Blood Of Kings: The Shadow Mage (38 page)

“I mean you no harm, Old Mother.” Rosinnio felt a knot of anxiety balling in her chest.

“I know that, child. I too have dreamt dark and strange dreams. I have also dreamt of one who would travel here from very, very far away. One with a good heart who would come to me for help. Your journey has been most long thus far, my child.” She reached out and took the younger woman’s hand in her own. “And it has not ended yet.”

“Do you know what I must do? What road I must travel?” Rosinnio asked.

“Take what you have come for and let it guide you, for who am I to know the ways of the gods? Sometimes they speak to me, but do I understand what they say? No.” Rosinnio heard a chuckle in her head then, it made her smile.

“How do I find the Horn of Galen?”

“If you are worthy, you just have to reach out and the Guardian of Souls will…” The old woman’s words trailed off as Rosinnio suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired, her eyes growing unbearably heavy.

“The Guardian?” She struggled against the desire to sleep and forced her eyes open.

The woman was gone, the hide tent, village and everybody in it were gone. She stood on a rocky mountain top. In the background she could see the sea stretching out to the horizon where it joined and became one with the grey sky. On top of the mountain, growing out of the rock, was a single black tree, its branches stark in their bareness and harsh, sharpened ends. The smell of rot emanated from it in waves of dank foulness. Lying at the foot of the tree, nestled between gnarled roots protruding from the rock, was a curved horn made of bone. She reached towards it and stopped as her fingers hovered over it.
Am I worthy?

Her fingers closed around the horn. Its touch was like ice. Like everything around her, the mountain, the tree. It felt like death.
How else would his realm feel?
she thought.
The Guardian of Souls – Sentinel to the Underworld. The Reaper of Souls to the Nortlanders.

Her eyes snapped open and the woman was in front of her once again.

“You should leave now. The wolves you have brought to our door are filling the folk with fear.”

“They fear you too,” Rosinnio said a little more defensively than she intended.

“You have a kind heart and they will gain immeasurably from your radiance shining on them.”

“Perhaps someday the Frost People and the Nortlanders can live together in peace, without fear or hate,” she said.

“When the great cats who hunt the woolly bison of the north learn to live off grass, perhaps that day will come.”

Rosinnio made her way back through the crowd. Crawulf and his three men sat facing each other around a small campfire, seemingly relaxed and simply warming themselves, but she knew each man watched the back of the other and any perceived threat would be met with a sudden explosion of violence. The thought saddened her.

“Did you get what you came for?” Crawulf asked when she joined them. She displayed the simple bone horn to them.

“Then let us be gone from here.”

Rosinnio nodded her agreement. “We have a long voyage ahead of us and none of you are going to like it.”

Duke Normand: Eorotia

D
uke Normand paced the tiled floor of the audience chamber in the Temple of Eor, his mind focusing on the image of the dragon made up from hundreds of small tiles at his feet.

“My lord, you summoned me.” Djangra Roe walked into the room. Normand watched him enter, saw him note the presence of warriors in the room.

“Have you heard, Mage?”

“Heard, my lord?” A confused look spread across Roe’s face.

“Those cursed mountain people have risen up in rebellion against me. They dare to challenge me!”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it, my lord. But then I’ve been locked away in the library, studying the old texts. I’m becoming quite the scholar on Eor.”

“Curse you and that damnable goddess. May she and that witch of a priestess be swallowed into The Hag’s Pit.”

“What has happened?”

Normand turned to one of his warriors, a man with dirt and dried blood smeared across his face. When he moved he did so stiffly and with obvious pain. “A caravan travelling from the Duchies going south with tin and wool was attacked in the mountains two days ago.”

“Bandits?”

“Bandits would have stolen the cargo to sell themselves, but the only thing taken was the lives of the traders and their drivers… every last one of them. I sent a score of men into the mountains to track down whoever had done this. This man is the only survivor of that patrol. They were attacked by a large force who knew the terrain, who knew exactly where to set an ambush.”

