Grim Company 02 - Sword Of The North (61 page)

‘You know,’ Kayne said, ‘there ain’t no shame in failing. There ain’t no shame in being afraid. Someone once told me to master fear. Turn it into a weapon.’

‘My body is my weapon,’ Jana said, though she sounded a lot less certain than when they had first met. She was still young, Kayne reminded himself. She might speak six languages and be a master of Unity and an agent of the one of the Confederation’s most powerful Magelords, the man her people revered as Wizard-Emperor, but she was still learning the truth of who she was.

He cleared his throat. ‘Seems to me you can keep your fear closer than anyone. Turn it into your sword and your shield
and
your armour. Make it a thing nothing is able to pierce.’

Jana appeared to consider his words. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I wish you good luck. I would like to help you in your war, but I have to bring word to the Emperor. The gholam must be stopped.’

Kayne nodded and bid his final farewell to the Jade Islander. He saw Taran sitting on the snow, staring out at nothing in particular. He’d intended to leave the man in peace, but the haunted look on the ex-Warden’s face was so tragic he couldn’t help but go to him.

‘Carver’s band are heading north to join the army once they’re done recruiting here,’ Kayne said. ‘You going with them?’

‘I got a mind to.’

‘You looking to die?’

‘I should’ve died at Red Valley. Never could beat my own demons. Figure I might as well die fighting the other kind. The easier kind. Maybe I’ll see my daughter again before the end. Maybe not. Don’t think she’d care much either way.’

‘Your daughter. That was your answer at Red Valley, when I asked you the same question you asked me.’

‘Aye,’ Taran said. ‘I remember.’

‘What was her name again? You know I ain’t ever been good with names.’

Taran looked up at him. ‘Yllandris,’ he said.

Several seconds passed before Kayne’s greatsword fell from his nerveless fingers and he sank to his knees in the snow.

The blizzard was growing stronger, the biting cold working its way into his armour and setting his teeth to chattering even with the thick cloak wrapped tight around him and the hood pulled down. He hated winter. He hated this country. Gods, how he hated this country.

Why did I come back?

It didn’t matter any more. He was leaving, heading back to civilization, the Duke and his men be damned. If they discovered him, why, he would kill them. He was a knight. Let those worthless curs learn why he had once earned the name the Sword Lord.

Somehow he had made it past the enemy line. The Greenmen were camped and ready to march on Heartstone, but like the rank amateurs they were they had left holes big enough for him to ride straight through. They hadn’t tried to stop him. No doubt they had simply mistaken the cloaked rider for one of their own. He smiled behind his visor. Only a few more miles and the Greenwild beckoned. Soon he would be free of this hellish place, never to return.

A sudden gust of wind buffeted him with snow. His horse snorted and tried to shy away from the storm and Sir Meredith cursed, tugging viciously at the beast’s reins. If the blizzard got any worse it would be near impossible to see more than a few feet in front of his face. As luck would have it, a little further on a lone farmhouse emerged from the swirling snow. The light from within was inviting, and the knight reined in his horse and led it inside the small stables at the side of the house. Then he went to rap on the door.

It opened to reveal an old man with a crown of white hair falling around a balding pate and a walking stick clutched tightly in one unsteady hand. He squinted through bleary eyes at the knight, who had little patience for such an inspection while he stood there in the freezing snow.

‘Who are you?’ Sir Meredith demanded, trying not to let his chattering teeth show.

‘Name’s Seb,’ said the grandfather. He appeared to hesitate for a moment, and then he shuffled aside and pointed indoors with his stick. ‘It’s no evening to be out riding. You come in out of the cold and I’ll get Drenna to bring you some warm stew.’

Sir Meredith grunted and entered the hearth chamber, taking a seat by the fire. A moment later a younger woman, likely the old man’s daughter judging by her homely features, came and stood next to him, a steaming clay bowl grasped uncertainly in her hands. Sir Meredith lowered his hood and removed his helmet, placing it carefully down on the floor.

‘Give it here then, woman. Don’t stand there gawking.’

