For hours, they pounded through the deep snow in the moonlight, weaving in and out of dark clusters of tall trees, trying to stay out of the open. Chel and Tarfel struggled along with the others, the snow sucking at their legs, the thin, chill air stinging their skin and freezing every stream from eyes, nose and mouth. Three days of climbing the mountains and half a night of sleep had left them both exhausted, and only the terror of murderous pursuit kept them going.
With the first fronds of light twinkling in the north-eastern sky, Tarfel caught his foot on a snow-covered rock and crashed head-first into a drift. Chel stumbled over him, ostensibly trying to help, but instead grateful for the chance to collapse one-armed onto the soft snow. He lay face-down, panting into whiteness, his cheeks so numb he no longer felt their burning. There he waited for death.
‘Get up, prolapse!’ Lemon stood over them, Foss at her elbow. ‘Fuckers’ll be on us pronto. Not like we’re hard to track in this white shite.’
‘I can’t go on. Let me die here.’ It was Tarfel’s voice, but the words could have been Chel’s.
‘Oh, aye, I’d love to, but then we wouldn’t get paid, and this whole affair would have been rather a waste of everyone’s time and effort, yes?’ She hauled them over, leaving them snow-dusted and staring at the dark foliage above.
Rennic’s thumping footsteps drew close. ‘Fuck’s the problem?’
‘Princeling wants to die here. The wee bear seems on board.’
Chel expected an explosion. Instead, the hawk-faced man took a long breath, surveying their wooded surroundings. They were in a shallow, sloping gully, thickly wooded on either side and dotted with the same black projecting rocks that littered the mountains.
‘Good a place as any. Dawn’s coming, be quick.’
Chel sat up. His heart thumped on in his chest, a little faster at Rennic’s words. He bit back the desire to ask what was happening, hating the gormless inquisitor he’d become. If I still had two working arms, he told himself, I’d never have ended up like this.
He met Rennic’s granite-hard gaze. No, said his inner voice, you’d likely have been dead for a week.
‘Get up,’ the big man said, and Chel did.
The crew arrayed themselves around the gully, concealed behind trees and rocks. Spider and Whisper disappeared vertically, clambering up into the snow-drenched trees and out of sight. Again, Lemon was left to babysit Chel and the prince. They were sent to the top of the slope to lurk behind a ridge and a low ring of boulders, leaving enough obvious tracks on their way up for the whole group. There they waited, traitorous breath fogging in hot columns through their trembling fingers.
‘You know,’ Chel whispered to Lemon, ‘you could just let me and the prince go. We’re off on the quiet, you’re no longer pursued, everyone’s happy.’
She gave him a look of incredulous horror.
‘Are you fucken cracked, man? Think our friendly chasers’ll take our word that we’ve sent you on your merry way? And what of our payment for the job? ’Sides, you’d get yourselves murdered by wolves or snow or something inside twenty paces. No, wee bear, we’re rather, you might say, committed to our current venture, eh?’
Tarfel saw them first, his stifled squeak alerting Chel and Lemon to their hunters’ arrival. A handful of figures had appeared at the gully’s distant base, their forms indistinct against the grey of the snow in the predawn light. They moved swiftly, without stealth, their attention on the deep tracks they followed and the landscape surrounding them.
Chel clenched inwardly, pressing himself against the frosty rock beneath him. It was one thing for faceless shapes to shoot arrows at you in the dark. It was another to see your would-be murderers approaching with such casual menace. They carried crossbows, heavy in their arms, and maces and axes hung from their belts.
The figures closed on them, advancing up the gully, fanning out as they did so. Chel counted five. In a few moments more they found the churned snow where Chel and Tarfel had fallen, the criss-crossed footprints where the crew had made their preparations. The foremost was now ten paces from Rennic’s hiding place. Chel could see him, crouched against a dark trunk, his long staff pressed against the bark. He had tied back his hair and was utterly still.
‘The fuck is this?’ one said. Her accent was eastern, wetlands. Not a local, then. Looking nervous, she levered back the arms of her crossbow with a grunt.
‘Which way did they go?’ This one sounded local. ‘Where are those Mawn-buggers when you need ’em, eh?’
The lead man stood. ‘Looks like upward. But guards up, could be they left a— Uff—’
‘A what?’
The lead man was swaying on his feet. Chel could see the surprise on his face as he looked down to see the long black shaft protruding upward from his chest. Chel thought of Lemon’s words. Would the man know he didn’t have to lie down and die?
