She showed very white teeth. There was nothing friendly about her smile. “These are unclean times.”
The limbs of the dead man started to move. Stinking air wheezed from his corrupted lungs. A groan emerged from his lips. His greyish tongue moved slug-like over his dried-out lips. Tears of thick, black blood dripped from his eyes.
“Did you do this?”
“I have no quarrel with you, stranger. Do you seek one with me?”
“Not unless you seek to prevent me performing my duty.”
There was a creaking noise as the dead man tried to work his hand free of the wood to which it was pinned. Kormak took his own hand off the arrow but the noise continued.
His sword cleared its sheath. Skin sizzled as he took the dead man’s head off. There was a smell of spoiled meat burning. The head started moving on the ground, propelling itself along with its jaw. He brought his blade down shattering the skull. It parted as if rotten. He drove his sword into the corpse’s heart and left it there long enough to cleanse the body of evil magic. He looked around and saw that the woman was gone, just as he had known she would be.
He shrugged, cleaned his blade, sheathed it and went on his way. He had business in these blighted woods but it was not with the elves.
A dead elf hung from a gallows outside the village of Green Oak. Birds had pecked at the flesh. The skin was bruised and broken. From a distance the elf looked human enough, but up close the differences were more obvious. The body was taller and leaner than that of a man, the skull longer and narrower, the features finer. The ears were pointed and lobeless. This elf was naked. A tattoo depicting a webbed pattern covered half his shaved skull. A long top-knot was the only hair there. Other tattoos depicting stylised spiders had been worked on his stomach, his buttocks and legs.
The warden at the open gate saw Kormak looking at the body and walked up, pike held in his hand. He was a middle aged man with rheumy suspicious eyes. A large horn hung round his neck for summoning aid in case of trouble. “Bastard elves,” he said and spat. From the gate-tower, a man with a longbow watched them both.
Kormak looked at the warden. “The tattoos mean anything?”
“That he was one of the Weaver’s people, Spider Guard maybe. He was spotted scouting the edge of the village. Hengist caught him with a lucky sling shot. Normally you never see the bastards till you fall in one of their traps or they fill you full of poisoned arrows.”
“You going to cut him down?”
“You an elf lover?”
“You’re on the edge of a Shadowblight here,” Kormak said. “You don’t want to leave bodies unburned for too long.”
“You talk like a priest but you don’t look like one.”
“I am a Guardian, of the Order of the Dawn.”
“Ah, a wizard hunter!” Kormak was surprised to be recognised. His Order was often held to be a legend in these dark times. In many places people thought they no longer existed or were just a storyteller’s tale to start with. In other places, the stories concerning them were dark and not always entirely untrue.
“I uphold the Law. If wizards break it I hunt them down.”
“You hunt monsters as well, don’t you? Plenty of work for you here — we got elves and spiders and night-gangers and ghosts. We’ve got manticores and serpent kings and…”
“I saw another body today, a man’s body,” Kormak said, to cut off the litany. “Pinned to a tree with rune-carved arrows. It was set up on the edge of the Blight. It was ready to walk.” Looking at the hanging corpse he decided it was probably best not to mention the elf woman.
The man took a step away, then gestured at the hanging corpse. “Maybe the Forest Children did that. We use their corpses as warning signs. They do the same.”
“I’ve never heard of elves claiming blighted lands.”
The watchman shrugged as if to say it was no business of his what the elves got up to.
Kormak gestured at the dangling body. “ A warning— is that what this is?”
“It’s certainly not to beautify the village now, is it?”
“I guess not.”
“You going in or did you just come here to look at the dead elves?”
“There’s an inn here or so I am told.”
“You were told right.”
“And there’s a sheriff.”
“That there is.”
“Then I am going in, if you have no objections.”
“None at all. You would not want to be out in the woods once night comes. You might become a corpse yourself. We’ve had a lot of trouble round here at night. With the elves.” The watchmen was eying the edge of the forest nervously now. He clearly was not too comfortable standing so close to the shadows of the wood’s edge as the sun was starting to set.
“I am not surprised if you leave them warnings like that,” said Kormak as he rode through the gate.
Green Oak was bigger than he had expected it to be and more crowded with people. The streets were muddy and the houses made from wood, with Elder Signs carved on gables and doorposts. The folk themselves were garbed in leather and coarse cloth. A lot of people, even the women and children, carried bows and they looked as if they knew how to use them. They were on the frontier here and they knew it. The New Settlements lay right along the western border of Taurea, a slab cut out of the Greatwood by humans, ripped from the hands of the elder race that had preceded them. This was as far west as Sunlander civilisation had got in this part of the world, a place where a number of peasants and freemen had come to make a new start out from under the watchful gaze of the nobles.
As he walked a number of eyes tracked him. He was a stranger here, and his weapons and his armour made him conspicuous. Shopkeepers sized him up as if he might have silver to spend. A sleepy-eyed whore smiled at him from the verandah of a large and elaborate house. It was late afternoon and she had just risen to be about her business.
