Authors: Peter V. Brett
She looked at Arlen, still laying a fire, proud as a cat with a mouse in its teeth, and grew angrier still. Magic came to him easy as breathing, but not to her? Why?
Ent
eaten
enough. Still got a way to go.
‘Gonna hunt, then,’ she said.
Arlen shrugged. ‘Won’t kill you to have some supper first.’
Renna wanted to slap the back of his shaved head. Her fists clenched, nails digging into her skin, drawing blood. She wanted to rend …
She caught herself. Magic pulsed through her, primal and powerful, awakening base desires and turning them into raging storms.
Maybe
I’ve eaten too much already.
Renna breathed deeply, again and again in rhythm, the Krasian technique Arlen had taught during her
sharusahk
lessons. Slowly her fists began to unclench, and her heart stopped pounding in her chest, or at least slowed to a steady throb. She forced herself to dismount, brushing down Promise and letting her graze on the thick grass at the side of the road.
They had almost finished eating when Arlen craned his head as if listening to something far away. He smiled. ‘There it is.’
‘What?’ Renna asked, but he stood quickly, scraping the remains from his bowl and stowing it with his cookpot. He drew a ward in the air, and the fire winked out.
‘Come on.’ Arlen leapt into the saddle and kicked Twilight Dancer into a gallop, tearing down the road.
‘Son of the Core,’ Renna muttered, dumping her own bowl and hurrying after. Promise had limbered as the day went on, but it was still several minutes until she caught up to Arlen as he pulled to a stop. Up ahead was a hazy glow and the sounds of battle, but he seemed unconcerned.
‘Seems the Hollow’s expanding again. Reckon the Cutters got it in hand.’ Arlen dismounted and nodded into the woods. ‘Put your cloak on and let’s see if we can get a peek.’
He led them quickly through the trees. A wood demon stepped into their path, ready to strike, but Arlen hissed at it and the wood wards on his body flared, driving the coreling back. They soon came to a thin spot in the trees just outside a huge clearing, still full of stumps and the smell of fresh lumber. Here Arlen stopped, watching from the darkness.
In the centre of the clearing, bonfires burned in a large
warded circle, full of tents and tools and draught animals. The
fires gave light to the men and women moving about the clearing, fighting a great copse of wood demons and a ten-foot rock demon.
Every instinct in Renna’s body told her to leap into the battle – her blood was on fire with the need to kill demons. She smelled ichor and felt her mouth water, ready to aid in choking down their foul meat.
But Arlen stood calmly, clearly having no intention to interfere. She forced herself to relax, taking her hand off the handle of her knife and letting her warded cloak envelop her fully, hiding her from demon eyes.
The cloak had changed since she began eating coreling flesh. She could feel the wards drawing off her own personal magic, but rather than flare brighter, they, and the cloak itself, seemed to dim and blur. Staring at it too long made her dizzy. She wondered how much demon meat she would need to eat before it faded from sight entirely. More than Arlen, it seemed, for he could still see the cloak, though she noted he never looked her way long when she wore it.
‘What are they doing?’ Renna asked, when silence and inaction began to weigh on her.
‘Clearing a greatward,’ Arlen said. ‘They start by chopping trees to form a centre for the town, then they branch out, clearing land in the shape of a ward of forbidding miles wide. At night, they kill the demons that rise in the area, so they’re culled and not just pushed to the edge of the forbidding when the ward activates.’
‘Why doesn’t everyone do that?’ Renna asked. A ward that big would draw so much magic that no corespawn could penetrate it, and it would be almost impossible to mar.
‘Reckon they used to, back in the demon wars,’ Arlen said. ‘But people forgot, and since the Return, folk have been too busy hiding to use their heads.’
Renna grunted and watched the battle more closely, recognizing the Cutters immediately. Cutter was a common name in the hamlets, the surname of most anyone who felled trees or sold wood. Even in Tibbet’s Brook, hundreds of miles away, there were close to a hundred Cutters, living in a cluster by the goldwood trees. It was shocking how alike they were to the Hollowers.
The men were big and burly, dressed in sleeveless vests of thick leather, with banded bracers and biceps that seemed bigger than Renna’s head. She could almost squint and see Brine Cutter, who had defended Renna in council, those months ago. She hadn’t had the will to move that night, even to speak in her own defence, but she remembered every word as the elders of Tibbet’s Brook condemned her to death. The Cutters had stood by her.
