“Follow me,” he told them and led them out of the deep darkness and into the still and waiting night.
The others were still there, standing in the circle of salt, glaring into the gloom. Someone had got a small fire going. Kormak could smell it as he emerged from the damp cold air of the barrow. The children looked relieved as they saw their parents, and began to race forward. He ordered them to stop and be careful not to disturb the salt lines. As if learning a new game they delicately picked their way over it and found themselves in the arms of their folk. One woman stood apart and looked at him, then the barrow mouth, then back at Kormak. He shook his head. Her head fell and she started to weep silently. The man beside her stood shaking his head and trying to embrace her.
Sir Brandon asked, “Where is little Olaf?” His voice was choked.
Kormak shot him a warning look. The knight ignored it and repeated the question.
“Dead,” said Kormak. He did not want to speak the boy’s real fate aloud. It was bad enough that these people had lost a child without knowing that his soul had gone to feed a monster.
Brandon looked at Kormak. “Was it bad?”
The Guardian shrugged. “For them, yes.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“What would you have me say?”
“Did you meet the tomb wight?”
“Yes.”
“Is it dead?”
“It was always dead. It just looked otherwise.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“I put an end to the thing if that’s what you want to know.”
“Simple as that?”
Kormak nodded and wondered at the gloom that had settled on him. He felt worse now than when he faced the monster. He told himself that he had done his best, that he had got most of the children out, that there was nothing he could have done for Olaf. The boy must have been dead from the moment he had entered the final chamber of the barrow. He looked at the boy’s weeping parents and thought of his disintegrating corpse and it did not help. Failure tasted bitter in his mouth. If only he had gotten here sooner, acted faster…
The others were looking at him now, with wonder, with gratitude and resentment. There were always some who did. His actions made them measure their own courage against his, and feel smaller. He wanted to tell them that it was not a question of courage; it was a question of temperament and training and having the right weapons, and that sometimes it was not courage that made him do what he did, but a different species of fear, the fear that he could not do what once he had done in his youth. These thoughts were pointless. Even if the others understood them, they would still resent him.
“What now?” Brandon asked.
“We go back.”
“Through the darkness and mist?”
“Aye. I have my blade. It will burn anything that comes upon us this night.”
“Lead on then!”
They began the trek home.
“Reminds me of the night march to the Grey Tower,” said Brandon as they led the procession through the hills. He was nervous and talking for the sake of it. All around them were rocks and moss-covered standing stones lit by the eerie moon. Behind them men held flickering torches that barely kept the darkness at bay. “The Orc War was a terrible time.”
“It was,” said Kormak remembering. The orcs had erupted from the endless steppelands of the east and surged across the Sunlander kingdoms, leaving a trail of carnage and destruction. It had taken three years of bitter fighting to throw them back. It seemed that the man-flesh eaters had not learned their lesson. Rumour had it that some new khan had arisen and they massed beyond the borders of Belaria once more. It seemed they wanted new stock for their human herds.
“I could take it more then,” said Brandon. “My bones were not so old. The lack of sleep did not slow me, and I burned with the lust for glory. Now I burn with the lust for bed, and not just because my Gena is there.” Brandon patted his paunch. It had grown, just as his jowls had. His face and limbs were thicker, and although he still looked strong, he did not have the lithe power of his youth. “The years have been kinder to you, Kormak. You don’t look a day older than you did then, except maybe for the grey in your hair.”
Kormak smiled. “I carry their mark in a different place, that’s all.”
"Let me keep my illusions," said Brandon. "I’d like to think the passing of the years was kind to someone."
Kormak kept a wary eye on the surroundings, half expecting something to emerge from the darkness.
"Things have been getting worse, since that hairy star appeared in the sky, since the bloody civil war started,” said Sir Brandon. “First the old king himself goes and has a stroke and now his heirs fight over who will succeed before he is even buried. There are monsters everywhere. Maniacs are unleashing the things in the tombs. The orcs stir on the borders again. It looks like the Holy Sun has decided to test the Kingdom of Taurea once again."
"The way you are talking, it sounds like he's decided to test the world," said Kormak.
"You'd be in a better position to know than I am," said Sir Brandon. "I am just a poor back-country knight-- although even I can see that things are worse than they were when we were young."
"Worse than when the orcs were overrunning our lands?"
"I am starting to think so."
"I pray you're wrong."
Both men fell silent. They both knew he was not wrong.
"I hear the Oracle at Shattermoon is predicting the end of the world," said Brandon after the silence had grown too long. "I hear she says that the Shadow will soon return to claim all the lands of men."
Kormak suppressed a shudder. "Someone is always predicting that. For as long as I've lived, someone's been predicting that."
"Aye," said Brandon. "But this has been the first time I've ever thought they might be right. There was a baby born not three months ago over at High Farm. She had no eyes. Not even a trace of them. Just skin where the eyes should have been."
"What happened to the poor mite?"