In the central square of the village the austere lines of a Solar temple rose. It was built entirely from wood but was just as imposing as the stone buildings further east. People came and went, some to pray, some to make the Sunset offering. He entered and knelt before the carved wooden altar and offered up a prayer that he was not sure would be answered. While a novice watched silently, he placed his scabbarded blade on the altar where it would catch the sunbeams filtering in through the crystal windows in the roof. The runes on the sheath caught fire as he asked the Sun’s blessing, made an Elder Sign over his heart and strode out to find an inn for the night.
The Royal Oak tavern was long and low and comfortable. The roof was thatched. A fire burned in the common room. It looked as if it was never allowed to go out. Kormak saw to the stabling of his horse and then went to talk to the innkeeper. Bertram was a short, heavy-set man with a woebegone look.
“Business bad?” Kormak asked.
The innkeeper shrugged. “Not so many traders now with the Young Princes at war. Lot of refugees but they don’t have much and they mostly keep their own company.”
“Trouble with the elves?”
“War drums have been beating in the Spider Groves. They say that the Weaver has stirred the Mayasha up, turned them against men. Shadows lengthen, sir, shadows lengthen.” His face grew even sadder, his moustache drooped even more but then he seemed to remember that gloom was bad for business and made an attempt to smile. Somehow it just made him look sadder. “It’ll get better. It always does.” He did not sound very convincing.
Kormak surveyed the common room. There were a couple of men in pilgrims’ robes, doubtless off to preach to the elves about the virtues of the Holy Sun. There were leather-garbed men in soft moccasins, wood rangers most like. A large group of them banged a table drunkenly, calling for more ale. A blowsy-looking barmaid served them. She caught Kormak looking at her and gave him a smile that lit up her face.
“You come in along the Old Road, stranger?” Bertram asked.
Kormak nodded.
“Not so many do, sinc
e the Blight started growing. Mostly they go round and that takes them through elf land. I reckon that’s what gets the elves riled up. They don’t like trespassers.”
“They don’t like men,” shouted the largest of the woodsmen, a cropped haired bravo with a cauliflower ear and a broken nose. “They’ve painted on their war tattoos. They won’t rest till we’re driven out of the Settlements.”
“Maybe so, Jaethro,” said Bertram. His manner was conciliatory. “Maybe so.”
One of the drunk men shouted. “We should burn the pointy-eared bastards out,” he said. His companions, rough-looking men, nodded agreement.
“Burn the bloody forest down more like,” the innkeeper muttered, not quite loud enough to be heard. The drunks looked at Kormak. They had hatchets in their belts and knives in their boots.
“Man carries a sword ought to know how to use it,” said Jaethro. Kormak took a sip from his drink, looked him up and down and said, “I agree.”
“I would have thought any man who could really use a sword would be in the central provinces, selling his services to the nobles, taking sides in the bloody civil war.”
“It’s not my war,” Kormak said.
“No. You’re not a Sunlander, are you?”
“Aquilean,” Kormak said. He used a bored neutral tone. This was a conversation he had a lot in his travels. His black hair and his savage, scarred face stated all too clearly he was not a Sunlander.
“Thieves and reavers, the lot of you,” said the drunk. “You should all be strung up as well.”
He looked at his comrades for support. Kormak could see the way this was going to play out unless he did something. He was a stranger. They were scared of their shadows and drunk. Violence was in the air. He did not mind. Violence was something he understood.
“Is that so?”Kormak raised himself off the stool and walked over. He could see the calculations being made by drunken minds. He was a very big man, carrying a sword, he was sober and he was not afraid.
The man looked at his dagger. It was sitting beside his half-full wooden platter, smeared with grease; he had been using it to eat. Kormak followed his gaze. The others moved their chairs away from the table. He looked at them and smiled. He could tell by the way several of them paled that it was not a reassuring smile.
“You really think you can kill all five of them,” said a gravelly voice from the door. It was calm and reassuring and had a slight note of curiosity in it, as if the owner was genuinely interested in knowing the answer.
“Before you can pull the trigger on that crossbow you are carrying.”
“And then you would come for me?”
“Not unless you give me reason to.”
“That seems fair.” The speaker came into view. He was tall, broad-shouldered, silver-haired. His skin was leathery but he carried himself like a man twenty years younger than he was. The crossbow in his hand was pointed at Jaethro.
“I have half a mind to let him do just that,” the newcomer said conversationally. “If you idiots are dumb enough to pick a fight with a Guardian, you deserve everything you get.”
“I’m not scared of him,” said the drunk. He did not sound scared.
“You should be,” said the newcomer. “I’ve seen one of his kind kill a bull orc with his bare hands. And, in the unlikely event you could kill him, two more just as big and just as mean will come looking for you and they will not be gentle before they slaughter you. But that’s not a problem that’s going to arise, since I am telling you to keep your mouths shut and not cause any trouble.”
“You the sheriff?” Kormak asked. The man nodded amiably.
“Heard you were looking for me. Any particular reason?”
“Yes but this is not the place to discuss it.”
“You’d better come with me then.” He looked at the drunks, smiled affably and said, “Try and keep yourselves out of trouble, boys. Goodnight Jaethro. Goodnight Bertram.”
