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‘My prince?’
‘You’re to accompany me to Gelleth, Father Gomst. A diplomatic mission. I’m surprised the King didn’t tell you.’ I wasn’t so surprised in truth, since it was a lie. ‘We leave immediately.’
‘But—’
‘Come!’ I strode toward the door. A pause, and then he followed. I could hear the reluctance in his footsteps.
The brothers began to file out ahead of me, Rike trailing his hand along the walls, over reliquary and icon.
Having secured the priest I was keen to be off. I directed Makin to oversee a swift provisioning and led Gomst back to the West Yard.
‘We should not take this Nuba-man on a mission of diplomacy, Prince. Or any other,’ Gomst whispered as we walked. ‘They drink the blood of Christian priests to work their spells, you know.’
‘They do?’ I think it was the first interesting thing I ever heard Gomst say. ‘I could use a little magic myself.’
The priest paled behind his beard. ‘A superstition, my prince.’
A few more paces and, ‘Even so, were you to burn him, the Lord’s blessing would be upon us and our journey.’
Within the hour, saddlebags bulging, we rode back out into the Old Town. Sageous was waiting for us. He stood alone by the side of the cobbled path. I drew up before him, still uneasy in my mind. He had driven a wedge of doubt into me. I had told myself I’d set Count Renar aside as an act of strength, a sacrifice to the iron will I needed to win the game of thrones. But sometimes, now for instance, I didn’t quite believe it.
‘You should accept my protection, Prince,’ Sageous said.
‘I’ve survived long enough without it.’
‘But now you’re going to Gelleth, bound on a path to strengthen your father’s hand.’
‘I am.’ The brothers’ horses snorted around me.
‘If any had a mind that you might truly succeed, they would stop you,’ Sageous said. ‘The one who has played you these past years will seek to tighten the bonds you have loosened. Perhaps the priest will help you. His presence did before. He has value as a talisman, but past that he is empty robes.’
A horse pushed against Gerrod, the rider moving beside me.
I set my hand on my sword hilt. ‘I don’t like you, pagan.’
‘What do you think scared the marsh-dead, Jorg?’ No ripple in his calm watchfulness.
‘I—’ The boast sounded hollow before I spoke it.
‘An angry boy?’ Sageous shook his head. ‘The dead saw a darker hand upon your heart.’
‘I—’
‘Accept my protection. There are grander dreams you can dream.’
I felt the soft weight of sleep upon me, the saddle unsure beneath me.
‘Dream-witch.’ A dark voice spoke at my shoulder.
‘Dream-witch.’ The Nuban held out his crossbow, black fist curled around the stock, muscle strained against the load. ‘I carry your token, Dream-witch, your magics will not stain the boy.’
Sageous shrank back, the tattooed writings seeming to writhe across his face.
In an instant my eyes were wide. ‘You’re him.’ The clarity of it was blinding. ‘You set my brothers in Father’s dungeon. You sent your hunter to kill me.’
I set a hand upon the Nuban’s bow, remembering how he took it from the man I killed in a barn one stormy night. The dream-witch’s hunter.
‘You sent your hunter to kill me.’ The last tatters of Sageous’ charm left me. ‘And now it’s my hunter who holds it.’
Sageous turned and made for the castle gate, half running.
‘Pray I don’t find you here on my return, pagan.’ I said it quietly. If he heard it, he might follow my advice.
We left then, riding from the city without a backward look.
The rains first found us on the Ancrath Plains and dogged our passage north into the mountainous borders of Gelleth. I’ve been soaked on the road many a time, but the rains as we left my father’s lands were a cold misery that reached deeper than our bones. Burlow’s appetite remained undampened though, and Rike’s temper too. Burlow ate as if the rations were a challenge, and Rike growled at every raindrop.
At my instruction, Gomst took confession from the men. After hearing Red Kent speak of his crimes, and learning how he earned his name, Gomst asked to be excused his duties. After listening to Liar’s whispers, he begged.
Days passed. Long days and cold nights. I dreamed of Katherine, of her face and the fierceness of her eyes. Of an evening we ate Gains’s mystery stews and Fat Burlow tended the beasts, checking hooves and fetlocks. Burlow always looked to the horses. Perhaps he felt guilty about weighing so heavy on them, but I put it down to a morbid fear of walking. We wound further up into the bleakness of the mountains. And at last the rains broke. We camped in a high pass and I sat with the Nuban to watch the sun fall. He held his bow, whispering old secrets to it in his home tongue.
