The cold slapped and stung his skin, despite his cloak of Nanaki spirit. The night was overcast, the moon a pale, watery smear lost behind billows of fat silver cloud, but the ubiquitous snow reflected enough meagre light for Chel to stagger to the trees and relieve himself. Lazy flakes drifted around him as he considered trying to write his name, then thought better of it.
Refreshed but shivering, he turned back toward the huts, making for the outer door. As he approached the wafting hide, he heard their voices within: Spider’s flint-edged rumble, the Nanaki girl’s thick laughter. They were in the outer chamber, blocking his way back inside. He hovered a moment, teeth on the edge of chattering as the warmth flooded from his body into the bitter night air, then scowled. Sod it, there were other entrances.
He trudged around the outer hut ring, hands shoved beneath his arms, the snow crust crunching beneath his feet as the lead-coloured lake filled his view. It seemed utterly flat in the feeble moonlight, immobile, lifeless, thick growths of ice encroaching from the shoreline like grasping fingers. Drifts of blown snow had dusted the ice like dandruff.
A figure strode into view in a sudden blaze of mellow light from the interior, darkened as soon as the hide flapped shut behind it. Blinking in the returned gloom, Chel watched the figure march from the hut down to a creaking jetty, travelling a well-worn path in the snow. The figure wore thick furs and moved easily over the slippery boards: one of their hosts.
Something made Chel pause. He couldn’t explain why – he had every reason to be where he was, after all – but he felt the urge to hide, to stay unseen. The Nanaki paced to the end of the jetty, knelt, and began pulling up a rope that dangled down into the frigid water below. A moment’s inspection of whatever was at its end, then it fell back with a splash, and the Nanaki pulled up another. Chel pressed himself gingerly against the outer wall, keeping to the moon-shadow. Fishing lines? Traps of some sort?
The figure pulled up several more ropes, letting a few drop back into the water, keeping the rest and untying whatever lay at their ends. Then the figure was up, the items bundled in its arms, making confident progress back down the jetty toward the waiting huts. Chel ducked back around the wall, breathing into his hand to try to mask the vapour. Another flash of mellow brilliance, and he was alone in the moonlight.
He was shivering, his teeth rattling in his jaw, fingers numb, and he knew it wasn’t all from cold. Lemon’s words echoed around his head, and he couldn’t fight the curiosity, the need to know. His steps on the slick and groaning jetty were slow, cautious, his eyes on the knotted ropes at its end, body tensed against another sudden wash of light from behind. His breath felt raw in his throat.
The ropes were dark, soaked and half-frozen, stiff and sharp against his palms. The first he tried didn’t move, its end locked into the ice chunks lurking below the jetty. Heavy pulls on the next revealed a dark lump of ice, heaved into the moonlight, a solid frozen block. He let it slide back into the water.
The third rope came more easily, less wet-frozen than the others. He pulled a knotted bundle out from the frigid depths, heavier still as it left the icy water, his shoulder screaming from the effort. With gasps of exertion and pain, he hauled the bundle up onto the jetty, levering it onto the wooden boards as he flopped down beside. He felt completely numb.
He picked at the knotted rope with his good hand, teasing at the contents beneath. Something hide-wrapped lay beneath the rope, tightly parcelled. He tweaked back the hide to reveal pale stacks, half-pickled by the ice-water, dark blotches like cut ends. He worked at the sodden rope, wishing he had a knife or lever. A length slipped at last and the hide fell away, and he saw the jagged edges, the protruding bone. It was meat. Preserving meat.
Chel paused, breathing hoarse, willing his failing fingers back to life. He could kick the bundle off the jetty and be back by the fire in the space of another twenty breaths. All he had to do was stand. He could feel the cold oozing into him from the jetty floor, creeping up through his legs, gnawing at him. All he had to do was stand.
He yanked at the rope again, and the loop came free. He stared at what lay beneath, throat closed, breath frozen, then rolled onto his hands and knees and began to vomit into the black water below.
Beside him on the jetty, pale and shrivelled in the wavering moonlight, stretched the clawing fingers of a human hand.
