‘And still he preens,’ said Tathenal, ‘and so embarrasses us all.’
Garelko threw up a dismissive hand. ‘The fate of every ageing king. Or queen, for that matter. Or, to be fair, every hero.’
‘Bah!’ retorted Tathenal. ‘It is the fate of the young who cease being young. And so it is all our fates.’
‘And this is what now haunts our wife?’ Ravast asked. ‘Does she so fear the loss of her wild beauty that she would make death stand in the place of ageing?’
‘Suicidal defiance?’ mused Tathenal behind Ravast. ‘There is a certain charm to that.’
‘Charm and Lasa Rook do not sit well together,’ said Garelko. ‘Slovenly lust? Yes. Seduction and the promise of manly dissolution? Of course. Manipulation and sudden vengeance? Absolutely. That smile and those eyes that could make even a man-loving king tremble? Oh, we’ve seen it ourselves, have we not? Why, I do not imagine—’
Garelko stepped round a sharp bend in the trail at that moment, and the scene before him cut the words from his tongue. Following a step behind, Ravast looked up and halted.
Before them, on a broad ledge, a reptilian monstrosity had been feeding on a massive, skinned carcass, and now it lifted its gore-smeared head to face them. The beast’s hiss sprayed all three Thel Akai with a fine mist of blood.
As the creature’s long neck curled, raising the head high, Garelko brought round his iron-shod staff from where it had been slung across his back, and leapt forward.
Reptilian jaws stretched wide and the head lunged down.
Garelko slipped to one side and drove the heel of his staff into the beast’s right eye.
Roaring, it pulled its head back.
Battleaxe in his hands, Ravast ran up on to the sloped side of a boulder, gaining height as he did so. Seeing the creature lashing out with an enormous taloned hand, Ravast launched himself from the boulder. Axe blade met that sweeping hand, the edge driving between two fingers, slicing through the webbing and then deep between the bones.
Recoiling, the beast stumbled back – tearing the axe from Ravast’s grip – and then rolled on to the carcass on which it had been dining. The stripped cage of the carcass’s ribs splintered and collapsed like brittle sticks, carrying the creature over on to its folded wings.
Tathenal raced past, between Ravast and Garelko, swinging his blunt-tipped, two-handed broadsword, chopping deep into the thrashing beast’s left thigh.
The creature continued rolling until it slammed into a massive boulder. The impact lifted the rock and sent it tumbling off the ledge beyond. A moment later the beast followed, vanishing – with trailing tail – from sight. Concussions shook the ground as the boulder made its wild descent to the treeline far below.
Then there was a thundering, snapping sound, and they saw the monster sailing out on its broad wings, skimming over the forest’s canopy. Its flight was erratic, as the head was strangely tilted. Ravast’s axe gleamed bright in the sunlight, firmly wedged between the talon-clad fingers of one hand.
Tathenal lifted up his sword to show the others the three scales still clinging to the blade’s edge.
‘Very well, Garelko,’ said Ravast, ‘not just shadows.’
‘Lasa camped here,’ Garelko pronounced, scanning the ledge. ‘Look, see how she kicked out the hearth’s coals, same as she does at home. Our wife’s habits make a trail we need no hound to follow.’ He slung the staff over on to his back once more and set off down the trail. The others followed.
‘Oh no,’ Garelko continued, ‘as I was saying, there is little charm in our dear wife. Deadly allure? Oh, indeed. That whimper-enticing heft of her thigh when sitting with folded legs, so smug an invitation for a man’s hand? How could we deny that? And what of the …’
The conversation continued, as the three husbands made their way down towards the forest.
It was nearing midday.
* * *
‘My husbands are in no hurry, it seems,’ said Lasa Rook, ‘and for that they will pay dearly. Am I not enticing enough? Desirable enough?’ She edged close to Hanako, until their shoulders were pressing. ‘Well?’
‘You are these things, Lasa, and more,’ said Hanako, struggling to keep his eyes on the trail.
‘Of course,’ she went on, ‘they are angry with me, and rightly so.’
Behind them, Erelan said, ‘You did not even leave them a note.’
