He shrugged. ‘I hope so,’ he said. Then he leaned close. ‘Hellenic fire. In their camp. Or so I hope.’
North of Harndon – Harmodius
Dissection is one of those skills a man never really forgets. Harmodius had exhumed the corpse himself – not much of a risk, given the haste with which it had been buried.
He was only interested in the brain, anyway. Which was as well, as the thorax was badly damaged and the central body cavity was largely empty. Something had eaten the guts.
Harmodius was above such feelings as nausea. Or so he kept telling himself. A steady spring rain fell on his back, darkness was falling, and he was in the midst of the northern wilderness, but the body was there for the taking and it was, after all, what had started him on this mad-cap chase. That, and the firm and magnetic draw of the power. Power like a beacon.
He took out a hunting trousseau – a pair of very heavy knives and half a dozen smaller, very sharp ones – and quickly and accurately flensed the skin from the dead man’s skull, folded the flaps back, took a trepan from his pack, and lifted a piece of skull the size of a triple leopard of solid silver.
The light was failing, but it was still clear the brain-matter was rotting.
Harmodius took an eating knife from his purse, pulled out the sharp pick, and dug around carefully. He used the tip of the knife to cut away small portions of the rotting material-
He spat out a mouthful of salty saliva. ‘I will not vomit,’ he declared aloud. Dug again.
It was too damned dark. He pulled a candle from his increasingly upset horse’s pack, and lit it with sorcery. There was no breeze at all, and the candle hissed in the light rain. He lit two more, squandering the beeswax.
He trepanned again, but it was no use. The brain-matter was too rotten. Or his theory was entirely wrong. Or rather, Aristotle’s theory was entirely wromg.
The Magus left the body where it was, lying half exhumed in the rain. He washed his hands in the creek at the base of the hill, repacked his knives, extinguished the candles, and reloaded his horse, who now shied at every noise. He reached out, and felt the power gathering the north.
Jesu Christe
The Magus paused, one booted foot already in a stirrup. There was something-
The creature gave itself away with a growl, and his mare bolted. Harmodius managed to get a hand on the saddle-bow and clung on for a furlong until the frightened animal turned. Harmodius rode the turn, using the force of her movement to help get his leg over the saddle at last. The moon was new and distant, the rain was covering the stars, and the night was dark. He prayed, rapidly and incoherently, that his mare stayed on the road.
He got his right foot in the stirrup and the reins in his left hand, and he pulled on them. Ginjer did not obey.
He reined in sharply, and felt for the baton he used as a riding whip. It took him what seemed hours to locate it in his belt, and hours more, apparently, to press it to her neck, a trick he’d learned from a knight.
He cast a simple thought, a phantasm that allowed him to see in the dark.
What he saw froze his blood. The horse balked, and he almost went over the cantle.
‘Sweet Jesu!’ he said aloud.
Something was standing in the road, waiting for him.
Off to his left, the north-west, the sky erupted – a long orange flash. Its dim light further illuminated the familiar – too familiar – shape of the creature standing on the road.
It tossed the corpse aside and loped at him. But he had time to feel the convulsion in the northern power first. To ponder, for an instant, the fact that the long flash of orange beyond the horizon had reached him long before the convulsion of power, a matter of great interest to a hermeticist. He had never fully investigated the effects of distance on power-
It was a form of panic, to spin off thought after thought, none of them connected to the monster on the road ahead of him, or the wave of terror that it emitted like a fist of fear.
‘Adeveniat regnum tuum,’ the Magus spat.
A lance of fire sprang from his riding stick to the winged creature, whose head was bathed in flame for as long as man might draw a deep breath. The liquid parts of the creature’s head vaporized and its skull exploded, lit by the intense flame of the lance of fire.
The fire went out, apart for some pale blue flames that licked at the creature’s neck for a few heartbeats before sizzling out.
Silence fell, in which the creature’s tail lashed the ground – thump, thump, thump – and then was still.
The silence went on, and on. The night smelled of singed hair and burnt soap.
The Magus drew a deep breath. Raised his riding crop and blew gently on the silver rune set in the gold cap. He smiled to himself, despite the fatigue that settled on his shoulders like a haubergeon of mail, and allowed himself a single ‘heh’.
He watched the northern horizon as the fire flickered there again, then dismounted and walked through the darkness to the creature’s side and muttered ‘Fiat lux.’ His light was blue and pale, but it sufficed.
He made a clucking sound, reached out into the night with his senses, recoiled from what he found there and ran for his horse.
East of Lissen Carak – Peter
Peter lay in a state of angry exhaustion and watched the pale fire flicker in the distant west. He had to tear his eyes away from it and watch the darkness to be sure that the whole thing wasn’t just his imagination. But it was true – above the endless trees, somewhere to the west, there was a great fire. So great, it reflected from the cliff face above him in long flashes of light.
His two ‘masters’ slept through it.
He struggled with his yoke again, surrendered again, and fell asleep.
Awoke to the smaller man kneeling beside him.
‘Cook,’ he said. ‘Wake up. Something is out here with us,’ he added. There was fear in his voice.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ asked the other Morean.
‘I’m letting him out of this yoke,’ said the smaller man. ‘I’m not going to run and leave him to die. Jesu – I’m a better man than that.’
‘He’s a pagan, or a heretic, or some such filth. Leave him.’ The first man was loading the mule as fast as he could. It was dark, but not true dark – the first pale light of morning. And something heavy was moving in the bush.
‘I am a Christian man,’ Peter said.
‘See?’ said the smaller man. He fumbled with the chains. Grunted.
‘Come on!’ shouted his friend.
The shorter man pulled again, slammed the yoke against a rock, and scrambled to his feet. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We don’t have the key.’ And he followed his mate into the woods, leaving Peter lying on the ground.
He lay there and waited to die.
But no one came for him, and you can only be so terrified for so long.
He got to his feet and stumbled over a stump he’d made himself the night before. The axe handle bruised his shin. The idiots had left their axe.
He plucked it from the stump. He went through the camp, over the broken ground in the near dark – camp was too strong a word for a place where three men had built a fire the size of a rabbit and lain on the bare ground. But by the fire he found an earthenware cup, still intact, and a tinderbox with both char cloth, flint and a steel.
Peter knelt on the ground and prayed to God. He managed a bittersweet thanks, and then he put the cup and the tinderbox into the front of his shirt, tied them in place, and made his way to the road, just a few horse lengths to the north. It was the main road from the eastern seaports to the Albin Plains. He knew that much.
To the east lay civilization and safety – and slavery.
To the west lay the Albin River and the Wild. Peter had seen the Wild, red in tooth and claw. And it had not enslaved him. So he shouldered the axe and headed west.
Harndon Palace – Desiderata