There were women as well, all armed with crank bows or heavy warded blades. At first Renna thought they wore heavy skirts, but when they moved she could see the skirts were divided, giving freedom of moment without sacrificing modesty.
Renna snorted. That was exactly the sort of ridiculous thing the goodwives in Tibbet’s Brook would do, which was likely why they had never taken well to Renna and her sisters. The Tanner girls seldom hid much skin from the sun. Renna herself bared as much as possible, so the blackstem wards on her flesh could embrace the magic-charged night air.
Surrounding the women were a group of men that stood in stark contrast to the Cutters. Clad in thick wooden armour, lacquered with wards and fired hard, they wore heavy helms and carried matching spear and shield. At the centre of the warding circle on their shields was a painted toy soldier.
‘Who’re they?’ Renna asked, pointing.
‘The Wooden Soldiers,’ Arlen said. ‘Royal guard of Angiers. Duke Rhinebeck said he would send ’em here to train with the Cutters.’
‘Looks like they haven’t been at it long,’ Renna noted. Despite their splendid armour, the men stood stiffly, clutching their weapons tight and casting nervous glances at the demons.
‘City guards,’ Arlen said. ‘Used to bullying folk and maybe handing down a beating or two, but I doubt any of them ever so much as thrust a spear outside the practice yard before coming to the Hollow.’ He pointed. ‘And Prince Thamos looks to be the worst of the lot.’
Indeed, the man Arlen pointed to was clad as she imagined a prince might be, his steel armour gilded with golden wards and polished bright. He was tall and lean, powerfully built with a trim black beard lining a strong jaw.
But the prince shifted his feet, stretching his arms and rolling his head, trying vainly to limber muscles gone tense. Renna could smell his fear from across the clearing, and she knew the demons could scent it, too.
It was clear the Cutters had relegated the Wooden Soldiers
to the back of the fray, given the specious duty of guarding
the women, who seemed neither to want nor to need such
protection.
Years ago, Renna’s father had asked Brine Broadshoulders and some of the other Cutters in Tibbet’s Brook to help clear some land for planting. Renna and Beni had watched the men work for hours, systematically felling trees, hauling off the wood, and tearing free the roots. Every movement smooth and practised, letting the weight of the tools power their swings, wasting no energy.
It was much like that to see the Hollow Cutters fight. They still carried the tools of their trade, now warded, and put them to work with brutal efficiency.
Two men wielding great long axes took turns hacking at the legs of a wood demon. It was tall and thin, with tremendous reach, but whenever it went after one man, the other came at it from the opposite side. When the demon’s strikes came in too close, the men would catch them on their warded bracers, deflecting the blows with flares of magic. Finally, one of the axes took the demon in the back of the knee, and the limb buckled.
‘Samm!’ one of the axe-wielders called, and a third Cutter came up behind the demon, putting a giant boot into its back and knocking it facedown, his full weight holding it prone. The man carried a great, two-handed saw, and he bent to the task,
sawing through the thick barklike armour of its neck in a
shower of magical sparks and spraying ichor. In seconds the head fell free.
‘Night,’ Renna whispered.
Arlen smiled and nodded. ‘That’s Samm Cutter, but everyone calls him Samm Saw. Used to cut the limbs from trees the Cutters felled so they could be hauled off. Hundreds a day. Now he cuts off demon limbs just as quick.’
Another call came, and Samm turned to a Cutter who swung a heavy axe mattock, chopping at a wood demon. Each warded blow knocked the demon back a step, unable to recover its balance, but the demon showed no sign of real damage, healing as fast as the blows could come. Samm came in behind the demon, sawing through one of its trunklike legs while the demon still stood. It collapsed with a shriek, and the Cutter shouted thanks as he raised his mattock to finish it off.
Across the clearing, a dozen Cutters hauled on ropes looped around the rock demon’s arms and shoulders, thrown this way and that as the coreling thrashed. Two women with crank bows fired repeatedly, the heavy bolts sticking from the obsidian carapace like porcupine quills, but they seemed to do little beyond provoke the rock demon’s rage.
Three men and a boy stood by the scene, two younger men with small but heavy mallets, and the third, older, with a heavy sledge. The boy held a thick metal wedge.
