‘Never mind that,’ she interrupted urgently, ‘just get over here.’
His heart thumped beneath his ribcage as he sidled awkwardly across the floor on his back and shoulders.
Their faces met in the darkness, and when he rested his cheek against hers, Versen realised it was the greatest comfort he had ever known. Later, drifting into unconsciousness, his head tilted away from Brexan’s slightly, and the Malakasian soldier commanded, ‘Get back here.’ Her voice breaking, she added, ‘Back here with me, please.’
Versen shifted his weight, propped his head up on her shoulder and allowed his face to fall back against hers. This time Brexan turned and kissed him gently on the lips. He breathed in her aroma and fell asleep nestled against her, dreaming they were walking together among the rolling hills outside Estrad Village.
The first wraiths materialised inside the cabin like the beginnings of a dream. Falling like cascading water through the roof, emerging between loose planks, the ghostly figures began to take shape before their eyes. The hickory staff felt alive in Steven’s hands, charged with the fury of powerful magic. But would it have enough strength to defeat this army? He bit on his lower lip to steady his nerves. Beside him, Garec had an arrow drawn and trained, while Lahp was crouched low to the ground, weapons in both hands, and ready to spring into the morass of spectres at any moment.
Surprising himself, Steven said loudly, ‘Leave now and you may return to Malakasia.’ The facial features on several of the wraiths came slowly into focus and Steven knew they understood him. ‘Fight, and I will send you all back into the Fold.’
Would he? He hoped so. It sounded like an appropriate threat, given the circumstances. Seeing them hesitate, he went on, ‘I have already killed the almor. You do not frighten me.’
With that, the wraiths inside the cabin charged, moving as one towards Steven, their spectral mouths agape in a silent scream, like the echo of a suicidal cry from the edge of a cliff. Steven countered. He stepped forward, imagining Hannah trapped somewhere in the bowels of Welstar Palace, calling out to him in terror. ‘Come and get me,’ he challenged the wraiths, and slashed at the forward-most attacker. It had once been a woman. As the staff tore through the translucent head and shoulders, he saw a look of intense pain pass over the spirit’s shadowy face. This would work, but he had to be quick if he was going to keep them off his friends.
Steven swung the staff about his head like a broadsword, scattering scores of spirits, tearing them asunder. As before, he felt time shift slightly, and no matter where the attack originated – the walls, the ceiling, even the floor beneath his feet – he found there was enough time to ready himself and to strike. Magic burst from the staff; he could smell it in the room, the ozone aftermath of a lightning strike.
Steven breathed the whole experience in like a life-giving drug. This was repayment for all the years he had let others make his decisions – because his will was weak, Slash! For all the opportunities he missed, because he would not speak up for himself, Slash! For the lifetime he had spent hiding in the shadows, Slash! Life was terrifying, but this was more terrifying. Slash! Death was in the room with him, and he screamed in its face: Slash!
‘More!’ he finally cried at the top of his lungs, ‘send me more. Send them faster, Nerak, you weak-willed fucker!’ He danced on his toes, leaping forward and back, spinning to strike at the strange spirit soldiers above and behind him. One spectre emerged from the floor at his feet and he stomped it out with the staff as if he were punctuating a declaration with a hickory cane.
This was what his whole life had been leading up to, and Steven realised he would not trade one day of his twenty-eight years to be anywhere else, to be any one else.
Periodically, one of the ghostly creatures would make an audible sound as it was ripped apart, a low-pitched groan that Mark could feel in his abdomen; he wondered whether the foundations of the cabin were about to open and drop them all into a hellish Eldarni abyss. He clutched Brynne to his chest, not just for comfort, but to ensure she stayed down, where she could be protected.
Whenever he relaxed his grip, even slightly, Brynne tried to slash at the wraiths attacking from overhead, until one passed very close to her outstretched arm and Steven barely managed to bring the staff around in time to ward the spirit off. Brynne felt the wraith’s energy bridge the narrow gap separating them and pulled her arm back to her side, shaking. She sheathed her hunting knife and cowered next to Mark. ‘That was too close,’ she whispered, still shuddering with fear. ‘You win. I’ll stay down.’
Holding Brynne’s hands for both their comfort, Mark peered over at Garec. Despite his fear that they would be overwhelmed at any moment, Mark watched the bowman in wonder. Garec was a thing of beauty, a true killing machine. He used his arrows sparingly at first as the wraiths focused their fury on Steven, but as more and more of the spirit intruders attacked, he intensified his retaliation. Concentrating his fire on the wraiths as they entered the cabin, Garec’s arrows, imbued with the power of Steven’s staff, took out scores of ghostly assailants. Howling in surprise, shocked that traditional weaponry could affect them, the ghosts flew into a rage and pressed the bowman from all sides.
Seeing them come, Garec fired twice with blinding speed then dived to the right, rolling against the wall and springing to his feet, swinging the bow like a club at his remaining attackers. He screamed thanks to Steven and the gods of the Northern Forest when he discovered he could use the bow like the determined foreigner was wielding the hickory staff, and three more wraiths fell beneath his deadly swipes.
One slow-moving spirit passed by and Garec hesitated an instant before striking it down. It looked like a man, a normal man, someone who might work for a merchant, or maybe a farmer. If Gabriel O’Reilly was right, each warrior ghost was once an Eldarni citizen, just an ordinary person who had fallen foul of Nerak, an average soul unlucky enough to join the fraternity devoured by the dark prince throughout the Twinmoons. They attacked now only because Nerak had sent them to retrieve Lessek’s Key, to kill the remaining members of their company and to ensure the eventual downfall of the world.
Garec wondered how Gabriel had managed to get free of Nerak’s grasp; he wished the wraith were with him now, inside his head as he sometimes was with Mark, to comfort him and encourage him as he dispatched these souls into the Fold.
Moving into the front corner of the room, Garec found he could protect his flank with the bow itself while firing arrows into the far corners. Twenty, thirty, forty arrows tore wraiths to gossamer shreds before they embedded themselves in the walls, and still Garec continued firing. He grinned broadly as one shaft dispatched three spirits before crashing through the hall window with a fourth in tow. The Bringer of Death: even to the dead, and Garec tumbled gracefully to his left, swinging the bow as he rolled to another stand of arrows.
Then it happened. Garec watched as Steven stumbled, in slow motion, his toe catching the edge of a loose floorboard. He pitched over, cursing and striking out with the staff until he managed to steady himself against the dining table – but that momentary lapse in his defences left Mark and Brynne vulnerable. Two wraiths quickly entered their bodies.
Brynne collapsed immediately, her slight frame lying deathly still on the floor a few paces away. Mark rose to his feet, raised his hands to the heavens and emitted an inhuman cry of pain and suffering.
Garec hesitated a moment, uncertain what to do. He swallowed hard, realised how thirsty he was and promised himself he would make a valiant effort to drink the river dry if he survived this hellish night. Two arrows stood, fletching up, in a wooden plank beside him. Holding his breath, he nocked one, drew and fired directly at Mark’s chest. Before the shaft found its target, Garec had nocked and fired the second into Brynne’s ribcage. Watching the arrows pierce his friends’ bodies, Garec felt the sting, the impossibly painful burn of flint tips and wooden shafts ripping through flesh. The Bringer of Death. He screamed in response to Mark’s cry, struck out with the bow at an attacking spirit and prayed his dangerous play had paid off.