3 Weaver of Shadow (2 page)

He looked at his comrades for support. Kormak could see the way this was going to play out unless he did something. He was a stranger. They were scared of their shadows and drunk. Violence was in the air. He did not mind. Violence was something he understood.

“Is that so?”Kormak raised himself off the stool and walked over. He could see the calculations being made by drunken minds. He was a very big man, carrying a sword, he was sober and he was not afraid.

The man looked at his dagger. It was sitting beside his half-full wooden platter, smeared with grease; he had been using it to eat. Kormak followed his gaze. The others moved their chairs away from the table. He looked at them and smiled. He could tell by the way several of them paled that it was not a reassuring smile.

“You really think you can kill all five of them,” said a gravelly voice from the door. It was calm and reassuring and had a slight note of curiosity in it, as if the owner was genuinely interested in knowing the answer.

“Before you can pull the trigger on that crossbow you are carrying.”

“And then you would come for me?”

“Not unless you give me reason to.”

“That seems fair.” The speaker came into view. He was tall, broad-shouldered, silver-haired. His skin was leathery but he carried himself like a man twenty years younger than he was. The crossbow in his hand was pointed at Jaethro.

“I have half a mind to let him do just that,” the newcomer said conversationally. “If you idiots are dumb enough to pick a fight with a Guardian, you deserve everything you get.”

“I’m not scared of him,” said the drunk. He did not sound scared.

“You should be,” said the newcomer. “I’ve seen one of his kind kill a bull orc with his bare hands. And, in the unlikely event you could kill him, two more just as big and just as mean will come looking for you and they will not be gentle before they slaughter you. But that’s not a problem that’s going to arise, since I am telling you to keep your mouths shut and not cause any trouble.”

“You the sheriff?” Kormak asked. The man nodded amiably.

“Heard you were looking for me. Any particular reason?”

“Yes but this is not the place to discuss it.”

“You’d better come with me then.” He looked at the drunks, smiled affably and said, “Try and keep yourselves out of trouble, boys. Goodnight Jaethro. Goodnight Bertram.”

CHAPTER TWO

“How did you know I had a crossbow and how did you know I would not shoot you,” the sheriff asked. He stretched his legs in front of the fire, raised his goblet as if inspecting it for smudges.

Kormak looked round the shack while he considered his answer. In the lamp-light, it looked like a neat place but austere. A bed, a shelf of religious books, an Elder Sign on the wall. A bow hung on some brackets, a well-used longsword too. Quivers of arrows hung from nails. A fletcher’s kit lay on a small table under the window. “I saw your shadow on the wall when you opened the door, Grogan, and I recognised your voice.”

“It’s been a long time,” said the sheriff. “Must be twenty years at least.”

“Not since the Orc War.”

“That was a rough time. Unless I miss my guess, times are getting rough again.”

“The woods not quite the blessed haven of peace and plenty you remembered?” Kormak let a note of irony show in his voice.

“They never were, Guardian. I was a long way from home and sick of killing. I built this place up in my mind as something worth fighting for. You need something, don’t you?”

Kormak nodded.

“You still don’t say much.”

“It is good to see you.”

“You too. Even though your sort don’t usually show up unless there is trouble.”

“My sort?”

“Don’t give me that sour look. I know what you do. It’s not all heroic battles against the man-flesh eaters. You here about the Blight? It’s growing, I know. I figured sooner or later someone would show up to investigate…or take advantage of it.”

Kormak looked around the sheriff’s bare cabin. “I thought you were coming back to marry the girl from the next steading.”

“I did. She died. The babies too. Breakbone fever took them all.” There was a world of pain in Grogan’s flat tone.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” He wanted to change the subject as much as Kormak. “You ever going to or are you just going to sit there with that slow-witted look on your face.”

“A month ago I was in Westergate,” said Kormak. “I met a man selling Shadow-corrupted bloodroot. He told me about another man, who, after some persuasion, told me it had come from here.”

“I can imagine the kind of persuasion,” Grogan said. He did not sound approving.

