Assail Read online

  She forced her eyes open, stilled her slapping of the water, and saw that she was engaged in a struggle with a corpse. Its limp arms kept bumping up against her. She pushed it away and carried on.

  ‘To the right.’ Petal spoke again and she realized then that he’d never been with her at all. It was a sending of some sort, or he was watching for her from his Warren. She paddled on.

  ‘Shimmer!’ a new voice shouted. She recognized Bars bulls’ bellow.

  ‘Here!’

  ‘Follow my voice! This way! I have an oar! Do you see it?’

  Something splashed the water nearby through the cloaking fog. She headed that way. A tall cliff of darkness emerged from the bank – the side of a vessel. ‘Here!’ she called.

  An oar came sluicing through the waves. She grasped for it but missed. She caught it on the second try.

  ‘There’s a rope here,’ Bars said. The oar pulled her along through the water to where a rope ladder hung from the side. She took hold and started up. On deck, she was met by all the landing party.

  ‘You’re last,’ Bars told her.

  She scanned the shore; the coursing banners of fog still obscured everything. The rest of the Guard were manning the sweeps. She noticed that, oddly, Lean was at the rudder.

  ‘Where’s Havvin?’

  Bars and K’azz exchanged glances. ‘I’m sorry, Shimmer,’ K’azz said. He motioned to where several shapes lay bundled in sailcloth.

  Shimmer suddenly felt very cold as she stood dripping wet in the fog. She shivered. ‘How many?’

  ‘Eight,’ K’azz said. His voice, and his features, did not change at all, and Shimmer realized that he was holding himself under a terrifying degree of will. ‘Taken by the mist.’

  She swallowed to dare her next question: ‘Any of us?’

  ‘None.’

  She was vastly relieved, but then fixed her gaze upon him; she wished to take hold of his shoulders and shake him. ‘Why? Why?’

  ‘The … Vow … I imagine.’ He lurched away and seemed to totter off.

  She let him go. He knows more than that – he must. She met Bars’ gaze, but the man just shook his head.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Shimmer.’

  ‘As am I, Bars,’ she sighed.

  The Avowed helped on the sweeps, a skeletal few, yet Mael’s Forbearance made steady headway. They finally emerged from the fog and Shimmer found that they were a good way out in the bay. Behind, the thick bank obscured the shore for several bowshots. Utterly unnatural, that concentration of mist. She peered round, counting ships. Found nine. Every vessel, it seemed, had escaped – though most of the ship’s launches and their crews probably hadn’t. She turned to face ahead, and while the sky was a leaden hue, overcast, she still had to squint in the light. Three vessels were far ahead: the Letherii modified merchantmen. It seemed Luthal Canar was in no mood to offer anyone any aid. Well, that was fine: they could face whatever lay ahead first.

  At that, she shifted her gaze to where a pale light seemed to glow to the north-east. ‘What is that?’ she asked Bars.

  But Blues answered, sounding uncharacteristically grim: ‘An ice field.’ She remembered that he’d crossed the immense plain of ice that separated Stratem from the lands of Korel to the north.

  ‘Can we get through?’ she asked.

  Blues shrugged. ‘There must be some way.’

  She nodded at that. Yes. Surely some vessels must have made it through ahead of them. Her gaze fell on the wrapped bodies. ‘We should give them a proper send-off.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bars agreed, and he sounded very firm on that.

  It was a channel. A narrow gap of open water that ran between tall cliffs of white and sapphire glacial ice. They reached it near to dusk, but such was the peculiar light held by the ice from the moon, and the star field where it shone through gaps in the cloud cover, that they continued on.

  Luthal’s command ahead did likewise. They too neither paused nor let up, and Shimmer began to wonder whether the Letherii merchant had – rather stupidly – decided that this was some sort of race. And the gold to the winner.

  Behind, the rest of the ragtag convoy straggled along. Next in line was the Mare galley. Privately, Shimmer was of the opinion that if any ship survived, it would be that one. She had a great respect for the vessels and crews of that seafaring nation.

  The passage narrowed alarmingly in places. The cliffs reared nearly overhead. At times great reports cracked the night air and carriage-sized shards of ice came crashing down ahead or behind to send up fountains of frigid spray. Some of that spray even reached them on board the Forbearance.

