‘They’re coming,’ Mark interrupted his thoughts. He crouched on the floor at Steven’s feet. ‘They’re just outside the cabin on the hill, but moving this way.’
‘No, wait; I need more time,’ Steven protested. ‘I think I’ve got it, but I just need more time.’
‘We don’t have any time.’ Garec was pale and his face ran with sweat, but his hands were steady as he drew two arrows from each quiver and stabbed them into the wood floor for quicker access.
‘Yes we do, Garec.’ Steven had put the pieces together quickly; now he had to see if it would work. ‘Turn around,’ he ordered, ‘quickly now.’ Garec gave him a curious look, but turned his back. Steven concentrated his will into the staff. He felt Garec’s fear and insecurity and called upon his own determination to help the bowman succeed in the coming fight. The staff flared to life and Steven felt its familiar heat burning through his fingers. With one end of the shaft, Steven brushed the quivers Garec wore high on his back.
‘Lords,’ Garec exclaimed, ‘what was that?’
Steven didn’t answer, but as Garec turned back towards him, it was clear he understood.
‘Yes,’ Garec whispered. ‘I can feel it.’ He hesitated, then asked, ‘Should you do the bow as well?’
‘I don’t know, but let’s be safe, anyway.’ As Steven brushed the staff along the rosewood longbow the younger man’s countenance slowly changed from despair to determination.
The Bringer of Death. Garec’s eyes narrowed and his jaw hardened. He began drawing arrows by the score and jamming them, fletching up, in between cracks in the plank floor: ten by the window, ten in the corner, ten near the fireplace. It was close quarters, almost too close, but with a short draw he could still send shafts out quickly and accurately.
‘Let them come,’ he said stabbing the last of his arrows into a wide wooden plank near the hallway. ‘This is going to work. This is what Lessek wanted me to know. It isn’t that I was atop Seer’s Peak; it’s that we were there together.’
‘Yes,’ Steven felt his confidence rise. ‘Bring ’em on.’ He was surprised that he was not more afraid. He had expected to find his limbs stiff with fear and his mind unable to focus, but he had channelled that fear, sublimated it into his determination to win, to fight with grace and speed, and to kill with compassion but without hesitation. He remembered sneaking out through the back window of Owen’s Pub one night to avoid a fight with a drunk, a lifetime ago. Now he was up against an army of homicidal wraiths; any one might kill him with a touch, but he was not afraid.
‘I will see you again, Nerak,’ he whispered. ‘If you harm Hannah, Mark, Brynne, Garec or Lahp, I will make sure you pay, a thousand times over.’ He caught the young bowman’s eye and said more loudly, ‘Good luck.’
‘To you, too,’ Garec replied.
Then the wraiths were upon them.
THE WRAITHS
Eldarn’s twin moons rose at nearly opposite poles, north to south, and the result was a calm sea with minimal tides. A light southwesterly wind blew the Malakasian schooner, the Falkan Dancer north along the Ronan coast; the sheets snapped taut with each intermittent gust that bounced out-of-phase off Pragan cliffs far to the west. In the dim light of the southern moon, Carpello Jax, the corpulent merchant with the bulbous mole on his face, argued with Karn and Rala about the fate of the two captives chained securely below. Carpello had no wish to arrive in Orindale without Prince Malagon’s talisman and was endeavouring to convince the Seron to kill their prisoners before reaching port. He believed the dark prince would be more forgiving if the prisoners died trying to escape. Arriving with two living captives who simply refused to disclose the whereabouts of the key would make them all look weak, and the Falkan businessman had no wish to appear weak before his prince.
Karn and Rala disagreed. If Lahp and the rest of their platoon had failed to find the key, and had killed the remaining members of Gilmour’s company, these two would be their only hope. The prisoners would be kept alive until Prince Malagon decided what to do with them.
‘You have an excuse,’ Carpello argued coldly. ‘He already possesses your souls.’ The puffy-faced ship owner held an ornate silk handkerchief beneath his nose and prayed for a stronger breeze to blow the rancid stench of the Seron out to sea. ‘ My soul is another story, and I do not intend to forfeit it to your master.’
‘Na.’ Rala was firm. ‘Two live Orindale.’
Karn nodded in agreement.
‘Then I suggest we step up our interrogation efforts, my disgusting friends. We have plenty of time between here and Orindale to convince them to talk.’
Karn nodded again. He was in favour of that, at least.
While the question of their continued survival was being discussed above deck, Versen and Brexan discussed their own options. Brexan guessed they were in line for a brutal interrogation. ‘They can’t go back to Malakasia empty-handed,’ she said. ‘And I’m quite sure that if your friends managed to escape from that horsecock Lahp, we’ve a tough time ahead of us.’ They had no idea that a half aven after they had been escorted from the base of Seer’s Peak, a grettan herd had torn through Lahp’s platoon, scattering or killing the last of that group in a maelstrom of deadly claws and teeth.
Versen sighed. ‘I’m afraid you’re right. Apart from using an almor to stop us escaping, our treatment has been pretty fair, really. We’re still a long way from Orindale, but sooner or later they’ll decide they’re bored with our silence.’
They were chained by their wrists to support beams and sat across from one another, their lower legs touching in the middle of the narrow cabin. There was no natural light and the perpetual dark weighed heavily on them. Versen had never properly appreciated the power of another’s touch; now he ached for more prolonged contact with the young woman seated so near and yet so far from him. Being able to feel each other’s feet was the only comfort they had, and neither commented on it. Instead, it became an understanding between them: do not pull back. This is about us, and we will get through this together. Now, we have touch.
They sat for days. Sometimes Brexan cried, weeping almost silently into the sleeve of her tunic. When Versen heard her trying to choke back sobs, he racked his memory for off-colour jokes in an effort to raise her spirits. When the woodsman’s hope waned, Brexan regaled him with only slightly embellished tales of her training. Together, they kept each other sane.
The only light in the cabin came when one of the three Seron appeared in the doorway to hand over bowls of the oat and herb mush and to empty their shared chamber pot. With that done, the door would close again almost immediately. In those few moments, Brexan and Versen would squint across at each other, each starving for a clear glimpse, each knowing it would be avens before they saw one another again. Versen’s mind raced every time light flooded the room: was she getting thinner? Did she look sick? Was her face still swollen? As the door swung closed, Versen invariably reached the same conclusion: despite the dirt and grime, she was lovely, a sight to preserve his will to live and his determination to fight back. Her image was indelibly etched in his mind’s eye.
Despite the extreme discomfort, it took several days for Versen to work out that he could reposition himself. He found the chains holding him fast to the ship’s hull were just long enough to allow him to turn over onto his back. Squatting low against the wall, he stepped over the length of chain holding his left wrist in place. With that accomplished, he pivoted his weight around, crossed his arms and lay backwards on the deck with his feet pressed against the bulkhead.
When his head came in contact with Brexan’s feet, she yelped, ‘Rutters! What is that?’ and lashed out, catching him a glancing blow on his temple.
‘Stop it, Brexan,’ he pleaded quietly, ‘it’s just me. I’ve managed to turn around.’ He talked her through the same steps and when her head fell gently alongside his, he took a moment to bury his face in her hair. ‘Glad you could join me,’ he said, trying for glib but instead sounding almost boyish in his nervousness.