‘Tomm Wedge and his sons,’ Arlen pointed. ‘Watch.’
The rock demon set its feet to pull on the ropes, and the younger men darted in, jamming warded spikes into the gap in the armour plates at the demon’s knees. Almost simultaneously, they struck with their mallets, once, twice, sending showers of magical sparks as they drove the spikes in.
The demon shrieked and staggered, teetering as the Cutters threw their full weight onto the ropes to bring it down. Its thrashing tail caught one cluster of men, knocking three of them to the ground, their rope flying free. The sudden release sent the demon staggering in the other direction, and it soon lost balance and fell.
Quick as a rabbit the boy was up on the rock demon’s back, planting the warded metal wedge into a gap where the plates met on the demon’s armoured back. Tomm Wedge went into action, swinging his hammer in a smooth arc to come down on the wedge with a thunderclap of magic. The flare was so bright Renna blinked, and when she opened her eyes the demon collapsed from the blow’s rebound and lay still.
Practised. Efficient. No wasted energy.
‘It’s eerie,’ Renna said. ‘They might as well be felling trees.’
Arlen nodded. ‘Wasn’t time to make weapons or train folk to fight that first night. Had to ward whatever was at hand, and the Cutters gave me the most precious things they owned – their tools. More and more folk join the fight every day now and are handed mass-produced spears, but the best of them can’t keep up with the Cutters. Using their old tools marks them. Sets them apart. Folk step lightly when they’re about, and spin ale stories about them when they’re not.’
‘All because they were fortunate enough to meet Arlen Bales on a bad day,’ Renna said. ‘Like me.’ Arlen looked at her, but she held up a hand to check him. ‘Don’t think you’re the Deliverer any more’n you do, but you can’t deny you’ve a knack for showing folk their spines,’ she touched her knife hilt again, ‘and teeth.’
Arlen grunted. ‘Everyone’s got a knack for something, I guess.’
‘Doesn’t hurt that the Hollowers are so big you’d have to jump to kiss them, as my sister used to say,’ Renna noted.
‘Didn’t all start that way,’ Arlen said. ‘Magic’s played its part. Sun may burn it off come morning, but not before it affects whatever it touches. Warded weapons don’t tend to break or dull, and the Cutters have been soaking magic up nightly for nigh a year. Old ones get younger, and young ones grow into their full before their time.’
He pointed. ‘See that one with the salt-and-pepper hair?’
Renna looked where he was pointing and saw a man with arms and legs bunched with thick-veined muscle, standing toe-to-toe with a seven-foot wood demon. She nodded.
‘Name’s Yon Gray,’ Arlen said, ‘and he’s the oldest man in the Hollow. Hair was stark white a year ago. Needed a stick to even walk crooked, and his hands shook.’
‘Honest word?’ Renna asked.
Arlen nodded, pointing again, this time to a huge man in the prime of his life, charging in behind the demon while Yon kept its attention. ‘Linder Cutter. Ent no more’n fifteen years old.’
One of the wood demons struck one of the huge men a backhand blow that lifted him from the ground and threw him back several feet. He landed with a heavy thump, his axe mattock flying from his grasp. Renna saw no blood, but the prone man had no time to rise as the demon charged.
Her knife was in her hand in an instant, but Arlen took hold of her shoulder as she started to move. She snapped a glare at him, but he only inclined his head back at the scene. Renna looked and saw an enormous wolfhound leap on the demon’s back, bearing it down as the dog’s huge jaws tore loose a chunk of the demon’s rough, knobbed armour, sinking into the soft flesh beneath.
The man had recovered by then, and buried his mattock in the coreling’s skull with a wet thwack. The dog looked up at him with its muzzle wet with black demon ichor, glowing bright with magic to Renna’s warded eyes. It was the biggest dog Renna had ever seen, five hundred pounds at least, with gnarled charcoal fur and claws so great they couldn’t fully retract. It growled at the Cutter, but he only laughed and gave it a scratch behind the ears. He whistled as he ran back into battle, and the dog licked the ichor from its teeth and followed.
‘Creator,’ Renna said. ‘It’s as big as a nightwolf.’
‘Didn’t used to be,’ Arlen said, ‘but it’s been eating demon. Corespawned dog’s bigger every time I see it.’