Paul Kemp - The Hammer and the Blade

"And that's how you'll know," Nix said. "If you can think about killing Rakon or running back to Dur Follin without puking, without your bones and teeth aching, then you've slipped it. Or think of it this way: working at slipping it will make you sick. That's why you don't do it except after camp. When you finally find yourself worrying at it and it doesn't make you sick, then you're free of it."

"You mean whenever I think about slipping it, I'll be nauseous?"

"Of course."

More cursing. "And if we don't slip it?"

"Then Rakon owns us until we get him that horn."

A final, inspired round of cursing that drew Baras's skeptical eyes, then, "So where'd you keep it loose?"

The question cut a little too deep for Nix to answer honestly, even to Egil. For a moment he considered confessing the mask he wore around his true self, exposing for his friend the boy of the Warrens who lived in his core, but he had no easy words to express it. He wasn't sure Egil would believe him anyway.

"I focused on my arrogance, of course. I don't want for that."

Egil looked skeptical, but let it pass. "As you say. Anyway, you're the better of us with knots and nets, so get to it."

"You work at it, too."

"Aye." Egil took out his dice, shook them as he walked.

For a time they said nothing, then Nix said, "Egil, I think… the sisters did something to me."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean, my eye pained me and I ran for the carriage and I still don't know why. And then my head felt like it was going to burst and I heard a voice, a woman's voice telling me to help her."

Egil considered Nix's confession for several beats. "You think the sisters are sorcerers, too?"

"I think maybe."

Egil eyed the carriage. "That makes us caught between witches and a warlock. All the more reason to slip this spellworm and get clear, I suppose."

"Aye."

Hours passed. The cloud cover blocked the sun so they trekked under a gray roof. The ground grew still more blasted as they advanced deeper into the Wastes, all but the magically protected road. Cracks and wide chasms bisected the parched ground here and there. Jagged rock formations jutted from the earth, carved by wind, dirt, and rain into thin, unsettling alien towers. Sharp stones poked up from the soil, as if the flesh had been stripped from the earth, exposing the bones of the world.

The road cut through it all, through gulleys and deep, barren valleys, leading them on, guiding them toward whatever doom awaited them. A tumble of rocky hills to their left cast them in late afternoon shadows. Caves opened here and there in the hills, open mouths hissing profane conspiracies into the wind.

Nix felt his eyes drawn to the carriage throughout the day. He replayed in his mind the events from earlier, the vacant expressions on the faces of the sisters, the nosebleed, the fact that he somehow knew their names.

How? None of it made sense.

Help us, he thought he'd heard, but that too made no sense.

Sorcery, he concluded. Had to be.

Rakon's sisters might be cursed, but they were also sorceresses.

They'd enspelled Nix somehow, forced him to open the door to the carriage, put thoughts in his mind. But why? He winced when he recalled the painful itch behind his eye, the agonizing feeling that his head would burst.

He worked at the spellworm with ever more urgency.

"I am Nix Fall of Dur Follin," he whispered as he walked, and thought of his childhood, the Heap, Mamabird, the old man he'd murdered over bread. "I'm Nix Fall of Dur Follin."

The exercise unsettled his stomach and weakened his legs, but he told himself that he felt some slack in the worm's grip. Bile crept up his throat, stinging and foul, but he kept at it as long as he could, hoping his efforts would wear down the compulsion. Taken with his task, he didn't notice Baras approach until the guardsmen stood at his side.

"You talking to yourself now?"

Nix swallowed the bile, cleared his throat. "No one else in this motley crew is half as interesting. Have to avoid boredom somehow."

Baras nodded, glanced around at the ruined land. Worry reached his eyes. "I suspect we'll have excitement enough at some point."

Seeing the worry, Nix dared a hard question. "What in the Pits are you doing here, Baras? You don't seem the kind to work for Rakon Norristru."

The guardsmen stiffened, looked straight ahead. "The lord Adjunct is my superior. It's my duty to serve. And I take my duty very seriously."

"See if that doesn't land you in a pile of shite one day," Nix said.

"Your jaw seems all right, given how well it's flapping at the moment."

"I've been hit by worse."

"I don't doubt it."

"You carry a decent punch, though."

"As I said, if I can help it, I don't take one without giving one back. That elbow caught me flat."

"Yeah," Nix said, grinning. "It did. Uh, sorry."

Baras cleared his throat. "Listen, you see that you're in this now, right? You and the priest? Whether you like it or not. I don't want to have to hawk over you. Got enough to worry my mind."

Nix looked over at him. For the first time, he noticed the dark circles under Baras's eyes, the worry wrinkles in his brow and around his eyes. He looked worn. "Whether I like it or not? Seems to me that goes for both of us, yeah? What with your duty and all."

Baras said nothing for a long moment. "We've a few more hours of travel left in the day. Keep legging it, Nix."

Nix stared at Baras's back as he walked away. He couldn't even work up the will to curse him. The man was just doing his duty as he saw it. He might be a fool, but he was a noble fool.

At Rakon's order, the drivers of the carriage and wagon drove the horses at a faster pace as twilight came on. The men afoot jogged to keep up. Rakon leaned out the carriage door from time to time and studied the sky for long stretches, his gaze intense, irritable. At first Nix assumed he was worried about a storm slowing them, but it seemed something more than that. Rakon seemed to see through the roof of clouds, to something beyond them, something that had him worried.

Before sunset, they reached an intersection. The new road was as pristine and well preserved as the old, and they took it, heading more or less due east. As dusk deepened, the wind picked up, howling over the jagged stonescape. The guards lapsed into silence, somber, huddled into their cloaks, alone with their thoughts. Baras did what he could for their morale but it helped little. Darkness threatened, darkness in the Wastes, far from Dur Follin, far from anything.

"What is that?" one of the guards called. He pointed off to the south.

There, black against the darkening sky, a cloud whirled and jerked wildly above the ruined earth.

"What in the Pits is that?" Nix asked, peering through the failing light. "Some kind of fog?"

Egil, with his better vision, said, "It's a flock of something. Doesn't move like birds, though."

"Then what?"

Egil shrugged.

"There's nothing for it," Baras said. "It's nothing to fear. Keep moving."

And they did keep moving, but all of them kept their eyes on the flock. For a time it flew in their direction and Nix got a sense of its huge size. There must have been thousands of… creatures in it.

The horses whinnied nervously. Out came Egil's dice. Nix, too, felt exposed under the bleak sky, but in time the flock turned away from them and they lost sight of it behind low hills.

Presently the setting sun slipped out from beneath the clouds just long enough to stain the western sky orange and red. The rocky terrain looked like a sea of blood in the dying light. The drivers of the wagon and carriage pulled the horses to a stop.

Ahead, the terrain fell away and the road descended through a deep cut. The fading sunlight did not reach very far into the declivity, leaving the bottom a lightless gash in the earth. A few crooked trees clung to the top of the cut, rattling in the gusts. While Baras conferred with Rakon, the rest of the group had a quick drink or sank to the ground with fatigue.