‘Looks like that stuff was worth the price,’ the leader com mented, then gestured at Carel. ‘Keep him back.’
‘Name your price. We’ll double it,’ Carel shouted.
‘Sorry, friend. Ilumene don’t like traitors — he takes it personal like.’
Without warning Isak swung around, as though taking a wild swipe at the man advancing on him.
Carel blinked as black stars burst before his eyes. A blurring sense of darkness streaked across his vision and a wet clap echoed around them. He reeled, head suddenly aching as though the air pressure had dropped in a heartbeat. It seemed that Isak had drawn a curtain through the air in front of him, a dark haze that melted to nothing as the taller attacker collapsed sideways, his entire body chopped in two. The second man grunted in shock and pain, staggering back with his dagger-hand pressed to his temple, and Carel seized the advantage.
He slashed up at the underside of the man’s hand, slicing through the soft flesh before stabbing him in the kidney. The man howled and fell to his knees, dropping his weapons.
Carel worked his sword savagely in the wound as the man screamed at the top of his lungs.
‘Who’s working with you?’ he yelled in the man’s ear. ‘Tell me, and I’ll drag you to a healer!’
The soldier’s eyes were wide with pain. ‘I don’t-’ he gasped, and then managed, ‘The coin-’
‘Coin?’ Carel demanded, but as he did so he saw a chain under the man’s collar. He tugged hard on it and the necklace came away in his hand. The soldier shuddered as the sword slid out of his back.
Carel held it up — it was just a scratched coin on a chain — and tossed it aside, and for a moment he thought he saw something akin to hope in the man’s eyes, but then Isak stabbed forward like a mantis and impaled him on the black sword.
In the blink of an eye the weapon had vanished from sight and Isak was left flexing his crabbed fingers as the corpse flopped to the ground.
‘Isak!’ Carel shouted, suddenly remembering the bolt in his back. He discarded the sword and ran over, but before he could touch the bolt, Isak raised a hand to stop him.
‘It’s not bad,’ he said, ‘really-’
‘Not bad? There’s a bloody arrow in your back!’
Isak grinned weakly and rapped his knuckles on his chest.
‘Armour?’ Carel gasped, tearing at Isak’s shirt until he could see the leather cuirass underneath. ‘You little bastard, why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Wanted it to be convincing,’ Isak said. He made a small gesture and looked all around as he pushed himself back to his feet, then he returned his attention to Carel, apparently satisfied with what he saw or didn’t see. ‘There’s still metal in my flesh, though. Help me off with this, will you?’
‘We’re safe now?’ And when Isak nodded he unsheathed his knife to cut away the shirt. The bolt had penetrated his armour, the plate of stiffened leather absorbing most of the blow, so no more than the tip had gone into Isak’s flesh.
‘You still got lucky,’ Carel growled. ‘Reckless bastard — what did he mean about it being worth the price?’
Isak winced at the sting in his back. ‘They wanted my skin broken — the bolt was tipped.’
‘Poison?’
‘No, something Emin told me Ilumene was skilled at making: it dulls magic, so it would make any energies I tried to gather slip through my fingers.’
‘Didn’t you use magic just now?’ Carel asked, bewildered.
Isak flexed his fingers and smiled. ‘Of course — but they were just hired agents. All they saw was an unarmed white-eye and a one-armed old man. They weren’t to know nothing they cooked up could match Termin Mystt.’
‘What about me — was I just bloody bait for you? What protection did I have?’ Carel shouted, suddenly furious at Isak’s risk-taking.
‘Why would they have shot you? You’re not the threat; the white-eye mage was.’
‘They might have had two bloody crossbows!’
The white-eye just shrugged. ‘True — they didn’t, though.’
‘Oh well, thank you very much,’ Carel snapped. ‘Glad I could be of use.’
‘You were,’ Isak said firmly. ‘We knew there’d be agents in the army — how many is anyone’s guess. But I knew they wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to take me when I looked most defenceless. Better they try me, than go for one of the weaker ones carrying a Crystal Skull. You said it yourself: trust the man beside you. Well, I did, and we both survived.’
Carel stopped dead, hearing his own words turned against him. The anger remained undiminished, but he’d long since learned anger was no use when arguing with Isak. No one could compete with a white-eye there.
‘You could have told me,’ he mumbled, retrieving his sword and turning his back on Isak. ‘Trust me enough to tell me, too.’
‘Sorry, my memory — you know? Not what it used to be-’
‘Eh?’ His anger faded in the face of Isak’s unashamed lies. ‘You brazen little bugger — at least pretend to be repentant!’
Isak turned his head to watch the grey blur of Hulf, bounding through the darkness towards them. ‘Don’t think you taught me that one. Anyways, doubt it’d be much use to a soldier, eh?’
She watched it scuttle through the darkness, six-legged and wrapped in shadows. From tree to clump of grass, stalk-eyes forever turned her way. A bisected tail curved over its humped back, fat pincers tucked down over its mandibles. Uneven plates covered its body, upraised and cracked, like flagstones assailed by tree roots. To most eyes it would be near-invisible, but to Zhia those folded shadows shone like a lamp.
Not a typical suitor, Zhia thought to herself, but I smell the same apprehension from this creature.
The daemon made its way closer: forty yards, thirty, never moving directly, slowing as it came until it was creeping with the delicate, fearful steps of a deer watching the wolf.
Zhia sighed. She could only imagine it had been sent with some message for her, but by whom or what, she couldn’t decide. It was smaller than Isak’s oversized puppy, so hardly much of a messenger — unless that was the intention?
She watched it wriggle into a long-abandoned fire-pit and pause there as though contemplating the last few yards of ground, but before it could decide the path was safe, a circle of light appeared around the edge of the pit. The daemon drew its limbs closer to its body, moving instinctively away from the light, and turned to seek a way out. Finding none, it started to dig frantically, scraping at the muddy ash with all its limbs at once, desperate to hide as the light steadily brightened.
Threads broke from the ring, writhing worms reaching up into the air only to find nothing and fall inwards, where they scorched the dark armour of the daemon. The creature hissed and scrabbled for purchase, snapping at the threads with its pincers, only to get one set snagged and caught, which increased the daemon’s panic. The threads of light closed inwards on it like a carnivorous plant, snaring its prey in a sizzling, shuddering bundle of scorched chitin.
‘Instructive, is it not?’
Zhia turned to find her brother standing just a few yards off. She hadn’t sensed his approach, but he was the only one who could take her unawares. He was unarmoured, dressed in fine silks procured from the Gods alone only knew where, embroidered all in black to serve as contrast to the plain white scabbard that held Eolis.
‘Instructive?’
‘The creature is ruled by its baser instinct to hide from the light and pain,’ Vorizh explained. ‘It cannot bring itself to burst through its cage of light until it is too late. It is hard to pity something that cannot comprehend sacrifice.’
The vampire’s face was a picture of ghastly fascination, and Zhia was struck by the strangeness of the sight. Vorizh was a mad recluse, both animated and restless, and in normal times she would see him perhaps every few centuries. Koezh, their elder brother, was very different. He was driven by his duty as leader of the Vukotic tribe, one of the Seven Tribes of Man; he was a man used to stillness and calm, his emotions well-hidden behind a mask of duty. And yet the two looked very much alike.
Sometimes she wondered if Vorizh served to remind Koezh that the alternative to that duty was to break under the strain of their curse, to become a monster fascinated with the death of daemons.