For two days we walked the horses across slopes too steep and sharp with rock for any hooves save the mountain goats’.
A pillar marked the entrance to the Gorge of the Leucrota. It stood two yards wide and twice as tall, a stump shattered by some giant’s whim. The remnants of the upper portion lay all around. Runes marked it, Latin I think, though so worn I could read almost nothing.
We rested at the pillar. I clambered up it to address the brothers from the top and take in the lie of the land.
I set the men to making camp. Gains set his fire and clanked his pots. The wind blew slight in the gorge, the oil-cloth tents barely flapping before it. The rain came again, but in a patter, soft and cold. Not enough to stir Rike lying on the rocks some five yards from the pillar, his snoring like a saw through wood.
I stood looking up at the cliff faces. There were caves up there. Many caves.
My hair swung behind me as I scanned the cliff. I’d let the Nuban weave it into a dozen long braids, a bronze charm at the end of each. He said it would ward off evil spirits. That just left me the good ones to worry about.
I stood with my hands on the Ancrath sword, resting its point before me. Waiting for something.
The men grew nervous, the animals too. I could tell it from their lack of complaint. They watched the slopes with me, toothless Elban as weatherbeaten as the rocks, young Roddat pale and pockmarked, Red Kent with his secrets, sly Row, Liar, Fat Burlow and the rest of my ragged bunch. The Nuban kept close by the pillar with Makin at his side. My band of brothers. All of them worried and not knowing why. Gomst looked set to run if he had a notion where to go. The brothers had a sense for trouble. I knew that well enough to understand that when they all worry together it’s a bad thing coming. A very bad thing.
Transcript from the trial of Sir Makin of Trent:
Cardinal Helot, papal prosecution: And do you deny razing the Cathedral of Wexten?
Sir Makin: I do not.
Cardinal Helot: Or the sack of Lower Merca?
Sir Makin: No, nor do I deny the sack of Upper Merca.
Cardinal Helot: Let the record show the accused finds amusement in the facts of his crime.
Court recorder: So noted.
27
The monsters came when the light failed. Shadows swallowed the gorge and the silence thickened until the wind could barely stir it. Makin’s hand fell on my shoulder. I flinched, edging the fear with momentary hatred, for my own weakness, and for Makin for showing it to me.
‘Up there.’ He nodded to my left.
One of the cave mouths had lit from within, a single eye watching us through the falling night.
‘That’s no fire,’ I said. The light had nothing of warmth or flicker.
As we watched, the source of illumination moved, swinging harsh shadows out across the slopes.
‘A lantern?’ Fat Burlow stepped up beside me, puffing out his cheeks in consternation. The brothers gathered around us.
The strange lantern emerged onto the slope, and darkness erased the cave behind. It shone like a star, a cold light, reaching from the source in a thousand bright lines. A single figure cut a wedge of shadow into the illumination; the lantern bearer.
We watched the unhurried descent. The wind sought my flesh with icy fingers and tugged for attention at my cloak.
‘Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus.’ Somewhere in the night old Gomsty muttered his Ave Marias.
A slow horror eased itself among us.
‘Mother of God!’ Makin spat the oath out as if to rid himself of the fear. We all felt it, crawling over the unseen rocks.
The brothers might have run, but where was there to go?
‘Torches, damn you. Now!’ I broke the paralysis, shocked that I’d stood hypnotized by the approach for so long.
‘Now!’ I drew my sword. They moved at that. Scurrying to the embers of the fire, stumbling over the rough ground.
‘Nuban, Row, Burlow, see there’s nothing coming up along the river.’ Even as I said it I knew we’d been flanked.
‘There! There, behind that rise!’ The Nuban motioned with his crossbow. He’d seen something, the Nuban wasn’t one to spook at nothing. We’d watched the pretty light and they’d flanked us. Simple as a market play of kiss-and-dip. Distract your mark with a pretty face, and come up from behind to rob him blind.
The torches flared, men ran to their weapons.
The light drew closer and we saw it for what it was, a child whose very skin bled radiance. She walked an even pace, every inch a-glow, white like molten silver, making mere shadows of the rags she wore.