***
Whisper drew back the hide curtain as he was reaching for it, his good hand trembling, skin pale from more than just cold. She gave him a genial nod, then her eyes narrowed as she took in his wild expression, brow sweat and caked trickles of vomit at his chin.
Her hand moved fast in the gloom, but her expression was easy to read. What’s wrong? She mimed drinking, then heaving, and raised an eyebrow. Over her shoulder, Tarfel was winding down his latest rendition, unaccompanied, while Loveless swung arms with one of the Nanaki bulls.
Chel shook his head. His voice was cracked, his throat still dry and resentful from retching. ‘Bodies,’ he managed.
Whisper’s eyes narrowed further, one hand moving to the hilt of the long knife at her belt. Her bow and quiver lay by the table in the hall, along with most of their weaponry. She gestured with the other hand. Where?
‘In the lake.’ He swallowed hard, fighting down revulsion. ‘Cut as meat.’
Her expression didn’t change, but the knuckles on the knife hilt gleamed pale in the murk.
‘Have to warn the others.’ Already his mind was racing away, past the terror of eating their own and onto becoming prey himself. Was this why there were no children or old people among the Nanaki band? They’d all been slaughtered already? Is that why they’d taken them in?
Whisper nodded, casting a quick look over her shoulder. The Nanaki matriarch remained at the back of the hall, wavering in the haze of smoke and steam and sweat, the creases of her eyes impossible to read. Her bone spear remained in her hand.
Whisper motioned downward. Wait here. She turned back to the room as Tarfel struck up the first chords of his next number. The notes were immediately familiar to Chel.
‘Oh, shit,’ he whispered. His eyes flicked to Rennic, whose broad back obscured the rest of his view of the crew’s low table. ‘Not that song! Stop him!’
Whisper turned back in confusion, and Tarfel began to sing.
‘O they told of her beauty,
The maiden of stars,
But cometh the—’
A clay jug smashed against his head.
Yelping and reeling, the prince flailed at his head, showering the earthen floor with shards of pottery and splatters of fiery spirit. Rennic was on his feet, swaying slightly, one hand still extended and the slow-dawning realization of a mistake crossing his face. Tarfel rubbed at his eyes and face, wailing and flinching, the cowl pulled from his head and the crust of old blood run from his face in slick rivulets. His milk-white skin shone in the firelight.
The Nanaki moved fastest. Before Lemon or Foss could rise from the table, the matriarch had barked a command and weapons of bone and steel were inches from their throats. The two men dancing with Loveless pulled their daggers without hesitation, one of them gripping her around the waist while the other danced around her kicks to press his knife to her cheek. Rennic was surrounded by three Nanaki, their spears extended, while two more registered Whisper’s presence by the doorway and hurtled toward her. Only Tarfel was left unattended, but he seemed more concerned with brushing clay from his hair and mewling. He looked on the verge of tears.
Rennic stared around the chamber. ‘Uh … black flag?’
Whisper fixed Chel with a stare and made a scuttling gesture with one hand against her body, before shoving him back into the darkness and turning to face her oncoming assailants. The hide curtain swung shut, muffling the shouting beyond.
Spider.
Find Spider.
His mouth still sour with bile, heart thumping against his ribs and glossy sweat cooling on his brow, Chel stood frozen in the darkness. Shouts carried through the curtain, the clatter of metal. At any moment, the hanging would be ripped aside, and a bone-tipped spear would drive into his torso. His meat. Ready to be bled, dressed and carved.
Find Spider.
Of course it had to be Spider. Bloody, bloody Spider.
He snorted, swallowed, then turned and bolted for the snow beyond.
***
The tracks to the hut were easy to follow.
‘Spider?’
The hanging moved aside. Spider filled the doorway, close and gnarled and suddenly much bigger than Chel remembered. He was stripped to the waist, the scattered moonlight gleaming from his shaven dome and knots of muscle. He said nothing, staring at Chel with cold, black eyes.
‘Listen, I know we’re not … that is, we’ve …’ Chel swallowed, tried again. ‘There’s trouble,’ he blurted, trying to keep his voice low, mindful of Spider’s likely company in the chilled, darkened hut. ‘They found out about the prince. They’ve pulled weapons, surrounded the others. Whisper sent me to get you – you’re the only one who can talk to them!’
