Nights of Villjamur

THIRTY-ONE

‘What d’you mean, war?’ Dartun said, while chewing a honey-oat biscuit. He was in conversation with a flickering image beaming from a brass device beside him onto the snow in the shadow of a dead tree. The image was blurred, but recognizable was the voice of one of his order back in Villjamur.

‘Papus has taken Guntar as a hostage,’ the voice continued, while light quivered on the snow. ‘She demands your presence.’

Dartun laughed before taking a last bite of the biscuit. He dusted the crumbs off his fuligin cloak, still considering their position. The air was still, but the temperature had dropped rapidly the further north they had sailed, but at least a relic had kept the worst of the weather away during this journey. Dartun had acquired a pack of dogs and a sailing vessel from some corrupt traders on the south coast of Y’iren – having ripped through empty space to get there – as far as he could manage with the help of his precious relics.

Last night he had dreamed of death, or so he supposed. In his sleep the sun had faded from red to something darker and dimmer, and then to nothing, till all around a city, Villjamur perhaps, the streets were blackened. Rows upon rows of torches burned to provide light, and frozen hands reached out all around to touch him. It was then he had woken and, not for the first time, he felt deeply connected to the world, and sensed that it, like him, was dying.

The dogs began howling further up the shore.

With Verain and his two most trusted cultists, Todi and Tuung, Dartun had travelled to the north-east of the Boreal Archipelago, sailing through the thick ice sheets as far as they could go. A dangerous way to travel, filled with breathless moments. Todi was young, blond and eager, offering a keenness that meant he was trustworthy. Tuung, however, was older and a balding little man with enough experience to have become cynical, with the need to think twice about matters; he constantly wore the expression of an angry tortoise. Both being of the same stocky build, there was something about their natures that made Dartun consider they could be father and son.

Sled was now the only way to travel since he had no relics enabling transportation. He had abandoned the last one just to get from Villjamur to Y’iren, thus saving himself the chore of travelling as far as the others must do with the undead. That meant Dartun couldn’t simply rip through space to cross the islands any more, and dryly he contemplated the fact that he was becoming just like a lay person.

‘This is serious,’ the image on the snow declared, slipping in and out of focus, the voice strangely ambient. ‘She’s accused you of tampering with ancient laws regarding the use of Dawnir technology to do wrong. Started quoting a whole load of shit about regulations – it’s very angry stuff, and could spiral out of control back here if we’re not careful.’

‘She’s not really much of a threat,’ Dartun muttered. ‘I suspect this is more about jealousy than anything else.’

‘Sir,’ the image protested, ‘they’ll torture Guntar – kill him even. They now know how you’ve been raising corpses. She wants to unite all the other sects against us. If that happens, they may have us all killed. So what should we do?’

It was a situation he had anticipated, that Papus would be so self-righteous, as if she herself was the moral centrepiece of the Archipelago. He wondered vaguely how she had come to know of his animation of corpses. Those whose transformation was incomplete he had simply released, perhaps a careless decision, but he did not possess the heart to kill them, they were so very nearly life. But the problem with the undead was that they were so unreliable in their different states of decay. And even these failures were side-effects of his greater aim, to breed perfect undead men and women.

A private militia. His protection.

‘Sit tight, and see what happens,’ Dartun sighed. ‘Let Papus make her moves if she wishes. It will bring her little benefit.’

‘One final thing, Godhi,’ the image communicated through static. ‘That Randur Estevu, he says he’s finally got the money together. I assume this was some private business of yours.’

‘Yes, yes…’ Preoccupied with his own thoughts, Dartun had very nearly forgotten the young man who wanted him to find a way to let his mother live.

‘Well, he wants… know when he can pay…’ The image flickered, and the voice became distorted before returning to clarity again.

‘Did you just say he wants to know when he can pay me?’

‘Yes,’ the image replied.