"The parents wanted to follow the old way, to expose her on High Hill. They thought she was touched by the Shadow. I took the child from them and sent her to the Temple orphanage at Skara. The priestesses took the babe in."
"Such things have always happened," said Kormak. "Particularly in areas where the Old Magic is strong. And you are near to the Cursed Lands here. The bones of Kharon lie just north.”
"Aye- that's true. But that's the sixth malformed child born within a year. I've never known things this bad, not even when the orcs ravaged the land."
"That many? I did not know it was so."
"You’ve most likely been too busy fighting monsters and hunting wizards to pay attention. I have to. I am the lord of these people."
Kormak felt ashamed. It was a sort of thing he was supposed to notice because he had been trained to notice. He should have spotted such omens. But Brandon was right about one thing- he had been busy. He had been doing the work of three Guardians.
"You've gone very quiet, Kormak," said Sir Brandon.
"I was just thinking."
"I thought there was a nasty smell of burning wood."
Kormak laughed. It seemed like an eternity since he'd last done so and he was glad of it. The people that followed them were not. They looked at Kormak as if he were mad. They were too nervous for humour and they saw precious little to laugh at in this bleak land.
“I'm glad you've not lost your sense of humour, Brandon," said Kormak.
"A few more nights like this and I might well do," said the knight. Suddenly they emerged from the mist. Kormak could see lights of the village glow beneath them and a river glittering in the moonlight. Above the waters, on a high promontory, stood the small strong keep that was Sir Brandon’s home. They had made better time than Kormak had hoped. The people behind him gave glad cries and offered up prayers for their deliverance. Several of them began to run downhill towards the village and the f
olk who kept vigil there.
“We made it,” Sir Brandon said. It was only then that Kormak realised how truly afraid his old friend had been.
Kormak surveyed the small chamber gratefully. A fire blazed in the grate. A platter of bread and cheese and a mug of ale lay on a small table beside the bed. A gold-painted solar circle and two wooden blocks carved with protective Elder Signs hung over the doors. A curtain of fur blocked the draught from the tiny window. Sir Brandon was not wealthy enough to afford glass.
Kormak stretched out on the bed, making sure that his sword was within easy reach. There had been times when such caution had saved his life, and even here in the house of a friend he was not going to relax it. You never knew when the past might catch up with you. Kormak had seen many strange deaths in his time.
He pulled off his boots and leggings. The stone flags felt cool under his feet. He made his way to the window and pulled back the fur. He was not sure why he did so, but instinct was at work, and he had learned long ago to trust it.
From the Tower he had a view away from the river looking towards the Barrow Hills. Green lights flickered. Witch lights that moved like the souls of the damned across the misty hills. Another evil omen, he thought. A sign that dark times were ahead. In the sky, the green comet glowed, still distant but noticeable, the eye of an evil god looking down upon the sleeping world.
Soon he was going to have to go back out and investigate. Perhaps there was some connection between those lights and the open barrow and the man he was here to hunt. As if they sensed his eyes upon them and wanted to hide from mortal notice, the lights vanished one by one. Kormak waited for a long time but the glow did not return. He closed the curtain and threw himself on the bed, covering himself in piled furs. Images of the dead child and the open barrow haunted his mind.
Sleep was a long time coming.
CHAPTER THREE
THE GREAT HALL was not much of a great hall. It was a large open room that took up a good deal of the lower floor of Brandon’s keep. A large fire blazed in the far corner and a couple of small boys rolled on the straw-covered floor wrestling with each other and the dogs. A larger boy sat in a wooden chair by the fire yawning ostentatiously as he saw the stranger. Opposite him sat a pretty blonde haired girl reading a scroll. She looked much as her mother had at about that age. At a large table Brandon and his wife sat. Kormak was aware that all of them were watching him.
Brandon gestured to the table. There was bread and cheese and ham and a jug of buttermilk there. Kormak walked over. The youngest of the boys had got up and watched him wide eyed, chewing on a thumb. Kormak winked at him and the boy ran to clutch at his mother’s skirts caught between delight and fear.
The Lady Gena was still beautiful although she was plumper than the bright young beauty Kormak remembered from King Brand’s court all those years ago. There had been those who had thought she had made a mistake marrying a bumptious knight from the far north of Taurea. Her father was a rich merchant from the great city-state of Vermstadt, she was a beauty and there had been many of higher birth and reduced fortune at the king’s court who would have married her for her father’s money. She had married Brandon for love.
“Dig in,” said Brandon, perhaps a trace too heartily. He seemed to want to put the horrors of the night behind him. Sitting in this comfortable hall, the strangeness of the previous night might have happened in another lifetime. Kormak looked at Gena and she nodded permission. Kormak invoked the blessing of the Sun over his food and helped himself to bread and cheese.
“It’s been a very long time since we first met, Sir Kormak,” said Gena. Kormak smiled.
“We meet in better times,” he said. The first time they had met had been after the great battle of Aeanar when the orcish armies had been broken and Brand and the other Kings of Men had been celebrating the victory.