“What will you do?” Djangra asked, his face set in grave lines.

“What I always do. I will take the fight to them.”

“Is that wise, my lord? If what you say is true, you do not know the numbers you will face or even where to find them. The mountains are vast and treacherous. You could wander around there for months without knowing where you are going. Then of course you have another problem; they are most likely among us even now, cooking our food, emptying our chamber pots, right under our noses, yet invisible.”

“I have tried the road of patience once already and that has failed.”

“If you speak of the priestess, do not be so sure, my lord. We have yet to hear from the men sent to hunt her down.”

“They are dead. She taunted me with them in my dream, brought their heads to me in a jug. All three men I gave to you. Think on that.” Normand spat the words out bitterly. “Your charms and petty, inadequate spells have failed. You have failed.” Normand could see fear creep into Djangra Roe’s eyes. It was well known the duke was not a patient man and did not tolerate failure.

“I will send others, better men, a more powerful witch…”

“No, from this day on you will stay by my side until that witch is dead. Heed my words, Mage. If she violates my dreams one more time I will have your head.”

“Yes, my lord, I understand.” Colour drained from Djangra Roe’s face.

“Now make ready. We ride out immediately.”

“I would make one suggestion, my lord.”

“Speak,” Normand said irritably.

“The valley – Perhaps you should take your warriors there.”

“This is not a treasure hunt, Mage.”

“No, my lord,” Djangra Roe answered, “but it is a sacred place to the people of the mountain… to the goddess Eor. Perhaps if they fear we will desecrate it they will show themselves to us.”

“Very well, if nothing else I will have the satisfaction of destroying something of value to the dream-witch.”

They marched out of Eorotia on foot, with an honour guard of grim-faced peasants and frightened traders lining the narrow road. There was little point in taking mounts into the mountains where the paths were little more than animal trails, often ending abruptly or needing a steep climb to continue. Duke Normand led them out followed by his Dragon Knights, above them his banner bearing the image of a red dragon on a green field billowed in the wind. Following behind were an array of men-at-arms, archers and crossbowmen, scouts and woodsmen. All in all a force of close to ten score armed, fighting men marched through the gates and into the morning mist clinging to the mountains.

Normand’s mood was buoyant. He was nothing if not a warrior, and the thrill of leading hard, fighting men into battle was the one thing that made him feel he was where he belonged. The intrigues of the king’s court were not something he enjoyed, probably why he stayed away from Rothberry Castle. The ways of the gods and their priests, the dark arts of witches and mages made him nervous. He was not comfortable with things he did not understand. Put a sword in his hand, though, and an enemy before him and he would revel.

Such a large body of fighting men was unlikely to encounter any trouble on the road and they made it to Widow’s Keep without incident. By then light was draining from the sky as night eased its dark mantle across the heavens. The men built fires and wrapped themselves in their cloaks as the first touches of winter stole the heat from their bones. There were no stories of ghosts and murdered brides this time, only the rattle of weapons and armour as men, feeling the tension of going into the unknown, kept their thoughts and fears to themselves.

They suffered their first casualty that night. Normand was woken to the cries for help and the barked orders of sergeants calling men to arms. A man-at-arms making his way to take up sentry duty found one of his fellows slumped against a tree. At first he thought the man had fallen asleep at his post, but when he kicked his legs to wake him the body had toppled over, revealing a bloodied throat and a gash from ear to ear.

Normand rubbed the tiredness from his eyes, catching his breath as the icy air caught in his throat. Underfoot the ground had hardened as a coat of frost painted the land white. It was still well off sunrise, but there would be no more sleep for that night. Normand sat before a fire reflecting on the last time he had led a party of men into the mountains, and the beast that had almost claimed his life.
What else is in these mountains?
he wondered.

