The Iron Ghost (58 page)

‘We swore an oath,’ she said, her face still. ‘Not to kill again.’

‘I release you from it.’

‘To be a knight,’ she said slowly, ‘is also to protect the weak. To save those who need saving.’

Sebastian took a deep breath. ‘Listen, you must make your own decisions. You mustn’t mindlessly obey me just because I am your father.’ His eyes flickered to King Aristees. ‘But I will ask you to help me, as a friend, to rescue my friend.’

‘We will help you, Father,’ she looked at him, her yellow eyes steady and without mercy, ‘gladly.’

‘Then let’s bring them a nightmare on the sunrise.’

Dallen lifted his head wearily to look at the first glimmers of violet light spilling across the snowy lands to the east. His father’s soldiers had left him alone for the moment, and he sat in the middle of their camp, his arms tied behind his back and his knees in the dirt, while his captors gathered around a cold-light to share out that morning’s breakfast of raw fish wrapped in leaves. King Aristees himself was standing at the edge of the ring of statues, talking to a few of the wyvern riders they had with them – the Diamond Tail squad, judging from the geometric patterns picked out in white leather on their harnesses. Dallen recognised Odissin, leader of the squad, standing next to his father, her face pinched and solemn. In better days, she and Dallen had raced against each other, good-naturedly calling out threats and jibes into the wind as their beasts belted across the sky. Now she was careful not to make eye contact with him, instead keeping as close to his father as she could.
She’s unsettled by the situation,
thought Dallen,
so she’s sticking to what she knows: obey the king
. The wyverns were rousing themselves, he noticed, pushing up their long snouts and sniffing at the brisk morning air.

Someone slapped him on the back, slightly too hard to be friendly, and Dallen pitched forward.

‘Not falling asleep on us are you, Dallen? You’ve a busy day on the sunrise.’

Dallen looked up into the grinning face of Nestor, a distant cousin. With Dallen removed from the hierarchy, Nestor’s branch of the family looked to gain power.

‘You could try not to look quite so pleased with yourself,’ replied Dallen through swollen lips, ignoring the way they stung as he talked. ‘It’s hardly a princely attitude.’

Nestor’s grin flickered and faded.

‘And I suppose a proper prince disobeys orders, and gets his soldiers killed. Is that right?’ Nestor leaned down close to Dallen so that when he spoke again, spitting the words like poison, he coated the prince in a fine rain of spittle. ‘I suppose a proper prince likes warmling cock?’

Dallen gritted his teeth and summoned the Cold instinctively, but Nestor just leaned down lazily and struck him hard across the face. Dallen rocked backwards, his head ringing. ‘Enough of that. Your tricks won’t save you now.’

Nestor stalked off, leaving Dallen to probe at the fresh cut on his lip with his tongue. He thought again of Nuava, wondering what had happened to the Skald girl. The group who had gone after her had come back empty handed, he knew that much, but she had run directly into the darkest part of the forest, with no provisions and no weapons. No one would know where she was. And on the heels of this, he thought of Sebastian, who had gone into that cursed city with his friends and not come out. As much as he had longed for the world outside the Frozen Steps, it seemed that it was destined to break his heart.

The sky was the deep purple of early dawn now, the stars slowly fading out of view as the silvery light of the sun stole their luminance. The scrubby land that spread out below the statues was still deeply shadowed in places, and Dallen found that his eyes were drawn to it. For a few moments, he forgot the men and women around him as he stared down at the snow and rocks below them. Had he spotted movement then? Was someone down there?

He looked to the wyverns. Their sense of smell was powerful, enough for the Narhl to use them to hunt down deer or the fleet-footed goats of the far north, and if there was anything approaching they should have caught the scent. But the animals showed no sense of alarm. One of them was up already, stretching its long, pale blue tail behind it as its rider started the day by rubbing its shiny body down with handfuls of clean snow. The other three wyverns were stirring too, and as he watched, one of them lifted its head and looked back down the hill. Not alarmed, not yet, but there was something.

‘Hoy,’ he called to the nearest soldier, a thickset woman with green lichen in her eyebrows. ‘How many do you have on watch? And where?’

The woman frowned at him, casually passing a spear from hand to hand. ‘I’m not supposed to talk to you.’

