The Book of the Sword (Darkest Age) (2 page)

She forced her gaze back to Cathbar, and nodded once.

Smoothly, without a moment’s wait, the man swung himself into the hollow of the dragon’s shoulder and stabbed upwards. The first stroke brought barely a shudder to the claw holding Elspeth, but a low rumbling began to shake the air around her. At the second stroke a great convulsion whipped
Elspeth through the air like a fish on a line. White earth and blue air whirled around her while above the great throat pulsed with an agonised roar. Out of the corner of one eye she saw a tree-like limb flailing through the air; saw Edmund, released, drop like a wounded bird.

She had time to breathe a few words of a prayer for Edmund’s life before another convulsion shook her. Bucking and plunging in the air, she saw the fight in flashes: a gout of black blood oozing from the dragon’s chest; Cathbar, the rope only holding his feet, leaning dangerously far over the beast’s shoulder as he tried to strike closer to the throat. Then the great head swung round, cutting off her view.

For an instant, as the dragon tried to reach its own chest, Elspeth caught sight of its cavernous mouth; the smoking pit of a nostril, and then the huge eye filled her sight. She could swear the eye focused on her, filled with a cold and terrifying hatred:
you won’t escape me!

‘Sword!’ she whispered desperately, and the sword seemed to writhe in her hand, pulsing in rhythm with her own blood. But she could not move her arm to lift it. The claw gripping her was clenched so tightly that she could hardly breathe.

The dragon had found the source of its pain. The great head snaked upwards, sending a jet of blue flame along its shoulder. Cathbar hurled himself out of the way, his clothes burning; the scorched end of the rope whipped through the air as the dragon drew its head back to swat him into the sky.
Before her vision was cut off Elspeth caught one last glimpse of him, lunging forward for a final blow.

The dragon screamed – and the talon gripping Elspeth slackened its grasp. Her arm was so numb she hardly knew how she moved it, but she managed a wild swipe at the limb above her head. Below her she saw Cathbar falling, a trail of blue fire following him like the tail of a comet. And then she was plunging after him, rolling over and over in the air, the sword flashing and the wind whistling about her, until the world went white.

They came to my door in winter: three of them. By their manner, and their height, I knew they were of the Fay.

They knew that my mortal father had been a smith, before their people stole me – and they called me by the name the Fay had given me: Brokk, the dwarf, because I was so much shorter than their people. They spoke, too, of things I had thought the Fay would want forgotten: how they cast me out when I grew up, the iron in my blood proving too strong for them; and how I took with me their fairest daughter as my wife.

– What do you want of me? I asked them.

– We need you to forge a sword, they said.

Edmund opened his eyes on a dazzling pale-blue sky. Uneven white walls rose all about him and cold stung his face. His hand clenched in something soft and freezing: snow! He was lying on his back in snow – deeper than he had ever known in his life, for he seemed to have burrowed into it. Where was he?

He tried to sit up and pain shot through him, followed by panic as the walls of snow began to collapse. A soft, heavy mass poured down on him, and he scrabbled to get free, flapping both hands frantically above his head as the stuff covered his face. The rest of his body was covered by the time he finally got his head clear, coughing out the snow that had found its way into his mouth and nose. He was in a white wasteland, stretching as far as he could see in one direction; bordered by dark trees in another. Straight ahead of him, the sun was rising between bare, jagged mountains. It was all so strange that for a moment he simply lay there, just looking.

And then he saw the dragon.

It came at him out of nowhere, a giant, sinuous shape, its scales glittering blue-black in the pale air. He recognised it at once: Torment. Torment, the enemy of men, who had set him on this strange path when it destroyed Elspeth’s ship and her father … and now it had plucked him out of the king’s hall in Venta Bulgarum, when he’d been so near to home. He remembered the sickening lurch up into the dark; the despair that had gripped him. Had it come back to finish him? The creature swooped low, only a few feet above him it seemed: he could feel the malice in the vast, cold eye. The eye itself seemed damaged in some way, streaked with black, but Edmund would never forget the threat of that stare. Terror caught in his throat, and he dug his hands into the snow as if he could cover himself again.

But the dragon did not strike. With a sound like a thundercrack, the great wings whipped down, and the long body rose into the sky in a rush of wind. The creature flapped away towards the mountains, huge and ungainly, with one foreleg hanging awkwardly down. In a few heartbeats it had vanished among the peaks.

