31

‘Surely they have woken,’ Grey Herald said. ‘The Plains people tell tales of their wings.’ Of their appetites, he almost added.

Storm Born smiled, exactly as though he had heard those unspoken words. ‘It is not they who wake, but the memory of them. They send out nightmares and feed on the fear they spread, but they do not move.’

‘I saw a man who slept in the shadow of this place. He was drained of blood at dawn,’ Grey Herald insisted.

The Wolf chuckled. ‘So terrible, those nightmares. But it’s not nightmares we need. We must wake them, Brother Owl.’

Grey Herald regarded him doubtfully. ‘Why is this your task? You’re a long way from home for a man with no wings.’

Storm Born’s broken-shard smile only widened. ‘Brother, I was a fool once, before I became a priest. I was a man too quick to take up the knife against my kin, and they cast me out. The Wolf was in me like an angry spirit. When I was young, he struck a hole in my mind, so he could go in and out of me as he willed. He made me mad, sometimes. Or perhaps it was the storm,’ tracing his fingers down the branching scars of his bare chest. ‘Storm Born,’ speaking his own name with reverence. ‘No man ever earned a name as I did. Touched by the sky! Touched by destiny. I left the jaws of the Wolf and came south with a warband, looking for the pieces of myself that were missing, you understand?’ His smile was full of razor edges. ‘We had such times. We fought for the Plains people, and against them. We heard their tales, but I heard more than the others. I heard a voice calling me through that hole in my mind.’

‘And you came here,’ Grey Herald finished.

‘At last I did, at last. After much hunting and listening, and some blood. I followed the sound of their wings. And I have kept my fire here, and waited for the time. I have followed their marks in the stone, the pictures they left of themselves. I have learned their rituals in my dreams. It is only you I have been waiting for.’ And then he had paused, with a childlike vulnerability in his face. ‘It is time, isn’t it?’

You are a broken thing, Grey Herald thought. ‘You know the way?’

‘It is the only thing I am certain of.’

‘Then it is time,’ Herald agreed, and knew he was going to regret it.

There followed days of work, rituals and tasks that Storm Born insisted were necessary. They had cleared the floor of the altar chamber of years of dust, scrubbing and scraping until a great tangled maze of channels was revealed, an inch-deep labyrinth incised into the stone, which led the eye around and around, inexorably trapping the gaze until the watcher was brought to the centre. There were long spaces of silence before the altar. There were stories told over the fire with a ritual solemnity – but little of what Storm Born spoke made sense, and Grey Herald himself had only the Three Brothers stories he had grown up with. Apparently they were enough, though. At other times, when Herald was supposed to be sleeping, Storm Born would polish and sharpen certain implements, ancient tools of bronze that were finely made and very, very sharp.

All the while the petrified gaze of the Bat was on them. Herald looked up into their withered faces, a people utterly unlike any he had ever known. He examined their sharp features, their deep-set eyes and the pointed ears folded back against their skulls. Most of all he saw the sharp teeth their shrivelled lips could not hide.

The channels of the maze that led him ever inwards led out as well. Each of those stony husks had a runnel leading to its alcove. Herald wondered if this carving had even been here, when Storm Born had first arrived, or whether the man’s madness had driven him to grind out this pattern as he waited for his brother from the north to arrive. I must not think of it as madness. For though the lost Wolf was clearly no longer master of his own mind, Grey Herald believed something else was. Some whispering dream had crept in by that invisible hole the man had spoken of, and taken up its seat in his skull.

The Bat knows its people must wake. That was all he could cling to. Whatever happens, this is the right thing.

‘They came into my head,’ Storm Born said later. He had lit a fire before the altar and was feeding it handfuls of grass. It was not a ritual act, Grey Herald thought, so much as nervous fidgeting; a man on the threshold of something he could not take back. ‘When the others went back north, I was left here with the voices in my head.’

The chamber was silent, save for the fire and Storm Born’s ragged voice. To him it was full of whispering, Grey Herald guessed. Those desiccated corpses all around were speaking into the broken space within the man’s skull. Grey Herald believed many things, but right then he could not believe wholeheartedly that there was anything here to wake. Were there really wings in the night to terrify the Plains people, or just stories to scare their children? Surely Storm Born’s madness was enough to weave all this out of no more than scraps.

