Loe raamatut: «Hero Risen»

Chapter 1

She sat beside him each afternoon now. Two high-backed chairs were paired on the balcony, fine sand gathering around their short legs of finely carved wood.

It was curious how change eased its way into your life before awareness caught up. He could not remember when her companionship had become routine; he could only recall the day when, with her called on other business, it had seemed strange that she was not there.

The other servants made no comment. They would not dare, of course, in his presence but he knew from his sources that her companionship provided no domestic scuttlebutt in the corridors. Why would it? Nobles, in particular, royals, had a habit of demanding services far more intimate from servants. Gossip is not born in the commonplace.

Her whisper drifted in the baking air. ‘You hate this.’

‘The heat?’ He snorted. ‘It is the only weather I know.’

‘Not the heat, as you know quite well.’ It was uncanny how a hoarse monotone could yet convey chastisement. ‘The waiting.’

He rested his head against the chair and raised his eyes to the deepness of the sky. The same sky that sat above all countries, above all people, and some more specific than others. ‘You think you can read my mind, crone, but you are wrong. Not the waiting. Waiting lies within the course of every strategy.’ He frowned at the sky. ‘I hate the not knowing.’

She gave a soft grunt. ‘And the not controlling.’

‘I would that I could control you and your prattling tongue.’

It was even more irritating when she did not reply. He let the silence draw out, as if it had not irked him.

‘And you miss him.’

He cursed inwardly, as much at the involuntary start her words had given him as at the suspicion that she could read his mind after all. He turned slowly and looked at her for a long moment. Her gaze never wavered from the horizon but the slightest twitch at the corner of her mouth hinted that she was aware of his stare.

‘On pain of death, do not ever say that in the presence of anyone,’ he rasped. ‘Especially him.’

****

Pain thumping and rebounding within his skull, Brann forced open his eyes and found himself lying in hell.

The stench of gore was so pervasive that he could taste it filling his throat; enough to make him retch, had he not become accustomed to the sensation that seemed half a lifetime before. He heaved at a body – cold, clammy, and limp and as naked as he felt himself to be – to force its weight away from his chest. It slipped from him with a wet slither, allowing him to drag in a breath of welcome depth. Pain flared across his ribs as he sucked in the air, but a pain of a battering and, thankfully, not of broken bone. It was not so much the breaking that worried him, but the piercing and tearing it so often caused inside. Bones could mend, but blood coughed up all too often prophesied the end. He twisted, feeling lifeless limbs shift beneath him, to look further around. He was in a pit as deep into the dry crumbling earth as his father’s mill had been tall. The darkness of night above was tinged with the glow of fires beyond the lip and either the flames or the moon or both combined to lessen the gloom just enough to reveal the silhouettes of arms and legs and bodies and heads, a layer of nightmare shapes with the promise of more hidden beneath.

Low voices approached and Brann lay still, tense and alert. A glow grew brighter at the lip of the pit until the flickering light of a torch brought the detail of the scene around him to his eyes in all its stark gore. Faces stared back at him, some hacked almost beyond recognition as human, while others appeared ready to start a conversation until he saw the eyes, cold and dead as stone. Limbs were strewn at angles, attached still to bodies or not; skin was rent and pierced, and everywhere, coating all, was blood, a dark lubricant that saw the corpses – stripped of everything whether of value or none – shift as, with a scrape of movement at the edge of the pit and a harsh slap on impact, another body was flung onto the pile.

A long moment of silence and shifting shadows was broken by a grunt of satisfaction.

‘That’ll do for today. Tomorrow will see us fill it enough to put the dirt back in over them, then we’ve done our bit. I’ll put the stew on to heat, and you two can start sorting their gear. We’ll divide it once we’ve eaten.’

A harsh laugh and a younger voice: ‘Sounds good to me. It’s hungry work, this. Bodies are heavier than I thought.’

A third voice: ‘But worth it for the loot. Don’t matter that the bodies are heavy when the loot pays you back. You city cut-throats are all the same when you come to this – you don’t realise you can’t just leave the dead in an alley for the watch guards to pick up in the morning. Now you know why I told you it’s good to stick with the sergeant who’s the best cheat at dice. Won us a pit to fill, didn’t he?’

The first voice was further away, presumably at the stew pot: ‘Say again that I cheat and you’ll be in the pit yourself and as dead as the others.’ The sergeant finished with a barked laugh.