Spider tilted his head back, dark eyes glittering in the moonlight. ‘Where’s the little prince?’
‘They’ve got him. I think they mean to hurt him …’
Spider breathed long and hard through his narrow nose. ‘Stay here.’
He disappeared back into the hut.
Chel stood alone in the cold, wondering if his shivers came from temperature or adrenaline, expecting to hear the crunch of footsteps on snow at any moment as the Nanaki butchers came up the slope to finish the job.
He heard a sound from the hut, something like a sigh, then a moment later Spider ducked through the doorway, dressed and bristling with knives. He grunted and gestured toward the central building.
‘Move it, shit-rat.’ He stepped in close, a hooked knife in his hand without seeming to travel from his belt. ‘If that fucking prince dies, then all this arse-grief will be for nothing, and the Spider has come too far to get nothing. The Spider might be tempted to push your eyeballs out the back of your head by way of compensation.’
‘Um. Understood.’ Chel nodded. He could cross that bridge when he came to it. Spider was already loping toward the main entrance; Chel hurried after.
‘What about your, uh, friend?’
‘What friend?’ Spider didn’t even look round. ‘Who fucked up? Was it Beaky? Never could keep his piss straight after two jugs.’
‘They’re cannibals. Truly. They’ve got a load of butchered bodies freezing on ropes in the lake.’ He was amazed by how easily he could say it.
Spider didn’t blink.
‘And?’
***
Spider moved over the snow like a sure-footed beast, low on all fours, leaving shallow impressions compared with the deep, rutted tracks that had led from the entrance. Chel laboured after, trying to keep up while limping against the thick drifts, his breath great silver plumes in the milky light. He did his best to outline the situation in the hall as he went.
‘What’s your steel?’ Spider said as they closed on the central hut.
‘Come again?’
‘What are you carrying?’ Spider stopped, turning to Chel with incredulity mixing with his existing disgust. ‘What are you armed with, rat-bear?’
Chel spread his hands, as much as his strapped shoulder would allow. ‘I don’t have anything.’
‘God’s fucking cock-pus.’
‘It’s not my fault – I’ve been disarmed since Denirnas, and even before then, uh …’
‘What? What kind of fucking bodyguard are you?’
‘I only took the oath just before your lot snatched me and the prince.’
Spider’s eyes were glittering coals. His hand moved in a blur, faster than Chel could register, and Chel found a knife at his chest. With a flick Spider reversed it, and Chel found himself taking the hilt with his good hand, while a sudden surge of adrenaline fizzed cold in his gut. The blade was long and narrow, a stabber, not a slasher. It was very cold, and heavier than it had looked.
‘Keep that close, rat-shit. The Spider will be taking it back later, one way or another.’
Spider reached the outer doorway and crouched beside it. Chel waded up beside him and did likewise. ‘How many of them are there? A dozen?’
‘Fourteen,’ Spider said, then considered. ‘Thirteen.’
Chel opened his mouth, then said nothing.
‘They’ll know we’re loose,’ Spider said. He had a hooked blade in each hand, and slow steam floated in wisps from his bald head. ‘They’ll be looking. Are you ready?’
Chel nodded. His options were limited.
‘There are two entries to the hall, one at each end. The Spider will take the one closer to Prince Fuck-face, you the other. They’ll be off their guard at our arrival, maybe we can talk them down, maybe not. Whatever goes down, you’re following up with that dagger – stick it in as many of them as your shit little rat arms can manage, aim for the soft places. Eyes, ears, neck, tits, cock, you name it. Jam up some fucker’s arsehole and he’s out of the fight, yes? None of your lordly pissing around here, understand?’
Chel nodded again, hoping his distaste wasn’t too obvious.
‘The Spider takes the prince, you get those other useless fuckers out of there. Their weapons are by the table, yes? Head that way, sling them over. They won’t be expecting a rat-faced cripple to spray steel, so that’s in your favour. Yes?’
‘No.’
‘The fuck you say, rat-boy?’
‘I’m taking the prince.’
