Assail

CHAPTER IX

The land rose the farther north Kyle travelled. He had yet to find any open water. The grasses grew far taller and thicker here, attesting to rainfall, but the high spring clouds passed on south without pausing to disgorge any of their moisture here. He pushed through lush green growing shoots that brushed his thighs. Today, he knew, he had to find some source of water or tomorrow he might not have the strength to rise. As it was, he barely made any progress at all. His vision was blurry; he often had to pause to gather his wits to remain certain of his direction; and he had to stop himself from wandering here or there in a futile search for a pond or a stream.

Straight. Straight east of north was the way to go. Upland. Wandering in circles would be the death of him. Yet he was so thirsty — he might have passed right by a creek off to one side! He was just thinking that perhaps he really ought to search about for water before it was too late when he fell forward.

He lay thinking that he’d misstepped. But no, the ground fell away here into a depression, and, strangely, his hands felt cold where they pressed against the earth.

Cold … and damp. He dug at the thick mat of grass roots that covered the earth here. It was wet and frigid. He couldn’t tear through — he was too weak. On his knees now, he drew his blade and pushed it into the ground. Two-handed, he cut a triangle, then wearily, as carefully as he could manage, he resheathed the weapon. He gathered up a handful of the grass and heaved. He had to put all his weight into it, leaning back. It came in a ripping and tearing of roots and he fell on to his back.

It took a while for the dizziness to pass.

He crawled forward and sank his arms up to the elbows to dig at the cold earth beneath. He came up with a fist of hard dirt, frosty-white, and speckled with earth. It took him a while to understand what he was looking at: the very ground frozen solid. A knot of ice that must have resided here for years, perhaps for untold centuries. He thrust the entire ball into his mouth and held it there.

The pain was exquisite. His head numbed and ached. It felt as if that knot of frost had expanded to engulf his entire body. Something told him that if anyone from another region, another land, had tried what he had just so impetuously done they would have died. Something, some power, residing in this ancient ice would have overcome them.

Yet he felt somehow … rejuvenated. He stood, steady now on his feet, and lurched onward.

He entered a wide forest of tall, ancient conifers. Game was plentiful, yet he chose not to take the time to hunt. He contented himself with fish taken from a stream. The ground rose more steeply now.

He had just crossed another shallow steam of frigid glacial runoff when a crossbow bolt slammed into a tree on the shore next to him. He froze and turned.

Two men and one woman came pushing into the water from upstream. Two covered him while the third reloaded.

‘This is our claim!’ one fellow shouted.

The accent was unfamiliar to Kyle. He kept his arms wide. ‘It is none of my business,’ he said, ‘but I do not think this land belongs to you.’

‘You’re right,’ the woman answered as she drew near. ‘It is none of your business.’

The three were armoured alike in plain soft leathers sewn with bronze rings and lozenges. The swords and crossbows they carried appeared rather shabby and mass-produced.

‘What are you doing here?’ the first fellow asked.

Kyle motioned up to the distant ridgeline. ‘Just passing through.’

The three eyed one another, uneasy. The woman looked him up and down in obvious disapproval. ‘You don’t look like you’re too well equipped to take on the ice giants, stranger.’

‘Ice giants?’

The three laughed. ‘Just arrived, hey?’ the woman said. ‘Yeah. The locals call them the Icebloods.’

‘Ah. I see.’

‘You see what?’ the woman snapped, annoyed. ‘Anyway, you’re right about that moving on.’

The other two laughed again.

Hands up, Kyle dared a small gesture to the woman. ‘If you’ll forgive me … you don’t look much like prospectors yourselves.’

She glanced to her two partners — no more than hangers on, Kyle thought them. ‘That’s right. We’re no dirt-grubbers or sifters. The plan is to guard this stretch of creek. Then, when everything else has been tapped out …’ she shrugged, ‘we offer this virgin patch on auction to the highest bidder.’ The two men nodded, grinning. ‘We should make a dock each, hey boys?’

‘That’s right, Gleeda,’ one answered.

‘And what will you do with it?’ Kyle asked.

The woman screwed up her face. ‘Do with what?’

‘This … dock. All the money.’

‘Who the fuck cares? I’ll buy a house so big there’ll be rooms I never use. I’ll eat quail eggs and fucking bird liver all day.’

‘A life of luxury. Doing nothing.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So your goal is to do nothing with your life,’ Kyle affirmed. ‘I don’t know. Sounds … pathetic to me.’

The woman’s mouth turned down and she raised her crossbow. ‘For someone on the sharp end of three bolts, you’ve got a big mouth on you, fellow. Now, you can throw your life away, but it would be a shame to waste a fine-looking ivory-handled sword like you got there.’

Kyle glanced to the weapon at his side. ‘I wouldn’t touch this, if I were you.’

‘Shut up. Cover him, boys.’ Gleeda carefully reached in to pull the weapon from its sheath. ‘Damn, that looks sharp,’ she said, and, cradling her crossbow in her arm, she moved to touch her thumb to it.

Kyle tensed, readying himself.

The woman goggled at the naked slit where her thumb had been. She screamed.

Kyle rolled forward through the shallow wash to kick one fellow down. A crossbow thumped, releasing. No lancing pain stabbed him so he charged onward, pulling the second fellow’s crossbow down and smashing a fist across his jaw. He turned to Gleeda. She was fumbling to bring up her own weapon. A single leap and he snatched it away and turned it on her.

Gleeda glared her bloody rage. Then her gaze went to the blade lying on the naked gravel bed of the wash. It gleamed there like glowing ivory. ‘You’re … him,’ she half mouthed. ‘That fella.’ She backed away while squeezing her mangled hand. ‘Whiteblade …’

Kyle gestured them off with the crossbow. The three stumbled back across the creek. He picked up the blade and carefully resheathed it then edged away, weapon raised until he entered the woods. He jogged on for a time. Once he’d gone far enough he shot off the bolt and slammed the weapon against a tree to break it and threw it away.

Three days later, in a valley far higher above the dry prairie plateau, he knelt at a pond of run-off next to humps of shadowed snow. Beneath the snow rested a layer of deep sapphire ice thicker than his arm. It crackled and almost seemed to steam in the heat of the gathering spring.

He was kneeling to scoop up the frigid ice-water when a voice spoke, close and gruff: ‘You are bold.’

He held out his arms, turned, and was quite startled to find a near-giant standing directly behind him. The man must have possessed a good full third again in height over Kyle, though he knew he wasn’t all that tall to begin with. The fellow wore thick leathers and possessed a wild mane of mussed brown hair tied up with leather strips, and an equally wide and bushy beard that touched his chest. A sword hung on one hip, a long-hafted axe at the other. The fellow regarded him from within his nest of hair with something like an eager grin, as if hoping Kyle would go for his sword. He kept his arms wide. ‘I’m just passing through.’

The grin broadened on the man’s ruddy features and he scratched his scalp beneath his bunched and matted hair. ‘You pass through to what? To peak? You’ll not like it there, I think.’

‘I’m looking for someone.’

The expressive brows rose. ‘Oh-ho! Looking for someone! You have friends here, yes?’

‘Yes, in fact I might.’

The giant slapped Kyle’s side, nearly sending him tumbling into the pond. ‘Ho! You are funny little man! I give you chance. You go south now. Don’t come back.’

Kyle rubbed his ribs. ‘Do you know a man named Stalker? Badlands? Coots?’

The fellow dropped his grin. He edged backwards from Kyle. A hand went to the bearded axe at his side. ‘The Losts? Yes, I know.’

Losts? Kyle wondered. Well, that made sense. They called themselves the Lost Army. ‘Well … they named me Lost as well.’

‘Did they?’ the man rumbled. He threw his arms wide. ‘Cousin!’ He wrapped Kyle in a crushing hug and lifted him from the ground. Only when he set him down again could Kyle breathe once more. He leaned over, hands on knees, sucking in air.

‘I am Cull Heel!’ the fellow announced, his voice booming over the valley. ‘Come! You go with me to Greathall!’

Hardly able to talk, Kyle nodded. ‘Thank you, yes,’ he gasped. ‘Thank you.’

Cull set off upland. Kyle hurried after; the fellow set a fast pace with his great strides. ‘I know lowland ways,’ he was saying. ‘I travel. Sail as pirate. Work as mercenary. Much fighting, little coin. Wife not happy.’