‘Ah! Not what I was thinking about, to be honest. Thrice, now, I’ve almost burned down the house. There is a careless imp in me – oh, do not look so shocked, Hanako! I will admit to my flaws, no matter how attractive and endearing they might be! In any case, the imp has a temper, too, as each night it and I must witness – yet again – my three husbandly oafs shovelling down the wretched fare I set before them. Have they no taste?’
‘They must have,’ objected Erelan, ‘since they married you!’
‘Ha ha! I am ambushed. Then I shall say it so: in the years since their lucid moments of appreciation, they have let themselves descend into dullardly obtuseness, into vapid venality. Their palates belong to dogs, their grunts are those of pigs – is it any wonder the imp snarls and kicks at coals until the rugs smoulder on all sides?’
‘What cause this vengeance of yours?’ Hanako asked.
Her shoulder pushed him hard enough to make him stumble. ‘So spake the virgin to marriage!’
Erelan laughed his uncertain laugh, and Lasa rounded on him. ‘And you! O warrior who wears everything he conquers! Where is your wife? What? None ever waved an inviting hand? How is it we supple reflections have not swooned in answer to your stolid prowess? Your pride of glory and the rotting trophies you hang from your person?’
Hanako dared not glance behind him to see the effect of her tirade on Erelan Kreed. He was thankful enough that she’d already dismissed him.
‘Your wit is a song to my ears, Lasa,’ Erelan said, ‘and so I laughed.’
‘You’ve not met my wit,’ Lasa warned in a low tone. ‘And you should thank the hoary rock-gods for that.’ She swung round again. ‘Bah, I need a bath. Hanako, dear youngling, when we reach the lake – unless it was ever a mirage, designed solely to haunt a woman’s need for a decent toilet – will you indulge my body with soap and oils?’
‘What of your husbands?’
‘Well, they’re not here, are they? No! The fools are probably well off the trail I set them. Picking berries, perhaps, with lips of blue as they natter endlessly about everything and nothing. Or they have found slabs on which to lie in the sun – as they often do when guarding the flocks. To think, they imagine that I can’t see them up in the hills! I have the sharpest eyes, Hanako. The sharpest! No, they are indolent and smug, slovenly and lazy.’
‘I will attend to you at the lake, then,’ said Hanako.
She pushed up against him once more. ‘Will you now?’
‘You tease me unduly, Lasa Rook.’
‘I but tease out what hides in you.’
‘Is it any wonder I remain wary?’
She waved a hand. ‘I will brush aside your temerity, Hanako of the Scars, Slayer of the Lord of Temper. My husbands can rot. I will take a lover, to spite them all. I might choose you, Hanako, what do you think of that?’
‘I see three deaths awaiting me, since surely my dying once will not be enough.’
‘What? Oh, them. Think on that some more, youngling. They already know I travel with company – oh, Erelan would give them no cause for jealousy, as his only love is the warrior’s vanity. But you, Hanako. Young, handsome, and are you not the tallest brave in the village? The strongest? Did you not just this morning tear the lower jaw off the Lord of Temper? And then break his neck? No, dear lover to be, it seems even you cannot light a fire to their heels. But look – is that a glimmer ahead, through those branches? Is the sun not directly above us?’
‘There is no way to—’
‘Hush! It is my blessing to experience synchronicity in life. Perfections meet wherever I make my island. Smile
sweetly, and show sure hands in the spreading of soap and oil, Hanako, and I might let you walk upon my shore.’
There to fetch up like a half-drowned man. ‘I fear that lake will be as cold as was the stream.’
‘A challenge to your manhood, then.’ A moment later she halted and raised a hand.
Company ahead? Well, it seemed a decent lake. Perhaps the Dog-Runners have made a camp upon its shoreline.
Erelan edged up to join them, and then, drawing his long-handled mace, moved ahead in a low crouch.
Glancing across at Lasa Rook, Hanako saw her meet his gaze in the same instant, and she rolled her eyes. They set out after Erelan Kreed, stepping carefully.
The treed trail ended a dozen paces ahead, pushed up against a scree of low boulders crowded with the leavings of high floods in the past. Erelan had crept up against this bulwark and was peering through a skeletal skein of branches. From the shoreline just past him, something was thrashing in the shallows, and it sounded big.