The woman handed over the bowl. Sir Meredith stared down at the contents with a deep frown. ‘Where’s the spoon?’ he demanded. ‘Do you expect me to bury my face in this inedible filth like some farmyard animal? Fetch me some wine!’

‘We… we don’t have any wine. My husband has some mead in the back. I… I can bring you some, if it pleases you.’

Sir Meredith gave a sharp nod, watching the wench’s swaying hips as she disappeared into the other room. She returned with a tankard of mead, spilling some on the floor with her shaking hand. He snatched it off her and raised it to his lips, taking a long swallow.

‘Gah!’ He spat the foul liquid all over the shocked woman, then hurled the clay mug across the room where it shattered against the far wall. ‘Are you trying to poison me, you stupid bitch?’

There was a tapping sound from over near the door. It was the old man, Seb, his walking stick beating a furious rhythm. ‘That’s no way for a guest to behave, now. You’ve got some nerve, coming in here and speaking to my daughter like that. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

Sir Meredith was on his feet in a flash. He stormed across to the old man, who raised his stick in a pathetic defensive gesture. The knight tore it from his grasp and struck the fool across the side of the head, knocking him to the floor.

‘Papa!’ Seb’s daughter rushed across to them, but a quick backhand from Sir Meredith sent her sprawling too.

He was breathing hard beneath his armour now, the old rage prodding at the blackness inside him. They dared disrespect
him
, this family of sheep-fuckers? As if Shranree’s barbs hadn’t been enough. As if the way the King had humiliated him back on the hill hadn’t been enough. He was tired of being treated with contempt. It was time to administer some harsh lessons.

He took a step towards the sobbing woman, but just then a small face peeked out from behind another doorway and a small boy made to dash into the room. ‘Mama,’ he cried, but a hand reached out to stop him and a pale-faced man stepped forward.

‘Leave here,’ he pleaded, his voice trembling. ‘Please. We’ve done nothing to you. My Drenna was only trying to make you feel welcome in our home.’

‘
Make me feel welcome
,’ Sir Meredith echoed, his eyes not leaving the boy. ‘This is how you a welcome a knight? By feeding him goat shit and pisswater?’

The man of the house, if he could even be called that, began to stutter a reply, but Sir Meredith held up a hand and cut him off. ‘You’re a coward. Your wife is an ugly cow. Maybe your father-in-law had some balls years ago, but they’re as shrivelled as the rest of him now. Come here, boy.’

‘No,’ the father said, his voice a ragged whisper. ‘Please.’

‘Don’t beg. It makes you sound even more wretched than you are.’

‘What… what are you going to do to him?’

Sir Meredith smiled humourlessly. ‘I fail to see how that should concern you. Worry about the few seconds you and your wife have remaining to you instead. I
might
let this child live – but I can make no guarantees.’

A long moment of terrified silence followed his words.

And then from outside there came the sound of booted feet crunching on snow. It was the only sound besides the crackling of the hearth and Drenna’s sobs.

A voice called out. An older man’s voice, proud but uncertain. ‘Sorry to bother you, but I don’t s’pose I could borrow that horse you got tied up in the stables over yonder? And if you got something to drink I’d be mighty grateful.’

A shadow emerged from the doorway, and the light of the hearth illuminated the newcomer. He was tall and powerfully built, a little diminished by age but still in good fighting shape. Bright blue eyes peered out from a bearded face covered in the grime of countless days of travel. They were slightly puffy, as if he had recently been crying.

Sir Meredith’s top lip curled in contempt. ‘That horse belongs to me. There is nothing for you here, barbarian.’

The grizzled old warrior took another step into the house. He wore a leather hauberk, Sir Meredith saw, and the hilt of some godforsaken savage’s greatsword poked out above his shoulder. On the floor near the door, the old man gasped softly.

‘I
said
there is nothing for you here,’ Sir Meredith barked. His gauntleted hand came to rest on the hilt of the sabre at his belt. But as the warrior looked around the room, and his jaw tightened, and his blue eyes grew as clear and hard as a glacier on the coldest winter morning, the knight felt the briefest moment of unease.