The torchlight started to recede but Brann forced himself to lie still; steeling himself against rising bile at the feeling of a cold arm pressing against his face, and waiting until the pit returned to safe darkness. The voices were still relatively close.

‘Of course, boss. You’re just very good at it. But before you start rolling those dice again, I want my name on those black weapons.’

Brann’s eyes jerked wide open.

The sergeant’s voice: ‘Good try, but we all do. I’ll take the sword. You bastards can roll the dice for the axe and knife.’

The young voice: ‘I am happy with the knife.’ A snicker of a laugh. ‘I like knife work.’

‘And the axe is fine for me. So we’re agreed. We can roll for the rest.’

The sergeant grunted. ‘You can sort the rest now, or the food will be ready before you’re done. Get your arses over here. You can use the knife tomorrow. At least the black one won’t take you four tries to cut a throat like that blunt apology for a blade you were using today.’

Brann growled as rage flared, overwhelming the horror and disgust prompted by the gore-smeared bodies pressing around him. He made to rise, but his left arm gave way beneath him as a shock of pain ran from his elbow into his shoulder. He could make out the dark shape of a wound on the arm, and a burning on the side of his ribs led tentative fingers to the split skin of another long gash. Either the bash on his head that was causing the headache or the loss of blood had been the reason he had passed out and appeared dead. Either way, it had saved him from being finished off by a looter’s blade. He had to hope it hadn’t been blood loss, or the strength to even escape the pit would have drained from him with it. He grunted softly. There was only one way to find out. The pain wasn’t enough to stop him from forcing movement had it been necessary, but while he had another good arm, there was no need.

Brann rolled to his right and pushed himself against a torso, chest hair slick and matted with blood and the jagged end of a rib pressing against his hand, and levered himself into a crouch. He tested his legs beneath him. They ached, but only through the stiffness of immobility. Hands and feet slipping and slithering on corpses, he moved towards the side of the pit. The body parts shifting beneath him made progress awkward, but the slick covering of stinking fluids saw them move quietly – just a squelch or a small slap as cold flesh met cold flesh. With almost every movement, his foot, then a hand, then a foot slipped between bodies – corpses that clung on, unwilling to let him go. His head told him that they were dead, that they were empty pieces of meat and bone, that they could not hurt him. But the feeling that they were trying to drag him down among them, to lose him in their midst and accept him as one of their own, overwhelmed him. Panic rose and he started to scrabble faster, one foot sinking even deeper into the grasping cadavers. He dragged in a gasp and forced himself to stop moving, desperately trying to control his impulses. He could feel his leg encased for most of its length against still, cold, wet dead skin. But it was the stillness that he forced his thoughts to accept. While he didn’t move, nothing else did. There were no spirits trying to pull him into their embrace, no fingers grabbing his ankles. He slowed his breathing and withdrew his leg gradually, pushing down within him the revulsion at the feeling of what it slid against. He was no stranger to death or broken bodies; the gods only knew how many he had caused and the brutality involved. But those were dealt with in the moment, reaction and action born of necessity, and driven by the urge at the core of nature to survive. This was the cold eternity of death, and it reminded him of everything he fought to avoid. He blew out a slow breath and moved slowly, each movement placed with deliberate care. A face, eyes dull but staring, almost allowed the panic back in, but he forced his concentration away from what the bodies had been and made his eyes see them as nothing more than a surface to cross. The entire journey was no more than the length of two long spears but to his straining nerves it seemed the distance of an arrow-shot. He glanced ahead – he was almost there. A leg that bridged unseen between two bodies snapped under his weight, the splintered end of the shin puncturing the side of his heel. He caught his balance by throwing himself at the pit wall, bracing his good arm against it and finding it steep. Stomach heaving, he twisted and wrenched free the broken shin bone. He let his vomit go; there was no point in fighting it in this hellhole. Most of the bone was intact, and he stabbed the jagged end into the wall, using it to pull himself up, injured arm dangling and one foot finding a root that protruded enough to let him push against it, dried earth rubbing against his front and mixing with the gore that coated every part of him. His arm found the lip and, legs scrambling behind him, he dragged himself over.