  Something about these avalanches of shards troubled Shimmer, and not just that any one of them could crush them into splinters. As they proceeded through, the sweeps hissing through ice-mush and clattering off floating chunks of sapphire-blue ice, it came to her.

  The ice was only falling near them.

  She watched to the rear for a time: no ice shards burst from the cliff faces behind them – at all. She turned ahead to study the three Letherii vessels and the full length of the channel ahead: nothing. No fracturing, cracking or rumbling.

  She turned to K’azz.

  Cowl suddenly appeared next to their commander. His scarred, ghostly pale face was upraised to study the overhanging cliffs. ‘We must back out – now,’ he said.

  K’azz frowned his puzzlement. ‘Back out? Why?’

  The High Mage lowered his face to gaze straight at K’azz. ‘You know why.’

  K’azz snapped his gaze to the cliffs. ‘You don’t think …’

  ‘I do.’

  K’azz spun to the mid-deck, roared, ‘Back oars! Back off!’ The Avowed on the oars pushed hard, heaving. Mael’s Forbearance came to a slow sluggish halt amid the wash of hissing crushed ice. ‘Back oars!’ K’azz yelled anew.

  It appeared to Shimmer that they had just made a terrible mistake.

  Reports like munition blasts erupted from the near port-side cliff. Cracks zigzagged up and down the translucent gleaming facets of the face. Chunks ranging in size from barrels to horses and wagons came crashing and tumbling. They sent up great fountains of spray that punched down to slap the decking of the Forbearance. One single massive crag now pulled away from the entire cliff. It extended from halfway up to the white snowy top. As slow as night falling it came, leaning farther and farther out from the body of the great ice wall above them.

  Shimmer caught Blues’ wide gaze. ‘Do something,’ she said.

  He shook his head in utter helplessness. ‘D’riss is of no …’

  ‘Cowl!’ K’azz demanded.

  Shimmer snapped her gaze to the High Mage, but the man only stared, his face now uncharacteristically severe. ‘There is nothing.’

  Brutal explosions of tons of crushed ice thundered above. A dark shadow engulfed the Forbearance.

  K’azz drew a savage breath and bellowed: ‘Abandon ship!’

  The crew and the Avowed on the oars let them fall. Everyone dived for the sides.

  The last thing Shimmer remembered was the intense cold of the water. She struck the ice mush first, and it parted for her, but not before imparting numbing blows to her protecting forearm. She churned her one good arm, fought for the surface.

  She never made it. Some immense dark shape came plunging into the water and it dragged her down with it, down into the frigid night of the depths below. For a time she fought to free herself from the weight that drove her on and on deeper into the darkness. But in the murk and the utter cold, her strength gradually seeped from her, and she knew nothing more.

  * * *

  ‘We must go back!’ Reuth thrust an arm to the stern, his gaze fierce upon Storval. ‘Search for survivors!’

  The first mate waved his dismissal. ‘You saw. None survived. Only wreckage surfaced.’ He nodded to the oarsmen, motioned for them to continue.

  ‘But we should wait. Search the wreckage!’

  ‘Too dangerous. The entire cliff fell on them.
More might come down.’

  Reuth stared, appalled beyond words. The foreign mercenaries saved them at Old Ruse and here at Mist, yet this heartless bastard was prepared to turn his back upon them. He clutched the man’s leather sleeve. ‘I see why you won’t stop – you’re a coward!’

  He did not see the blow; next thing he knew he was on the deck, blinking, his head ringing. Hands clutched his shirtfront, yanked him to his feet. ‘You little puke,’ Storval hissed in his face. ‘You’re only living because I’ve allowed you to live. Maybe if you keep your trap shut and do your job I’ll continue to let you!’ The hands thrust him backwards and he stumbled into the ship’s side.

  Storval straightened his jerkin and paced off. Reuth caught the gazes of nearby Stormguard; he saw no sympathy there, only their maddening haughty airs. ‘They saved us at Old Ruse,’ he said, and rubbed his head where he’d been struck.

  ‘We guided them here,’ one of the Stormguard answered.

  ‘We?’ Reuth gaped, nearly speechless. ‘I guided us here!’