‘I see.’

‘You?’

‘Oh — I was a mercenary as well. For a time.’

‘Same as Losts. They go too, I hear. They come back.’

It took some time for Kyle to realize that he’d been asked a question. ‘So they said.’

Cull grunted his understanding. ‘We go but we come back. Always. Cannot escape.’

‘Escape?’

By way of answer, the big fellow opened wide his arms as if to embrace the entire valley. ‘The land. The Holdings. We are one.’

‘Ah. I see.’

They climbed steeply for the rest of the day. Towards evening, Kyle was surprised by a shadowy figure awaiting them in the woods. Cull walked on, giving no clue that he’d seen the stranger. When they were quite close, Kyle cleared his throat and gestured ahead. ‘Someone’s there.’

Cull bunched his thick brows as if vexed. ‘Yes?’

‘Oh — so, a friend?’

‘No. No friend,’ the man answered darkly.

Closer, Kyle paused as he saw how the black trunks of the trees shone through the outline. Some sort of shade, or revenant. Cull walked on. He passed quite near to the tall wavering shape with its frayed tattered leathers and long unkempt hair, yet made no effort to acknowledge its presence.

‘There are trespassers on the Holding,’ the shape called after them.

Cull waved the back of his hand at the outline. ‘Yes, yes.’

‘You must deal with them!’

‘Certainly.’

As they walked on, Kyle following Cull who did not slow, the last thing the shade said was a murmured, ‘We are ashamed.’

Kyle decided not to ask what all that had been about.

They only stopped when Cull led him to what was an obvious campsite, complete with a lean-to of cut boughs and a ring of stones. The big fellow set to cutting wood with his bearded axe. Kyle followed his lead by gathering more wood. It was dark when Cull got the fire going by taking out a tinderbox and striking flint to iron over a bed of dried moss.

Once the fire was sure, the big fellow sat back. Overhead, the aurora was out in wide draping bands of green and yellow frilled in pink.

‘That was ancestor,’ Cull said, throwing another stick on to the fire and raising a great gust of sparks that flew up into the night. Kyle watched them rise on and on, as if they would join the aurora itself. He decided that Cull was talking about the shade. ‘Tell me to kill all trespassers.’ He poked a thin stick into the fire then pointed it at him. ‘Like you.’

‘Thank you for not killing me.’

The giant frowned at the glowing tip of the stick. ‘I have enough killing. Besides,’ he shrugged, ‘too many come.’ He eased himself back against a log. ‘Too many to kill.’

‘They are coming for the gold.’

The fellow swished the glowing tip through the air, making circles and snake-like lines. He seemed delighted by the designs. ‘Yes, the gold.’

‘Why don’t you just let them take it?’

‘Gold in the land. They take the land.’

He felt like a fool. ‘Yes. Sorry.’

‘I’m sorry for them.’

Kyle shook his head in amazement. ‘They are running you from your land and you are sorry for them?’

Cull continued swishing the stick. ‘Gold least important thing in land.’

‘Really? Then what is the most important?’

The fellow thought about this for a time. Frowning, he peered about at their forested surroundings, his brows crimping. Finally, a big infectious grin split his lips, and he offered, ‘Life.’

Kyle thought that a strange answer but decided he wouldn’t argue with his host. They slept then. For a time the blazing banners of the aurora kept him awake. It reminded him of Korel and the lights that glowed above the Strait of Storms. But they had been far fainter, more diffuse. Here they appeared so bright and low he thought he could pinch them between his fingers.

Over the next three days of climbing snow-patched slopes, Kyle decided that his host was very strange indeed. The man didn’t seem to think the way he did. At times he seemed a child in a giant’s body; at other times he was just plain odd. When Kyle remarked on the great rush of run-off streaming down the rock faces and the gathering summer, the man answered: ‘Sun not the enemy. Time the enemy.’

Another day Kyle found him standing very still and solemn as he appeared to be doing nothing more than studying the mossy forest floor before him. He stood with him for a time, but soon became bored and moved off to sit and rest for the unannounced, extended stop. Cull woke him with a gentle touch. Kyle started up, peered back to where the man had stood for so long. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Powerful ancestor fall there long ago,’ Cull answered, and started off.

Curious, Kyle crossed to the spot which appeared no different from any other patch of needle-strewn ground. Then he noticed how the dirt was darker here, far wetter than the surrounding earth. He knelt and brushed aside the leaf bracken and litter. Something gleamed amid the dirt. He dug deeper into the dark wet humus. A layer of it came away in a swath. Below gleamed a black smooth face of buried ice. Kyle flinched backward in shock and surprise. His hand throbbed, numb yet tingling. How like the Stormriders — but different. Theirs had been an alien cold, seemingly anathema to flesh and blood as he knew it. This was not so alien. Frigid, yes, but somehow far more comprehensible. Like … well, like a snow-capped mountain peak: formidable and inhospitable, but also majestic and awe-inspiring at the same time.

‘Little brother,’ Cull called, sounding far away.

Kyle shook his head and blinked to clear his vision, as if emerging from a dream. ‘Yes, sorry. Coming.’

Towards late afternoon, they exited the forest to push through the tall weeds and saplings of what had once been cleared land. Fields, Kyle decided, now abandoned — or neglected — to fall back to the forest from where they’d been taken. The fields climbed a rising slope that allowed a magnificent view of the haze-shrouded lowlands.

Cull led him to the burnt ruin of what once must have been a very long hall. Only the butt-ends of its huge logs had escaped the fire, many as broad in girth as a large shield. Its fieldstone foundation lay as a mute line of rock among the weeds. The Iceblood waved to the fallen shell. ‘Behold, Greathall.’

Kyle did not reply at once. He took a wondering breath. ‘Very … impressive …’

Studying the wreckage, Cull nodded his solemn agreement. ‘Yes. Very impressive.’ He motioned Kyle onward. ‘Come. We find wife.’ He led the way round the ruins to the rear. Here was a much more modest structure: a cabin of smaller logs, chinked, with a sod roof. Smoke curled from a roof-hole.

‘Ho! Wife!’ Cull boomed out.

A crash such as a dropped plate or bowl sounded from within. The door of adzed planks was thrust open. A woman of a scale to match Cull emerged, towering and broad, bearing an even greater tangle of wild unkempt auburn hair. She wore a tanned leather jerkin, trousers and moccasins, and a knife the size of a shortsword was sheathed at her side.

‘You!’ she called, glaring.

Cull raised his hands defensively. ‘Now, now …’

She started for him, a hand raised as if to clout him on the head. Cull backed away. Spying Kyle, the woman halted, surprised. ‘Who is this?’

‘He-’

‘A lowlander? You bring a lowlander here!’

‘I-’

‘Are you an even greater fool than everyone knows?’

‘We-’

She turned on Kyle. ‘What is your name?’

‘Ah, Kyle, ma’am. I don’t have to stay. I could just-’

‘Shut up.’ She thrust a finger at Cull. ‘Find the cows. They’ve wandered off again.’

Cull bowed low. ‘Yes, my chick.’ He headed off.

‘Why did you bring him?’ she called after him.

‘Because he is Lost!’ Cull shouted back, and laughed. He continued on, chortling to himself as he went.

The Iceblood woman now cast her sceptical eye to Kyle. ‘What did my fool of a husband mean, lost?’

Kyle cleared his throat. ‘Stalker and his brothers, ma’am. We were in the same mercenary outfit years ago. He made me a Lost.’

The woman grunted at this, eyed him up and down. ‘Hmph. I see it now. So, Stalker made you a Lost, did he?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Well, then. Better make yourself useful.’ She pointed to the trees behind the cabin. ‘There’s a cache back there. We might have a smoked haunch or two left. Bring one in.’

Kyle inclined his head. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Name’s Yullveig.’

He nodded again, ‘Yullveig.’

It took him some time to find the cache. It was a hut very high up in a tree. All the lower branches had been cut away. The ladder that led up to it consisted of staves of wood lashed to the trunk. They were fixed very far apart. After thrusting the haunch of venison into a burlap sack the only way he could manage the descent was to tie the sack to his belt.