‘So what comes now?’ he demanded. ‘We have followed your rituals. We have cleaned and prayed and lit fires and painted red and white men on your walls. And now we’re here, with your fire, and your altar.’ And Herald jabbed two fingers at the bowl-like concavity that Storm Born’s scraping and scrubbing had unearthed there. ‘And everything about us is dead. More dead than anything I have ever known. And so I’m waiting, because I know what your next move will be. I have seen the blood-channels on the floor and the knife you think is hidden in your belt is plain to me.’

Storm Born started, guilty as any man Grey Herald ever knew. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Blood is at the heart of all the Bat stories the Plains people tell.’

Storm Born blinked furiously. ‘Are you saying you don’t want to give of yourself to bring the Bat into the world?’

Grey Herald stared at him levelly. ‘I have only one life. I will spend my blood on destiny if I must, but not on madness.’

‘Why did they send you to me?’ Storm Born asked hollowly, sounding betrayed. He left the fire and went to one of the withered statues, or bodies – they seemed stone to Grey Herald, and yet far too finely worked to ever be the craft of human hands. ‘You speak so clear to me, can you not put a word in his ear? What am I for if not to bring you into being?’ His voice had died away to a whisper, trembling with uncertainty. He took the iron knife from his belt and threw it ringing onto the floor.

‘Tell me what they say.’ Grey Herald stepped closer, warily. The fire sent light and shadow dancing over the drawn stone face. For a moment he thought it had opened its eyes.

Storm Born shook his head and said something that was swallowed by the statue’s alcove, and Herald drew closer despite himself, almost close enough to touch the man’s shoulder.

‘The jaws of the Wolf need no knives,’ the madman repeated. Then he Stepped and turned and went for Herald’s throat.

He nearly took it, too, bowling the Owl over, slathering and foaming. His jaws locked on Herald’s upraised arm and worried it savagely, slicing him open from wrist halfway to elbow. Then Herald had Stepped into a huge Owl, driving the talons of one foot into the wolf’s head, tearing across one staring, insane eye.

He was free, but he was battering about the cave ceiling, and the way out of the cave – which should have been so clear – was hidden from him. Storm Born had Stepped, his face running with blood, one socket just gore and ruin, but he had his knife back, and the cave was low enough that he would be able to put it in Herald just by reaching up.

Grey Herald swooped on him, but flurried away when the knife rose to meet him. He Stepped himself, feeling the weakness of his wounded arm, taking out the bronze of his own knife. He was younger but Storm Born was mad, and losing an eye didn’t seem to have bothered him.

There was no way out of the cave without a fight. It was not that the Wolf stood before the exit, it was that some power had taken the exit away. His eyes could not find the opening, nor his mind conceive of it. The price of its return was plain enough.

The two of them clashed, each man grappling for the other’s knife-hand. Herald’s slick hand fumbled its hold and Storm Born stabbed him in the shoulder. He yelled and Stepped for just a moment, beating at the man’s face with his wings and then ripping a gash in the Wolf’s tattooed chest with his beak. Then he was human again and ducking low, even as Storm Born drove the knife deeper, as though trying to force it all the way from shoulder to heart.

Herald took hold of the Wolf’s leg and threw him, almost one-handed. Storm Born landed hard on his back, the breath vomiting out of him. That was the time to finish the fight, but the effort left the Owl priest weak and dizzy. He staggered away, the darkness and the fire spinning about him, each movement grating the knife against his shoulder.

He was going to lose, he realized. It would be his blood flowing down the channels to those long-dead figures. Whether or not it would achieve anything, he knew what every sacrifice knew: he did not want to go. No matter the Owl, no matter the world, he did not want to die.

