The guard looked at him, doubt and anxiety in his mind.
Styliann raised an eyebrow. ‘Where is Darrick?’ he asked.
‘At the far end, my Lord, overseeing construction of the fortifications. ’
‘Then you have discharged your duties admirably,’ said Styliann. ‘He can personally clear me to travel when I meet him.’
The guard smiled, comfortable with Styliann’s logic. He stood aside. ‘Good luck, my Lord.’
Styliann stared down at him. ‘Luck is something on which I never rely.’ He rode into the pass, his Protectors behind him, silent, masked and disturbing.
Styliann’s passage through the pass was swift, his horses bred for stamina. He barely noticed the devastation Xetesk’s new spell had caused and certainly had no mind to admire its success. He rode on, reaching the end of the pass as dusk gathered, pulling up to a stop when he saw Darrick.
The two men gazed at each other for a time, Darrick reading his face, Styliann burning with the desire to be at the throats of the men who had raped and murdered Selyn. Darrick said nothing, simply nodding, stepping from his path and waving him through. Styliann and the Protectors galloped into Wesmen lands. For them there would be no halt for a night’s rest. Styliann had places he needed to reach and something to prove to an arrogant barbarian.
Hirad awoke glad of the leather-clad bivouac shelters Thraun had insisted they raise over themselves the night before. At the time, it had seemed a pointless exercise in irritation, but now, with the rain thrumming on the material above his head, Hirad smiled.
He sat up, scratching his head. He could smell a fire and, looking out, saw Will crouched over his stove, leather over his shoulders and a wide-brimmed hat pulled forward over his face. Water steamed away on an open pot.
Beside Hirad, Ilkar stirred and awoke, opening one eye on the weather.
‘Wake me when it’s dry,’ he said, and turned over.
‘I’d hate to be in Understone with this coming down,’ said Hirad. Ilkar grunted.
The camp came slowly to life. Set in an area of lightly wooded land on the downhill side of a lively stream, the four shelters sat in a rough semicircle. Will’s wood-burner was at its centre. They were a long way from Understone Pass and the relative security of Darrick’s cavalry, and Hirad felt strangely ill at ease.
Surrounded by his closest friends and people he trusted with his life, he couldn’t shake the fear of the new from his bones. He had rarely been in the lands west of Understone Pass before, and with only a small inkling of where they were headed, drawn from maps and stories, he was nervous.
They all took breakfast hunched under their shelters, the rain showing no signs of easing as it shouldered its way through leaf and branch to patter and drum on earth and leather. Across the stream, and on the other side of the gentle slope on which they sat, the land quickly turned harder as it tracked northwards, becoming steep climbs, cold peaks and barren plateaux. Their destination lay across easier travel to the south-west.
‘How far to the Wrethsires from here?’ Hirad asked.
Thraun sat with Will at the far end of the half-circle; next to them were Erienne and Denser, his arm about her shoulders, with The Unknown and Jandyr next to Hirad.
‘A day, no more,’ replied Thraun through a mouthful of bread. ‘That assumes we can steer clear of Wesmen.’
‘We’re heading away from their major concentrations, and with so many on the move, if we keep off the path we should be safe enough,’ said The Unknown. ‘Anyway, I’ve heard you’re not bad at keeping hidden.’ He smiled.
‘Not bad.’
‘It’s a shock, isn’t it, discovering you’re something you don’t want to be.’ The Unknown’s voice carried a sorrow so deep that Hirad almost spilled his coffee.
Thraun and the big man locked eyes, every other member of The Raven waiting for the reaction.
But Thraun merely nodded. ‘Only someone like you can possibly understand the pain and the fear. I would give anything not to be as I am.’
‘But in the crypts, you seemed—’ said Erienne.
‘Only when there is no other way. And then in terror for everything I know and love.’ He got up. ‘I’ll saddle the horses.’ The Unknown followed him from the camp, leaving the rest to a confused silence.
‘It’s not a blessing,’ said Will eventually, killing the flame in the stove and unhooking the pieces to cool them on the wet earth. ‘He is terrified that one day he will lose himself in the mind of the wolf and never be able to change back.’
The Raven moved off twenty minutes later, with the rain pounding on leathers and the stream behind them thrashing as it filled. Thraun chose the trail but kept his thoughts to himself.
Hirad and Ilkar dropped back to flank The Unknown, who rode directly behind Denser and Erienne.
‘Why did Thraun think you could understand him?’ asked Hirad.
‘Subtlety never was a strong point of yours, was it, Hirad?’ Ilkar sniffed.
The Unknown shook his head. ‘At least he never changes,’ he said. ‘Look, Hirad, it’s complex and not very pleasant. Not to me, anyway.’ He looked to Denser, but the Dark Mage was at least giving the impression of not listening. ‘We were both brought up knowing we were different. You’ll have to ask Thraun how he came to know, but the point is, we were both something we didn’t want to be yet something we could never escape. Mind you, I believed I could.’ The Unknown bit his lip.
‘Don’t feel you—’ began Ilkar.
‘No. I might as well. At least this way it’s just you two, and Denser already knows. There’s nothing random about being chosen as a Protector. I’m a Xeteskian. We - they are bred for strength, stamina and speed from carefully chosen lineage. I was weapons-trained early, and at thirteen discovered my destiny. It’s not something you are supposed to find out, for obvious reasons. I thought I was just being schooled for the College Guard.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t like the idea that my soul was already sold to the Mount of Xetesk so I ran away. Apparently it happens all the time when people find out, and they let you go. I mean, why not? When you can’t escape them even when you die.’
‘So you’ve always known?’ Hirad felt at once swept empty with sorrow and distrusted. Here was the secret he’d kept for ten years. ‘Is this all linked to your name?’
‘Yes. Pathetic, really. I couldn’t deny my calling but I refused to admit it to myself. I tried false names but they never fitted, so I ended up just never telling anyone anything. When Ilkar came up with The Unknown Warrior, that did fit. A name that was no name, if you like. I felt at home.’ Another biting of the lip. His eyes glistened and his voice was gruff. ‘And then, of course, with The Raven, I thought I’d never die. But that’s no escape either.’ He set his jaw and looked forwards.
‘Sorry, I’ve lost you,’ said Ilkar.
‘Me too,’ said Hirad. ‘I mean, if you were so anxious not to die, why did you take on all those dogs by yourself?’
‘Because when I realised they’d come for me anyway, I thought at least I could die saving you. All of you. And perhaps that I’d get away, dying so far from Xetesk in a place where the mana was unstable. I thought they wouldn’t find me.’
‘Hang on, can we backtrack a little? What do you mean, they’d come for you anyway?’ Ilkar hoped he wasn’t beginning to understand. But The Unknown just shook his head again and bored his eyes into Denser’s back.
Denser turned his horse and fell in beside Ilkar. ‘He means that the demons would have taken his soul from him eventually, dead or alive. He means he knew his time was running out. After all, what good is a forty-year-old Protector?’ Denser’s words were hard but his tone was thick with disgust. ‘That is why he chose to die, because it was his only chance of saving himself as well as us. But they found him. They stole his death.’ He urged his horse to join Erienne once more. ‘And now you know it all, and why poor Laryon and I wanted to free them. Too many of them were never dead in the first place.’