Mist & Whispers (12 page)

‘
H
E KILLED HIM
,’ Anya said once Michael had finished reading out loud. ‘I liked the Prince before that.’

‘Don’t you think it was romantic?’ Steph wondered, her head lolling on Tim’s shoulder, her whole body turned to mush right before them.

‘No,’ Anya said, frowning. ‘I think it was cold and cowardly.’

‘
That’s what I liked about it,’ Michael said, closing the book and stuffing it back in his bag. ‘It didn’t end how you’d expect, the fairytale ending came at a price. If the Weaver’s stories are all that imaginative, it’s no wonder they are selling the way they are back home.’ He jumped down from his hammock and began searching through his clothes – his usual chinos, shirt and jumper, and the tunic, leathers and dragon-hide armour Barlem had found for him.

Barlem had been busy since the Four’s arrival. When he discovered that both Anya and Michael were sleeping on the floor, he took it upon himself to erect two hammocks for them, grumbling the whole time that Anya was supposed to be sleeping in the big, tree-trunk bed. He’d also fetched them outfits for training, though due to her tiny frame, Anya was stuck in her little tartan skirt and skull-print t-shirt with only an oversized breast plate and pair of ill-fitting greaves for protection.

It was effectively morning in the camp, but none of the natives ever used that word. Nor
day
, nor
night
. With no notable difference between the two, they’d stopped counting days and simply counted
sleeps
.

Morning was referred to as
rising
, and each hour that passed was noted as
one after rising
,
two after rising
, and so on until midday, or
noontide
as the Virtfirthians called it. Then, the cycle would repeat –
One after noontide
,
two after noontide
– until the late hours drew upon them. No one seemed to ever say anything higher than
seven after noontide
, and the hours that followed were known as
two before sleep
and
one before sleep
. A gong would sound to mark the waking hours, the first at
rising
.

Anya was curious as to how closely the Virtfirthian time zone followed their own, but all their watches had stopped working the moment the sunrise had taken them from Burrow Mump.

The Four had been in Virtfirth for thirteen sleeps now, and had woken early to finish the final chapter of
The Princess and the Peacock
before
rising.

‘I can’t wait to read the others! Weaver’s books are just totes amazeballs,’ Steph said, unthreading the belt from her dress. She wrapped it tight around the baggy waist of her camp-issue tunic. Femininity reinstated, she shifted her hips from side to side. ‘There; super cute once again!’

Michael groaned. For the last few sleeps, he’d been rolling his eyes or shaking his head at almost everything Steph had to say, and this time, he cracked. ‘Do you really have to talk like that?’

The atmosphere turned in an instant. Steph bit her lip, and though Tim didn’t say a word, Anya could hear his teeth grinding. He picked up Steph’s bag, took her hand and ushered her out of the hut.

Anya shook her head, stuffing her greaves in her bag.

‘What?’ Michael huffed.

‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep the Mr-Nice-act up for long.’

‘Oh, come on Anya, she sounds ridiculous and you’d be lying if you said otherwise. For the manager of a bookshop, she puts the English language to shame.’

She stormed past him. It took all her effort not to turn round and lamp him one.
Douche.

THE FOUR HAD
got to know the camp pretty well. Their hut was situated in the far south-west corner, right next to the drinking well, and flanked by two-story barracks on either side – the second story above them in the trees. To the east, Lorcan was still locked up in the cells, and in the heart of the camp, the main fire burned brightly. It was there that each meal was served, sometimes by Theone but mostly by Joliver, the camp’s contagiously happy cook.

Joliver’s slight lisp and untameable dirty blonde hair were as endearing as his puppy-like enthusiasm. But as wonderful a person as Joliver was, his food was, in every sense of the word, bleak.

The dread of eating another bowl of mushroom or root broth tugged hard at Anya’s hunger pains as she caught up with Steph and Tim by the fire.
‘Sorry about Michael. He’s an idiot. Don’t listen to him, yeah?’

‘It’s ok, Anya. It’s not your fault, Steph knows that,’ Tim said, one arm blanketing his girlfriend.

A welcomed fragrance enveloped them. ‘Mmm, what is that smell?’

Joliver was busy over a stone fire pit, the likes of which Anya had never seen before. The excited whispers of the soldiers rapidly gathered momentum, and soon every man in the camp appeared by the fire, hungrily awaiting what promised to be a delicious alternative to stewed fungus.

Barlem, who had been waiting on the Four hand and foot despite their efforts to stop him, was first to be served and directly he made his way to Anya, Steph and Tim. It promised to be a real treat, as he practically ran to their little table.

‘Good risin’, Miss,’ he said, bowing to Anya.

A simple piece of flatbread lay in each bowl, steam seductively dancing up around their awed faces. Stuffing the bread in her mouth ravenously, Anya asked Barlem, ‘Where – how –
sooooo good
– how?’

‘The Stragglers. They came back last night from Thule wi’a giant sack o’wheat berry, Miss. Can’t believe they found it, after all these years!’

Every answer given by a Virtfirthian usually resulted in more questions, and Barlem’s was no different.

‘What’s a Straggler?’ Anya asked, in unison with Tim’s question, ‘Where’s Thule?’ and Stephanie’s ‘What’s a wheat berry?’

