dislike their mother’s lover, if that is all he is. There is a way among the Jheleck, when they have veered into their wolf form, that males are taken by a fever of violence and they set out to slay the pups of their rivals.’
Sharenas thought about that, and then smiled. ‘We do the same and call it war.’
‘No other reasons serve?’
She shrugged. ‘Forms and rules serve to confound what is in essence both simple and banal. Now, you ask which way I will fall. I have thought about it, yet am still undecided. And you?’
‘I shall side with peace.’
‘Who among any of us would claim otherwise?’
‘Many speak of peace, yet their hearts are torrid and vile. Their one love is violence, the slaying of enemies, and in the absence of true enemies, they will invent them. I wonder, how much of this hatred for Draconus comes from base envy?’
‘I have wondered the same,’ Sharenas admitted.
They rode on for a time then, silent. The caustic air, so near the as yet unseen Vitr, burned in the throat, made raw the eyes. They passed the carcasses of slain wolves, the beasts scaled rather than furred, and though only days old already the hide was crumbling, the jutting bones gnawed by the very air.
Deep into the night Bered called a halt. It was a wonder to Sharenas that the Wardens had managed to follow a trail this long. Now the captain dismounted and walked back to her and Tulas. ‘Here, Finarra Stone emerged from among the rocks, coming from the shore. Her steps were laboured, her stride unsteady. We will rest here, as best we can in this foul atmosphere, and approach the Vitr with the dawn. Lady Sharenas, Lord Tulas, will you join us in a meal?’
The sun was like a wound in the sky, reflecting dully on the tranquil surface of the Vitr Sea. They were arrayed in a row upon the high bank, looking down through a scatter of pocked boulders. Just up from the shore sprawled an enormous, headless carcass. Close to it was the mangled remains of Finarra Stone’s horse.
‘She spoke true, then,’ Sharenas said. ‘But how is it that a creature with its head cut away was able to live on, much less launch an attack?’
Bered, his face pale and drawn tight, dismounted and closed a gauntleted hand on the sword at his belt. ‘Selad, Stenas, Quill, walk your horses with me. Lances out.’
Tulas grunted and then said, ‘Captain, the beast is clearly dead. Its flesh rots. Its organs are spilled out and sun-cracked.’
Not replying, Bered set out down the makeshift trail between the boulders. The three named Wardens accompanied him, each picking his own path.
Tulas slipped down from his horse and followed the captain.
Pulling her gaze away, Sharenas stared out upon the Vitr. Its placid mien belied its evident malice. Rising on her stirrups, she scanned the length of shoreline, first to the west, and then to the east. She frowned. ‘There is something there,’ she said, and then pointed. ‘A shadow, half in, half out of the water. No boulder could long survive that.’
One of the Wardens near her, second in rank behind Bered, guided his horse down to the left, out on to the strand. Sharenas glanced back at Bered and the others. They had reached the two carcasses, and Bered, sword sheathed, was pulling loose the saddle from the dead horse. He’d already retrieved Finarra’s weapons and delivered them to one of his Wardens. Tulas stood a few paces back, watching.
Her chest felt tight, much like after a night with the pipe, and she could feel vehemence in the fumes flowing against her exposed skin. Eyes stinging, she set out after the veteran. Joining him on the strand she said, ‘Nothing untoward with the captain. It seems the creature is finally dead. Let us ride to examine our find, and then we can be quit of this place.’
‘The Vitr yields no detritus, Lady Sharenas.’
‘It seems that now it does.’
The observation made him clearly unhappy. Sighing, he nodded. ‘Quickly then, as you say.’
They kicked their mounts into a slow canter. The sharp sands beneath the horses’ hoofs sounded strangely hollow.
Four hundred or so paces ahead, the object casting the shadow looked angular, tilted like a beached ship, but far more massive than any ship Sharenas had seen — although in truth she had only seen ships in illustrations, among Forulkan books and hide paintings, and scale was always dubious in such renderings, so eager were the artists to magnify personages aboard such craft.
From one of the two spars something like sailcloth hung down in torn shrouds. The other spar was broken halfway down its length, tilted with its tip buried in the sand.
But as they drew closer, both riders slowed their mounts.
Not a ship.
The Warden’s voice was weak with disbelief. ‘I thought them tales. Legends.’
‘You imagine Mother Dark succumbed to invention? She walked to the End of Darkness, and stood on a spar surrounded in chaos. And when she called upon that chaos, shapes emerged from the wildness.’
‘Is it dead, do you think? It must be dead.’
Illustrators had attempted to make sense of Mother Dark’s vague descriptions. They had elected to draw inspiration from a winged lizard that had once dwelt in abundance in the Great Blackwood, before the trees in which they nested were all cut down. But such forest denizens were small, not much larger than a month-old hunting hound. They had been called Eleint.
The spars were the bones of wings, the sailcloth thin membrane. The sharp angles were jutting shoulder blades, splayed hips. At the same time, this was so unlike the beast that had attacked Finarra Stone as to belong to someone else’s nightmare. It massed three times the size, for one.
Dragon. Thing of myth, the yearning for flight made carnate. Yet… see its head, the length of its neck so like a serpent’s body. And those jaws could devour a horse entire. See its eyes, smeared black in blood like tears.
The Warden reined in. ‘Captain Bered must see this.’
‘Ride back,’ said Sharenas. ‘I will examine it more closely.’
‘I would advise against that, milady. Perhaps it is a quality of the Vitr that nothing dead stays dead.’
She shot him a look. ‘An intriguing notion. Go on. I intend to be careful, as I happen to greatly value my life.’
He swung his horse round, kicked it into a canter, and then a gallop.
Facing the dragon again, she rode closer. At fifty paces her mount baulked, so she slipped down from the saddle and hobbled the horse.
The giant beast was lying on its side. Its flank bore wounds, as of ribs punching out through the thick, scaled hide, but she could see no thrust of white bone from any of them, and there were scores. The huge belly, facing her, had been sliced open. Entrails were spilled out in a massive heap, and these had been slashed and chopped at, savaged as if by a sword swung in frenzy.
Something else was lying near the belly wound, amidst disturbed sands. Sharenas approached.
Clothing. Armour, stained by acids. Discarded. A long, thin-bladed sword was lying close to the gear, black with gore. And there… footprints leading away.
Sharenas found that she was standing, motionless, unable to take another step closer. Her eyes tracked the prints up the strand to where they vanished between boulders crowding the verge.
‘Faror Hend,’ she murmured, ‘who walks with you now?’
EIGHT
‘There is nothing bold in the wearing of weapons,’ haut said, the vertical pupils of his eyes narrowed down to the thinnest of lines as he studied the array on the table’s battered, gouged surface. ‘Each one you see here is but a variation. What they share is of far greater import, Korya. They are all arguments in iron.’ He turned upon her his lined, weathered face, and his tusks were the hue of old horn in the meagre light, the greenish cast of his skin reminding her of verdigris. ‘You will eschew such obvious conceits. For you, iron is the language of failure.’
