Grim Company 02 - Sword Of The North (6 page)

Lightning crackled from the Halfmage’s extended digit, striking the rebel dead in the chest. He jerked for a few seconds and flopped to the ground just in front of them.

‘Are you trying to get us killed?’ the Halfmage spat, voice thick with anger.

Sasha looked down at the rebel’s sizzling body and swallowed when she saw the ceramic ball he clutched in his death grip.
It’s the moon dust
, she realized.
I’m not thinking clearly.

Ambryl was staring at the Halfmage with a queer expression. ‘I’m not surprised to find you here. You seem to show up whenever some disaster befalls the city. Like a maggot drawn to death.’

The wizard sneered. ‘I could say the same for you. This night could hardly get any worse. I need only return home to find Isaac pleasuring himself in my bed and my evening would be complete.’

‘Isaac?’ Despite the anger she felt, Sasha was intrigued at the mention of the strange manservant.

‘Better you don’t ask.’ The Halfmage frowned at the body of the rebel. ‘What’s that?’ He leaned forward on his chair and pointed at the corpse. The man’s shirt had burned away, leaving his ruined chest exposed.

Sasha knelt down and examined the corpse, grateful that her drug-abused nose was deadened to the stench of charred flesh. ‘There’s a tattoo on his neck. Some kind of script.’

‘What does it say?’

‘I don’t know the language,’ she snapped. ‘And you’re mistaken if you think I’m doing you any favours. I came to you asking for help. You slammed your door in my face.’

The Halfmage glanced around. Sasha followed his gaze. More Watchmen were arriving, clutching buckets of water drawn from cisterns beneath the city. Small groups were banding together to put out the fires that still raged to the east. A physician tended to the wounded, implements neatly arranged beside him.

‘Fine,’ the Halfmage said wearily. ‘Come with me to the depository and I’ll answer your questions. I have some of my own.’ He frowned down at the smoking body. ‘First I must ask you to do something for me.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘What?’

‘I need that tattoo.’ His eyes went to the knife and lingered there.

Sasha looked down at the corpse, and then at the blade in her hand. ‘You don’t mean…’

‘Yes. Try not to make a mess.’

With a heavy sigh, she bent to her task.

He drifted on a river of stars; stared at a vast blackness stretching for infinity.

Who was he? He thought he might remember if he concentrated hard enough, yet something about that idea struck him as dangerous. Better to forget. To embrace dissolution.

He closed his eyes – or at least stopped seeing. It didn’t matter who he was or might have been. He was at peace now, a weightless vessel pulled along by the cosmic torrent below, surrounded by an endless sea of perfect tranquillity.

And yet...

There was
something
. Discordance – a ripple in the absolute calm. He tried to ignore it. To let awareness slip away, become one with the emptiness.

But it was
persistent.

‘Bastard’s alive.’

‘What?’

‘He’s alive. I just saw him twitch.’

‘You sure? I’ve never seen a man that pale still drawing breath.’

‘Me neither, mate. But his chest is moving. See?’

‘Well, bugger me.’

‘Come again?’

‘Bugger me, I said.’

A heavy pause.

‘Did you mean that literally or... what’s the word... figuratively? It’s just... we’ve been stuck on this ship for days now. A man has
needs
.’

‘The fuck you talking about?’

‘Forget it. We gonna take his boots or what?’

‘Yeah. You grab the left foot. I’ll take the right.’

‘Hang on. There’s something leaking from his stomach.’

Another pause.

‘Kid’s bleeding pretty bad.’

‘Yeah. Someone shanked him good. Nothing worse than a gut wound.’

‘Let’s grab his boots and get the hell away. Before those ghost women discover we’re down here...’

And then only silence.

‘You came,’ Tyrannus rumbled in a voice seething with spite. The Black Lord had been staring down at the world below, his divine gaze piercing the vast divide between the celestial plane and the mortal realm with an ease that only the gods could ever comprehend.

