The Faithful and the Fallen: Ruin Part 24

'No,' Sif said. She tugged at Swain's hand. 'Don't do it,' she said.

Swain peered back into the basket and frowned. 'Old Kalf'll catch us, then we'll be scrubbing these barges till midwinter.'

'There's an empty barn over there.' Trigg smiled, sensing a victory over Swain. 'Are you scared for your pup?'

Swain snorted. 'What's the wager, then?'

'My knife for your axe.'

'No chance.'

'Don't have much faith in your dog, do you?'

Swain was silent a moment, then he nodded and they were all rushing to one of the timber barns. As he hurried with the others, Haelan glanced across the river. Beyond a strip of green vegetation the land to the north quickly changed, turning into a wasteland, barren and pitted, punctuated by a scattered range of mountains receding into the distance. The Desolation, it was called, a peninsula of land where the Scourging had raged hottest, so Tahir had told him. The battleground where Asroth and Elyon's hosts had met, the Ben-Elim and the Kadoshim. The land was still scarred and broken from the outpouring of Elyon's wrath, a place of rock and dust, of ruins and bottomless chasms. Haelan often looked out at the northlands, imagining the clash of angels and demons filling the landscape. He shivered. Now only giants were supposed to roam the wasteland, occasionally raiding across the river on their great bears. A huge war-hammer and a bear pelt hung in the feasthall to remind Haelan that the giants and their bears were more than just tales.

Once inside the barn Swain and Trigg threw together a circle from hay bales while others started shouting wagers. Haelan was holding Pots.

'Kill it quick,' he whispered in Pots' ear; the dog gave his face a quick lick.

Swain came and took Pots, holding him by the scruff of the neck as Trigg placed the willow basket on the far side of the makeshift ring. Pots growled, his hackles standing, and Trigg opened the basket.

Something black and sinuous leaped out, a collective gasp issuing from the small crowd. It was a rat, but bigger than any that Haelan had ever seen before. From snout to tail it must be as long as my arm. Yellow incisors gleamed in a malevolent face, thick bristly hair coating its body, and suddenly Haelan was scared for Pots.

Pots was surging towards it, all fur and snarls.

The rat didn't try to run, it just bunched up, then leaped.

They collided with a meaty thump, Pots twisting, trying to get his jaws at the rat's neck. They rolled on the dusty ground, teeth snapping, spittle flying, then parted, skidding in different directions, Pots' feet scrabbling for purchase.

The rat found its balance first, darted forwards, and the two animals were a swirling ma.s.s again. Abruptly there was blood spattering the ground, an animal whine. Haelan closed his eyes, scared, saw a memory of blood flying in a dark tunnel and quickly opened his eyes again. The fighting animals crashed against a hay bale. Haelan saw the rat's jaws clamped around Pots' shoulder, the dog squirming frantically, teeth snapping, head twisting as he tried to get to the rat.

Pots shook violently; the rat flew off with a ripping sound, bouncing off of a hay bale.

The two animals stood staring at one another, Pots holding a front paw in the air, blood pulsing from a ragged gash in his shoulder.

He's going to die, Haelan thought, knowing Pots killed with speed. That was gone now.

'Help him,' he whispered to Swain.

'I can't,' Swain said, looking on in shock.

Sif buried her face in Swain's breeches.

The rat approached Pots, slower this time, nose twitching. Pots lunged forward, teeth snapping and stumbled, the rat leaping aside, then it was on Pots' back, teeth gouging, Pots crying out, high-pitched. Haelan screwed his eyes shut, clenched his fists, trying to blot out the sound. Memories surged, Pots' screams becoming deeper, morphing into something else, something worse; the sound of men dying in a dark tunnel, blood flowing. He grabbed his head, fingers squeezing, trying to stop the sound, but Pots' cries of pain filtered through everything. Distantly he realized he was moving, a hand grabbing at him, but he shook it off, voices shouting at him, then his arm was rising and falling, faster and faster, warm liquid spraying his face, in his mouth, blurring his vision.

Then silence; only the heaving of his breath, a dog whining.

He wiped blood from his eyes, saw Swain's hatchet in his hand, slick with blood. The rat was a twitching mess on the floor, hacked into savage ruin, intestines spilling about Haelan's feet. Pots had crawled away, watching him.

He looked up, around the ring, saw faces staring back at him, mouths open. Sif was crying.

'Not fair,' Trigg said. 'My rat was winning.' Swain stepped into the ring and picked Pots up.

