Ecko Burning (25 page)

And then the coughing would double him over, hurting his ribs and flecking his hands with red. He’d done everything he could to hide it from the others - they trusted him and followed him, and he was damned to all the rhez if he’d let them see him falter.

He was Redlock, for the Gods’ sakes. Whatever this endless cursed woodland hid within its glimmering tree roots, he’d face it, and he’d beat it.

Always.

Yet despite his solidity and determination, the woodland’s eventual ending brought with it a huge sense of relief. When they climbed down at last from the forested foothills, and the dense trees began to thin and the scent of sea air filtered through the leaves, he felt his heart lift with light. As the dank and the moss receded, his doubts faded. He surged ahead of the others, and began to believe that the nightmare trek was over. It might, just might, be all right...

They weren’t about to fall off the damned edge of the world, or anything stupid.

Silently, the axeman cursed himself for superstitious horseshit.

Over the crumbling mountains, the sun was lowering to the red glow of the day’s end and Redlock stopped with an unnamed weight falling from his hurting shoulders. His undertunic was stuck to his back, his legs were aching with the long day, but he leaned on a bent knee with something like relief.

His lungs heaved; he spasmed hard with the need to cough.

Smothered it.

Ahead of him, the ground became flatter and less harsh, the woodland parted to give glittering hints of open water. Beside him was a small river, frothing close to the coastline as if it really was the edge of the world. It ran swift, leaves like boats upon its surface.

On its far side, the ground had been thrown hard upwards as if the mountains had shuddered with some final spasm. A sharply rising twist of cliff tore free from grass and soil. It rose in grey rock striations to an odd lookout point, a Godscrafted tower.

Redlock eyed it warily, allowed himself a moment to catch his breath. He shoved loose hair out of his eyes and glanced over his shoulder, wondering how far back the others had lingered.

He allowed himself the luxury of a cough, his breath barking harsh in the air.

And then something caught his eye.

On the opposite bank of the river and almost hidden by an overgrowth of the Gleam Wood’s mossed trees, there was just about the last thing he’d been expecting.

A window.

Still leaning on his knee, sheltered by the edge of the woods, he stifled his coughing and stared.

Its arch was broken, tumbledown and ruined, but gradually Redlock realised that it was not alone.

Slowly, as the light stretched away from him, he began to see the angles of stone that showed amidst the overgrowth, the flat planes of mossed walls that had not been touched by human hand in...

He shivered.

...how long?

The shiver crept out across his shoulders, wonder and wariness. This was no more a place of merchants than the gutted wreckage of the Great Fayre. How long since anyone had lived out here, since anyone had come this far off the roadway?

Carefully, the axeman crept forwards to the muddied bank of the small river, and crouched by the bole of a tree.

Could there have been a village here once - here at the very outermost point of the Varchinde - charcoal burners, foresters? Could there have been some town reachable only by water, a place with no trade-road to tell of its presence? Scattered through the woods, there had been odd fragments of crafted stone, but at no point had they seen any sign that a road had carved this way - that any feet but their own had ever come around the edge of the Green Mountains and down into the wood.

By the damned Gods...

How had Nivrotar known this was here?

He began to see the ruins were not haphazard - there were pathways, cracked and splintered with time and growth, old stone buildings grown over by weaving roots, pulled down by their sheer strength. There were dead stone windows, empty and staring, old doorways gaping wide, steps that led from nowhere to nowhere.

And all of it overgrown by the seethe of beautiful, strangling creeper.

He stood upright, somehow trembling, oddly breathless.

He had no idea what the rhez he’d just found.

And in just that moment, there was no movement. Not a creature, not a bird. Not a human life, other than his own. If anything had ever lived out here, it had died a thousand returns before, rotted into the grass and been forgotten. Not knowing how far back the others were, Redlock was awed and utterly, utterly alone.

Then, behind him, something rustled.

The axeman wheezed, tried to swallow the urge to cough. It made his ribs burn, his vision blur - he struggled to draw an even breath, control his wracking body.