‘Ave Maria, gratia plena!’ Father Gomst’s voice rose, lifting the prayer like a shield.
‘Hail Mary,’ I echoed him. ‘Full of grace, indeed.’
The girl’s eyes burned silver and the ghosts of flames chased across her skin. There was a fragile beauty to her that took my breath.
A monster walked behind her. In any other circumstance it would have been him that drew the eye. The monster had been built in parody of a man, sharing Adam’s lines as a cow apes a horse. The light revealed the horror of his flesh, sparing no detail. The thing might have topped seven foot in height. It even had a few inches on Little Rikey.
Liar raised his bow, disgust on his pinched face. I took his arm as he sighted on the monster.
‘No.’ I wanted to hear them speak. Besides, it looked as if an arrow would just annoy our new friend.
Under a twisted red hide the monster’s chest looked like a hundred-gallon barrel. A set of ribs pierced the flesh, reaching for each other above his heart.
The girl’s light touched us with a cold kiss and I felt her in my mind. She spoke and her voice seemed to rise from the rocks. I heard her footsteps in the corridors of my memory.
There are places where children shouldn’t wander. I met the girl’s silver gaze, and for a moment shadows licked across her.
‘Welcome to our camp,’ I said.
I stepped forward to greet them, leaving the brothers and entering the brilliance of the child’s aura. The monster smiled at me, a wide smile showing teeth stolen from the wolf. He’d the eyes of a cat, slitted against the light and throwing it back.
I passed beauty by and stood before the beast. We had us a moment of judging. I ran an eye over the muscle heaped on his bones, crossed over with pulsing veins and hard ridges of scar tissue. I could have eaten dinner off one of his hands. He had three fingers and a thumb on each, thick as the girl’s arm. He could have taken my head in one hand and crushed it.
I snapped my neck forward, sudden-like, and jumped at him with a shout, thrusting my face at his. He flinched backward and stumbled on the loose rock. The laughter escaped me. I couldn’t stop it.
‘Why?’ The girl looked puzzled. She tilted her head and the shadows ran.
‘Because.’ I gasped for my breath as the monster righted himself.
Why? For a moment I didn’t know.
‘Because … because, fuck him. Because he’s such a big bastard.’ I pushed the grin from my face. Because he had given me pause. Because he had made me feel small.
I looked down at her. ‘I’m bigger than you. Are you going to let that scare you?’
‘I do fear you,’ the girl said. ‘Not for your size, Jorg. For the threads that gather around you. For the lines that meet where I can’t see them. For the weight, and the knife-edge on which it sits.’ She spoke in a sing-song, high and sweet.
‘You make a fine oracle, girl,’ I said. ‘You’ve got that mix of profound and empty just right.’ I slammed my sword back into its sheath. ‘So, you’ve my name. Shall we share? Do the leucrota have names?’
‘Jane,’ she said. ‘And this is Gorgoth, a leader under the mountain.’
‘Charmed.’ I gave them a little bow. ‘Perhaps your friends could come out from behind the rocks, and that way my brothers won’t feel so tempted to shoot at shadows.’
Gorgoth set his cat’s eyes on me, a narrow and feral stare.
‘Up!’ His voice rolled out even deeper than I’d imagined, and I’d imagined it pretty deep.
Other monsters rose around our camp, some of them shockingly close. Had every gargoyle and grotesque torn free from the great cathedrals and gathered to form an army, the leucrota would be that army made flesh. No two stood alike. All had been sketched on the frame of a man, but with a poor hand. None were as huge and hale as Gorgoth. Most leaked from sores, sported withered limbs, or laboured beneath growths of wart and tumour heaped in foul confusion.
‘Jesu, Gorgoth! Your friends make Little Rikey look almost handsome,’ I said.
Makin came to join me, eyes screwed up against Jane’s light. He shaded his face with a hand and looked Gorgoth up and down.
‘And this will be Sir Makin,’ I said. ‘Knight of the court of King Olidan, terror of—’
‘A man to trust.’ Jane’s high voice cut across me. ‘If he gives you his word.’
She turned those silver orbs of hers on me and I felt my yesterdays crowding at my shoulder. ‘You want to go to the heart of the mountain,’ she said.
