Mordraud, Book One (2 page)

He often got muddled up with his senses.

“Yes, black cliffs. Do you like it?”

“
It’s great! Thanks, Uncle!”

“
Now go to your mother. I know she’s made some sweet bread. I want to talk to your father for a while. We’ll all have dinner together later.”

Beril ran off twiddling the
spinning top between his fingers, and shut the outhouse door behind him.

Gwern
and his brother Dunwich stared at each other in a tense moment of silence.

“
He’s grown a lot. How old is he?” Gwern began, almost lost in thought.

“
Twelve,” replied Dunwich.

“
Has it been that long?”

H
e nodded slowly. He watched Gwern’s taut face anxiously. Their roles seemed to have reversed. Gwern was as tall as him even if he was slighter. Wrinkles on his forehead, and mildly thinning hair of a mousy colour streaked with a dirty white. The impression was that of a boy who’d grown and aged too quickly. His neck and his temples near his grey eyes still showed the knotted waxen scars from where the Flux had spread through his flesh to save him. He’d almost died, that day on the cliff-edge. He’d never fully recovered. He walked with a vague limp. His voice had become hoarse and laboured. But more than anything else, his gaze had changed profoundly. Cold and critical. With cruel overtones.

Dunwich
, instead, had aged little. Twenty years had passed, hardly leaving a mark. A line or two and a few more grey hairs, but he was still as tall and athletic as before. His expression had mellowed. He no longer glanced furtively about as if always ready to unsheathe his sword. And he spoke less, in quieter tones. He looked like Gwern’s younger brother – not the other way round.

“
My time really seems to be flowing faster than yours, Dunwich.”

“
It’s the same for Beril,” he replied. “At his age, I looked much younger than him. Yet, he should have little or no Khartian blood in his veins.”

Gwern
nodded slowly, with a squint smile. He really had changed, his brother mused. Not even the slightest hint of the boy he’d shared that tragedy with at Cambria. Defiant, startlingly more cynical. He spoke in whispers and strained half-smiles. With grey eyes examining reality as if he saw something else, with fewer yet more details. The Flux’s gaze placed over his own, thought Dunwich.

He
’d become a badly aged man. Perhaps because he’d been living on the road for twenty years, Dunwich told himself sadly. Gwern hadn’t settled anywhere since then. Just travelling and more travelling. Dunwich didn’t envy him at all. His brother was always slightly tense when he knocked on their door. As if they might not want to listen to what he’d seen while moving around
the worlds
.

“
When was the last time you went anywhere?” Gwern asked.

“
A few years ago. We want to stay here a while. Make a home, you know...”

“
A home, yes...” he murmured. “You always had an excellent memory, didn’t you, brother? You’ve rebuilt it just as it was back then.”

“
Don’t you like it?”

“
Yes, it’s lovely... Exactly the way I remember it,” Gwern answered, in a flat distant tone.

“
Come with me, I want to show you something.”

His
brother opened the outhouse door and had Gwern follow him into the wood. The younger man suddenly stopped in his tracks. He’d realised where they were heading.

“
Don’t you want to?”

Gwern
nodded and walked at his side, looking at the earth, his fists clenching and relaxing towards the ground. Flux drool filtered between his tense fingers.

“
Yes, show me.”

They reached a large dry trunk. Around it a glade with
tiny red meadow flowers. His brother halted in front of a wooden statue set on a stone pedestal. It portrayed a woman bowed over a child. He was weeping tearlessly. She was stroking his cheek with a loving gaze.

“
You gave him a grave in the end. But not one for our father. You did the right thing,” Gwern muttered.

“
At least he can be with his mother now. Even though he’s not actually buried here. Didn’t he deserve that?”

“
Yes, it was a kind thought.”

They stood in silence meditating on the statue.
Eglade consoling a dark-haired boy. They looked very alike. His body hadn’t been found but Dunwich liked to picture him together with her. When the eldest brother had come back after many years, and he’d found himself standing before a charred clearing where their childhood home had once been, he gathered up his father’s remains and buried him even further away, with nothing to mark his grave among the scrub. He’d finally left his mother alone with her son.

Gwern
didn’t want to remember those years. Neither of them did.

It had all started back then, when they were still children.

“It’s been twenty years since Mordraud’s death,” uttered Gwern, with a sigh lacking in emotion.

“
Yes, it has,” replied Dunwich, in a quiet voice.

...I knew I was born to this world to find something

still concealed from man
’s eyes.

I
look at the sea while seated at the bow of my small boat,

and
it all seems so vast and, at the same time, so near.

Does a Limit exist
, beyond the horizon?

Is there a Limit for men, one nobody
has yet found?

But
how can the invisible be found?

How can the end of an infinite road be reached?

“Another one down.”

The bow
string vibrated in pleasing harmony with the last breath of the Khartiar at the foot of the tree. He’d seen him trudge in the forest, shabby and filthier than a beast, as he dragged himself through the twisted roots, stumbling when his cracked armour caught in the branches.

