He expected to see the wraiths burst from Mark and Brynne, like souls ascending to the Northern Forest, but nothing appeared to happen. Mark collapsed to the floor near Brynne and neither moved again. ‘Rutting dogs,’ Garec cursed and leaped to another stand of arrows, hoping to fire these as quickly as possible. He needed to create enough breathing space to cross the room into the circle of Steven’s protection and see to his friends. Could he save them? He had no idea what to do now; he might even have killed them himself.
Garec tried not to think about that possibility and instead launched himself back against the spirit offensive with renewed hatred. Two wraiths emerged near the fireplace and Garec pinned both to the pantry door. It was only when he peered beneath their disintegrating, indistinct forms that he noticed two more arrows buried in the woodwork, arrows he didn’t recall firing.
It must have worked: those were the shafts; they had passed right through his friends. It had to be magic; he had not drawn the bowstring back far enough to fully penetrate a body, let alone drive the shafts into the hard wooden walls. It had to have worked.
On and on the wraiths came, and the battle raged unchanging. To Steven it felt like it was half the night, but he neither slowed nor weakened, despite the near-constant actions of spinning and striking out with the staff.
Garec felt as though his arms would fall off, but still he continued to fight until his last arrow was spent. Then he backed towards Mark and Brynne, protecting them from attack along the hallway with the still-potent longbow. Standing back to back, he and Steven warded off wave after wave of ghostly assailants.
Then it ended.
The interior of the cabin bristled with arrows, each firmly embedded into the woodwork, as if the walls themselves had been the attackers. Garec dropped to his knees, rolled Brynne onto her back and began weeping when he saw she was still alive. Tearing open her tunic, he found no entry or exit wounds; he checked Mark’s chest to be certain. He had not killed them.
Realising, for almost the first time, that he had gambled with his friends’ lives, the Bringer of Death pitched onto his side, felt the cool floorboards against his face and sobbed aloud, unconcerned if anyone heard him break down.
Steven was not ready for the fight to end. A wild and untamed look danced in his eyes as he continued to curse Nerak. With the staff’s magic still coursing through his body, he whirled about, looking for more enemies, needing someone or something to attack, thirsting for another kill, when he finally saw Lahp. The Seron lay in a heap near the front wall. His enormous hands still gripped his daggers, but Steven could see the big soldier was dead.
Not even noticing his friends, he strode to the front door, kicked it open and walked out into the cold mountain night. Darkness had fallen, but Steven found he could see where he was going. His senses were alive, acute, as he made his way through the underbrush towards the river. Reaching the banks, Steven waded in, the glacial cold unfelt as the power of the staff fortified muscle and bone with the strength of a brigade of warriors. His limp was gone, his leg healed, the bones knitted together as if they had never been broken.
‘Nerak!’ he screamed into the night, ‘I will not hide from you, Nerak, and you will pay for Gilmour. You will pay for Lahp, and even your evil master will not be able to save you if Hannah dies!’
Steven raised the staff above his head and drove it deep into the riverbed. A wall of water leaped up before him and careened through the valley, uprooting trees and wrenching boulders from their resting places along the riverbank. He waited until it disappeared from sight then listened as it roared its way between the foothills and off into the canyon beyond. He tossed the staff to the riverbank, then leaned back until the water flowed over his head and chest.
Steven remained submerged until his lungs burned with the need for air. Pushing his wet hair back from his face and gazing down the valley towards Orindale, he knew they had won a great victory.
‘Now, Hannah, I am coming for you,’ he announced loudly. Eldarn’s twin moons flanked either end of the valley: just over halfway to the next Twinmoon. ‘Thirty days? Have we only been here thirty days?’ he asked the valley as he clambered back up the bank, retrieved the hickory staff and strode back towards the cabin.
Versen squinted against the bright sunlight as Karn led them to the raised quarterdeck in the Falkan Dancer ’s stern. The vessel moved briskly north and Versen welcomed the stiff breeze after the stale, humid air of their cell. As he breathed deeply to clear his lungs, he tried to calculate how long they had been at sea.
When his eyes adjusted he could just make out the coast in the distance, an indistinct, blurry mass that looked as though it had been sketched along the horizon. He was heartened to see land at all and for a few brief moments scanned the decks in hopes of discovering some means by which to take the ship – or at least gain control of the helm long enough to run them all aground. A cursory look was enough to dash his hopes: a tally of the crew of hardened seamen, not to mention the Seron, made it quite clear they didn’t stand a chance on their own. He sighed, and quietly braced himself for whatever was going to happen next.
Karn replaced their chain manacles with heavy twine, fixed a short length of rope to the bonds, then dragged the prisoners aft. Brexan, legs cramped and aching from her tenure in the hold, tripped a number of times, which brought jeers from the crew, who hurled insults at the soldier-turned-traitor. Brexan regained her feet and sneered down her nose at the sailors with unbridled contempt. Her eyes narrowed as she wished she were armed with more than just scorn. She would have enjoyed nothing more than to summarily gut one or two of the smug-looking seamen disparaging her from the safety of the rigging.
Carpello Jax was leaning against the stern rail, uncomfortable despite the near-perfect weather. Versen decided the ship’s owner could not be accustomed to long sea voyages; it was probably only his fear of Malagon’s wrath that had motivated him to accompany his crew of mercenaries on this journey. At his side Rala picked absentmindedly at a discoloured fingernail and Haden spat a mouthful of phlegm towards a scupper. The big Ronan grinned to himself as he told the nauseous merchant, ‘I’ll have mussel soup, mussels drenched in white wine and aromatic with savory, a venison stew thickened with a good Falkan red, with gobbets of meat spitting fat and juices, layered potatoes in double cream and cheese, and a goblet of the same- no, actually, come to think of it, I’ll wash it down with beer, a bitter golden beer heady with the finest hops in Rona and with smooth, succulent barley from the lowlands-’
The thought of all that rich food turned Carpello’s already unsettled stomach and Versen couldn’t help his grin as the merchant retched over the gunwale, then wiped his mouth on the silk kerchief. He glared at his prisoner as he spat, ‘Scum – but I am pleased to see you have not lost your sense of humour.’ He gestured at the scarred Seron. ‘It will bring me that much more pleasure to watch him beat it out of you.’
Versen glared back at him, all trace of humour now gone. ‘How can you ally yourself with these Seron? With Malagon? Does the idea of freedom mean so little that you would allow Malagon’s pets to order you around?’