He returned to the cabin and knocked on the timber jamb. Yullveig invited him in. The little furniture within — a table, chairs of lashed wood, and a bed — were all on a scale that made him feel an infant. It didn’t help that when she urged him to sit his feet barely touched the dirt floor.

‘I must apologize for Cull,’ she said as she minded the pot simmering over the stone hearth. The steam wafting from it smelled of parsnips.

‘Apologize? For what?’

The answer brought a small smile to her otherwise severe lips. ‘He fell climbing a cliff when he was a child.’ She tapped her head. ‘Never been the same since.’

‘Ah. I see.’

‘But he has a good heart,’ she said, adding, ‘Too good, his brothers said.’

Kyle peered about the rather cramped cabin. ‘There are just the two of you?’

‘A son and a daughter. Baran and Erta.’ She started slicing the haunch. ‘Cull left with two sons and returned with one. Not that I am complaining. He left at my urging.’ She pointed the knife at the remains of the Greathall. ‘In his absence the hall was burned and everyone killed by lowland raiders. Just the four of us now.’

‘Yet Cull won’t kill the trespassers.’

‘No. He says death does not erase death.’ She cast him a significant glance. ‘A view not popular here among the Holdings, you can imagine. Our son did not understand. Damned him as touched. He’s off fighting now and Erta with him. Defending the Holding.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Her gaze snapped to him. ‘Sorry? Why?’

‘That he did not understand your husband’s choice. I do.’

She nodded as she trimmed. ‘Yes. I see it in you. The blood-price.’

‘Blood-price?’ I owe no blood-price.’

The woman snorted, almost derisive. ‘You lowlanders and your fixation upon vengeance, vendetta, honour and debts owed.’ She waved the carving knife. ‘That is the cheapest and simplest of blood-prices. It is self-aggrandizing. Self-righteous. And self-defeating. No, I speak of the only real cost of blood that matters — the price it exacts from the one who spills it. I see that within you and I respect it.’

‘Yet there are those who think nothing of spilling blood.’

She nodded. ‘There will always be such. They are the enemies of order among people. They must prove their worthiness to enter into any accord. And if they fail …’ she shrugged, ‘someone must take it upon themselves to drive the dogs off.’

‘I think there are many dogs braying at the borders of your Holding, Yullveig.’

She laughed aloud at that. ‘I think you are right.’ She set a wooden bowl before him. It contained a splash of the boiled parsnips, slices of venison, and a portion of heavy dark bread.

‘Should we not wait for Cull?’

‘No. There is no telling when he might return — if at all. He comes and goes of his own pleasing. I am used to it. Indeed, it would gall me to have him here underfoot at all times.’

Kyle could not restrain himself any longer. He was famished, and tucked into the offering as if one of those exiled dogs himself. She watched him for a time, clearly taking pleasure from his appetite.

‘You wish to try to find Stalker Lost, yes?’

Kyle nodded, his mouth full.

Yullveig thought about this while she cleared up. ‘It will be difficult,’ she began, after a long silence. ‘The Losts are far to the east. You must cross all the surviving Holdings to reach them. You will probably be killed out of hand.’ She crossed her arms and stared down at him. ‘I suggest you return to the lowlands and journey east from there.’

Kyle could not keep from shaking his head. After coming all this way? ‘That will not be so easy either.’

‘Less dangerous than the Holdings, I think.’

‘Perhaps.’

Yullveig did not argue the point further. ‘Sleep here tonight. Rest. Tomorrow I will escort you to the edge of the Holdings. You can make your way from there.’

‘Well … thank you, Yullveig. I am grateful for your kindness.’ A thought occurred and he ventured a question. ‘Did you say surviving Holdings?’

‘Yes. Far more existed once. Larger Holdings covered the south. They extended down all the way to what you call the Bone Peninsula and the Dread Sea. I and my daughter Erta are from one such. The Fanyar, we were named. Gone now with the retreat of the cold and ice. Cull took us in when others would not.’

‘I am sorry, Yullveig. I did not know.’

She shrugged again. ‘Few do in this day and age.’

Kyle did not know what to say after that. Yullveig went to the rear of the cabin. ‘We have a few hides and blankets. You can sleep by the hearth.’

‘My thanks.’

‘Save your thanks till the morning — the nights are very cold up here.’

Kyle did not doubt her. And true enough, no matter how closely he crowded the stones of the hearth, no warmth seemed to reach him through the frigid bite of the night air.

In the morning, Yullveig had no hot tea or drink to offer. She handed over slices of the smoked venison wrapped in burlap, then collected an immense spear from next to the door and headed out. Kyle followed. They spoke little the entire time; Yullveig proved a far more sombre guide than her voluble husband. She struck a south-east route and four days’ hard journeying brought them to a stretch of forest that betrayed patches of recent clearing.

‘Homesteaders,’ she explained.

Kyle listened but heard no reports of further chopping, nor voices calling out. He wondered if Baran and Erta had been through recently.

‘You are on your own from here, cousin. Give our regards to the Losts.’

‘I shall. Give my thanks to Cull, won’t you?’

‘Yes. Fare you well. Oh,’ she gestured to his side, ‘I’d cover a weapon such as that if I were you.’

‘Ah — yes. I usually do. Goodbye.’

Yullveig turned and jogged off. She disappeared in what seemed an instant among the dark trunks of the spruce and pine. He thought there must be some sort of magic in how these Icebloods came and went so quietly and suddenly here within their Holdings.

He did indeed wrap the sword in leather before heading into the clearing. But he kept it at his side in case he had call to use it. He travelled easily down among the foothills; parties crossed his path now and then, but none challenged or harassed him. He supposed he looked too much like what he was: just another ragged fortune-hunter.

He met more and more gold-chasers the further he went. They were a friendly lot away from the actual bearing fields and stream beds. Some invited him to join them at their fires. They told tall tales of the difficulties of their passages north — and of the hard knocks and precious few rewards since. And every day Kyle listened for the mention of a fierce warrior-woman, a shieldmaiden. For most of the men and women he met hailed from nearby Genabackis, and would know her as such.

The trails that had been newly tramped out of the wilderness led him down to the shores of the Sea of Gold, and a rambling tent city its fortune-hunter founders named, ironically perhaps, Wrongway.

At a tent-tavern, he heard that a band of Malazan marauders had attacked and half burned the place to the ground. After this, the thug who ran the town, one Lying Gell, died of a mysterious knife-thrust and most of the gold-hunters decamped to join the crowd pressing the siege of the last independent local settlement, Mantle. The prospect of loot on hand, it seemed, was preferable to trying to track it down and dig it up. Kyle reflected that an invasion of fortune-hunters had now made the transition into a plain invasion. Inevitable, he supposed, when these rootless blades appeared to outnumber the locals by far.

‘Who are the leaders?’ he asked the crowded table.

It turned out the captains were from all over, though none were Malazan, given the recent attack — which everyone seemed to regard as some sort of betrayal. A betrayal of what, Kyle couldn’t quite understand. There was a Lether captain who called himself Marshal Teal; a number of ex-ship’s captains who’d kept their crews together, and a Genabackan troop pulled together by a woman who’d actually served in the north, under the Warlord Caladan Brood.

‘This woman,’ Kyle asked, ‘what’s her name?’

The fortune-hunters glanced to one another, uncertain. One fellow spoke up. ‘Don’t know her name,’ he offered. ‘Only know what they call her.’

‘What’s that?’

‘They call her the Shieldmaiden.’

And Kyle sat back, sipping his drink of watered ale. Lyan. Served under Brood? Neglected to mention that … But then, she knew he’d served with the Malazans, didn’t she?

He stood from the table.

‘Headed out?’ someone asked.

Kyle finished his drink and saluted the table. ‘Yes. Going to join up.’

* * *

The seventh day after they entered the Sea of Dread, a long low vessel came storming out of the west to intercept them. The Crimson Guard led the convoy of twelve in their captured local raider ship, which Captain Ghelath insisted on rechristening Mael’s Forbearance.

The strange vessel was long and sleek, and moved with extraordinary speed — all the more astonishingly as she showed no sail nor sweeps. Like a shot arrow, it darted straight for the Forbearance and pulled up alongside, slowing to match the ponderous pace of the sweeps that pulled the Forbearance along, as there was no wind to speak of.

