Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series) Read online

  Loffrey closed his eyes and waved his hand in a figure-of-eight in the air.

  ‘What does it feel like?’ asked Kint.

  ‘It actually feels like nothing.’

  ‘Must be broken then.’ This from Fat Forluss.

  ‘On the contrary, gentlemen. Only very few people can feel the effects of true Scalussen armour. I bet a fair bit of coin that you can, mage, hmm?’

  ‘How do you know it ain’t broken then? Or a fake?’

  Loffrey shook his head. He tugged at the gauntlet and the metal peeled away all by itself, releasing his hand. ‘Do you think that looks broken or fake to you, man?’

  Kint had to shake his head. Forluss piped up. ‘What’s so rare about this lot then?’

  Loffrey sighed, a sigh of a man who had explained this a dozen times already. ‘All Scalussen armour is rare, you idiot. It was made a thousand years ago by the Scalussen smiths, who to this day managed to make the finest armour and arms known to mankind. That’s why you’ll only ever see it being worn by those who are rich enough to buy it, brave enough to steal it, or hardy enough to take it.’

  ‘So? I’ve seen some good armour in my time. The pretty stuff don’t always do the job. Why’s this lot so special then, aside from doing that shrinking trick and how bloody old it is?’

  Loffrey bit his lip. ‘Why don’t you take your knife and see if you can scratch it, Kint?’

  Kint drew his knife with relish. He held one of the greaves he was carrying in one hand and his knife with the other. With a screeching sound, Kint dragged the tip of the knife along one of the greave’s steel scales. There wasn’t even a hint of a scratch. He tried again, and again, getting angrier every time he tried, until Loffrey snatched it from him. ‘See?’ he said. ‘Scalussen armour is magick armour. Some of it moves on its own. Some of it changes colour. Some of it even burns you if you touch it.’

  ‘And what does this lot do?’ Forluss asked, still sweating.

  ‘This lot, gentlemen, is more than rare. So rare, in fact, that everybody thinks it doesn’t exist.’ Loffrey turned back to the mage and lifted his aching head up and into the sunlight. ‘How old do you think he looks, hmm? What would you guess?’

  Kint shrugged. ‘Not a year older than me.’

  ‘Or me,’ added Forluss.

  ‘Or me,’ said Wartan.

  ‘And how old is that?’

  ‘Thirty?’ Kint looked around and the other two nodded. Forluss didn’t actually know. He had lost count a few years back thanks to the perpetual Long Winter and a poorer-than-average skill with a calendar. ‘Thirty-ish,’ asserted Kint.

  ‘Farden has barely aged a day since I last saw him,’ said Loffrey, and at this the mage narrowed his eyes, trying to place the man’s face. ‘And that was more than fifteen years ago. Who knows how old he was then. Isn’t that right, Written?’

  Farden glared, confused, defeated. Doomed.

  If one looked close enough, it was possible to see the cogs turning in Forluss’ head. The man looked down at the armour in his hands. ‘So how did he manage to get his hands on this? Did yer steal it, Four-Hand? Kill someone for it?’ he asked, confused.

  Loffrey put his hands on his hips. ‘That’s what I want to find out. There was a book by that armchair. A diary by the looks of it. Go get it.’

  Forluss and Kint traded glances. Kint smacked Forluss on the arm and the fat man went back inside the shack. He reappeared a minute later with a book. He gave it to Loffrey with a grunt and the man quickly flipped through it, noting the names and dates that had been scribbled down. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Take those back to the cart, and be careful with them. Kiltyrin will have your head if you’re not.’

  Kint could be heard muttering to Forluss as they walked back up the hill. ‘So I can dig a knife into it but I have to be careful putting it in a cart. Who’s the idiot now?’ he said, quietly.

  Loffrey knelt down and grabbed the mage’s armoured left wrist. Farden flinched away, but quickly found the tip of the spear digging into the base of his skull again. He clenched his fist as Loffrey probed the metal. ‘How did you do it again? Ah yes.’ He pinched the bottom of the vambrace but nothing happened. He shifted his grip and tried again, but still nothing happened. ‘Let go, Farden,’ he warned, pulling at the metal. ‘Let it go I say!’