On the river’s far side, the creeper danced at him, laughing silent.

He turned, shattering the moment.

Some distance back from the water’s edge, Triqueta emerged from the wood, leading the chearl. She was lined and weary, her bright skin dusty, her hair straggled and stuck to her face. The laden chearl was restless, its eyes showed white and its hide was grimy, darkened with sweat. Placid though the beasts usually were, the Banned woman had her hands full, and her blades hung loose at her belt.

Behind her, Amethea was pale and swaying - her eyes darting from shadow to shadow, from dappled sunset to woodland sound. She caught sight of the broken stone walls, the last of the sunlight cresting the mountains and making them glow like fire, and her jaw dropped.

Even Ecko, barely visible in the seething colours of cloak and skin, seemed oddly subdued.

All of them were exhausted, weary from the endless woods. Redlock had no idea what they had found but he had the distinct and creeping feeling that their presence out here had little to do with chance.

And frankly, he didn’t like it.

* * *

Ecko had been stuck with firewood duty.

All this fucking way, right out here in the ass-end of beyond, and he’d been lumbered - no pun intended - with collecting fucking
sticks.

Dry sticks.

In the rain.

No one ever told you this shit - you only ever heard about the glamorous bits. It was all monsters and fighting and flirting and beer and sunlight and heaps of fucking treasure. No one ever told you that you had to crap in a hole, wipe your ass with wet leaves and then go hunting for dry sticks in the pissing fucking rain. Hell, finishing up this program could come after he’d skipped through the woods and sung a few songs and probably had a vision in a pond or something...

Chrissakes.

The only vision Ecko wanted was for this Noble Quest to be over, the sulphur in the bag.

He quit hunting sticks and crouched in the lee of a crumbling stone wall, his cloak hunched about him and the rain seeping cold down the back of his neck.

Sulphur, chrissakes. Never mind the Greek fire, right now he’d be better off inventing microfibre or something.

Fidgeting with irritation, he picked up a loose twig - a wet one - snapped it and wished he had a way to make it burn.

All the way from the trade-road, he’d been getting angrier by the minute: made claustrophobic by necessity, caught like a fucking trace-animal, forced to move in one direction. He felt like he was following footprints, some handy scenario pack. All he wanted to do was to kick this shit into
life. Make
it fucking happen.

Like now.

Like you jus’ fuckin’ watch me.

In answer, the rain grew colder.

Yeah, I know your game. But I’m gonna play this out, bitch, an’ then I’m gonna bring this shit down round your ears. I’m gonna tear a hole right through the fucking sky...

Water ran down the inside of his neckline, daring him. It felt like he was being laughed at.

Of course you are. When you’re finished collecting sticks.

Against Redlock’s specific instruction, he’d crossed the small river, skirted the bottom edge of the rock they’d named the “lookout tower”. He’d been hoping for more monsters, goblins and skeletons, prancing elves and luring dryads -hell, they weren’t gonna be very dry in all of this - but the busted fragments of the ruin seemed deader than Eliza’s sense of humour. Ancient legends, his mottled ass - right now, if he couldn’t have his char-hole in the sky, he’d give his right bollock for geo-tracking, a silenced nine-mil and a thermos of fucking
tea.

Tea. Chrissakes. He really was turning normal - this place was messing with his
head.

He was cold.

He missed the Bard.

What?

The thought came out of nowhere. It was a twinge of conscience, a sudden wrinkle of doubt and hesitation. He somehow almost wished that Roderick
was
there, could help him, could tell him if he was doing the right thing...

Then he caught himself, threw the thought down and stepped on it. Felt it squash into the mud.

No. Lugan sold me out; Rodders fucking died. Fuck that. I don’t need either of them; I don’t need help. I don’t need any other fucker to hold my hand an’ tell me what to do.
He was almost railing at the glowering sky.
I jus’ wanna get to the end of this!

Fuming, he fought the adrenaline down. Another stick detonated into fragments in his fingers, the snapping loud in the wet. He dropped the bits, shook them off like insects, like they’d bite him. Then he huddled up further as it began to rain more heavily, spattering down through the leaves.