‘Right. OK, first you’ll need someone who can gain access to my private chambers.’ Dartun then recited information about assembling certain relics so that even from here he could have the Dawnir technology manipulated in the manner he wished. And it wasn’t difficult, ironically, the grand concept of extending life, it was just that only he knew the correct procedure and had kept it to himself for as long as he could remember. None of his fellow cultists would realize what they were creating from following his instructions. Although the methods were clearly not permanent – as he knew all too well now – it might at least give this wretched woman a little extra life.

Dartun said, ‘If he comes tell him the process will be ready in ten days or so. And I take it there’s no issue with the others from the sect in bringing the undead out to me?’

‘No, all is as you scheduled.’

‘Very good.’ Dartun now manipulated the device so that the projected image faded to nothing, and the air around him was filled with an absolute stillness. But Dartun couldn’t work out why he felt a sudden nervousness; he assumed it might be because he was so near the final stages of what he fervently hoped to achieve. There was always that creeping suspicion that nothing would be at the end of his journey, merely a simple reaffirmation that he could not live forever no matter how he tried to engineer it.

Tineag’l: the mining island lying north of Y’iren, and here the massive mineral belt had long been a supplier of much of the Empire’s metal ores, an old industry of long-suffering workers and slaves. Snow had fallen evenly across the tundra, its serenity undisturbed except when auks darted out of the thick larix forest, their ragged shapes bursting starkly across the horizon. Much of the island’s northern shores had once been heavily populated with dozens of mining communities stretching far beyond the Ring of Iron, as the largest of the Empire’s industrial regions was known. Towns and villages were composed of sprawling wooden structures rather than the grand stonework of Villjamur. Men covered in black dirt would drag their feet towards the mines whilst women in dowdy clothing would try to scrape a living providing stores and taverns and brothels. Tribal slaves were treated well, the Council would say of this place, better than if they were merely given poor wages. It was a poor argument to own another person, in Dartun’s view, but seemed symptomatic of how things worked in the Jamur Empire.

It was difficult to avoid the detritus from decades of excavations, and the roads interlinking such places were little more than well-trodden paths. There was a continuing problem with wolves scavenging in the scraps of food and Dartun was amazed that people would choose to live here, but he supposed that the mines at least provided a livelihood of sorts.

Their group had passed around the outskirts of several such settlements, but there was now no one here to be seen. It wasn’t what Dartun expected. Was this due to the Freeze? Was it now so cold here that the inhabitants had been forced to evacuate? It was unlikely, he thought. The richer or more desperate residents would have sought shelter in the Sanctuary City, definitely, but there were bound to be a few hardened types – rumel even, with their more resilient skins – that could survive a harsher environment. There were still deer around, so the farming communities should at least survive being here. But where the people were was a mystery.

‘Dartun.’ Verain trudged towards him through the thick snow, her arms elegantly extended to each side as she navigated cautiously.

Her eyes shone with excitement. ‘We’ve found two hunters from the Aes tribe just up the way.’ She gestured towards the shoreline. ‘I think they can give news of why this island is deserted, although so far we can’t quite understand one another.’

Dartun took her gloved hands in his. ‘Thank you for telling me.’ He reached for the communication relic, held it beneath his cloak.

She smiled. She may have begun to feel a faint pity for his eccentricities.

Slipping now and then, Verain led him down a bank of snow, and he was forced to clutch thick clumps of ulex for stability. He could see Todi and Tuung still in conversation with the two tribesmen. The natives were dressed in furs. They both carried bows and hunting knives. Their faces were broad and tanned from a life in the sun and snow.

‘Greetings, warriors,’ Dartun addressed them in Sula, the common language of the Aes. ‘The weather has turned for the worse, has it not?’

‘You speak our language, magician,’ the taller man said. They had to be brothers. Dartun could barely tell them apart, but for the high cheekbones of the shorter man. ‘That is surprising.’

‘I’ve used my long life sensibly,’ Dartun replied. ‘So, what news is there on this island?’

The tall tribesman regarded the other, whilst the shorter one nodded imperceptibly, indicating it was him who was the thinker of the two. An icy wind whipped by them suddenly, and both warriors tilted their heads slightly as if to listen for the sounds of the wild.

They’re dressed to hunt – or be hunted… Which?

‘Creatures now stalk this island, magician. They are not natural to any animal group we know of.’