A wolf again, Storm Born howled and came for him. Grey Herald tried to dodge aside, but the stone beneath him was already slippery with blood and he fell. The wolf skidded past him in a skittering of claws, and when he came back, Grey Herald stabbed him in the side, dragging his blade along the beast’s ribs and laying open his grey hide. Storm Born snarled and snapped at him, bloodying the back of his hand, but the Wolf was slower too. The wounds were beginning to overwhelm even the madness in him.

But he wasn’t giving up. Back he came, ravening for Herald’s throat, and the Owl Stepped once more, lurching into the air and leaving Storm Born with a mouthful of feathers. Herald faltered and fought with the close, smoky air, even as the wolf below him jumped, jaws agape, and then fell back and staggered sideways, whining.

Below him, Storm Born was at the heart of the pattern, and the channels gleamed darkly, throwing back the firelight like jewels. He watched the creep of blood – his blood, Storm Born’s blood, as it touched the first of the parched statues.

Those shrivelled eyes did not open, but a shudder ran through the stony substance of the figure and it shattered, so dry and rigid that the very moment of waking was too much for it. It exploded into shards and dust and was gone.

Storm Born let out a howl of pure loss and then he was a man again, running from statue to statue, babbling desperate pleas, scrabbling at the bloody floor, and each time too late. The blood touched each stiff icon in turn, and it came apart, tearing and splintering into pieces.

Grey Herald dropped to the ground and Stepped, holding his shoulder. His own blade was lost somewhere, but on the ground was Storm Born’s iron. He took it up, determined to make an end of this for better or for worse. The fight had gone out of the Wolf. He knelt in the centre of the room, sobbing, shielding his ravaged face from the fire. Simple enough for Grey Herald to kick him over and kneel on his back. Simple enough to lift the knife.

Storm Born didn’t even struggle. ‘End it,’ he choked out.

Grey Herald’s arm wanted to. His muscles twitched and strained to force the issue. Probably the man would die soon from his wounds anyway. Possibly they both would. But stripped of his murderous intent, what was left of Storm Born? A man who had believed. A man who had been faithful.

Grey Herald wanted no ghosts to burden him. Even the weight of one might be too much. He sighed and tried to stand, but ended up sitting beside the Wolf, his breath shuddering in his chest.

Except it was not in his chest that the air shuddered. The sound came again, and both men froze, sitting there in a maze of their own blood. Another beat resonated about the chamber, then another. They came from outside, the sound of them thundering into the cave mouths and funnelling into the shrine.

Grey Herald said, ‘Wings,’ but by then they were no longer alone. People were filing in from that winding entrance. Or, beings that looked like people. Not the shrivelled husks that had guarded this place for centuries, but a dozen who might have been those cadavers’ great-great-grandchildren. Smooth faces of an alien caste, gaunt and hollow-eyed but living and young; men and women of another time, another race, skin like yellowed bone and teeth like needles. They stood in a ring around the battered men as though they had arisen from the shadow and the smoke and the blood itself.

One of them was a lean woman who stood a head taller than anyone Herald knew except for the Bear. She smiled at them both, and spoke, her words strangely slanted. Only after some thought did Herald understand, ‘Blood is spilt, yet two men live. What a strange thing to wake to. Is this a merciful age, then?’

‘No.’ Grey Herald sucked in a harsh breath, feeling the presence of the Bat Society people like the night against his skin. Were they truly here, or was this a dream born of ritual and blood loss. He could barely even recollect why he had travelled so far to call them up. He looked down and met Storm Born’s torn-up gaze, seeing the madness there, but beyond it the despair. The Wolf had given far more than he to see this moment, and even Storm Born could not tell truth from vision. Grey Herald felt the moment tilt on a knife edge, trembling.

The great enemy was coming. The end of the world was here. If not now, then when should these gaunt people be woken, and what would be too great a cost to have them at the Owl’s side in the final fight?

Storm Born shuddered; the seeds of attack were in that movement but they would never grow again. Nonetheless, Grey Herald took it as his example. The iron dagger fell ringing to the ground and he was an owl again, the great sweep of his wings filling the chamber as he dropped claws-first onto Storm Born’s scarred chest, rending and rending with his beak until the man had at last stopped moving, and the Bat Society had all the blood they could possibly want.