The nightmare apparition – naked body, heaving chest, and snarling face caked and smeared and matted in mud and blood, and broken bone in hand – that he must have presented as he rose to his feet, eyes glaring from a head lowered from effort and shoulders hanging low to one side to favour the left arm held tight to his chest, was reflected in the dread filling the stare of the man who must have been the sergeant. The man froze, a ladle dropping against a rock with a dull clang that alerted his companions.

His reaction stopped the other two also, despite their backs being towards Brann, giving him a moment to absorb what lay before him. The sergeant, crouched beside a steaming pot suspended over a fire, was a wiry veteran, with little hair and fewer teeth. The fact that he had reached this age told of skill with arms or ruthless guile, either of which was as dangerous as the other. The other two, a skinny youth and a taller man, broad of shoulder and girth, were closer to him and had been moving items from a heap of all the plunder stripped from the bodies and sorting them into smaller specific piles.

‘Son of a poxy whore,’ the sergeant breathed.

The other two turned.

The youth’s eyes widened, and his voice was shrill. ‘The dead. Gods save us. The dead are rising.’ He had been handing Brann’s axe to the other man when Brann’s appearance had frozen them, and it hung forgotten in his hand.

Brann growled at the sight.

The broad man tried to speak, his mouth working soundlessly.

Brann started towards them, the stiffness easing from his legs with every step. His movement broke through the men’s shock but, before it could turn to panic, the sergeant recovered enough of his senses to growl at the other two.

‘Back-from-the-dead or never-dead, make sure the bastard stays dead this time. I want a head to fall.’

The boy hefted the axe but still hung back, waiting for his companion to move. Clearly the sort who preferred his victims with their backs to him. His voice was still high and shaking. ‘Should we get help?’

The brute beside him grabbed the nearest weapons to hand: a halberd with a broken tip and an axe-blade with more nicks than edge, but no less dangerous for either. ‘And let them demand a share of our loot in return? Help me gut him and we’ll get our dinner in peace.’

Brann’s eyes narrowed. For all his initial dumbness, this one’s nerves had steadied the quickest. He was the first threat. He angled his approach towards the youth, panicking the boy even more as he fixed him with a stare that seemed intent on him alone. With a roar, the burly man shouldered the youth to the side, sending him staggering, and raised the pole of the halberd high to strike.

Brann’s grin was savage. They may be useless and unskilled, or they may be anything but. Regardless, they were better one at a time. ‘Got you,’ he said, his voice rough and dry.

The man’s eyes widened in surprise, for an instant, before he started to swing the weapon. In that instant, Brann was inside his swing and the jagged end of the shin bone had buried half of its length up under his ribs. Brann had spun away and towards the youth, the bone pulling with it a sprayed crescent of blood before the body had even started to collapse. A wild swing of the axe, born of panic, was easily avoided and the bone was left a hand’s width deep in the youth’s throat as Brann closed his fingers around the familiar haft of his axe and pulled it from already nerveless fingers.

The sergeant spat and crouched, a sword drawn back in readiness. ‘You won’t catch me by surprise, bastard.’

Brann stepped forward and, in a blur, raised the axe high with both hands, gritting his teeth against the sharp agony of the stretched wound along his ribs. As the man swung his sword up to parry the downwards swing, Brann changed to slide one hand up towards the dark metal of the head of the weapon, grasping the wood and slamming the shaft end first into the man’s face. The sergeant barely had time to register his smashed nose and shattered teeth before the axe swung and his head bounced in the dirt beyond the firelight.

Brann, his chest heaving, looked down at the corpse. ‘That was what you said you wanted, wasn’t it?’

He sat the axe against the ground and rested on it. His wounds had sapped his energy, but he had proved that the blood loss wasn’t life-threatening just yet. He needed clothing – he could wash and attend to his injuries once he was safely clear of the area – and, looking around, it was clear that the looters had been diligent enough to provide him with a large selection. He had another concern first, though. You can’t meet an attack so easily with a tunic or a pair of boots. He wiped clean the black axe head on a ripped tunic and moved to the pile of sorted weapons, grunting in satisfaction to see the distinctive black metal of his sword and dagger. Lifting them to one side, he turned to the next pile, one of weapon accessories: scabbards, belts, sheaths, and the like. The three men may have been callous, but they had certainly been meticulous. It didn’t take long to find his belt and the strapping and sheaths he had become accustomed to using to fasten knives to each of his forearms, between his shoulder blades and on his lower legs, inside his boots – he always felt better if a blade was to hand, no matter where that hand may be. His sheaths had been near the top of the pile, so he guessed his knives would be likewise in the heap of weapons. He must have been one of the more recent bodies to have been dragged to the pit.

