Exile (Bloodforge Book 1) (17 page)

Beccorban.
The name
came to her again. There had been a man once, many years ago. Had he not been
called Beccorban?
Yes
, she decided,
he had, but he had been called many others
things besides, and that man was dead, killed in a battle as bitter as his
life’s work.
Helhammer. Scourge. Slain and hacked apart as a punishment for
his crimes.

Riella looked again at
that lined face, at the hair flecked with grey. Now it had taken on a different
aspect to her. She could see the pain in him, the inner agony that made his
face twist, that clawed at the back of his eyelids so that it might look upon
the world that had conceived it. He would be about the right age, she was sure.
Her mother had told her the stories when she was young but she had thought that
they were just that: stories. Was this man the ogre from her mother’s tall
tales?

He stirred restlessly
and she froze, afraid to look up in case she met that iron-coloured gaze and
withered before it, as so many surely had before. The moment seemed to last for
an age while she waited for a bellow of rage and the clasp of steel fingers on
her flesh, but it did not come, and finally she noticed the rhythm of his
breathing and realised that he was still very much asleep. She frowned. Did
evil men know they were evil?

Riella turned her
attention back to the wooden handle of the weapon. Over two thirds of it was
exposed now, and as she pulled it again to free the end, it snagged on the
cloak. She swore softly and tried once more. It refused to move, trapped as it
was in the folds of the black fur, which was in turn pinned beneath Beccorban’s
bulk. Riella felt panic threaten and took a deep breath. There was no going
back now. If he caught her like this, things would turn ugly. She bent forward
and gripped the wood with both hands. Carefully she twisted it so that whatever
was trapped might come loose, and then, risking everything, she gave a great
heave.

It was a warhammer. The
head of it broke free and slid across the bed. With a sickening lurch, Riella
realised that the hammer was too heavy for her and that, unbalanced as she was,
it would fall from the bed and smash into the floor. Quickly she dropped to one
knee and released the handle, throwing her hand forward to catch the head as it
slipped forward and dropped to the floorboards with unearthly speed. The hammer
crushed her hand into the floor and she bit her lip to stop herself from crying
out with pain. She looked up at Beccorban, but this time he was not asleep. He
was sitting rigid, awake and staring at her with a mixed look of surprise, rage,
and fear.

Riella looked back at
him, unsure of what to say. Her hand throbbed and she was sure that one or more
of her fingers were broken, but his expression hurt her more. He opened his
mouth to speak and then stopped as the sound of somebody ascending the stairs
from the taproom carried to both their ears. Beccorban leapt into action,
shoving Riella aside with his knee and snatching up the fallen weapon, however
before he could hide it away, there came a shocked gasp from behind them, and
they both turned to see Hana standing at the door, one hand hovering at her
mouth and the other holding a tray of food. She dropped it with a clatter and
spilled black bread, cheese, and cured meat on to the floorboards.

Riella knew what it
looked like: her on the floor nursing an injury, Beccorban standing above her,
hair in disarray, the bedclothes all a-tangle and a weapon of dark purpose in
his hand. “Hana,” she reached out, but it was too late. The girl turned and
fled, even her slight frame making the timbers crack and creak as she went.

Beccorban stood still a
moment more then strode to the bed. He gathered up his bearskin cloak and
twirled it on to his shoulders, then set about packing what he could into a
small satchel of tanned hide that she had not noticed until now.

Riella watched him as he
marched around the room, gathering furs and picking up the fallen food from
where Hana had dropped it. “I’m sorry,” she began.

“That was badly done,”
he cut her off. “Now things will turn ill.” He didn’t look at her and she could
feel the shame of her betrayal burning the tender skin behind her ears. Why had
she looked? What right did she have to his secrets?

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed
again. “Truly. I didn’t mean for—”

“You didn’t think of
anything besides yourself and now we shall both pay for it. You more so than
I.”

“What do you mean?”
Riella picked herself up and stood drunkenly — an island lashed by the
cold and unforgiving seas of his rage.

