66

He had fought many times.

When Cahan was young and full of anger, martial skills were all he had to sell. He thought the heat of battle would hide his pain, he believed his anger a thing that could be spent, that he could use it up. He did not realise that battle was a fire and he was only stoking his anger, every sweep of his axe adding more fuel. A frightened boy became a frightening man. He fed the fire well and teetered over the edge of the conflagration he had been raised to become.

And one day he looked deep into the fire, he felt the heat and knew it would burn everyone, including him. So he turned from it.

It took a long time to put the fire out.

His past meant that it was not alien for him to stand on the walls of a town or a village, watching the enemy advance. Nor was it alien for him to be one of those advancing. He knew the fear of both sides, he knew the excitement of it, too. He knew that the Rai, though they held back, their energy spent on creating the fireballs, would be eager for the fight as much as they feared it. Their cowls burning within them like acid, demanding to be fed. They would be balancing the desire for the pain of hunger to stop, with the knowledge they were vulnerable. The wish to attack, against the wish to stay safe.

He knew all these things.

But he had never stood upon a wall, or advanced upon an enemy sure in the knowledge he would lose. And seeing the troops arrayed against them he knew he would. His hands shook and he placed them on the wood before him, grasped it tightly. As the soldiers advanced his mind showed him images, old and forgotten images, the faces of men and women as they gave up their lives under his hand. The way they screamed, the pain. The flood of power and the things he could do with it.

You are the fire.

He had sworn not to feed his cowl. Never again. And already broken that promise once in the forest clearing. He knew it was death by fingerbreadths, the slow hardening of everything that made him one of the people. He could steal life from those advancing, grab one and pull them away to a dark place and take what he needed. It might be enough for him to save the village.

It is not.

The voice was right.

One soldier’s life was not enough to face the Rai and the Hetton.

But it was a step towards becoming something worse. Something that frightened him enough to know he must not do it. He must fight with what he had.

And die.

Die with everyone else here.

But die as one of the people.

He looked around. Fire, always hungry, had collapsed part of one wall. The villagers were banding together with their bows. Ania and five of the Forestals stood on the wall with him. Venn and Udinny were in the longhouse seeing to the wounded.

There were worse people to die with. Worse places to die and alone on his farm may have been one of them.

The soldiers of the Rai advanced on the wreckage of the forestgate. The villagers had tried to block it, but it would not hold for long. They would fight them in the village, and withdraw to the longhouse, do their best to protect the wounded and the dying until they joined them. Became more bodies laid out on the floor like the leaves of Harsh in the wood.

“Ready, archers!” he shouted. He had not taken up his bow. Though he knew he would be a better shot than nearly every other. Instead he stood with his axes, and would join those who had only pitchforks and sharpened sticks to fight with when the time came. He wanted the villagers to feel that he trusted them, was one of them, the few he would kill with arrows would make little difference here. Ania looked over at him. Ont had his bow, and stood next to Furin with a bow of her own. She was a poor shot, but that no longer mattered. A few stray arrows would make no difference. Udinny had asked to come, but in the end had stayed in the longhouse to help Venn.

The Rai’s soldiers marched into the killing zone, his attention was for them now. “Loose!” he shouted it at the top of his voice. In answer he heard the whistle of arrows passing over him. He watched them land, saw shields raised. A few arrows found targets but no one fell. Ania glanced over at him and grinned. He heard her shout to her people.

“Kill them,” she said. The Forestals started loosing arrows, slowly and methodically choosing their targets. A death for every arrow. He saw Ania licking the flights of the arrows that had been made in Harn, straightening them to her liking before she loosed. When the Rai were halfway across the killing floor their branch leaders let out a roar.

“Forward!” A mass of soldiers running at the gate. A shout of “They’re coming!” from the other side of the village.

“Put down the leaders!” shouted Ania. Loosing even more deliberately. “Iftal curse the Rai,” she spat, “staying back with the second wave, the cowards.”

“Furin,” he shouted, hands itching for his bow, “come with me, we meet them at the gate.” He jumped from the wall, Furin dropped her bow and grabbed a spear. Below villagers ran to join him. Children gathered up the remaining arrows and ran with them to the Forestals who were loosing faster, putting all they had into killing as many soldiers as they could before they breached the ruined gate.

“Form up!” shouted Cahan, “form up!” Around him villagers were crowding together, some with makeshift shields, others with shields stolen from corpses. The shield wall was the best they had made so far. “Good!” he shouted, “good! Get ready to meet them! Stand fast! For Harn!”

From around him raised voices, “For Harn!”

