Ned called out in dire pain. He staggered back, stemming the blood with his hand. Ren turned to run, with Pupp in his arms, but walked into the swipe of a wooden club. A second club jarred the back of Ned’s head and broke the world up into tiny stars. The last thing he remembered before he hit the ground was the rustle of feet and the voice of Varl Rednose saying in a swagger, ‘You done well, girl. This night be yours. Take them. Bag the beast.’
24
Even in these troubled times of darkeyes and skalers, rarely could a man expect to set his gaze on the face of Targen the Old. The leader of the Kaal never left his shelter and would only communicate through his dreyas, the two aged women who attended to his needs and sat beside him during his journeys with the Fathers. It was said that Targen had more years on him than most of the trees in the Whispering Forest. It showed in the many lines of his face, more wrinkled than spiker bark and said to be home to the same kind of nibblers. As Ned was led in and made to kneel, he thought he saw a nibbler scuttle over Targen’s rumpled cheek and crawl into the shell of one gnarled brown ear, though it could have been a faint adjustment of expression as the old man framed a look of displeasure.
Ned’s head was throbbing, in more than one place. A poultice pasted to the wound at his neck had dried overnight and tugged the edges of the cut together. The pain clawed at the bones of his jaw whenever he tried to open his mouth. One eye was drawing down a veil upon the world. And as if to make his tally of misfortune complete, Varl Rednose had gifted him a swollen ear, the last of the blows to send him into darkness.
Now it was light and the reckoning had begun. Ned hung his head, tormented by the memories clawing at his mind: Ren. The river. The graarking skaler. Oak had judged it right. If only Ned had followed his advice and waited another day for the boy. Now there was tragedy at every turn, and more to come when the skalers arrived. He looked around the shelter. Ren was not there, only Targen and his grisly women, sitting on a pile of animal skins. Between them, in one of the wooden cages used for carrying catches from hunting, was the skaler.
It was lying on its side, twitching now and then. Ned flinched as its claws gripped a bar of the cage and squeezed the wood until it cracked. What strength, he wondered, must an adult have if one so small could splinter a length of wood in its sleep? One of the dreyas bent forward, her grey hair crackling as she stirred the contents of a black pot bedded in the ashes of a fire. Yellow wisps were rising out of it, stinging the air with a grievous scent. The dreya picked up a stick. It was bulbous with rags at the thickest end and heavy with the stains of the potion she was cooking. She stirred the stick into the shallows of the pot and wafted it close to the skaler’s snout. The creature’s body jerked, then slackened. The dreya sat back with her hands in her lap. She stared at Ned as though his breaths could be numbered by the gaps in her teeth. Ned disliked these women intensely. They were nothing like his Mell, who dressed in simple working robes and warmed his heart with her floating smile. The dreyas never smiled. They wore robes the colour of river mud, sewn with single caarker feathers. In their hair they hung bones that clattered when they spoke. It was said their magicks could turn men to stone. What magicks, Ned wondered, were they planning for him?
‘Where is my son?’ he asked, needing to support his jaw against the pain.
The second dreya leant close to Targen. She repeated the question as if Ned had spoken a foreign tongue.
Targen opened his toothless mouth. He whispered a faint reply back to the dreya. The words whistled off his breath like arrows.
‘He says the tribe is light,’ said the dreya. ‘He hears death singing among the men. You will speak on this.’
Ned lowered his head. He grimaced and felt the poultice crack. A tear made a pale line down his cheek. ‘I rode with Oak Longarm and Waylen Treader. We journeyed by our own consent. We followed the moon in search of the darkeyes, so we might raise them against the skalers. Both these men now lie at peace, slain by a skaler which itself rests dead in the darkeyes’ cave, an arrow deep in its blood-drained eye. My soul weeps for brave friends missed, but it will weep a world more if we do not flee the settlement. Do not doubt this: the skalers will come. I say to Targen, the Old, the Wise, do what you will with me, but leave here now and save yourselves.’
The dreya shared these words with Targen and listened, patiently, for his reply.
‘He says you must settle the spirits of these men.’
Ned nodded, the tips of his white hair dancing. ‘What would he bid me do?’