Haelan felt tears bloom, leaving tracks through the blood on his cheeks. His shoulders started to shake.

'Come on,' Swain said, putting an arm around Haelan. Sif came and took his hand.

'Look at my rat,' Trigg said, frowning. 'I would have won. You put him up to it.'

Swain stopped and turned, then took the hatchet from Haelan's grip and threw it at Trigg's feet.

'Your prize,' Swain said.

'No, you can't,' Haelan blurted. 'Orgull gave it to you.'

'That is fair,' Trigg said. 'I'd have won it anyway.' She stooped and picked up the weapon, wiping its shaft clean on a hay bale.

A horn call echoed through the barn, all of them looking to the entrance. Swain strode away.

They stood outside, the horn call ringing out again.

'What's that about?' Haelan asked.

'Look,' Swain said, pointing north, across the river towards the Desolation.

Haelan stared, frowning. In the distance a cloud hovered low over the land.

'What's that?' Haelan asked.

'Dust. Look to the land beneath it,' Swain replied.

At first Haelan saw nothing, then he caught movement. A line of riders emerged from the wasteland, approaching Gramm's hold, metal glinting in the sunlight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

ULFILAS.

Ulfilas felt a wave of relief fill him as he saw the river come into view, a dark, shimmering vein winding across the land. Beyond it was Isiltir. And goodbye to this pox-ridden land of ash and stone. And giants. And bears.

'It is always good to return home, after a long journey,' King Jael said to him as they cantered down a gentle slope, the hooves of two hundred mounted warriors raising a cloud of dust behind them.

'Aye, my King.'

'And a successful one,' Jael added, quieter this time.

The meeting with the Jotun had gone well enough. No one had died, and King Jael's spirits had seemed much improved on the return journey. Ildaer, the Jotun's warlord, had appeared most impressed with the gift of ancient weapons that Jael had given him. Impressed enough to hunt down a runaway princeling, though? Ulfilas wasn't so sure about that. And he couldn't shake the sense of wrongness about the situation. Giants were the enemy, as they had always been, for time without end. Ulfilas had grown to manhood beneath the shadow of Forn Forest, where the threat of giant raids had been very real admittedly the Hunen, a different giant clan from the Jotun but giants were giants, warlike, savage and not to be trusted. So making deals with them was just wrong.

But who am I to judge? These are strange days . . .

'What's wrong?' Jael asked him.

'I was thinking on the wisdom of making alliances with giants,' Ulfilas said.

'A polite way of saying I'm a fool,' Jael replied. He smiled, but there was a sharpness in his features, no warmth in his smile.

'Never, my King.'

'I hate giants,' Jael said. 'And wish every giant clan dead, have dreamed that since the Hunen slaughtered my mam and da, burned out my home.' He paused, the flare of his nostrils giving away a measure of his anger. 'But I wish to be king more.'

'The greater good, then,' Ulfilas said.

'My greater good, at least,' Jael said with a grin. 'And who knows, my dream may yet come true. We have seen the Hunen of Forn broken, destroyed. That is one less giant clan. But I need the Jotun.'

'Do you think they'll find the child?' Ulfilas asked Jael.

'Maybe ' Jael shrugged 'if he has reached this far. He may be dead. He may be alive and still in Isiltir, hiding in some woodsman's shed. Many would help him, out of misguided loyalty to a dead king. Or he may have escaped north into the Desolation. I do not know, but I will not rest until I see his dead body at my feet. While Haelan is out there, alive or dead, there is a challenge to me. He is a rallying point for every naysayer. He must die, and be seen to be dead by all.'

Warbands had been set to scouring Isiltir, circling ever wider after the fall of Dun Kellen. Ulfilas guessed that Jael was probably correct when he said that Haelan was already dead. Probably lying in a ditch somewhere, food for crows.

'We'll find him,' Ulfilas muttered.

'Aye, we will. Us or the Jotun. Little travels through the Desolation without their knowledge.'

I believe that. Ulfilas glanced back at the hills they were finally riding out of. At the edge of his vision, far beyond the column of Jael's shieldmen, there was a flicker of movement, a shape outlined against the horizon for a moment. It looked like a bear.

Making sure we leave their lands.

He turned his eyes forwards. To the east the bulk of Forn Forest loomed, dark and brooding. The river was closer now, dark shapes of boats appearing upon it. To the south-east was a bridge, beyond it a hill with a timber hall at its crest, a palisaded wall circling it. Buildings sprawled down the slope, almost right to the river's banks.

