They left in the snow, a stinging wind slapping gentle flakes against their skin. Eka was as good as her word, guiding them to a trading post on the edge of hill-lands where Rennic exchanged a quantity of blood-silver for as many mules and supplies as the proprietor could offer, including a couple of oversized shields that went Foss’s way. She asked no questions, made no recommendations and attempted no up-sell. Rennic approved.
They parted with Sab, Eka and her people a day later, sending them off with two laden mules between them. Chel exchanged a tearful farewell with his sister, promised to return before she knew it, spoke words of thanks and implied threat to Eka who nodded them away. He tried to watch them go, to follow them with his eyes until they were over the crest and lost from view, but Brecki growled at them to follow and was away over the hillside.
She set a brutal pace from the start, too brutal even for herself. Weeks of little food and moving less than a veal-calf had left her frail, and she flagged rapidly. He was close to her when first she stumbled, one-armed, and instinctively he reached out to steady her.
She slapped his hand away with a snarl, righting herself on the slippery path. He saw the crisp gems of sweat glinting from her forehead, the flutter of the pulse in the pale cords of her neck. Her twitching eyes dared him to mock her, to make something of her weakness, her ruined arm.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, gaze fixed on the frigid earth. ‘I thought you could use a … ah.’
She pushed on without a word, but this time a little slower, to Chel’s relief. He wasn’t in much better shape himself after his time in the cells, and the frequent stops and early camps that followed reassured him that however swift their southward journey, it wouldn’t leave him wrecked in the snow.
He kept close to Tarfel, who was at pains to keep up with Brecki in a presumed demonstration of leadership. He cut an awkward, bulky figure in his new-bought furs, pale face peeping from within, lost in the surrounding fuzz. Chel walked at his side and kept an eye on Brecki, whom he was certainly no closer to trusting. Who knew where she might lead them, or what she might do along the way? The woman was an instinctive and merciless killer.
But then, so were most of the others in their party.
‘You’re quiet, Fossy,’ Lemon said as she and the other Black Hawks trudged along behind Chel and the prince. ‘You pondering life’s great mysteries, or is it bum-gas again? Just between us, that last bit of breakfast isn’t sitting too pretty in my down-belows either, and if someone sparks a flint at the wrong moment, I’m apt to go up like—’
‘I am reflecting, Lem,’ came Foss’s tired reply.
‘Like a puddle?’
‘I am reflecting that while God may have a plan for us, He has a certain humour about its implementation.’
‘Come again?’
‘Our young friend saved this woman, this reaver, and now she leads us downmap, toward the great unknown. Toward a savage land and savage people, or toward our own salvation?’
‘Aye, right, Fossy, this is a bit doom-flavoured even for me. Maybe their god is on board with yours, eh? Maybe it’ll all be sunshine and rainbows.’
Foss’s sigh carried the weight of centuries. ‘They have their own bloody pantheon, unlike anything ever described by the church.’
‘Who’s to say they can’t be friendly?’
‘They cut the limbs from their sacrifices and hoist them on sharpened poles, while still they live.’
‘… Oh. Bit short on manners, then.’
Chel dropped back a pace. ‘Is there any way we can trust her?’ he asked in a low voice, with a nod to Brecki at the head of the group.
Lemon made a face. ‘Can’t see how.’
‘But we’re getting her home, right?’
‘Do they even have homes? I thought Horvaun simply sprung forth from holes in the ground and set about chewing through livestock.’
‘Lemon!’ Foss admonished. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say about an entire people.’
‘Aw, come on, Fossy, have you ever met one who wasn’t a cast-iron bastard?’
Foss pursed his lips. ‘I’ve only ever met that one.’
‘Well, there you go.’
‘Wasn’t Tarfel’s mum from there?’ Chel said in a hopeful voice. ‘And his grandfather? You heard her,’ – another nod at Brecki – ‘saying “you’re of our blood”.’
‘Aye, just goes to show, doesn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘You can take the most wild and savage bloodline, and it can grow up to be … that.’
‘Will the three of you cease your prattle?’ Kosh’s peevish tones carried over the clear air. ‘This accursed wasteland you call a country is bitter enough without the constant chirping of small-brained mammals. Spirits curse this cold!’