‘Did you hit your head?’
‘Think about it. You can talk to the Nanaki, they know you. If there’s a bloodless solution to this, it’s you convincing them that all’s well, that Tarfel’s not worth any trouble.’ He tried not to think of the lake meat, or Spider’s absent friend in the hut. Bloodless seemed a remote outcome. ‘Either way, they won’t be expecting me, like you said. You make the big entrance, see if they’re open to negotiation, hold their attention. I can grab the prince and get him to safety before anything, uh, untoward happens. That’s what matters, right? The prince being safe. Like you said, he dies, this was all for nothing.’ And I spend eternity in an unmarked grave in these mountains, assuming I’m not digested first.
Spider considered. To Chel’s eye he was weighing probabilities, and it felt like an awful lot rode on which way Spider’s scales would tip. After a moment, he grimaced. ‘Fine. The Spider should make the big entrance. You’d only fuck it up.’ He twirled the knives, one after the other. ‘But you come back, rat-boy. Get that bleached weasel out in the woods and come back, give a signal, wave your little rat arms. You think about running, you will not be getting far.’ Spider’s gaze was a darkness from which there was no escape.
Chel swallowed. ‘Of course—’
Spider’s hand went over his mouth, rough and cold and salty. He shuddered and tried to move away, but Spider’s eyes were on the doorway. He whipped his hand away, the curved blade reappearing as it moved, then stood silently, pressed against the doorway’s edge. Chel pulled back from him, his own dagger cold and strange in his off-handed grip. He fixed his eyes on the heavy hide, watching its every curl and ripple in the breeze.
All was still, no sound but the rolling bustle of wind in the forest around them, and the pounding of blood in Chel’s ears.
The hanging moved aside.
The Nanaki was half out of the door, his spear leading proud, when Spider rolled over him like a boulder. One hand clamped over his mouth, Spider’s legs wrapped around his arms and body, and they tumbled into the snow before the Nanaki could cry out. One hooked blade rose and fell, rose and fell, and blood sprayed into the churned drift. Spider locked the man tight, crushing his struggles and convulsions, his protests only gurgles as the life flooded from him into the mush beneath. His movements slowed, then stopped altogether. Spider stood, wiping his blade and brushing himself down.
‘Twelve.’ He hawked and spat a fat gobbet onto the cooling body at his feet. ‘Fancy sticking him with your blade, get the feel of it?’
Chel took three attempts to shake his head.
So much for bloodless.
***
The scene in the hall was little changed, as Spider peeled back a wisp of hide covering from the inner doorway and they peered in. Lemon and Foss had been moved away from their weapons, and joined by Whisper, who sported a fresh cut across the top of her chest. One of the Nanaki was bandaging his hand in the corner. Loveless remained pinned between the two young studs, steaming with booze and fury. Rennic stood at the hall’s centre, his hands raised in supplication, still trying to surmount the language barrier. The Nanaki matriarch looked unmoved, although Chel found her expression as hard to read as ever.
Tarfel had remained where he was, curled in a ball and whimpering beside the instruments, his back to the wall. Despite the fuss over his heritage, he seemed at the bottom of everyone’s priorities. Chel nodded toward him.
‘I can reach him from here, if you draw their attention to the far end.’
‘The Spider will draw plenty, don’t you worry, rat-bear.’
‘Uh-huh.’ What had his mother said about people who refer to themselves in the third person? He’d forgotten her exact words, but the essence had been: wankers.
Spider was away, scuttling back through the darkness like his namesake. Chel waited at the doorway, counting his ragged breaths, feeling the weight of the dagger in his hand. It was still grave-cold, his fingers offering little warmth in the circumstances. He peeked into the hall again. The fire crackled away at the hall’s centre, yet somehow its amiable heat now repelled him, its association with the butchered human-meat too close.
The far hanging flapped aside, and Spider strode into the room. The Nanaki fell into uproar, weapons brandished, threats made clear despite the foreign tongue. Two Nanaki nocked arrows to their short bone bows, swivelling to face the new threat. Spider’s hands were up and empty, his tone conciliatory, his eyes glittering in the firelight. Tarfel sat alone and forgotten. Chel moved.