Soldiers, pushing easily through their attempt to block the ruined gate, and among them, shunned even by their own, came four of the Hetton. Broken skin, fishbelly-white eyes, the scent of rot filling the village and making even the stink of Tanside feel clean. Unlike the soldiers they did not run, they advanced slowly, deliberate and sinister. Cahan reached down and grabbed a fallen spear, hefted it and launched it at the nearest Hetton. Rather than dodge the creature caught it. Hissed, and threw it back. Cahan smashed it away with an axe and the Hetton pointed at him, as if in challenge.

“Ania!” he shouted, “the white eyes! They are what killed your people, concentrate your shot!” Ania twisted on the ledge and brought her bow up, two arrows, swift as a stream sent into the back of the Hetton. It stumbled but did not fall. Her Forestals added their arrows. Still it did not fall. More arrows, he lost count of how many before the thing went down. While they brought down the first Hetton the Rai’s soldiers formed their shield wall.

Stopped.

A pair of Hetton pushed through it. Terror walking, no longer people. Creatures that, even to those without a cowl, radiated a powerful sense of wrongness. Cahan felt the strength of the villagers waver around him. Fear running through the line. He could not blame them, he felt it himself.

Behind the line of soldiers a third Hetton jumped onto the wall, not needing ladders. Its body moving loosely, as if a collection of parts barely joined, its armour flaking, cracked and dry. It landed between two of the Forestals, stretched skin face scanning backwards and forwards, a pointed tongue flickered out of a lipless mouth. It hissed again. The nearest Forestal dropped their bow and reached for a spear. The Hetton moved, so quickly it seemed to flicker, flowing around the spear thrust and then the Forestal was dead. A quick stab, barely seen, and the outlaw fell from the wall, clutching at their neck and trying to stem the flow of blood. The Forestal on the other side did not go for their spear, they used their bow. Loosing arrows one, two, three, into the Hetton. The impact of each staggering it but not stopping the creature as it ran towards them. Three, four, upsetting, strangely arrhythmic steps.

The second Forestal fell, run through by the Hetton’s spear.

Then the Hetton advanced on Ania. She was concentrating on loosing arrows into the mass of soldiers. Cahan shouted but she was battle-aware, and had already seen the creature. She spun, loosed an arrow at it that punched through the creature’s helmet. It paused, shook its head as if trying to shake off a night’s drinking, and advanced with the arrow still through its skull. The Forestal loosed another arrow. Turned, looked into the village and found Cahan. She grinned and gave him a quick salute before jumping from the wall. The Hetton followed, loping after her as she vanished between burning roundhouses.

The remaining two advanced on the villagers.

“What are they?” Furin, beside him, holding a shield, eyes wide with fear.

“Hetton, creatures of terror.”

She did not reply, only stared at them as they came forward.

Cahan could feel the resolve of the villagers cracking like new ice underfoot. The shouts of battle quieting on both sides. Hetton radiating hate and fear and the sour stink of rot. Hissing to each other as they advanced. The Rai’s soldiers held back, as much because they were wary of the Hetton as because they were giving them space to fight. They, too, became quiet. Still.

The Hetton were fear, and they were to be feared.

“Hold the line,” he shouted. His voice rang into the night. “Furin, take my place.” Cahan stepped out of the line, leaving the warmth of gathered bodies and moving into cold air. The two Hetton, lit by roaring fires. Wreathed in woodsmoke. Fishbelly-white eyes locked on to him. Speaking to each other in their not-quite-understandable language. One went left of him, the other right. Cahan’s hands sweating in his gauntlets. His hair wet with the clammy, uncomfortable sweat of fear.

We are ready.

He was ready.

Now was the time, what did it matter if he was a husk by the end of it? They all died here anyway. He let his armour change, spikes growing at elbow and knee. With a thought, and a ripple of pleasure passing through him he changed the smooth spikes on the knuckles of gauntlets to longer, serrated ones for ripping and tearing.

He had seen how many arrows it took to bring down a Hetton.

He knew it would not be easy.

We are ready.

He took up his axes. The world became quieter, like the moment of dawn in the forest before the creatures realised the light had risen. Cahan took a breath. Everything felt very close, very detailed. The ruts in the mud. The flickering fire. The curling smoke. The flaking white make-up on the faces of the villagers. The flaking broken skin on the faces of the Hetton. The thud of his blood through his body.

He took a breath.

Each breath could be his last. The air, thick with woodsmoke and the scent of tanning pits, felt as cold and clean and sweet as if he were sitting by a forest stream.

“Well,” he tightened his hands on the axes. Felt his gauntlets extrude cilia to hold them more tightly. The sweat drying up within them as he absorbed it. “You have come for me, Hetton, let us see if you can take me.”