The relief that flooded Edmund made him too weak to move for a while. He gazed at the mountains, his eyes swimming in the cold and the strengthening light of the sun. Dawn. It had been evening when the dragon took him and Elspeth, the lamps not long lit. So they must have been flying all night – and judging by the countryside, they’d gone north, far north. This land was wilder even than his father’s stories of Hibernia. But why had Torment dropped him here? And was Elspeth here too?

Elspeth! He remembered now the creature’s trailing leg and scarred eye. Elspeth must have got loose somehow, and used the crystal sword. Please, gods, let her have jumped safely herself; let her still be alive … He pulled himself half out of the snow, sending a spray of flakes into the air as he fought to get free. His legs were numb, and the rest of him hurt fiercely, as if he were bruised all over. He ignored the dull ache, dug down into the snow with his hands to free his legs and hauled himself up. The snow crumbled beneath him as he rolled into a sitting position, rubbing at his legs and wincing as the feeling came back in little hot stabs. It was hard to stand up; his knees kept buckling and the snow offered no purchase, but he
managed it at last, shivering as he cast about him for any sign of movement.

At first, there was nothing. The white waste stretched away in all directions, level and bare. The sun, now risen above the mountains, dazzled his eyes, and he turned away from it to scan the distant forest. Was that a speck of light against the dark trees? He blinked and stared again. Yes: the snow in that direction rose into a hummock, with a scuffed-looking area halfway down, and in the middle of it a bright streak moved, as if waving to him …

His feet slipped and sank in the powdery snow as he started to run. He fell a dozen times, sinking to his waist in one particularly deep drift. But before he was halfway there he saw it clearly. It was the crystal sword, blazing as it caught the low light, and – praise the gods – Elspeth was struggling out of the snow behind it, using the point of the blade to steady herself.

She saw him as he approached, and started towards him, stumbling as much as he did. When they reached each other she caught him in a clumsy, one-armed hug.

‘I thought you must be dead!’ she whispered. Her face was wet against his; whether with tears or snow he could not tell.

‘I was afraid
you
were! What are we doing here, Elspeth? Why would the dragon take us to a place like this?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’m afraid that the sword …’ She trailed off unhappily. ‘I think something here wants the sword, and sent the dragon to get it. If it hadn’t dropped us …’

‘How
did
it drop us? You used the sword … ?’

‘No!’ Elspeth insisted. ‘I didn’t do anything – it was Cathbar.’ Her eyes widened and she started up, away from him. ‘Edmund, we have to find him!’

‘Cathbar! But how …?’

‘I think he tied himself to the dragon’s tail before it took us.’ Elspeth’s voice was unsteady. ‘He stood on its back, and fought it … and it burned him, and he fell …’

She had started to shake. Edmund squeezed her arm, trying to keep the anxiety from his own face. ‘The fall didn’t kill
us
– he’ll be alive somewhere,’ he said, more confidently than he felt. ‘We’ll find him.’

Elspeth nodded, visibly controlling herself. ‘At least we have light to search by,’ she said. ‘But the snow’s so deep …’

‘We don’t have to look for him!’ Edmund cut in. ‘Well, not like that!’

A few short weeks ago he had been ashamed of his gift – so recently, and painfully, discovered. The Ripente, the seers through others’ eyes, were too often viewed as spies and traitors. But without the gift, neither of them would be alive now. Almost with eagerness, he sank down cross-legged in the snow, closed his eyes, and cast out his sight.

Nothing close. Nothing at all in the waste of snow to his left, or the mountains behind him. To his relief, there was not even a flicker of the dragon’s awareness. He moved to the forest, finding small scurrying creatures; birds; something hunting – he tensed for a moment, but the beast was not
large, maybe a fox. It had found something much bigger than itself, and was hesitating, not certain whether to go closer: the thing might be meat, but if it was still alive … Through the fox’s eyes Edmund could see only an indistinct shape in the gloom beneath the trees. Then the thing moved: the fox leapt back in alarm and ran away. But not before Edmund had seen a foot, wearing a stout leather boot.

‘I’ve found him,’ he said. ‘This way.’