‘We are very exposed up here,’ he said. He was thinking of Joah Demonsworn, who had appeared out of nowhere and slaughtered his troop. Of the terrible stone and metal monster that had torn its way out of the earth. ‘This is a bad place to make camp.’

The woman lowered her eyes.

‘I’m sorry, your highness, but the King has been very clear.’ She looked uncomfortable, as Odissin did. ‘You are to be treated as a prisoner.’

Dallen turned away from her, biting down a frustrated retort, and that was when he saw death coming for them, fast and silent. A woman was running up the hill towards the statues, a sword in each hand. Her skin was pale green and her long white hair streamed out behind her like a flag. She bellowed no war cry, and there was a look of serene concentration on her face. Her eyes were yellow and full of murder.

‘Watch out!’

But they were so fast. All at once lots of women were streaking up the hill, and then they were over the summit and amongst them. The Narhl soldiers were taken completely by surprise, most of them without their weapons, many still eating their breakfast.

The women were unnaturally quick, whirling and diving and lunging without appearing to need to think about it. Their reactions were instantaneous; Dallen saw one Narhl soldier, faster than the rest, fling his ice-spear at one of the green women, but, rather than shying away, she leapt towards the spear, smacking it from its dangerous arc with one blow of her sword so that it clattered harmlessly against the nearest statue, and using the momentum of her leap she turned and brought her other sword down across the Narhl soldier’s neck. Dallen saw his blood spray crimson in the dawn light, and then he was down.

‘Kill them!’ his father was bellowing, ‘Kill them all!’ The king had a hold of his axe and was charging in a frenzy, but the green women were too fast, simply dancing out of his way. All around him, Narhl soldiers were falling, screaming in the dirt, bleeding out. Dallen scrambled awkwardly to his feet, stumbling backwards as a man with his chest torn open collapsed in front of him.

‘Someone untie my bonds!’ he cried, but even if they had wanted to, the Narhl soldiers had no chance to free him; they were falling fast now, and the smell of blood was overpowering. The woman with the green lichen in her eyebrows staggered past him, one hand pressed to her neck, her eyes wide and glassy. The woman who had stabbed her pushed her easily onto the ground and glanced up at Dallen, and nodded once before heading back into the fray.

What is going on?
‘Stop, please!’

He saw his father beset on all sides by three of the green warriors, and he had dropped his axe in favour of a pair of curved blades. King Aristees was famed throughout the Frozen Steps as a legendary fighter but Dallen could see that his father was struggling. Soon, they would put him down too.

‘Wyverns, to me!’

The big lizards were confused, cowering back against the stones away from these newcomers, but each of them turned towards his call, long snouts snuffling the air.

‘To your squad!’ he cried. ‘Protect the squad!’

The biggest wyvern, Odissin’s own, curled like a snake, jaws yawning open to reveal rows of shining white teeth. It made to strike at a nearby attacker, but a man appeared from behind the nearest statue, a man with long black hair and broad shoulders. Dallen was so surprised to see Sebastian that for a few moments he didn’t recognise him, and then the big knight placed a hand on the wyvern’s flank and immediately it coiled back in on itself, hiding its long head under its own tail. The other wyverns followed suit, drawing together as though frightened or confused.

‘Sebastian?’

One of the women approached him – her white hair was cut very short – and in desperation he summoned the Cold. He saw her blink with surprise as the temperature around them plummeted, and her eyebrows and hair were suddenly rimmed with frost. Another second and her blade gained an icy coating.

‘I will freeze your blood in its veins, monster.’

‘Dallen, stop!’

Sebastian left the wyverns, who were still mewling like pups, and jogged over. He placed a hand on the woman’s arm.

‘They’re on your side, Dallen.’ He stepped over the bodies like they weren’t there. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Am I all right?’ said Dallen, weakly. It really was Sebastian; his long black hair was tied back in its customary braid, and his blue eyes were narrowed against the cold. Dallen could see how he was looking at him; making note of every bruise, every cut. When Dallen didn’t elaborate, Sebastian turned to gesture at the female warriors. King Aristees was now on his knees in the dirt, a smear of blood on his dirty white beard.

‘These are . . . my friends, I suppose. The brood sisters. It’s a bit complicated to explain, actually; remind me to tell you the story some time.’ He smiled wanly. ‘This one here you just tried to freeze is Havoc, and this is Ephemeral, their leader.’

