The Faithful and the Fallen: Ruin Part 21

What are we going to do? She was walking with a spear in her hand, the same one that she had used to kill the Vin Thalun. Now, though, she was using it as a crutch to keep herself upright. Her grip on its shaft tightened. Sweat ran down her face, dripping into her eyes, stinging, her lungs heaving, the aching in her legs a constant companion. They were following a fox trail. Animals know the way through the forest better than I do, Maquin had said to her. Better to trust them than try cutting a new way through the undergrowth. Blessedly, the ground levelled beneath them, to one side a cliff rising steep and sheer, pines crowding close on the other. A new sound made itself known, growing with each step. Running water.

Maquin pulled up in front of her and grabbed her about the waist as she stumbled past him, her legs not instantly obeying the order to stop. She was glad he did.

A ravine opened up in front of her, a river roaring through it some distance below. She fell to her knees, sucking in great lungfuls of air.

'What are we going to do,' she asked.

'Well. If the dogs weren't onto us I'd say we climb down this ravine and swim for a bit. Come out a few leagues downriver. It would take a huntsman a ten-night to pick up our trail again, if ever they could find it.'

'Let's do that, then.'

'No point. They'll know we've used the river, and with those hounds they'll pick up our scent and trail again within a day; we'll be back to square one.'

Hunted again. Death breathing down our necks, again.

'I am sorry to bring this upon you.'

'Well, I'll not deny, you're proving to be a great deal of trouble.'

'So what do we do?' Fidele felt that old companion squirming in her belly. Fear. I cannot be caught. I cannot go back to Lykos.

Maquin reached inside his bag and pulled out the ball of twine he'd taken from the woodcutters' hut.

'Got to kill those hounds.'

Fidele crouched behind a tree, peering back down the track in the twilight.

The sun was setting behind the treetop canopy, its last rays dappling the ground pink and orange. Fidele thought she saw movement.

Please Elyon, let it be Maquin.

He had set out his plan to her if it could be called that and left her soon after. Fear had been steadily filling her since then, like the drip of ice melting into a bucket.

No. I will not die scared. Or live scared any longer. Maquin is right. There is nothing I can do other than face it. She gripped her spear tightly.

A figure emerged out of the gloom: Maquin sprinting towards her and skidding to the ground beside her.

'Well, I think I got their attention,' he said through ragged breaths.

Men were visible on the path now, the first one straining to control three hounds, all barking frantically and straining on their leashes.

'Didn't think there'd be three,' Maquin muttered, pulling one of the many knives he carried. 'Woodsmen usually hunt with two.'

He stood and let their pursuers see him.

The first man let the dogs go, all three of them bursting along the path towards Maquin. They were big grey-coated hounds with broad heads and wide muzzles, the type she'd seen bring down boars when accompanying Aquilus on hunts. Their bared teeth glinted in the twilight.

We're dead.

One pulled ahead of the others, tongue lolling, so close that Fidele could see the muscles of his chest and shoulders bunching and flowing with each ground-eating stride. He stumbled on something across his path and suddenly the undergrowth was in motion, a long branch whipping out of nowhere, sharp spikes slamming into the hound's flank, impaling it a dozen times. It howled, squirmed, the howls slipping to a whine, then it slumped, blood dripping from its mouth.

The other two hounds paid it no attention, surging past.

'Remember, do what I told you,' Maquin hissed as he spread his feet, crouching, drawing another knife. Fidele shifted the weight of her spear, eyes focused on the nearest hound. It was thirty paces away now. A heartbeat, and it was twenty. She shuffled involuntarily backwards, heard the roar of the river behind her, set her feet.

The hound jolted to a stop, one leg wrenched into the air, its body swinging around, dragging on the branch that it was now snared to. Fidele held her breath but the snare and branch held. The other hound powered past it and leapt at Maquin. As she rushed forward, she glimpsed Maquin tumbling away, the hound slamming into him.

Finish your task, she screamed at herself as she ran forwards and plunged her spear into the snared hound's chest. Dimly she remembered Maquin telling her to stab it in the belly, that it would be softer there, at the same time feeling the spear head slide on bone. She put all her weight onto the shaft and pushed, felt the spear slip past ribs, deeper, into something softer, the hound whining, snapping and writhing. It shuddered and then collapsed.

She pulled on her spear but it was stuck; she tugged more frantically, then heard the shouts of men running towards them down the track. A hundred paces, closing quickly. She left her spear in the dead hound and turned.

Maquin lay beneath a pile of fur, the last hound slumped on him.

He's dead. Fidele rushed to him, feeling as if her heart was lurching in her chest, and heaved the dog away. Maquin groaned and she felt a tide of relief wash her.

'Thought I was dead,' he blinked.