‘Oh, cork it, Norty,’ Lemon called back with a chuckle. ‘Like the big man said, it’s all downhill from here.’
Chel resumed his place beside the prince, his thoughts dark and churning.
***
‘Highness,’ Chel said, ‘what kind of reception do you expect to receive when we reach … when we arrive? What do you think will happen?’ Aside from imagining Brecki’s potential atrocities en route, it was now hard for him to think of anything beyond their journey’s end. Tarfel had seemed so determined in this course that Chel had assumed on some level that the prince’s inherent cowardice would preclude any decisions flagged with suicidal risk. His confidence in this conclusion was waning.
The prince sniffed. His nose had gone very pink. ‘Well, Vedren, there are some treaties that cover this kind of thing – Kelsuus set a precedent, you know – even with the Horvaun. Believe it or not, relations haven’t always been all axe-heads and blood.’
‘Do you think this queen of Brecki’s will be pleased to see us?’
‘What interests me more, Vedren, is why she would have sent a war-band to kill my brother in the first place. Could they have known what he was planning? Could anyone?’
Chel blinked tiny snowflakes from his eyelashes. ‘Perhaps they just like to kill royalty in neighbouring lands every so often, for sport – like how nobles hunt game.’
Tarfel offered a wry smile through the collar of fur. ‘The point is, Vedren, that my brother …’ He paused, swallowed, took a sharp breath of wintry air, ‘… is now my enemy. And if this queen thought killing him worthwhile, then we may well have fertile grounds for discussion.’
‘Highness?’ Chel tried to keep his reaction neutral, but the word still came out with the inflection of you what?
Brecki had tired again, and come to a halt in the long shadow of a copse on a small rise. The rest of the party were strung out behind them, making steady progress up the snow-dusted slope in their wake. Ahead of them rolled ever more hills, crusted white and glinting amber in the low afternoon sun. The world had a total stillness to it, frozen in time as the two young men looked out over the empty landscape, their breath coming in steady plumes.
‘I never knew my mother, Vedren,’ Tarfel said. ‘She died, as you know, birthing me, which I don’t think endeared me to anyone.’ He looked away for a moment, something pained crossing his face, then continued. ‘But beyond that, I barely know … knew my father. Not well enough to tell that he’d been dead for five years, for a start. Hells, it would almost be funny if it were someone else, wouldn’t it?’
Chel offered a rueful smile. ‘My father died when I was young, highness, but there was at least no doubt that it had happened.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Vedren. Was it combat?’
‘Plague.’
‘Foul luck. My sympathies.’ The prince sighed. ‘I knew my parents more by reputation than as people, let alone family, and I’ve found that the more time I’ve spent outside the cloisters and palaces, the more I’ve come to question what I heard.’
‘Such as, highness?’
‘I think it’s pretty obvious by now that my father was Vassad’s pawn for much of his adult life, and that much of what I was told about his great victories and leadership and so on was likely exaggerated to the point of outright mendacity. Who was going to tell me the truth, after all? I believed what I was told, never questioned it, and, had it not been for your intervention, I’d have gone to my grave believing that my father was a fabulous conqueror who championed justice and the true church, and brought great strength and stability to our kingdom. But it’s all bollocks, isn’t it?’
‘It is, highness.’
‘It’s been non-stop conflict for two decades. Battles and strife, famine and plague – your poor father among the victims, direct and indirect. And it was all power games, to Vassad, the Names, the powers beyond our borders. All that suffering, just so they might get one over on each other.’
‘You’ve been thinking about this, highness.’
‘I have, Vedren, I have. I’ve been thinking that I stand here, the scales fallen from my eyes, finally understanding the hypocrisy, the vile waste … And in Roniaman, my brother dreams of empire.’
‘Empire?’
‘It’s … it’s worse than I mentioned before. When I said he had plans.’ Tarfel pushed back the hood of his furs, ran a hand through his lank mass of hair. ‘He hasn’t seen what I’ve seen, he’s swallowed it all, whether he realizes it or not. He thinks Father was a great man, poisoned and murdered by Vassad, and with Father avenged he can carry on his legacy. Corvel once told me as a joke that Father had some ancient scrolls falsified, lineage changed, just so he could claim to be descended from the first emperors. It was all a ridiculous stunt, or at least we thought so.
