Night of Knives

Temper lunged and swung high. One blade caught a shoulder plate, twisted up and rebounded from the helm. Lubben feinted a low swipe then thrust with the killing-spike on the axe-head.

The Jaghut turned, slipped the thrust, cut Lubben down his shoulder and spine. Lubben jerked down and away from Temper’s side.

They’d failed their first and best chance. In the following fraction of a heartbeat Temper decided on new tactics. He screamed and lunged in what he hoped appeared to be outright berserk fury. After two exchanges the Jaghut believed it — it yielded ground, waiting for Temper’s blind rage to provide an opening. Temper now held the gate’s threshold. The barrier of channelled power snapped away like a door slammed shut.

Temper stopped attacking. He was rewarded by a fraction’s hesitation from his opponent that betrayed a stumble of rhythm. At that instant Temper felt the glow of a gambit’s success along with something more: renewed strength coursing up from the ground through his legs. The leaden weight of exhaustion and pain sloughed from him like a layer of dirt in a cold reviving stream. His fighting calm, the inner peace that had carried him through all the chaos of past battles, settled upon him like an affirmation. He allowed himself a fierce, taut grin.

The Jaghut clashed its blades together, advanced once more. Temper could not see its face, but he imagined its re-evaluation of the duel, and its determination to hack him to pieces for daring to oppose him. The attack rolled against Temper like the slamming waves of a storm. He held the gate, crouching low under the blows like a rock that could not be cracked as the swords rang out. He parried as carefully as he could to spare his own, much lighter, blades. The Jaghut gave him openings but he ignored them, refusing to yield his stance.

Soon Temper realized that here he faced no lethal artistry such as that offered by Surgen or Dassem, swordsmen you could never anticipate because you never lasted long enough to grasp their style. Instead, this was raw power incarnate, like the direct irresistible onslaught of a tidal wave. The Jaghut’s blades smashed the stones to either side, ploughed through the earth.

Temper thought it impossible that he could turn such blows. But something gave him the strength, pouring up from the earth to empower him, and he wondered — was this true Patronage? If so, with whom or what had he entered into service?

The style of the attack changed then, bearing on steadily; the creature had abandoned the quick decisive blow and would grind him down instead. That would take longer, it likely judged, but was more certain. And Temper had to agree with the estimate. He’d already used up the fresh reserve that had come to him like a blessing at the slamming of the gate. He was down to pure blind cussedness and was slowing, tiring. The blades hissed closer and closer. Then stopped.

Temper straightened, startled.

The Jaghut had withdrawn a step. Temper risked a glimpse away. He was alone. Everyone and everything had vanished. Bare, time-rounded hills stretched all around. And the House was no longer a house. A pile of megalithic blocks stood in its place, looking like a tumbled-down cairn. Even the trees and mounds in the yard were gone. The Jaghut stood to one side, helm raised as it gazed to the south-west.

Rainbow lights weaved and shimmered in a clear night sky. A darkened vault of constellations strangely distorted. At the horizon stretched a blue-green glow such as he had once seen at sea, when his ship passed close to the shores of the icebound Fenn Mountains. His breath, he noticed, steamed from his helm like smoke and a dire cold bit at his limbs. Where in Burn’s Wisdom was he?

The Jaghut turned its helm to him and pointed one sword south. ‘They’ve failed,’ it said in perfect Talian.

‘Who failed?’ Temper said, startled to find himself addressed.

The Jaghut spoke as if Temper hadn’t responded. ‘Never rely upon uncertain allies, human. They will always disappoint you.’

Temper reminded himself not to lower his guard. The game had changed to one perhaps even more perilous; he’d heard enough legends and tales of Jaghuts plying subtle arguments and poisoned gifts. Physically, he felt strong. Whatever power’s service he had entered into had found him a vessel sufficient to the task of standing before this being’s onslaught. Perhaps the Jaghut knew it too, and that was why he now found himself here. A change in strategy. He felt the power of its regard like a giant’s hand pushing him back. ‘Do you know who I am, human?’