Targen whispered to the dreya again. She said, ‘You will lead the men of the Kaal to the flat rock. You, Whitehair, will carry the skaler.’
A look of surprise set over Ned’s face. The flat rock was an old sacrificial stone. It lay some fifty strides wrong of the scorch line and had not been used since Ned was a boy. He shook his head in disbelief. ‘You would blood the creature – on skaler ground?’
The dreya consulted Targen again. ‘When the skalers come, you will kneel by the stone and return the creature to its kind, unharmed, but a sacrifice will be made.’
‘Of what?’ said Ned, growing anxious.
The yellow smoke drifted across the shelter. Two bones rattled in the dreya’s hair.
‘Your son, Whitehair.’
‘Ren?’ Ned gasped, despite the pain. He looked at Targen. The lines of the old man’s face did not lie. ‘No,’ Ned said. He rose up, struggling to keep his balance. ‘If you seek a life, take mine. The boy fell prey to a madness, yes, but I will not give him up in place of this beast.’
‘Stay where you stand,’ a harsh voice said. Varl Rednose. Again. ‘Move and I’ll finish what the creature started.’
Ned felt the edge of a sword on his neck.
Two more men swept into the shelter.
‘Get him out,’ said Varl.
And they dragged Ned away, still in pain, still protesting.
Varl knelt before Targen and bent his head. ‘At first light, it will be done,’ he said. Then he nodded at the dreyas and picked up the cage, spitting on the wearling as he carried it into the night.
25
They gagged Ned and tied him to a post overnight, so he might not call Ren or move to flee. Mell was not permitted to see him.
At the break of dawn, Varl woke him with a bucket of watered filth. He gripped Ned’s chin with the gag still in place, enjoying the fear he could see in Ned’s eyes. ‘Were it me,’ he said, ‘it would be you, not Ren, on that rock this morrow. You are no friend to any Kaal now.’ And he spat on Ned’s face with even more venom than he’d used for the skaler. Ned heard the creature skrike somewhere and rolled his eyes toward the sound.
‘Aye,’ said Varl. ‘All night the creature called to your boy, and he likeways to it. It’s taken him, Ned, chewed on him bad.’ He ran a hand down a forearm crowded with scars. ‘All this, not flesh no more. Skaler, he is. Gone wild to the beasts.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Fevered.’
Ned’s eyes shrank in disbelief.
Varl nodded. ‘Aye, I tell it true. When I blood the boy, I’ll be killing the juice o’ the skalers in him.’ He stepped up close, making Ned recoil from his stinking breath. ‘And the spirits of Oak Longarm and Waylen Treader will look upon the green that flows from the cut and smile on my blade and know they are even.’
And he punched Ned hard, taking his wind. Ned groaned and wrestled with the ties that bound him. He would have given all the wealth he owned to break free and punch Varl’s fat, red nose. But the ties were strong and Ned knew he had lost. A tear ran silver from his grieving eye.
Varl took him again by the chin. ‘I am bound by Targen to kill you alike if you choose to make bother. Will you make bother, Ned? Shall I spear you now with this strange black treasure an’ save you the long walk to the rock?’ He held up the darkeye horn.
In the background, the wearling skriked
again.
Ned cursed it silently and said nay with his eyes; nay, he would not make bother. He grunted, wanting to speak.
Varl thought for a moment, then loosened the gag.
Ned coughed away the dry, rank taste in his mouth and seized his chance to breathe cold, sweet air. ‘Tell me true. Has Mell seen the arm? Has she seen this change in Ren?’
‘Listen hard,’ Varl snorted. ‘You may hear her weeping – as Oak and Waylen’s women weep for them.’
‘They rode with me freely,’ Ned protested. ‘I did no more than—’
Varl stopped him with a brutal slap across the mouth. ‘Slight them again and I will cut your tongue till it’s twice as skinny as a spiker leaf.’
A bloodied tooth worked free of Ned’s gum. He spat it onto the ground and said, ‘Will you take me to Ren?’
‘You’ll see him soon enough.’
‘What have you done to him, Varl?’
But Rednose would not say. He pushed the horn into his belt and turned to go.
