The Long War 02 - The Dark Blood (61 page)

‘Okay, so you can’t see,’ Nanon muttered, reaching for his short bow and a black-wart arrow from the quiver on his back.

He stood up quickly and took aim. He was no more than ten feet from the Dark Young. A glance either side of him told him that the other forest-dwellers were wrestling with their fear and struggling to nock arrows to their short bows. One or two were beginning to mouth the words
the priest and the altar
, though they were doing so quietly.

‘Hey!’ Nanon shouted at the tentacled monstrosity in front of him. ‘This is our ground. You are not welcome.’

The Dark Young reared up at the words and pulled itself towards Nanon. The Dokkalfar turned to him. Though they all hesitated, it was clear that their leader’s courage was beginning to infuse them.

Nanon grinned at the advancing beast and released his bowstring, sending an explosive arrow into the creature’s maw. Tyr Dyus and Tyr Vasir also fired black wart. A deafening and shrill cry rose from the beast, and as it flailed in the air a series of explosions tore it apart. It did not die straightaway and the high-pitched wail continued until it stopped moving. At that moment, a shrivelled darkwood tree with a blasted trunk took root in the ground.

‘Not my priest and not my altar,’ said Nanon defiantly.

‘That’s one down,’ muttered Daylight Sky from above, his eyes fixed on the darkwood tree.

‘There could be a hundred of them,’ Nanon replied, with a tilt of his head. ‘But they die just like anything else.’ He then addressed the assembled Dokkalfar. ‘You see...’ he stated in a loud, clear voice. ‘They can die... they can die and they
will
die... Fire was our gift from Jaa and with fire we will vanquish them.’

He knew that the longer the host spent with him, the more resistant they would become to the disquieting effects of the Dark Young. ‘We will hold this tree line and make them come to us,’ he announced, motioning along the last stand of trees before the burnt-out area ahead of them. ‘Each and every patrol they send into the Fell will die like the first. They won’t reach the Walk and they will capture no more of our people.’

It was a gamble, and Nanon knew it. They couldn’t fight the hounds and the Dark Young on the plains of Leith, and if they stayed in the forest, they risked being bombarded with more fiery projectiles. The gamble was that the Seven Sisters would want the Dokkalfar captured rather than dead, so sooner or later they would need to launch a ground assault rather than just deforesting the Fell.

CHAPTER 11

As he reclined in the Dokkalfar hammock, he dreamt. He dreamt he was flying over mountains and through clouds. He dreamt that the land beneath was a dot, a tapestry of colour and texture, just out of reach, elusive and half-remembered. He felt more than man. He entered the high shadows cast by towering peaks and rumbling cloud formations, only to emerge from other shadows, some distant, some close, but all his to manipulate.

He felt the peace of isolation. Or was it just euphoria at the enormity of what he was seeing? Either way, wind caressed his fingertips and ruffled his stark white hair. He was no longer just a man, no longer merely a cleric of a god or the servant of a church. He was beyond it, beyond them, and he breathed in deeply and felt that he had taken the first step on a longer path.

‘Enjoy the peace, old-blood,’ said a hollow voice out of the darkness.

He was not startled. He felt that nothing could harm him as he dived in and out of the shadows. He paused in his flight and addressed the speaker, whose voice seemed to have come from the base of an enormous mountain.

‘Who speaks?’ he asked.

‘In this place I have neither name nor form, old-blood,’ the reply echoed through the clouds. ‘I am a memory, a remnant, an echo.’

Utha allowed himself to glide down towards the mountain. It was a single peak, rising from an endless craggy plain and topped with snow. With complete command of the shadows around him, he manoeuvred through dark clouds to emerge at the mountain’s base. With the tingling in his fingers abating, Utha felt rock beneath his bare feet and saw a gothic structure of rock – perhaps natural, perhaps crafted – rising in front of him. It resembled a primitive altar, a raised platform, framed by two scything rock protrusions and dug slightly into the mountain. No figure was visible as Utha approached.