And as they gathered close, truly real now, nothing of the dream about them, he Stepped and sat down heavily, letting them dabble their long fingers in the ruin he had made.

‘Mercy is not what we need,’ he told them heavily. ‘If it were, we would not have called on you.’

***

Feeds on Rags battered through the air in a flurry of dark wings. He did not stop or slow, not for the heat, not even for the hawk which swooped on him and veered off at the last moment, finding him larger than it had thought.

His flight was a straight line to Tsokawan, and he thundered in at a window, darting and diving about the interior. Rivermen servants scattered or chased after him, yelling, but he had no time for them. He had charted a course all across the estuary but now he could not find his way within the maze of rooms and passageways. At last he was reduced to running about the place on his human feet, shouting out for Spear Catcher until one of the Wolves heard and hailed him.

They thought it was just him playing the fool as usual. When he tried to gabble the story to them, his words got twisted and they looked around for Sathewe and said he was tricking them again. Then they walked away and he had to trail after them, gasping and wheezing over his repeated warnings, until Spear Catcher himself cuffed him and shouted at him to go away.

It was when that did not get rid of him that the warband began to take him seriously and something of his panic communicated itself to them. They sat him down and he explained where they had gone, what had been done: the Serpents, Sathewe’s scream. Takes Iron and Maniye’s Snake friend were captives. Only Feeds on Rags was free to find help.

There was a little talk then, but only a little. Wolves were not given much to debate. That the masters of Tsokawan did not want them just running off was no great secret. Thus far they had been given good food and attentive servants, but the northerners felt this could change very quickly. In particular it would change if Spear Catcher announced his intention of leading the warband off into the estuary to look for their priest.

So: no announcements would be made.

One of the younger warriors suggested they creep out in ones and twos. All very well, Spear Catcher considered, save for whoever got trapped inside when their hosts saw what was up. ‘Let the Snakes look to creeping,’ he decided. ‘All of you, put on your armour, take up your weapons and Step. We go out all together and in iron, and let’s see if any of them want to get in our way. We stop for nobody.’

The other Wolves set to it immediately – those with iron pelts shrugged into them, and the rest trusted to their hides and bronze scales, whatever protection they had. The iron-wearers would go first, and if there were spears or arrows they would trust to the Wolf’s metal to protect them.

The Rivermen did want their Iron Wolves, Feeds on Rags thought, calmer now that he had delivered his message. The effort of holding himself to his task over such a distance had worn him out. At last Spear Catcher nodded to him. ‘You, keep in the middle of us. Fly as soon as we’re out under the sky. Show us where to go.’

It was not exactly praise, but it was belonging. Sometimes that was enough. Feeds on Rags Stepped and dug his clawed toes into the coat of a wolf as the pack streamed out of their quarters, scattering curious servants and leaving a trail of chaos in their wake. Somewhere in Tsokawan men were shouting the alarm, but the wolves were running now and they would be gone from the fortress before any answer could be made.

When they reached the edge of the estuary, where the ground got marshy and the farmland gave way to the gradual encroachment of trees, they slowed a little. Feeds on Rags swung back to them and cawed raucously, and Spear Catcher Stepped to speak with him.

‘Easy for you in the air, but there’s no path for us,’ he pointed out.

The Crow shifted to human shape as well. ‘Keep to where the tree roots are,’ he suggested. ‘It’s dry there. I will come back for you, over and over. I’ll fly up to see, then I’ll fly back down.’

‘How far to where they were?’ Spear Catcher asked him.

‘Far.’ Feeds on Rags shrugged. ‘Not so far. Tomorrow.’

Spear Catcher grimaced, but reckoned he had no real choice. ‘Just don’t forget about us.’

Then there was nothing for it but to pass under the trees’ shadow; to trust to the shifting ground and endure the heat and the flies. The warband was more used to the hot southern sun by now, but the air of the estuary seemed more than half water. You’d think, with all their craftiness, they’d have done something about it. But the place was probably a perfect delight if you were a crocodile half the time.