Beccorban stopped his
frantic activity and stared her down so that she felt the chill of his gaze. He
pointed the head of the warhammer that he clutched so possessively straight at
her, and when he lifted it, it was as though he held nothing more than a reed,
not the heavy weight of wood and steel that had ruined her hand. “I am used to
being hunted. I have been chased and I have fled like prey and I have even been
cornered a few times, as I am now, but I have never been caught. When they come
for me again I shall be long gone, but now they shall also come for you. Let us
hope that you can sneak away.” His eyes bored into the back of her skull.
“Spirit counts for much but it has little stamina when the knives come out.”
His voice was hard and cruel and had been stripped of any of the warmth she had
heard before. “Flee, girl. It won’t be long now.”

Riella stood dumbfounded
and it felt as though the world was closing in around her. “But I’m coming with
you. To Kressel.”

Beccorban laughed and it
was a laugh as frosty as the mountain wind. “No. I will not have you with me.
Not now.”

“But I never meant…” she
protested but did not get to finish, as the heavy footsteps of a man thundered
up the stairs until Hari was standing in the doorway, his daughter hidden
behind his arm.

“So it is true,” he
said, his eyes fastened on the weapon in Beccorban’s grip.

Beccorban nodded, making
no effort to hide the warhammer. “Aye, it is true. I am no simple woodsman.
Would that I were.”

A haunted look came over
Hari’s face and his eyes glazed over with fear. He tore his eyes from the
warhammer. “I won’t have you here in my home. Get out or, gods help me, I’ll
scream your name from the village square, and then even
that
,” he pointed at the hammer,” won’t save you. Not even you.”

Beccorban nodded, and
Riella, caught in between, saw Beccorban tense as if to strike out, then he
breathed deeply and relaxed. “You know my past, tavern keeper, but you do not
know my present. I will leave, but don’t follow me.” He looked up and there was
ice in his eyes. “You know what I am capable of.”

“I know your deeds,
Helhammer. I know the stain your soul bears. I was with you at Fend and during
the Long March.” He paused and his voice grew quiet. “And Iss. The city of your
shame, the city of ash and bone. Go now, Helhammer, and don’t come back or I
will kill you.”

Beccorban held Hari’s
gaze and Riella could feel the promise of violence between the two men. Hari
was much smaller than Beccorban and clearly no match for him. It had taken a
lot of courage for him to say what he had but she could see that Beccorban was
going to let him say it. Hari stepped aside and the huge warrior stalked from
the room without a word. The tension eased like dust settling, and Riella,
uncomfortable, grabbed one of the discarded fur cloaks from the pile on the
floor and went after Beccorban. He had been cut loose and she had tied herself
to his mast, so she followed, past Hari and his sobbing daughter, down the
stairs, through the empty taproom and out into the cold.

Beccorban was some
distance ahead of her, a great black silhouette contrasted against the white
brilliance of the snow. Even from this distance she could see by the set of his
shoulders that he was burning with rage, so that she imagined she might see
steam rising in his wake. Nevertheless she hurried to catch up with him. He did
not look back and seemed content to let her follow him, though she thought it
wise to keep her distance.

After a while he stopped
and slung the warhammer underneath his cloak, hooking it on an unseen catch on
his back. Riella stood patiently, waiting for him to move on again. When he did
not she realised that he was waiting for her. She came to stand by his side and
he spoke.

“Do you believe in
second chances?” he asked. His voice was gentle again.

“Yes,” she said meekly.
“Within reason.”

He laughed. “Within
reason. That is good.”

He turned back the way
they had come and his hand snapped to the hammer, ready to draw it. Riella
turned with him, afraid that Hari had raised a mob to chase them from the
village after all. Yet it was not a mob behind them but rather a crowd of people
connected only in their interest — interest that did not lie with the
large man and his female companion. They were all looking past the duo,
pointing and whispering to each other, though she could not make out what they
were talking about.