Dartun wondered for a moment if any of his undead could have escaped and strayed this far north, without being directed by his sect. But surely that was impossible. ‘Creatures?’ he queried.

‘That is why we’ve travelled here. Because our people have sent us to keep watch over things, according to the directions of shell readings.’

‘Watch over what exactly? Is this why there’s no one around?’

The tribesman nodded. ‘No one is around because of the creatures. They have snatched the people out of the cities and villages.’

‘What creatures?’ Dartun demanded, growing impatient with the limited vocabulary of Sula.

‘I am not sure if they have a name,’ the hunter responded. ‘They are like creatures of the sea, yet they walk on the land. They are like nothing I can precisely describe.’

Bipedal? ‘They walk upright?’ Dartun marched two fingers across the palm of his other hand. ‘On two legs? But they come from the sea?’

‘Yes, they walk like you and I do, but they have a shell like a lobster – or a crab perhaps I should say. A dark red shell the colour of the dying sun. This makes it difficult for our arrows because they cannot pierce the shell. We have tried to hunt some down, or rather other hunters of our people tried. Our folk were killed very quickly.’

Dartun was amazed at these accounts. ‘Are any of them still around?’

‘It is possible.’ Both men shrugged. ‘They’re too difficult to catch. They have killed so many.’

‘How many?’ Dartun was eager for more as he’d never read of such a creature in any of the Archipelago’s bestiaries. He felt both excitement and a threat, and this sort of thing appealed to his essential nature.

‘Nearly everyone on the island,’ the short man said casually, his voice as calm as if he was describing the weather.

‘Everyone?’ Dartun whispered. ‘But there must be hundreds of thousands on Tineag’l. Surely they can’t all have been killed?’

The tall tribesman grunted a laugh. ‘Tell me, how many people have you seen since you arrived here?’

Dartun saw the truth of what he said, and the concept sickened him, yet there was still some base, primitive reaction that excited him. Such was his constant thirst for knowledge and understanding. A new, unknown race was a sensational piece of information. ‘Please, could you tell me more about these creatures?’

‘We have told you all there is. We are sorry, magician.’ The two of them then headed back to their horses with that same annoying calmness. One added casually, ‘There have been great problems for us with the coming ice.’

Ice. That word again – changing the fabric of the world, changing people’s lives, their homes, their thoughts, bringing an unsettling texture of uncertainty about whether things would ever be the same again.

Ice. That was the reason he was now able to head for the Realm Gates since sheets of it had formed artificial land where previously maps had indicated only water. Could that bridge have allowed a new race to enter the Archipelago? Could these creatures have exited through the same gates that he was hoping to enter?

Dartun regarded his fellow cultists, who had soon lost interest in a conversation where they could understand little or nothing. The three of them were shuffling around idly in the snow, kicking up small mounds with their boots.

Todi noticed him watching them. ‘What’s up, Godhi? What did they say?’

Dartun rubbed his forehead as if to stir himself to some new state of alertness. ‘To be precise, they said that there’s some pretty major shit going on.’

Verain approached, took Dartun’s arm. ‘Should we be worried?’

Dartun explained what he had learned so far, whilst the other three simply stared at him as if he was demented.

Dartun summarized. ‘There has been genocide. The island has been cleansed.’

Their moods darkened considerably.

‘Come,’ Dartun announced, heading towards the dog pack. ‘A little research is perhaps in order.’

Dogs dragged the four cultists skidding along by sled into the nearest township that hadn’t suffered too much from incursions of snow. Settlements located on particularly exposed slopes had been, without their human population, covered completely. Villages had become corpses. Dartun had halted the dogs more than once, thinking that they should have reached a town clearly marked on his maps. He laughed morosely when he realized it was under snow.

Eventually they came to a settlement sheltered under a titanic outcrop of sedimentary rock. Dartun believed the place was called Bronjek, but it now bore little resemblance to the bustling town he had once heard of. The main street was little more than a muddy track, trodden by a thousand pairs of feet and rutted wheels and dog sleds, between wood and metal shacks that appeared to lean against one another for support. Thick shutters obscured most of the windows, but a few of these were open – despite the freezing cold – and that was the first indication something wasn’t as it should be.