‘Everything all right?’ the newcomer said slowly and deliberately. The woman at Sir Meredith’s feet let out a small sob, and her husband over near the other door made a strangled sound. The old warrior met his eyes for the briefest of moments. Then he nodded, and his scarred hands rose slowly to the hilt of his greatsword.

‘I warned you,’ Sir Meredith snapped. He drew his sabre and it whispered from its sheath like the promise of death. ‘You could have walked out of here, old fool. Now you’re just another corpse. A backwater savage whose faith in your legends was sadly misplaced. I am Sir Meredith, a knight of Tarbonne, champion of the Circle, known as the Sword Lord. My sabre was forged by Dranthe, the finest smith in the Shattered Realms. Who are
you
?’

‘No one important.’

Sir Meredith snorted at that. ‘At least you know your place.’

The old warrior had his greatsword in his hands now. ‘Let me show you what happens when a barbarian meets a true knight,’ Sir Meredith declared. But those blue eyes didn’t waver. If anything they grew colder, and as Sir Meredith strode forward to meet this veteran he wondered idly who he was.

It hardly mattered, of course. He was a champion of the Circle. He had killed a hundred men. He was a
knight
.

He feinted and then launched a blinding chain of attacks, displaying perfect form, a masterful display of swordsmanship that would have made the Masters weep.

He didn’t recall what happened next. All he knew was that somehow he was on the floor in a broken heap. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. But he could
feel
: half a dozen spots on his body screaming in agony where the dripping steel above him had found the gaps in his armour and cut his flesh to ribbons. The bearded face looked down at him, and he might have been staring into the gaze of the Reaver himself.

‘How…’ he tried to ask, but when he opened his mouth all that emerged was a thick bubble of blood. His killer turned and sheathed his greatsword. Then the stranger reached down and, with a gentleness that seemed impossible for a man so skilled at taking lives, helped the woman of the house to her feet.

Sir Meredith’s eyes felt terribly heavy now, and as he turned his head to find a more comfortable position to die he saw Seb watching him.

‘You asked who he was,’ the old man said as he went to retrieve his walking stick. ‘That man there, I’ll tell you who he is.’

Seb’s words seemed to reach him from very far away. ‘That man… is the Sword of the North…’

The traveller ghosted through the grey and deserted streets, sweeping eyes suffused with crimson over the multitude of corpses lining the avenues, piled high against burned-out buildings that still smoked gently in the pre-dawn gloom. The blood of those who were unburned called to him, but he ignored it. There would be time to sate his hunger later. The journey had been arduous and depleted much of his power, yet the Master would suffer no delay.

He sniffed the air as he wandered through the wreckage of a city torn apart first by war and then by insurgency. The stench of alchemy filled his nostrils. This city had seen so much death; he could feel it in every pore of the dark granite beneath his feet.

There was a commotion ahead. A group of men and women were marauding down the street opposite. Their clothing was singed and their faces were covered in black powder and he knew they were fanatics, roaming the streets like jackals, looking for victims who lacked the wit to have barred themselves in their homes and closed the shutters. He could sense the alien technology implanted in their flesh, though its flavour was strange to him.

The group passed him by, oblivious to his presence. The traveller walked the paths others could not see. He reached up and touched the key hanging on the chain beneath his cloak, wondering what had become of the devastating entity he had freed from the depths of the forgotten kingdom. The gholam would have pierced his shroud of concealment, he knew. Caught him and scattered his ashes to the wind had he not taken such great pains to avoid making himself a target. It had been a huge risk, activating that terrible weapon of the gods, but the Master had willed it and Wolgred had obeyed. So it had been for the last three hundred years.

He was close now; the voice in his skull grew louder, beckoning him onwards, drawing him towards the docks where a fleet of newly arrived ships the likes of which even he had never seen filled the harbour. They were magnificent vessels: massive and yet delicate, the engineering that had gone into their design so far advanced of any ship ever built by the hand of man that it was as if he been transported to a different age. Though he was himself ancient by the standards of his people, the power he possessed exceeded only by the Master and his surviving peers, he felt himself humbled. He quickened his pace, aware that if the Adjudicators aboard those ships learned of his presence even his magic would not save him.