“What are they saying?”
she asked Beccorban and he turned to look back down the mountain, where the sky
smudged into the land. The sun was sliding below the eastern horizon but there
was still a golden red glow, fiercer than any light cast by the great orb at
this time of day. Beccorban narrowed his eyes and pointed in the same manner as
those behind him. On one side his face was twilight and shadow, but on the
other it shone with the warmth of a distant fire, showing at once the two men
she had met that day.

“Kressel,” his voice was
grim. “She burns.”

Loster closed the door
of his small carriage and looked down the length of the assembled wagons.
They’d been travelling for three days now since being turned away from Temple,
and still it seemed that they were no closer to the second city. It made no
sense. They had approached the capital on the main road but, upon arriving, had
found the famous Certifax Gate closed. A vast army was encamped outside the
walls, and they had been forced to suffer numerous checkpoints and searches
before they were allowed to approach the city. None of Aifayne’s protests that
they were simple priests were heeded. Eventually their group was informed that
they would not be allowed into Temple at all. The city was closed to outsiders,
as loyal members of the council sought to purge criminal elements from the
Empron’s court.

Instead they were
directed to Kressel, the second city of Veria. Kressel was many miles away
through the forest of Mantle and then Ruum, the great mountain fortress that
squatted like an insect over the only pass through the Dantus Mountains.
Aifayne had cursed and uttered a few words Loster had never thought to hear
from his mouth, but there was little else to do. After a night spent camping
under the shadow of Temple’s enormous battlements, they had set off again.

Far from being
disappointed, the young lordling had found it hard to contain his excitement at
first. Leaving the place of his birth had not been hard, but as the convoy
passed the boundaries of Malix’s dominion, Loster had been treated to one last
horror: three small bodies, blackened and twisted by fire, hanging from the
roadside. He had not had to look for too long to know that the bodies belonged
to Barik and his cronies. Loster was Malix’s and he always would be. The dead
boys were a lesson to all those that would seek to claim otherwise.

Now he had finally left
Elk and all the evil there. Better still, the gods had seen fit to send him
even further away than planned. He was thankful that in Kressel the Widowpeak
would not even be a bump on the horizon.

He winced as a twinge of
pain teased one of his ribs. He placed a hand on his chest and probed gently.
His body was still recovering from the beating he had taken but it was much
better now. His wounds would heal, theirs would not.

Loster put the grisly
image from his mind and dragged himself back to the present. The wagons had
been stopped for some time and nobody had thought to tell him why. He looked to
his left and right. It was very quiet around here. A short distance away, a
handful of his father’s guardsmen in dark grey mail and tunics of the same
colour played dice at a small trestle table. Loster knew he should reprimand
them and tell them to get back to their duties, but he also knew that he would
not. His father’s men did not take orders from priests, especially beardless
ones. Loster ran a hand over his chin and frowned at the smoothness there.
Still a boy, if not by name.

He thought of Barde as
he often did and tried to imagine him as he would be now. Barde always had an
easy way with the soldiers, even being so young — younger than Loster was
now. He had laughed with them and made jokes with them and they had vied for
his attention and smiled at him with paternal affection. Loster sighed and stepped
off of the stone roadway into the trees. That was a memory now and memories
were best forgotten. He had tried to go back once and that was enough.

“Lord Loster! My Lord!”
came a wheedling voice.

Loster sighed and turned
back to see an elderly man in the white robes of a dawn priest poking his head
out from the carriage. The expression on his craggy face suggested that the
outside world were a forbidden place and he risked his very soul by being
there.

“Yes, Aifayne? What is
it?”

“You must not stray too
far from the convoy, my Lord. Your Lord father said you were to stay with me
until we reach our destination.”

“We reached our
destination and couldn’t get in. Now we have a new one.”

“That is quite besides
the point.”

“I’m not going anywhere,
Aifayne. I just need to go out of sight for a minute, if you know what I mean.”

The elderly priest
bristled. “Out of sight, my Lord?” he squeaked. “Absolutely not! I forbid it!”

Loster bit the inside of
his cheek and tried to ignore Aifayne’s nagging tone. He was a kindly old man
and any sharpness in his voice would have been born of concern. “I’m going for
a piss, Aifayne. If you insist on me not breaking eye contact, I shall oblige.”