Hanako reached for his father’s sword – which he had foolishly left near his bedding as he ventured off for his dawn meeting with the Lord of Temper – which now formed the spine to his bedroll. Sliding it from its scabbard, he studied its dull, pocked length. The single edge was ragged, notched. There was a distinct leftward curve visible along its backed reach. The history of this blade was one of successive failures. It was no wonder he hesitated unsheathing it.
Lasa Rook settled a hand on his scabbed, slashed and swollen forearm. ‘Leave this for Erelan,’ she whispered. ‘See how he charges himself with delight?’
They drew closer, until they fetched up alongside their warrior companion. Through the latticework of tangled brush, Hanako looked out upon a winged, scaled monstrosity. It favoured one forelimb and bled from a haunch as it staggered clumsily in the shallows. The massive head at the end of its long, sinewy neck was pitching wildly, tilting to one side.
Erelan’s eager words came in a hiss. ‘Blinded in the right eye. I but wait until it makes itself blind to the shore.’
‘Why not leave it be?’ Hanako asked.
Erelan grunted. ‘See that axe – there upon the strand? Torn out from that forefoot?’
Lasa gasped. ‘Oh dear, that weapon belongs to my beloved Ravast!’
‘Look then,’ Erelan continued in a rough growl, ‘to the blood on its maw – the gore slung between fangs!’
‘My husbands have been devoured, and not by me!’
Erelan straightened suddenly. ‘This warrior avenges you, Lasa Rook!’ Leaping up on to a boulder, he readied his mace, and then jumped down on to the pebbled wrack and raced forward.
The monster heard nothing as it slapped at the water. Its blinded eye was turned to the shoreline, and so it saw nothing of Erelan’s furious charge.
The heavy mace struck the beast’s head, just behind the blinded eye. The impact was sufficient to crush its orbital, its flared cheekbone, and one side of the creature’s skull.
Blood sprayed from its nostrils and it lurched away with a drunken stagger.
Erelan struck again, this time with a blow coming from high above, straight down on to the flat of the creature’s head. The mace buried its striking end in the skull, halted only by the weapon’s bronze-sheathed shaft. Pitching suddenly on to its side, the dying beast coughed out a heavy gush of blood. Legs kicked fitfully as Erelan wrenched free his mace. He clambered on to the monster’s back, perching atop one shoulder, and swung a third time. The snap of the bones of the neck was sharp, echoing out across the lake’s waters.
The creature slumped in twitching death.
Hanako set out, Lasa following, arriving on the pebble-strewn beach in time to see Erelan draw out his gutting knife and begin carving into the carcass’s chest.
‘He seeks the hearts,’ said Hanako, ‘in keeping with his warrior’s—’
‘Host to every manly fever,’ Lasa Rook said in a bitter tone, ‘his antics leave us cold. My husbands!’ She fell to her knees at the axe lying on the stones. ‘Ravast, so young, so fresh to my bed! I see the fury of your battle! The bravery of your stand! Who was first to dive down the fiend’s maw? Garelko, too slow as always, too old, in all his creaking ways! Tathenal! Did the beast toss its head in swallowing you down? Like a sliver of flesh? Like a fish down a heron’s gullet? Did you complain all the way? Oh, my heart grieves! Ravast!’
Having carved a gaping hole in the creature’s steaming chest, Erelan barked triumphantly as he struggled to pull free an enormous, blood-drenched mass of muscle that still trembled. ‘See, I have the first one! Hah!’ He fell back on to the gravel, knees crunching in the polished stones. Raising the heart high above his head, he leaned back, letting the draining blood wash down over his face, and filling his mouth.
The visage he swung over to Lasa Rook was ghastly. ‘I am your champion, Lasa—’
Then Erelan’s eyes widened amidst the sea of red. ‘Iskari Mockras! Arak Rashanas, my foul brother, lusts after you! I pursue him! Too many insults, too many betrayals! There were crushed eggs making a path to your high perch! He leaves you to yearn and doubt my seed’s power! I will kill him!’ Rearing upright, the beast’s heart tumbling out from his grip, Erelan staggered a step, and then clutched the sides of his head. ‘I took her again, Arak Rashanas! She will yield my spawn in this new world! They are born with the hate of you in their hearts – this I swear!’
He stumbled into the water. ‘This fire! This pain! Latal! Mother! Heal me!’