The newcomer was unmoved by the hatred in that divine voice. The Black Lord Tyrannus was one of the oldest Primes, birthed when the earliest of men first walked the earth.

But
he
was the Reaver, and he was older still.

‘I came,’ he agreed, his own voice as cold as the grave, deeper than the hidden abysses at the bottom of the greatest oceans.

They stood together in silence and watched the circle of the world far below. Armies clashed; magic flared; men died.

‘We are winning,’ the Black Lord growled eventually. Such was the bitterness in his voice that his words might well have elicited confused laughter from another god.

The Reaver did not laugh. There was little in all the cosmos in which he found amusement. ‘The wizards of the Alliance retreat before the Congregation’s armies, that much is true. The gholam has left a trail of devastation in its wake. But the Mother’s treacherous high priestess may yet swing the balance again.’

Tyrannus snarled. The black leathery skin of his hideous face wept venom that dribbled from his chin and plummeted from the heavens. Moments later a dark storm gathered on the battlefield far below. The skies opened, unleashed a torrent of acidic rain so caustic it stripped flesh from bone, killing hundreds on both sides.

The Reaver shook his head, yet his skull-visage remained impassive. ‘You let your emotions rule you. Your fury will not aid our cause. No god may sway events in the world below through direct intervention. It is the one rule that binds us all.’

Tyrannus turned away, clenching ebony claws into boulder-sized fists capable of prodigious acts of violence. ‘I know well the rules that bind us, Bone Lord. It is why I summoned you here.’

The Reaver raised one rotting arm and rubbed absently at his fleshless cheek. ‘I am intrigued. I would never have acquiesced to your outrageous request otherwise.’

The Black Lord met his gaze, eyes of furious black fire meeting those worm-eaten and rheumy with age. ‘I am considering freeing the Nameless.’

He had thought emotion something long lost to him, but at the other god’s words the Reaver felt a flicker of something close to the memory of fear. ‘You speak of madness. The Nameless is a thing without purpose in the Pattern of Creation.’

Tyrannus smashed a huge fist down into his palm, creating an explosion of sound that would have shattered the eardrums of any mortal within a hundred miles. ‘Humanity has grown arrogant!’ he hissed. ‘They abandon us as their forebears once did. Even in the brief passage of their short lives, they believe themselves elevated above the need for worship.’

‘And so, in response, you would unleash the Nameless upon them?’

‘I would restore humanity to its rightful place! Trembling in the shadows! Praying to us for their salvation! The mightiest among the gifted are a threat even to the Pantheon. That was never a part of the Creator’s design.’

The Reaver stared down at the battle raging below. Every death was an affirmation of his efficacy, in its own way a silent prayer. True, freeing the Nameless and its kin would serve him well – they would bring death to the world in catastrophic numbers. Yet the Reaver was ancient, the oldest of the Primes save for the Mother. Millions had already passed through his gates. Patience was ever his greatest virtue.

‘I will not help in this,’ the Reaver declared, with the finality of a heart beating its last. ‘The Nameless would wreak devastation on an unknown scale. We might not be able to imprison it again once its purpose was fulfilled.’

‘Then you doom us all!’ Tyrannus snarled. He took a step towards the Reaver. The heavens shuddered beneath the weight of his divine fury.

‘Not
all
,’ the Reaver replied. His skull-face twisted into a humourless grin. ‘I have made plans should the impossible come to pass.’

‘And if I choose to end you now?’ Tyrannus roared. He raised his brutal hands and suddenly clutched a great flail forged of utter darkness.

The Reaver laughed then, a grating sound like a thousand tombstones grinding into place. ‘You threaten to kill
death itself
? I will still be here when you finally pass through my gates, Black Lord. Until there is nothing left to die and my purpose is fulfilled. It was written in the Creator’s Pattern...’

‘… in the Creator’s Pattern...’

… Pattern...’

‘He’s twitching again.’

