Night of Knives (17 page)

The second man – a youth – wept in terror. With a sudden dash he threw himself to the floorboards where he knelt, head down, as the hound snarled. Then opening his arms wide he screamed, ‘Kellanved! Protect me! I invoke your name!’

Now Kiska remembered her bindings and sawed frantically. Her ankles came free. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she reversed the blade to hack feverishly at the rope between her wrists.

Across the room came the scraping of claws as the hound leapt forward like a sprung catapult. It closed its jaws over the man’s head and clamped down. Bone crunched. Blood and mulched flesh flew from the hound’s maw. Tossing its head, the hound flicked the man’s headless torso away. It rolled to a stop close to Kiska’s booth, blood jetting across the floor. Kiska fought down the surge of bile at her throat.

Into the silence following, the veteran drawled, ‘Well, I guess the old man wasn’t listening.’ He tossed aside his sword to stand empty-handed.

The hound turned to regard him. Kiska also stared, fascinated by the man’s calm. From a pouch at his side he drew a round object about the size of a large fruit, dark green and shiny. His gaze caught Kiska’s and he nodded her to the rear stairwell.

He held up the object to the hound and pointed. ‘It’s just you and me now, boy.’

Kiska’s breath caught. She’d heard stories . . . she dived down the short stairs to the lower room, rolled, came up running. In the dark she slammed against a table, stood gagging for air. Barely able to straighten up, she glanced around and caught a shaft of moonlight near one wall illuminating a servant’s staircase.

From the room above pounded a man’s scream of pure rage and hate. Kiska staggered to the stairs, kicked open the bolted door at the end of a dry-goods larder, and ran straight out only to trip and smash down onto a gravel drive, wrenching her shoulder and cracking one knee. As she lay half conscious an explosion of light and heat punched a gasp of pain from her gut. A burst of flame blinded her, shards of wood tearing overhead, larger flaming pieces crashing down all around. She heard a long bray of pain that faded as the hound fled. Headed for the water perhaps.

Dead to any injury now, as if her nerves had burst beneath their strain, Kiska pushed herself upright and limped down the alley. Even had she broken her back, she knew she’d have dragged herself away from the horror of that slaughterhouse. Behind her what was left of the inn flared brightly into the night, lighting her path down the alley through burning timber and debris.

A wordless cry stopped Temper. It echoed from among a maze of alleyways to his right. A young woman, shrieking as if her soul itself were at stake. He froze, scanning among the dark
openings. From the shadows ran a girl in dark clothing, her long black hair blowing about her face.

She saw him and hesitated, then called, ‘Please, help me. Please.’

He waved her forwards. ‘Damn, child, are you wounded? Where’s your home? Is it near?’

She threw herself onto him, a mere bundle of bones in his arms. She sobbed something, terrified.

He squinted past her into the darkness. ‘What is it?’ One of her hands clasped his arm while she buried her face at his shoulder. He pulled at her. ‘Child? What?’

Stinging pain pierced his neck. The girl’s arm writhed around it like a vice. Her legs twisted and kicked, crossing themselves behind his back. Temper staggered from side to side in the lane, pushed at her shoulders to force her head from his neck. ‘What in cursed Rikkter’s name?’

The girl threw back her head. Eyes as black as night regarded him. She smiled slyly, revealing needle-sharp teeth. Temper snapped a hand to her neck just under her jaw and held her there.

She smiled even more widely at him over his hand. ‘You’re not going to turn me out into the night alone, are you, good sir?’

With his free hand Temper drew his gauche and thrust at her. She snatched his wrist and twisted. He howled, struggled, fought, but the hand numbed and the blade dropped from his grip.

