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Although Nico appeared to have completely forgotten anything uncomfortable he’d said the previous night, Fish couldn’t bring himself to act normally around him in the morning. When Nico pressed him, he complained of a non-existent headache, and went outside before Nico had finished breakfast. He wandered over to the stables with the vague idea of seeing how the donkeys were getting on. That patch of mud caught his eye again, but this time, there was someone there.
Fish ducked behind the stable door, keeping out of sight. There was no doubt that the waifish girl sitting cross-legged in the dirt was the source of the magical energy that lay like cobwebs over the whole village. She was no older than fifteen, if Fish was any judge, and the clothes she wore were little more than rags, topped off with a musty-looking fox fur. Tangled black hair obscured most of her face, but she was darker than anyone in the village, similar in colouring to Fish himself, who had always stuck out in this land like a bay horse in a herd of palominos.
With her back turned to Fish, she was throwing a stick to a puppy. Alternately she caressed and played tug-of-war with it. She seemed to be absorbed in the game, but then abruptly she turned around and looked straight in Fish’s direction. He tried to duck out of sight, but it was too late. Leaping to her feet, she ran behind a neighbouring house, vanishing from his view. The puppy stayed where it was, happily chewing on the stick. Fish followed the girl, trying to see where she had gone, but she had vanished seemingly into thin air.
Walking back towards the house, trailed by the puppy still carrying its stick, he came across Liezl doing her chores. The puppy nosed happily about her feet.
“Liezl,” Fish said, “there was a young girl here.”
“The girl dressed in rags? With the long black hair?” Fish nodded, and Liezl grinned. “Don’t worry about her. She’s harmless. Turned up last year in the autumn.” She hefted the basket she carried against her hip.
“Let me help you with that,” Fish offered, and she relinquished the basket.
“It’s for the chickens,” she said, and showed him to a barn where two dozen fat fowl were pecking around in the warmth. She began to shovel out the muck, after showing him where to scatter the feed.
“The girl,” Fish said above the animated clucking, “does she have a name?”
“She doesn’t seem to understand much of the common speech,” Liezl replied, “but she answers to the name of Bree.” She shook brown hair from her forehead, and turned to Fish with a stern look. “She ain’t no trouble, honest. She does odd chores in the village, and gets food for it. She doesn’t steal.”
“I only think we may be able to help her,” Fish said cryptically. He had his suspicions about how a young girl with the Mage-Gift could have fetched up here. “And she may be able to help us.”
––––––––
As Harold Velman had promised, all the men and half the women of the village were suddenly eager to help them—or at least, to have their say in what was happening. They all gathered in what was evidently the village’s only meeting hall, a low wooden building with tables and benches smoke-darkened and stained with age. One of the village men had started a fire in the central pit, and started heating an enormous basin of sour red wine, to which he was now adding dried fruit and spices. Harold and about half a dozen other men sat with Nico, poring over the maps he had brought with him. Fish looked on for a while, only half-listening to Nico’s battle plans. He himself had never had much interest in strategy and planning, and the thought of co-ordinating this lot into a viable fighting force made his head ache. Nico was beginning to look like the kind of man that other men might follow into battle, but this was not something Fish had ever wanted for himself.
Does Nico want it? he wondered. Would he someday want to sit where Harold now sits, to sway the hearts of the men who follow him? They were a long way from Ülhard now, with no reason to ever return. If Nico wanted, he could remain here for ever. It would be a great deal less glamorous than the life they had led as hired knives in the city, but perhaps Nico would like that. Fish tried to imagine if Nico spent ten years here, married one of those stout brown-haired girls who were already giggling over him, had seven sons and twice as many dogs, and directed wood-cutting operations every day. It was surprisingly easy to imagine.
The heat inside the hall was stifling, the conversation far too loud. Fish took a cup of spiced wine out to the porch, where rain was drizzling miserably from the eaves. The fog had parted slightly since yesterday, and he could see all the way down the hamlet’s main road, rutted with cart tracks and muddied with the hooves of mountain mules.
As he stood there, warming his hands on the cup of wine rather than drinking it, he noticed that a lone figure had crept out from the gap between two houses, and now stood watching him in the rain.
Fish started. The overwhelming feeling of magic was back. Less sinister now that he had identified it, but still crawling around in the recesses of his mind like the ghost of a slug, raising the hairs on the back of his neck and sending shivers of cold-heat down his spine. The girl watched him steadfastly. Her long black hair was plastered to the side of her face and down her back, sopping wet and heavy with the rain.