  The spear pressed harder, but Farden didn’t move. He stared straight ahead at his shack and said nothing. Only when the butt of the spear smacked him hard in the temple did he move, and even then he just slumped to the floor. He didn’t want to give Wartan and Loffrey the satisfaction. Loffrey was growing impatient. ‘Let go!’ he cried, but it was no use; the vambraces refused to part with their mage.

  Loffrey was getting aggravated now. ‘Kint! Forluss! Bring me some more rope! This bastard is being stubborn!’

  Kint and Forluss quickly returned, eager to see what Farden was up to. Somehow one step ahead, Forluss had already made a simple noose with the length of ragged rope, and wasted no time looping it about Farden’s bruised neck. ‘I’ll show you how it’s done,’ grunted Forluss, as he yanked on the rope. Farden flailed as the noose quickly strangled him. Forluss wrapped the rope around his shoulder and began to drag the thrashing mage up the hill. The man might have been fat, but he was stronger than an ox.

  Flints and stones raked at Farden’s ill-fitting clothes as if the earth itself had claws. Some cut his flesh. Some bruised. Grass-whipped and dirt-choked, he gasped as the rough rope bit into his neck and made the veins there bulge. Farden’s only saving grace was the two or three fingers he had managed to slip in between the rope and his neck. He pushed as hard as he could, gulping a few precious breaths, gasping all the while. The throbbing in his head became a fervent hammering, like that of his tired heart. The cold fear gripped him in a vice. The hole threatened to swallow him. Was this it? he found himself asking. He had forgotten how much he feared death. Something told him to pray, but he grit his teeth and refused.

  It felt as though it took an hour to be dragged to the top of the hill. But it was not over yet. Forluss left the mage at the base of the ash tree to gasp and wheeze while he looped the rope over a low branch, about a dozen feet from the ground. Kint seized the rope and together they hauled the mage upright by his neck. Farden retched and spat. He had made the mistake of taking his fingers out from under the rope. Farden stood on his tiptoes as the rope pulled him ever-upwards. He thrashed and gurgled and flailed and wheezed, but it was no use. No, no… screamed his air-starved brain. His greatest, coldest fear had come to visit.

  Loffrey was standing in front of him. Wartan and the spear too. That glint of murder in the man’s eye had not gone away. Kint and Forluss stood on the rope and waited. ‘Let them go, Farden, or we’ll have to see how long you can hold your breath.’

  ‘Do what ‘e says, or I’ll stick you with this,’ hissed Wartan, drawing a look from the others. Loffrey moved to stand in front of the eager guard, lest he do something dramatic. A nod, and the rope pulled him higher. His toes scraped the soil. Farden was turning red. Loffrey pulled on the vambraces but they still refused to budge. The mage clawed for his eyes and he stepped back.

  ‘Farden…’ warned the man. With another jerk, Farden’s feet left the floor, and he flailed even more. It took a moment for the despair to set in; the exhausted ache of already tired muscles crying out to give in and accept. He slowly stopped thrashing. Flecks of bark landed on his head. A twig rested on his shoulder. Farden stared out at the wandering landscape, eyes bulging and darkness hovering at their corners. The cart cows were staring up at him with blank faces. A crow was a fluttering speck in the distance. He could see a faint smudge of white in the west, a cottage maybe, his vision was blurring. Not a soul or saviour for miles, just the four torturers standing around him.

  So this is it, he told himself, as he slipped into the dark hole of his fear. For a man toying with immortality, he had never considered how he’d go. He had stubbornly ignored it. A life of fire and blood and blinding lig
ht, only to be finally extinguished by the pinch of a rope on an ash tree. Killed for the very thing that kept him from death and an early grave. His precious treasures stolen. His usefulness exhausted. Farden looked up at the tree, for the briefest of moments hoping that he would see a rat nibbling on the rope that strangled him. But the blurry world before his bulging eyes was not so kind. Just a bare tree, waving in the breeze.

