‘I expect we shall meet again,’ said Decado.
‘As enemies or friends?’ Skilgannon asked him.
‘Who knows? If you are heading north be aware that a large company of soldiers and Jems is ahead of you. Advance column for the main army. The last battle against Agrias is close now. Jianna wants to end the war this side of the ocean.’ With that he turned his mount and rode off.
‘I don’t like him,’ said Harad.
‘He doesn’t like himself,’ Askari told him. ‘Which shows he is capable of good judgement.’
Skilgannon smiled. ‘Even so, I am glad he was here when the Shadows attacked. What did you talk about?’
‘Jianna. I told him I was not like her.’ She looked into his sapphire eyes. ‘I am not, am I?’
‘I cannot give you the answer you want to hear,’ he said. ‘When I first knew her she was just like you.
Brave — indeed fearless — and loyal and beautiful. She was her own woman, with a strong, independent mind. We used to talk about how we would change the world. When she became Queen of Naashan she would make the land like a garden, and every citizen would live in peace and prosperity. Those were her dreams.’
‘So why did she change?’
‘She became Queen of Naashan,’ he said simply.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It took me a while,’ he told her. ‘Mostly people obey the laws of their respective lands for one simple reason. If they break them they will suffer for it. The thought of suffering deters them from wrongdoing. It is an age-old principle. Kill someone, and you yourself will be killed. Rob someone and you will be punished. You might lose a hand, or be branded upon the brow, or indeed hanged. The question is, what happens when you are the law, when your actions are unchallenged, your decisions final and beyond appeal? When you are surrounded by people who agree with your every word and every deed? You become like a god, Askari. It is but a small step from that to tyranny.’
‘I would not be like that. I know the difference between right and wrong.’
‘I believe you. I also believe that if Jianna had been born in the high mountains, and grown to womanhood here, she would have said the same. That is beside the point, though. You are not Jianna.
You were not raised in a duplicitous court. You did not see your parents murdered by traitors. You did not have to fight huge battles in order to win back a kingdom. I do not defend what she became. I will not simplify it, either, by holding to the view that she was merely a devil in human flesh, or a monster.’
‘That is because you love her!’ she said, anger flaring again.
‘Perhaps so. But I will do all in my power to end her reign, even if by doing so I condemn her to death. I can do no more than that.’
‘No,’ she said, her voice softening. ‘No-one could ask more than that.’
Stavut sat apart, the horror of the day clinging to him like the blood-drenched shirt he wore. He had wandered away from the pack, needing to be alone. The sun was setting in a blood red sky, and Stavut thought how apt it was, that such a day should end with a crimson sky. The colour of rage.
Tears formed, flowing down his bearded cheek. He brushed them away, and his hand came away stained red. For however long he lived, this would be the Day of the Beast in his memory. He would never forget it, not one dreadful part of it.
The pack had run for hours, eating up the miles in a steady fast lope. Then they had come to a line of wooded hills, and Shakul had paused. ‘What is it?’ asked Stavut.
‘Fight finished,’ said Shakul. Stavut glanced at the other beasts. They all had their heads high, sniffing the air. ‘Much blood,’ added Shakul.
‘Show me,’ Stavut ordered him.
Shakul ran on, up the slope and through the trees, the pack following. They came to a stretch of open ground. Bodies were everywhere. Stavut stepped down from Shakul’s back and walked among the corpses. He saw Kinyon first, his head crushed. Arin, the logger from Harad’s settlement, was pinned against a tree, a broken lance impaling him to the trunk. His wife, Kerena, was close by. Her throat had been cut, but not before she had been brutally raped by the soldiers. She was lying on her back, her skirt over her breast, her legs splayed. Other women had been similarly abused before being slain. There was no point checking for survivors. All of the men had been hacked to death, save Arin.
Shakul loomed alongside him. ‘Four Jems,’ he said. ‘Stood by trees.’
‘What?’
‘We go now?’
‘Go? Yes, we go. We find the soldiers responsible for this.’ A cold anger began in the pit of Stavut’s belly, a rage unlike anything he had ever experienced. ‘We find them. We kill them. Every one.’
‘As Bloodshirt says,’ muttered Shakul.
‘How far away are they?’
‘Not far. Catch soon.’
‘Then let’s be going.’ Stavut reached up and took hold of the baldric. Shakul crouched down, allowing Stavut to place his foot in the loop. Then the great beast reared up, Stavut on his back, and let out a howl. He began to run. As he did so his right arm swept out, and he called an order. Some fifteen of the pack veered off to the right. Shakul barked out a second order, and another group headed towards the left. The rest of the pack ran on silently.
Stavut ducked down as Shakul ploughed through thick undergrowth and low-hanging branches. Then the Jiamad slowed and pointed forward. A column of men were marching over the brow of a hill, some quarter of a mile ahead. ‘How many?’ asked Stavut.
Shakul lifted up his huge, taloned hands, opening and closing them three times. ‘Few more, few less,’
he said.
Then they ran again, pounding up the hillside. As they crested the hill they saw the troop still marching ahead of them, oblivious of the danger. Then one of the soldiers swung round, and shouted a warning.
The troop drew their weapons, and tried to form a defensive wall. There was no time. The Jiamads tore into them. Stavut was thrown clear of Shakul. He hit the ground hard, and rolled. A swordsman loomed over him. Shakul’s talons tore the man’s face away. Blood bubbled from his ruined throat, and he fell.
Stavut grabbed the man’s sword and ran into the fray, hacking and stabbing. An officer on a tall horse was leading the men. When he saw the carnage he tried to flee. Grava hurtled across the grass, and leapt at the man’s mount, ripping its neck open. The horse reared, hurling the rider to the earth. Stavut ran across the killing ground, slashing his sword into the bodies of men trying to flee. Not one escaped. Their skulls were crushed or bitten through, or their backbones shattered by iron-shod clubs. Stavut paused and looked around. A few men were still moving, trying to crawl. The beasts leapt upon them, long fangs slicing into vulnerable necks.
Then Stavut saw the leader, lying very still. Grava was close by, his long, curved fangs tearing chunks of flesh from the body of the dead horse. Stavut walked to the officer, a young man, slim and handsome, his beard carefully shaped and trimmed. ‘I have information,’ said the man. ‘Agrias will find it very useful, if you take me to him.’
‘I don’t serve Agrias,’ said Stavut.
‘I. . don’t understand. Who do you serve?’
‘A man named Kinyon, and a young girl called Kerena. And others whose names I don’t recall now. I don’t suppose you asked their names before you killed them and raped their women.’ Stavut raised the bloody sword.
‘No, wait!’ shrieked the officer, lifting his arm high. Stavut’s blade slashed down smashing the forearm, and cutting deeply through muscle and sinew. The man screamed. ‘Mercy! I beg you!’