She turned, and Fish started forward, spilling half the wine over his hands. Impatiently, he set the cup down on the ground and stepped into the rain. “Wait!” he yelled. She had already fled, disappearing behind the log house on Fish’s left. Cursing, Fish ran after her. He was just in time to see her disappear into the stretch of brushwood that grew beside Friedma’s homestead.
He was about to follow her when he heard a shout behind him. Turning, he saw Nico striding up. Although his right arm was still functionally useless, bound in a sling against his body to give his shoulder time to heal, his sword was buckled to his belt, albeit on the wrong side. Nico claimed to be ambidextrous, Fish knew, but he had never seen his partner actually try to fight with his left hand before.
“What are you doing?” Nico demanded.
Fish hesitated. “There’s a stray girl in the village,” he began slowly, aware of how questionable he sounded. “I think she’s from Qwu’Mallorn.” When Nico looked blank, he explained, “The Forest of the Morning.”
“One of the magic folk?”
“Yes,” Fish said. “She’s obviously foreign—she has no family here. The villagers don’t know where she came from.” He looked urgently at Nico. “She must have escaped from the slavers. She may know if they have a hideout nearby. She might be able to tell us how many there are, or where they’re hiding out in the mountains.”
Nico gave his partner a curious look. “And this girl is the reason you’ve been so distracted?”
“We’ve got to follow her,” Fish said, turning and darting into the forest. There was a path of sorts, and he could see the slight prints of the girl’s thin shoes in the mud. He heard Nico following him. The light rain stirred with his breath as he strode past trees festooned with delicate shoots of green. The ground gradually led uphill, and Fish sensed that they were leaving the village behind. The girl’s footsteps were easy to track, leading straight on until they ran dead into the face of a sheer cliff.
Fish looked up. The cliff was rocky, with jutting angles everywhere. It towered a few feet over the top of Nico’s head. “She must have climbed,” he said.
“You’re right,” Nico said, examining the mess of prints in the mud. “Looks like she comes up here often. Maybe she doesn’t sleep in the village. I wonder why.” The tone of his voice made it clear that Nico did not think it could be for any good reason. “Let’s go back,” he said impatiently. “We won’t find her this way.”
There was magic still stuffing up all of Fish’s senses, so thick on the ground it was choking him. “No, she’ll be easy to find,” he insisted. He could see the route she had taken up the wet rocks, the way the mud had been scuffed at the top of the cliff. It would be easy enough for him to follow her.
Nico stood looking on in silence as Fish made his way up the face of the cliff, using the same rocks the girl had done. It was as easy as he had thought it would be; the rocks were only slightly slippery, and Fish was not much heavier than the girl herself. Soon he was wriggling his way over the edge, regaining his footing in the mud at the top of the cliffside.
There were no trees up here; he could very well have convinced himself that he had crossed over into a different world. There had been no wind down in the village, but here it persistently blew icy drops of rain into his face. Fish thought of Bree’s thin rags, and shivered in sympathy.
In front of him, the mountains seemed to open up, peaks upon sparsely-grassed peaks, with the bare bulwarks of Svanlyn’s black buttresses far in the background. Even the lower peaks were topped with snow, and the faraway ones looked like nothing so much as long white fangs ready to crunch up the sky. Out here, the wind was clearing the clouds from those high sharp peaks, and the sun was no longer just a memory.
He could not see where the girl had gone; her fresh prints were obscured by old ones, and they seemed to go off into a dozen different directions. There was a sandstone cliff face a few hundred yards away that seemed as if it might have caves, but the ground rose steeply from where Fish was standing, and he could see that it would be a long climb just to get to the foot of the cliff.
Fish was about to turn around and call off the search, when he heard a loud grunt behind him and turned to see Nico emerging over the rocks. Horrified, he went to help him to his feet. “What are you thinking?” he scolded. “Your shoulder needs time to heal, Nic.”
Nico had loosened the sling. “It isn’t as bad as you think,” he said shortly, but the catch in his breath as he leaned his weight against Fish belied his words. “I had to see what was keeping you up here. Ah.” Nico scowled at his partner, gesturing around at the peaks and canyons in their view. “The perfect spot for an ambush.”
“A scenic spot for an ambush,” Fish retorted, countering Nico’s sarcasm with his own.