A lone figure straightened from the deck. It was a thin old man, mostly bald, wrapped in a ragged cloak. ‘Permission to come aboard,’ he called up in a reedy voice.

Gwynn, next to Shimmer, muttered: ‘That vessel is soaked in magery.’

‘Raise your Warren,’ she answered, and signed likewise to Petal and Blues.

A rope ladder was lowered. The foreign vessel manoeuvred alongside. The old man climbed aboard — quite vigorously for such an ancient. K’azz came forward to meet him. The fellow scanned the deck with eyes tiny and dark, like deep wells.

‘What can we do for you?’ K’azz asked.

‘You can surrender this vessel and all those behind to us.’

‘I’m sorry …’ K’azz began.

The old man snapped up a wizened hand. ‘Do not argue. And do not resist. We will destroy-’ The fellow stopped himself, his gaze narrowing. He murmured, ‘Wait a moment …’

Someone very big and sturdy brushed past Shimmer: Bars pushing his way forward. ‘Just a minute,’ he called.

The two met at mid-deck. The old man’s gaze widened and he gaped; Bars rocked back, pointing. ‘You!’ the old man growled.

‘It’s them!’ Bars called. ‘The Sharrs of Exile Keep!’

Snarling, the old man spun sending his cloak flying across to enmesh Bars who went down in its smothering folds. Beneath, bands and belts wrapped the old fellow from head to foot, all holding short blades that shone like polished silver. He threw his arms out and every one of the blades, an entire forest of them, flew from their many sheaths.

The blades scattered over the deck. Shimmer staggered at a blow to her chest, then threw herself flat as several glinting shards flew for her face. She heard the slivers punch into someone near, and his answering grunt as he fell: Sept, thrust through the throat. Multiple impacts now sounded as Black the Elder closed on the man behind his shield — the blades thudding home. But, the slivers of metal flew like birds, and many swung round to strike Black from the rear, hammering into him so hard they disappeared fully into his back. He fell as well.

She glimpsed Gwynn lying against the side, a hand pressed to one eye, blood coursing between the fingers.

A thrown rope took the mage round his neck and yanked him viciously from his feet, but the spinning blades flew and severed the rope. A new figure appeared at the bow: a young man wielding lengths of slim chain in each hand. These he lashed about, clearing the space round him. The tearing of cloth revealed Bars freeing himself. K’azz and others were closing on the old man, all crawling forward.

With another snarl, the Sharr mage jumped over the side. Shimmer leapt to the rail; saw him on his own vessel. A panicked yell snapped her attention to the bow: Blues was closing upon the youth, the chains now wrapped about his twinned fighting sticks. Bars lunged in, blade overhead, for a ferocious swipe that hacked through the lad’s shoulder, collarbone and ribs and stuck in the spine. A kick sent the body over the side. As one, like a flock, all the flying shards converged upon Bars. Rather coolly, he simply rolled over the rail to follow the lad into the sea below.

At that instant Reed, Cole and Amatt all bounded past Shimmer to throw themselves after the mage. K’azz and she yelled simultaneously, ‘No!’ But all three thumped to the strange vessel’s deck, rolling, and came up, blades readied.

K’azz joined Shimmer at the rail. ‘Get off there!’ he yelled.

Chains, Shimmer noted, lay all about the decking. The old man laughed and gestured, and the chains snaked to life. They lashed their fat links about the three Avowed, then tumbled over the side in huge splashes. She caught one last glimpse of Cole before he disappeared, and she wasn’t certain, but she thought the man flashed her one last typical roguish smile, as if to say: well … had to happen sometime. She had one boot up on the rail when a firm hand on her shoulder urged her back down — K’azz.

A sudden blur of motion next to the Exile mage, and the fellow fell stiffly to the deck. Or rather, most of him did: Cowl stood holding his severed head. The last links of chain slithered off the deck to sink into the water, and all was quiet.

Shimmer stood staring at the waves where moments before three good friends had disappeared. She shook her head in horror and disbelief.

‘By the gods …’ someone murmured, in awe.

She rubbed her chest where one of the flying slivers had rebounded from her mail armour. K’azz was staring at her, a strange expression on his face. She frowned at him, distracted.

A call sounded from the water below: ‘Hello? Some help here?’

Everyone dashed to the side. Bars was splashing about. Ropes were thrown and soon the man was up over the side, dripping water to the deck. Shimmer embraced him, but he did not share her pleasure. ‘How many?’ he asked K’azz.

Their commander opened his mouth to answer, but stopped himself. He looked to Shimmer. ‘How many?’

She scanned the deck: Gwynn, she saw, now stood, a cloth tied over one eye. ‘Five, I believe,’ she answered. ‘Black the Elder, Sept, Cole, Amatt, and Reed.’

K’azz, she noted, had not taken his eyes from her the entire time. The man was obviously in anguish: the flesh of his face was drawn so tight as to seem parchment. ‘Yes … five,’ he managed, his voice breaking. ‘I’m sorry … Shimmer.’

She nodded. ‘As am I.’ She gestured to the Exile vessel drifting alongside. ‘Take that ship under tow.’

‘No!’

She turned. Gwynn approached. He had a hand pressed to his ravaged socket. ‘It’s cursed. Burn it.’

She shrugged. ‘If you insist.’ Her gaze fell to the still figures of Sept and Black the Elder prone upon the blood-soaked deck.

‘And them?’ Gwynn asked.

She sighed, rubbing her chest. ‘Burial at sea, Gwynn.’

He inclined his head in agreement. ‘Very well.’

She turned away, only to nearly run into Cowl standing behind her. ‘What?’ she snarled, in no mood for the man’s games.

Fresh slashes and gouges marked where many of the shards had struck the High Mage. His crooked smile appeared even more manic than usual. ‘Nothing.’ He turned away, brows raised. ‘Nothing at all.’

She frowned her irritation. Lunatic.

Bars came to her side. Water still dripped from him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, his gaze lowered. ‘I tried to warn you.’

She wanted to embrace him — I could have lost you! — but held his shoulder instead. ‘It’s all right. Now we know why Cal-Brinn chose to break off.’

He took her hand. His was so icy cold she almost yanked hers free. ‘If only …’ he began.

‘If only we were somewhere else,’ she finished. ‘Someone else.’

His answering smile was a half grimace. ‘Yes … if only.’

They held a short ceremony for Sept and Black, then slid the weighted bodies over the side. May Mael embrace them, Shimmer prayed. The short invocation reminded her of her earlier prayer to Burn, the ancient goddess, to guide them through these dangers. It seemed her prayer was going unanswered.

After this, she found she was spending almost all her time on deck, staring at the unnaturally smooth surface of the Dread Sea. It was all too familiar: the sliding water, the seeming spell of timelessness. Far too familiar.

The fourth night after the attack, she decided she’d seen enough. It was too much like a land half the world away. A land named Jacuruku. ‘Gwynn,’ she murmured into the dark, though it was after the mid-night bell and the deck was deserted.

A moment later he appeared. He wore a leather patch now; he’d lost his right eye.

‘Yes?’

That was all. No What? or sleepy resentment at being disturbed. No, he knew she wouldn’t call unless there was a reason. She extended a hand to the water. ‘Look familiar?’

The mage’s remaining eye narrowed on the barely undulating milky surface. He let go a tired sigh. ‘I see your point.’ He’d been a long time in Jacuruku.

‘Get on it.’

He bowed, and returned below. Shimmer returned to studying the waves where they glimmered, reflecting the stars above.

Three days later, three mages came to see her. She was again at the rail of the ‘liberated’ pirate vessel. Something told her she was not alone; that, in fact, she was the object of a great deal of regard, and she turned. The Guard’s mages faced her: Gwynn, as sour as ever; Petal, looking uncharacteristically concerned; and even Blues, ostensibly second-in-command, but a company mage as well.

Now that they had her attention, Blues waved a hand to indicate those self-same waves. ‘Casts quite the spell, don’t it?’

Shimmer flicked her gaze to Petal, who nodded, his thick neck bulging.

‘Can you do anything about it?’ she asked.

Blues tapped one of his fighting sticks to his chin — Shimmer hadn’t noticed them slipping into his hands. ‘Petal here is of the opinion that maybe we can. But it’ll take all three of us working together.’

Shimmer was surprised. What could possibly be so potent? ‘Why all of you?’

