The Grim Company

The Gathering Storm

His eyelids flickered open and the world shifted into focus. He was lying flat on his back, staring up at a huge grey cloud looming directly overhead. A gust of wind pushed at his hair, ruffled the growth of beard he felt bristling upon his neck. He tried to move his body, grunted at the sudden sharp pain in his midriff.

He felt weak. Weak and half-starved. Memories rushed back to him. The collapse of the mine. The fight with the baby-faced Augmentor and his belt of knives. Cold steel slipping inside his stomach. Waking in sweat-drenched fever, swallowing desperately from a waterskin shoved halfway down his throat before the blackness took him again.

‘You’re awake. About fucking time.’ Jerek was there, crouched beside him. His right shoulder and thigh were wrapped in padded dressing. Blood had seeped through the bandages, but it had long since dried and turned brown.

Brodar Kayne forced himself up onto his elbows and glanced around. They were in a narrow depression, tree-covered hills rising on either side. The smell of rain was in the air. It was hard to be sure with the sun behind the clouds, but he reckoned it was late afternoon. How long?

‘You been out the better part of a week,’ the Wolf said, answering his unspoken question. ‘You were gutted good and proper, Kayne. Isaac stitched you up but the girl thought you was done for. I told her you was a stubborn cunt.’

Kayne licked his lips. His mouth was dry and tasted foul. ‘Where are they?’ he asked.

The Wolf reached down and passed him his water bottle. ‘Hunting,’ he replied. ‘Would have gone myself, but Isaac reckons my wounds still need time to heal. Turns out he’s an expert trapper.’

He looked up at his friend. Jerek’s face was unreadable. He scowled slightly when he saw Kayne studying him. You’ve taken worse wounds and they ain’t slowed you an inch, Wolf. You stayed with me in case I regained my senses. Not that the grim Highlander would ever admit to the fact.

‘Where are we?’ he asked.

Jerek spat. ‘West of the Rift, maybe a dozen miles. A shipful of the red-cloaked pricks turned up the day after we collapsed the mine. Followed our trail for a while, but I reckon we lost them. We been lying low ever since.’

Kayne sighed. How many had died at the Rift? The sabotage mission had turned into a massacre. ‘They discover it was us that destroyed the place?’

Jerek shrugged. ‘Don’t think so. They never got close enough to see our faces. Still, ain’t much chance of us swanning back into the Grey City now, is there? Not with the trail of bodies we’ve left behind. I say we escort the girl back to the city and get her to retrieve our gold, then put some miles between us and Dorminia. I’m tired of this shit.’

Kayne was of a like mind himself. He felt old. He felt ancient. Too many dead; too much sorrow. He was tired of running away, sick of killing. A man has to know when to quit.

A disturbance up near a line of alders caught his attention. Isaac and Sasha emerged from the trees, the manservant clutching a trio of coneys in one hand. He smiled happily when he saw his charge had regained consciousness.

In contrast, Sasha was looking mighty peeved. Her jaw clenched and unclenched in a manner not dissimilar to the Wolf when he got into one of his moods. She had a jagged tear down the side of her breeches and her left leg was caked up to the knee in mud.

‘So you made it after all,’ she said, somewhat coldly, hunkering down near to where he lay. She pulled her muddy boot off and turned it upside down, giving it a violent shake. Filthy water trickled out. ‘It would be nice if Isaac paid as much attention to our footing as he did your recovery.’ She glared at the manservant. ‘I can’t believe you led me into a bog.’

Isaac looked slightly embarrassed. ‘I really am sorry about that. I was distracted.’

‘Distracted? You were ambling along drawing pictures of birds.’

‘I like to sketch. I have quite a collection back at the depository. Perhaps when we return to the city I could show them to you.’ His vapid face looked hopeful.

Sasha snorted. ‘Now there’s an offer I can’t refuse. Don’t waste your time, Isaac. I’m not interested.’

Isaac’s face fell. Kayne couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. ‘I guess I should thank you for patching me up,’ he said to the dejected manservant. He lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘I shouldn’t fret about the girl. I reckon she has her sights set on someone else.’ He gave her a knowing look, thought about winking but couldn’t quite muster the enthusiasm.

Sasha shot him a poisonous glance. ‘As if you’re in any position to know what I want. You Highlanders and your women. How does it go? You hit them on the head with a rock and rape them while they’re unconscious? Or is it the other way around?’

The girl’s words cut right through him. She might have been jesting, but if there was anything besides anger and contempt in those dark eyes he couldn’t see it.

Her tone didn’t sit well with Jerek. ‘What’s your fucking problem?’ he demanded in an angry rasp. ‘You’ve been bitching like a she-bear with a twig up her arse for the last week. Did the alchemist mean that much to you?’

‘Vicard was a better man than you’ll ever be,’ Sasha spat back. ‘I suppose I should consider myself lucky Isaac is around, or who knows what you’d have done to me by now. I’m not scared of you.’

