“Very droll. Come on, Kell. It was a good poem.”
“Ha! A curse on all poets! May they catch the pox and have ugly children.”
“This poem was a good one,” persisted Saark. “Proper hero stuff. Had a decent rhyme as well. Foot-tapping stuff, when recited in a tavern by men with harps and honey-beer and the glint of wonder in their eyes.”
Kell drew his Svian blade. His eyes glowed and he pointed at Saark in the close proximity. “Don’t even fucking think about it. All poets should be gutted like fish, their entrails strung out to dry, then made to compose ballads about how they feel with the bastard suffering. A curse on them!”
Saark sang, voice soft, hand held out to ward off Kell’s knife should he make a strike: “Kell waded through life on a river of blood, His axe in his hands, dreams misunderstood, In Moonlake and Skulkra he fought with the best This hero of old, this hero obsessed, This hero turned champion of King Searlan Defiant and worthy a merciless man.”
Kell snorted. “Poets make a joy out of slaughter, the academic smug self-satisfying bastards. I am ashamed to be a part of that song! Bah!” Kell frowned darkly. “And you! You sing like a drunkard. I can sing better than that, and I sound like a fart from a donkey’s arse…and I’m proud of it! A man should only sing when he’s a belly full of whisky, a fist full of money, and the idea of a fight in his head. You can keep your cursed poetry, Saark, you idiot. A bad case of gonorrhoea on you all! Death to all poets!”
“Death to all poets?” chuckled Saark, and relaxed as Kell sheathed his long, silver-bladed Svian. “A little harsh, I find, for simply extending the oral tradition and entertaining fellow man. But was it true? The stuff in the poem? The Saga?”
“No.”
“Not even some of it?”
“Well, the bastards spelt my name right. Listen, Saark, we need to go after Nienna and Kat. They could end up miles away. Leagues! They could be in danger even as we sit here, wasting our breath like a whore wastes her hard-earned coin.”
“We’ll die if we go back to the storm.” Saark’s voice was soft.
“Where’s your courage, man?”
“Hiding behind my need to stay alive. Kell, you’re no use to her dead. Wait till the sun’s up; then we’ll search.”
“No. I am going now!” He stood and reached for his wet clothes.
Saark sang: “And brave Kell marched out through the snow, His dullard brain he left behind, He took with him a mighty bow, His thumb up his arse and shit in his mind.”
Kell paused. Stared hard at Saark, who shrugged, and threw another chunk of wood on the fire. “You’re being irrational, my friend. I may dress like an idiot, but I know when to live, and when to die. Now is not the time to die.”
Kell sighed, a deep sigh of resignation, and returned to the fire. He sat, staring into flickering flames.
“Say it,” said Saark.
“What?”
“Admit that I’m right.”
“You’re right.”
“See, that wasn’t too painful, eh, old horse?”
“But I’ll tell you something, Saark. If anything happens to Nienna, then I’ll blame you; and it’ll take more than fucking poetry to remove my axe from your fat split head.”
Saark laughed, and slapped Kell on the back. “What a truly grumpy old bastard you are, eh? You remind me of my dad.”
“If I was your dad, I’d kill myself.”
“And if I was your son, I’d help you. Listen, enough of this banter; we need to get some sleep. I have a strange feeling tomorrow’s going to be a hard day. Call me extreme, but it can’t get any worse.”
“A hard day?” scoffed Kell. “Harder than yesterday? That seems unlikely. However, young man, I will take your advice, even though it pains me to listen to somebody with the wardrobe sense of a travelling chicken.”
“At least that beast…at least it was dead, in the river. It was dead, wasn’t it?”
“It was a canker.”
“A what?”
“A canker. That’s what it was.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw one. Once. Halfway up a mountain in the Black Pikes; it tried to kill us.”
“What happened?”
“It slipped on ice. Fell six thousand feet onto rocks like spears.” Kell’s eyes gleamed, misted, distant, unreadable. He coughed. “So put that Dog Gemdog gem in your poem, laddie. Because the canker, well, it’s a vachine creation. And there are more of the bastards where that one came from.”
Saark shivered, and scowled hard at Kell. “Well, thanks for that cheerful nocturnal nugget, just before I try and sleep. Sweet dreams to you as well, you old goat!”
The boat spun out of control through the blackness and Nienna screamed, clinging to Kat. “What do we do?”
“We row!”
“The oars were smashed!”
The two girls looked frantically for something to use as a paddle, but only Kell’s axe caught Nienna’s eye and she stooped, picking up the weapon. She expected a dead-weight, impossible to lift, but it was surprisingly light despite its size. She hefted the weapon, and it glowed, warm for a moment, in her hands. Or had she imagined that?
“You can’t paddle with that,” snapped Kat.
“I was thinking more of hitting it into the beast’s head.”
“If it comes back,” said Kat.
They both thought of Saark, and Kell, under the freezing river, fighting the huge beast. They shivered, and neither dared to wonder what the outcome would be.
The boat spun around again, and bounced from a rotting tree-trunk, invisible in the darkness. The river grew wider, more shallow, and they found themselves rushing through a minefield of rocks, the river gushing and pounding all around.
“What do we do?” shouted Kat over the torrent.
“I don’t know!”
Both girls moved to the boat’s stern, and with four hands on the tiller, tried to steer the boat in towards the shore. Amazingly, it began to work, and they bounced and skimmed down the fast flow and towards an overhanging shoreline in the gloom…with a crunch, the boat beached on ice and stones, and Nienna leapt out as she had seen Kell do, holding his axe, and tried to drag the boat up the beach. She did not have the strength. Kat jumped out and they both tried, but the boat was dragged backwards by wild currents and within seconds was lost in the raging darkness.
Snow fell.
The girls retreated a short distance into the woods, but stopped, spooked by the complete and utter darkness. A carpet of pine needles were soft underfoot, and the heady smell of resin filled the air.
“This is creepy,” whispered Nienna.
Kat nodded, but Nienna couldn’t discern the movement; by mutual consent, their hands found one another and they walked deeper into the forest, pushed on by a fear of the canker that outweighed a fear of the dark. They stared up at the massive boles of towering Silver Firs, and a violent darkness above which signified the sky. Random flakes drifted down through the trees, but at least here there was no wind; only a still calm.
“Will that creature come back, do you think?” asked Kat.
“I have Kell’s axe,” said Nienna, by way of reply.
“Kell and Saark couldn’t kill it,” said Kat.
Nienna did not answer.
They stopped, their footsteps crunching pine needles. All around lay the broken carcass shapes of dead- wood; ahead, a criss-crossing of fallen trees blocked their path, and cursing and moaning, they dragged themselves