Their progress towards the trees was agonisingly slow at first. Their feet sank deep into the snow, and Edmund started to shiver uncontrollably. His blue cloak, given to him by the grateful king at Venta Bulgarum, had been meant for display, not warmth. He tried to put the cold aside and think only of Cathbar. The man was not dead (
not yet
, whispered a treacherous little voice). The man’s eyelids flickered at times: if he concentrated, Edmund could see indistinct flashes of grey and white, and feel the life behind them. It was dangerous even to look, he knew.
Use the sight of one about to die
, he’d been warned,
and you lose your own sight, for ever
. But he kept slipping back, as if he could keep Cathbar alive by the force of his own will. ‘He’s unconscious,’ was all he would tell Elspeth. ‘We need to reach him quickly.’

The two of them spoke little after that, concentrating on keeping their footing. As they neared the forest the snow grew mercifully thinner and Edmund quickened his pace, driven as much by the cold as by his concern for Cathbar. The trees looked like a haven from the bleak expanse of snow – but it
was no warmer beneath them, only darker. Elspeth’s sword had faded, and they walked through a black-green gloom, punctuated with thin shafts of light and filled with the scent of pine needles. The world had shrunk to rows of rough trunks, carpeted with snow wherever the sky was visible above the branches. One opening, unusually large, let in slanting rays of sun. Two bushy branches dangled brokenly down – and beneath them was Cathbar.

To his relief, Edmund saw that the man’s eyes were open, and he was breathing. He lay awkwardly, half-propped against a broad trunk and surrounded by the branches that he had brought down in his fall. As they approached he stiffened, tried to rise and slumped back, his eyes unfocused.

Elspeth ran to him. ‘He’s badly burned, Edmund. Help me!’

She was already scooping handfuls of snow from the ground and laying them on Cathbar’s face and shoulder. Edmund saw that the skin of the man’s face was an angry red; his clothes blackened all down the right side. ‘What should I do?’ he asked, feeling suddenly stupid and helpless.

‘Find some more snow – clean snow. I’ve seen tar burns on my father’s ship; they’re like this. You have to cool them!’

They worked steadily, laying on fresh snow as each handful melted, and the burned skin gradually lost its feverish heat, though it looked no better. When the slanting sunlight fell directly on his face, Cathbar groaned and opened his eyes.

‘You found me, then,’ he croaked. ‘Good work. Burned up, am I?’

‘It’ll heal,’ Elspeth told him. But her voice sounded uncertain, and looking at the man’s ravaged face, Edmund wondered if she believed it.

‘Cathbar,’ he burst out, ‘why did you follow us? We owe you more than we can ever repay, but this …’

‘You owe me nothing, lad,’ retorted Cathbar. They had to bend close to hear him, but his voice already had some of its old briskness. ‘I was doing my duty, nothing more.’ He looked around the little clearing, and shivered violently. ‘Keeping you alive, and myself too,’ he said. ‘And if we’re to keep alive much longer, I’d say we should be thinking about a fire, and maybe some shelter. Seems to me, we’re in the Snowlands, and that’s a bad place to be outside after dark.’

Elspeth nodded, and she and Edmund ran to gather sticks for a fire – but Edmund was suddenly uneasy.
A bad place to be outside after dark
. He remembered the wariness he had sensed in the fox’s mind. Were there other hunters in this forest, larger than a fox? He said nothing, but began, cautiously, to feel around him for eyes.

As they began to lay a fire, Cathbar told Elspeth about a campaign he had been on in the Far North, and about some of the customs of the Snowlanders he had met. He was sitting up now, and seemed a little better: his voice was gaining strength, and Elspeth listened with the interest of the keen traveller. But Edmund was still casting his sight around, his wariness growing. There was something … Oh yes.

He was slinking low to the ground, senses wound up to a needle-point of alertness, the distant scent of meat sharpening the hunger in his belly. And on all sides were his companions, sleek and grey, younger and stronger than him, but not so fierce … not quite so hungry…

Edmund snapped himself back. ‘We need to move,’ he said urgently. ‘Get out of the trees. There are creatures stalking us.’

Cathbar cursed and tried to haul himself up, subsiding with a groan. Edmund and Elspeth together managed to get him to his feet and he leant heavily on Edmund, breathing hard, his burns livid against the sudden pallor of his face.