The sign on a tavern said ‘Open’, but there was no one to enjoy its hospitality, no hospitality to enjoy, this once-busy street now a ghost of its former self.

There were dark smears across walls, and the odour of urine, something internal now exposed. Blended with the mud, it caused the town to smell like a macabre farmyard. A careful look would discern arcs of blood splattering wooden and metal panels of shacks. Whatever had caused this had visited the place quite recently. The sheer silence and absence of life in the latticework of streets engendered a sinister sensation. There seemed a thousand possible hiding places for those who had butchered this entire community.

Dartun dumped his heavier furs back on the sled in case he had to move quickly, then resumed the investigation. Soon he thought he could hear something. ‘Stay together,’ he urged to the others, and they huddled together like children, clutching various relics that could kill a man in an instant.

A muffled, animal whimper.

A sharp inhalation of breath originated from somewhere behind a nearby building.

Dartun strode across the slippery ground, reaching in his pocket for one of his relics, though he realized suddenly it wasn’t necessary.

What remained of a young girl lay naked on the ground, her entrails emerging from a horizontal slit in her stomach, while a famished dog was loitering nearby with blood on its maw. Dartun waved his arms to scare the creature off, till it finally trotted away through a gap between the shacks, stealing a cautious glance backwards every few moments until it disappeared.

Dartun crouched next to the girl’s body; he saw several bones of her ribcage were exposed and the flesh of her scalp peeled back to reveal a tiny piece of her skull glimmering white. With gloved hands he prodded her arms in turn, and they flopped aside, half severed from her torso. Something had actually tried to remove her bones, but apparently had given up. There was no way of telling what had been used to slice her open.

Was it some creature’s claws that did this? But why was she left here and yet no others?

The whisper of feet approached through the snow behind, and then Verain was in tears, Todi and Tuung peering over her shoulder. ‘Is that…’ she sobbed. ‘What…?’

‘Stay back, Verain,’ Dartun commanded. ‘All of you, go and keep watch.’ He gestured them away.

He studied the body once again. Although he had often raised the dead, there was nothing Dartun could possibly do to help this girl. She had been torn apart too cruelly to restore to living form.

What would do such a thing, and why would they try to pull her bones out? Was it intended as some warning? No, they would’ve left her in a more prominent position. This one has been discarded, as if she was merely waste.

Although the issue intrigued him scientifically, he was emotionally disgusted by this discovery. If a new race had arrived on the islands of the Empire, what interest could they have in killing Tineag’l’s population in such a barbaric fashion? Although, from another perspective, many of the tribes in these regions had thought the same about the Empire stealing their lands.

Dartun assembled the others to follow him on a thorough tour around the town’s haphazard streets, hoping to make some sense of these disturbing scenes. They examined the smashed buildings, doors hanging off hinges, tools strewn outside doorways, fragments of splintered wood littering patches of red snow, broken swords lying abandoned in the alleys. This had clearly been a terrifying struggle.

As he studied the tracks in the snow, he began to build a picture of what must have happened. From the north, they’d come, these creatures, and had smashed their way along every house systematically, driving residents into the open where some were slaughtered. Bloodstains were not frequent enough for complete eradication on the spot, which meant the town’s population had been driven away, herded like animals. There were heavy tracks leading back to the north.

More corpses were discovered, people who had met death in their homes: two more young children, a baby with its head removed, five elderly men, six old women, their bodies dismembered at the backs of buildings. One old man’s body was lying in his yard clutching a piece of Jorsalir artwork in his frozen hands: a depiction of Bohr and Astrid embracing, and Dartun could not help reflecting on how useless that holy trinket would have been in the victim’s horrifying final moments. What faith he must have possessed to think it might protect him from the terror.

The last discovery was the most disturbing: an elderly woman stripped naked, three savage slices running down her torso. She lay in a metal bathtub filled with bloodied water. The stench was overpowering. Todi was sick so had to leave the room. Again it appeared that some of bones had been removed from her body, particularly her pelvis and tibia. Her right arm had been totally severed, lying in several pieces that were tossed aside across the room, while her left hand still clung to the rim of the bath, fixed there with ice.