Jerek’s face twisted in anger. He stepped towards her. She stared back, unflinching. The Wolf’s right hand went to his beard, tugging furiously. His left hand clenched into a fist. ‘Fuck yourself. I’m going for a walk.’ With that, he spun and stormed off into the trees.

Kayne watched him go. He released the breath he’d been holding with a tired sigh and closed his eyes for a moment. The first light patters of rain fell, cooling his face and releasing some of the tension in the air.

Isaac scratched the side of his head and risked a nervous smile. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I think we’d better find shelter from this downpour.’ He gave the rabbits he was holding a small shake. ‘Who’s hungry?’

He watched the small fire dancing in the light breeze. The canopy of leaves and branches overhead shook with the strength of the downpour. Occasional droplets of rain splattered down through gaps in the foliage, but it was better than being out there in the open where the spring deluge was beating at the surrounding hills like an anvil. Isaac stirred the stew he was preparing with a stick, humming to himself. It smelled delicious. Even Sasha appeared to have relaxed somewhat.

The old Highlander was so hungry he felt sick but there was no point complaining about it. The food would be ready when it was ready. At least his stomach wound seemed to be healing. He’d managed to struggle to his feet and hobble up the hill without the help of the others. His knees hurt like hell and the piss he’d just taken had been two of the worst minutes of his life, but he reckoned he was on the mend.

He cleared his throat and glanced across at Sasha. ‘Sorry for the loss of your friend, lass,’ he said. He tried to think of something else to add but couldn’t, so he stared at his scarred hands instead.

For a moment she didn’t respond. Then she looked across the fire at him. ‘I have a name, you know. Sasha. Not “girl”, or “lass”. Or even “bitch”, as your brutish companion so endearingly refers to me.’

‘I don’t mean to offend,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been good with names, and my memory ain’t getting any better with age. Besides, most everyone seems a girl or boy when you’re as old as me.’

She seemed to ponder this for a time. ‘Just how old are you?’ she asked eventually.

‘Can’t say for sure. I killed my first man over forty years ago. I was, what, nine at the time. I guess that means I’m past fifty.’

She stared at him in disbelief. ‘You killed your first man when you were nine years old? That’s ridiculous.’

‘Aye, well, the High Fangs were wilder back in them days.’ He stared at the pot bubbling over the fire. ‘My village had come under attack from a nearby settlement. Our warriors drove them off, but they left some of their wounded behind. One of ’em was right there before me on the snow, stabbed through his chest and sobbing like a babe. Father handed me his spear, told me it was time I became a man.’ He shrugged. ‘I did what I had to do.’

‘You were a child,’ she said. He saw disgust in her eyes.

Aye, I was. And yet in that moment I saw the truth of the world, and a smarter man would have heeded that lesson better than I ever could. Still. What’s done is done. I wager your own past ain’t all sweetness and light. Got some ghosts of your own, if I’m any judge.

‘It was the way things were done,’ Kayne said. ‘Still is, though the Reachings don’t war like they used to. The threat from the Devil’s Spine has made everyone a bit more cautious about killing each other. Most of the time,’ he added.

Isaac decided the stew was ready. The manservant passed over the cook pot. ‘Have as much as you want,’ he said. ‘You need to eat. To tell the truth, I’m surprised you pulled through. You mountain folk are a hardy lot and no mistake.’

Brodar Kayne didn’t respond. He was already stuffing his mouth. Hot stew spilled down his chin and burned his fingers, but he paid it no mind. He’d spent two years being pursued all over the High Fangs, never knowing where his next meal might come from. In that situation a man eats what he can, when he can, and in any way he can. There were times when he’d been forced to drink his own piss, and you know things are looking bleak when that prospect’s almost appealing.

The other two watched him in silence. When he’d eaten as much as he could, he felt the weakness return. He was about to nod off when Sasha’s voice drifted over and tugged him back to wakefulness.

‘You never did tell me what you and Jerek were doing in Dorminia.’

He shifted, blinked a few times to shake away the sleepiness. ‘We were on the run,’ he said, after an uncomfortable silence. ‘The Shaman has a bounty on our heads. Mine especially. Ain’t nothing he’d rather see than my ugly face on a spear above the Great Lodge.’

‘The Shaman? You mean the Magelord of the High Fangs? What did you do to upset him?’

‘Ain’t what I done, lass. It’s what I didn’t do.’ He closed his eyes and thought back to the morning the Shaman uttered the words that had frozen the blood in his veins.

Beregund must be razed to the ground.

‘I wasn’t always the sorry old bastard you see now. The Sword of the North, they named me. I was the Defender of the High Fangs, the first bulwark against the fiends that came down from the Spine. In times of war I was the instrument of the Shaman’s will.’

Sasha looked puzzled. ‘You served the Shaman?’

He nodded. ‘The fact is, I didn’t much care for right and wrong when I was a younger man. I did many things I ain’t proud of. Wasn’t until I got older that the fame and respect began to lose their lustre. Once that happens, killing is the only thing that’s left, and being the best at killing ain’t enough. Not when the weight of a man’s deeds begins to drag on him.’