Nico rolled his eyes. “Well, as long as we’re here now, I might as well make some sense of these tracks.” He bent over the muddle of prints in the mud. “Well, not all of these are hers. Look. Hobnailed boots, like yours and mine.” He pointed at the very old outline of a boot. It was rapidly sinking away with the rain, but it was clear that it had frozen in place in the mud for several weeks.
Fish frowned over the print, then wandered some distance towards the rising hills. The ground he walked on was half frozen, and he left clear prints of his own. There seemed to be a path of sorts leading to a nearby rise, but he found no more prints. Turning to go back to Nico, he thought he saw movement in the corner of his eye, and froze.
There was no warning, just a miasma of dark magic suddenly washing over him, sending him almost to his knees. At the top of the rise, five black shapes materialized in his vision.
Fish took a horrified step backwards as the creatures came streaming over the ridge. “Nico!” he screamed, his partner’s name ripping from his throat. “Run!”
As Fish raced towards him, Nico planted his feet in the mud and drew his sword with his left hand, the metal sheath making an icy ringing sound. Fish reached the edge of the cliff. There was nowhere to run, but they could still make it down. He looked desperately back at Nico, who clearly had no intention of running.
“There’s only five of them,” he growled, hefting his sword as the grey-skinned creatures rushed towards them.
“Nico,” Fish began, “you don’t understand—”
His words were cut off as Nico sprang forward, sword in hand. The foremost creature rushed at him and ran straight into the sword, which Nico had angled for its neck. There was a loud thwack, and it sank into the mud, head nearly severed from its body. Nico pivoted, but there was no time for him to recover. His rush had brought him within reach of the other four. One of them leapt at him, teeth bared in a snarl, a growl ripping from deep within its throat. It collided with his right shoulder, long nails clawing at him. Nico gave a scream of shock and pain and fell back. The footing was poor, ice mixed with mud on top of slick wet grass. And Nico, who was always stalwart and firm-standing, Nico who never seemed to feel any weariness nor pain, who had never misstepped for as long as Fish had known him, slipped in the mud and went down like a fallen stone.
Everything happened so fast, and yet the split second when Nico fell seemed to last an eternity. Flashes of memory from years before played in front of Fish’s eyes, as clearly as though he were that frightened eleven-year-old boy all over again. The way their prisoner had screamed when his father strung him up. The way the man’s blood had spattered across Fish’s face when his father cut his throat. The glowing energy that had spilled from the man, visible only to those who had given themselves to the goddess of blood magic, and how his father had shown him how to seize that energy, take mastery of it, and send it back into the lifeless cadaver to make one more for his army of dead men.
Fish had not used his magic in eight years. He had placed mental blocks around his own mind in order to not touch that part of himself. He had never once fed that power, never allowed it to even rattle the fetters he had placed on it, and with it he had locked all the tormented memories of his childhood away. But in that brief moment when he saw Nico fall, saw the hands of darkness reaching for him, ready to rip and kill, there was no time for mental blocks and conscious thought, only raw instinct. His father had trained that instinct well when Fish was only a boy, drilled him for hours and hours on end until the reflex became more natural than breathing, and now, when his body stood frozen in horror, his mind paralyzed with fear, the magic broke free of its restraints and lashed out to save the life of the one he could not lose.
The red-hot cloud of power broke free from his body and streaked towards the necromes, shimmering the air with its intensity. Nico only escaped that cloud because he had already hit the ground. There was an impact as if the hills had shifted, and the air around the dark creatures heated in a blinding flash of energy, causing their bodies to burst into flame.
Fish had only the barest of moments to react to what he had done. Nico’s silver-edged sword and the silver medallion he always wore were providing him with a measure of protection from the magic, but it was not long before the physical heat of the power would reach him. Clumsily, Fish took hold of the magic, the heat, and flung it away from Nico. There was an impact on the hillside, and a cloud of dust went flying as the muddy ground was baked dry all in a single moment. Shaking, Fish stumbled over to Nico’s side. He was still on the ground, holding his sword with a grip gone white, his face a mask of confusion. The sky was raining baked clay and burned body parts.
“W-w-w-what,” Nico began. It was the first time Fish had ever heard him stammer.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Fish cried, and grabbed at Nico’s shirt, trying to haul him to his feet.
Nico’s gaze locked onto his, and Fish flinched. Nico had a quick temper sometimes, was prone to bouts of sharpness and sarcasm, but his partner had never looked at him quite like this before. It was as though Nico was seeing him for the first time, and did not love whatever it was he saw. Fish faltered, falling down on one knee, both fists still buried in Nico’s shirt.