Temper struggled to find his voice: ‘No.’

‘I am Jhenna. Do you know the name?’

Jhenna? He’d been facing a female all along? ’No.’

‘Truly not?’ It shook its helmed head. ‘How far into ignorance you humans have fallen. I was one of your kind’s teachers long ago. We raised you up out of the muck. Did you know that?’

Temper slapped his clenched hands to his sides to warm them. ‘No.’

‘We were puissant upon the world while your ancestors dressed in hides and squatted in their own filth. We gave you fire! We shielded you from the K’Chain!’

Temper shrugged. He was no scholar, just a soldier.

‘What I am saying, human, is name your price.’

‘What?’

‘What is it you wish? Name anything. Simply stand aside. Nothing in the world of your age lies beyond my reach. Is it rulership you crave? I will carve out a continent-wide kingdom for you. Power? I will instruct you in mysteries entirely forgotten by the practitioners of your age. Riches? The locations of hoards beyond your imagination are known to me. Immortality? I know arts that will inure your flesh against the passage of time. Stand aside and these or anything you desire can be yours. What do you say?’

Temper snorted his scorn. Some things never change. It was as if the old ogre himself stood before him, promising Moon’s Spawn itself. He remembered how the council of nobles of Quon Tali province fared after sealing a deal with Kellanved. They were rounded up and beheaded. And there was a timeless saying for deceit and betrayal: dealing with a Jaghut. He struck a ready stance, tensed his arms to warm them. ‘You jammed back in your hole interests me.’

The Jaghut shook its head as if in pity. ‘I can see you lack the imagination necessary to grasp the unparalleled opportunity before you. I am disappointed… but not surprised.’ Temper expected a renewed onslaught after that rejection, yet Jhenna made no move towards him. Instead, she pointed her sword south again. ‘Here comes another disappointment.’

Keeping a wary eye on Jhenna, Temper allowed himself one quick glimpse. Someone was slowly approaching up the slope of naked stone, someone wounded or crippled. Temper waited, weapons poised. Jhenna said conversationally, as if to be companionable: ‘Have you yet begun to worry about the time here, human? How much of the night has passed? Or has any time passed at all? Has your limited imagination yet begun to fathom that prickly problem?’

In fact he hadn’t, but he wasn’t about to admit it to Jhenna. What was the fiend getting at? That she could keep him here-wherever here was — forever? Was that possible? Would he have to stand guard here for eternity? Temper reclasped his weapons through his tattered gauntlets. Frost, he saw, feathered the iron links of his sleeves.

Jhenna half-turned away. ‘I have brought you to Omtose Phellack. It is the home of my kind. Our Warren, such as you call them. It is us and we are it. This night of Conjunction has allowed me at least this one small boon: to revisit my old home.’ The helmed head faced Temper. ‘More to the point for you, human, is that time as you know it does not pass here. I could keep you here for an age only to return an instant after we left.’

She shoved her weapons through the sash at her waist, then lifted her helm away and held it negligently. She regarded him through lambent eyes that glittered with inhuman emotion. Tusklike canines thrust up from its wide jaws, but other than this, Temper found her features almost human, simply oversized: a cliff-like brow ridge, broad cheek bones, a wide sloped forehead. Her leonine mane was matted and greasy. Twists of gold thread and lengths of leather tied off a multitude of small braids — rat-tails, soldiers called them.

‘Think more on my offer, human.’ She crossed her long arms. ‘We have the time.’

The world began to crumble for Temper. Was he doomed to face this monster for centuries? Surely, eventually, he would be defeated or driven insane. Curse Faro to D’rek’s pits! He would know how to counter this tactic; why couldn’t he have warned him? What was he to do? He was only a soldier. After what seemed its own eternity, Jhenna spoke to someone behind him. ‘And what gifts do you bring, skulking wanderer?’

Temper shifted until he could keep both beings in sight at once. He was startled to find that the newcomer