The Iron Ghost (10 page)

It was too late. Sebastian watched as the man’s eyes flickered from him to the figures standing behind him. The man took a stumbling step backwards, almost falling straight back down onto his rear end.

‘What are you?’

Sebastian held his hands out, palms up. ‘Just travellers, passing through. We mean no harm.’

‘Denia, you come back here right now.’

The girl looked back up to her father with an expression of deepest puzzlement and slight affront.

‘I just want an extra practice, Da, and you know I like to do it down by the lake.’

‘Denia!’ The man bellowed her name, his red cheeks now showing spots of white at the tops. ‘Get away from them RIGHT NOW.’

The girl blinked, glancing up at the shifting crowd behind Sebastian, and he saw her eyes grow wide. In a second she was screaming, apparently rooted to the spot. Her small wooden flute fell into the grass.

‘Denia! Denia!’

The portly man came down the hill rapidly, still keeping his eye on Sebastian and the brood, and then from behind him another figure appeared; he was much younger, perhaps eighteen and broad across the shoulders. He had dark curls too and Sebastian would have put money on this being Denia’s older brother.
Gods be cursed.

On hearing his sister’s screams, the young man came pelting down the slope at them, already brandishing what looked like a rusty sword.

‘Hold fast!’ Sebastian turned to the brood, trying to look all of them in the face at once. ‘Do nothing, do you hear me?’

If the boy had come brandishing nothing more than his fists, they wouldn’t have reacted – or at least that was what Sebastian told himself. Two of the brood sisters leapt forward, their hoods falling back; the first to reach him knocked the sword from his hand, the other grabbed him as though to kiss him, and sunk her teeth into his neck instead.

‘Stand down!’ Sebastian drew his own sword, despair thick at the back of his throat. ‘I swear by the god-peak if you do not—’

The young man’s blood fell on the grass in a hot shower. Sebastian grabbed the shoulder of the brood sister and yanked her back; her eyes, when they turned to him, were wide and yellow, the pupils shrunk down to narrow slits –
Tidal,
he thought belatedly,
that’s her name
– but now the girl was running. As one, he felt the attention of the brood sisters latch on to her fleeing shape.

‘Stop! Don’t run!’

The father was standing, his mouth hanging open as his son’s blood ran into the dirt. The girl was already some distance down the slope, her scarlet hood flapping wildly. The brood sister who had disarmed the young man had already joined the chase, her white hair streaming behind her.

‘Damn you all!’

Sebastian set off after them, pounding down the grass with his heart in his throat, but another shape quickly overtook him. At first he thought it was another brood sister joining the hunt, but then he saw the familiar swinging shape of Ephemeral’s braid. Within seconds she had caught up with her sister, who, thankfully, had yet to catch the girl, and tackled her forcefully to the ground. There was a chorus of hissing and Sebastian arrived just as Ephemeral was threatening to tear her sister’s throat out. Denia was still running to the lake – so quickly, that Sebastian feared she would run straight into it.

‘I hope you are happy.’ Sebastian took a deep breath, and shook his head. ‘You may well have doomed us all.’ The brood sister on her back looked up at him and bared her teeth. He wasn’t very surprised to see it was the Second.

‘The human ran,’ she said. She was breathing hard. ‘It is prey.’

‘Not any more it’s not. Get up.’

Ephemeral eased her weight off and the Second scrambled to her feet, shooting her sister a poisonous look. Sebastian glanced up to where the rest of the brood army waited. The father still stood there, amazingly, looking punch drunk. He was swaying gently on his feet.

‘Isu be cursed,’ muttered Sebastian. He could feel a rage building inside him, a hot slither like a snake in the dark. ‘Any hope we had of travelling through this land without attracting attention has gone. And that boy –’ he turned to the Second, his hands grasping the pommel of his sword, too tight – ‘he could never have harmed you. Any of you.’

‘Father, what will we do?’ Ephemeral was watching the girl, who had made it to the shore of the lake and had fallen to her knees. ‘The humans will sound the alarm.’

‘We must kill them,’ said the Second. There was no hunger in her face now, no need for the hunt. Just a simple pragmatism. Sebastian wasn’t sure which he hated more. ‘The girl and her father, or we forfeit our own lives.’

‘No.’