He observed that he was not wearing armour or carrying a weapon, but he did not feel in danger or unprepared. He wore just his brown robe, with his feet bare, and his limbs were exposed to the wind as the fabric rolled and fluttered in the breeze.

‘I am Utha of Arnon,’ he said with a bow of his head. ‘And this is my dream.’

‘Is it?’ came the hollow reply.

Now that he was closer, the old-blood could identify a strange quality to the voice. The words were somehow sharp, as if the speaker was not used to the speech of men and had to concentrate in order to be understood.

‘If you won’t tell me
who
you are, will you at least tell me
what
you are?’ Utha asked, stepping towards the jagged altar.

‘I am nothing... and less than nothing... and more than nothing.’ The speaker emitted a strange, chirruping sound between each word.

Utha smiled at the cryptic response. ‘Were I awake I would likely say something caustic and clever,’ he responded.

‘Were you awake you would be able to see me, old-blood... but, in the halls beyond the world, I am as formless as the Giants that dwell here.’

Utha paused and took a step back. Looking around him, he suddenly experienced a majestic vista. This was not the land of men; nor was it anywhere a man could travel in his dreams. His blood had taken control of his mind and he had fallen effortlessly into the lands beyond the world.

Above him, stretching into the void of deep time, were the halls of the Giants. His mind could not interpret what his eyes were seeing, but he knew that countless gods, demi-gods, urges, spirits and other things he could not name dwelt within view. Palaces, caves, spires, as numerous as grains of sand on a beach, flowed together in an undulating mass of divinity, each stranger and more enormous than the last – gods with no names and no followers, urges that fed off desire and pain, spirits of natural forces, and everything in between. Halls of rock, water, air, fire, shadow and death, bizarre and unknowable, they unfolded before him, and Utha the Shadow knew that he was not afraid. Instead, he felt a deep sadness and a rising anger.

The vista before him was tied to the lands he remembered, of which the lands of men were only a tiny part, but as he looked, Utha could sense that the ties had been severed. The Giants could no longer influence their followers and each shouted blindly into the void in the hope that someone would hear. The voices were beyond his comprehension, but he knew that each carried the ages of deep time within it. Some called to men, but most of them screamed at things for which Utha had no name.

‘You have brought me here? Why?’ he asked the alien presence.

‘I have done nothing. I merely followed as you slept. Think of me as a guide.’ The voice was utterly inhuman and Utha’s skin began to crawl. ‘When you awake, old-blood, you will know your task,’ stated the speaker. ‘And you will seek me out.’

He breathed in the crisp air and allowed his mind to settle. Whatever the being was, Utha was sure it meant him no harm. He was also sure that it was close, perhaps even waiting somewhere in the Dokkalfar woods, waiting for an old-blood to address, to guide, and perhaps to teach. He had been told that he was the last old-blood and that he had a responsibility to the lands of men and to the Gods.

He had never truly believed this. In his cynicism, he had merely sought sanctuary and to remove himself from his fellow men.

Now, as he began to wake, Utha of Arnon, Black cleric of the One God, knew who he was and who he was not. He was no longer a cleric and his path was no longer the path of the One. Nor was it a path that any other man could take. He was the only man capable of reaching the halls beyond the world.

The last hazy image of his dream was of a stairway, a labyrinth and a guardian. They were all shrouded in mist and Utha could not make out their actual lines or forms. Instead, he felt a powerful pull towards them.

* * *

‘Bad dreams?’ asked Randall, from the adjacent hammock.

‘Strange, certainly,’ Utha replied, turning to smile at his squire. ‘
Bad
doesn’t seem to apply... neither does
good
.’

Randall sat up and rubbed his eyes. He had expressed his concern that they should be waiting in the Fell Walk while the Dokkalfar went to war, and Utha was proud of his squire’s desire to assist in the defence of the settlement. It was only Nanon’s insistence that they remain behind that had made him submit to sleep instead of combat.