Erelan fell, as if in a swoon, and the waters closed around him in a bloom of blood.
Hanako rushed into the icy shallows. Reaching Erelan, he lifted the warrior under the arms – saw with horror the pink water draining from Kreed’s slack mouth. Wounds reopened across Hanako’s body as he dragged Erelan back on to the shore.
Lasa had not moved from where she knelt before Ravast’s axe, but her face was ashen as she looked across at Hanako’s struggles. ‘Is he dead?’ she asked.
Hanako did not yet know the answer to that, so he said nothing as he rolled Erelan on to his side. He pressed a hand against the warrior’s neck, and felt in the veins there the thundering, panicked beat of the man’s hearts. ‘He lives but I fear his chest may burst, Lasa!’
Then Erelan spasmed. His boots kicked gouges through the pebbles. His hands waved blindly but still managed to push Hanako away. Erelan fell over on to his back, his eyes wide as they stared skyward. ‘She sings my name – in the ache within her – my love sings my name!’
‘What do you mean?’ Hanako asked. ‘Erelan?’
‘Dalk!’
‘Erelan!’
Something flashed to life in Erelan’s eyes, and they fixed suddenly on Hanako. Horror and terror warred in that wild stare. ‘Hanako!’ he whispered. ‘I – I am not alone!’
* * *
His belly filled with berries, Ravast dozed in the sun. They occupied a clearing they had spied off to one side of the trail, in which huge slabs of stone lay strewn about, marking some fallen temple, perhaps, or the gutted remnants of a looted barrow. No matter. The midday sun bathed the glade with sweet warmth, and the travails of the world seemed far away.
Tathenal was pottering among the menhirs, while Garelko snored loudly from his own bed of stone.
‘Ravast, I proclaim these Azathanai.’
‘Fascinating.’
‘You are still too young,’ Tathenal said. ‘Nothing of the profundity that accompanies antiquity is to be found in your squealing pup of a soul. While I, who have known a host of wretched decades – not as many as Garelko, let us be sure – I, then, am grown into the appreciation of our brief flit of life in the midst of this grinding, shambling, plodding march of pointless time. Did I say pointless? I did, and heed that well, Ravast.’
‘Your words are as a song to lull this child into sleep,’ Ravast said.
‘Like birds my wisdom flaps about your skull, despairing of ever finding a way in. The Azathanai are most ancient folk, Ravast. Mysterious, too. Like a
n uncle who dresses strangely and has nothing to say, but offers you a knowing wink every now and then. Yes, they can be maddening in their obscurity, and such knowing regard would wordlessly tell us of outlandish adventures and sights seen to steal the breath of lesser folk.’
Blinking against the glare, Ravast half sat up and peered across at Tathenal. The man was seated on one dolmen, the index finger of his right hand tracking the unknown words carved into the stone’s facing. ‘You speak of Kanyn Thrall—’
‘Who then wandered off again! Years, now, since last we have seen him, or known of his whereabouts. But now, at last, I am beyond caring. He but served as an irritating example. I was speaking of the Azathanai, and their obsession with stone. Statues, monuments, ringed circles, chambered tombs – always empty! – and their madness reaches yet further, Ravast! Stone swords! Stone armour! Stone helms, which will serve only stone heads! I imagine they shit stone, too—’
‘Well, we’ve seen enough suspicious pebbles on this trail—’
‘You mock me, but I tell you, there is no place in all the world which they have not seen, have not explored, have not interfered with. The Jaghut were right to oust the one they found hiding in their midst. You might think us Thel Akai immune, but there is no telling if an Azathanai hides among us – they choose the flesh they wear, you know—’
‘Well, that is nonsense, Tathenal,’ said Ravast, leaning back again and closing his eyes. ‘Were they as you say, they would not be mortal – they would be gods.’
‘Gods? Well, why not? We worship the rock-gods—’
‘No we don’t. We just blame them when things go wrong.’
‘And when we are blessed we thank them.’
‘No. When things go right, we congratulate ourselves.’
‘Oh, cynical child, does this fresh world so weary you? Are you left exhausted after uncovering all the world’s truths? Will you slouch and slide your jaded eye upon all the fools whose company you are cursed to endure?’
‘You mock my tolerance. It is only my youthful vigour that sustains me.’