The trees closed over Suruk’s head, almost hiding the sky. The forest was damp and hot and its smell seemed to wrap itself around him. A fine night for battle, he thought, and a fine night to make peace with his ancestors.
He knew when he had found the right tree, a mighty alien pseudo-conifer with a trunk as broad as a watchtower. He swung the rucksack onto his back, bent his legs and sprang onto one of the lower branches. He flexed his fingers and jumped again, and in a moment he was springing from branch to branch, bouncing off the trunk and limbs, leaping ever upward until he cleared the forest canopy as if bursting from below the waves.
Suddenly he was looking at the moon. Light rain tapped his skin. Under his boots the branch on which he balanced swayed gently with the wind, and Suruk swayed with it.
‘Greetings, Father,’ he said. ‘It is I, Suruk the Slayer.’
The sky was silent.
‘Morgar has become a good warrior,’ Suruk said. ‘He has slain many of our enemies. Dozens of Ghasts have fallen to his hand. Soon he shall join those taking vengeance to the foul Yull and teach them to fear the House of Urgar. I am sure you are proud, Father.
‘And I wish you to be proud of me, as well. When last we spoke you said that I should get a proper trade, and you lamented that there were no lawyers or doctors in our family. I have remedied that. The fight with Vock was great and terrible, as you saw. In return for my work in shaming Mimco Vock and revealing the Vorl to mankind, the greatest scholars of the British Empire have forged a helm and cape for me, and anointed me by post Doctor of Law. And not just any doctor, Father, but an honorary one!’
Suruk reached into his bag and took out a mortar-board hat. It would not fit easily on his head, but with a bit of shoving he managed to wedge the mortar-board in place.
The rain grew in force, pattering down on his hat.
Thunder rippled through the trees and, a mile away, lightning broke the sky.
Perched on the branch, Suruk drew two last items from the bag and raised them in his hands. ‘See, Father. I swore to follow you and to bring vengeance and honour to our line. Let the ancestors know that this I have done! In this hand, the axe of Mimco Vock: in the other, the scroll of learning of the University of New Stoke. Look closely now, my Father: are you not avenged? Are you not avenged? ’
He threw his head back and bellowed into the rain, arms raised as if to hold up the head of a mighty beast for the ancestors to see. The thunder roared back at him and a bolt of lightning shot into the axe, down the shaft, into Suruk. He shuddered and frothed, frozen mid-cry, and dropped like a rock into the forest below.
Suruk awoke stretched out on his back, surrounded by the smell of singed mane. He flexed his limbs; they still worked, but he did not get up. The rain was warm around him and he smiled up at the sky through wisps of smoke.
‘I shall take that as a yes,’ he said.