3 Weaver of Shadow
WEAVER OF SHADOW
Copyright © William King 2013
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CHAPTER ONE
GREEN-FLETCHED ARROWS crucified the corpse against the trunk of the ancient oak. Columns of light broke through the canopy of leaves overhead and dappled the forest floor. The undergrowth rustled although there was no wind.
Kormak dismounted and walked towards the body. A big man with greying black hair, he moved with the wary readiness of one who knows he is being watched. A dwarf-forged longsword, the sign of his calling, was scabbarded on his back.
This part of the forest had been blighted by the Shadow. The signs were everywhere; in the mad eyes of the diseased ravens sitting on the trees, in the mould-covered leaves of the newly grown bushes, in the mangy look of the few small animals visible. The stink of corruption underlay the scent of pine. Blotched fungus strewed the ground.
Mad the carrion birds might have been but even they had not touched the corpse. This close Kormak could see the greyish peeling skin and catch a whiff of the odd stench. Worms were eating through the flesh.
In life the man had been almost as tall as Kormak, and he had carried considerably more weight. Kormak inspected the body, noticing the leather forester’s jacket and trousers and the moccasins that covered the dead man’s feet. This was a local then. He had got lost in the wrong part of the forest, that was sure.
Kormak reached out and touched one of the arrows, running his finger along the wood. The shaft had been carved with runes in ancient inhuman script. The workmanship was beautiful. The magic in it made the flesh of his hand tingle. He took a grip as if to pull it out.
“I would not do that if I were you, stranger,” said a voice from behind him. Kormak turned and saw the woman. She was tall and slender, whipcord lean. Her hair was green as her eyes, and flowed back past her pointed ears. Her skin was the brown of healthy bark. Odd blotched patterns, intended to let her blend in to the shadowy undergrowth, marked her high-cheek-boned face. They matched the patterns on her tunic and britches. The bow she held in her hand was steady and the arrow was aimed directly at him. It was green-fletched. “Not unless you want to join him.”
Kormak looked back at the dead man. “Did you do this?”
“I doubt he is your clan-brother, man of the north. You cannot claim you have blood-debt.”
“Leaving a corpse unburned in a Shadowblight is an unclean thing.”
She showed very white teeth. There was nothing friendly about her smile. “These are unclean times.”
The limbs of the dead man started to move. Stinking air wheezed from his corrupted lungs. A groan emerged from his lips. His greyish tongue moved slug-like over his dried-out lips. Tears of thick, black blood dripped from his eyes.
“Did you do this?”
“I have no quarrel with you, stranger. Do you seek one with me?”
“Not unless you seek to prevent me performing my duty.”
There was a creaking noise as the dead man tried to work his hand free of the wood to which it was pinned. Kormak took his own hand off the arrow but the noise continued.
His sword cleared its sheath. Skin sizzled as he took the dead man’s head off. There was a smell of spoiled meat burning. The head started moving on the ground, propelling itself along with its jaw. He brought his blade down shattering the skull. It parted as if rotten. He drove his sword into the corpse’s heart and left it there long enough to cleanse the body of evil magic. He looked around and saw that the woman was gone, just as he had known she would be.
He shrugged, cleaned his blade, sheathed it and went on his way. He had business in these blighted woods but it was not with the elves.
A dead elf hung from a gallows outside the village of Green Oak. Birds had pecked at the flesh. The skin was bruised and broken. From a distance the elf looked human enough, but up close the differences were more obvious. The body was taller and leaner than that of a man, the skull longer and narrower, the features finer. The ears were pointed and lobeless. This elf was naked. A tattoo depicting a webbed pattern covered half his shaved skull. A long top-knot was the only hair there. Other tattoos depicting stylised spiders had been worked on his stomach, his buttocks and legs.
The warden at the open gate saw Kormak looking at the body and walked up, pike held in his hand. He was a middle aged man with rheumy suspicious eyes. A large horn hung round his neck for summoning aid in case of trouble. “Bastard elves,” he said and spat. From the gate-tower, a man with a longbow watched them both.
Kormak looked at the warden. “The tattoos mean anything?”
“That he was one of the Weaver’s people, Spider Guard maybe. He was spotted scouting the edge of the village. Hengist caught him with a lucky sling shot. Normally you never see the bastards till you fall in one of their traps or they fill you full of poisoned arrows.”
“You going to cut him down?”
“You an elf lover?”
“You’re on the edge of a Shadowblight here,” Kormak said. “You don’t want to leave bodies unburned for too long.”
“You talk like a priest but you don’t look like one.”
“I am a Guardian, of the Order of the Dawn.”
“Ah, a wizard hunter!” Kormak was surprised to be recognised. His Order was often held to be a legend in these dark times. In many places people thought they no longer existed or were just a storyteller’s tale to start with. In other places, the stories concerning them were dark and not always entirely untrue.
“I uphold the Law. If wizards break it I hunt them down.”
“You hunt monsters as well, don’t you? Plenty of work for you here — we got elves and spiders and night-gangers and ghosts. We’ve got manticores and serpent kings and…”
“I saw another body today, a man’s body,” Kormak said, to cut off the litany. “Pinned to a tree with rune-carved arrows. It was set up on the edge of the Blight. It was ready to walk.” Looking at the hanging corpse he decided it was probably best not to mention the elf woman.