He fell, tried to roll, but she remained on top of him, wrapped as tightly as a winding sheet. Glancing down, Temper saw, horrified, that it was no longer two legs that squeezed the breath from him, but rather a single snake-like limb that encircled his chest down to his knees. Already his ribs felt crushed from the pressure. Moonlight shone from glistening scales. He would’ve shrieked had he breath for it. Holding her
head away from his neck, his arm and hand burned as if aflame. Fraction by fraction the face inched inward, lips pulled back from tiny serrated fangs, her eyes mocking all his strength.

Gasping, panting, he spared one short breath to shout, ’
Help me!
’

She let out a girlish giggle. ‘None will help you this night. Tonight belongs to the hunters of Shadow. Can’t you hear them call their hunger?’ Forcing herself close, she cupped one hand behind his neck. ‘Now, let me show you my hunger. You will enjoy it much more than theirs. I promise you.’

Temper poured every ounce of strength into his arm but now her greasy hair brushed at his face. His own blood dripped from her mouth onto his cheek and burned there as if turned to acid. A hiss gurgled from the creature’s throat. Temper wrenched his face away as far as humanly possible.

The thing snarled and whipped over him suddenly. Its hair was yanked from his face. Temper glanced back: a fist had gathered up a handhold of the creature’s hair and was pulling back its head. The thing hissed, writhed and spat wordlessly. Its neck was bent backwards to an impossible angle. Its eyes glared blackest fury. A long blade came down in front of the neck, rusted, its edges uneven, more like an ancient iron bar than a sword. It sawed into the pale flesh inches from Temper’s face. The neck parted with a wet, ragged scission like a rotten fruit split from its stem, and hot fetid blood gushed out onto Temper. The thing spasmed, pulled away, its arms beating at him, its snake limb lashing the stones.

Temper threw himself aside, slapped at his cheeks and eyes where the corrupt blood stung as if poison. ‘Gods! Aw, gods!’ On his knees he vomited, groaned, wiped his mouth and lay dragging in great lungfuls of welcome air.

Whoever had rescued him stood over the butchered corpse. Headless, the body still twitched. Like a leech, Temper
thought, and almost heaved again. Slowly he got to his feet and spat to clear his mouth. ‘My thanks, stranger.’

The man said nothing. In the shifting moonlight Temper now saw that perhaps things had got worse. Who or whatever his saviour was, it wasn’t alive. It was a walking cadaver, desiccated, wearing shredded armour, its dried flesh curled back from yellowed teeth, its eye sockets empty and dark. In one hand it held the head, blood dripping, black hair matted.

‘Disgusting parasites,’ the thing said in a voice as dry as sifting sand. It tossed the head aside where it rolled under an empty vendor’s cart.

Temper pulled his gaze from where the head had vanished. ‘Yeah. Damned disgusting all right.’

‘Please do not think they belong to Shadow. They are trespassers. Like you.’

‘Like me?’ Temper eyed the thing. It resembled an Imass warrior, though taller and slimmer. He wondered why it had stepped in. ‘Who do I thank for my life?’

The being inclined its head a fraction. Temper heard dry flesh creaking like leather. ‘Edgewalker.’

‘Temper. So, what now?’

Edgewalker gestured a skeletal hand to the shops and houses lining the way. ‘You’d best remain inside. The dwellings will be respected, mostly’

‘Sorry, but I can’t do that.’

Edgewalker shrugged ever so slightly. ‘Then I wish you better luck.’

‘Many thanks.’ Temper backed away. The being, who or whatever it was, remained where it stood. At the end of the street Temper paused to peer back but he, or it, was gone. He gave his own shrug and started on, heading for a public well he knew to be nearby. He had to wash this filth from himself.

At the broken fountain dedicated to Poliel, Temper rinsed bucketful after bucketful of freezing cold water over his head. He then jogged onto Toe Way, but before long he slowed and looked about. Shouldn’t Stone Lane be right ahead? He squinted into denser patches of night. The rows of houses and shop fronts did not look familiar. Something tonight seemed to be tricking his sense of direction, causing him to even doubt where he’d just been.