Sebastian could feel Ephemeral looking at him. ‘No,’ he said again, ‘we’ve spilt more than enough blood today.’

With a heavy heart, he walked back up the slope. The bearded man had fallen at his son’s side now, cradling the boy’s head in his arms. He was shaking all over.

‘Get away from him,’ Sebastian snapped at the brood sisters, who were standing and watching the man’s grief with blank faces. He knelt by him and placed a hand on his shoulder, but the man just shook his head. His eyes were dry, and when he turned his face, Sebastian saw that it had lost all of its previous ruddy colour.

‘You must go to your daughter,’ he said in a low voice. ‘She is frightened. Take her home, and—’ He stopped, thinking of young Denia’s first lake-singing test. She wouldn’t take it now, of course. How many lives had they ruined just by walking this path? ‘Take her home. There is nothing I can say to repair what has been taken from you. But if I can help you one day, I will.’ The man looked at him, uncomprehending. ‘I am sorry.’

Sebastian stood up. Tidal, the brood sister who had torn out the young man’s throat, was standing at the very edge of the group. Her mouth and neck were red with rapidly drying blood, and she looked almost as lost as the man kneeling on the ground.

‘Move,’ he said, gesturing brusquely down the slope. ‘Quickly now. We’ll likely have a mob after us before the sun goes down.’

Much later, when the brood sisters were safely hidden away in a thicket of dark forest, Ephemeral came and stood with Sebastian while he kept watch at the edge of their camp. He had forbidden any fires, and she was little more than a light patch of gloom in the forest, her hair the brightest thing he could see.

‘Will we be safe?’

Sebastian laughed a little, although he had no humour in him. ‘Oh, we’re safe. It’s everyone else who’s not.’

Ephemeral nodded, as though she had expected this answer. ‘When one of us disobeyed Y’Ruen, she would kill us. There was never any question. But you have let Tidal live.’

Far off in the dark forest, an owl fluted its evening call. A moment later, another owl answered.

‘If I had killed Tidal, if I became her executioner, then I would be no better than Y’Ruen. I will not say I did not want to. For a moment I could have killed her, and the Second too, and I may not even have regretted it.’ Sebastian sighed. It was a freezing night, and he could feel his fingers growing numb through his gloves. The brood sisters did not like the cold, and many had complained about the lack of a fire on the coldest night they’d seen so far. ‘Ephemeral, I am responsible for you. That boy’s blood is as much on my hands as it is on Tidal’s. I can only try to stop it happening again.’

‘I did not like to see it,’ said Ephemeral. When he looked at her, she shrugged. ‘The boy dying. The screams of the girl. It was . . . unjust. There was no joy in it.’

Looking back into the darkness between the trees, Sebastian wondered if the alarm had been raised yet. The man would have eventually taken his daughter home, or perhaps more family members would have come out to find them. It might take some time to get any sense out of Denia or her father, but the words would come in the end, and then they would remember the stories of the army of monstrous green women who had marched across Creos and Relios, right up to the city of Baneswatch. The rumours that some had survived that terrible battle would be confirmed.

‘Why did they come with me, Ephemeral?’ he said, still looking into the darkness. ‘Why did these ones follow me? Plenty of your sisters wouldn’t.’

‘And they all died at Baneswatch,’ said Ephemeral. He looked at her, trying to gauge if her comment was as sardonic as it sounded, but it was impossible to make out her expression in the gloom. ‘My sisters are confused, and as alone as they have ever been. You are the only thing that makes sense to them, the only link their blood has left. The Second laid down her sword when she saw Mother torn through the sky, and the way forward has been lost to her.’

Sebastian shook his head. ‘If they cannot see a running human without thinking they must kill them, then we will never make it to the mountains.’

‘They will listen to you,’ said Ephemeral. ‘Mother’s voice has gone from their hearts and they are looking for a new one. You must give it to them.’

The next morning, Sebastian gathered them together in the weak grey light of dawn. Tidal was sitting on her haunches, still looking as though she expected a blow to fall any moment, while the Second stood at the back of the group with her arms crossed over her chest.

‘I will only say this to you once, and I hope that you will listen,’ said Sebastian. ‘If you want to continue living in this world, you must not take another human life. You must
not
.’ He looked around at them all; he saw fear there, and reluctance, and confusion, just as Ephemeral had said. ‘You must swear it to me. I can help you to learn about the world, and I can help you to live in it, but I must have this promise from you.’