  The Stormguard merely shrugged, unconcerned. ‘We all have our job to do.’

  Reuth almost answered, but caught himself in time: and yours is a glorified spear-rack. Instead, he turned away, pointedly giving these fools his back.

  His uncle wouldn’t have bulled through the wreckage. He would’ve stopped. And Kyle would’ve supported him against these Stormguard. Still, it was hard to imagine that anyone could’ve survived such an enormous blow. It had been as if the hand of some vengeful god had slammed down upon those mercenaries. No other vessel had even been touched! Reuth slapped the timbers of the stern cabin. All for naught now. He was a captive – Abyss, a slave to this cowardly wretch’s commands.

  He knew then what he would do at the first opportunity. The decision had been coming for some time now in his unhappiness and frustration. Come his first chance he’d jump ship, abandon these bastards to their own fate. Then they’d see how well they fared without a proper pilot.

  It would be simple enough; there were no charts or rolls of maps to burn or steal away. His uncle had seen to that – forbidding him from bringing even the simplest scroll. Now he understood why. Bargaining power and value. Where there were no charts, the knowledge he held in his head made him priceless.

  Reuth suddenly realized just how much he must have meant to his uncle – and what pains Tulan had taken to ensure his survival.

  He wept for him then, hugging himself, kneeling hidden as deep in the stern notch as he could wiggle. All he had seen was his uncle’s gruffness. His coarse ways. And how he had resented him for it. Now a hotter grief clutched his throat: the certainty of his own unworthiness. His ingratitude! His sullen pouting childishness!

  Someone kicked his flank. It was Storval. ‘Hey,’ he urged. ‘Which way? What now, damn you?’

  He wiped his sleeve across his burning eyes. ‘Hug the north shore,’ he answered, his voice thick. ‘There should be … settlements there.’

  Storval – he still could not bring himself to think of the man as captain – simply grunted and turned away.

  Reuth watched him go. The first settlement they reached – he’d be gone.

  * * *

  Stones rattled from a switchback trail down a steep ravine as a file of silent figures descended in the night. At its base they spread out upon a narrow cleft of dirt to regard the amazing sight ahead: a deep chasm spanned by a construction of bones lashed and hooked into a bridge. None spoke; they seemed to be waiting.

  The ground before the bridge shifted. Ancient stained bones emerged, shook off the dry dirt. A titanic entity of bone slowly straightened from the stony ground. Last of all came a colossal battered dragon skull that it set upon its broad neck with skeletal hands.

  A faint blue flame flickered to life deep within the sockets of the skull as the entity regarded the eerily silent figures – who studied him in turn.

  ‘I am Yrkki,’ the giant boomed. ‘And you, most of all, certainly may not pass.’

  The foremost of the travellers strode closer. Passing clouds allowed the moonlight to shine upon this one, revealing him to be wrapped in ragged leathers, a fur cloak at one shoulder, his sockets empty and his lips curled back from grinning teeth stained the colour of wet dead leaves. ‘I am Gor’eth of the Kerluhm T’lan Imass,’ he announced. ‘And we have no quarrel with you.’

  ‘That is true,’ the giant rumbled. ‘Yet I have a claim upon you.’

  ‘We are newly wakened after an ages-long sleep. We seek the north. Stand aside, ancient spirit, and you may continue your guardianship.’

  ‘My guardianship – my custodianship – is of this bridge. Long have I awaited your arrival, T’lan. When I was set here ages ago to ward this passage my price was but one request.’

  Gor’eth shifted, his skeletal hand slipping to the worn grip of the stone blade that hung at his pelvis. ‘And that was?’

  Yrkki stretched his wide arms to encompass the cleft. ‘The bones of the T’lan Imass for my bridge!’

  Gor’eth rolled to avoid an immense hand that flattened the ground he stood upon. His fellows surged forward. Flint and chalcedony weapons slashed the fat mammoth legs Yrkki stood upon. Bone chips flew. A swatting hand knocked Imass aside to land shattering among rocks. Gor’eth swung his two-handed blade of milky flint, severing one clutching hand of bones. Imass charged. They levered stone spearheads into the vertebrae of the giant’s exposed spine.