‘Shit! I was sure he was done for. He’s a stubborn one.’

‘What’s that in his hand?’

‘Looks like a dagger. Is that a ruby in the hilt? Quick, grab it.’

‘I can’t. He won’t let go.’

‘What do you mean he won’t let go? He’s near dead! Cut off his fingers if you have to.’

‘Wait – who’s
that
?’

The sound of clanking chains growing closer.

‘Hey, you! What are you doing down here?’

No answer.

‘Ha – he’s blind! Probably went looking for a piss and wandered in here by mistake.’

The other voice. Louder now, and slightly amused. ‘Best turn around, old fellow. This place isn’t safe.’

No answer. The footsteps did not slow.

‘I said turn around, you deaf old—’

A brief flash of light and the beginnings of a scream abruptly cut off.

Then silence once more.

He was floating again. Back on the river of stars. The pain was still there, but it was beginning to fade.

The incandescent stream that carried him along seemed to gather speed. He was moving faster now. He smiled faintly. His journey was almost done. Soon the suffering would end. He could finally sink into oblivion.

A voice called out a name somewhere in the endless depths of space. There was something familiar about that name, but he closed his mind to it. Recognition would only invite more pain.

He was racing along now, the stars beneath him a blur. The voice repeated that word again, louder this time.

A colossal shadow seemed to envelop him.

It was a skull, so massive it filled the emptiness like a small planet. A yellow orb the size of a moon shifted slightly to regard him, and he realized with utter horror that it was an eye, rotten and filled with malevolence. The river of stars had turned a sickly colour now, a festering effluvium bleeding into the skull’s cavernous maw.

Sudden terror. He tried to scream but no sound emerged. He struggled desperately to resist the stream’s pull, to no effect. The skull would claim him at any moment.

And then he heard that voice a third time. It was quieter now, distant, but he willed himself to understand, to turn the sound into meaning.

Caw.
It sounded like
caw.
The sound a bird makes? No, that wasn’t it. It had to be something else. It had—

The sound of beating wings; the unexpected feeling of air buffeting his face. Great talons closing around him. He caught sight of a great bird above, lifting him up and away from the skull-planet. That terrible, luminous eye swivelled upwards, watched his escape with deathly fury.

The giant bird squawked again. ‘Caw,’ it seemed to say.

Except that it wasn’t ‘caw’.

At last he remembered who he was.

He opened his eyes, whimpering in pain. He could see only darkness. Someone was holding him up. He felt a hard object being pressed against his lips. Cool liquid rushed into his parched mouth, and he almost choked before swallowing it down.

He became aware of the quiet whisper of water lapping against the side of a hull, the gentle swaying motion of a ship at sea. He had been on another voyage not long past, though it seemed a lifetime ago now.

‘Lie still,’ commanded a voice with an edge of steel.

‘Who—’ he began, but a rough finger pressed up against his lips, silencing him.

‘You will live. But the next time you awaken, you must be prepared to fend for yourself. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ he croaked.

‘Good. Rest now.’

He listened to the sounds of slow, steady footsteps and metal shackles scraping against wood fading into the distance.

This time, when sleep finally came for him, he did not dream.

The oxen had stopped moving again.

Kayne stared up at the iron sky and watched his breath mist. Any moment now the open-top wagon would resume its rickety journey west, sending fresh eruptions of agony stabbing through his injured leg. His captors had snapped off most of the shaft but the head remained wedged deep in his knee. The furs beneath him were soaked through with blood.

He had lost consciousness on three separate occasions. Each time he had awoken to a world of fresh misery. He figured a fortnight had passed since the disaster on the banks of the Icemelt, but it was hard to be sure, what with the pain clouding his brain. His stomach growled and he reached down, felt his ribs poking out through the woollen tunic he’d been given. His captors fed him meat and bread of an evening, but it wasn’t enough. He had been hungry before his capture; now he was damned near starving.