Mordraud, Book One (71 page)

Mordraud
bend towards the dark mass lurking in the shadows. A man’s head, attached to its body by a mere shred of bloody flesh. It hadn’t been dead more than a day. Less maybe. Mordraud kept his sword in his hand. Whoever was responsible for the slaughter might still be in the vicinity.

“
See any others?” he asked Saiden.

“
Everywhere,” he replied, glancing about. Instead, Mordraud could make out almost nothing, due to the fog. Saiden’s eyes were animated by an unsettling vibrancy. Black, yet also curiously
transparent
. Inside floated – or at least so it seemed to the young man – thin strands of light curling up in little fluid balls. What exactly was he seeing, he asked himself uncomfortably. ‘Death?’ he wondered.

He wasn
’t sure he wanted to know.

Mordraud turned round to signal to
Gwern to stand up and follow them. The boy had already done so, but hadn’t yet passed through the opening in the wall. He was waiting for his brother to give him the cue. He hadn’t managed to hold out lying there in anticipation, yet he hadn’t the vaguest idea of what he’d do if he had to fight. He didn’t know how to do anything. He hadn’t even managed to learn what Saiden had done to hear the resonance for the Long Winter.

“
Nobody here anymore?!” he asked, perplexed.

“
Seems not,” returned Mordraud, more confused than him.

“
What could have happened?!”

“
Eldain must have found out where the chanters were concealed...”

“
No, I don’t think so,” Saiden called, from inside the house. He was in the doorway, straddling an armour-clad corpse stretched out over another more slender one. Mordraud ran to him, leaving Gwern on the drive.

“
A Lance...” Mordraud exclaimed, releasing a sigh of relief within. If assailing the villa had been up to him, he’d have had to invent a rather more elaborate plan to avoid getting killed. Whoever had got there first had likely saved their lives.

“
The door was open,” muttered Saiden, smiling in surprise. “No signs of a barricade here. Nobody tried to break it down from inside. The chanters must have opened it of their own free will.”

“
And could that have happened?! They can’t have been so dumb...”

Saiden
turned the body over with a foot. An exceedingly burly good-looking man. Who’d died from a flame-burst square to his back. It had punctured his lungs, cauterising a perfectly circular gaping chasm.

“
Whoever it was attacked this place first identified himself as an ally. As a Lance... Or as many...”

“
Eldain would never give a similar order. Our lads just wouldn’t know how to behave,” confirmed Mordraud. Saiden nodded, lost in reasoning.

“
First they got in without fighting, then took control of the entrance and let the reinforcements in. That’s why the lawn is a carpet of butchery. But some chanters must have put up more of a struggle than envisaged...” Saiden pointed to the terrible wound. “Astounding! Cambria has damned itself on its own...”

“
Do you think it was someone...
from the inside
?!”

“
No, it’s unlikely,” answered a stunned Saiden. “I think it must have been a group from the people. When it comes to it, the situation here doesn’t seem any brighter than for you at the front.”

“
They haven’t got the snow!” Mordraud burst out in indignation.

“
But they do have the rain. And it’s just as bad for the fields, believe me...” Saiden replied, chortling alone. “The Emperor’s gone too far.”

“
We must check there are no more chanters at work,” blurted Gwern. Mordraud nodded and set off ahead of him down a long passage ending in a heavy security door. Saiden followed, hanging behind, scrutinising their backs. Still nothing new, he mused. ‘Pity... I’d hoped to unearth more.’

Mordraud
inspected the lock. It had been broken. Someone must have closed the door again after forcing it. He told the others to keep back, and prepared a kick. He started battering the door by hurling himself at it with all his might. In the end the hinges gave way, and he tumbled inside the great dark hall. All noise was muffled, stifled by the compact wool pinned to the walls. He could see nothing. He heard only a faint scraping of feet. His brother, he thought. Gwern approached him and helped him up. Saiden remained at a distance, in the doorway. His eyes shone white. He was able to perfectly detect every detail of the room, even if the curtains were pulled and the candles had burnt down to wide scarlet pools.

Somebody els
e was with them, bent over in a corner. A middle-aged man, with a flabby build and a pronounced receding hairline. On the floor, near him, were all the other choir members, sliced open and gutted. It was so dark the two brothers were still unaware they were encircled by mutilated bodies.

Saiden
did and said nothing.

“
Better open a window,” suggested Mordraud.

“
I’ll go...”

Gwern
stiffened at his brother’s side. They both clearly heard the first notes of a laboured, blood-laden melody. Mordraud put his arm round him and pulled him back. Saiden beamed in delight. The Cambrian chanter had hoisted himself onto his knees and was completing his brief harmony of death.

A bubble of white
fire burst from his hands and slammed into them.

“
Magnificent!” muttered Saiden, sheltering his face with his hands. The heat was unbelievable. And he wasn’t even mixed up in the resonance. Nonetheless he kept his eyes on the brothers. Mordraud, without uttering a word, had embraced Gwern and tipped him over towards the door. The fire blazed all around them, setting alight the wool on the walls. The blast cracked the window panes, which exploded, strewing the corpse-invaded sopping lawn with shards of glass.

What
Saiden saw went beyond all his centuries of experience.

The Flux
traced out what really happened. Myriads of strands of light suddenly shot out of Gwern’s chest, wrapping themselves right around the brothers, like a shield. The pair couldn’t see them and noticed nothing. The fire impacted with the Flux and was annihilated by its might. It was literally
devoured
, eaten up in a cloud of fluttering white sparks.

Mordraud
and Gwern flew against the charred wall, propelled by the fearsome blow between fireball and Flux shield.

“
Awesome... Absolutely awesome...” breathed Saiden.

