The six of them had left the little boat at the pier, climbed the steep steps of the harbour wall, crept past the statue of Hytha, and were now standing on the street facing out to the sea. Even
the sea made no noise here – there was just fog above them, below them and about them, enfolding them with its icy fingers, shortening their breath and making Ceriana’s heart thump so
violently she half expected it to see it explode out of her chest.
Wulfthram was in the lead, with Ceriana following closely behind him, as they walked slowly past dark lifeless cottage after dark lifeless cottage. Then he stopped.
‘A tavern,’ he said. ‘If we are going to find anyone in this place, surely it’ll be here.’ Even he was trying to speak quietly.
They all looked at the gloomy two-storey building in front of them. The sign, displaying some sort of jolly fisherman, hung limply without moving over the dark oak door. There were two bowed
thick glass windows that reflected no light in front of them. Ceriana tried peering through but could see nothing. ‘Who’s going in?’ she asked.
‘It’s black as pitch in there,’ said Haelward. ‘It looks as deserted as every other place we’ve seen.’
‘Hand me the lantern,’ said Wulfthram, ‘Strogar, Haelward, come with me; you three wait here; I reckon we will only be a minute.’
The door was not locked. As Wulfthram pushed it, it creaked slowly inwards, a noise that seemed a violation to the all-pervading stillness around them. Wulfthram looked at Strogar, who was a
bull of a man, who in turn looked at Haelward, who in turn looked at the three people behind him. He raised his eyes, making Ceriana smile back at him. Then the three of them disappeared into the
tavern.
Ceriana looked around her. The moon was casting a ghoulish light on to the cobbled street and making both her and her companions faces look as white as a death mask. Derkss, a thin-faced man
with a full growth of beard, held the remaining lantern. He looked as discomfited by their surroundings as any of them.
‘Are you all right?’ Ceriana asked him.
‘Of course, my Lady; it is just that I am a simple enough man who would much prefer a stand-up fight to all this creeping around. And this place ... can’t you feel it? It is as
though it has been forsaken by the Gods.’
‘Forsaken by the Gods!’ Ceriana whispered to herself. ‘Perhaps I am in the right place, after all.’
Ulian padded softly to the water’s edge. The outline of their ship could barely be seen. After a little while, though, he asked out loud, ‘Do you think this is a natural
fog?’
‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Derkss replied nervously. ‘These parts have many heavy sea fogs.’
Ceriana did not reply; the same thought had already occurred to her. What if the fog was the cause of everyone’s disappearance? And here they were trapped in the middle of it. It was cold,
too. Her cloak seemed to be doing nothing to protect her; the fog seemed to be passing right through it, her dress, her very skin. Her very soul seemed frozen by it.
The three men came out of the tavern. ‘Nothing,’ said Wulfthram. ‘It looks like the place was full of people who for no reason at all decided to get up and leave. Mugs of ale
not fully consumed, plates of half-eaten food, crumpled bed sheets. It is so strange.’
‘The ale was still there, though.’ Haelward was holding a bottle. The men passed it round, each taking a swig. Wulfthram passed it finally to Ceriana.
‘Go on,’ he said, ‘show me how northern you have become.’
Without hesitating, she took a draught. By Elissa, it was horrible, but she was determined not to show it. She wiped her lips, gave the slightest feminine burp and handed it back to her
husband.
‘Have you nothing stronger than this pond water?’
There were laughs all round, and the laughter seemed as incongruous as it was possible to be, given their surroundings. ‘Let us check the town square,’ said Wulfthram. ‘Then we
can return to the boat and leave further investigations till the morning.’
There was a narrow side street next to the tavern that led uphill towards the square. Its buildings were squeezed so closely to the roadside that it felt like they were deliberately hemming them
in. The men drew their blades as the fog thickened the further they progressed. Finally, the street ended, the climb finished and they were on the level ground of the town’s square.
It was a fairly nondescript square, cobbled and with a house of Artorus at its far end. The buildings here were taller, two-storey townhouses and warehouses with dark leaded windows; it was a
place for the better-off people of the town, or at least it had been.