He sat for a time, remembering. The wind had picked up, whistling through the boughs above them like the shrieks of a thousand lost souls. Sasha and Isaac looked at him expectantly. He cleared his throat.

‘I met Mhaira when I was maybe half the age I am now. We had our joining within a year. She was a daughter of the Green Reaching, born to a couple of herders from Beregund. A modest family, but it didn’t matter a damn to me. Not when I saw the laughter in her eyes. Thinking back, I probably thought wedding a shepherd’s daughter added to my own legend in the making.’

‘That sounds like someone I know,’ Sasha said quietly.

He thought about that for a time. ‘Aye, I reckon I can see shades of myself in the lad. I was arrogant. Proud. Conceited. Wedding Mhaira was the one thing I got right. Ain’t a day goes by that I don’t count my blessings for that one moment of good sense.’

‘What happened?’ asked Sasha, poking at the remnants of their campfire with a stick. Isaac looked on with his usual bland expression.

He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘The Shaman ordered Beregund put to the sword. Mhaira’s family. The friends I had there. All of them.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s how the Shaman does things. Aye, reasons were given: the town wasn’t honouring the Treaty; they were withholding tributes due to Heartstone — that kind of thing. But what it came down to was the Shaman exercising his dominance. He was always pitting folk against each other. Culling the weak, as he called it.’

‘You refused to do as he asked.’

The old Highlander nodded. ‘The Shaman gave me a day to make my decision. I figure he thought to test me. Knowing he wouldn’t like my answer, I fled east with Mhaira. The Brethren caught me a few days later but I bought her some time to escape. Or so I thought.’

Tears threatened his eyes. He blinked them away. ‘I spent the best part of a year inside a wicker cage. The Brethren found Mhaira huddling in a cave in the Devil’s Spine and had both of us brought before the Shaman. He burned her alive. Would have been me next but for Jerek. Whatever else a man might say about him, the Wolf ain’t one to forget a debt.’

Sasha pursed her lips and stared down at the ground. ‘That’s a horrible story. Do you have any children?’

He flinched at the question. ‘I had a son. Pride of his mother and me, he was. Had his mother’s wits and his father’s skill with a sword. He… died, the day Mhaira burned.’

Silence followed his words. Isaac’s plain face was sympathetic, and even Sasha’s eyes had softened. The fire had burned down to embers. Kayne stared at the glowing ash, avoiding the gazes of those opposite him. Eventually he cleared his throat.

‘I reckon that’s enough about me. What about you, lass? What’s the story with you and boy?’

Sasha frowned back at him. ‘You mean Cole? There is no story.’

‘I saw the way he looks at you.’

‘He can look at me any way he likes. We’ve known each other for years. Garrett is my mentor too. Cole is… well, you’ve seen how he is. He’s the only person I know who can scrape through the most dangerous situations by the sheer power of his own bullshit.’

‘Aye, there’s some gap between the man he is and the man he sees in the mirror. Still, I get the feeling his heart’s in the right place.’

Sasha sighed. ‘Somewhere deep down inside him, it is. But he’s been raised to believe he’s some great hero. Garrett spoiled him.’ She shook her head. ‘Cole lives in a bubble. One day it’s going to burst and his whole world will come crashing down.’ There was a hint of concern in the girl’s voice. Concern and perhaps something more.

The old barbarian was wise enough to say nothing.

Footsteps squelched on soggy turf and Jerek reappeared, soaked through to the bone. His face was thunder.

‘Fucking things don’t work,’ he said, pointing down at the faintly glowing leather boots on his feet.

Sasha rolled her eyes. ‘That’s because they’re bondmagic. The enchantment only functions for the person linked to them. Salazar isn’t stupid enough to allow powerful artefacts such as those to be turned against him.’

Jerek looked down at the boots in disgust and spat. ‘Could have told me that before I prised them from the stinking feet of that bastard. Waste of fucking time, this whole journey. And roll those pretty eyes at me again and you’ll regret it.’

Kayne flexed his neck, loosening muscles that had grown stiff during his convalescence. ‘We’ve got a two-day march until we reach Dorminia. I reckon it’ll go smoother if we all make the effort to be civil.’ No one answered. Sasha and Jerek stared daggers at one another. Isaac busied himself tidying the camp. Kayne sighed. ‘Fine. Silence suits me just as well.’

‘I spotted a small town a few miles west of here,’ Jerek said abruptly. ‘We can buy supplies. Maybe rest until this shitty weather passes.’ He rubbed at his scarred face as if he could do with a break, but Brodar Kayne knew the truth of the matter. In spite of everything, the realization pricked at him.

Wounded pride? Stupid old fool. You never learn. He climbed to his feet, niggling pains assailing him from every direction, so many he didn’t even bother to try and count them all. He forced his stubbly face into a rictus of a smile.

‘A few miles, eh? We can make that before nightfall. Let’s get some shelter over our heads. You lot could use a break from the rain.’