Ian Esslemont - Assail

From the edge of his vision, Kyle caught Jethiss stepping out of the dark. The Andii had his hands raised, open. ‘We are all of us run ragged. Our blood is high. Perhaps now is not the time …’

But Fisher had drawn himself up straight and with both hands pushed back his long, sweaty grey-streaked hair. ‘You would have me speak, would you? Very well. All I have are suspicions, hints, lines from old sagas, but what I dread may be very real. I fear both what lies ahead and what lies behind. And for the life of me, I cannot say which is the lesser of the two! Omtose Phellack is stirring. And why? What could raise its ire? Badlands,’ he demanded, pointing, ‘I spoke of this before and you dismissed it — who is the old enemy?’

The Lost brother’s brow wrinkled in confusion at first, but then understanding came and he snorted his scorn. ‘You can’t be serious, man!’

‘I fear it!’ Fisher answered, insistent. ‘And we are leading them on higher!’ He turned to Stalker. ‘And what sleeps in the heights?’

Stalker scowled in obvious rejection of the bard’s words. He turned away and raised his head to the heights gleaming silver through breaks in the forest’s canopy. He was quiet for a time as he smoothed his long drooping moustache. ‘You’re letting your imagination get the better of you — jumping at maybes and phantasms.’ Yet his tone told Kyle that he was half convinced. ‘We’d better talk this over with the others.’ As if struck by a thought, he faced Jethiss. ‘My thanks for getting us out of there.’

The Andii inclined his head a fraction. ‘No — it is I who should thank you.’ He glanced to Fisher. ‘Calling upon whatever it is in me that allows this manipulation has jogged free more of my memories. I believe I now know why I am here.’

Strangely, instead of being pleased, as Kyle had thought he would be, the bard actually appeared wary. He offered a subdued, ‘Oh?’

‘Yes.’ Jethiss turned to Kyle. ‘Our people once had a champion who carried a blade that guarded us. Now we are without such a protector. I believe I have been sent to remedy that lack. I believe I have been sent for a sword.’

Kyle could not help but close his fist on the grip of the white blade. All eyes, he noted, now rested upon him. He felt his breath whisper away in an unmanning clutch of dread.

Jethiss frowned then, studying his face in puzzlement, then his brows rose and for an instant a strange expression crossed his face. What to Kyle appeared almost to be hurt. He waved a hand. ‘Do not worry, friend Kyle, I would never — that is, your weapon is safe.’

‘Then where,’ the bard asked into the lengthening silence, ‘do you believe you will find this weapon?’

The Andii’s alien night-black eyes released Kyle to shift to Fisher. ‘In the north.’

Kyle found himself blinking and weaving slightly as he dropped his sweat-slick hand from the sword. Only now did he note how both Stalker and Badlands flanked him, while Cal-Brinn had eased away, closer to the Avowed now quiet and watchful across the copse of woods.

‘A desperate option,’ Fisher remarked, rather dryly. ‘Do you think it wise?’

‘I think it necessary.’ And the Andii walked off into the woods, heading upland.

Kyle and the remaining three exchanged silent looks. We are of the blood, he realized. As Stalker said, I, too, have a stake here.

‘So what do we do?’ Badlands growled, and adjusted the blood-soaked cloth round his upper arm.

‘I do not know,’ Fisher answered. ‘I’m not even sure we could stop him if we wished.’

‘Is he — you know … him ?’

The bard shook his head in frustration. ‘I do not believe so. He appears different. But then …’

‘Yes? What?’ Stalker prompted, irritated by the bard’s habit of withholding his thoughts.

Fisher raised his shoulders in a helpless shrug. ‘He was a shapeshifter.’

‘Oh, wonderful,’ Badlands snarled, and he let out a breath like a fart. ‘That’s a big help.’ He waved Cal-Brinn over, calling, ‘Let’s put more room between us ’n’ them Letherii bastards, shall we?’

* * *

Reuth started up from his bunk in a panic. It was dark and all he could see were Storval’s hands reaching for his throat from the night. He blinked away the ghost-memory from his nightmares. He remembered that he was safe now, on board the Silver Dawn , in the care of a blind Falaran pilot and her husband, the ship’s captain. He had a sudden sense of the solid presence of his uncle, Tulan, wrapped in his bear-hide cloak, smelling of grease, and tears came to his eyes. He was gone, and the crew that betrayed him was now part of the invader army camped outside the walls of Mantle, high on its cliff-side perch.

Though it was long before dawn he knew he’d never get back to sleep, so he swung his feet over to the cold boards of the cabin and dressed. The air was surprisingly chill and he shivered as he pulled on his woollen outer shirt and vest. Last, he drew on his goatskin shoes, slipped the leather thong over its horn toggle, and stood to stamp his feet on the boards to bring warmth to them. Indeed, so cold was the night air that he drew on the extra cloak he’d been given and clasped it at his shoulder with its round bronze brooch.

Ducking his head, he opened the door and stepped out of what was the cabin of the captain and his wife — the only private cabin on board the vessel. He remembered, vaguely, being moved here. He drew in a long breath of the chill air and nearly coughed, so harsh was it. His lungs felt frozen. To the south, the night sky was dark and clear, the stars glimmering brightly. But thick black clouds choked the sky overhead and further north. They crowded so low as to cut off the heights of the Salt range.

‘Felt it too, yes?’ murmured the rough voice of his caregiver, the ship’s pilot, Ieleen.

He turned to the tiller arm where she sat, long-stemmed pipe in mouth, hands clasping a short walking stick. ‘Feel what?’

‘The change.’ She took hold of the pipe and gestured. ‘All these days the wind has been coming out of the south, bringing warmth and the spring.’ She pointed the stem north. ‘But now the air is coming down from the mountains, bringing an unnatural cold.’ Her eyes, milky blind, somehow found his. ‘Ever felt the like?’

Being of Mare, Reuth had to admit that he had. So dreadful was the similarity he was reluctant to give it voice. As if saying it would somehow lend it solidity. ‘The false winter of the Stormriders,’ he finally admitted, hunching and shivering.

‘Aye. Your Stormriders. The ignorant speak of the winters of the Stormriders and the Jaghut as if they are the same thing. But that is not so. The Riders are alien. Not of this world. Indeed, some argue that in their original form they were of the frigid black gaps between the worlds — but that cannot be decided. No, this cold is more familiar, is it not? We’ve faced it before, or at least our ancestors have.’ She drew on the pipe in a loud hiss and popping of whatever strange leaf she burned. ‘This crew is of Falar, and south of our lands are mountains capped by a great ice-field. The Fenn range, we call it. It, too, is a place where the old races yet hold out. Giants and Jaghut — the Fenn and the Thelomen-kind. We both know this cold, yes? It is the breath of the Jaghut winter blowing down our necks.’

Reuth shivered again. ‘But it’s spring.’

The old woman’s snow-white orbs gleamed in the yellow glow of the pipe-embers. ‘It was. I fear spring’s been cancelled. As has summer.’

‘That’s impossible!’

‘Not at all. It’s happened before. Many times. In many regions.’

‘Greetings, Silver Dawn !’ a gruff voice called from the dock. ‘Permission to come aboard?’