There was a murmur of assent.

‘If you break this oath, I will not kill you.’ He looked down at Tidal, who was staring at the ground. ‘But I will cast you out, which will be as good as death. You are strong, yes, frighteningly strong, but alone you will be lost, and without your sisters at your side the humans you meet will bring you down eventually. They might need a mob to do it, but they will. If you can keep this oath, then we will make it to the sacred mountains and there we will have space and time to learn what you need to.’ He paused. Off to his left he saw Ephemeral, standing utterly still. ‘Do you swear it?’

After a few moments’ silence there was a chorus of assent. Some sounded more enthusiastic than others, but Sebastian was glad to note that every one of them took the oath, even the Second, who nodded once when he met her eyes. When it was done, he slung his pack over his back and ran a hand over his chin. He would need to shave again soon.

‘Good. And I swear to you that I will do what I can to give you a life here. I swear it by the god-peak.’

‘How does it feel?’

Wydrin came to a stop, shifting her legs around, trying to get comfortable. Beneath her the werken stood utterly still, its legs half buried in the sun-bright snow. She had tied a leather seat around its waist, which did something to cushion her behind, but even so, her rear end was already complaining. Ahead of her Bors sat astride his own mount, a werken shaped rather like an enormous bear, its shoulders broad and rounded.

‘It feels like my arse has gone to sleep for ever.’

Bors laughed. ‘You’ll get used to that. In Skaldshollow, most of us are riding werkens as soon as we can walk.’ He smiled. ‘My father used to take Nuava and me out on his werken and do circuits of the city wall. It was safer back then.’

‘What a fine collection of rock-hard bottoms you all must have.’ She caught up with Bors and they stood still for a moment, looking out over the snowy landscape. They were to the east of the quarry that split the ground above Skaldshollow, following a rarely used path that headed deep into the mountains. Below them, Wydrin could see men and women and werkens working in the pit. She could hear their voices on the cold air, the chilly chink of hammers on rock, and every now and then the soft
crump
of an explosion as they delved deeper into the mountain. ‘Safer?’

‘The Narhl attacks weren’t so frequent then.’ Bors tugged at his knot of hair, not quite looking at her. ‘My mother and father were both murdered by the Narhl just after Nuava’s fifth birthday. They used to be Edeian trackers. It was their job to look for new veins of Edeian out in the northern territories.’

‘I am sorry to hear that.’ Wydrin thought of her own brother lying in his cabin, half his body covered in burns after their deadly encounter with the dragon. Thanks to Frith’s magic, Jarath had survived, and that wasn’t something she’d forget in a hurry. ‘You and your sister are close, then?’

He nodded. ‘We lived with Tamlyn after that, and Nuava has flourished under her tutelage,’ he said reluctantly. ‘She will be a fine crafter one day.’ He paused, and shook himself. ‘Anyway, I meant how does it feel to be riding the werken?’ He smiled at her, his honest face lighting up. Wydrin smiled back. ‘I imagine it is quite strange for you.’

‘Well, you know,’ Wydrin leaned forward and urged her werken beyond Bors and his mount, dragging stone legs through powdery snow, ‘I was always quite useless with horses. Big, flighty creatures, altogether too nervous. They can tell when you’ve had a drink, did you know that? I was brought up on an island, you see, not much call for them. I spent more time on boats than on horseback. This, though,’ she patted the werken on the space between its arrow-like stone ears, ‘this is easier. It’s an extension of myself, like the dagger in my hand. I think about doing something, and the werken does it.’

Bors looked pleased. ‘I think you are a natural. You must have the mountains in your blood somewhere.’

‘Nah, that’s Sebastian.’ She looked down at the chip of green crystal nestled in her palm. It no longer hurt at all. ‘Although I suppose with this, now I do, in a way.’

They moved on further, following a rough trail almost lost under fresh drifts of snow, until the quarry was out of sight and in front of them was a shallow dip in the terrain. Dark trees lined the far side of it, and above them rose the face of the mountain proper.

‘Are you feeling up to a race?’ Bors’ bear-shaped werken rose up briefly on its hind legs, displaying stony paws, before thumping back into the snow. ‘First one down to the treeline buys a round of drinks.’