At the centre of the square was a fountain. In the height of summer it would have been a lovely place to sit, maybe to run one’s fingers through the waters or feel the light spray caress
one’s cheek. None of the six people looking at it felt anything like that now, though.
For the fountain was frozen.
The air around them was cold but not freezing, certainly not cold enough to freeze moving water, but there the fountain was, its jets paralysed, twisting like frosted white chains, entwining but
never reaching the unmoving pool underneath.
Wulfthram and Haelward moved towards the fountain; they started to walk around it but both stopped simultaneously when they saw what lay behind it.
‘Mytha’s claw!’ breathed Haelward.
Lying on the ground behind the fountain were close to a dozen people. They were all dead; they were all frozen. All of them were holding their hands to their faces as if to ward off some unseen
terror. Fear was writ large on all of them, their eyes wide, their mouths open as though their paralysis had started long before the frost overtook them.
‘They are all men,’ said Haelward as the others joined them. ‘I wonder if they had sent the women and children away somewhere and decided to stay and fight for their
homes.’
‘But to fight what?,’ said Derkss. ‘What in this world can do this to a man?’
Nobody answered him. Wulfthram continued to walk the square and when he got to the house of Artorus he called the others to him. Ceriana walked up to him, expecting the worst.
She was not disappointed.
Pews and benches had been put behind the doorway in order to reinforce it, but both doors had been torn off their hinges and lay where they had been thrown, in the square about ten feet from the
holy house. Some benches had been smashed into matchwood; others had been ripped in half as though they were made of paper. They slowly eased their way past this destruction and stood on the tiled
floor at the centre of the church.
Against the far wall, all huddled together, were at least two dozen more people, all frozen in their death throes, many of them holding each other as though seeking comfort. It was as if the
certainty of their fate was already apparent to them. And these were not young men. They were mainly women and children; some of the children were little more than babes in arms. They could not
run, so they came here, hoping the Gods would protect them; but it was as Derkss said – the Gods had already forsaken this town. Ceriana choked back a sob. These poor people – none of
them deserved this!
She turned and left the building. From this side of the square it was easy to see the hill and cliff top where the ruins stood. And now it was her turn to notice something. She waited for the
others to join her and pointed up the hill.
Despite the fog and the darkness, the dark outlines of some of the nearer ruined towers could be seen, but it was not at these that Ceriana was pointing. Somewhere up the hill, amid the smoky
white blanket shrouding the land, was a light. It was a sickly green in colour and it pulsated slowly, in a similar way to the stone at her breast sometimes did. She could not tell how far away it
was, but every instinct told her that it was in that direction they should be heading.
Wulfthram evidently felt the same. He stood next to her, looked at it for a moment and said:
‘Well, my dear, I don’t think we need bother hiring a guide after all.’
And with that he starting walking, heading straight towards the hill. After a deep breath Ceriana touched the amulet of dull iron and followed. Behind her, she heard Haelward mutter: ‘I
hope the Gods are watching tonight. Artorus help us, have I ever done anything braver?’
No, she thought, none of us have.
There was a grille in the roof of his cell. Cygan knew he was underground and that the grille opened out on to the stone floor of the courtyard of this baron’s enormous
house, but for Cygan it was the only source of light in this cramped miserable little chamber. Moisture dripped through it – where it slid down the walls the stones were streaked with moss
and where it pooled on the floor it stained the already-filthy straw black.
He wasn’t quite sure how many days he had been here. He thought back to when he was bundled into the wagon, his hands and feet shackled, and the short journey along the river’s edge
to the town where he was now being held. The trading post had been the only settlement of the Taneren he had ever seen and his shock at seeing this much larger city, with its smells of leather,
horse, and dung and the press of unwashed citizens, had been great. He was, of course, something of a curiosity to them and it was almost a relief when they passed through the great gates of this
mansion and he had left the wide-eyed and pointing populace behind. There he was handed over to a large slack-jawed hulk of a man named Cornock, who had thrown him into this tiny cell, though not
until after he had spat on him, called him a murderer and remarked on how much he was looking forward to see him dance at the end of a rope. And here he had remained. The cell stank, the door had
only been opened once a day for feeding purposes, and he had seen and spoken to no one in all this time.