He chided himself. Of course he had been. If he had been brought earlier in the process, he’d have wakened under a layer, maybe several layers, of corpses. Unless suffocation had seen to it that he never wakened at all. He grunted in annoyance. His thoughts were slow and he needed to be away from this place as soon as possible. Ensuring his main weapons were always within reach, he quickly flicked through the assembled collection of edges and points and soon had assembled his collection. Now for clothes.

As he straightened, the wind shifted and drifted smoke in his direction. There was a strong smell of burning meat, but there was too much smoke for it to have come from campfires. Some of the corpse collectors apparently favoured pyres over pits.

He tensed. The smoke was not all that the shifting wind had brought his way. A sound, no more than a scuff of boot on a loose clod of dirt, mixed for a moment with the crackling of the late sergeant’s cooking fire. He crouched, feeling for his sword and axe, his eyes straining to see beyond the fire’s light. He cursed himself, not only for the time he had taken but more now for his position – he was perfectly lit beside the fire, whilst those approaching could be encircling him and approach from any or all angles with little warning. He whirled back and forth, fighting to see, but all he could discern was a shadow, then two more, slightly vaguish, and all from the same direction as he had heard the noise. He bent his knees, pushing through the pain in his left side to hold the sword forward to parry and the axe back to strike. This time he might not get away with using one weapon.

‘Steady, chief. Not everyone thinks it’s a good idea to fight you.’

Brann relaxed with a sigh, and Gerens stepped into the light. The rangy boy turned and whistled softly into the darkness. ‘He’s over here.’

Konall emerged from the gloom. ‘The gods save me,’ he gasped. ‘There’s an image that will haunt me to my deathbed. For the love of all that’s dear, please get dressed.’

A guffaw exploded as Hakon followed close behind. ‘Little friend, the weapons in your hands are sufficient. One more would not make a difference.’ He reached down and threw a pair of breeches to Brann. ‘Put these on and stick to the weapons you can do harm with.’

Brann grunted and started to dress. ‘I was a bit distracted by these other three. If I’d known you were coming, I’d have tidied up.’

‘I’d have settled for just getting dressed,’ Konall said drily.

‘Wait,’ said Gerens from behind. ‘Don’t put them on just yet.’

‘Oh, make up your minds!’ Brann objected. ‘First you can’t wait to get me to cover up, now you… argh!’ His yelp turned to spluttering as cold water drenched him from his head down. He whirled to find Gerens solemnly regarding him, a now-empty bucket in his hand.

‘Your dead companions had left this water, and it may rinse some of the worst from you until you can wash properly. I don’t know if you had noticed, C, but you are in a bit of a mess.’

Brann just looked at him.

Gerens’s eyes widened with concern as some of the grime rinsed from his arm. ‘You are wounded!’

The other two stepped forward in concern, but Brann waved them away and ignored the pain to pull the tunic over his head. ‘It’s fine, it can wait. We need to leave.’

‘You are right there,’ Konall said. He found a sack. ‘Fasten your black weapons to your belt and put your many knives in this. You can sort them later.’

Reluctantly, Brann did so. He buckled on his belt and slid the weapons home, sliding the leather hood, dangling from the loop for his axe’s shaft, over the weapon’s head.

Hakon tossed over a pair of boots. ‘These do? They look like they’ll fit your dainty little feet.’

Brann felt a smile pull at the corners of his mouth. ‘So says someone who would need to have his footwear made at the boatyards.’ He looked at them. ‘They’re actually better than the ones I had.’ He tried them on. ‘And comfier.’

‘Good,’ Konall grunted impatiently. ‘Now grab another set of clothing and let’s go.’ Brann wondered why, and it must have shown. The tall blond boy added, ‘The state you are in, all that those clothes you are wearing will be good for when you take them off will be the fire. No use being a change of clothing down when we set off.’

Brann nodded his understanding and quickly gathered what he needed, adding it all to his sack of knives.

Konall turned to go, but Brann hesitated.

‘Wait just a moment.’

Konall threw his hands in the air. ‘Oh for the love of the gods. What now?’