The chanter was now on his feet. He was bleeding from his belly and face. He’d been wounded, probably fainted, and the attackers wouldn’t have noticed he was still alive. The noise Mordraud made to break in must have brought him round from his stupor. Saiden made the most of the moment. He glared hostilely at the chanter, and from his eyes slipped two lashes of light that coiled around the injured man’s neck. He was already attempting another chant, but the Flux inescapably strangled him. His hands clutched at thin air as they hopelessly endeavoured to seize the opalescent white twine.

A few seconds later,
Saiden poured a flood of light into him: it seeped through the pores of the chanter’s skin, his ears and his mouth gaping in a sneer of amazement. Then, before the two brothers could notice what he was up to, he released the Flux around the victim’s throat and the cords vanished.

The
chanter stood motionless. His eyes utterly devoid of all will. His skin taut and pale. He was still alive simply because it hadn’t had time to reach his heart. But he was just an unwitting illusion of blood and breath.

“
What happened?!” yelled Gwern, stunned by the impact. Mordraud failed to reply. He swivelled round suddenly and, thanks to the daylight filtering through the shattered windows, saw the chanter standing, menacingly, mouth open and ready to chant. Growling ferociously he pounced on him. He dragged the man to the ground and thrust his thumbs into his eyes. The other put up no resistance – didn’t even tense his muscles. Mordraud had all the time he wanted to ravage his face, digging his nails into his eyeballs and smashing his skull on the ground with brutal force. He didn’t even stop when there was nothing but cartilage and slack skin in his hands. Saiden had to forcefully pull him off the mangled body.

But
he didn’t succeed in keeping Mordraud still for long.

While
Gwern felt his own arms and neck in shock, astounded to still be alive, Mordraud seemed to have gone mad. He unsheathed his sword and began stabbing all the dead chanters. He ran them through, from the mouth, one by one. He smirked viciously as his sword sawed off the teeth and clenched jaws of the chanters scattered on the floor. He turned them over with a boot when they were face-down. Sometimes he ripped out his weapon with such force that part of the head chopped off by his steel blade rolled away.

“
I... hate you... YOU BASTARDS!”

“
That’s enough, Mordraud! Stop it!” yelled Gwern. Saiden stepped back again. He didn’t try to hinder him. He was more interested in observing what was happening. The Flux bundle in Gwern’s chest had incredibly shrunk. It had become minute, a teardrop of light feebly jolting behind his sternum. Both were unharmed – they hadn’t even been minimally grazed by the extreme heat and condensed flames of the harmony bubble.

It must have taken remarkable strain to withstand that
resonance, Saiden considered, rubbing his chin with a hand.

“
Mordraud!” Gwern shouted again. He grabbed his brother’s hand, but the soldier finished disfiguring the last body before listening to him. “We were frighteningly lucky, Gwern,” he panted, drenched in cold sweat and eyes wide in panic. “It missed us, otherwise we’d be dead now!”

“
Missed us?!” the boy burst out, stunned and confused. He’d had the distinct impression they’d been hit full on. It was the first time he’d come up against a war harmony. Mordraud had described how lethal they could be, but they’d both emerged unscathed.

“
It must have missed us – there’s no other explanation,” he reaffirmed. He ushered out a last kick at the first corpse within range, and only then did he slide his sword back into its casing, satisfied. “We’ll scout the house.
All of it.
We have to be certain nobody is left alive. No Cambrian must remain to chant in here again.”

Mordraud
ran towards the door. He bumped into Saiden and stopped, baffled. It was as if he’d forgotten he was there. Extraordinary, he considered. They were all still alive, after a blast as violent as that one.

“
Couldn’t you have done something to intervene?”

“
No, I noticed it just at the last instant. Are you both okay?” Saiden asked. His voice revealed not a shred of concern.

“
Yes... At least I think so...” Gwern answered, touching his arms again. He brushed his chest too – a movement that didn’t go unobserved by Saiden. The man smiled and bent down to look him straight in the eye.

“
Well done...” he murmured, with an amused grin. Mordraud gazed around, disoriented. Gwern too failed to work out what exactly his tutor meant. Why was he so pleased with him?

“
Well done for what?! We didn’t put a halt to the Long Winter! We don’t even know who did!” Mordraud blurted out.

“
Oh, that doesn’t matter... Well done just the same...” concluded Saiden, moving towards the room’s exit. They were through. They could return home now, he thought.

He
’d seen what he’d come to see.

***

Larois was stooping down to scoop up a bucketful of snow to melt on the stove. Her cold-chapped hands were excruciating, but it was the last of her worries. Her whole body was in tatters, exhausted by hunger and hardship. Her knees barely held her up now, and she was lucky the inn had been closed for months. She’d have been in no fit state to work. The wood had run out some time ago, and now just the stove stayed lit, thanks to some panelling she’d ripped off the walls in the tavern. She still had a couple of planks, three at most. A day or two more, and then she knew how it would end. One fine morning, she wouldn’t wake up. She began hoping the moment would come quickly. She could no longer drag on like that.

While
she cupped up the snow in her hands, Larois looked about. Eld was an open-air cemetery, an old burial place deserted in the countryside, forgotten by the whole world. No smoke rose from the chimneys, no voices of families around rich dinner tables wafted from the windows. The dead were no longer counted, and weren’t even buried. It required pointless effort. Each person’s turn would come sooner or later, and there was a shortage of people still with the strength for digging.

‘
Who knows how my boys are...’ she thought, bitterly. She hadn’t seen them for ages. She knew Mordraud was climbing the ranks in the army, and that he’d had a close brush with death a couple of times. Instead, she knew nothing of Gwern. The thought only deepened her black mood. She didn’t want to die alone. It was the worst thing that could happen to her. It was precisely as she was straining to recall the smiling face of her dear Gwern that her gaze happened to fall on the cracked stone steps leading up to her house.