Slow. Unaware. Hateful beyond bearing.

“One Khartiar less,” Aris hissed in satisfaction as he notched yet another arrow. He had a full quiver, an almost new bottle of Aniria and, above all, a great desire to clean things up a bit.

The hunt had just begun
.

“
There must have been a battle beyond the crest of the hill,” said Memion, who was waiting on a nearby branch, bow in hand. Aris had been faster, as he always was. But Memion wasn’t holding a grudge – there’d be other good chances. What really counted was to make sure the Khartiars didn’t find the village.

“
We should send someone to check there are no survivors on the field,” replied Aris. Two fellow fighters leapt down from the trees at once and ran silently off into the forest. Not one foe was to make it home that night, he thought, savouring the idea.

“
The Khartiars are like rats.”

“
That’s right. They all need to be wiped out, otherwise they’ll start breeding again as soon as they can...” Memion replied, chuckling. An old Aelian saying. Once before they’d made the mistake of tolerating the Khartiar presence, and they were still paying the price. They’d have to pay forever: the Aelians’ history had been at its twilight for too long now.

“
After an endless night, a sunless dawn...” Aris mumbled, sadly. Some rustling suddenly caught his attention. He raised his bow, pulled back the string, but Memion was swifter than him. An arrow sliced through the darkness, embedding itself in the forehead of a Khartiar in an even worse state than the previous one. He no longer had his breastplate, and a sword blade had left a broad bloody smile gaping between his bottom ribs. He was losing a hideous amount of blood. Almost an act of mercy, reflected Aris in annoyance.

There should be no mercy for the
Khartiars. None at all.

“
Nice shot.”

Memion
thanked him with a nod. Aris was younger than him, but already very good with his bow. There was just one difference.

It was the first time he
’d hunted the Khartiars.

There
’d been no shortage of opportunities for taking up arms since the war had started. Like during a now remote past, when the Aelians had tried to seize back what had once been theirs. It was the early years after the Endless Night. Shaken and bewildered, and without a trace of group organisation, the Aelians had hurled themselves randomly at the emerging Khartiar world. Too late, and too few of them. The Endless Night hadn’t much weakened those fragile bastards, while his people had been literally exterminated by the darkness, and the few survivors never fully recovered from what had happened.

The day the sun
had died beyond the horizon.

The ancient fathers
did nothing to prevent the Khartiars from taking possession of their abandoned cities, their ministries and their squares. And so, the onerous task of embarking on a hapless recapture was left to their descendents. The elders watched the fall of the Empire with the drained desire and blind eyes of those who had seen things too painful to describe or narrate. All failed, Aris mulled. The attempts to claim back Cambria. Their pride downtrodden and buried in those boggy forests. That night hadn’t been talked about for centuries. Almost all the details had been entirely forgotten. Cambiryon alone still insisted on wheedling an answer out of the elders, Aris reminded himself with an amused smirk. That arrogant noble blood.

‘We tried it many years ago... But the Khartiars are like rats...’ reflected Aris, as he slackened the tension on the string. He was just a grandson of that wretched generation of Aelians, and he held no memory of what his people had suffered when the Khartiars had laid the final stone on any intentions they might have for retaliation. Yet the hatred had survived the centuries.

Undisturbed
. And swelled out of all proportion.

He shouldn
’t tire himself without reason. He wanted to go home that night with his eyes steeped in blood and his ears ringing with death throes.

“
Aris, look, down there... Two more,” Memion whispered to him.

“
Two together?! Where?”

“
Behind that oak.”

Aris l
icked the feathers of his arrow, gauged its weight, then loaded it again on the strand of horsehair.

“
One’s yours... The other’s mine.”

***

Varno was staring at the back of the young man not far from him. He must have been about his age. He didn’t remember him, he hadn’t seen him on the field and the man hadn’t been near him when the cavalry charged their ranks. His face was contorted in pain and rage, white as a handful of snow. Blood mingled with earth was flowing from the mangled stump that had once been his right arm.

For a moment – just one – he
’d truly believed in him. On foot against a horseman. Armed with merely a blunt dagger. One of the few soldiers left in his regiment.

He
’d been wrong.

His cries
faded away only when a spear tip punctured his forehead. Yet silence did not return. The earth itself seemed to groan with hundreds of mouths gaping towards the skies.

Varno
could recall little of the battle. He and his comrades had been put in the front ranks, as always. The place awarded by right to mercenaries – there was no use protesting. The clash between the two fronts had been sudden and brutal, an overwhelming tidal wave. He’d seen that cursed horseman head for him, stare at him from behind the helmet visor, take aim and strike him full on like a target in a joust. He’d felt the rocks scrape his back, and the skies took the place of the ground, until a tree brought his flight to a halt. The lance had gone in above his shoulder-strap, shattering his collar-bone. The blow hadn’t killed him.

He
’d been lucky.