“Bloodroot is bad enough but the stuff that grows only in Shadowblights is worse, far worse. I came west into the Settlements. Sure enough, I find a Blight.”

“I sent a message to Master Graydon at your Order’s house in Westergate months ago. No one came…till now. I thought they had forgotten all about the matter. Seems I was wrong.”

“No one told me that,” said Kormak. Sudden silence filled the room.

“Maybe the message went astray. Runners are not always reliable.” Kormak nodded slowly. Grogan tilted his head to one side.

“You thinking something else?”

Kormak shook his head. Even if he was wondering if someone had been bribed to look the other way, he was not going to say so. That was Order business and not to be discussed with outsiders.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“The Shadowblight?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to see for myself how bad it is and decide what needs to be done.”

“On your own?”

Kormak shrugged.

“You picked a bad time for it. The woods are crawling with elves, and they are not friendly. Never seen anything like it in my lifetime. Folks are saying there will be war along the border before this business is done, and they are most likely right.”

“Is that why you have a naked elf hanging outside the gate?”

Grogan looked embarrassed. “Not my idea but the Council wanted it done and it did not seem worth fighting them about. The elf was dead anyway so he raised no objections.”

“They won’t like it, will they, the elves? I always heard they wanted their bodies returned to the Earth.”

“They do, Kormak. But maybe not these ones, these days. There’s something different about the Mayasha now, has been since the Weaver came.”

“Weaver?”

“A priestess, a shaman, a prophet, whatever. Since she showed up the elves have taken to getting themselves spider tattooed and taking pot shots at the locals. They make off with local kids, sometimes adults as well. It’s a bad business, slaving. They’ve got themselves some nasty pets as well.”

“Pets?”

“Spiders, big ones, use them like hunting dogs. I’ve heard tales they use the venom for rituals. Low dosage is hallucinogenic. Some of the local boys have tried it.” Kormak just looked at him.

“They get bored and they’ll try anything once. They are wild lads. You remember what we were like when we were young.”

“I did not go trying spider venom just on the off-chance it might get me high.”

“Maybe not. But they knew the elves were doing it though so they tried it.”

“How did they know?”

“Don’t know for sure but I can guess. Men meet elves in the woods or they did until recently. It does not always end with bows drawn.”

“This change that came over the elves, did it happen at the same time as the Shadowblight started to spread?”

“That thought has struck me as well but I can’t make it fit. The elves started going strange a ways before the woods started to rot, on this side of the river at least. Of course, you never saw too many on this side of the river anyway. The settlers drove them out.”

“It could have started earlier deeper in the forest, blights take time to spread.”

“Some of the locals claim that the Weaver was responsible for the Blight, with her magic and her evil god.”

“I am not saying they are wrong. I am just trying to understand what happened here. When your neighbours go bad and a Blight appears at the same time, it’s usually safe to assume it’s not a coincidence.”

“What will happen if it keeps spreading?”

“Things will change. People will go to the bad. There will be physical changes: in the woods, in the beasts, in the people. It won’t be pretty. In the worst places, the dead won’t stay down unless they are burned.”

“The Settlements will have to be abandoned, won’t they?”

“Most likely, at the very least.”

“Lot of people round here won’t like that. They’ve poured their sweat and their blood into this land. Their fathers and mothers before them, too.”

“It’s better than death and worse than death.”

“You are not cheering me up, Kormak. We’ve got the Weaver stirring up the elves to bad craziness and now you’re telling me the Blight is going to drive us all out anyway.”

“I did not make the world, Grogan. I am sorry to be the bringer of bad news though.”

“Anything we can do to stop it?”

“Usually when things have gone this far, the only thing that can be done with a Shadowblight is to burn it out, cleanse the land with fire and salt and the sword.”

“A Burning? Your Order can call those, can’t it?”

“If anyone listens, yes. We don’t have the influence we once had but I think in this case, if it’s as bad as it seems, the nobility will listen. The ones on the border, at least.”

“Not the ones fighting in the civil war though.”

“Times of turmoil are always bad. When men are disunited the Shadow grows in strength.”