He drew off his helmet again, pushed back his wet hair, and wiped the remaining cold water from his face. Had he somehow turned around? But where? The way twisted between the uninterrupted rear walls of shops and houses. A shockingly brisk breeze gusted at him and he heard the rasp and creak of numerous branches lashing in the wind. Yet the island was practically deforested. The surge of the surf . . . where had it disappeared? These last months he had worked, eaten, and slept to its reassuring beat. Was the heavy mist obscuring it? Yet the winds were fierce tonight; contrary.

He started up a cobbled rise. No matter the twists and turnings,
up
led to Mock’s Hold, and that had to be the mercenaries’ target. There couldn’t be anything else to interest them on the island.

After a number of turns the ground levelled and Temper lost his way in a maze of narrow lanes he’d never before come across. Scarf-thin wisps of cloud scudded overhead and the full moon, a pool of suspended mercury, dazzled his vision. Only Mock’s Hold squatting high upon its cliff, silver and black in the monochrome glare, reassured him that he was indeed still on Malaz. Otherwise he would have sworn he’d wandered into another town, another country.

Dry hot air tickled the nape of his neck and he rubbed at it; his hand came away gritty with sand. Sand? Where in the world had that come from? He stood still, rubbing the grains between thumb and forefinger as he looked about. Hadn’t
the moon just been to the left of the cliffs a moment earlier?

A deep bull-like snort reverberated up the narrow lane behind him – the distant cough of an animal scenting spoor. Then came a grinding of claws over stone. Temper swallowed, backed against a wall. Automatically his hands moved to check his weapons. A door stood to his right and he hammered at it. No answer. He pounded the sturdy planks again. A voice spoke, but in no language Temper had ever heard before.

‘Open up,’ he growled.

The voice croaked again and this time Temper recognized a word: hrin.
Hrin?
Hadn’t someone once told him that was an ancient word for revenant?

His mouth dried from a new sort of fear – the dread of one’s senses corroding. This was his worst fear of the Warrens: the way they could twist the mind. A physical enemy he could face, but insanity? How do you fight that? Old Rengel’s warning echoed:
’The bloodshed summoned it. Fiends and worse rule this night!
’

He turned and ran. Flint cobbles jarred under his feet. Boarded shop fronts passed, blind and forbidding. From far away a bell rang mutely, as if from a ship at sea. He stopped, listening. The third bell of evening. To the left a lane curved steeply downwards, the roofs of warehouses just visible beyond – the waterfront, Temper realized, but shrouded in fog. While he watched, the dense bank rose like an unnatural tide, clearing the warehouses and crawling up the lane.

He backed away, turned, and sprinted uphill. Up, just keep going up. That’s where he’ll find them. But then what? What could he—

An explosion of sound, a blood-freezing howl that made him stumble and clasp his hands to his ears. The agonizing call rose and fell like the inconsolable keening of the dead. Temper pulled his weapons though he could see nothing of the beast – nor hope to accomplish anything against such a monster.

Togg protect him. Had it scented him? Did it smell at all? Perhaps it followed some other kind of less mundane spoor. He saw the fog still rising and ran on.

The rutted lane he followed crossed a narrow stairway. He started up then stopped. Noise carried from below: something shuffling through the mist obscuring the lane. His first urge was to make a stand at the crossing; put an end to this unmanning fear and anticipation, one way or another. Yet his experience, the accumulated wisdom of decades amidst the smoky tumult of battle, warned against it. What reason had he to believe that whatever was down there knew of him, or even sought him? Why force a confrontation by blocking this narrow passage? Snarling under his breath, he backed up the stairs, weapons held ready.

The worn steps ended at a shoulder-width cleft between buildings facing Jakani Square. Temper felt his way along the walls and out onto the square. It was a shifting sea of mist, the cobbles treacherous beneath his feet. Echoes of his steps returned distorted and hollow. A gust cooled his face and through the mist he glimpsed house fronts looming dark, shadows flitting past so fast he couldn’t follow them.