The
rider left the lance where it was after unsuccessfully tugging at it a couple of times. It was embedded deep in the tree trunk, leaving him hanging there, like a rag put out to dry. Varno hadn’t even pulled out his sword. And to think he’d paid good money for it, he considered in weary irony.

He should have heeded his
father, when he’d told him he’d be better off tilling the fields and finding himself a good woman to settle down with, and have children, a roof over their heads and food to eat. Wise words. But his village was small, and the towns too expensive and too far away. And not even the shadow of available women. Varno wanted to make something of himself, but he hadn’t the faintest idea where to start. So he decided to taste life as a mercenary – it seemed like a great idea.

He
’d been a complete idiot.

“
I don’t want to die...”

He
’d followed the battle nailed to the tree by the horseman’s lance. He’d even had the satisfaction of watching the man shoot off his horse, and chuckled when its hooves had smashed his face in. In the end, Varno’s life had lasted longer than his executioner’s.

H
e was about to die for nothing, he realised. It had been little more than a scuffle, an unimportant clash within the Empire’s far-reaching strategy. Yet that morning, as he advanced with the new mercenary troops, he’d deluded himself that he was finally taking part in a ground-breaking event; a line on a resplendent page of history.

N
othing more than a skirmish far from the front.

‘
In Cambria, they’ll wipe the floor with a flag or two, they’ll correct a line of ink marking the front, then they’ll turn their attentions elsewhere... to a nice roast with a rich sauce probably,’ he mused, making an effort not to laugh. His shoulder hurt like torture. His right arm – the good one – hung weakly at his side. The armour was too heavy, and the mud beneath him had swallowed up his legs.

They
’d lost. His first battle, his first time outside that sodding village.

He
’d lost.

“
Oh, what shite...”

The enemy horsemen were clearing the field of the few survivors. Just the slightly wounded – the
moribund and the maimed were left there to die. Strange, thought Varno. Elder’s men were in a great hurry to leave.

“
Can you move?”

Varno
painfully turned his head and felt his heart leap for joy. Dear old Nedrio. That blessed barrel of lard had managed to get through it all. His forehead was thick with clotted blood, an ear had been shaved off, and even his hallmark belly didn’t seem in too good shape.

But he was alive, and at his side
.

“
I think... I can...”

“
Hold on!”

Nedrio
glanced at the nearest rider and waited for him to trot away. The field was teeming with casualties, and it would be some time before they, on the edge of the forest, were reached. The friend grabbed the spear with both hands at the right moment and tugged with all his might.

And he had plenty of might.
Before becoming a mercenary, he’d been a blacksmith. Nedrio was the only one in the village who’d left with him. Varno had never felt so much love for a man.

The pain he experienced when the spear was pulled out was wo
rse than countless deaths all together.

“
Come on, let’s make a getaway!” growled Nedrio as he tossed the lance aside, but Varno couldn’t stop screaming. He sounded like a pig being flayed alive. An enemy soldier turned towards them. The blacksmith’s hand was already on his sword, but was amazed to see the man turn his horse round and ride away.

It was their golden opportunity
.

“
Stop squealing and follow me!” bawled Nedrio, as he slapped him a couple of times. Stunned and delirious in pain, Varno clung onto him and together they went beyond the first rows of trees, soon disappearing into the dense darkness of the forest.

The sun had set
in a hurry. A few more moments and everything would be shrouded in obscurity.

“
Better... This way they won’t come after us...” muttered Nedrio as he wheezed in exertion. It was hard to move ahead through the intertwined branches and treacherous roots. Not a wisp of wind blew, nor could the slightest sound be heard.

The
forest was sleeping peacefully.

“
We’ve made it, my friend,” uttered Varno, coughing with rasping violence. There was blood in his breath. They’d been walking for longer than he could remember. He must have hit the ground when the horseman’s charge pinned him to the tree – he was a heap of bruised and broken bones.

He was in a really bad way. Perhaps too bad.

“You have to hold out until dawn, then we can head for the camp... It should be south of here. The important thing is to keep away from Cambrinn’s mountains...” Nedrio replied with a taut smile. “We’ll cross this valley and hide somewhere. I might still have a few slices of dried meat on me. Be careful of the ravine – it’s barely visible.”

“
Thanks... You saved my life...”

“
You can do the same for me next time, numbskull!” he answered.

“
Tha...”

There was no
time to finish his sentence.

The feathers of an
arrow suddenly appeared on Varno’s thigh. The bone had exploded into a thousand pieces. He hadn’t had time to hear the ping of the string nor the hiss of the shaft.

Red feathers, like blood.
And yellow, like molten gold.

Varno
glanced at Nedrio. He saw him clutch his stomach in silence, eyes bulging from their sockets. He’d been hit too. Varno looked up, at the treetops. He noticed nothing unusual at first. Just foliage fluttering in the breeze against a coal-black sky.

And then, at last, he saw them. They sprang down from the branches, without
a sound.

He had no idea who, or what, they could be.

***

“
You didn’t kill him, Aris.”