Slowly, the sunlight died. The darkness rose to meet the cloud, and rivulets of dirt ran between his feet.

Then, as the nacre of the trees began to glimmer ghostlike, something caught his gaze.

Creeping silent, also this side of the water and close enough for his heatseeker, Triqueta was hunting. Her blur of warmth moved slowly between crumbling pillars. Curled against the rain to keep her bowstring dry, she was quiet as death, placing her feet with care.

Ecko stayed still. Breathless. Fascinated.

He wondered if she was on the trail of something - she was elegant and precise, somehow delicate; even in the rain she made no sound. As she passed across in front of him, he resisted the urge to scare the shit out of her, just for the hell of it.

Instead, he let her go, then slipped out behind her, into the full force of the rain. Keeping her just within range of his oculars, he began to follow her route.

Who knew, if he was lucky she might just be waking all the beasties up.

* * *

It was wet.

No, it wasn’t just wet, it was absolutely
pissing
it down. Not even London got rain like this. It was a deluge, for chrissakes, a silver-grey sheet in front of his nose.

The soil under his feet was running with muck, slick with leaf mould. Roots wound under and through it, just waiting to make him stumble. His cloak had become a bastard nuisance -snagging on low branches and dragging down with water. He was almost tempted to dump it, but something in him couldn’t part with his identity, with the things that remained of his London self, his real self, with the image of Ecko that he still needed to present...

Whether that was to himself or the world outside.

Inside.

Whatever.

His feet skidded again.

Then, through a fuzz of rain, he picked up the faintest blur of heat-trace, somewhere between the trees - not Triqueta, this was a new something, a breathing something, four-footed and prowling wary.

It was close. And it was too damn fucking quiet.

Now that’s what I meant!
Anticipation skittered, thrilling.
See? This is a helluva lot more fun than sticks.

He skidded a third time. Impatiently, he picked up the cloak-hem and bundled it under one arm. In the faint gleam of tree-light, another corner of crumbled building loomed suddenly into view. He dropped low behind its cover.

Ecko was grinning properly now. Swap the canopy for the grey sky, the stone ruins for the tessellated buildings of London, and hell, he could almost be at home - this was more the fuck like it!

The blur that was Triqueta had paused. She seemed to be crouched behind or in something; a sharp, black line cut off her warm colour. A distance from her, the Something Else had crouched belly-down, like some giant street cat. A long tail curved over its back.

Triqueta hadn’t seen it. Any second now, she was gonna be dinner - unless...

Oh for fuck’s sake.

...unless he jumped in and rescued her.

Nice touch Eliza, just push my buttons whydontcha...

Daaaaance...

Chances of successful scenario running at...

Then, out of nowhere, the thought hit him like a fucking jackhammer:
Fuck you, you bitch: what if I don’t rescue her?

What if I say, not any more? What if I walk away? What if I cut to the chase and go find the sulphur without playing Random Encounter Bad Guy?

Then whatcha gonna do? You’ll lose your lever. Your strings. How you gonna make me dance then?

It was like some dark epiphany, for chrissakes. The eagerness of it pinned him right to the spot, to the weathered wall he rested against...

See? I don’t
care
. You can’t make me
care.

The beastie was close now, silent as nightmare. Ecko had forgotten the relentless sheeting of the rain, the cold light of the trees, his numb fingers. He was intent only on the critter as it stole forwards, low to the filthy ground.

Temptation beckoned him like the long middle finger of the dryad.

But Redlock was close, and he was a kick-ass fighter - pushing fifty or not, he’d chopped the centaur stallion to gobbets, and Maugrim had been a bloody, hacked-up mess. The axeman might just carve the beastie into beastie steak, already, and then there’d be a fuckton of awkward questions...

Shit.

Ecko’s point of indecision teetered, swung one way and then the other; its breathlessness seemed to last an age. Triqueta shifted. The noise was minute, but the beast raised its head. In the patchy moonlight, its face was oddly flat.