Some of the Rivermen did try to get in the Wolves’ way, but half-heartedly, never daring to make a fight of it. Spear Catcher didn’t know whether they were from Tsokawan or from the other lot, the girl-Kasra’s people, or just regular raiders or brigands. Groups of southerners in armour kept showing up with their stone-headed spears, and they called out challenges or formed a line across the warband’s path. Probably they had laws against ravening bands of wolves charging about their places.

Each time, the warband faced off against the soldiers, often outnumbered two to one. They kept to their beast forms so that the enemy couldn’t see who had iron on them and who only bronze. Nobody Stepped, they just snapped and snarled and threatened. And each time, instead of standing firm and drawing blood, the River Lords backed off. Spear Catcher thought it was cowardice at first, but after a while he realized it was confusion. The land around them was at war with itself. The soldiers couldn’t know where they stood with these foreigners. Probably there were bands of Plains raiders daily crossing the border to set things on fire, and nobody was standing up to them because they were all looking to that Daybreak Throne, or whatever they called it.

Takes Iron had called for them and, in the absence of Many Tracks, it was the priest’s voice that set the pack in motion. Spear Catcher didn’t hesitate in carrying out his duty: he fully believed that the Wolf’s ire would find him even here if he betrayed the old priest.

This was his time, Spear Catcher knew. Many Tracks was off guarding the boy-Kasra, along with Moon Eye – their strongest warrior when he was in his right mind. Takes Iron was in danger, and so was Many Tracks’ Serpent friend, and it came down to old Spear Catcher to make up for a lifetime of failures, small and large.

So thinking, he led the warband at a fierce pace, a rushing column of grey wolves winding between the trees, scrabbling and leaping from root to root, from island to island. The beasts of the estuary got out of their way, crocodiles slithering off the banks into the water, birds raising a racket of clattering wings as they leapt into the air. Spear Catcher’s mouth was open as he panted in the heat, but inside he was grinning like a young hunter.

Only when the dark came did he falter and call for them to make camp. It was a very different dark they had in the estuary, peopled with all the wrong sounds and smells, and the going had been treacherous even during the day. Spear Catcher weighed his new-found heroism, and then conferred with Amelak, his wife, always the keeper of his common sense. That done, he had the warband set watches to wait out the night.

The call came from Feeds on Rags at dawn. The Crow had been scouting in the first grey light but now he dropped amongst them shouting that they must be ready, rousing the warband to furious motion. They faced out all ways into the murk of the estuary. Spear Catcher braced himself, ready to test the iron of his hide against anything the south might throw at him.

When he saw what was coming, though, it was the one confrontation he had not prepared for. No soldiers, no reptile jaws, no great force of southerners to break against the iron bastion of the Wolves. Just one of their own: Takes Iron’s lean grey shape slipping through the trees ahead, with a little coyote skipping at his heels. Sathewe had a makeshift sling looped about her body, and Spear Catcher saw the narrow head of a serpent lift from it and taste the air.

‘Um . . .’ Feeds on Rags said awkwardly. Spear Catcher glared at him, feeling as though the Crow and the world had conspired to make a fool of him.

Takes Iron Stepped, the years falling back on him as he took human shape. And if there was magic here on the River, this was it, because Spear Catcher had not been blind to what Takes Iron thought of the Serpent – of this Serpent in particular. When the two of them walked the estuary together, it seemed certain only one would return. But here they were, if not as friends, then at least as priests together. And whatever they had been doing, plainly that was priest business that Spear Catcher could not begin to guess at.

‘I think it is time we found a missing friend of ours,’ Hesprec said. ‘There should be a Champion and a Kasra loose in the estuary, but I have had my belly to the earth and felt no tremor of them.’

‘Does your magic tell you where they have gone?’ Spear Catcher asked.

‘The magic of knowing who else went to find them, and where his family dwells,’ Hesprec agreed. ‘But knowing is more than half of any magic. We need the river, and we need a boat.’

At last Takes Iron turned to Spear Catcher – and the rebuke didn’t come, wonder of wonders. Instead, he nodded. ‘It’s good you’re here. Knowing Many Tracks, we’ll have need of you all.’