  The rope tugged at him and pulled him even higher. Farden writhed for another moment, but then sagged once again. Hanging. He’d never imagined that. Suddenly, the slowness of this death seemed graceful, painfully so, in its inexorable winding down. Strange, he thought, for a man to come into the world screaming, and yet leave it so silently. He had always imagined himself uttering some great proverb at the moment his heart stopped, some great stamp of profundity to linger in the ears of whoever listened. Perhaps a curse, perhaps some iota of defiance against the grave. Even just a guttural cry would suffice, a final lyric for the song of life. Not like this. The fear was numbed somewhat by the hopelessness of it all. The fight died with the air in his lungs. The darkness seeped into his eyes. So this is it.

  Words floated up to him.

  ‘Cut his arm off,’ said Forluss. ‘We don’t have to bring him back alive.’ A momentary flinch from Farden. Let him be dead before that.

  ‘We don’t have to bring him back at all. Duke’s orders.’

  ‘A little barbaric, don’t you think?’

  ‘You wanted the armour, Loffrey, time to get your hands dirty.’

  A sigh. ‘Do it.’

  ‘With pleasure. Might even take one of his fingers for a trophy.’

  Hur-hur-hur. Forluss laughing. If there was one sound Farden hoped not to go out to, it was that. The air had left him now. His hands and legs were going numb. He felt the cold kiss of a blade on his arm and a sharp flicker of pain run up it. It was over in a second. Farden closed his eyes and listened to the dwindling of his heart.

  ‘That bloody armour has dulled my blade.’

  ‘Get another then.’

  ‘Oh, fer gods’ sake,’ cried Wartan. If Farden could have opened his eyes he would have seen the man charge forward, spear up and glinting. The silver blade buried itself neatly between his ribs. Farden momentarily burst into life, gurgling with pain. He kicked his legs, once, twice maybe, and then sagged again. His head lolled to his chest, eyes half-closed but glazed over. Wartan left the spear in the mage’s ribs. It dangled oddly like some grotesque, unwanted limb. The man spat on the mage’s foot and grinned at the others. ‘Been waiting on that fer years,’ he said.

  Down on the grass, Kint was just about to clout Wartan in the face when there came a thud, closely followed by another. The men turned to see two vambraces lying in the grass. Drops of blood began to drip on them, some from the spear, some from the mage’s arm. Loffrey quickly grabbed them and hurried to the cart.

  ‘Job done,’ said Kint, sneering at the mage dangling in the wind like a ghoulish fruit.

  Forluss wrapped the rope around the tree-trunk and tied it off. ‘Goodbye, old Four-Hand. Sleep well,’ he chuckled, even having the sadistic audacity to blow Farden a kiss.

  The four men climbed into the cart. The wide-eyed cows were whipped into action, and within minutes they were trundling down the flint road and disappearing into the west.

  Farden, wrapped in darkness, watched it go through narrow slits. The pain was melting away with every arduous pound of his dying heart. The chasm of death, black like the innards of an elf well, was yawning, and Farden was falling down it.

  So this is it, he told himself, as his heart came to a faltering stop. His eyes stayed open just long enough for him to see the sun fade behind a cloud and send shadows flitting across the moorland, the crow swooping to catch something, and the dark blotch of a figure standing in the distance, boots kicking flints from the road.

  Part Two

  To The Dead (Revenge)

  1568 years ago

  ‘Stonefoot.’

  A subtle slide of the leg. Back as straight as a flagpole. A slight bend of the knees. Korrin felt the ground grip him as he felt it with his cold, bare toes.

  ‘To Havestus.’

  The blade flicked up over his head. His grip slid down its handle, cupping the pommelstone. He held it as if were the bitter wind itself.

  ‘To Shiverstance.’

  Feet slid swiftly back over frozen soil. Elbows dropped like bricks. The long-sword swung in sweeping figure-of-eight arcs. The metal whined as it spun through the morning air.