Dartun opened the shutters to allow in some fresher air. The view was of rolling hills in the distance, over which several flocks of birds arced in peaceful flight patterns towards the south, escaping the cold. The air was still as the sun broke through the clouds.

‘What d’you make of all this… madness?’ Tuung asked, stepping alongside Dartun at the window. There wasn’t a great deal to look at from there, but both men had seen too much inside.

Dartun sighed. ‘Dark times, my friend. Dark times.’

‘What’s caused all this? Why is it happening?’

‘I’m beginning to see some shape in these horrors. I suspect that the human population on this island was preyed upon by an alien race of intruders those hunters saw. And they’ve all been rounded up and herded out of this town. Where to and why? Who the hell can say why?’

‘It’s all so senseless.’ Tuung slapped the windowsill in fury. This was the first time Dartun had seen someone as dogged as Tuung seem so totally frustrated.

Events such as these altered people.

Dartun said, ‘I suppose that it’s not senseless to them. You’re seeing things from a human-centric perspective. I suspect they don’t think in the same way that you and I would think.’

‘I don’t follow you. Are you getting all philosophical again?’

‘Listen. Why would they leave the bodies of just the old and the very young?’ Dartun said, gesturing at the old woman’s remains.

Tuung shrugged. ‘I guess they’re the weakest, therefore the easiest to kill? I don’t know.’

‘Exactly so,’ Dartun replied. ‘They’re the weakest. The handful of bodies we’ve seen so far have been either young children or the old. Those are the frailest forms of human or rumel. Every corpse has had its bones partially or completely removed. It’s as if they opened them up to examine the bones, and then just discarded the corpses. As if they were not considered good enough.’

‘So they’re, what, after our bones or something?’

Dartun snorted a humourless laugh. ‘That’s a strong possibility. They’ve definitely taken people captive. And appear to be deliberately hunting mankind. Maybe even rumel, too, as we haven’t seen any of them around either.’

‘Bloody sick if you ask me,’ Tuung muttered.

‘That’s life,’ Dartun said, ‘once you look at it from a viewpoint other than our own. They’re just doing what this Empire has done for thousands of years to other cultures, and to other species. Pillaging their worlds for the sake of adding value to our own.’ He added: ‘And we call ourselves an enlightened civilization.’

‘It’s all right for you,’ Tuung grumbled, running a hand over his head as if to highlight the signs of ageing.

The comment, casual though it was, struck Dartun hard as his gaze lingered on the woman’s remains. Death was such a strange phenomenon because everyone went through life hiding from it, fearing it, yet it was the only inevitable outcome. But there was nothing inevitable about the way this woman had died, butchered in her moment of relaxation while lying in a warm bath on a cold day.

Life was never long enough, was it? He understood that better than most.

‘Come on,’ Dartun said at last, and began to lead them away from the disturbing scene. ‘We now find the Realm Gates, we investigate my final theories, and only when we have done so successfully will we return.’

Dartun paused on the muddied doorstep, his breath clouding in front of his face. In that intense air he felt you could breathe the terror pervading that desolate town. You could feel it seeping deep in your bones, into your blood.

They rode away from the dead town towards their agreed meeting point with other members of the Order of the Equinox. Arriving early, they had to wait there for two days in the freezing cold. Red sunlight forced its way through the fat clouds that obscured these vast northern skies. Everything around them seemed more capacious – or rather as humans they felt smaller compared with the empty environment. Life out here was much harsher than in the city. Nature dominated. Ridges of hillsides sloped steeply, snow slanted perpetually across your vision. It was humbling. Snow-buried tundra grasses stretched for leagues in every direction, punctuated occasionally by thickets of larix or betula. Sometimes a wolf would stray past in the first or last moments of the day, imposing its long shadow over the snow, while overhead the cry of birds – terns, gulls, falcons, and nearer the coast, gannets – would add an eerie chorus that only heightened the pervasive loneliness.