  Yrkki roared and crushed a handful with a descending blow then swept the rest aside. But more of the warriors gathered to encircle him and he could not defend himself on all sides.

  More stone-headed spears thrust at the joints of the naked vertebrae, and levered. Yrkki roared his panic and spun. A rock-shattering crack sounded and the vertebrae parted. The giant tottered in two directions. The enormous bones came crashing down upon the remaining T’lan Imass.

  Gor’eth righted himself and approached to kick through the wreckage. He stopped before the fallen dragon skull and regarded the faint azure flame still guttering within its sockets. ‘Your masters have not been kind to you, Yrkki.’

  ‘Omtose Phellack has withdrawn,’ came a faint breath. ‘That is true. But as a spirit of the earth, I sense its stirring. I tell you, the ice shall once again claim these lands.’

  Gor’eth extended a finger that was no more than flanges sheathed in cured leather flesh. He traced a suture where it ran in a jagged line between the rises of the orbital ridges of the dragon skull’s sockets. Then he gripped his stone weapon in both fists and brought it high up overhead to swing it crashing down upon the skull, splitting it into fragments.

  He turned to his gathered brethren. ‘Let us go.’

  The file of silent figures climbed a trail that led to a bare rock ridge. Behind them, spanning its dark gap, the trellis-like bridge groaned and tilted ponderously from side to side. Thundering cracking and popping split its length and sections fell, toppling, to disappear into the depths. After one immense shudder, the remaining structure collapsed in an impact that shook the ground the Imass stood upon and brought a small avalanche of loose rock and gravel tumbling down the slope.

  Making the crest of the ridge, Gor’eth paused, glanced back down into the murk of the valley. A great billowing cloud of dust obscured the site where the bridge once stood. He returned his attention to the north, then studied his own skeletal hands.

  Another Imass joined him. This one’s skull bore a hideous crack that revealed withered fibrous remains within. ‘I sense our brothers and sisters to the west.’

  ‘Yes, Sholas. While we must yet walk.’

  ‘Tellann lies beyond our reach – as yet.’

  Gor’esh lowered his hands. ‘Those broken must thus remain.’

  ‘They will re-join us – eventually.’

  The tendons of Gor’esh’s neck creaked as he nodded his agreement. ‘Yes, Sholas. Eventually. As before.’

  They started down the slope to where the grade shallowed and a forest of
thin spruce boles gripped the bare talus.

  CHAPTER X

  ON HIS THIRD day descending into the valleys and ridges of the Bain Holding, Orman spotted something strange in a meadow of waving tall green grasses far below: the single figure of a large man running. But ponderously, awkwardly so. And, breaking from the cover of a nearby treeline, a pursuing party of some ten men. Orman froze in his sliding descent down a steep scree slope. He shaded his one good eye. He might be mistaken, what with his different vision now, but that shambling figure practically had the appearance of a bear running on two legs.

  He charged down the slope. He skittered and slid, kicked up a great fan of tumbling gravel and rocks. These he leapt in greater and greater jumps until an ankle turned on a loose rock and he joined the minor landslide as one more object making its way in the inevitable rush, rolling and tumbling, down to the rocky base. As the hissing wash of stones slowed he jumped up and cleared the mass of boulders awaiting him, rolled, and leapt up to continue running.

  He drew his hatchets as he ran. He jumped fallen logs, or attempted to, as he still was not used to his differing vision and fell a few times. Standing, damning the irreversible loss, he shouldered through dense thickets then burst forth on to the meadow. The roars of battle-joy he heard from over a nearby gentle rise confirmed his suspicions, and he charged.

  From the crest he saw Old Bear himself below, surrounded by spearmen. The man held a body in front of him and this he raised in both arms over his head and threw upon a spearman, then charged. The ring flinched, men backpedalling. Old Bear batted the glinting spearheads aside.

  Orman was spotted and the ring eased back into a line, facing the two of them. He charged in headlong. He took one prodding spear on the notch of his bearded hatchet and yanked the haft aside, then smashed his blade into the nook where shoulder met neck and half decapitated the man. A spear thrust at him from his blind side, appearing from nowhere, and he was rocked by the surprise. He had only an instant to realize what a disadvantage he now possessed and took to bobbing his head from side to side. He successfully knocked aside two more thrusts.