Midnight tides

‘Who was he, then?’ Hull Beddict asked.

‘I do not know.’ Abruptly Buruk scowled and turned away. ‘Does it matter? The mud stirs and things clamber free, that is all. The Seventh Closure draws near – but I fear it will be nothing like what all of us have been taught. The birth of empire, oh yes, but who shall rule it? The prophecy is perniciously vague. The trail has cleared – let us proceed.’

He clambered back into his wagon.

‘Are we to make sense of that?’ Hull asked.

Seren shrugged. ‘Prophecies are like the tiles themselves, Hull. See in them what you will.’ The aftermath of her terror was sour in her throat, and her limbs felt loose and weak. Suddenly weary, she unstrapped her helm and lifted it off. The fine rain was like ice on her brow. She closed her eyes.

I can’t save him. I can’t save any of us.

Hull Beddict spoke to the Nerek.

Blinking her eyes open, Seren shook herself. She tied her helm to her pack.

The journey resumed. Clattering, groaning wagons, the harsh breathing of the Nerek. Motionless air and the mist falling through it like the breath of an exhausted god.

Two days. Then it is done.

Thirty paces ahead, unseen by any of them, an owl sailed across the path, silent on its broad, dark wings. There was blood on its talons, blood around its beak.

Sudden bounties were unquestioned. Extravagance unworthy of celebration. The hunter knew only hunting, and was indifferent to the fear of the prey. Indifferent, as well, to the white crow that sailed in its wake.

A random twist of the wind drew the remnants of the pyre’s smoke into the village. It had burned for a day and a night, and Trull Sengar emerged from his father’s longhouse the following morning to find the mist drifting across the compound bitter with its taint.

He regretted the new world he had found. Revelations could not be undone. And now he shared secrets and the truth was, he would rather have done without them. Once familiar faces had changed. What did they know? How vast and insidious this deceit? How many warriors had Hannan Mosag drawn into his ambitions? To what extent had the women organised against the Warlock King?

No words on the subject had been exchanged among the brothers, not since that conversation in the pit, the stove-in dragon skull the only witness to what most would call treason. The preparations for the impending journey were under way. There would be no slaves accompanying them, after all. Hannan Mosag had sent wraiths ahead to the villages lying between here and the ice-fields, and so provisions would await them, mitigating the need for burdensome supplies, at least until the very end.

A wagon drawn by a half-dozen slaves had trundled across the bridge, in its bed newly forged weapons. Iron-tipped spears stood upright in bound bundles. Copper sheathing protected the shafts for fully half their length. Cross-hilted swords were also visible, hand-and-a-half grips and boiled leather scabbards. Billhooks for unseating riders, sheaves of long arrows with leather fletching. Throwing axes, as favoured by the Arapay. Broad cutlasses in the Merude style.

The forges hammered the din of war once more.

Trull saw Fear and Rhulad stride up to the wagon, more slaves trailing them, and Fear began directing the storage of the weapons.

Rhulad glanced over as Trull approached. ‘Have you need of more spears, brother?’ he asked.

‘No, Rhulad. I see Arapay and Merude weapons here – and Beneda and Den-Ratha-’

‘Every tribe, yes. So it is now among all the forges, in every village. A sharing of skills.’

Trull glanced over at Fear. ‘Your thoughts on this, brother? Will you now be training the Hiroth warriors in new weapons?’

‘I have taught how to defend against them, Trull. It is the Warlock King’s intention to create a true army, such as those of the Letherii. This will involve specialist units.’ Fear studied Trull for a moment, before adding, ‘I am Weapons Master for the Hiroth, and now, at the Warlock King’s command, for all of the tribes.’

‘You are to lead this army?’

‘If war should come, yes, I will lead it into battle.’

‘Thus are the Sengar honoured,’ Rhulad said, his face expressionless, the tone without inflection.

Thus are we rewarded .

‘Binadas returned at dawn,’ Fear said. ‘He will take this day in rest. Then we shall depart.’

Trull nodded.

‘A Letherii trader caravan is coming,’ Rhulad said. ‘Binadas met them on the trail. The Acquitor is Seren Pedac. And Hull Beddict is with them.’

Hull Beddict, the Sentinel who betrayed the Nerek, the Tarthenal and the Faraed. What did he want? Not all Letherii were the same, Trull knew. Opposing views sang with the clash of swords. Betrayals abounded among the rapacious multitude in the vast cities and indeed, if rumours were true, in the palace of the king himself. The merchant was charged to deliver the words of whoever had bought him. Whilst Seren Pedac, in the profession of Acquitor, would neither speak her mind nor interfere with the aims of the others. He had not been in the village during her other visits, and so could judge no more than that. But Hull, the once Sentinel – it was said he was immune to corruption, such as only a man once betrayed could be.

Trull was silent as he watched the slaves drag the weapon bundles from the cart bed and carry them off to the armoury.

Even his brothers seemed… different somehow. As if shadows stretched taut between them, unseen by anyone else, and could make the wind drone with weighted trepidation. Darkness, then, in the blood of brothers. None of this served the journey about to begin. None of it.

I was ever the worrier. I do not see too much, I see only the wrong things. And so the fault is mine, within me. I need to remain mindful of that. Such as with my assumptions about Rhulad and Mayen. Wrong things, wrong thoughts, they are the ones that seem to be… tireless…

‘Binadas says Buruk carries Letherii iron,’ Rhulad said, breaking Trull’s reverie. ‘That will prove useful. Dapple knows, the Letherii are truly fools-’

‘They are not,’ Fear said. ‘They are indifferent. They see no contradiction in selling us iron at one moment and waging war with us the next.’

‘Nor the harvesting of tusked seals,’ Trull added, nodding. ‘They are a nation of ten thousand grasping hands, and none can tell which ones are true, which ones belong to those in power.’

‘King Ezgara Diskanar is not like Hannan Mosag,’ Fear said. ‘He does not rule his people with absolute…’

Trull glanced over as his brother’s voice trailed off.

Fear swung away. ‘Mayen is guest tonight,’ he said. ‘Mother may request you partake in the supper preparations.’

‘And so we shall,’ Rhulad said, meeting Trull’s eyes a moment before fixing his attention once more on the slaves.

Absolute power… no, we have undone that, haven’t we? And indeed, perhaps it never existed at all. The women, after all…

The other slaves were busy in the longhouse, scurrying back and forth across the trusses as Udinaas entered and made his way to his sleeping pallet. He was to serve this night, and so was permitted a short period of rest beforehand. He saw Uruth standing near the central hearth but was able to slip past unnoticed in the confusion, just another slave in the gloom.

Feather Witch’s assertions remained with him, tightening his every breath. Should the Edur discover the truth that coursed through his veins, they would kill him. He knew he must hide, only he did not know how.

He settled onto his mat. The sounds and smells of the chambers beyond drifted over him. Lying back, he closed his eyes.