'A desolate and dangerous place for a hold,' Jael remarked.

'Aye. Who would be mad enough to build here? Forn Forest to the east, the Desolation to the north.'

Dag the huntsman dropped back to join them. 'That is Gramm's hold. He's been here a good long while: twenty, twenty-five years.' Dag had a set of scars down one side of his face that stretched from skull to jaw, looking like the raking of claws. Part of one ear was missing and the hair on that side of his head only grew in patches.

'Has he, now?' Jael said. 'Perhaps he needs reminding who really is king.'

Hooves clattered on stone as the warband crossed the bridge, the river's dark waters clogged with dressed timber, cut and ready to be shipped downstream. Faces peered over the palisaded wall as Jael and his shieldmen cantered onto a road that skirted the wall, taking them past the usual array of boats beached for repair, smokehouses, tanners' yards and grain barns, eventually bringing them around to the southern approach to the hold. Ulfilas noted the glint of sunshine on iron along the wall. Ten armed men, at least.

'More like a village than a hold,' Jael said to Ulfilas and Dag.

'It is, my lord.'

They rode alongside sweeping fenced meadows where herds of horses ran. Impressive, powerful horses, Ulfilas noted, remembering now the reputation Gramm's hold had for more than just timber. Ulfilas eyed them covetously. They would make fine warhorses.

'Magnificent. They are wasted up here,' Jael said with a grin.

'Just what I was thinking,' Ulfilas replied.

The road sloped up the hill, the hold's gates open and they cantered through the gateway into a wide courtyard. Guards with long spears stood on the palisade's walkway, a handful more around the courtyard's edge. Well-equipped guards, Ulfilas thought, taking in their coats of mail and weapons all of them with swords hanging at their hips, spears in their hands. And all with an axe strapped across their back. Unusual. A dozen guards that I can see around the gate. Five more in the courtyard. Must have been another ten on the palisade wall as we pa.s.sed. How many more here? Is this all of them, a display intended to impress us? They would have seen us coming, had time to prepare a welcome. Ulfilas smiled as Jael's shieldmen filled the courtyard, which was big, but nevertheless hard-pressed to contain two hundred of the King's shieldmen, all on proud warhorses. I think we will impress them more.

A figure emerged from the feast-hall and stood at the top of wide steps. He was thick muscled, though with a large belly as well, tall and fair, streaks of grey in his hair and braided beard. He wore plain breeches and a woollen tunic tied at the waist.

'Greetings,' the man shouted. 'I am Gramm, lord of this hold, and I bid you welcome.' He looked at the banner carried by one of Jael's shieldmen, snapping in a stiff breeze from the north. A lightning bolt on a black field, a pale serpent entwined about it.

'You are Jael's men, then. I say welcome again. Come, enter. I will find you some food and drink.'

Ulfilas dismounted and climbed the steps, dipping his head to Gramm.

'We are more than King Jael's men,' Ulfilas said, accenting the word King. 'We are his chosen shieldmen, guarding him on this journey to the north of his realm.' Ulfilas swept a hand to Jael, who sat tall on his stallion, wrapped in a sable cloak, looking as regal as any king that Ulfilas had ever seen.

Gramm stood frozen for a moment, something sweeping his face. Ulfilas felt the hairs on his neck p.r.i.c.kle, the possibility of violence suddenly thick in the air. Then the expression on Gramm's face was gone.

Ulfilas frowned, disconcerted.

Slowly, clumsily, Gramm dropped to one knee.

'You do me honour,' he said. 'Be welcome in my hall, King Jael.'

Jael dismounted and climbed the steps of the hall, resting a hand on Gramm's shoulder, bidding him stand.

'Welcome to my hall,' Gramm repeated.

He looks fl.u.s.tered, but then it is not every day that a king comes calling.

'My thanks,' Jael said.

'If I had known of your arrival I would have prepared a feast and fine beds worthy of a king and his company.'

'It is not a planned visit,' Jael said. 'In truth I am riding the northlands of Isiltir in pursuit of rebels and brigands. We came upon your hold by chance. It seemed to be a good opportunity to meet someone I have heard much talk of.'

'You honour me,' Gramm said.

'My apologies for descending upon you unannounced,' Jael said. 'We will not be staying long, but something to wash the throat and fill the belly would be welcome.'