CHAPTER TWO
“How did you know I had a crossbow and how did you know I would not shoot you,” the sheriff asked. He stretched his legs in front of the fire, raised his goblet as if inspecting it for smudges.
Kormak looked round the shack while he considered his answer. In the lamp-light, it looked like a neat place but austere. A bed, a shelf of religious books, an Elder Sign on the wall. A bow hung on some brackets, a well-used longsword too. Quivers of arrows hung from nails. A fletcher’s kit lay on a small table under the window. “I saw your shadow on the wall when you opened the door, Grogan, and I recognised your voice.”
“It’s been a long time,” said the sheriff. “Must be twenty years at least.”
“Not since the Orc War.”
“That was a rough time. Unless I miss my guess, times are getting rough again.”
“The woods not quite the blessed haven of peace and plenty you remembered?” Kormak let a note of irony show in his voice.
“They never were, Guardian. I was a long way from home and sick of killing. I built this place up in my mind as something worth fighting for. You need something, don’t you?”
Kormak nodded.
“You still don’t say much.”
“It is good to see you.”
“You too. Even though your sort don’t usually show up unless there is trouble.”
“My sort?”
“Don’t give me that sour look. I know what you do. It’s not all heroic battles against the man-flesh eaters. You here about the Blight? It’s growing, I know. I figured sooner or later someone would show up to investigate…or take advantage of it.”
Kormak looked around the sheriff’s bare cabin. “I thought you were coming back to marry the girl from the next steading.”
“I did. She died. The babies too. Breakbone fever took them all.” There was a world of pain in Grogan’s flat tone.
“Sorry to hear that.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” He wanted to change the subject as much as Kormak. “You ever going to or are you just going to sit there with that slow-witted look on your face.”
“A month ago I was in Westergate,” said Kormak. “I met a man selling Shadow-corrupted bloodroot. He told me about another man, who, after some persuasion, told me it had come from here.”
“I can imagine the kind of persuasion,” Grogan said. He did not sound approving.
“Bloodroot is bad enough but the stuff that grows only in Shadowblights is worse, far worse. I came west into the Settlements. Sure enough, I find a Blight.”
“I sent a message to Master Graydon at your Order’s house in Westergate months ago. No one came…till now. I thought they had forgotten all about the matter. Seems I was wrong.”
“No one told me that,” said Kormak. Sudden silence filled the room.
“Maybe the message went astray. Runners are not always reliable.” Kormak nodded slowly. Grogan tilted his head to one side.
“You thinking something else?”
Kormak shook his head. Even if he was wondering if someone had been bribed to look the other way, he was not going to say so. That was Order business and not to be discussed with outsiders.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“The Shadowblight?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to see for myself how bad it is and decide what needs to be done.”
“On your own?”
Kormak shrugged.
“You picked a bad time for it. The woods are crawling with elves, and they are not friendly. Never seen anything like it in my lifetime. Folks are saying there will be war along the border before this business is done, and they are most likely right.”
“Is that why you have a naked elf hanging outside the gate?”
Grogan looked embarrassed. “Not my idea but the Council wanted it done and it did not seem worth fighting them about. The elf was dead anyway so he raised no objections.”
“They won’t like it, will they, the elves? I always heard they wanted their bodies ret
urned to the Earth.”
“They do, Kormak. But maybe not these ones, these days. There’s something different about the Mayasha now, has been since the Weaver came.”
“Weaver?”
“A priestess, a shaman, a prophet, whatever. Since she showed up the elves have taken to getting themselves spider tattooed and taking pot shots at the locals. They make off with local kids, sometimes adults as well. It’s a bad business, slaving. They’ve got themselves some nasty pets as well.”
“Pets?”
“Spiders, big ones, use them like hunting dogs. I’ve heard tales they use the venom for rituals. Low dosage is hallucinogenic. Some of the local boys have tried it.” Kormak just looked at him.
“They get bored and they’ll try anything once. They are wild lads. You remember what we were like when we were young.”
“I did not go trying spider venom just on the off-chance it might get me high.”
“Maybe not. But they knew the elves were doing it though so they tried it.”
“How did they know?”
“Don’t know for sure but I can guess. Men meet elves in the woods or they did until recently. It does not always end with bows drawn.”
“This change that came over the elves, did it happen at the same time as the Shadowblight started to spread?”
“That thought has struck me as well but I can’t make it fit. The elves started going strange a ways before the woods started to rot, on this side of the river at least. Of course, you never saw too many on this side of the river anyway. The settlers drove them out.”
“It could have started earlier deeper in the forest, blights take time to spread.”
“Some of the locals claim that the Weaver was responsible for the Blight, with her magic and her evil god.”
“I am not saying they are wrong. I am just trying to understand what happened here. When your neighbours go bad and a Blight appears at the same time, it’s usually safe to assume it’s not a coincidence.”
“What will happen if it keeps spreading?”
“Things will change. People will go to the bad. There will be physical changes: in the woods, in the beasts, in the people. It won’t be pretty. In the worst places, the dead won’t stay down unless they are burned.”