Three more men lost their lives the following day, all of them scouts who had run foul of traps set to catch woodsmen wandering ahead of the main body of Normand’s small army. It made the going even slower as each step was taken with caution and no little fear. A wooden stake triggered by stepping on a crude mechanism buried under a cover of brown leaves and broken twigs, was not a nice way to die.

Djangra Roe scratched his beard nervously when they stopped at midday to rest and take on water. “They’re out there. I can feel their eyes on me,” he said, his eyes darting in different directions.

“Good,” Normand snapped.

“Good?” the mage asked with incredulity.

“I want them close. They will have to face us soon enough.” Normand lay back and closed his eyes, allowing himself a smile at the thought of the flabbergasted look on the mage’s face.

The drums started later that night. Normand had already ordered the guard doubled, with no man to be left out of sight of another as he stood sentinel. For those not on sentry duty there was very little sleep to be had, as a constant thrumming filled the air, leaving each man in no doubt that his enemy was close by, and though he could not see them, they could see him. Later in the night the air was punctuated by a scream. A guard who had stepped away from his post to relieve himself was found face down with an arrow in the back of his neck and his breeches down around his knees.

The early morning sun, though bright and sitting low in a clear blue sky, carried little heat in its rays and less cheer in the hearts of the men. Tired from lack of sleep, anxious of facing the unknown in a strange place to them, they packed up and headed deeper into the mountains. Normand had been told that there were scores of villages hidden all over the mountain range, populated by people who offered no allegiance to crown or monarch, a wild, lawless folk. He would tame them. If he had to kill half of them first then so be it.

The first village they found was, unsurprisingly, deserted, although, still warm embers, and steaming cooking pots over hearths told of the speedy and recent evacuation of the village folk. Even so, it gave the men a focus to vent their fear and anger. It was a squalid little place, the wattle-and-daub walls practically one with the forest that covered this part of the mountains. By the time they pressed on, not a building remained standing.

Camouflaged pits with fire-hardened stakes at the bottom made the force move warily as it snaked its way along hunting trails through the woods. Arrows and stones fired from slingshots were a constant threat from the darkness around them, until finally they climbed high enough to leave the tree line behind. Even though they looked down on the vast carpet of green, and with the air becoming harder to breathe, snow-clad peeks still towered over them in all directions.

“How much farther?” Normand asked irritably as dark clouds rolled in from behind the mountains, bringing wisps of snow floating down from the heavens.

“There! Beyond that peek, there should be a path down,” Djangra answered breathlessly. Normand made no reply, simply waving his men on in the direction the mage had indicated.

The valley they looked down on was bordered on both sides by steep banks of rock as if some ancient giant had carved a path through the mountain. A stream flowed through its centre, water gurgling over rocks back down towards the forest below. Normand sucked in a breath as he regarded the gorge stretching out before him. “There could be an army hidden down there,” he mused, looking down as a thick mist shrouded the far end of the valley.

“See those stones, near the centre?” Djangra Roe asked, pointing into the valley at a group of massive boulders circling a rocky plinth just beyond the wispy touch of the mist. Even from a distance they could see the giant rocks had been smoothed and shaped. “That must be their sacred place.”

A narrow and treacherous path led down into the valley. More than one man slipped on the loose stones and hard earth, often knocking one or more men in front tumbling also. Once they reached the bottom, Normand signalled for his men to fan out and form two separate lines, five men deep and twenty wide. Then he slowly marched them towards the circle of stones, constantly wary of an unseen enemy. Normand was confident his trained warriors would easily overcome a force of mountain folk many times its size, in a pitched battle. So far though, none had been offered.

As they approached the sacred place, swirling designs and intricate carvings etched into the rock could be made out on the massive stones. The closer they got, the more imposing the stones appeared, each one twice the height of a man.

“A strange place to erect such a thing. How long do you suppose they are here?” Normand turned to the mage as they approached the circle. The raised area the rocks circled had also been carved and smoothed to give an even surface. More designs, reminding Normand of huge snail trails decorated the stone floor.