‘And now I think back, I wonder how stupid, how petty a man my father was. So easily tricked, so easily used, before he was even drugged into a stupor. He probably believed it himself. That he was emperor in waiting. And now Corvel … Now my brother sees his duty as the rebuilding of that empire. He’s going to wage wars the like we’ve not seen in our lifetimes, and all over a foolish lie. He will not stop unless he is made to stop.’
‘What are you saying, highness?’
‘I’m saying, Vedren, that I’m not going south to hide. I’m going to face up to my birthright, to my brother. I’m going to make him stop. It has to be me – that much I realized when I saw the remnants of the Rau Rel tear themselves to shreds at the slightest provocation. I cannot expect disparate groups with too much to lose to unify spontaneously against my brother and avert a catastrophe in these lands. Nobody else can do this, can unite the forces required to stop Corvel for good. And as your sister said, if I can’t stand up to him, who will?’
‘You’re going to ask the reavers to … help? For alliance? To be your army?’
‘Corvel has more enemies than he realizes. Why not start with the most dangerous?’
Chel could only nod and try to keep his eyebrows level. Part of his brain was beginning to sound something like an alarm bell, a sonorous and implacable suggestion that he’d made a terrible mistake in accompanying the prince, and that his death was not only inevitable but indescribably gruesome and speeding toward him at an ever-increasing rate. They cut people’s limbs off and stick poles through them while they’re still alive. That’s what they’re going to do to you, to all of you.
‘Are you all right, Vedren? You look a little peaky.’
‘I’m, uh. I’m fine, highness.’
I was supposed to be lucky.
***
Tarfel was in a good mood for the rest of the day, and Chel found his own mood lifting alongside. The prince had a certain puppyish glow when he was happy, and it happened rarely enough to be infectious. For a moment, Chel even saw some of the golden bounce of Mendel the Fair in his exuberance. Perhaps they weren’t so far removed after all.
‘Vedren,’ the prince said, ‘I think our chat earlier was the longest conversation I’ve had with anyone in months. Years, probably.’ He was quiet for a moment, then said, ‘We’re friends, aren’t we, Vedren?’
Chel didn’t permit a moment of hesitation. ‘We are, highness.’
‘Then I think you can probably call me Tarfel, Vedren.’
Chel concentrated on his footing in the gathering twilight. ‘As you wish, Tarfel.’ Then after a moment, ‘How about Tarf?’
‘Yes, why not?’
‘Tarfy?’
‘Um …’
‘Tarfy-Barfy?’
‘Well—’
‘Tarfy-Warfy-Rum-Bum?’
‘Yes, all right, Vedren, you don’t have to take the piss. I’m still a prince, remember?’
‘Right you are, Tarf.’
Both were still grinning when they stopped to camp.
***
The sedate pace wasn’t to last. Although Brecki maintained her distance when they camped, ignoring the varied tales around the evening fires – most of which seemed to revolve around Rennic’s catastrophic escapades with a string of mercenary companies – and treating the rest of the group with a blank-eyed indifference that was somehow more hostile than any direct interaction, she ate heartily and each day seemed that much more restored, ranging ever further ahead and away. Eventually only Whisper could keep pace with her.
Chel watched the reaver carefully, uneasy when she was nearby, more so when she was out of sight. He kept close to the prince out of habit, but his curiosity about the woman grew as they travelled. Occasionally he’d see her struggling to tear off a strip of meat, or snarling at a trailing bootlace. He realized the pang he felt was guilt. He’d captured her. He’d injured her. Her presence, and all its concomitant issues, was his fault.
Every so often, this sense of obligation would overwhelm him and he’d try to offer her help. Although she stopped short of physically striking him, the hot contempt in her glare was usually enough to send him scurrying, muttering apologies.
