The Pilgrims

dance, side to side on its feet, arms raised high, a growl in its throat. The kid instinctively raised an arrow to the string. ‘Certain fires are not for warmth,’ the war mage rasped, a warning finger raised, its voice melding with the growl in its throat. ‘Certain flames don’t touch candle wicks but burn them down.’

‘Settle down, don’t attack him!’

‘Where spells fail are claws and teeth …’

Eric felt heat building in the war mage, saw it crouching in the pose it used during its fight with Far Gaze in the woods. A single thread of hair-thin discoloured air wound down from the sky and touched the diamond-shaped tip of its staff.

There wasn’t even time to think about it: he took the gun, held it to the war mage’s head and pulled the trigger. The Glock’s huge noise made Eric almost drop it in shock, made the young archer drop his bow and throw himself sideways, hands over ears. The war mage staggered back a pace or two, its staff clattering to the floor, and its body toppling stiffly over the edge. Just before it fell, its head revolved very slowly towards Eric, mouth slightly open, eyes wide with what was — he assumed — a look of profoundest surprise.

The body tumbled down. A dozen Tormentors, perhaps drawn by the gunshot, ran towards the city wall and took apart the war mage’s body. Eric swallowed, expecting to feel the way he had after shooting the Invia, but somehow he didn’t. It felt like he’d just put an animal down, perhaps regrettable but perfectly necessary. There was no more time to reflect, for arrows began to fly from the invaders outside the gate, glancing off the turrets, some landing close to them.

The archer stared at him, not yet recovered from his surprise. Eric put the gun in his pocket. The brief rain of arrows ceased and he chanced a look down. On the wall’s other side the invading castle army prepared the battering ram for its assault on the door. Many heads turned upwards seeking whatever had made the gun’s noise. ‘Come on,’ said Eric. ‘We have to go. I don’t think it’ll be safe here much longer.’

‘You saved me,’ the kid said with no more conviction than someone commenting on the weather. Eric couldn’t tell if he was grateful or not.

‘I guess so,’ he answered. ‘Want to do me a favour back? Help me find Anfen or the Mayor.’

The kid nodded and stood, pausing to sling the bow over his shoulder. Eric followed him and tried not to look down on either side. The first battering ram charge boomed out like a massive struck drum, but the iron door didn’t tremble. A few more archers were scattered along the high wall, and more could be heard down on lower levels. Eric was shocked that many were as young as or younger than the kid leading him around.

‘What was that spell you cast?’ the kid paused to ask him. ‘What kind of mage are you?’

‘Spell? No. It was a weapon. I’m from-’ should he tell? ‘-from Otherworld.’

The kid frowned. ‘Where’s that?’

‘A long, long way away.’ For some reason he felt a lump in his throat to say it.

‘And the spell was in your weapon?’

‘I guess you could say that.’

‘Is it the same Anfen who won Valour’s Helm?’

‘Yes.’

The kid nodded and led him on. There came a bridge which led from the city wall to the thick ledge of a cliff, and from there they came to the artificial shelf ringing the city high above. Soon, though Eric didn’t know it, he walked the same path Anfen and the others had walked little more than a day before. Many people stood and helplessly watched the situation below, faces grim or disbelieving, while official-looking groups were led the opposite way, out through the secret passages in the hillsides behind. Eric followed the young archer through the bustling crowd, when suddenly he saw a familiar face among those gazing down at the carnage. ‘Siel!’ he said. The boy, evidently feeling his task complete and debt repaid, wandered away and was gone from sight in the crowds.

She turned and looked at him with a neutral expression, though her eyes showed she’d been crying. She was not, it seemed, half as surprised to see him as he was to see her. She walked towards him slowly. ‘You’re back,’ she said. ‘Have a nice adventure?’

‘Hardly. What’s wrong? Is Anfen dead?’

She scoffed. ‘Shall we send you to check if he’s there?’ A hand went to the curved blade on her belt and he saw she was shivering with anger. When he got over his surprise, he said, ‘Wait! Don’t do it. I can explain what happened.’

She inclined her head with a humourless smile as if to say: I very much look forward to it. ‘And where’s the old twit?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe on his way here with the wolf, Far Gaze.’

She looked with a moment’s pause at the war mage’s staff in his hand, which he didn’t even remember picking up. ‘The charm?’ she said.

‘He still has it.’ Eric told his story, the hardest part explaining his motives in following Case, since he’d done it with her own words echoing in his ears. Siel paced back and forth while she listened, tugging on her braids so hard it surely hurt her. The part about Kiown she asked him to repeat word for word, and her eyes shut when she heard it the second time. She said, ‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s all true. Even the part about Nightmare.’

She said nothing, but gestured for him to continue, wiping a fresh tear from her face. When he told her about the war mage, her eyes narrowed and fists clenched. ‘They want you back with Anfen,’ she said, incredulous.

‘So it’d seem. Case thought the war mage was just nuts, acting on its own, not on orders.’

She scoffed again and paced along the ledge, thinking. People still bustled around them, many now watching the northern gate, at which a steady pounding could be heard from the invaders’ battering rams. ‘So much you think you know,’ she said after a while.

‘Of Kiown, you mean?’

Her laugh was bitter. ‘And Anfen, of course.’

‘What do you mean? You don’t think he’s in league with-?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t know any more. But I see now why Kiown would fuck anything that moved but not me. I’d learn his secrets.’

They both watched the carnage below for a while without speaking. ‘Why not go riding?’ she said at last. ‘Let’s discover the rest of the surprises. If there are provisions left at our inn, we’ll take what we can, but I doubt the important people will have left much behind. No matter. We’ll be riding through safer country this time, provided no Invia come for you, Marked one.’

‘Where are we headed? Is Anfen even here?’

‘He’s off to destroy the Wall at World’s End,’ she said and laughed. She looked down again at the now eerily quiet streets. ‘Maybe he’s right to try it, whatever the Mayors say. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to stop him. We may soon know. Let’s get horses.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘And I hope your friend shows up.’ It was no well- wishing: because I intend to slice him up the middle, her wide dark eyes had said.

61

A human flood poured south: refugees clogged the roads, clutching what possessions they’d been able to carry through the frantic press of escaping bodies through the southern gate. The road was littered here and there with things cast aside as the realities of travel sank in, and a day or two of hauling excess weight proved plenty enough. The inns between Elvury and the closest city, Yinfel, were so stuffed that patrons paid big money to sleep under tables in their pubs, or in their closets. A good number refused to stop moving, certain the Tormentors would pursue them. But no new sightings were heard of.

News of Elvury’s doom travelled along the road much faster than the trudge of its refugees, spreading to the other Free Cities, whose forces frantically checked their underground passages and ramped up defences. Tormentors were now widely known of and rumoured to be attacking at the castle’s behest. There had indeed been