Dartun, however, was grateful for this isolation.

They had almost begun to lose track of the days when Verain spotted three longships approaching up Tineag’l’s western coast, almost veiled in the spray of the surf as it surged on the rough seas. That morning had brought a stronger wind, and with it the weather had taken a more severe turn.

‘Dartun, they’re here,’ she announced, rousing him as he reclined against a tree trunk, his boots sprawled out in front of him.

‘You sure it’s not the Empire’s forces?’ he demanded, glancing to the tents in which Todi and Tuung were still sleeping, then over to the pack of dogs who were huddled for shelter beside a windbreak.

‘They carry no Imperial banners. And look there.’ She pointed as a bright flash of purple light streaked up into the cloud base, like reverse lightning.

‘It’s them all right,’ Dartun agreed. He paused briefly to embrace her and kiss her on both cheeks. Almost wincing, her reaction indicated she wasn’t that comfortable with his closeness. She was like this from time to time – why then did she stick with him? Could she not leave him because of fear?

Dartun proceeded towards the tent, pulling back the flap to kick Todi and Tuung awake. ‘They’re here. Get ready.’

The two men groaned. ‘Not another freezing bloody day,’ Tuung complained.

‘Indeed.’ Dartun reached into one of his bags, drew out a brass tube, stepped outside, and set it in the snow for stability. He took off his gloves and made some subtle adjustments to the dials, then lunged for safety towards Verain as a thick bolt of purple light burst upwards with an explosive roar.

Dartun turned his attention to the ships once again. The vessels lurched lackadaisically, like old marine beasts, and were steered shoreward to the source of the signal.

The four cultists and their equipment were pulled down by the sled to the shore with the sleet now driving straight into their faces. They arrived at a rock-littered beach. Dartun dismounted, and stepped over to inspect the boats towering above him in the shallows. Originally hijacked by political dissidents, these three imposing boats had once been based in a military port further south. Military runework was carved into the hulls. On board, several members of the Order of the Equinox were standing ready, looking down at their leader.

‘Sele of Jamur!’ Dartun shouted above the smash of the waves. ‘You couldn’t have arrived a moment too soon. Where are the rest?’

The answer to that question came soon enough. Within the bell, five more vessels of equal dimensions had arrived, lining up alongside each other in a haphazard fashion. They had voyaged in small groups, not wanting to draw attention, and had gathered further down the coast to make the last lap to this neglected corner of a fading world. Gangplanks were thrown down, and soon around fifty Equinox cultists began disembarking.

And the undead were unloaded.

Two hundred, male and female, and human and rumel, in varying states of decay came shambling through the water to reach the rock-shore. Their arms swinging by their sides, they seemed unaffected by the harshness of the weather, the grey tint of exposed flesh showing through what little clothing they possessed.

They marched in neat rows, this militia, to stand in several lines against the upper shore, their rags fluttering like crippled banners in the breeze. Unprepossessing as they looked, Dartun knew he needed this protection. Papus might come after him even here, and he did not know what lay waiting for him the other side of the gates.

Packs of dogs were fetched from the ships, ripping at the cold air in excitement. Following them came yet more of the undead, this time carrying equipment, parts of sleds to be assembled, weaponry and relics and minor armour. Dartun was pleased at such efficiency. This counted for nearly all of the Order of the Equinox, leaving only a handful of cultists back in Villjamur. He felt much safer now, the mere presence of his kin lifting his morale.

Throughout the morning he briefed every cultist in turn on what had been discovered on the island.

Brutal killings.

Alien species.

The grotesque filleting of the victims.

Theories were discussed, methods and solutions bandied about, but one thing was certain: they had to move quickly so as to be prepared for any attack. Dartun stressed the importance of marching across the ice sheets to find their new enemy’s location. He was convinced it would be at the Realm Gates, which represented a new level of knowledge entirely.

Later, dog teams began dragging the cultists – a bizarre train of magicians – along the coastline, the army of the undead jogging along to the rear, all heading now for the northern shores. There they would venture out across the ice.

To the possibility of new worlds.