Whatever Chel’s misgivings, Brecki knew the land. Despite the clotting snow and icy brooks, she kept them moving along hidden creeks and goat-paths, well out of sight of settlements much bigger than the occasional hut. They moved carefully, forever mindful of pursuit, hiding their tracks where they could. The farther south they went, the more the temperature dropped, and the thin snatches of sunlight through cloud became ever rarer until the sky was a single leaden sheet, seeping swirling flakes over a blasted and barren world.
Foss stopped on a snowy hillside, dropping to one knee and scraping at the ground’s white covering. He churned black frozen earth beneath, thin black stubs crunching between his fingers. He stood, wiping charcoal streaks from his hand.
Rennic approached. ‘Is it?’
He nodded. ‘Crops burnt.’
‘Who do you think?’
Foss spread his heavy hands. ‘Take your pick. Rival claimant, local lordling, our friends in the church, Corvel himself. Or maybe even her lot, on their way north.’ He jerked a thumb at Brecki, who affected indifference.
Foss sighed and resumed his trudge. ‘Evil days.’
‘Evil days.’
***
The weather’s deterioration was matched by declining visibility, and before long they had travelled several days without seeing the sun. Whisper alone could match Brecki’s now tireless, uneven canter; the rest of them took turns to ride the mules, more so as the supplies dwindled. Tarfel and Kosh were never off theirs, the non-riding prince bobbing unsteadily on the lead-rope. Their sluggish pace and persistent griping had ensured it could be no other way.
Another sunless morning brought them to a hazy snow-covered plain, crunching over lumpy fresh snow as they descended a sharp slope at its edge. Odd shapes loomed from the snow, bulges and pillars of white fluff, standing alone or in groups. The plain itself was expansive, almost perfectly flat, stretching away into the mist around them. Brecki seemed pleased at seeing it, loping without hesitation onto the plateau and into the mist.
‘Where in ancestor’s fuck are we?’ Chel heard Lemon grousing behind him, her voice clear in the freezing stillness. ‘This fucken fog is a curse.’ They trudged out onto the plain, almost snow-blind from reflected glare, the mules following with minimal protest. Hard ground thumped beneath its snowy coat.
‘Where the fuck’s this come from? There’s no fucken flat land south of the Kharin, unless a fucken mountain has prolapsed.’
The wind was picking up, a more insistent whirling, howling at the plain’s distant edges. Looking back, Chel could barely see the lumpy slope that they’d descended. Ahead, Brecki had vanished, lost from sight in the drifting grey banks.
‘Only thing that’s big and flat in this part of the south is Lake Saldirtse, and that’s, you know, water …’
Chel wondered if he’d felt the slightest slip of his boot, a glossy surface beneath a thin crust of snow. The howling of the wind was louder, making it difficult to hear Lemon’s grumbles.
‘Of course, even if it was frozen, this couldn’t be Lake Saldirtse, on account of there being a great fucken town on its banks, you know, houses and buildings and that …’ She paused, looking back at the now invisible slope behind them, at its odd lumps and pillars beneath the snow.
The howling on the wind was loud now, insistent. Discrete. Whisper put up an urgent hand.
‘Aw fucken hells!’ Lemon was turning in small circles, clenching and unclenching her fists. ‘Those Horvaun bastards couldn’t have burned the whole place, could they? Razed the whole fucken town?’
Whisper had an arrow nocked, her sharp gestures bringing the group and mules together, weapons fumbled from storage.
‘Where’s the reaver? She’s fucken stitched us!’
Chel swung around, feeling hot breath in his throat and the thump of blood in his ears. Where had Brecki got to? A new sound echoed over the frozen waste, a fierce scraping like blades on a whetstone. Something was coming.
He seized on her tracks, tried to race after her, to bring her back to them, but his foot slipped after a handful of paces and he floundered and fell, thumping against the freezing ground with enough force to drive the air from his lungs and crack his head.
Oh, yes, that’s ice all right.
At last he could place the howls that came loud over the wind. He’d heard them before, at Raven-Hill. Reavers were upon them. Brecki had sold them down the river after all. Bitter disappointment curdled in his gut. He’d genuinely thought she was softening toward him.