“Do we?” she said. “Tell that to Olaf’s mother.”
There was anger in her tone. Kormak glanced at her. The smile had vanished from her face but she was running her hand through the little boy’s hair. He understood at once what was troubling her. So did Brandon. The knight reached out and stroked his wife’s face. There was a tenderness in the gesture that Kormak envied.
“Now, Gena, don’t fret. The tomb wight is gone. Kormak killed it.” There was a gasp from one of the children near the table. The little boy buried his head in his mother’s skirts again. It was not a childishly theatrical gesture this time. It was real fear. It could not be easy growing up in the shadow of the barrows of time-lost Kharon, Kormak thought. The name was a curse in the Northlands of Taurea. People still whispered the name of the Defiler here, when they spoke of him at all.
“Did you really kill a wight?” the boy by the fire did not sound so bored now.
“No,” said Kormak. “You cannot kill something already dead.”
Brandon’s laughter boomed out. “Kormak was educated by priests, young Radney. He would argue the finer points of definition with you till the cows are brought back from milking.”
“I was educated by the brethren of the Order of the Dawn,” said Kormak, keeping his tone mild. “And they taught me more than debating.” He tapped the hilt of his sword with an air of fake menace.
“If you did not kill it what did you do to it?” the boy was obviously not going to be discouraged not even by the meaningful looks his parents were shooting at him. Kormak guessed that they did not want him upsetting the other children. He was of an age where parental disapproval was only going to goad him on though.
“I exorcised the evil spirit in the body. Without it to provide animation, the corpse failed.”
“Can the spirit come back and find another body?”
Kormak shook his head. “My blade destroyed it.”
“The Priests of the Sun say souls are immortal,” said Radney.
“This was a cursed soul. Kormak sent it to the Shadow,” Brandon said.
Did I, Kormak wondered? “I don’t think so. I don’t think this was the soul that originally animated the body. I think it was a shade, a fragment of the Shadow that crept in after the original soul departed, the way beggars in the big city occupy the ruins of an abandoned house.”
“Why would it do that?” the boy asked. “And where do such shades come from?”
“Now, Radney,” said Lady Gena. “That’s enough. Let Sir Kormak eat his breakfast in peace. He’ll answer your questions later, if he wants to.”
“But mother…”
“No buts Radney!” The boy fell silent in the face of his mother’s disapproval in a way he had not for his father. Kormak guessed Brandon was an indulgent parent particularly to his boys. He looked at the small, happy family of the knight and wondered what it would have been like to have grown up as part of such a family and not as a ward of the Dawn. He would have been a different man today, that was certain.
“Did you kill the wight?” Rob, the smallest boy asked. He sounded afraid and Kormak guessed he just wanted reassurance that the monster would not come for him. Kormak smiled and nodded and the boy screamed and ran away happily to play.
“I see you still wear your sword at the table,” said Gena.
“He’s a Guardian, my love,” said Brandon. “He would feel undressed without it. I dare say he would rather appear at table without his trousers than that blade.”
Gena swatted at her husband. “What a terrible thing to say.”
“Ask him whether it’s true,” said Brandon. His wife made it clear that she would do no such thing. Kormak ate and listened and watched. He liked it here. It was peaceful and he wanted to enjoy that while he could. Soon he would return to a hunt that could end only in death.
“My old man and I used to come up here and look out over the land,” Brandon said. Kormak followed the expansive gesture of his meaty fist. Brandon’s ancestral keep stood atop a hill and this tower was the highest point in a long way. They had a clear view for leagues in all directions except northwards. Kormak could see the riv
er and the fields and the huts in the village. There were the slightly larger dwellings of the freemen dotted about the landscapes. A straggle of woods here and there, and in the distance, to the north the great rampart of hills amid which lay the barrow. He could see the path they had followed last night where it emerged from the scree-strewn valley.
“He probably came here with his father,” Kormak said. Brandon said something to the sentry and the man-at-arms made off down the stairs to get something to eat.
“There always has to be somebody here, to keep a watch,” Brandon said, after the man had gone. “I told him we would do it.”
“I worked that out for myself,” Kormak said.
Sir Brandon fumbled inside his jerkin and produced a small metal flask. “You were always pretty smart,” he said, offering Kormak the flask.
Kormak looked at it. He recognised the runes on the side. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Yes. It’s the same flask I offered you the night before the Battle of Aeanar. It has the same cherry brandy in it too or, at least, it comes from the same casks. Drink some. It will warm you up. Always a cold breeze up here as autumn sets in." Kormak took a small sip just to be friendly. The brandy burned in his stomach. He handed the flask back to Brandon who took a gulp from it and left it sitting on the battlements in front of him. He turned and looked north in the same direction as Kormak had been looking.
“Yes. He used to come up here with his old man. And no doubt my grandfather came up here with his father and on and on back until the time when the first Sunlander came to this blasted cold northern land. I sometimes wonder why we did— with the barrows and a blighted land under the Defiler’s curse right along our borders.”