CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

CAMLIN

Camlin coughed, pain ripping through his chest, and he opened his eyes to a bright, glaring light, like staring into the sun.

I’m dead.

He coughed again, felt his lungs burning, throat raw. He tasted salt. Pain in his back, and his shoulder.

No, not dead. There’s pain. Don’t think you feel this kind of pain when you’re dead. Don’t suppose you feel anything at all.

A freckled face with red hair and a too-large helmet filled his vision, blotting out the glare.

Meg.

“He’s waking up.”

Meg bent down and hugged him.

He opened his mouth to talk but only a dry rasp came out, his throat feeling as if it’d been scraped out with a tanner’s knife. So he tried to sit up instead. That was more painful; the movement waking up a host of injuries that he tried to ignore, a groan slipping out of his throat.

He was in their rowing-boat, waves slapping against the hull. Craf was perched upon the prow like a scruffy figurehead, while Vonn and Brogan sat at a bench, pulling on oars as if their lives depended on it.

“You’re dead,” Camlin managed to croak at Brogan.

The bull-necked warrior was soaked to the skin, a huge mottled bruise spreading from the arch of his eyebrow down across one side of his face, all the way to his jawline.

“That’s what I said,” Vonn grunted.

“Should be,” Brogan agreed, the muscles of his prodigious back bunching and straining.

“You all should be,” said Meg with a frown. “I was waiting where we agreed. Then there were two great explosions of water either side of the boat. Thought some monstrous leviathan had come to eat me for supper. But it was just you and Vonn, falling out of the sky. Craf helped me find you both. Vonn was easier, as he was splashing about and choking. You were bobbing face-down. Thought you were dead. Vonn hauled you in and pounded on your chest a bit, then you started breathing, threw up, coughed yourself half to death, threw up again and passed out.” She shrugged.

“Then No-Neck fell out of the sky. Lucky he didn’t capsize us with the wave he caused.”

“Huh,” grunted Brogan.

“Wasn’t easy getting him in the boat,” she said.

“Can say that again,” Vonn managed to get out between oar-strokes.

“Why aren’t you dead?” Camlin asked Brogan.

“Well, I was on the stairs, knocked everyone flying. I was the first back on my feet, trying to get a sword in my fist, then that giant appeared.”

“The one you fought, with the axe?” Camlin breathed.

“No. The one that was our prisoner. The woman. She gave me this,” Brogan said, shaking the side of his face that was one huge bruise at Camlin. “Punched me in the head, knocked me off my feet, back up onto the wall. Then she chased after me, picked me up…”

“Can’t have been easy,” Meg commented.

“And then she threw me over the wall.”

Camlin nodded.

Was that to kill him or save him?

Then Camlin remembered why Brogan had thrown himself at the enemy on the stairwell.

“I’m sorry, lads,” Camlin said. “I’ve made a right mess of things. Lorcan…”

“Not your fault,” Brogan said sadly. “There was no stopping Lorcan. You’d have had to tie him up.”

I should have. Might have hurt his pride, but least he’d still be alive.

“Poor Lorcan,” Craf croaked from the prow. “Morcant bad man.”

He is, thought Camlin. One that needs killing.

“I hope I meet him again,” Brogan snarled, his knuckles abruptly white on his oar.

“Careful of him,” Vonn said, “for all his mouth, he’s deadly with a blade.”

“We’ll see,” Brogan said.

“And we’re going back without the necklace, as well.” Camlin shook his head.

“What’s this, then?” Meg said, pulling a length of silver and black stone from a pocket inside her cloak.

“Craf catch it,” the bird squawked. “Craf clever.”

“Damn it but you are, Craf my lad,” Camlin said.

Hope that wipes the smile off of Rhin’s face.

Camlin checked himself over. He was soaked to the skin, but by some miracle his new sword was still in its scabbard, and a few arrows left in his belt-quiver.

“My bow?” he asked them.

Meg shook her head. “Burial at sea.”

The Baglun was growing closer and larger. Camlin’s skin started to prickle as he realized how exposed they were.

Need to get under some cover.

They reached the ford that crossed the river and climbed out of the boat, starting to carry it across the shallow stretch of water, boots crunching on shingle, Craf launching into the air in an upwards spiral. Within moments he was squawking, circling back down to them.

They all stopped in the middle of the ford, looking north to where Dun Carreg rose like an iron spike in the distance.

“No, THERE!” squawked Craf, swooping northwards, drawing their eyes beyond Dun Carreg. Camlin blinked, squinted, rubbed his eyes.

“Asroth’s teeth,” he whispered.

The giantsway to the north of Dun Carreg, and all the land about it was filled with a crawling tide of men. Thousands of men, the iron of helms, mail, weapons sparkling in the rising sun, an ocean of flame. Rhin’s warband had come in all its strength.