Shaking snow from his head, he rolled up onto his knees, then immediately dropped back to the ice as a shape flashed through the mist, moving too fast, too smoothly, travelling around him in an arc, all the time making a noise like grinding steel. It howled as it swung around him, the howl picked up by others, more shapes gliding in and out of his vision. The shouts behind him redoubled, joined by the braying of the terrified mules, the whistle of arrows fired at nothing. Somewhere Lemon was beating something against her shield, screaming incoherently.
‘They’re on fucken skates? Fucken skatey-skates?’
He scrabbled to his feet. He’d travelled further than he realized. White surrounded him, shaded blue and grey. Murky ice beneath, snow-dusted, nothing but white haze above it in all directions. Sounds of combat, clangs and cries, came from one direction, one that looked the same as any other. He ran for it, feet slipping on loose powder.
One of the mules was down, its blood staining the snow bright around it. The others were huddled together, Tarfel and Kosh at their centre, the five points of a star, wide-eyed and steaming. Circling them were the howling, skating reavers, pale-skinned in pale furs, dodging in and out of the mist, flinging half-axes and knives, whooshing in close to slash at the beleaguered defenders.
Chel bolted for the mule-circle, feet slipping against the carved ice. He skittered on approach, unable to stop, and slid past an astounded Lemon with arms waving, crashing against the side of a mule and back onto the ice.
‘Wee bear! Nice of you to join us!’ Her shield was prickled with thrown steel, and she had a thick wad of blood on one temple. ‘Did you find that Brecki bastard?’
‘Not as such,’ he confessed. ‘What do we do?’
She hefted a hand-axe, then ducked behind her shield as something metallic flashed out of the mist and slammed into its creaking woodwork.
‘We’re fucken stuck! Can’t get near the pricks! We’ve winged a couple but I’m low on rods and Whisp is running out of sticks. Can’t tell you how many more of those fuckers are out there.’
He ducked down, scrambling beneath the panicked mule, past the equally panicked Tarfel and Kosh, and popped his head out the other side.
‘How are we doing over here?’
Rennic glanced down at him, maintaining a neutral expression. ‘You’re alive, then. Thought you’d run off.’
‘I am. What’s the plan?’
Two reavers screeched past, out of glaive-reach, then swung around, splitting and arcing back in a pincer manoeuvre. Rennic lunged with the glaive and retreated, snarling, as they sailed gleefully past. They really seemed to be enjoying themselves.
‘You tell me, little man.’
‘We can’t stay here. We’ve got to get off the ice.’ Chel was already looking around, searching for a landmark that would betray the distant shore.
‘No shit. Which way would that be?’
Lemon’s shout from the other side of the terrified animals curtailed his search. ‘Aw hells, they’re coming again! A wet ton of the fuckers!’
Chel ducked beneath the mules again. Two sets of frantic eyes met his.
‘We’re going to run,’ he said. ‘Get ready.’
‘Which way are we going?’ Tarfel was shaking all over, whether from fear or cold was immaterial.
‘Not sure yet. Stay behind the mules, or between them at least.’ He paused, eyes on Kosh’s lumpen sack, cradled in her stringy arms. ‘You know, now would be an excellent time for some revelatory alchemy.’
She glared at him, defiant with terror. ‘I am not an alchemist—’
‘Yes, yes, but if you’ve got any more spontaneous infernos in there, then this would be an excellent moment.’ The howls and whoops were coming again, loud over the skate-scrape.
She gestured with a trembling hand. ‘It’s too cold for that reaction, but …’ The fear left her eyes for a moment, their gaze distant. She whirled, delving into the saddlebags of the mule behind her. She fished out one of the wine-skins, labelled by Loveless a travelling necessity. Unstoppered, its contents hissed against the ice, splashing scarlet.
‘The fuck’s going on there?’ Loveless had seen the splash. Her tone suggested restitution for her lost wine would feature urgently once their current situation was resolved. Kosh ignored her, now adding powders and liquids from small containers fished from her sack. The smell was appalling, and the mules began to honk with displeasure beyond their current alarm. The Nort jammed the stopper back on the skin, then held it out with a tremulous hand.
‘Throw that.’
He lunged for it, and she pulled it back from his hand.