The man took a step away, then gestured at the hanging corpse. “Maybe the Forest Children did that. We use their corpses as warning signs. They do the same.”
“I’ve never heard of elves claiming blighted lands.”
The watchman shrugged as if to say it was no business of his what the elves got up to.
Kormak gestured at the dangling body. “ A warning— is that what this is?”
“It’s certainly not to beautify the village now, is it?”
“I guess not.”
“You going in or did you just come here to look at the dead elves?”
“There’s an inn here or so I am told.”
“You were told right.”
“And there’s a sheriff.”
“That there is.”
“Then I am going in, if you have no objections.”
“None at all. You would not want to be out in the woods once night comes. You might become a corpse yourself. We’ve had a lot of trouble round here at night. With the elves.” The watchmen was eying the edge of the forest nervously now. He clearly was not too comfortable standing so close to the shadows of the wood’s edge as the sun was starting to set.
“I am not surprised if you leave them warnings like that,” said Kormak as he rode through the gate.
Green Oak was bigger than he had expected it to be and more crowded with people. The streets were muddy and the houses made from wood, with Elder Signs carved on gables and doorposts. The folk themselves were garbed in leather and coarse cloth. A lot of people, even the women and children, carried bows and they looked as if they knew how to use them. They were on the frontier here and they knew it. The New Settlements lay right along the western border of Taurea, a slab cut out of the Greatwood by humans, ripped from the hands of the elder race that had preceded them. This was as far west as Sunlander civilisation had got in this part of the world, a place where a number of peasants and freemen had come to make a new start out from under the watchful gaze of the nobles.
As he walked a number of eyes tracked him. He was a stranger here, and his weapons and his armour made him conspicuous. Shopkeepers sized him up as if he might have silver to spend. A sleepy-eyed whore smiled at him from the verandah of a large and elaborate house. It was late afternoon and she had just risen to be about her business.
In the central square of the village the austere lines of a Solar temple rose. It was built entirely from wood but was just as imposing as the stone buildings further east. People came and went, some to pray, some to make the Sunset offering. He entered and knelt before the carved wooden altar and offered up a prayer that he was not sure would be answered. While a novice watched silently, he placed his scabbarded blade on the altar where it would catch the sunbeams filtering in through the crystal windows in the roof. The runes on the sheath caught fire as he asked the Sun’s blessing, made an Elder Sign over his heart and strode out to find an inn for the night.
The Royal Oak tavern was long and low and comfortable. The roof was thatched. A fire burned in the common room. It looked as if it was never allowed to go out. Kormak saw to the stabling of his horse and then went to talk to the innkeeper. Bertram was a short, heavy-set man with a woebegone look.
“Business bad?” Kormak asked.
The innkeeper shrugged. “Not so many traders now with the Young Princes at war. Lot of refugees but they don’t have much and they mostly keep their own company.”
“Trouble with the elves?”
“War drums have been beating in the Spider Groves. They say that the Weaver has stirred the Mayasha up, turned them against men. Shadows lengthen, sir, shadows lengthen.” His face grew even sadder, his moustache drooped even more but then he seemed to remember that gloom was bad for business and made an attempt to smile. Somehow it just made him look sadder. “It’ll get better. It always does.” He did not sound very convincing.
Kormak surveyed the common room. There were a couple of men in pilgrims’ robes, doubtless off to preach to the elves about the virtues of the Holy Sun. There were leather-garbed men in soft moccasins, wood rangers most like. A large group of them banged a table drunkenly, calling for more ale. A blowsy-looking barmaid served them. She caught Kormak looking at her and gave him a smile that lit up her face.
“You come in along the Old Road, stranger?” Bertram asked.
Kormak nodded.
“Not so many do, since the Blight started growing. Mostly they go round and that takes them through elf land. I reckon that’s what gets the elves riled up. They don’t like trespassers.”
“They don’t like men,” shouted the largest of the woodsmen, a cropped haired bravo with a cauliflower ear and a broken nose. “They’ve painted on their war tattoos. They won’t rest till we’re driven out of the Settlements.”
“Maybe so, Jaethro,” said Bertram. His manner was conciliatory. “Maybe so.”
One of the drunk men shouted. “We should burn the pointy-eared bastards out,” he said. His companions, rough-looking men, nodded agreement.
“Burn the bloody forest down more like,” the innkeeper muttered, not quite loud enough to be heard. The drunks looked at Kormak. They had hatchets in their belts and knives in their boots.
“Man carries a sword ought to know how to use it,” said Jaethro. Kormak took a sip from his drink, looked him up and down and said, “I agree.”
“I would have thought any man who could really use a sword would be in the central provinces, selling his services to the nobles, taking sides in the bloody civil war.”
“It’s not my war,” Kormak said.
“No. You’re not a Sunlander, are you?”
“Aquilean,” Kormak said. He used a bored neutral tone. This was a conversation he had a lot in his travels. His black hair and his savage, scarred face stated all too clearly he was not a Sunlander.
“Thieves and reavers, the lot of you,” said the drunk. “You should all be strung up as well.”