For the first time Grogan looked scared. “You think it’s out there in the forest, the Shadow or its minions.”

“Yes. It is making its presence felt in the world. That’s what blights are, or so the scholars say, a manifestation of the Shadow in our world.”

“They draw the bad ones, don’t they? I heard there’s something in them that whispers in men’s sleep.”

“Any whispers in yours? You are close enough.”

“Sleep like a baby. At least when I take enough whiskey. Speaking of which…” He raised the flask, offered it to Kormak. The Guardian put his hand over the beaker. One drink was normally his limit. He needed to keep his wits about him.

“I am wondering about the bloodroot,” said Kormak.

“We get a few who go out into the woods to harvest herbs. I would not put it past some of them to take bloodroot, black lotus and the nastier spectral mushrooms. You can make a small fortune selling that stuff to the right people. Or rather the wrong ones. I would have thought this civil war would have put a dent in the trade but no.”

“Mages use the stuff,” said Kormak, “and every ambitious noble in Taurea is doing his best to get a mage as a bannerman.”

“And bloodroot is a perk of the job?”

“It makes a sorcerer very powerful… among other things. In the long run it twists the mind, drives them mad. It’s why no few of them fall to the Shadow. They get addicted to the stuff and it changes something in them.”

Kormak produced the green-fletched arrow he has been carrying in his kit since his encounter with the walking dead man. He put it on the table. “Ever seen anything like this?”

Grogan picked it up and turned it over in his hands, inspecting the markings closely. “It’s a Shadow-killer. The runes show the maker was Kayoga Nation. The light-green fletching say the owner is Speardancer sept. Where did you get this? The Kayoga hunting grounds are about a score of leagues northwest of here. It’s all Mayasha land round here, starts on the far side of the river.”

“I pulled it from a corpse that was getting ready to rise on the edge of the Blight. I met an elf-woman who was carrying its siblings in her quiver. She pointed one at me.”

Grogan’s eyes widened. “You’ve met our ghost then…”

“Ghost?”

“Green-haired elf woman, face tattoos in camouflage pattern. She’s been coming and going through the Settlements for months. Some of the woods runners claimed to have seen her. Most of them think she’s got something to do with raids and the slavers. They’ve made a few attempts to catch her but she always slips away.”

“You always told me it was folly trying to catch an elf in a forest.”

“It can be done, Guardian, but it takes skill rare among men.”

“You could do it if you had to.”

“Maybe but I’ve had better things to do these last few months, keeping the peace in town, calming the Council, trying to organise a defence against these raids, looking for the lost in the woods. I’ve bigger things to worry about than some elf girl who may or may not exist.”

“She exists.”

“If you say so I don’t doubt it. But most of the reports have come from people I would not believe if their trouser fronts were wet and they told me they had pissed themselves. You think she may have something to do with the Blight?”

Kormak shook his head. “I think she was just warning me to leave the dead man alone. She had already pinned him to a tree and her arrows would probably have kept him there.”

Grogan’s eyes narrowed. “I wonder what she’s up to then.”

He tilted his head to one side. “What’s wrong?” Kormak asked. He felt something himself. It was too still, and a small voice was niggling at his consciousness, warning him to be ready. Listening to that voice had saved his life many times in the past.

“I don’t know. Thought I heard something. I think I am going to make a round of the walls. Care to come with me?”

Before Kormak could reply the temple gongs started an irregular peal of alarm. Screams split the night. Grogan calmly walked over to the wall, took down the huge long bow and started stringing it. When he finished he strapped on the sword and took up a couple of quivers of arrows. All his movements were methodical, unhurried but swift. Kormak remembered him behaving exactly the same way during the darkest moments of the Orc War.

“We’d best make that sweep now,” he said. “The village is under attack.”

Kormak glanced out through the doorway. He peered round it, not wanting to be silhouetted against the opening by the lantern light.

Shadowy figures moved through the night. They were taller and thinner than human and they carried long spears whose points, deliberately dulled, did not glitter in the moonlight. Around them, at their feet, dog-sized things with glittering eyes scuttled. Spiders, he thought, very big ones.