It was academic a moment later. A second arrow hit the man in the upper chest, sticking up above his cloaked shoulder and sending a hot jet of blood over his face. The man shrieked and stumbled backward, gesturing upward in his incoherence, his crossbow fallen from his hands. The other four crouched and cursed, their bows flashing upward at the treetops, searching for the arrows’ origin.
Then everything happened at once. A man-shaped rage ball dropped from the branches above them, crumpling the man at the back to the ground and spraying arterial gore in frenzied arcs. Another arrow flashed out of the trees, splitting the eye socket of the non-local woman. She screamed and fired her crossbow, driving its bolt into the fleshy thigh of the man next to her. As he spun and cursed, Rennic and Loveless exploded from the trees on either side, covering the distance faster than the remaining man could react. Two sharp blows from Rennic’s staff drove him from his feet into the snow, a third left him unconscious. Loveless, meanwhile, delivered one killing strike after another, first impaling the man with the wounded thigh on her beautiful sword, then slicing open the neck of the half-blinded woman. They dropped to the snow in succession, the gruesome pink mess at their feet enfolding them like a lover’s arms.
Rennic knelt and drew a knife from his belt across the unconscious man’s throat, then stood, leaning on his staff, breathing heavily. Loveless tried to clean her sword on an unbloodied scrap of fabric, but one was proving hard to come by. Spider continued stabbing the victim beneath him, his breath coming in halting gasps, his teeth gritted. He was slick with blood from neck to knee in the early light, a true vision of nightmares.
Rennic grinned and wiped something dark from his bearded cheek. ‘Good work. Now let’s get back on it before—’
A bright arrow splintered the staff beside his face, showering him with needle-shards of wood.
‘Fuck-sticks!’
Around them branches bucked and rippled as shafts ripped through the foliage. Chel saw flashes ripping through the upper limbs, arcing toward where Whisper hid.
‘Down!’
The crew ducked, Chel slithering down the cold stone of the rocks that lined the ridge. Beside him, Lemon hissed. ‘Sly fucks ambushed our ambush!’
Heart thumping, Chel risked a swift peek over the rock. Whisper had clambered down from her tree and was ducked behind a meaty trunk while arrows thunked against its side. She looked peeved. Rennic and Loveless looked similarly pinned down, and Spider lay among the corpses. He was so soaked with blood it was impossible to tell whether he was hit or merely playing dead. Chel suspected the latter.
‘What do we do?’
Lemon flicked a gaze over the rocks, then over at Foss who crouched behind a snow-covered thicket along the ridge-line. ‘Aye, right. Keep our heads down, let them think they’re flanking the folks below, then Fossy and I spring the jaws.’
‘What about—’
‘You stay here, wee bear, and keep yourself and Prince Gobshite well from sight. Yes? You wander off, you’ll get your both selves skinned.’ She fished a short, wide-bladed hatchet and an anvil-headed hammer from her collection. From down the slope, Chel heard something splinter and Rennic’s answering curse.
The chill dawn breeze blew over them from beyond the ridge, and brought with it a faint, delicate jingling. Something familiar about it nagged at Chel, and he turned away from the rocks for a clue as to what bothered him.
Two human shapes loomed up over the low ring of boulders, one very much bigger than the other. They were clad in furs and hunting gear, but even in the early light Chel recognized the rust-coloured robes beneath.
‘Hurkel,’ he said, throat cracked.
‘Whassat?’ Lemon looked over, then turned to follow his frozen gaze. ‘Aye, fuck! Fossy!’
Tarfel’s shriek carried over the woods, sending hardy birds bolting from the trees at their periphery.
The blond giant dropped from the outer boulder into the ring with a thud, crushing the snow beneath, then extended one arm, pointing. He was grinning. Behind him, the other confessor made more hesitant progress, sliding down the rock with his mace brandished like a ward.
‘Kneel, heretics!’ Hurkel roared. ‘Beg for the Shepherd’s mercy, that you may be spared eternal damnation!’
‘Stick it up your bollocks,’ Lemon replied, and hurled the short axe at the oncoming giant. He watched it all the way, then juked aside. The axe whistled past his beefy arm and split the face of the robed man behind him, who collapsed unconscious without a sound, thin sprays of blood fountaining from either side of the buried axe-head.
Hurkel reached Lemon in three strides, catching the haft of the hammer she swung at him. He towered over her, grinning all the while, as she strained to free the hammer from his grasp, then lashed a kick at his knee. Hurkel grunted, then punched her with his free hand. Lemon wobbled, and as her grip sagged Hurkel wrapped a hand over her face and began to squeeze.