Blues looked to Petal. The big mage actually blushed. He lowered his gaze to study his hands where they clasped his stomach. ‘It’s not just another Warren, Shimmer. This is a Realm. Jaghut magics. Omtose Phellack. And we’re not welcome.’

‘If you need power then bring in our vaunted High Mage.’

Petal shrugged his humped shoulders. ‘He said his participation would only make things more difficult.’

Difficult bastard. Typical. ‘So? What’s stopping you?’

The three exchanged uncomfortable glances. Blues finally supplied, ‘Could be fatal.’

Fatal? To all? ‘I see. So … should we risk all our mages …’

Blues gave a curt nod. ‘Right. So I’ll do it.’

Gwynn snorted. ‘Idiotic.’

‘It would make most sense,’ Petal stammered, ‘if it was me … don’t you think?’

Shimmer had had enough of this. She brushed past all three. ‘Won’t be any of you.’ Difficult, my arse! Trying to duck a dangerous job!

She stamped her way across the mid-deck, scanned the stern, saw no hint of the fellow. ‘Cowl! Come out from under your rock! We need to have a chat!’

‘Yes?’ The answer was gentle, unforced, and directly to her rear. She turned round slowly. The man stood uncomfortably close. In kissing range, in fact. His eager, avid gaze seemed to be daring her to act: either embrace him, or knife him.

She forced herself not to flinch, began calmly, ‘I understand that attempting to ease us through Omtose Phellack could kill the mage who tried.’

‘True.’

‘Then shouldn’t you be the one to make the attempt — High Mage?’

His habitual mad mocking smile climbed even higher, as it always seemed to whenever they spoke. He shook his head in a negative. ‘Oh, it would be worse if I tried. Much worse.’

‘Why?’

The man fairly hugged himself in his glee. ‘You’ll see …’

She raised a hand to cuff the man across his face, thought better of it, and stormed off. Fool! Where’s — ah, there he is. She marched up to K’azz at the bow.

‘K’azz! Your pet is becoming more and more obnoxious.’

‘Shared a frank exchange of views, did you?’

‘I’d like to share my sword.’

‘He is still High Mage, Shimmer.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Take his word for it.’

She almost flinched. There it was — the lingering ghost of the old chain of command. Was she able to give orders or not? Damn the way the past just wouldn’t go away! She turned on her heel and left the man standing alone.

She returned to the gathered company mages. Her gaze found Petal and rested there. ‘You said it should be you — why?’

The huge man seemed to shrink under her stony regard. ‘Well,’ he began, stammering, ‘Blues’ D’riss is not appropriate to this. Nor is Serc. Nor Shadow.’ He pressed his hands together and touched them to his chin. ‘I believe my insights into the Mockra Warren — the magics of the mind and perception — should guide us best.’

Shimmer nodded. ‘Very well. You have the task.’ The fellow blinked, quite surprised by his success. ‘Blues, Gwynn, give him any aid necessary.’

The mages murmured their assent and the three went off, already arguing and sharing opinions on the coming job.

Shimmer crossed her arms and returned to staring out over the water. Familiar. Hood-blasted familiar. Like Ardata. But not as heavy-handed or powerful. More subtle. More … insinuating.

Days passed. Eleven vessels followed their lead, including the Lether ships of that ruthless merchant general, Luthal Canar. Eleven now, as one morning the sun rose to reveal that one of their number had simply gone missing overnight. No further losses appeared after that. The ship immediately following theirs, the Mare galley, the Lady’s Luck, kept close, and the others followed them.

One day Blues joined her at the rail where she was studying the unchanging heavy cover of fog. ‘How is Petal doing?’ she asked.

‘Holding up.’ He glanced back to where the mage sat cross-legged on the deck, wrapped in blankets. He let out a hard breath. ‘I gather from his muttering that what he’s facing — Omtose Phellack unveiled — is fading even as he wrestles with it. Unravelling like rotten cloth. Probably be impossible to push through, otherwise.’

‘Good. Maybe we’ll make it through this without any further losses.’

They stood together in silence after that. The sun sank to a dim reddish smear close to the horizon. She remarked, ‘The Brethren have been silent of late.’

‘Petal says the Jaghut magic is holding them off.’

Shimmer grunted her acceptance. The night darkened. The unvarying haze of the Sea of Dread thickened to an impenetrable blanket that blinded her.

With the sounding of the mid-night bell, Blues remarked, ‘There were ex-Stormguard on that Mare vessel. The men who used to fight the Riders of the Strait of Storms. They’ll be useful in a dust-up.’

She nodded at this information. Yet she wished to say so much more; to thank the man for his support, for his extraordinary lack of jealousy that would have driven others to undermine her position; for frankly just being him all these years. But something stopped her, something intervened and closed her mouth like a clenching fist, and she wondered: was it the clichéd isolation of command? The weight she’d heard described so often? Ridiculous. Yet there it was. Something had driven itself between her and all the others of the Guard. Something she hadn’t felt before.

But she said nothing of this. She remained silent. She was no longer the one to give explanations; she gave orders now. And a voice within her remarked, scornfully: how like K’azz!

Days later — Shimmer had no idea how many, and felt no impulse to ask — the banks of fog that choked the Sea of Dread parted before their bow, revealing a rugged rocky coast, forested hills beyond, and distant jagged snow-peaked mountains.

Shimmer went to find K’azz. He was at the stern, hands clasped behind his back. ‘We’re through,’ she reported.

For some time he did not answer, then his eyes fluttered, blinking, and his head turned to her. It was as if he was surfacing from some deep dive, such as his undersea walk at the Isle of Pillars. He nodded. ‘Good.’ He gestured to the line of vessels emerging from the fog-banks behind them. ‘Nine now. Lost two more.’

‘When?’

He shrugged. ‘Some time ago.’

‘An attack?’

He shook his head; his iron-grey hair, she noted, was thinning even more. ‘No. No attacks. I understand that here, on the Dread Sea, crews just give up. Or disappear. Vessels lose headway, then coast, and finally lie adrift, empty. Abandoned. A sea of ghost ships.’

‘We made it through.’

He nodded again, the muscles of his jaws bunched in stark contrast beneath his parchment-like skin. ‘How is he?’

She jumped, flinching. Petal! She ran to where the man sat close to the side rudder and knelt before him. His head hung so low she couldn’t see his face. ‘Petal? Hello? Are you with us?’

The blankets heaped about the man stirred. The head shook, as if its owner were waking, then rose. Sweat sheathed the pale rounded cheeks, dripped from the chin. He peered about, puzzled, as if he’d forgotten everything, then his gaze found her face and fixed there and he smiled, rather self-consciously. ‘Thirsty,’ he croaked.

She straightened. ‘Water here! A drink!’

One of Ghelath’s crewmen ran up with a skin of water. Petal just blinked at the thing. Shimmer snatched it away, unstoppered it, and held the spout to his lips, squeezing gently. Water poured down his chin but he managed to swallow some few gulps. He nodded his thanks.

Only now did Shimmer realize how neglectful they had been. Who had taken care of him? Gods, how could they have been so … forgetful? But no, Blues, surely … With Petal awake, Blues was here with her now, along with Gwynn.

‘Did you check on him?’ she demanded.

Blues blinked his surprise. ‘Well … no. I thought …’ and he gestured vaguely, as if to indicate the ship’s company in general.

Shimmer gazed down at the mage as he stirred. He wanted to stand, and so they helped him to his feet. The blankets fell from him and steam rose into the air from his sweat-soaked robes, as if he smouldered with heat. How many days, weeks, had it been, she wondered. Or had it only been a few? In any case, how could he have survived? It was inhuman.

She studied the fellow as he weaved on his feet. He looked to have lost a full two stone.

They passed a number of bare rocky headlands, a few yet sheathed in scabrous ice, then came to where the coast flattened and here they found the shore littered with the broken husks of ships.

Blues pointed a stick ahead, where cliffs rose; there stood a keep, a heap of rock exactly the same slate-grey hue as the surrounding cliffs. The land before it lay checkered in fields in various degrees of care and cultivation. A bedraggled clutch of wooden huts hugged the shore.

A rain that had fallen on and off through the day started in earnest. It pushed down the smoke climbing from holes in the shack roofs. Though Shimmer had longed for land, it was a dour and depressing sight.