‘Gently! And far, far away.’
He took the sagging skin with care. Already its surface was beginning to discolour, the skin bloating in his grip.
‘Fast! Get rid of it!’
He squeezed through the mule wall, to where Lemon and Foss faced half a dozen cavorting reavers, swirling patterns on their bone-skates as they swept forward in ones and twos to swipe at them. Her shield was a splintered wreck, his was hacked and scored.
Chel lobbed the skin. It arced away from him, hissing faintly, trailing an acrid stench in its wake. Already his fingers felt stained and itchy where he’d held it. The skin flopped up through the air, then began its descent, now bulging almost spherical. The two reavers who were next in line to charge paused to watch the strange, round object travel slowly through the air, its landing spot well in front of where they lurked.
The skin hit the ice and burst. It more than burst. It erupted. It split apart with a great crack, blasting tatters of animal hide into the air. A great fountain of thick white cloud spurted outwards, while hissing liquid sprayed in all directions, coating the ice. One of the reavers was caught in the spray and collapsed screaming, clawing at the affected skin. The others were overcome with coughing as the smoke rolled over them, hands to faces, eyes streaming, failing.
Then the ice split. Whatever had sprayed from the skin had eaten through the crust, weakened by the explosion, and a great chunk reared before them, cracks widening either side of it. A moment later, a channel of black water yawned between the mules and the reavers, peppered with icy chunks, some still hissing.
‘What the fuck was that?’
The question came from all sides. Chel looked to Kosh, who began to stammer the names of reagents.
‘Move! Move, move, move!’ Rennic was yanking at a mule’s rope, gesturing the others to do likewise. He began to drag the protesting mule away from the smoking ruins, where the reavers hacked and rolled.
‘Which way is the shore?’
‘It’s a lake! It’s all shore eventually!’
They ran, feet slipping against slick ice, mules resisting, leaving the one dead animal and a dozen stricken reavers behind them. Chel looked over his shoulder in time to see Dalim’s beautiful glaive slip from the fractured ice and into the dark waters of the hungering lake.
Then the ice split beneath him, and he plunged.
***
The shock was immediate. He disappeared beneath the water, his world nothing but bubbles and grey filtered light and pressure in his ears and incredible cold, then rose to the surface with a great rush and a watery explosion, coughing and spluttering and terrified. He trod frigid lake-water, fighting the drag of his sodden clothes, sucking him back below. His breath came in desperate little shocks of fog, bursting over the lapping black of his own waves. The cracked ice had split around him, breaking away into diminishing chunks, and his numbed and flailing hands grasped only drifting shards.
‘Help! Help me!’
From somewhere he thought he heard Rennic bellowing ‘little man!’, but his movements were becoming urgent and spasmodic as his body started to shake. His eyes were blurry with water and panic, and he blinked furiously. The monochrome smears in his vision resolved themselves into figures, lurking at the ice’s edge.
The skating reavers had dragged themselves from the caustic fog, weak on their feet, coughing and grunting. The closest had kicked off his skates, a long axe gripped in one hand, the other pressed to his streaming eyes. The moment his vision cleared, he would see Chel floundering by his feet. The great cold that had gripped Chel began to crush him.
A new figure strode into his view, moving confidently over the ice past the hunched and grunting reavers. Brecki came to a stop by the floe’s jagged edge, and regarded Chel’s desperate plight with a tilt of her head, her flaxen braids swaying.
‘Brecki,’ he gasped. ‘Please! I’m … sorry …’
Her lip curled, and she shook her head with slow contempt. Beside her, the skate-less reaver had blinked himself to sight, and was staring at Brecki in surprise. From her his gaze slipped to Chel, battling to stay afloat in the freezing waves, bloodless fingertips questing for solid ice. A broad grin lit the reaver’s pale face.
‘Please, Brecki! Please!’
The reaver raised his axe to swing, and Brecki cuffed him around the head. Still weak on his feet, the man staggered and dropped to the ice, the axe skittering from his grasp. Brecki fixed Chel with a look of utter disgust, then extended her hand toward him.
‘You apologize too much, crying boy. Look weak enough already.’