Chel rolled across the snow. His good hand closed around the second confessor’s discarded mace, and he struggled up onto one knee behind the giant.
Mustering all his strength on his weaker side, he smashed the mace against Hurkel’s knee. This time, the confessor bellowed and staggered. He flung Lemon’s limp form aside and rounded on Chel, favouring his other leg.
His close-set eyes widened in surprise, then his grin expanded. ‘Sand-crab! How the Shepherd smiles on loyal servants. I’d thought the chance to dispatch you on your downward journey was long gone.’
Chel pushed himself to his feet and raised the mace, alarmed by its tremble in his hand. ‘Come on then, you great white prick.’
Hurkel punched him in the face. It had been a good few days since he’d last taken a blow, and most of his superficial injuries, especially the rough scabs on his face, had been healing up well. Hurkel’s fist rattled the teeth in his jaw, fractured his cheek and split his lip wide. He felt his brain move in his skull, and his vision was at once a mass of yellow and purple. He became only latterly aware that he was falling backward, then snow crunched beneath him and the pain bloom began as his nerves caught up with the damage.
Hurkel laughed, then looked around, searching for the prince, who was scuttling up the rocks away from him. Chel blew bloody spittle from his ripped mouth and tried to sit up. ‘Is that it, you rancid rat-fucker?’
Hurkel turned back. ‘Oh, sand-crab, you are thrice-damned and corrupted. You are beyond the Shepherd’s love.’ He raised a boot to stamp on Chel’s head, wincing at the movement.
Foss launched himself from the top of the rocks, landing on Hurkel’s back and sending him staggering. The boot crashed to the snow beside Chel’s ear, close enough for flecks of snow to spray his ravaged cheek. The two spun and struggled, Foss’s arms wrapped around Hurkel’s neck and chest, the blond giant’s ponderous arms flailing up at him, before Hurkel hooked an arm and pivoted, throwing Foss over his shoulder. It should have slammed him helpless to the ground, but Foss twisted as he was turned and got his feet beneath him, landing almost upright. He dropped immediately into a wrestler’s pose: knees bent, palms down, one arm extended, the other close to the body.
Hurkel nodded his head from one side to the other, as if considering, then assumed much the same pose. Even half-crouched, he still had half a head on Foss. The man with the braids might have been the biggest of Rennic’s crew in bulk and strength, but Hurkel looked capable of devouring him.
‘So shall the faithless betray the love of their maker,’ Hurkel said, ‘but the faithful shall be blessed with weapons of righteousness, and see the damned riven beneath their feet.’
‘The virtue of the believer shall shine from deeds, not proclamations,’ Foss replied.
The two circled, exchanging the odd half-slap blow, each keeping their distance, then Foss drove forward with his shoulder low, wrapping his arms around Hurkel’s massive thighs and heaving upward. Hurkel staggered backward, but Foss couldn’t get him all the way over and Hurkel began to rain blows down on him, laughing with increasing mania. The confessor reached down and wrapped his arms around Foss’s torso, then with a grunt levered his legs up off the ground until Foss was thrashing in mid-air.
Lying prone, Chel slammed the mace against Hurkel’s knee. When Hurkel staggered, he swung again, catching him a glancing blow on the kneecap. Hurkel roared and dropped Foss, snatching at the mace as Chel tried for another blow. He grabbed it and yanked it from Chel’s weakened grip, but before he could do much with it, Foss crunched his other knee with Lemon’s hammer.
The giant howled, clutched his knee and pitched sideways, unable to support his hefty bodyweight. As he fell, Foss scrambled to his feet and pounded the side of his trailing leg for good measure. He reached down and jerked the mace away from the curled and moaning Hurkel, then helped Chel to sit up. ‘Watch him,’ he said, pressing the mace back into Chel’s palm. ‘If he moves, hit him again.’ Chel immediately thumped the mace against Hurkel’s battered leg.
Foss called over the rocks. ‘Boss? We have the churchman.’
An arrow skittered off the boulder beside him and clattered down into the snow.
Rennic’s voice came echoing back. ‘Hear that, Mawnish travellers? We have your paymaster. Your engagement is ended.’
For a moment, the wood was still. Then a woman’s accented voice rang out. ‘Rennic? That you?’
Chel risked standing to look over the ring of stone. Rennic and the others were much where he’d last seen them, although Whisper had moved two trees over and Spider had crawled into thick undergrowth. Rennic was standing, his back still pressed to a tree trunk, staring at the brightly fletched arrow that was jammed in the top of his staff.