‘Wait!’ Ned cried, making several mutts bark.
Varl did him the grace of pausing.
‘You swear Ren is bit?’
‘Aye,’ Varl said. ‘Green of arm and babbling like he were born of fire.’
Green of arm? Ned grappled with despair. If this were true and the boy was poisoned, he was as hopeless as Wind with her shattered leg. And so Ned gathered up his grief and said, ‘Let it be me.’
Varl half looked back. ‘What blether is this?’
‘I should be the one to end it,’ said Ned. ‘Let me be true to the Fathers and the tribe. Let me bear the blade against Ren.’
Varl turned, kicking at a mutt that had drifted too close. ‘You ain’t got the gristle.’
Ned spat another bead of blood from his mouth. ‘You think I want him changed so wrong? It’s my right to take back what I seeded. I say to you plain, I stand by the ruling. I will give the skaler back to the beasts and show them the blood of my son, and be done.’
Varl filled his swollen nose with air. He was a pitiless man who cared little for the lives of those around him – but he did understand the need for honour. ‘I will think on it,’ he said, and walked away.
‘Think on it soon!’ Ned shouted through his pain. And he glanced up to the sky and whispered, ‘Or I tell you true, we are all dead.’
26
They came for Ned shortly. Two to cut him free, two more to drag him to the midst of the settlement where Varl and the rest of the men were waiting. Mell broke free of her guards and threw herself at Ned, pleading with him not to allow them to take Ren to sacrifice. But Ned, by now convinced of his destiny, spoke openly and loud for all to hear. He said that Targen had ruled with wisdom and that he, Ned Whitehair, father of Ren, would settle the spirits of Oak and Waylen by his own strong hand.
‘No-ooo!’ Mell screamed and was dragged away, promising murder on Ned, and worse.
They brought Ren out on an open cart. He was lying on his side, alive but fuddled. His hands were bound in front of him. Ned shuddered when he saw the state of the arm. Varl had spoken true. The boy’s flesh was covered in fine green scales that glittered freely in the morning sun. There were bloodstains down his robe, which looked to have come from the blow he’d taken, though Ned suspected they had beaten him too. They had gagged him also, but the cloth was slipping. To his horror, Ned could hear the boy whining, making the sounds the skalers made. A guard punched him hard and tightened the gag. Ned’s gaze drifted to the skaler in its cage. That too had been silenced again. It lay squeezed into a corner, a green froth spilling from the angle of its jaw, tail half twined round one of the bars.
Varl strode up, his sword at his side. He nodded at the cage. Ned reluctantly picked it up, holding it well away from his face. The skaler was surprisingly light.
‘Aye, be wary it don’t bite,’ said Varl. He snapped his teeth. The men laughed, but their nerves made the mockery hollow.
Ned liked being taunted as little as anyone, but he saw the wisdom in carrying the cage by its flat wooden base, rather than showing his fingers to the creature. ‘I would speak with my son a moment,’ he said, a request that Varl straightway denied.
‘Your son speaks only with skalers,’ he jeered. He mounted his whinney, which tried not to sag beneath his weight. ‘Walk,’ he ordered, and kicked Ned hard between the shoulders to move him.
By the time they had reached the Whispering Forest, the skaler had woken. It immediately wailed and looked for Ren. Ned had a swift reminder of its strength when its tail whipped the cage, forcing him to drop it. The cage tumbled down a grassy knoll and came to rest in a hopper’s hollow. The men roared with laughter to see the beast upside down and kicking. Varl was less impressed. He ordered Ned to retrieve the cage and told another man to find a skin to cover it. For a short while after, the creature was quiet. Then from its dark pen began to come a sound.
Tada, it cried. Over and over. A wail so heavy with woe that it could have drawn the sap from the heart of the trees.
In the cart, Ren stirred. He gestured for water.
Ned looked to Varl for pity.
Varl stroked his beard. ‘All right, ungag him. Give the boy water. I need to dampen a tree, anyway. I’ve enough piss in me to drown a mutt.’ The men’s laughter shook the forest again. One by one they slid off their whinneys and found places to stand and lift their robes.
