Iron Angel

stretched his legs and winced. “My bones ache and my flesh is raw. I fear my presence will be a burden to you all.”

One of the Heshette spat.

“You are my guide,” Anchor said to Caulker firmly. “I need you with me.”

“You appear to have found some better guides,” Caulker retorted.

“But I like you, Jack Caulker.” The giant’s smile now seemed to have a slightly sinister edge to it. “We are good friends. And you are still…ah, indebted to me, yes? You would not break our deal?”

The cutthroat remembered the glass bead he had smashed, payment for services he had yet to provide, and he smiled as Anchor mentioned it now.

“John Anchor’s generosity almost matches yours,” he said to Ramnir. “He was kind enough to give me a soulpearl, a bead with the power to bestow great strength upon any man who consumes it.” Now he shrugged sadly. “Foolishly, I broke the pearl.” He sighed. “Such a waste of power is especially galling now. I think we’d all benefit from a boost to strength and endurance if we are to follow Anchor into the dangers ahead.”

He caught Anchor’s eye and, for an instant, saw a shadow pass across the big man’s face. That’s right. Not so willing to share your power with these heathen bastards, are you?

None of the Heshette spoke. Several eyed the pouch at the giant’s belt, then looked quickly away. The horses whickered. Finally Ramnir said, “John Anchor has already offered us much. We do not need to be bribed with power.”

But Anchor beamed suddenly. “No, no. Jack Caulker is right. I have souls aplenty, and any man who wants one is welcome to it.” He untied the pouch from his belt. Now the Heshette looked abashed. Not one of them would step forward.

Jack Caulker wasn’t so modest. He reached into the bag and plucked out one of the glass beads. It glittered in the flat grey light, as though illuminated by an interior glow. “I thank you, Anchor.” He popped the soulpearl into his mouth and swallowed.

Wild cackles of laughter assaulted the cutthroat’s ears, as though the ghost of a madwoman had been let loose inside his head. His vision blurred and eddied and suddenly the view before him changed. He found himself standing before a parapet on the edge of a sickening drop, peering down into a fog-shrouded valley of green conifers. Great eagles circled in the air below him, drifting in and out of the mists. He smelled cold mountain air and pine needles. A gust of wind made him shiver-he was wearing a thin, floaty garment.

A dress?

But then two huge hands grabbed his shoulders. Caulker had just enough time to turn around and see a face he recognized-the massive wooden harness, the rope leading up into the heavens, and the thick black lips split into a huge grin-before John Anchor shoved him out into the yawning precipice.

The cutthroat plummeted down towards the misty trees, his ridiculous dress flapping wildly about his ears-his screams now mingling with the feverish laughter of the madwoman in his mind. Green branches rushed up to meet him…

He hit sand.

Caulker opened his eyes to see John Anchor and a ring of Heshette riders staring down at him. A horse snorted nervously somewhere nearby.

Anchor grinned. “You ate the soul of an old midwife,” he said. “And you died her death at Rockwall Fortress.”

The cutthroat groaned. “I died her death?”

“Yes. With Cospinol’s soulpearls, you experience the soul’s death. Now, her…” He frowned, thinking. “What is the word? Essence. Yes, her essence lives inside you.” He laughed suddenly. “Makes you as strong as she was.”

Caulker’s arms and legs were trembling; his heart hammered in his chest. The scent of that cold mountain still seemed to linger around him. “It was horrible,” he said. “You killed her. You threw her off a cliff.”

“From the Rockwall battlements,” Anchor admitted. “Count Lat of Grenere asked me to dispatch this woman. So many infants had died in her care. All very suspicious.”

With some effort, Caulker rose shakily to his feet. He certainly didn’t feel any stronger than before. “I never want to experience that again,” he said.

“But you will,” Anchor said brightly. “Her last thoughts are yours now. When you sleep, I think you will dream this death many, many times. It is a small problem with Cospinol’s soulpearls-these nightmares.”

Caulker felt sick, trapped, beaten. Of all the gods and archons and warriors the giant claimed to have in his horde of ghosts, why had Caulker chosen that soulpearl? A murdering midwife! Had Anchor tricked him? The thought of reliving that fall again and again filled him with despair. Would he ever sleep peacefully again?

The Heshette declined to take soulpearls for themselves. Indeed, they now seemed to carry themselves with a degree of righteous aloofness.

Caulker silently cursed them all. The more he thought about it, the more sure he became that the big man had deliberately tricked him into choosing that worthless pearl. Anchor wasn’t nearly as stupid and garrulous as he pretended to be. He clearly had some plan for Caulker-and Caulker didn’t like that idea at all.

But if Anchor thought he could manipulate Jack Caulker, then he had seriously underestimated the cutthroat. Caulker hadn’t survived as long as he had without good instincts. He would find a way to turn the tables on the giant.

The seed of a plan began to take shape in the cutthroat’s mind.

The Heshette left their women with the elderly folk to steer the livestock around the eastern edge of Cinderbark Wood, while the mounted warriors accompanied Anchor and Caulker onwards, towards the trees. Soon the snarl of phosphorescent branches loomed before them in the fog like a toxic dream. At the very edge of the forest Anchor halted and addressed the others.

“I will go in first,” he said, “and clear a path for the horses, yes?” He bulled his huge shoulders then slammed his fists together. The huge rope quivered behind his harness.

And then he marched headlong into Cinderbark Wood.

A small smile tugged at one corner of Jack Caulker’s lips as he waited for the first poisonous thorn to bite the tethered giant.

Anchor’s rope snagged in the canopy above him, but he did not pay it any notice, dragging the rope onwards, further into the woodland. The petrified branches could only bend a little before snapping, showering down upon the big man like fragments of brightly glazed crockery. Anchor brushed this debris off his shoulders and harness without any apparent concern, kicking the larger branches aside.

Caulker watched and waited.

But the giant was unstoppable. He marched on into the fog, apparently immune to his toxic surroundings. His rope rent the canopy above him, snagging great colourful nests of branches, twigs, and thorns before ripping them free.

Caulker jerked backwards, just as the Heshette horsemen spurred their mounts forward after the giant. “Don’t take us in there,” he hissed to the rider in the saddle before him. “You’ll kill us both.”

“Where John Anchor goes, we follow,” the rider replied. “Hah!”

His gelding picked up speed, and a heartbeat later they were inside Cinderbark Wood.

The twelve riders formed a line with Ramnir in the lead. The Heshette leader kept a sensible distance behind the tethered giant to avoid the debris falling from the canopy, but he was often forced to leave the giant’s trail and choose a snaking route through the surrounding trees to avoid those tangles of painted stone which had already fallen.

Countless twisted branches reached out of the fog, but the Heshette riders guided their horses skillfully between them.

Anchor crashed on through the wood like a boar through a hedge, picking up pieces of the broken trees and tossing them aside. His hands and arms soon became stained with different-coloured gels, yet none of the poisons had any apparent effect on him.