Which brought him back to the grille and the small square of light that it cast on to the stone wall in front of him. He would watch it move as the day progressed, from dawn – when it
would appear on the cell door – to nightfall – when, if there was no moon, it would disappear on the wall against which he now sat. He tried to keep focusing on it, thinking of the
freedom that it represented, a freedom he was not likely to experience again. He deliberately did not think of his wife and children, not while hope still remained. To dwell on his wife’s
dark, intelligent face and his children, laughing and shouting as they played outside their home, would be to weaken him, to make him think of what he had to lose – and right now he was still
alive and charged with a mission from the Elder. However remote the possibility of him discharging his duty, while the possibility remained, then his duty was all that mattered and he had to be
strong for that.
How or what he could do to accomplish it, though, was another matter. He knew a little of the society of these people from snippets of conversation picked up at the trading posts and with
conversations held with the more amenable merchants there. He believed the Baron would look at the details of his case and pronounce judgement, and that he had the right to speak before him before
sentence was pronounced. It was likely to be his only chance to warn these people of their folly; if they ignored him, the Malaac would be here soon enough. What would happen to his village and his
people, though, he did not want to think. He had no real inner conviction that Cerren’s brave sacrifice would grant the protection the Gods had promised.
Suddenly the silence was broken. He heard the sound of a bolt being drawn back and the key being turned in the lock. He went and stood with his back to the far wall as the door was slowly
opened, its hinges groaning in protest. In the doorway stood Cornock, his forearms bare, his mouth open in a sneer that showed his blackened teeth. He came into the cell followed by two other men
Cygan had not seen before. He noticed, though, that they were both almost as muscular as the jailor.
Cornock folded his arms. One of the men behind him was holding a flaming torch. It gave off little light but made the jailor’s black eyes glitter like two pits of obsidian. Cygan noticed
the man dribbled slightly; maybe his teeth were giving him problems.
‘Well, Marsh Man,’ he said, ‘we have just had some good news, good for us that is. A herald has just arrived to say the Baron will be here tomorrow. Apparently, he has business
to attend to.’
‘Yes,’ laughed one of the men behind him, ‘the business of hanging you.’
Cornock said nothing. Instead, he started pulling the fingers of his left hand, clicking each knuckle in turn.
‘It is true – holding the local justice hearings is one of his chief duties. Magistrate Onkean has written the deputation in your case; I am sure he will hear it in the next few
days.’
‘Then I will be brought before your baron?’ asked Cygan. ‘I will be able to speak with him?’
Cornock sniggered, then without warning he back-handed Cygan across the face. Cygan did not fall but stood to face the man almost immediately, a thin line of blood trickling from the corner of
his lip.
‘And what exactly do you think our baron’ – he emphasised the last word – ‘would want with a barbaric little sewer rat like you. You think you have rights here? You
are not even a citizen of the country; an Arshuman dog is more important than you to us. Just because you have managed to stop scratching the fleas on your arse long enough to speak a civilised
language does not make you a human being and that’ – he stopped to clean some wax out of his ear – ‘is exactly how Baron Eburg will see you.’
‘He would be a fool not to listen to me.’ Cygan stood tall and unflinching, matching Cornock’s stare. ‘His people are in as much danger as mine. That includes you. You
would be a very tasty meal for the creatures that are attacking us, and...’ – he paused to let the words sink home – ‘if they were to feast on your corpulence, it would be
the first thing I could give them credit for.’
Cornock glowered menacingly. ‘See, boys; what we have here is an uppity Marshie, one as thinks he is as good as us.’ He moved closer to Cygan, close enough for his fetid breath to be
smelled. ‘Just be grateful that we need no information from you, boy; otherwise there would be nothing to stop me from applying hot brands to your scaly marsh flesh. One thing though’
– he moved backwards a couple of feet so the men behind could hear him clearly – ‘you really should not have tried to escape; using force to restrain you should never have been
necessary.’