there – in times of flight, who would leave a horse? – but willing to search all the same. As he approached, the stables were dark, and silent. Rubbing his chin, he threw open the doors to reveal a total lack of thoroughbred stallion. 'Hmm,' he muttered, cursing his luck. Would it have hurt, for just this once, to give them a bit of good fortune? For a change? Instead of the gods throwing soldiers and deranged creatures into the battle at every damn pissing turn?
Saark turned, leant his back against the stable door, and heard a strangled cluck. He winced. He had been truthful, in that his food was normally served on a silver platter by a wench whose breasts would suffocate three men, never mind one; but the reality of the matter, and something that shamed him, was that his life of high society had ill-prepared him for chicken slaughter. He had no idea how one slaughtered a chicken; nor any inclination to find out.
Another deranged cluck emerged from the coop, and Saark winced again, almost in sympathy. A sympathy overwhelmed only by his ravenous hunger. Then, suddenly, behind him something went clack in the gloom of the dingy stable interior. He whirled about, slim rapier drawn, eyes narrowed.
'Is there somebody there?' he snapped. 'Show yourself! Don't make me come in there after you!' Nothing. No reply. No movement. No sound.
Saark glanced back to the farmhouse, but there was no sign of Kell, and anyway, Saark resented being made to look a fool over something as ridiculous as the murder of a chicken. He pushed into the stable and lowered his head, as if this movement might somehow aid his night vision. He walked along the stalls, nose wrinkled at the stench of old dung and damp straw. The place reeked as bad as a rancid corpse. 'Come out, now, before I lose my temper!' he said, voice raised, and as he neared the end stall he slowed his pace. Whoever it was, they had to be in there.
Saark leapt the last few feet, rapier outstretched, and blinked. There, huddled in the stall, was a donkey. Saark and the donkey stared at one another for a while, and Saark finally relaxed. The donkey gave a husky bray, and tilted its head, observing the tall, lithe swordsman. 'Damn it, they left you! You poor little thing.' Saark opened the door, and finding a lead on the wall, spent several minutes attaching a halter and then leading the donkey out through the stables. Kell was just appearing from the farmhouse with a collection of items wrapped in a blanket as Saark emerged into wintry sunlight. They both stopped, staring at one another.
'You found a donkey. Well done,' said Kell.
'The miserable whoresons left her! What a horrible thing to do; they could have at least set her free. Well, she can come with us, carry our provisions. I'm sure I saw a basket somewhere.'
'Well,' said Kell, thoughtfully, dumping the blanket on the snow-peppered ground. 'I've certainly no objections to taking a donkey with us. It's a long journey, and many a donkey has surely proved its worth during my lifetime.' 'Good,' said Saark, rubbing the donkey's muzzle. 'I think this beast has had enough mistreatment for one year.'
'Yes. And I reckon there's good eating on a donkey,' said Kell.
There came a long pause. 'So, you'd eat the donkey?' Saark said.
'Saark, if I was starving lad, I'd eat your very arse cheeks. Now get this stuff in the basket. Did you kill those chickens?'
Skanda emerged at that moment with five birds tied together by the throat. He handed them to Kell, who took the dead chickens and glanced sideways at Saark. 'What?' snapped the swordsman.
'For shame, Saark. Getting the boy to do a man's job. Your job, in fact. You!'
'He offered,' said Saark, miserably, and returned to the stables to find the basket.
They moved fast for the rest of the day, only stopping early evening to have a cold meal of dried beef and hard oatcakes. Saark led the donkey, which he'd named Mary – to a rising of Kell's eyebrows, and an unreadable expression. Saark shrugged off the implied criticism, and walked slightly ahead of the group. But on one thing they all agreed. Mary did indeed lighten their load, and the farmhouse had been a store of many provisions, from bread, cheese, a side of ham, dried beef, oats, sugar and salt, and even a little chocolate. Kell found a bottle of unlabelled whiskey, which he stowed deep in the basket. He thought it best not to let Saark know, for the last time Kell drank an excess of whiskey it had ended in a savage brawl, with Saark taking a beating under Kell's mighty fists. But, obviously, Kell had no intentions of drinking any whiskey now. He was off the whiskey. It was for medicinal purposes only, he convinced himself. The sky stretched out, streaked with grey and black. What blue remained was thin, like a bleak watercolour portrait, and just as night began to fall they breached a hill and Kell pointed to a long, low, abandoned building made of black bricks. It had several squat chimneys, and by its overgrown look, gates hanging off hinges, missing bricks and smashed windows, had been empty for a considerable amount of time. 'You knew this was here?' said Saark.