'So did I,' Fidele breathed as she helped him stand. 'What now?'

'Didn't think we'd get this far.' He glanced down the trail at the onrushing warriors, then over his shoulder at the river.

'Time to get wet,' he said. He gripped her hand in his and together they ran at the ravine's edge, leapt into the air and plummeted towards the river below.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

LYKOS.

Lykos wandered in a world of grey. Grey plains undulating into the distance, a charcoal river curling through it like some fluid serpent. Grey trees, branches swaying, slate-grey clouds boiling above him. In the distance he saw a structure, arching out of the land.

A bridge?

On its far side was a wall, stretching into the sky, merging with the clouds. Or was it a wall . . . ?

He squinted, saw that there was movement within it, a billowing, like sails in a fickle wind.

It is not a wall. It is mist. A fog bank.

He saw a rock and sat to a.s.sess the situation.

Pain spiked, in his face and back. He put his hand to the greater pain, his back, and his fingers came away red. Blood red.

'How did that happen?'

He felt a flicker of worry, but almost as soon as it had come it was gone. It was hard to care in this world leached of all colour. Of all life.

He looked about again, knew where he was.

The Otherworld. He had been here before, since he had made his pact with Asroth, summoned here on rare occasions by Calidus for some clandestine communication or other. But this time it felt different. Time was different here, hard to measure, but he knew somehow that he'd been here . . . a while? How long?

'Long enough. Longer than ever before.'

Is this death?

'No,' a voice said beside him, startling him. 'But near enough.'

It was Calidus, sitting upon a boulder. He looked younger, his white hair softer, less brittle, the creases in his face lines instead of grooves. He wore a coat of chainmail, dark leathery wings folded behind him. A smile spread across his face.

'You look pleased with yourself,' Lykos commented.

'I am. Things are going well.'

'So why am I here?' Lykos asked him.

Calidus' smile disappeared. 'I have not summoned you this time. You found your own way here. You are dying.'

'Oh.' I guessed as much. I should feel scared, but I don't.

'And that, over there?' He pointed to the bridge and the wall of mist.

'The bridge of swords, and what comes next,' Calidus told him.

'What does come next?'

'Death. Whatever that is.'

Lykos felt indifferent to it. Not even any hint of curiosity.

'I don't want you to die,' Calidus said. 'I need you to live.'

Lykos shrugged again.

'Here,' Calidus said and pa.s.sed him an apple. Lykos took it in both hands, ran his fingers over the featureless skin. A grey apple. Not very appealing.

'Would you walk away from it all, then?' Calidus asked him.

'From what?'

'Your life.'

Lykos thought about that, maybe for a few heartbeats, maybe for a moon, he could not tell. Eventually he shook his head. 'I can hardly remember it.'

'Your heart's desire was to unite the Three Islands. To become Lord of the Vin Thalun.'

'The Three Islands?'

'Aye. Your father was a Vin Thalun corsair, and Lord of the Island of Panos. You inherited that island, though you had to fight for it.'

A dim memory stirred. The corpse of his father lying upon a bower of thorns. Flames. Blood in the firelight.

'I did.'

'You made a pact with Asroth. He helped you win the Three Islands. You united them, forged a nation out of the Vin Thalun and became their king.'

Lykos felt a flicker of emotion, an echo of the joy that had consumed him as he had sat before the defeated captains of Nerin and Pelset and heard their oaths of fealty.

'Take a bite of your apple.'

Lykos lifted it to his lips and saw there was a pink flush to its skin, faded and pastel, but there now, stark against the grey of this world. He took a small bite, tasted . . . something. Faint, bland.

'And you have done more. You rule in Tenebral, are regent in Nathair's stead.'

'Aye. But that hasn't gone so well.'

'Tell me of it.'

As Lykos spoke, he remembered: the effigy of Fidele that Calidus had gifted him, the power it gave him over her. Pa.s.sion stirred in him at the memory of her, the sensation of her skin beneath his fingers, the taste of her fear. He remembered the arena, his wedding day, Fidele as beautiful and desirable as he had ever seen her. Maquin and Orgull duelling in the fighting-pit. Maquin throwing down his weapons, the explosion of eagle-guard from amongst the spectators.

Chaos.

Battle.

Fighting Maquin, Fidele plunging a knife into his back. He felt a wave of anger at that, but it soon subsided into a self-deprecating chuckle. 'I suppose I had that coming.'

'No. In your world you take, or it is taken from you.'

'I remember those words. My da spoke them to me.'

'Aye. And you have taken, and tasted.'

'I have.' He thought of Fidele again, felt a spark of anger at Maquin, the man who had taken her from him.

'Your face, Lykos. What happened to it?'

He touched his cheek, felt gouges in his flesh, blood congealing into crusted scabs.