Barlem remained silent whilst he chewed his flatbread, relinquishing none of his manners as they had. Then, after he’d swallowed, he looked at Anya and said, ‘The Stragglers are a pack o’soldiers – don’t care for rules much. They go off every s’often lookin’ for supplies in the Big City. Don’t care much for danger, neev-ah.’ Then he turned to Tim and said, ‘Thule is the Big City; ‘mazing place before the Darkness changed it.’ Finally he looked at Steph and said, ‘wheat berries are what make the flour – grind ‘em up, cook it up, fill their bellies.’

Anya thought back to when she and Harrion watched for the castle up on the Great Hill. It was hard to imagine an actual city once thrived behind those walls. The camp was so... so hand-made, and the villages barren. A real city seemed like a faraway dream. There was nothing anywhere, only a few lifeless buildings; corpses on a forgotten waste land, left to decay until only their ghosts remained.

THOUGHTS OF THE
Big City stayed with Anya all through training. It became a mystery she desperately wanted to solve, another part of the riddle. It was only a collision with a tree that finally jolted her imagination away from Thule.

She’d collided with the ground during training so many times that her and it had become good friends. The tree, however, was a new acquaintance.

General Faust, in charge of the Four’s training, sighed perhaps his heaviest sigh since taking on the role. ‘I’m beginning to doubt the fate of Virtfirth, knowing it rests in your clumsy hands.’

Faust was a tall, square man, with one solid black eyebrow that made him look like he’d been assaulted with a permanent marker. His fighting skills were second to none, but when it came to personality, Anya wasn’t keen on him. He seemed to lack any compassion or understanding, and his judge of character was poor – Michael being his favourite of the Four. Anya assumed she ranked in somewhere between mushroom broth and the creepy skeletal beasts that lurked the forest.

Glowering at the General, she rubbed her hurt face, brushing away the specks of bark embedded in her cheek and picked up her sword.

Only a moment earlier Michael had knocked it out of her hand in a single blow. Sparring between the two of them had become an endless battle of smugness versus awkward technique, smugness claiming victory every time.

It was frustrating. Michael’s skill had been apparent the moment the sword was placed in his hand, the reason behind Faust’s favouritism, no doubt. Tim was reasonable with a sword, though it had taken him a few sessions before he’d built any real confidence, and even Steph found she had a proclivity for archery.

But Anya... The moment she touched a sword at their first training session, she’d had another vision, much like the one she’d had about the riddle back at Erimus Hall.

In the vision, she was a sword maven, wielding a blade around as simply as second nature. She wasn’t at the camp though; she was somewhere else entirely. Ghoulish creatures were flying above her, circling a bloody battlefield whilst men were hacking each other to bits, left, right and centre. An arrow had pierced her shoulder, she felt so alive among the casualties it was as if she were invincible. She took down the enemy one after another, sometimes even two or three at a time, her movements bold and effortless. Not only was the blade an extension of herself physically, it was like a projection of her will, carrying out her every intention like a genie granting the wishes of its master.  

She’d been right about the riddle, so she was sure this vision would come true. So sure that she entered the training field with an ego the size of the General himself.

The reality, however, was very different.

After trying her hand at every weapon in the armoury, she couldn’t find her way with anything, and with every bruise gained, a little more patience was lost.

‘Yeah, well...’ she hurled back at the General’s slur. ‘All the weapons and the training in this camp haven’t helped
you
any in the last eighteen years; you’re no closer to saving this place than I am, so back off!’

The General’s eyes darkened and, unsheathing his own blade, he slashed it in her direction, Anya only just parrying his attack in time.

‘HEY! You could have killed me!’ she shouted before throwing her weapon back down to the ground.

‘You’re going to have to rely on more than just that mark on your hand if you’re going to succeed in this mission. I have seen men; good men and great warriors lose their lives on the same quest! The King himself, with all the magic that runs through his veins cannot overpower the dark force that has ravaged our world of all its life. You? You are nothing! You have no power! You have no skill! You are tiny! A child, years shy of becoming a woman! Prophecy or no prophecy, you go out there and try to fight, the Darkness
will
swallow you up just like it did all our other women and children, and frankly it would be a blessing not having to endure your whining any longer.’

There are moments in life when a person’s words snatch all reason and control, and everything twists into a blur of rage. For Anya, this was one of those moments.

She drew in a deep breath, as if allowing dark forces to take hold of her, and, through her fists, she exhaled all her fury at the General. After it happened, she couldn’t remember exactly what she had done, but Steph recounted it later as she hid herself away during dinner.

‘You kind of just threw yourself at him, and I just thought you’d fall on your face again – ’

‘Thanks.’

‘Well, you
do
do that. A lot.’

‘Again,’ Anya said sarcastically. ‘Thanks, Steph.’

‘Anyway, you just threw yourself at him and he just went crashing down to the ground! Shattered both your swords in the process, like they were made of glass or something! Seriously, Anya, that guy is huge! It was like you’d bulldozed a mansion with your bare hands!’

Anya sighed. She felt rotten for losing it like that with General Faust, and the more Steph spoke about it, the smaller she felt.

Now, on top of everything, she had yet another thing she needed to fix, along with improving her appalling battle skills, and proving Lorcan’s innocence. That wasn’t to mention getting Harrion to stop avoiding her. He hadn’t spoken to her since the Potentilla, despite her calling at his hut a number of times.