Another one of the women stepped forward. Her hair was tied back in a braid like Sebastian’s, and she was watching Dallen closely.

‘Why –’ Dallen shook his head. ‘Why have you done this?’

‘Why?’ Sebastian looked utterly confused for a moment. ‘Because they had taken you prisoner. They were beating you, killing you slowly. Frith saw it with his seeing spell.’ He nodded to the woman called Havoc, who circled Dallen and cut his bonds with a quick stroke of her knife. ‘I couldn’t just leave you here.’

‘So instead you come here with these . . .’ he gestured to the green-skinned soldiers, lost for words – ‘with whatever these creatures are, and you kill my people?’

Sebastian said nothing at all for some time. He was breathing hard. Now that the fighting was over, the dawn light seemed to fill the space between the statues like liquid gold. Dallen could see it reflected on the shining white hair of the warrior women, and in the pools of blood already being absorbed into the dark earth. The wyverns still cowered, the sunlight turning their shining skins to brittle crystal.

‘
They
were killing
you
,’ said Sebastian eventually. ‘I could not just stand by and let them do that.’

‘Why not?’ Dallen raised his hands once, and dropped them. ‘I had accepted it. It was the justice I deserved for getting my squad killed. My father was too merciful. And now it seems that I am responsible for even more deaths.’

Sebastian took a step towards him, then seemed to think the better of it.

‘I could not leave you here,’ he said again. ‘Wydrin is dead, and I could not lose you too.’

Dallen frowned. Despite everything, he had liked the mouthy red-headed sell-sword.

‘What will you do now, Sir Sebastian?’ he said, noting how the big knight winced at the use of that particular honorific. ‘Kill my father in front of me too?’

Sebastian shook his head tersely. While they had been talking, the brood sisters, as Sebastian called them, had gathered the last of the living Narhl together and made them kneel next to their king by the largest statue. There were six of them left.

‘Let’s see what King Aristees has to say for himself,’ said Sebastian. ‘And then I expect we’ll work it out from there.’

The old man glared up at them as they approached. Had he ever been bested in battle before? Seen his soldiers torn to pieces around him? Dallen didn’t believe so.

‘King Aristees,’ said Sebastian evenly. ‘It seems you are my prisoner now.’

‘Aye, well. Just goes to show that I should have killed you on the spot. My axe thirsted for your blood, and I denied it. Not a mistake I’ll be making again, you can be sure of that.’

‘Oh, I’m absolutely sure of it, your majesty.’

Aristees actually chuckled at this. ‘Heh. Well. Shall we get down to business, warmling scum?’

‘Business?’ Sebastian tipped his head to one side. ‘What business could we possibly have?’

‘You came back for my son, didn’t you? That’s what you want, isn’t it? Well, he has always been a wrong ’un, and you’re welcome to him. He won’t live long in your own lands, of course, eating your poisoned food and sweltering around your fires. But you can have him. I require three of your snake women here, and then you can go.’

For a few moments, everyone was silent.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Sebastian eventually.

‘I don’t know where you found them, but I would certainly like to know. I’ve never seen such ruthless fighters.’ King Aristees grinned up at them, revealing yellowed teeth. ‘I saw one of them, there, tear out Nestor’s throat with her
teeth
.’ He barked laughter. ‘They are cold-blooded and merciless, like us. I shall make one my wife. Imagine the sons I shall have!’

‘Father,’ cut in Dallen, ‘what in all the frozen wastes—’

‘It will be our greatest legacy!’ boomed Aristees. He seemed utterly unconcerned by the carnage around him, or how close he’d come to death. There was a strange light in his eyes. ‘No more weak sons who crave the warmth of unnatural appetites, only worthy successors to my throne, with blood on their teeth and claws.’

‘I do not understand, Father,’ said the one Sebastian had named as Ephemeral. She was standing with her swords still drawn and was peering down at King Aristees in great confusion. ‘Does he wish to make us his queen?’

Sebastian ran a hand over his face wearily. ‘We’re going to need to have a long talk.’

Frith sat cross-legged in his room, the Edenier trap nestled on a rug in front of him. It seemed to hum with its own dark energy, so close to being complete now. He reached up and absently wiped the sweat from his brow. It was mid-morning and the temperature inside the inn was stifling.