‘It won’t take long.’ Brann crouched by the sergeant’s headless corpse and reached under the man’s tunic until he found what he was looking for: a pouch that had hung on a thong around the man’s neck when there had been a neck fit for that purpose. He pulled out a handful of coins and a set of dice.

‘Brann!’ Hakon was aghast. ‘We needed the clothes, that was fair enough, but this is not you. I’ve never seen you loot the dead before.’

‘And you won’t now.’ He scattered the coins on the ground and dropped the dice among them. ‘If you came across this scene, what would spring to mind? That they had fallen out over dicing or that one of the dead woke up, hauled itself out of the pit and slaughtered them?’

Hakon beamed. ‘Good thinking. Wait, is that what you did? The crawling out the pit and killing thing?’

Gerens cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘You think he stripped naked and smeared himself from top to toe in blood for the fun of it? And that these three committed suicide?’

The large boy grinned and slapped Brann on the back, prompting an un-noticed wince. ‘Good man! This will make an excellent story for the others.’

Brann picked up the sack. ‘You tell it then. There is much in it I’d rather not be reminded of.’

Konall snorted. ‘You and me both. At least you weren’t greeted with the sight that we were. Now can we go?’

Without a further word, they left the light of the fire, Konall leading them unerringly into the gloom. They skirted telltale campfires and their progress proved straightforward. Brann could remember nothing of how he had come to be in the burial pit, but it had been obvious from the start that there had been some sort of battle, although the only men remaining were those tasked with clearing the dead, and paid for their troubles with the loot. Those who had fought would seem to have moved on. He glanced around and counted no more than six or eight campfires, two of them with large pyres burning beside them. He pictured the pit he had been in, suppressing a shudder at the memory of slick bodies moving and sliding beneath him, and estimated the dead within it. Even if the men had doubled the number the following day to complete their pit, and assuming that all of the similar groups around them were allocated similar numbers to deal with, then the dead numbered in the low hundreds rather than the thousands. So not a major battle, then.

It still didn’t explain his involvement, though. Or his failure in combat, which worried him more. It was only luck that had kept him alive, and chance was the most unreliable of all factors, and the one he generally tried to avoid having to consider.

His thoughts were interrupted as he stumbled.

Instantly, Gerens caught him by the elbow, taking the sack from him with his other hand. ‘Steady there, chief.’

‘Thank you. I’m fine now.’

But Gerens maintained his hold on Brann’s arm. And Brann, feeling a weariness, hitherto banished by the energy of combat, creep over him, said nothing to shake off the support.

They left the fires behind without incident and found the horses picketed by the three boys in a copse on the far side of a hillock from the small valley where the conflict had been fought, dark shapes scattered in the gloom below and the noise of scavengers – human and animal – moving among them proving that the work to clear the bodies would continue into the next day. Brann shuddered. Had he not wakened when he did…

Gerens sat Brann in front of him, the wiry strength in his arms providing a calming security. As they moved off, Brann decided they were far enough from danger to be able to gain some idea of how fate had led him to a burial pit. The swaying of the horse, however, the weight removed from his legs, the companionship of his friends… it all felt so welcome that he decided to enjoy it for a few moments before questioning Gerens.

He was woken by a shout of alarm. Breta’s familiar booming tone was not happy as her powerful arms lifted him from the horse. ‘What do you bring me, you fools? You return him to us in such a state? He is barely conscious.’

‘Small wonder,’ said Cannick’s calm growl as his fingers pulled the blood-soaked tunic away from Brann’s side.

The sharp pain as the material pulled away from the wound on his ribs dispelled the torpor of his recent sleep and almost immediately threatened to send him back there as his head swam.

‘That’s an impressive nick you’ve got there, son. Looks like more on your arm, too. Breta, lay him by the fire where I can see better. And cut that tunic from him. Marlo, bring me my pack. We’ll see if we can get him sorted out before the others return. No need for them to get the shock we did when we saw him.’

‘Be grateful,’ Konall’s voice said from behind them, ‘that you did not suffer the shock we endured when we first saw him. I have seen some unpleasant sights in my time, but…’

Brann almost laughed, but the pain it caused stopped him. He settled for a weak smile. ‘Glad I made an impression.’

Konall grunted. ‘Fear not, it was one I will struggle to forget. Though believe me, I will try.’