'Aye,' nodded Kell. 'Camped here a few times. It's an old armoury; rumoured, or so I've heard it told, to have made the finest weapons, helmets and breastplates in Falanor!'
'Safe?'
'As safe as anywhere else during the invasion of a wicked enemy army. I'll scout ahead, you wait here with, ahh, Mary.'
Saark watched Kell descend a steep bank of tangled branches smothered in snow. The huge warrior stopped at the bottom, scanning, searching for footprints. Then, wary and with Ilanna drawn, he disappeared from view. He returned a few minutes later and waved them down, and both Saark and Skanda were more than happy to leave the biting chill of the wind behind. Despite new woollen jackets and leather-lined cloaks from the farmhouse, the cold still crept easily through to the depths of their bones. Falanor in winter was not the best place to travel, nor camp.
They slid down the snowy hill, the donkey's hooves digging in deep, and Saark tied Mary up outside the deserted armoury and ducked through the doorway, closely followed by Skanda.
Kell stood, hands on hips, looking around. They were in a huge, long, low-ceilinged workshop; benches lined the walls, set out in L-shapes at regular intervals, perhaps fifty in all stretching off into the gloom. Also ranged around the black, fire-damaged walls were curious iron ovens, and other machines with handles and tubes and strange gears, all black iron, many now rusted into solid blocks.
'Been empty a while,' said Saark, whispering, but not realising why he whispered.
'Aye,' nodded Kell. 'Come on, it's too cold in this room, but there's lots of side rooms. I think this place has been used by travellers for nearly two decades now. Hopefully, somebody has laid a fire.'
Saark and Skanda followed Kell through the huge chamber, and their eyes wandered to abandoned benches where ancient tools rested on work surfaces. 'It's like they left in a hurry,' said Saark, eyes following contours of rusted tools. There were hammers and tongs, files and pincers, and other tools in curious shapes Saark had never before seen; but then, he was a swordsman, not an armourer.
Kell approached one room to the side; the door closed, and he suddenly stopped. He turned and stared at Saark, features hidden in the gloom; then he seemed to win some internal debate, and stepped forward, pushing open the door The black longsword slashed for his throat and Kell swayed back with incredible speed, axe slamming up, the spike at its tip carving a long groove of channelled flesh up the albino soldier's face. His chin and nose disappeared like molten wax in a spray of milk white blood, and he screamed, and Kell brought back his gleaming axe, eyes narrowed, and yelled, 'It's a trap! They saw us coming! Be ready!' He stepped forward with a mighty swing, halving the soldier's head, and then turning his back on the small room.
'They?' said Saark, drawing his slender rapier, and gaped with open flapping mouth as a flood of albino warriors raced through the gloomy old armoury; there were no war cries, no shouts, no screams of battle; only an eerie silence and thudding of boots.
A soldier fell on Saark and he parried the blow with a clash of steel, batting the ineffectual sword strike aside and drawing his blade across the man's throat. Flesh opened, parted, without blood – like slicing the throat of a corpse, thought Saark sourly – but all other images were slammed from him at the sheer number of soldiers in the armoury. Kell had been right, it was a set-up, a trap; they'd been waiting. Saark parried another blow, slammed his blade back in a shower of sparks, and exchanged several strikes before piercing his blade through the soldier's eye. Beside him, Kell's axe swung, but was hampered by the close confines fighting. He glimpsed the great blades behead an albino in a flail of long hair and gristle, and Saark shifted as the great Ilanna hummed past his own face.
'Kell!' screamed Saark, his face thunder, and he skipped to the side to give the old man more killing space. He spun low under a warrior's blade, and shoved his own sword up, brutally, into the soldier's groin. The albino