‘Grassi?’ he called. ‘Grassi of the Mawn, are you out there?’
Again silence, and then: ‘Black flag?’ came the woman’s voice.
‘Black flag,’ Rennic said, and at a stroke the tension dissipated. Rennic, Loveless and Whisper stood and moved out from their tree cover, Spider climbed to his feet, sheathing a long knife at his blood-soaked belt. Three dark forms materialized out of the trees, one of them only feet from where Spider had lain. Chel had no idea which of them had had the advantage.
Chel passed the mace to Foss. Hurkel began to move, and Foss hit him again.
One of the dark forms advanced on Rennic. She was barely two-thirds of his height, clad in dark furs and leather, her abdomen wrapped with armoured scales and a short bow at her shoulder. She grinned when Rennic stepped to meet her, a playful grin tinged with a hint of malice.
‘Didn’t know we hunt old men,’ she said.
Rennic’s smile was tight but genuine. ‘The fuck you doing out this way?’
‘You didn’t hear? More uprisings down south. Double coin at least, cold as shit down there.’
‘So why are you up here, with these god-bothering arseholes?’
She shrugged. ‘Detour. You know Grassi, if money good, service good.’
‘You were paid up front?’
She nodded. ‘Not imbecile, Rennic.’
‘And we can end it here?’
‘Normal day, no chance. Today, feel, uh, charitable. But—’ she jerked a slim finger in the direction of the circle of boulders. ‘Make sure he dead. This damage to reputation, Rennic. Always complete contract.’ Around them, the other Mawn were retrieving their arrows, yanking them from trunks and branches, completely indifferent to the watching mercenaries. Grassi grinned again. ‘Fortunately, we not go back to Sebemir. We go south. Always where the action is.’
‘Always.’ Rennic nodded and offered a small smile in return.
‘We not the only ones taking contracts from the Rose, Rennic. Nobody else going to give you a pass like Grassi.’
‘Don’t I know it. Good to see you, Grassi.’
‘Good to see you, Rennic.’ She reached up and ran a hand down his cheek with great affection, then turned and stomped back into the woods. Her two companions joined her, then another two before all five were lost among the thickening woods.
‘That’s it? That’s fucking it?’ Spider was up beside Rennic, the long knife back in his hand. ‘Those animal fucks killed the Fly! They butchered her!’
Rennic didn’t look at him. ‘And they could have done the same to us. They haven’t. Let’s be grateful for that much, and take this no further.’
Spider started to speak again, but Rennic was already slogging up the slope. ‘Perhaps you might enjoy a word with Brother Hurkel, Spider. To take your mind off things.’
Loveless fell in beside him. ‘So that was Grassi of the Mawn, eh?’
Rennic grunted.
‘She’s pretty. Little, but pretty.’
Rennic didn’t reply.
‘I liked her armour. Very flash. Hey, don’t you have some like that?’
They reached the rocks where Chel waited, good hand on the cold stone, one side of his face pulsing with waves of pain. He could feel the swelling already, his lip fat and bloody, one eye half-closed.
‘Hells, look at you, boy. The fuck happened up here? Where’s Lemon?’
‘Don’t call me boy,’ Chel slurred through throbbing lips.
Tarfel was crouched over Lemon’s stirring form. ‘I think she’s all right,’ the prince said. ‘She’s instructing me to eat my own genitals.’
***
With one knee shattered, Hurkel hunched like a wounded bear at the centre of the stone ring. He muttered scripture in a monotone through gritted teeth, eyes fixed on the muddy slush before him. The crew kept their distance, conscious his muscular arms still had speed and reach. Dawn had broken, the yellow morning sun scraping at the peaks behind them. Downslope, the gully was a mess of churned and vivid pink.
Rennic leaned against one of the stones opposite the stricken confessor. ‘So. Brother Hurkel.’
Hurkel ignored him, rocking gently as he murmured.
‘Foss, what’s he reciting?’
‘It’s the Article of Resolve. He thinks he’s going to be a martyr.’
‘Hey, Hurkel!’ Rennic prodded him with his splintered staff. Hurkel snarled and snatched its end, before Foss thumped him with the mace again and he released it with a growl.
‘Thrice-damned you are, every man, whore and faithless sand-crab among you,’ Hurkel said. ‘The flames of nine hells shall ravage your bleached bones for eternity, while your souls scream for salvation that will never come. You are beyond redemption.’