A ringing voice pierced the air. “What have we here?”
Fish whipped his head up to see one of the many nightmares he had hoped never to come across again. The past had collided with him, he was still reeling from the impact, and now, there was even more.
A few yards away stood a young man, flanked by necromes on either side, dressed in shining armour from open-faced helm to silvered boots. He was eight years Fish’s senior, and it was possible to tell that he was half of Morgein blood, half nonmage Vailanan. His skin was tanned to a deep golden hue, and yet his shock of straight hair had both blond and ash in it. Even his eyes were a mixed colour, golden-brown and green together. He had inherited the height and bulk of his nonmage father; he wielded the kind of long sword that would never balance in Fish’s hand, which he now brandished in front of him. But he had inherited the magic from his Morgein mother, and was as formidable an opponent as Fish at his best.
Fish was not at his best just then, and well aware of it. Still, defiance carried him to his feet, facing the man, shielding Nico as best he could. He raised a hand to scrape his sweat-sodden hair from his forehead, and the man gave a gasp, taking a half step backwards.
“Surely not!” he said in genuine shock, as if to himself, but he recovered quickly. “You. Deryck.”
Fish’s fist clenched as his heart hammered halfway up into his throat. “Taunus,” he managed in return. There was little point in pretending he did not remember. There was already a broad grin on Taunus’s face, and Fish remembered, with a chill in his gut, things that would follow the appearance of that grin...
“My long-lost little brother!” Taunus laughed nastily. “What Father would not give to be standing here now. He swore, once, that if ever he saw you again he’d flay you alive and let the magic slowly leak from your body.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “But as it is only me, only Taunus here, you need not fear.” His eyes became as hard as stones. “It is for others to punish you, not me.”
There was a whisper of wind at Fish’s shoulder, and he half-turned to see Nico, now on his feet again, still holding his sword in the wrong hand.
Taunus turned to his necromes. “Take them alive.”
With incredible speed the creatures pounced, coming towards them in a frantic rush. Fish could not easily tell how many there were, but this was an army in truth.
He reached for his long-dormant power again, this time directing the energy consciously, choosing his targets selectively, sending lashes of fire from his hands to stop the first surge. It was the only thing he could think to do, the only power that might spare them from Taunus. He could not see Nico’s face, had no idea what his partner was thinking, but there was no time to spare on speculation. The necromes kept coming on, streaming past him towards Nico, and Fish half-saw, half-felt Nico engage in battle, laying about him with his sword.
From the corner of his eye, Fish saw Taunus move.
In only a few moments he was upon Fish, who just managed to fumble for his own sword before he was engaged. Blades clashed together, and Fish had to retreat before his brother’s advance. He was weary from unwonted usage of power long kept dormant, and Taunus was taking full advantage of that, coming on forcefully whilst Fish kept backing away, looking desperately for an opening that never came.
It was inevitable, in a protracted sword fight, that a weary opponent would leave himself open to attack, and that moment came for Fish as he knew it would. Taunus’s sword smacked into his unguarded side, robbing him of breath and sending him stumbling backwards. Fish’s leather armour saved him from serious injury, but now he was half-sprawled upon the ground, at his brother’s mercy.
Frantically Fish racked his brain, trying to find something to say that might halt Taunus in his tracks. But he was too late. All was lost; he could no longer hear the sounds of battle from Nico’s side, and he was desperately afraid for his partner.
A gauntleted hand struck him across the face, and for the next few moments, all Fish saw was stars.
When he finally fumbled himself back to his knees, head spinning with nausea, a hand seized him by the hair and pulled his head up. Taunus’s face blurred before him, as cruel and cold as ever he remembered, his mocking smile just as Fish had seen it in nightmares past.
“This moment was always going to come, Deryck,” he said softly. “You could never have escaped us.”
Fish’s head swam, and he stayed silent. As Taunus stood back up, letting go of his hair, he saw a slight, tangle-haired figure come up behind his brother, and the flash of a ragged fox fur.
So you led me into this after all, waif, he thought to himself. Mystery solved. You belong to Taunus.
“Chain them and take them to the underground,” Taunus declared, and Fish felt a momentary pang of relief to realize that Nico was still alive. But the world fogged in front of his eyes, and all he knew was the stench of death and dark sorcery.
