Dawn of the Dreamsmith (The Raven's Tale Book 1) (12 page)

His hands still trembling, the older man hastened to do as he was bid. He lifted the cord over his head, and threw the pouch at the stranger’s feet. “I hope ye choke on it,” he spat.

The stranger stooped to retrieve the pouch, then upturned it onto his palm. Cole watched as a tiny gold locket fell out, glinting in the sunlight. The stranger stood a moment, staring at it, before placing it inside a pocket. With his back still to Cole, the stranger half-turned his head. “You would spare this man?”

Cole glanced down at his guide. The man’s red-rimmed eyes looked up at him imploringly. “I would,” he answered.

“Even though he and these others would have robbed you, cut your throat and left you for the crows?”

Cole swallowed. “Even then,” he said, after a pause. “If I did not, how would I know I am any better than they?”

The stranger nodded thoughtfully. His hooded head turned back to the old man still lying on his back. “Go,” he said.

Disbelief etched onto his face, Dirk slowly raised himself to his feet, warily eyeing the blade the stranger still held. As he turned to flee, the stranger spoke again. “Nothing happens in The Weald without my hearing of it,” he said. “If I ever learn that you have returned to your old ways, I will find you. Do you understand?”

The old man’s eyes glittered with menace, yet he nodded. “Aye.” A moment later he was gone, lurching into the trees in the direction Cole had heard the noise of horses coming from earlier.

He stood and watched, unsure what to do with himself, as the black-clad stranger marched off in the opposite direction, without so much as a backwards glance at him or the three bodies lying in the clearing. For want of anything else to do, Cole jogged after him.

A short distance from the clearing, a black horse was tied to a low branch by its reins. The stranger cleaned his red-streaked blades on the grass, then placed them within a pair of leather scabbards fastened to his saddle. Cole noticed other weapons hanging beside them; a longsword, several knives and a shortbow. Lying near Cole’s feet was a small crossbow. He picked it up and proffered it.

The stranger regarded at it coolly for a moment, and then snatched it from Cole’s hands. “My thanks,” he said gruffly, slipping it into a leather holster upon the saddle. He then retrieved a long black woollen cloak and pulled it around his shoulders. Satisfied, he swung up into the saddle and removed his mask and hood.

Cole gasped. The stranger was not a man, nor even a boy as he had assumed. Sitting atop the black horse was a woman, still in her youth. Her hair was black, darker even than the shadows beneath the trees, and had been hacked artlessly short. Eyes as blue as winter’s heart stared down at him. Eyes he had seen before.

“You’re the one from the inn,” Cole cried, in a flash of realisation. “The serving girl.” The memory of their last encounter came back to him then, and he blushed. “Wait,” he added, “wasn’t your hair blonde? Were you following me?”

“Not you. Him,” the black-haired woman replied, nodding her head back towards the clearing.

“Who are you?” Cole’s curiosity over-ride his desire not to antagonise a woman who not five minutes earlier had massacred three people before his eyes.

“Raven,” she replied, taking up her reins.

“Wait,” Cole cried again, leaping in front of her horse. “Can you help? I need to get to the mountains. The fate of the realm could be at stake!” he blurted.

“Look, young man-”

“Cole.”

“-Cole,” she continued smoothly, “I’m not a guide. I have business of my own to attend to, so...”

“I
had
a guide,” interrupted Cole testily. “You chased him away and killed several others who happened to be in the general vicinity. Thank you for that, by the way.”

Wordlessly, Raven attempted to steer her horse around him, but Cole jumped to the side to block her passage. “I could just run you down, you know,” she pointed out.

“You could,” Cole admitted. “But something tells me you won’t. You owe me.”

A hint of a smile played at the corners of the rider’s mouth. “So, I save your life and now
I
owe
you
?”

Cole hesitated. Put like that, it did sound ridiculous. “Well, perhaps I owe you then, and I’m not letting you leave until you agree to let me pay my debt.” He grinned, in what he hoped was a winning manner.

Raven sighed. “What is it you want from me?”

“Just take me to the nearest town or village. I’ll find my way from there. I can pay.”

She considered his offer. “Fine,” she said wearily. “If it will get you off my back. Go fetch your horse, then. We’ll be riding at my pace, so if you get left behind you’ll be on your own.”