‘We should go ashore first,’ said K’azz from beside her and she started, surprised; she hadn’t sensed his presence.

‘Of course.’

The landing party consisted of her, K’azz, Blues, Gwynn, and Keel. She was startled to see K’azz actually carrying a sword — a hand and a half. He caught her gaze and said, explaining, ‘Cole’s.’

The losses still burned in her chest, and she nodded. ‘I’m sorry, K’azz.

‘As am I, Shimmer. As am I.’

A launch took them to shore. They tramped up the wet sand then climbed a ratty set of stairs built of timbers taken from stricken vessels. The huts were likewise constructed from ships’ timbers. But so much wood was in evidence, Shimmer began to suspect deliberate wrecking. The shacks were roofed with sod, bundled grasses, or wooden shakes. What few men and women they met turned away, or stopped in stony silence to watch them pass. One woman, her rags gathered about her, murmured, ‘Run while you can,’ and hurried off herself.

Shimmer looked to K’azz, quite uneasy. He motioned her on to the stone fortress. Blues, she noted, had drawn his sticks. These he tossed and spun as they went, and she knew this was his habit when nervous. Keel walked with his enormous rectangular shield readied on his arm.

They found the wide wooden door open upon its heavy iron hinges. The hall within was flagged with broad cut stones, yet littered with wind-blown leaves and twigs as if from long neglect, and thick with tramped-in mud. The entrance hall led to a much larger reception hall. It was very dark after the outdoors. The only light streamed in from the open doorway behind them, or from thin slit openings high up the walls. Here a woman awaited them. She sat in a wooden chair also constructed from battered ship’s planking, and wore a flowing white dress that hung down to spread in long reaching lengths all about the floor. Her hair was similarly snow-white and extraordinarily long — it appeared to even reach the stone floor around her. The proud way she sat in the chair of faded old timbers made it clear to Shimmer that she regarded it as a throne.

K’azz stepped forward and bowed in a courtly manner, as when he had dealt with the prickly Quon kings and nobles long ago. ‘Greetings,’ he murmured, his head lowered. ‘I am K’azz, commander of the mercenary company the Crimson Guard. With me are members of my troop: Shimmer, Blues, Gwynn, and Keel.’

The woman favoured them with a hard glare; she did not respond to K’azz’s greeting. ‘A mercenary company,’ she said, musing. ‘An army — of sorts.’ Her glare narrowed. ‘Are you the enemy I was warned to expect?’

K’azz turned round to examine each of them. Gwynn stood leaning upon his staff. He adjusted the leather patch over his eye, frowned his confusion. Shimmer was completely mystified and shook her head. K’azz turned back to the woman. ‘I do not believe we are …’

‘Mist,’ the woman supplied. ‘You may call me Mist. Normally, here I would also say that I am your queen as well. But there is something about you …’ She turned her head as if to regard them first through one eye, then the other. ‘Something about you I do not like. Therefore, while I would usually give you until tomorrow to lay down your weapons, you I will ask to depart — immediately. Or you will be executed.’

K’azz appeared to rub his chin. ‘Executed? Then we are your prisoners?’

Mist shook her head. ‘No. Not prisoners. Trespassers. Meddlers. Troublemakers here among my peaceful farming community.’

‘Perhaps we may be permitted to purchase a few small parcels of food — kegs of potable water? We must travel north, as we have business there.’

The woman’s features hardened even more. ‘The north does not want your business. But I see that you are not to be convinced. You are armed and experienced fighters — perhaps you think you can win your way through by strength of arms.’ She snapped her fingers, motioned curtly to one side.

Heavy steps sounded from the darkness behind the woman’s throne. Two gigantic shapes emerged. Twins they seemed, two giants. They resembled those of the race of Jaghut Shimmer had seen over the years, but differed in the coarseness of their features: enormous jutting tusks; thick shelves of brow ridges entirely shadowing the orbs of their eyes; massed thick manes of hair that tumbled about their shoulders. One wore a long coat of scaled bronze, and carried a two-headed axe thrust through a wide belt. The weapon was fully as tall as Shimmer herself. The other wore a similar set of shell-like scaled armour, but of iron. This one carried a massive two-handed sword taller from tip to pommel than Keel’s full height.

Both set their shovel-like hands to their belts and grinned to expose uneven teeth; both obviously enjoyed the reactions their appearance evoked.

Shimmer heard Gwynn’s breath leave him in one long hiss of revulsion. She cast him a questioning look. He whispered low, ‘Twisted, these two — in the womb.’

She could not help her hand climbing to where the grip of her whipsword rose over one shoulder. Gwynn shook a negative, inclined his head to the gloom of the chamber. Shimmer squinted. At first she saw nothing, but slowly details emerged. She had thought the ragged scarf-ends of this sorceress’s dress and hair ended in the small circle of light she could make out, but in fact they did not. They stretched on across the full breadth and length of the hall. Then she realized something even more remarkable: they were moving. The tatters and ribbons writhed and twitched — and they surrounded them.

Like cats’ tails, she thought to herself. Lashing. And we are the mice.

‘May I introduce my sons,’ Mist said, sounding quite proud. She extended a hand to her left. ‘Anger,’ and she indicated to her right, ‘Wrath.’

‘Impressive,’ K’azz allowed, and nodded his greeting to each. Their low rumbled amusement sounded like rocks shifting. ‘We will leave you, then, to your peaceful farming community,’ and he bowed again, motioning for Blues and Gwynn to back away.

‘Go then,’ Mist called as they retreated. ‘You I do not like. But the others … the many vessels dropping anchor even as we speak … they may stay.’

Shimmer could not help but shoot K’azz an anxious look. He waved her on. Outside, the commander motioned for a hurried retreat to the shore. ‘Why did she let us go?’ she demanded.

‘We are an unknown. She senses there is more to us.’

‘Such as what?’ she snapped.

He would not meet her gaze. ‘The Vow, I imagine.’

They found that a thick ground fog had arisen while they were inside. Shimmer did not imagine it coincidental. The meandering streamers of fog reminded her too much of Mist’s lashing white dress. In fact, she began to wonder whether they were in very great trouble; certainly K’azz seemed to think so as he hurried them along.

‘Get to the ships,’ he told them as they jogged. ‘Warn them off. None should put in.’

She gave a quick nod and ran for the nearest launch already ashore. These sailors she warned away. The next lot she found by nearly running into their boat in the dense soup-like miasma. They were clinging to the boat’s side as if afraid they’d sink in the fog and she recognized them as sailors of the Mare galley, the one with the pilot K’azz said knew most about these waters.

‘Put out,’ she told them. ‘It’s a trap. A sorceress is here.’

‘Mist?’ A youth spoke up, standing from within the boat.

‘Yes. She calls herself Mist.’

‘We must leave,’ the youth said to another sailor, presumably his superior. ‘The Fortress Mist and its witch. It’s mentioned in some few accounts. She enslaves all those who land.’

The officer grimaced his scepticism. ‘We need water, Storval,’ another said.

‘Shut up,’ the officer growled. ‘Let me think.’ He eyed Shimmer. ‘Couldn’t we find a-’

A scream sounded from the distance. Its source was utterly obscured by the layers of dense fog surrounding them. It bespoke chilling terror, and was all the more horrible for being cut off in a gurgle, as if the man had fallen from a gallows.

‘Push off now!’ Shimmer commanded, and ran into the fog. She headed for where she thought she’d glimpsed another longboat. Her feet splashed through the waves and sand hissed beneath her boots, but for all that it was as if she waded through a sea of blanketing soup.

She doubled over as she ran into the next boat, nearly falling in. ‘Push off!’ she gasped.

None of the sailors within answered. Nor would they again. They lay sprawled, contorted, hands at throats, their features swollen and purple, although paling now. Scarves of thick fog drifted from their necks even as she watched. She threw herself from the boat, scanned the coursing banners of mist. Damn it to Hood! They were turning round. Where was their boat?

She ran on along the strand. Thicker gravel crunched beneath her boots and the normality of it comforted her; the fog was so leaden it was as if she’d wandered into another world — perhaps Hood’s demesne itself, which some theorize as a land of mists.