He kept low against the wall, retracing the steps he’d followed on his way out such a short time before. He skirted an upturned table, closing on the prince, sweat prickling along his back from more than the fire’s heat. His ankle throbbed and yowled with every hunched step, but he pushed on with gritted teeth. A gentle tap on the prince’s cloaked shoulder was all he could risk, his darting eyes on the figures beyond, Spider’s low, placatory words against the aggressive barks of the Nanaki present. How long before they realized that at least one of their number would not be returning?
Tarfel turned. His head was sticky with dribbled spirit and dried blood, his hair matted and lumpen against his scalp. His eyes widened as he registered Chel, and his lips parted to speak. Chel shook his head with fury, jamming his good hand forward to still the prince’s mouth. The pommel of the dagger mashed into the prince’s lips and he recoiled with a gasp, Chel’s mortified grimace scant mollification. Chel watched a single tear roll down the prince’s filthy cheek, gnawing his fist in mute apology.
A swift glance suggested no one had heard the gasp over the central dispute. Chel beckoned with his weak hand, head inclined toward the doorway, and the prince nodded, eyes wet and wide. They crawled at a gallop, Chel not risking a look back, his pulsing heart pressing against his gorge so hard he feared his eyes would burst from his skull. He ushered Tarfel past him at the doorway, through the dark passageway beyond, and out into the stinging cold of the night.
‘Vedren!’ the prince said as the starlit night welcomed them. Chel gestured on, aiming for the line of dark forest at the head of the slope. ‘Why did you hit me?’
‘I’m so sorry, highness. It was an accident,’ he managed, breath coming hard. ‘We need to keep moving.’
‘Why is the snow so dirty? What’s this by the door?’
‘Come on!’ Chel grabbed the prince by the arm and dragged him into the woods.
***
They climbed into a snow-draped thicket that offered a narrow, fractured view of the huts below. Chel tried to calm his breathing as he peered back down the slope, scanning for any movement. The lake beyond was a pewter slab, the odd sliver of moonlight that slipped the gloomy cloud glinting from its sullen surface. His fingers and toes were long since numb to the cold, his limbs beginning to stiffen and seize.
‘Vedren?’ The prince’s voice was meek in the darkness, almost buried in the whispering creak of the surrounding forest.
‘Highness?’
‘They were really going to kill me, weren’t they?’
‘I don’t know, highness. They certainly didn’t seem best pleased to see you.’
‘Why do they hate me? Why would they want to kill me just for how I look?’
Chel bit his lip. It hardly felt the time for a diversion into ethno-politics, and the Horvaun reaver purges that had driven the Nanaki into the remotest parts of these mountains.
‘I need to get back, highness. We can talk later.’ He rose to his feet, cursing every battered bone in his body.
‘What? What are you talking about! You can’t go back! You can’t leave me here! I command you!’
‘I’m sorry, highness. I must.’
‘But, but, it’s cold! There are wolves! What if the Nanaki murder you like the others? Why don’t we just run, right now? The two of us?’ Tarfel spread his pale palms in the darkness. ‘After all, what do we know about those people, these kidnappers, assuming they’re not dead already? You know, I don’t think they’re planning to ransom me at all.’ His voice rose in pitch. ‘They’ve not been very nice to me and I don’t see why you should risk your life helping them when for all we know they’re planning to cut our throats as soon as they get us to wherever it is they’re dragging us!’
Chel nodded. ‘And that’s why I have to go back. Without them, we’ll not last a day out here. Certainly not with the Nanaki hunting us.’ And certainly not if Spider survives and comes after us, either. I prefer my eyeballs on the inside of my skull.
‘They’re not your friends, Vedren. They’re mercenaries, hired by my enemies – by our enemies.’
‘I know, highness. I still have to go back.’
‘You are refusing a royal command. I am … displeased!’
‘Take this, highness.’ Chel held out the dagger, hilt first.
‘What? I can’t fight off a horde of Nanaki if they come for me.’
Chel nodded.
‘It’s not for them.’
Tarfel’s indignation vanished, and he suddenly seemed very small in the moonlight.
‘Oh.’