Rennic stared at him for a moment, hand on his chin, then stood. ‘You know what? Fuck this ape.’ He reached for a knife from his belt. Hurkel resumed his incantations with greater urgency, eyes closed, face raised to the sky and hands clasped.
Loveless put a hand on Rennic’s arm, and he deferred to her. She took a step forward, still keeping her distance. ‘Been with the Brotherhood of the Twice-Blooded Thorn long, Brother Hurkel?’ she said.
‘Demons take you, whore.’
‘That’s a yes, is it? Since you were a tiny meat-stack, I’d guess. Orphan? Foundling? Backstreet accident to some poor Horvaun working girl?’
‘God turns his back to painted harlots, vile whores, accursed street-rats.’
‘Brother Hurkel, that just isn’t true. Your god preaches love for everyone, especially the lost and unfortunate. I’m sure Foss here could quote you an apposite Article.’
Foss nodded, but remained silent.
‘You’ll not speak of God. You know nothing of his will!’
‘I suspect I know about as much as you do, Brother Hurkel.’
He clenched his teeth then spat at her, a gobbet of something landing on the muddied snow beside her boots. She pursed her lips. ‘Quite the charmer, aren’t we, Brother Hurkel? I bet the ladies can’t keep their hands off you. Oh, forgive me, you took a vow, didn’t you? First to the Rose, then when you, let’s say, bloomed into this vision of even-tempered manhood before us, I bet the Thorn couldn’t wait to sweep you into their bosom.’
Loveless took a small step closer. ‘You can’t bear it, can you, Hurkel? You can’t bear to see the pretty girls enjoying themselves, enjoying other boys, enjoying each other. You can’t stand it. That they can’t stand you. Your mother rejected you, the serving girls in the monastery shrieked and hid from you, and now every woman who claps her eyes on your grisly mug runs a mile.’
‘Shut your vile mouth, trollop!’
‘Never was a vow of celibacy so unnecessary.’
He lunged for her then, thrusting forward on one hand with the other outstretched. She danced aside, whipping the short silver sword from its scabbard at her belt. She held it before her face, looking along the flat of the blade at the snarling confessor. ‘Please, Brother Hurkel. Make me do it.’
Hurkel’s face was the colour of rotten beetroot. ‘That’s a fine blade. I’m going to fuck you with it.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘And you seemed like such a nice boy.’
He lunged again, fast and unstoppable. Loveless swayed and the sword moved in a blur, hissing through the air. Hurkel’s hand gripped Loveless’s jacket. His hand was no longer attached to his arm.
Hurkel began to shriek as the reality of his mutilation dawned. Thick, bright blood pumped from the stump at his wrist, pooling on the ruined snow beneath him.
‘For God’s sake, Loveless, look at this mess. Now one of us will have to touch him,’ Rennic sighed.
‘You will die unlamented and alone, Brother Hurkel, and as your life leaves you, you will realize that you are alone with your god, and that he knows you for what you are. Shorn of pomp and sacrament, you are a transparent nothing. A robed void. A tiny, wasted existence.’ Loveless brushed his severed hand from her clothes, then kicked it along the ground at him.
‘Fuck off and die, Brother Hurkel.’
Something howled in the distance, and Whisper gestured to Rennic.
‘Wolves?’
Foss looked at the carnage that surrounded them. ‘What could possibly have attracted them?’
‘Packs and sacks, Black Hawk Company! We’re away from here right now.’
Lemon struggled to her feet at the edge of the circle. ‘Aye, right, wolves, is it? I’ll tell you what I’ll do to any fucken wolfy comes near me. I’ll …’ She wobbled and sat down again.
‘Foss, carry her, please.’
‘You know,’ came Lemon’s voice as Foss hoisted her, ‘I’ve got this idea for a better kind of crossbow …’
The crew grabbed the remainder of their supplies. Chel wasn’t sure where his supply sack was. He suspected it was in the blood-soaked grime beneath Hurkel. It had his food rations and a small knife. He hoped he’d cope without them.
‘What about him?’ he said to Rennic as the crew began to move off over the ridge.
Rennic didn’t look back. ‘Fuck him. Let the wolves have him. Come on, Fossy! You can pray for them later.’
Foss had his head bowed, his hands clasped as he stood at the peak of the ridge. The effect was marred only slightly by Lemon’s groggy form slung over his shoulder. He shook his head then turned to follow.
As howls echoed from the peaks, the Black Hawk Company left the crimson stone circle and Brother Hurkel, whimpering and trying to stop the blood, behind them.