‘How long did I sleep?’ he asked his squire.

‘Two hours maybe... you were restless, though,’ replied Randall. ‘I made a bet with a passing forest-dweller that you’d fall out of that stupid hammock thing.’

Utha yawned. ‘You lost,’ he responded, with little humour.

‘Don’t take it out on me... just because you didn’t sleep well.’ Randall was smiling and Utha was grateful for the young man’s presence.

‘Any word from Nanon or Vasir?’

The squire shook his head and rubbed his eyes again. ‘They have probably reached the hounds by now, but no one’s said anything. These Dokkalfar are difficult to talk to, though, so I doubt they’d tell us if they’d had word.’

‘Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter,’ said the old-blood. ‘We’ll be leaving soon anyway.’

Randall raised an eyebrow. ‘And where are we going, master?’

Utha smiled. He knew that his squire trusted him, but he didn’t feel like burdening the young man with talk of dreams, disembodied voices and strange floating halls beyond the world.

‘For now, there’s someone, or something, we need to speak to.’

‘And after that?’ pressed Randall.

‘A sea voyage, my dear boy. Followed by a long trek south.’

How he knew this was a mystery. Suffice to say, he had woken up with a clear path in his troubled mind. There was a stairway, a labyrinth and a guardian. That this was their path, he didn’t doubt.

‘Er, that’s not what I expected to hear,’ replied the young man of Darkwald. ‘I couldn’t tell you what I
did
expect to hear... but it wasn’t that.’

‘Come on, we’ve got things to do.’ He scanned the nearby hammocks. ‘Is that Kirin still around here someplace?’ Utha had not yet lost his desire to pummel Rham Jas to death for the murder of Torian.

‘They left an hour or so ago. The Kirin and that forger from Tiris. I think they’re going to Ro Haran. The Karesian man, Dalian, is going back to Ro Weir.’ Randall had clearly been paying attention to the comings and goings of the other men present in the Fell. Utha felt glad that they had all departed.

‘Just thee and me, then,’ said Utha, with a broad and friendly smile.

They clambered down from their hammocks, pausing only to retrieve their weapons from a convenient knot in the tree. The Dokkalfar settlement had not been designed with men in mind, and they were forced to negotiate several sheer drops and tentatively supported walkways on their way to the forest floor.

Most of the forest-dwellers were inside their wooden huts and places of contemplation – meditating, no doubt, on Tyr Nanon’s chances of survival. Utha didn’t fancy the odds of a few dozen Dokkalfar against thousands of hounds and Dark Young, but something about the strange little shape-taker gave him confidence.

‘Do you think he’s limited to things with wings?’ asked Randall, seeming to sense his master’s thoughts. ‘Gryphons and hawks and things?’

‘I’ve no idea. The first I knew of this shape-taking business was when he dropped a load of black wart on Pevain’s men.’ Utha had not heard of forest-dwellers doing such things and had no idea of its limitations.

‘You never know,’ said Randall somewhat mischievously, ‘maybe he can turn into a Stone Giant or something and smash the Dark Young to bits.’

Utha laughed, slapping his squire on the back in comradely fashion. ‘While I remember, young Randall, we need to step up your lessons. You’ve developed a few bad habits with that sword of yours.’ Utha pointed to the sword of Great Claw which Randall had buckled around his waist as they wandered through the Fell Walk.

The young man looked slightly hurt. ‘I’m still alive, master... I think I did quite well against the mercenaries.’

‘
Quite well
is what lucky swordsmen do, lad. You need to rely on skill, not luck.’ Utha had been tutoring him most days since they had left Voy, but their journey had taken a frenetic turn over the past few weeks and the lessons had become less regular.

‘Can we expect to be doing a lot of fighting?’ asked the squire.

‘Probably... maybe... who knows? It’s better to be prepared, don’t you think?’ Utha pointed to a break in the tree line on the eastern side of the settlement. ‘That’s where we’re headed,’ he said, following the insistent pull at the back of his mind.