It turned out to be an empty threat. Cole did ride considerably slower than Raven and her shadowy mount, who loped confidently across the deeply rutted and perilous floor of the forest as if it were a sunny meadow. But, whenever he lost sight of them, they were to be found waiting a short distance ahead. His new guide did not seem particularly happy about the delays, however.

To his chagrin, they were heading in the opposite direction to the foothills he had been making for with his guide that morning, but he wisely decided against complaining. He was being brought along on sufferance, he knew, and, although it was not gracefully given, he did appreciate the help.

But something was nagging at him, and at last he had to put voice to it. “Thank you for sparing him,” he said to her on one of the rare occasions they rode side by side. “The old man, I mean. I wasn’t sure that you would.”

Raven didn’t meet his gaze. “Do you know what they would have done to you if I hadn’t been there?”

“I might have been able to talk them round,” replied Cole defiantly. “Dirk was gruff, but he wasn’t such a bad sort.”

For a long time, Raven was silent. Cole began to wonder if she had heard him, or was ignoring his words. “Perhaps,” she said finally, in a quiet voice. She didn’t look at him when she spoke, instead her eyes scanned the trees ahead.

“What
were
you doing there, anyway?” he asked. This time, she did ignore him. “All I know about you is your name, and that you fight better with swords than anyone I have ever seen.” Saying it out loud, he suddenly questioned his wisdom in insisting they travel together. “I don’t even know what you do.”

“I’m a hunter.”

Cole looked around them doubtfully. In nearly two days spent plodding through these woods, the only game he had seen were scrawny squirrels and one very dead hare. It didn’t seem to be a part of the world where a hunter would enjoy much success. “A hunter of what?” he asked.

It was then that she turned to face him. Eyes burning with a cold intensity fastened upon his own. “Monsters,” she replied.

CHAPTER 6

A
light rain was falling as Captain Brandt stepped onto the dock from the wooden gangway. Dark clouds that had begun to gather over the bay before they set sail now loomed directly above their heads. He eyed them warily. It was folly to set sail in such weather, he knew, but curiosity had gotten the better of him. Fortunately the crossing to the island fortress was a short one.

Raindrops spattering his face, Captain Brandt looked up towards the keep; an ugly, clenched granite fist that loomed out of the sheer rock two hundred feet above their heads.

His crew busied themselves behind him, securing the vessel to the moorings. Despite the worsening weather he took a moment to admire the craft he commanded. The
Havørn
was a sixty-foot, twin-masted buss, and deceptively nimble despite her rotund appearance; a quality he had been grateful for on more than one occasion.

“Look captain,” called Dorric, pointing to the sky. Above the keep, a massive flock of birds was wheeling through the air. Even at this distance, Captain Brandt could make out the harsh cries of gulls.

“Ill tidings,” he muttered to no-one in particular. He cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed a greeting up to the stone gatehouse far above. There was no reply.

His jaw tightened. The Brothers had always kept to themselves, but the stillness of the keep and its dock unnerved him. When they had set out at first light, it was his hope that they would find Cole’s story was a fantasy, or an exaggeration of events at worst. It wouldn’t be the first time that a runaway had embellished the tale of their flight.

Perhaps there was a minor disagreement and he fled
, the captain thought.
Or he was disgraced and expelled, and invented a story to gain the sympathy of strangers.
He knew that he was trying to convince himself, however. He’d known the lad only a short time, but long enough to know he seemed neither craven nor a liar.
I must have the truth of what happened here.

Nobody in Westcove knew about their journey to the Crag, not even Freyja. He hadn’t even recounted Cole’s story to his crew. Either it was false and there was no reason to alarm them, or it was true and they would see for themselves shortly. Instead he had told them he wished to speak in person to the castle’s steward regarding payment for their last shipment.

Truthfully, it was hard to pin down exactly why he felt such a strong desire to see the Crag for himself, and confirm the details of Cole’s story. He had told Freyja about the events at the tavern the previous evening, but mere words were unable to convey the sheer
wrongness
of what he had witnessed. Whatever magic had once existed in the world was long since forgotten, but what else could explain the powers he had seen the green-eyed priest wield? If Cole’s story was true, then he was afraid that dark forces had been at work. For the safety of his family, if nothing else, he needed to be sure.