Ned used the break to move nearer to Ren. A guard put out a weak hand to stop him, but Ned pushed right on by, saying, ‘What harm can there be in speaking to the boy? His time is short. Tend mercifully to him.’
So they hauled Ren into a sitting position, took away his gag and wet his tongue.
Ned said quietly, ‘Boy, harken to your father now. You are fevered by skalers, and I must be your remedy.’
Ren’s head lolled into his blood-stained chest. ‘Garrffred,’ he said in a slur.
Ned looked at the man who was holding Ren. The man shrugged. Like Ned, he could find no meaning for the boy’s strange babble. He pulled Ren up by the hair.
‘Galan aug scieth,’ Ren hissed.
The guard backed off, muttering that the boy had been taken by a devil.
‘Ren, what are these words?’ asked Ned.
‘His,’ Ren breathed, making soothing sounds that Pupp would understand.
The cage shook in Ned’s hands as the skaler grew restless. Tada, it wailed. Tada. Tada.
‘His?’ said Ned. He thought back on Varl’s jibe at the start of the journey. Your son speaks only with skalers. Could it be true that Ren had their words? Ned asked directly, ‘You speak with the beast?’
‘Some,’ Ren said, and quickly produced more sounds of dragontongue. The skaler responded with a similar noise and began to jab at the covering skin.
‘What does the creature say?’ asked Ned.
Ren rolled his eyes. ‘It calls me Father, for I am all it has.’
‘Let’s be on,’ barked Varl, reapproaching his whinney.
‘And what say you in return?’ gulped Ned.
Ren swayed and looked his father in the eye. ‘I say I love it – as a father should.’
‘Whitehair!’ snapped Varl. ‘Be done dreaming! I said we are onward. My hand grows eager to slay something.’
One of the men clapped a hand on Ned’s shoulder.
‘No,’ said Ned. He brushed the man off.
Rednose paused and dropped his reins.
By now, Ned’s mind was wild with a notion, a notion so strange he could barely believe he would hear himself say it, but say it he did: ‘Harken to me. All of you. This errand is false. Targen is wrong. We need Ren alive. He alone can save us.’
Varl’s hand moved slowly to the grip of his sword. ‘Have a care, Ned. Your words move perilous close to the edge.’ r />
‘Take me instead if you must,’ Ned shouted, making sure he had the ears of every man. ‘But the boy must live. He speaks their tongue.’
Varl drew the blade and held it level at the pulse of Ned’s throat. ‘He makes an interesting noise, it’s true. As will you when I take off your head.’
‘I beg you, think on this!’ Ned cried. He turned his back on Varl to face more of the men. ‘If we can talk to the skalers, we can know their will. We can—’
And that was where his plea was ended, on the pitiless tip of Varl Rednose’s sword. It entered Ned’s back and pushed out through his front like a milky tongue, bearing nought but the slightest streak of blood.
‘No-oo!’ Ren screamed, setting Pupp off too.
Ned gasped and dropped the cage. The covering skin fell clear. The skaler flapped and kicked as though all hell was about to rain down.
Varl withdrew his blade, the force of it pulling Ned back against him. ‘I told you Ned, no bother,’ he whispered.
Ned’s mouth bubbled with blood. Despite the pain, he reached back quickly and found Varl’s belt. In a moment, the darkeye horn was in his grasp and he had stabbed Varl hard in the groin with it. Varl howled and dropped his sword. Ned fell against the cart and slashed Ren’s ties, placing the horn in his son’s small hands. ‘Whatever you would do, do it now,’ he said. And he touched the boy’s soft white hair and fell, dead.
By now, the men had recovered their wits and the nearest were beginning to close on Ren. He took the first one down with a burst of fire. The man screamed and fell back, his robe jumping with flames. The others, seeing this, stayed their distance. Some cried out in fear of magicks. Despite his weakened state, Ren tumbled off the cart and staggered to the cage, springing the clasp which held it locked.
‘Fly!’ he shouted, shaking Pupp out, an act that almost cost him his life. For Varl was injured but certainly not dead. As the drake flapped awkwardly towards the trees, Varl picked up his sword and came there, swinging.