Aifayne blushed pink and
stammered over his reply. “Oh, well, why didn’t you say?” He slammed the door
shut and Loster spun away and slipped into the musty darkness of the forest.

The forest of Mantle was
old: a dark and gloomy place of beech and elm and oak that smelt of rotting
vegetation. Thick moss clung to the low limbs of the trees, and creepers as
thick as a man’s wrist wound around the thick trunks like blood vessels around
a man’s heart.
If I cut one, would it
bleed?
Loster wondered. He smiled and ran his hand over the rough bark of
the nearest tree.
I don’t have a weapon
and wouldn’t know how to use it anyway
— he held out his hand as if
to prove his innocence to this old man of the forest.

He stepped over an
obstructing root and reached up under his white acolyte’s tunic to loosen his
trews. His water steamed as it hit the earth. The weather had been unseasonably
warm as the world slipped into winter, yet now it seemed that Frost had dug its
fingers into the soil and that tendrils of cold were reaching out to choke the
life from the land. He shivered uncontrollably, as men relieving themselves
often do, and buttoned up his leggings with stiff fingers.

It suddenly occurred to
him that he was entirely alone. When in Elk he had been under constant watch.
In daylight hours he had never strayed too far from the eyes of teachers, or his
father’s guardsmen. Nighttime was the only time he had to himself, and most of
the time in his dim room was spent waiting, dreading the tramp of drunken
footsteps approaching his door. Now his only watcher was Aifayne, and though
the priest was a bumbling, crook-backed old man, he was still sharp. Loster was
held on a short leash with a firm grip.

The young acolyte sighed
and then held his breath, closing his eyes to open his ears so that he might
listen to the forest’s heartbeat. There was nothing. No
tweep-tweep
of birds or creaking of tiny insects. Loster frowned
and opened his eyes again. He was alone, with only the hiss of the wind to keep
him company. He turned and looked about him. There were greens of many hues and
the deep blues of afternoon shadows, hiding from the sun. Here and there
droplets of yesterday’s rain still clung stubbornly to the leaves, whilst
others sparkled as they fell into the slow track of a column of light. Behind
him he knew the small convoy waited to bear him to Kressel, though through some
trick of the forest he could not hear any activity from it.
This is my chance
, he thought. He could
run, but he doubted he would get more than half a day away before his father’s
guardsmen found him and brought him back for punishment. Aifayne’s discipline
would be timid at best in comparison to Malix’s, but any attempted escape would
shame the old priest, and the Lord of Elk would bring retribution down on his
grey head.
And I will be dragged back to
the Great Hall
. Then it would not even matter if he were a black thrall of
the Temple Deep. Nothing would save him from his father.

He felt suddenly weak
and feared that he would suffer one of his episodes. If it came over him out
here he could be left alone for hours. He doubted Aifayne had the strength or
even to the will to come looking for him if he fainted. Loster gritted his
teeth and clenched and unclenched his fists, encouraging the flow of blood and
breathing in deeply. The tunnelling began to recede and crept back to the edges
of his vision, though it left him with an empty feeling of sour nausea in the
pit of his belly.

He retched and spat bile
as bitter as vinegar on to the bole of the old tree in front of him. He stood
up straight and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and felt a sudden
stab of fear that he was making too much noise; that he might awaken unfriendly
eyes in the otherwise lifeless forest.

He turned and tried not
to run back to the road, though he was sure that if he turned he would see a
nameless horror approaching fast. He quickened his pace despite his resolve not
to and abruptly stumbled out on to the raised stone, tripping on a jutting
edge. He glared down at his feet.

Now that he really
looked, the grand high road of Temple was not nearly so grand as he had imagined
it would be. This deep into the forest, the insistent push of the trees had
bitten into this highway of men, and here and there the roots had lifted the
stone slabs as though they were made of nothing heavier than cloth. These trees
had watched healthy cousins cut down by cruel iron and their vengeance was to
jealously take back their land, spilling the earth in muddy peninsulas on to
the pale grey stone.