A gust of wind tugged at the tails of his longcoat. The sky was continuing to darken, and heavy drops of rain began to fall more urgently. Captain Brandt looked out over the sea where the waves were growing in size, white foam at their crests. He barked an order at his men, and they began to lower the boat’s sails. “If the wind continues to pick up and a storm threatens, take her out to deeper waters,” he told the first mate.

“Aye cap’n.”

Satisfied, Captain Brandt turned and marched along the dock towards the narrow stone steps that zig-zagged up the cliff face to the keep. The island on which the Crag sat looked almost like a mountain, submerged with just its crown poking above the waves.

In ancient times, the Crag would have been an impregnable fortress, beyond the reach of any siege engine on the mainland and an impossible place for any hostile force to land. But if an invading army had somehow managed to reach the island and begun scaling the cliff face, they would have done so while being pelted with hot oil, arrows, rocks and other missiles from the ramparts above. Over the centuries, it had come to symbolise the obduracy of the region’s inhabitants, who referred to themselves proudly as Westermen. While geographically part of the Empire, they ever held themselves separate from it. All attempts to integrate them further had failed, until eventually Emperor Maximilien had accepted their stubborn individuality, though not forgiven it.

But any such history of the island bastion’s military prowess was lost to time, and it had been the home of the peaceful Brothers for as long as any could remember. Captain Brandt knew that the lords of several of the Fisher Houses claimed their ancestors had held the Crag as their seat, but any records that might have confirmed this were conspicuous by their absence.

There was still no sign of activity from the gatehouse above, and he reached a decision. “Jan, Dorric, with me,” he barked, and strode towards the steps. The two crew members jumped obediently from the deck and hurried along in his wake. Grey-haired Nikolaj, his grizzled first mate, had stayed on board, as had the typically impassive southron Sten. It was not his true name, but the bald, muscular sailor had earned the nickname – Rock, in the old northern tongue – from his crew-mates for his stony silence and stoicism. These four comprised the crew of the
Havørn
, and had served Captain Brandt well for many years.

The climb was hard going. In Westcove, the path in the cliffside that led from the docks to the Crag itself was known as the ‘Stair of a Thousand Steps’, and the captain would not have been surprised to learn that the actual number was far greater. Each step had been carved into the rock-face itself, roughly two feet wide. There was no handrail on the side that faced out to the sea, and rain and algae had made the surface treacherous underfoot. They proceeded slowly, in single file. The captain kept one hand pressed against the cliff face, trying not to think about the hundred-foot drop that would greet any slip or misstep.

Far above them, outside the keep’s curtain wall, a wooden platform had been constructed overlooking the dock, from which a small basket could be lowered. This was used to raise shipments of provisions, or the more infirm Brothers, without the need to climb up the stair. In such perilous conditions, the captain had hoped to be able to make use of it, but it was still secured at the platform above them and they had no means of lowering it from below.

At a sudden gust of wind, the captain pressed himself flat against the cliff face. The two men behind him did the same. “Let’s come back tomorrow, cap’n,” cried Dorric, his simple, open face screwed up against the rain and biting wind. “A pouch of gold ain’t worth breaking our necks over.”

“Aye,” agreed Jan. “The ‘Maid is calling to me. A mug of ale and a seat by the fire, how about it cap’n?”

“We go on,” Captain Brandt growled. “Quit your bellyaching. And any man that dashes his brains out below, I’ll warm their heels to the gates of hell myself.”

He continued up the steps, refusing to let his own disquiet show. In truth, he wondered if this wasn’t a fool’s errand. Behind him, the two sailors grumbled, but resumed the climb.

It seemed to take hours, every step along the path requiring absolute concentration and care to negotiate. Eventually, and with great relief, they reached the cliff top and gazed down upon the deck of the
Havørn
far below. The fishing vessel bobbed from side to side as white-capped waves dashed against its sides. As yet, though, there was no need for it to cast off in search of deeper water.

The rain continued to soak their clothes, and the wind at the top of the cliff gusted harder. It was with a glad heart that Captain Brandt turned away towards the Crag’s gatehouse. They would use the elevator to return to the dock, he decided.

It was just a short walk from the top of the winding steps to the large wooden gate of the keep, which loomed high above them. Close to, the stillness of the gatehouse was if anything more eerie than it had been from the dock.
A dead place
, he thought, as an icy finger ran up his spine. The gigantic flock of gulls, which must have numbered in the hundreds, created a near-deafening cacophony. But he felt that, even without their presence, there would have been no sound from within those cold stone walls.