The loud shock of a boot-step sounded nearby, one far heavier than any she or any person might make. Something hissed above her and she sidestepped — a fluid motion as swift as thought that only a trained sword-dancer could execute. Something sliced the fog beside her to slam into the gravel like a battering ram. She found herself within a hand’s breadth of the beaten bronze blade of a two-headed axe, one pounded so heavily into the strand that she could step over it, though she knew it to be as tall as she.

A gnarled fist larger than her head yanked the weapon free and it disappeared once more into the swirling mists above her.

Shimmer ran.

Cries of terror continued all about, most cut off in throttled gurgles. She stumbled over boulders, flinched when her boot pressed down on a yielding body. It was galling that just nearby, out of sight, waves slapped against boats. If she could only find theirs!

A voice called then, from nearby in the mist, and she recognized it: Petal. ‘Shimmer!’ It was spoken, not shouted, as if from just next to her.

She shouted, ‘Yes!’ and was chagrined by the note of panic she heard.

‘This way. Follow my voice.’ She set off, feeling her way. Petal spoke every few heartbeats to reacquaint her with his location: ‘Keep going,’ he sometimes said, or, ‘More left.’

Distantly, she heard cordage creaking and sweeps banging wood; the ships were drawing anchor and pulling out. From across a portion of the strand she could make out the silhouette of one of the giant brothers, Anger or Wrath. The massive shape knelt at the shore then rose, roaring, and she recognized the shadowy curve of a boat’s side rising with him. A mass of panicked shouts and screams was abruptly cut off as the longboat, overturned, fell upon its crew.

The giant’s roar of laughter was an avalanche of falling rocks.

‘Swim for it,’ Petal told her.

‘What of you?’

‘Never mind me. Swim!’

Snarling her displeasure, she pushed her way into the surf. It was a good thing she’d chosen not to wear her armour, but then it had been weeks since she’d donned it. Her feet left the bottom and she paddled — she’d only ever had a few basic lessons from Blues. Something snagged at her and she flinched, gained a mouthful of water, and almost slipped into blind flailing terror. Blues’ first lesson saved her: don’t panic, he’d told her. As in a fight, panicking is the worst thing you can do.

She forced her eyes open, stilled her slapping of the water, and saw that she was engaged in a struggle with a corpse. Its limp arms kept bumping up against her. She pushed it away and carried on.

‘To the right.’ Petal spoke again and she realized then that he’d never been with her at all. It was a sending of some sort, or he was watching for her from his Warren. She paddled on.

‘Shimmer!’ a new voice shouted. She recognized Bars bulls’ bellow.

‘Here!’

‘Follow my voice! This way! I have an oar! Do you see it?’

Something splashed the water nearby through the cloaking fog. She headed that way. A tall cliff of darkness emerged from the bank — the side of a vessel. ‘Here!’ she called.

An oar came sluicing through the waves. She grasped for it but missed. She caught it on the second try.

‘There’s a rope here,’ Bars said. The oar pulled her along through the water to where a rope ladder hung from the side. She took hold and started up. On deck, she was met by all the landing party.

‘You’re last,’ Bars told her.

She scanned the shore; the coursing banners of fog still obscured everything. The rest of the Guard were manning the sweeps. She noticed that, oddly, Lean was at the rudder.

‘Where’s Havvin?’

Bars and K’azz exchanged glances. ‘I’m sorry, Shimmer,’ K’azz said. He motioned to where several shapes lay bundled in sailcloth.

Shimmer suddenly felt very cold as she stood dripping wet in the fog. She shivered. ‘How many?’

‘Eight,’ K’azz said. His voice, and his features, did not change at all, and Shimmer realized that he was holding himself under a terrifying degree of will. ‘Taken by the mist.’

She swallowed to dare her next question: ‘Any of us?’

‘None.’

She was vastly relieved, but then fixed her gaze upon him; she wished to take hold of his shoulders and shake him. ‘Why? Why?’

‘The … Vow … I imagine.’ He lurched away and seemed to totter off.

She let him go. He knows more than that — he must. She met Bars’ gaze, but the man just shook his head.

‘I’m very sorry, Shimmer.’

‘As am I, Bars,’ she sighed.

The Avowed helped on the sweeps, a skeletal few, yet Mael’s Forbearance made steady headway. They finally emerged from the fog and Shimmer found that they were a good way out in the bay. Behind, the thick bank obscured the shore for several bowshots. Utterly unnatural, that concentration of mist. She peered round, counting ships. Found nine. Every vessel, it seemed, had escaped — though most of the ship’s launches and their crews probably hadn’t. She turned to face ahead, and while the sky was a leaden hue, overcast, she still had to squint in the light. Three vessels were far ahead: the Letherii modified merchantmen. It seemed Luthal Canar was in no mood to offer anyone any aid. Well, that was fine: they could face whatever lay ahead first.

At that, she shifted her gaze to where a pale light seemed to glow to the north-east. ‘What is that?’ she asked Bars.

But Blues answered, sounding uncharacteristically grim: ‘An ice field.’ She remembered that he’d crossed the immense plain of ice that separated Stratem from the lands of Korel to the north.

‘Can we get through?’ she asked.

Blues shrugged. ‘There must be some way.’

She nodded at that. Yes. Surely some vessels must have made it through ahead of them. Her gaze fell on the wrapped bodies. ‘We should give them a proper send-off.’

‘Yes,’ Bars agreed, and he sounded very firm on that.

It was a channel. A narrow gap of open water that ran between tall cliffs of white and sapphire glacial ice. They reached it near to dusk, but such was the peculiar light held by the ice from the moon, and the star field where it shone through gaps in the cloud cover, that they continued on.

Luthal’s command ahead did likewise. They too neither paused nor let up, and Shimmer began to wonder whether the Letherii merchant had — rather stupidly — decided that this was some sort of race. And the gold to the winner.

Behind, the rest of the ragtag convoy straggled along. Next in line was the Mare galley. Privately, Shimmer was of the opinion that if any ship survived, it would be that one. She had a great respect for the vessels and crews of that seafaring nation.

The passage narrowed alarmingly in places. The cliffs reared nearly overhead. At times great reports cracked the night air and carriage-sized shards of ice came crashing down ahead or behind to send up fountains of frigid spray. Some of that spray even reached them on board the Forbearance.

Something about these avalanches of shards troubled Shimmer, and not just that any one of them could crush them into splinters. As they proceeded through, the sweeps hissing through ice-mush and clattering off floating chunks of sapphire-blue ice, it came to her.

The ice was only falling near them.

She watched to the rear for a time: no ice shards burst from the cliff faces behind them — at all. She turned ahead to study the three Letherii vessels and the full length of the channel ahead: nothing. No fracturing, cracking or rumbling.

She turned to K’azz.

Cowl suddenly appeared next to their commander. His scarred, ghostly pale face was upraised to study the overhanging cliffs. ‘We must back out — now,’ he said.

K’azz frowned his puzzlement. ‘Back out? Why?’

The High Mage lowered his face to gaze straight at K’azz. ‘You know why.’

K’azz snapped his gaze to the cliffs. ‘You don’t think …’

‘I do.’

K’azz spun to the mid-deck, roared, ‘Back oars! Back off!’ The Avowed on the oars pushed hard, heaving. Mael’s Forbearance came to a slow sluggish halt amid the wash of hissing crushed ice. ‘Back oars!’ K’azz yelled anew.

It appeared to Shimmer that they had just made a terrible mistake.

Reports like munition blasts erupted from the near port-side cliff. Cracks zigzagged up and down the translucent gleaming facets of the face. Chunks ranging in size from barrels to horses and wagons came crashing and tumbling. They sent up great fountains of spray that punched down to slap the decking of the Forbearance. One single massive crag now pulled away from the entire cliff. It extended from halfway up to the white snowy top. As slow as night falling it came, leaning farther and farther out from the body of the great ice wall above them.

Shimmer caught Blues’ wide gaze. ‘Do something,’ she said.

He shook his head in utter helplessness. ‘D’riss is of no …’

‘Cowl!’ K’azz demanded.

Shimmer snapped her gaze to the High Mage, but the man only stared, his face now uncharacteristically severe. ‘There is nothing.’

Brutal explosions of tons of crushed ice thundered above. A dark shadow engulfed the Forbearance.

K’azz drew a savage breath and bellowed: ‘Abandon ship!’

