He managed to ram his hand and weapon, hilt-first, into the beast’s maw but its onrush snatched him from his feet and dragged him clattering and bouncing beneath its massive chest. The iron scales of his armour gouged through his shoulder. The monster’s fangs closed on his forearm, grating against the bones. Temper roared at the searing pain.
The beast hauled him to a wall and shook him as a terrier might a rat. It would rip his arm off in a moment. Channelling all his pain into one ferocious effort, he swung his free hand up and smashed the iron pommel of his weapon down on the fiend’s skull. It rang like a bell, and the beast jerked and snorted as if it would release its grip. But then it merely coughed, sending a blast of hot fetid air into Temper’s face. It heaved forward, dragging him over the cobbles, smashing him into walls and battering his body against timbers as it loped through the labyrinth of alleys. Stone steps gouged his back and cracked against his knees. He threw up a gout of froth and blood. Screams followed him and as his mouth filled with his own bloodied vomit, Temper knew the cries weren’t just his.
Eventually the beast wearied of the game and let him roll away. Crippled, his arm broken and mangled, he was past pain and long past fear. He was in a place he hadn’t known since his last battle nearly a year ago, and it was like a strange reunion. He was floating, euphoric. It was the place he retreated to during the worst of his engagements. Where all his strength and resilience flowed unbound. Where his body moved like some remote automaton of flesh and bone; where no injury could reach. Lying broken and dirt-smeared, he bared his teeth at the hound.
It towered over him, heaving great bellows of hot air, its coat a mangy reddish brown, grown tangled over the scars of countless battles, its eyes blazing.
With his good hand, Temper edged a dirk from its sheath at his hip. End it! he urged the lantern eyes.
The head lunged toward his chest. Temper thrust the dirk up point-first into the open maw. The beast recoiled, hacking and snarling. It shook its muzzle; sprayed blood and saliva.
Temper tried to laugh but could only gag. He held the blade up.
Pawing at its mouth and chuffing, it ran in circles, shook its enormous skull, then smashed into a wall of whitewashed plaster that crumpled. The beast turned back to glare at him. A mere wasp’s sting, Temper admitted sadly. His arm fell and the weapon clattered to the stones. Dizziness and a black onrushing wind smothered his senses. From a vast distance, he watched as the beast coiled for another spring.
He must have lost consciousness, as the visage he avoided through every battle and duel now gazed down at him. The Hooded One himself, come at last to collect his spirit. Temper wished he had the strength to spit at him. A cowl of darkness descended over him, and he felt himself falling, on and on until he was smothered in night and knew nothing more.
Who can’t find you? she asked herself.
No one. Not one person ever. None of the kids she played hide and seek with. None of the local thieves she competed against. Not even Auntie when she tried her magic. But she could find anyone. She always did. Auntie said she had a talent for it.
And what else can’t find you?
Kiska rocked for a time. She hummed to herself.
Kiska sighed, freed one arm from its grip of her knees and stroked the dog. It whimpered again and huddled closer. She nodded in agreement.
I think
She sighed again and massaged her knee where her black pants were torn and blood had dried in a rough crust. She flexed the leg and winced at the pain. The dog whined its alarm.
Can’t stay here forever.
She rubbed her eyes. Stay here.
On this island?
‘A living death,’ Kiska whispered into the dark.
The dog cocked one ear. She peered down at it. Sorry, boy. I just can’t hide any longer.
She pushed herself to her feet. She had staggered into an outhouse, a boarded shack hardly larger than an upright coffin. She looked out over the half-door. Boards covered the rear windows of a house belonging to a young family Kiska knew. They exported dried fish and were quite well-to-do. They even had an outhouse in their vegetable garden.
So here she was. The biggest night of her life and she was hiding in a shitter. Everything she wished for all her life had materialized and what has she done? Run away!
The dog rested its head on one of her muddied slippers and peered up at her. Kiska searched her pockets and sheaths. A length of cord and a scarf, needles, cloths soaked in unguents given to her by Agayla. This was all she had left. She unfolded one cloth and pressed it to her knee. She hissed at the pain. Yet who could’ve guessed at the vast difference between hoping for action, and the sight of a man’s head bursting like a melon in the maw of some monster from another realm? No wonder she’d found herself throwing up in a back alley.
That man from the Imperial cutter… he hadn’t been afraid to walk the streets. He’d faced down an entire nest of cultists. And he must’ve known what he was walking into. She was certain of that. Yet he had come. Oleg said his message had to get to him, a message he believed vitally important. But he was mad. Agayla, though… she’d also sent Kiska after him.
Her hand found the flattened scroll at her chest. This was for him. Had he reached the Hold yet? He must have — but who could be sure on a night like this? And the gatekeeper — Lubben — he would let her know if he had. He might even let her in. If she played it right.
Kiska opened the door. The dog whimpered afresh. Looking back, she saw it still curled on the privy floor, unwilling to even push its nose past the threshold. She bid goodbye and headed for a shortcut she knew to Rampart Way.
The night had turned unearthly still. Even her slippers and the whisper of her breath sounded deafening. Then suddenly, randomly, a hound’s baying shattered the calm, causing her to shrink. But other than these terrifying moments — each of which she was certain would be her last — it was as if the night stood frozen. Only the moon appeared to move, watching her with its silver eye as she made for the waterfront where the shore lapped the cliffs and the oldest wharves ceased at a thatch of rotten piers.
She climbed the slick stones jumbled at the cliff’s base. Salt spray beaded on her shirt and the waves beneath her murmured, unnaturally subdued. Her cord-soled slippers gripped the broken rock, but her hands slid, cut open on its knife-like edges.
Soon she reached the barest lip in the uneven stones — an animal path dating back generations to when wild goats still clambered over the island. The track was long forgotten and invisible to those beneath and above. She fancied it was the mystery behind the phantom departures and arrivals of the island’s pirates.
She carefully edged her way up the slick rock ledges, most no wider than her foot. Thorned brush choked the route, forcing her to ascend behind or over. But she knew the way blindfolded, as she’d often climbed it at night. It led to her favourite spot on the island — after Agayla’s rooms, that is.
The mist closed in like a shroud. The bay, some hundred yards down, lay smothered in low-lying fog. In the southern sky, lights flickered green and pink, reminding Kiska of the legends of the Riders who rose in winter to tow sailors to their doom. She also remembered the tales of ghosts and revenants said to haunt the Hold above. Even these cliffs boasted an entire host of spirits — drowned sailors deceived into drawing too close to the shoals, tricked by her ancestors, wreckers and pirates all. It was said you could still hear their moaning at night, seeking vengeance on their murderers. She’d grown up on such yarns and believed not a one. Including those of a certain demon-haunted Shadow Moon…
