Luke Scull - The Grim Company

Jerek had noticed the disturbance too. He took one look at the disaster heading towards them and raised his hands in a gesture that expressed his complete disgust at this unlikely turn of events. ‘This is bullshit,’ he said. ‘One thing after another. Fucking unbeliev-’

He was interrupted as the wall of water hurtled into the cutter and lifted it into the air, tossing it with alarming speed towards the onrushing coastline.

The sudden cacophony of animal noises from outside told her the Brethren had arrived.

Yllandris rose hastily, brushing ash from the purple silk shawl straining against her breasts. Sweat moistened her bronze skin, running in beads down her perfectly flat stomach. Her hair was so dark as to appear almost purple, complementing the violet paint she wore on her lips and under her eyes. She gave it a shake and it fell almost to her waist, an impressive mane of hair that resembled that of the great Highland cat: a regal, graceful creature, yet utterly vicious when provoked.

Yllandris smiled, revealing perfect white teeth. Regal, graceful and deadly was exactly how she would describe herself.

She kicked dirt over the embers of the dying fire. The modest wooden hut that was her home disgusted her, but she wouldn’t have to suffer it for much longer. Yllandris was the favoured paramour of Magnar, King of the High Fangs, and, if the spirits were good, before the year was over she would sit beside him in the Great Lodge as his queen and consort.

She pushed aside the bearskin that covered the entrance to her hut and stepped out into the early-morning air. The freezing wind buffeted her immediately, depositing snowflakes on her skin and causing it to prickle where moments ago it had perspired. Snow blanketed Heartstone as far as the eye could see. The capital and largest city of the High Fangs was a sea of white, dotted by mounds and hills that were all that remained of the huts and longhouses buried beneath the night’s snowfall. The tall wooden wall surrounding the town rose menacingly from a thick fog that obscured the frozen surface of Lake Dragur beyond.

Yllandris could feel damp cold on the bottom of her bare legs. The snow had swallowed her boots and now reached almost to her knees. She paid it no mind — she was a sorceress and a daughter of the Highland people. The soft fops in the Lowlands might quail at such hardships, but she was made of sterner stuff. Besides, she would not appear weak in front of the Brethren.

There were eight of them. Gaern had led this hunt; he sat on his huge haunches at the front of the pack, panting heavily. Frozen blood clung to his snout, though whether it belonged to him or another Yllandris could not be certain.

She narrowed her eyes. A massive silver boar lay with his head resting on the snow. The animal’s breathing was shallow and a jagged wound ran down the length of his left flank. It looked deep. It was a small miracle he had made it back to Heartstone.

It took her a moment to remember the beast’s name. Thorne . He had been with the Brethren for twenty years. Already greying when he had transcended, he was old even by the standards of the most grizzled warriors in the High Fangs. For a boar, the animal the Highlander had merged with during the Shaman’s ritual, he was positively ancient.

‘What did this to you?’ she snarled. Thorne measured eight feet from the tip of his snout to the end of his tail and weighed close to half a ton. Even a pack of Highland cats would shy away from attacking such a formidable beast — especially when they saw the human intelligence shining within those gimlet eyes.

Yllandris placed a hand on Thorne’s boulder-like head. Thought-mining was next to useless when attempted on a Highlander, but the Brethren were no longer human. The natural resistance her people possessed towards mental intrusion evaporated when they transcended.

Images formed in her mind. She saw giants, ugly hulking creatures half again the height of a man, wielding crude clubs and axes of wood and stone. The Brethren had fallen upon them on a ridge overlooking a pine-crowded valley. Despite their size and strength, the giants had been outnumbered and overwhelmed by the speed and cunning of their foes. She witnessed Gaern take a club to the face and then rise up with a mighty roar to wrap his arms around the giant that had struck him. The transcended bear closed massive jaws around the giant’s neck and tore out its throat in a shower of blood.

Some of the Brethren had taken minor wounds, but the encounter with the giants had proved to be little more than a distraction. It was not giants they hunted.

Yllandris mined deeper and concentrated. Scattered recollections came to her: visions of snow-encrusted vales and frozen streams; a herd of elk scattering in alarm as the Brethren passed by. Then she saw it and she could not stifle a gasp. It was impossibly tall, towering over even Gaern: a lithe, black-skinned reptilian monstrosity with bat-like wings and claws resembling scythes. It had ambushed them as they crossed the surface of a frozen lake, plummeting down out of the sky to rend Thorne with its enormous talons. The others had immediately surrounded the demon, but it had dodged their attacks with terrifying speed. One of the pack, a white cougar unknown to her, leaped onto its back and sank its claws into the fiend’s scaly skin. The creature took to the wing again, pulled the transcended great cat from its back and disembowelled it while those below looked on.

The Brethren had retreated then. This was a fight they could not hope to win. Thorne had somehow kept pace with the others, leaving a sticky red trail across the snow for miles. Now, though, his strength was all but gone. His fading mind had become hazy, the images indecipherable.

Yllandris quickly withdrew her hand and listened to the final exhalations rattling from that great chest. They had lost two of the Brethren. The King would need to be told.

She spun around to face the small crowd that had gathered to watch. Fur-clad men and women stared back, all much paler than she. The men wore their hair loose and long, and their beards were flecked with snow. The women had their hair braided. Many wore small trinkets of bone and copper around their necks and wrists. Not a few of them regarded her with barely disguised hostility.

Go ahead and hate me , she thought, sneering back at them. I’m young and beautiful, a sorceress high in the favour of the King. I could have any one of your husbands in my bed in an instant, and you all know it. I will be a queen. None of you will amount to anything, you sour-faced pack of bitches .

‘Find a healer,’ she ordered the greybeard closest to her. ‘The rest of you, fetch a pallet. Thorne must be brought to the Great Lodge. Move your feet before I light a flame under them.’

She strolled away from the crowd in the direction of the Great Lodge, confident that her orders would be followed. Many of the assembled Highlanders might desire or despise her, depending on what they had between their legs, but they feared her even more. Besides, the Brethren were their sacred protectors. None would dare anger the Shaman by dishonouring one of the beasts.

The snow continued to fall. Yllandris made sure no one was looking and then pulled her thin shawl tighter around her shoulders.

In marked contrast to the vast majority of the structures in Heartstone, the Great Lodge was a huge and sprawling edifice. It occupied the centre of town where it rose higher than any other building, gazing down on its domain like one of the great alpha wargs that roamed the highest peaks. The Shaman would be up there, she knew, unless he was off hunting. Their Magelord had become less and less a part of the world of men, preferring to dwell alone under the stars when he was among them at all. Whatever ancient tragedy had driven him to isolate himself so far from his peers had slowly stripped away his humanity.