The crew and the Avowed on the oars let them fall. Everyone dived for the sides.

The last thing Shimmer remembered was the intense cold of the water. She struck the ice mush first, and it parted for her, but not before imparting numbing blows to her protecting forearm. She churned her one good arm, fought for the surface.

She never made it. Some immense dark shape came plunging into the water and it dragged her down with it, down into the frigid night of the depths below. For a time she fought to free herself from the weight that drove her on and on deeper into the darkness. But in the murk and the utter cold, her strength gradually seeped from her, and she knew nothing more.

* * *

‘We must go back!’ Reuth thrust an arm to the stern, his gaze fierce upon Storval. ‘Search for survivors!’

The first mate waved his dismissal. ‘You saw. None survived. Only wreckage surfaced.’ He nodded to the oarsmen, motioned for them to continue.

‘But we should wait. Search the wreckage!’

‘Too dangerous. The entire cliff fell on them. More might come down.’

Reuth stared, appalled beyond words. The foreign mercenaries saved them at Old Ruse and here at Mist, yet this heartless bastard was prepared to turn his back upon them. He clutched the man’s leather sleeve. ‘I see why you won’t stop — you’re a coward!’

He did not see the blow; next thing he knew he was on the deck, blinking, his head ringing. Hands clutched his shirtfront, yanked him to his feet. ‘You little puke,’ Storval hissed in his face. ‘You’re only living because I’ve allowed you to live. Maybe if you keep your trap shut and do your job I’ll continue to let you!’ The hands thrust him backwards and he stumbled into the ship’s side.

Storval straightened his jerkin and paced off. Reuth caught the gazes of nearby Stormguard; he saw no sympathy there, only their maddening haughty airs. ‘They saved us at Old Ruse,’ he said, and rubbed his head where he’d been struck.

‘We guided them here,’ one of the Stormguard answered.

‘We?’ Reuth gaped, nearly speechless. ‘I guided us here!’

The Stormguard merely shrugged, unconcerned. ‘We all have our job to do.’

Reuth almost answered, but caught himself in time: and yours is a glorified spear-rack. Instead, he turned away, pointedly giving these fools his back.

His uncle wouldn’t have bulled through the wreckage. He would’ve stopped. And Kyle would’ve supported him against these Stormguard. Still, it was hard to imagine that anyone could’ve survived such an enormous blow. It had been as if the hand of some vengeful god had slammed down upon those mercenaries. No other vessel had even been touched! Reuth slapped the timbers of the stern cabin. All for naught now. He was a captive — Abyss, a slave to this cowardly wretch’s commands.

He knew then what he would do at the first opportunity. The decision had been coming for some time now in his unhappiness and frustration. Come his first chance he’d jump ship, abandon these bastards to their own fate. Then they’d see how well they fared without a proper pilot.

It would be simple enough; there were no charts or rolls of maps to burn or steal away. His uncle had seen to that — forbidding him from bringing even the simplest scroll. Now he understood why. Bargaining power and value. Where there were no charts, the knowledge he held in his head made him priceless.

Reuth suddenly realized just how much he must have meant to his uncle — and what pains Tulan had taken to ensure his survival.

He wept for him then, hugging himself, kneeling hidden as deep in the stern notch as he could wiggle. All he had seen was his uncle’s gruffness. His coarse ways. And how he had resented him for it. Now a hotter grief clutched his throat: the certainty of his own unworthiness. His ingratitude! His sullen pouting childishness!

Someone kicked his flank. It was Storval. ‘Hey,’ he urged. ‘Which way? What now, damn you?’

He wiped his sleeve across his burning eyes. ‘Hug the north shore,’ he answered, his voice thick. ‘There should be … settlements there.’

Storval — he still could not bring himself to think of the man as captain — simply grunted and turned away.

Reuth watched him go. The first settlement they reached — he’d be gone.

* * *

Stones rattled from a switchback trail down a steep ravine as a file of silent figures descended in the night. At its base they spread out upon a narrow cleft of dirt to regard the amazing sight ahead: a deep chasm spanned by a construction of bones lashed and hooked into a bridge. None spoke; they seemed to be waiting.

The ground before the bridge shifted. Ancient stained bones emerged, shook off the dry dirt. A titanic entity of bone slowly straightened from the stony ground. Last of all came a colossal battered dragon skull that it set upon its broad neck with skeletal hands.

A faint blue flame flickered to life deep within the sockets of the skull as the entity regarded the eerily silent figures — who studied him in turn.

‘I am Yrkki,’ the giant boomed. ‘And you, most of all, certainly may not pass.’

The foremost of the travellers strode closer. Passing clouds allowed the moonlight to shine upon this one, revealing him to be wrapped in ragged leathers, a fur cloak at one shoulder, his sockets empty and his lips curled back from grinning teeth stained the colour of wet dead leaves. ‘I am Gor’eth of the Kerluhm T’lan Imass,’ he announced. ‘And we have no quarrel with you.’

‘That is true,’ the giant rumbled. ‘Yet I have a claim upon you.’

‘We are newly wakened after an ages-long sleep. We seek the north. Stand aside, ancient spirit, and you may continue your guardianship.’

‘My guardianship — my custodianship — is of this bridge. Long have I awaited your arrival, T’lan. When I was set here ages ago to ward this passage my price was but one request.’

Gor’eth shifted, his skeletal hand slipping to the worn grip of the stone blade that hung at his pelvis. ‘And that was?’

Yrkki stretched his wide arms to encompass the cleft. ‘The bones of the T’lan Imass for my bridge!’

Gor’eth rolled to avoid an immense hand that flattened the ground he stood upon. His fellows surged forward. Flint and chalcedony weapons slashed the fat mammoth legs Yrkki stood upon. Bone chips flew. A swatting hand knocked Imass aside to land shattering among rocks. Gor’eth swung his two-handed blade of milky flint, severing one clutching hand of bones. Imass charged. They levered stone spearheads into the vertebrae of the giant’s exposed spine.

Yrkki roared and crushed a handful with a descending blow then swept the rest aside. But more of the warriors gathered to encircle him and he could not defend himself on all sides.

More stone-headed spears thrust at the joints of the naked vertebrae, and levered. Yrkki roared his panic and spun. A rock-shattering crack sounded and the vertebrae parted. The giant tottered in two directions. The enormous bones came crashing down upon the remaining T’lan Imass.

Gor’eth righted himself and approached to kick through the wreckage. He stopped before the fallen dragon skull and regarded the faint azure flame still guttering within its sockets. ‘Your masters have not been kind to you, Yrkki.’

‘Omtose Phellack has withdrawn,’ came a faint breath. ‘That is true. But as a spirit of the earth, I sense its stirring. I tell you, the ice shall once again claim these lands.’

Gor’eth extended a finger that was no more than flanges sheathed in cured leather flesh. He traced a suture where it ran in a jagged line between the rises of the orbital ridges of the dragon skull’s sockets. Then he gripped his stone weapon in both fists and brought it high up overhead to swing it crashing down upon the skull, splitting it into fragments.

He turned to his gathered brethren. ‘Let us go.’

The file of silent figures climbed a trail that led to a bare rock ridge. Behind them, spanning its dark gap, the trellis-like bridge groaned and tilted ponderously from side to side. Thundering cracking and popping split its length and sections fell, toppling, to disappear into the depths. After one immense shudder, the remaining structure collapsed in an impact that shook the ground the Imass stood upon and brought a small avalanche of loose rock and gravel tumbling down the slope.

Making the crest of the ridge, Gor’eth paused, glanced back down into the murk of the valley. A great billowing cloud of dust obscured the site where the bridge once stood. He returned his attention to the north, then studied his own skeletal hands.

Another Imass joined him. This one’s skull bore a hideous crack that revealed withered fibrous remains within. ‘I sense our brothers and sisters to the west.’

‘Yes, Sholas. While we must yet walk.’

‘Tellann lies beyond our reach — as yet.’

Gor’esh lowered his hands. ‘Those broken must thus remain.’

‘They will re-join us — eventually.’

The tendons of Gor’esh’s neck creaked as he nodded his agreement. ‘Yes, Sholas. Eventually. As before.’

They started down the slope to where the grade shallowed and a forest of thin spruce boles gripped the bare talus.