Loster knelt and
massaged his stubbed toe, and just then the door to his tiny, cramped carriage
flew open and a wash of heat struck him full in the face. He sighed. Aifayne
was an old man and his bones felt the cold more than most people, so he had a
small, shielded brazier of blackened iron in the carriage that emitted a
stifling and smothering warmth.

“My Lord! You have been
gone for almost a quarter of the clock!” Aifayne admonished, pointing at an
imaginary clock face somewhere in the sky. “Must it take so long to empty your
bladder? I was ever so worried.”

Yet
not so worried as to leave the comfort of your carriage
, thought
Loster. “Apologies, Aifayne. I got lost.”

Aifayne nodded, clearly
accepting this as reasonable explanation. “Yes, I should think so,” he mumbled,
beckoning his ward inside. “We’re not cut out for this kind of adventuring. We
have no knowledge of the forest, and after all why should we? We are of the
gods and our thoughts are directed inwards. I know you have found your studies
difficult, my Lord, but it will come. I remember when I was an acolyte. I was
reading ‘The Third Commune of Dawn’ when all of a sudden…”

Loster stood and let the
elderly priest ramble on. Soon he would forget why he started and mutter into
his long white beard. For the meantime, Loster would use this opportunity to
get as much fresh air as he could, and nod and smile and gasp appropriately
like a good, attentive acolyte.

An angry shout made him
look towards the head of the column of wagons where several soldiers milled
about. He began to walk towards them, drawn by curiosity rather than an urge to
assert his flimsy authority.

“My Lord? Lord Loster?
Where are you going?” Aifayne’s nagging tones tugged at his sleeve but he waved
them away and walked on. The cries from the priest became more insistent.

Ahead of him the road
curved slightly so that he could not see what was causing the soldiers to be so
agitated. There were quite a few of them now, spilling off of the road and on
to the muddy bank that fell into the forest. Malix had not spared too many of
his guardsmen. Fifteen men had left Elk, and five of those had turned back
after Temple, but the truth was that anyone in the dark grey favoured by the
Lord of Elk made Loster uncomfortable. Aifayne’s carriage seemed more and more
comfortable with every step he took.

The wizened priest’s
cries had receded into a distant whine, and now he could hear the low,
threatening tones of his father’s men rising and then falling again in the
swell of anger.

“I won’t say it again,
peasant. Give me an order one more time and I’ll gut you!” said a hard voice.
Loster felt the buzz of adrenaline and fought to keep his hands from shaking.

“An’ while you’re
sticking him, I’ll stick his pretty daughter,” said another. The men in armour
laughed. There were five of them — no, six.

“Your sword ain’t sharp
enough, Podwain.”

“Do you even know where
it goes?” More laughter.

“Give her to Nerret. He
ain’t ever ‘ad a woman!”

“Oh, she’s just a girl,
this ‘un. Needs a gentle touch.” This time the laughter had a deeper, uglier
sound, and Loster sensed that the moment was ripe for something sinister.

“Hold,” he called out,
then added uncertainly, “men.”

They turned as he
rounded the lead wagon — a simple wheeled gurney stacked with shovels and
tent pegs. The men stood in a crescent that now opened outwards as they turned,
like the blooming petals of a metal flower. In front of them was a simple cart
overladen with cargo and covered by a huge piece of white cloth, tied down by
thick, salt-stained hempen rope, like that a sailor might use. On the back of
the cart sat a woman of around forty summers, wrapped up warm with her head
covered by a shawl. At her side sat a girl a few years younger than Loster. Her
hair was dark as night under a new moon, yet it framed a face too youthful to
be truly attractive. She was also scarred by fear, her eyes wide and her lips
parted slightly. Loster suddenly felt very protective of her.

He stepped through the
semi circle of his father’s men, careful not to brush his shoulders into the
hard metal pauldrons they wore, until he found himself face to face with a
short, stocky man. The man was prematurely grey, with dark skin darkened
further by the sun and whipped to the texture of old leather by the wind.
However, his clothes were wealthy and finely cut, if a little shabby.