“This isn’t right, cap’n,” said Dorric nervously. “Not a single one a’ the mad monks come to see what we’re about.”

“Keep your blades loose in their sheaths, lads,” Captain Brandt murmured softly. “Be ready.”

It occurred to him then to wonder how they would gain access to the keep if there were none left inside to unbar the gate, but as it transpired the answer to that riddle was far simpler than the ascent up the stair had been. While the pair of large wooden gates would have been wide enough to admit a cart when opened, a smaller door just large enough for a man was cut into the left-hand gate. It creaked open at Captain Brandt’s touch. No attempt had been made to fasten it.

He kept his hand on the hilt of his own sword as he cautiously stepped through to the passage beyond. Past a tall stone archway as long as the thickness of the curtain wall, it led to an open courtyard. Doors were set into either side of the passage, leading to the guardroom above, the captain presumed. Inside the keep, as outside, there was no sound nor movement beyond that of the gulls, which he could now see were swooping in and out of the courtyard in front.

He thought about shouting another greeting, but felt the words catch in his throat. Freyja made fun of his superstitions, though he always retorted that he had never met a sailor who was different. The truth, however, was that he was as much a pragmatist as someone influenced by old wives’ tales. It was that voice in his head that told him there was little point in wasting his breath. The superstitious side of his nature, meanwhile, was afraid of what he might disturb by calling out.

Reluctantly, he walked through to the courtyard. As he left the passage, his boots splashed through wide puddles that had collected around the square. Treading in one, he nearly lost his footing. The water had mingled with the droppings of hundreds of birds, creating a surface as slick and treacherous as that of the stone steps they had climbed.

Jan was not so fortunate. With a startled cry, his skinny legs flew from under him and he landed on his back in a puddle. Dorric roared with laughter as they watched their fallen comrade struggle to gain his feet.

“Quiet!” Captain Brandt barked. “Can’t you feel it? Laughter has no place within these walls.”

Dorric’s guffaws dried up instantly. He looked foolishly around the keep’s inner walls and buildings. It was true, they all felt it. The captain glanced around as well. The empty windows surrounding them stared down like hollow eye sockets.

“P’raps we should just leave, cap’n,” said Jan nervously, his usual cocky tone nowhere to be heard.

Captain Brandt was about to rebuke him, when Dorric cried out, “Look! Over there!”

He looked in the direction the sailor was pointing. Across from them, the arch leading to the keep’s inner courtyard stood open. Through it, he could just make out what appeared to be a large pale mound. Even from this distance, it looked as though it was writhing.

With dread in his heart, the captain moved towards it. With every footstep, he felt as though there were lead weights in his boots, and the cries of the gulls grew louder in his ears as he approached the mound trying to calm the rising sickness in his stomach.

What he had taken for writhing was in fact the movement of dozens of gulls, hopping over the lifeless forms, pecking, taking flight only to be replaced by another. Close to, the cacophony of their hungry, eager cries was overwhelming.

As was the smell.

The mass of seabirds was too thick to see through clearly, but the same part of the human brain that could discern animals or ships in the clouds recognised familiar shapes as they were fleetingly uncovered. A hand, a foot. A face.

He couldn’t tell how many were there, but several dozen at least; stacked carelessly on top of one another like so much cordwood. The brown robes were maroon with the stains of dried blood. The gulls and other seabirds had been busy, but they were unmistakably the Brothers and novices of the Crag.
They’ve probably lain here since the boy’s flight from this accursed rock
, he thought.

“Massacred,” hissed Jan from behind, tracing the holy sign of the Divine across his chest.

“I don’t think we’re gettin’ paid,” Dorric added.

Captain Brandt said nothing for a long time. Cole’s story was true, there was little doubt about that now. But what to do about it? What had been done here, had been done for a reason, he was sure of that. But what? What would cause the head of their Order to slaughter his subordinates in this way? And how did the boy fit into it all?
I’m just a simple sailor
, he thought.
Even if I had all the pieces of this puzzle, I doubt I could put it together
.

He pushed the dozen questions that vied for his attention to one side. They could wait. For now, there were more pressing matters to attend to. With a yell, he threw his arms wide towards the mound, and sent hundreds of gulls flapping and squawking into the air. He drew his sword and swung at them ineffectually as they took flight.