  There was a pause as Gaspid walked around him, ducking the blade to test the tension of the lad’s arms and legs. He nodded, to himself more than Korrin, and held up a thick wooden staff. Korrin shifted his weight and his windmilling blade and clove the staff in two with a cracking thud. The splinters had barely landed before he was back in stance.

  ‘Good,’ smiled Gaspid. ‘Into Dassen.’

  Korrin grunted as he wrestled the momentum of the heavy sword into stillness. With a clap of his bare soles on the earth, he jumped and landed with his legs split, one forward, one back, sword jutting upwards into an imaginary throat.

  ‘Who are you aiming for? Balimuel?’ chided Gaspid, knocking the tip of the sword down a good foot with what was left of his staff. ‘Waterfall, and to salute,’ came his last instruction. Korrin rose to his tiptoes, swung the sword in a low arc, and then slammed his heels together. He flicked the imaginary blood from its edges, held the cold blade to his nose, then sheathed it.

  ‘I say. Very good, lad,’ Gaspid remarked. ‘Keep on like that and you’ll be better than me.’

  Korrin nodded and bowed. ‘Will you tell me now?’ he asked, calming his breathing. Gaspid rubbed his moustache.

  ‘The insistence of the young,’ he mused. With an expression that feigned annoyance, he gestured to the edge of the training platform, where the tower fell away to empty space and far-below ice, the place where Korrin spent his spare hours every night and morning, watching the wolves in the distance. ‘This way,’ Gaspid ordered. Korrin followed and together they stood over the icy countryside, as if they were vultures.

  A year had passed since he had toppled Balimuel. A year since the Pens had barked his name into the misty sky. A whole year can mean everything. It had felt like ten.

  Did he feel different? Korrin couldn’t begin to count the ways. He looked down from the vista to his fists. They were white after the morning’s practice. His knuckles were in a constant state of callous. He looked to his bare arms. The scars of sparring and conditioning were like worms under his tanned skin. He couldn’t help but smirk. Where once his body had been that of a farmboy: lean, average, scrawny in places, powered only by passion, it was now carved from steel, trained and beaten into a powerful machine, like one of the forge-engines the Smiths kept in their caverns. With every tough new day that passed, he felt more like a visitor in a stranger’s body. It could now do things and move in ways that he had thought impossible, things that a year of constant and relentless training had beaten into him. He no longer thought about doing something, he simply did. Training. Korrin shook his head. Torture, more like, but both turned a man as hard as he.

  And he had loved almost every moment of it.

  His mind had flourished with his body. It too had become a confident and practised machine. Calculating. Silent. Controlled. That fire that had burnt in him through the testing, the fire that long ago had driven him to sneak out the green wooden door of his father’s farm that cold, misty morning, still burnt as strong as ever. Balimuel and Gaspid had taught him to nurture it and channel it. What he lacked in experience he made up for with pure yearning. The more he trained, the further away the farm slipped.

  On the long nights, watching the slow dance of the moon and the misty blue tendrils of the Wake flutter through the star fields, Korrin sometimes allowed a tired, but contented smile to wander onto his face. He had escaped his peasant name and its muddy, pig-filled destiny. He had defeated his f
ather’s ideas and become the man he had always dreamt of being. The man of his grandfather’s stories. A warrior like those in the story books he had pilfered from old Grast’s library. One of nine elite men and women chosen from thousands.

  But one question yet remained. Elites they were. That was unquestionable. Chosen they had been. But for what?

  ‘They’re allowing us one month,’ said Gaspid, more to the wind than to Korrin.

  Korrin almost didn’t hear him. ‘They’re what?’

  ‘Allowing us a month. Sending us home to say our final goodbyes.’

  The news was like a hot stone in his throat. ‘Why?’

  ‘The Pens and their ways, dear boy. We’ll never fathom them. We’ve barely seen another human besides ourselves and our minders in the last year, and now they’re turning us loose for an entire month.’

  Korrin frowned. ‘What if some of us don’t want to come back?’

  Gaspid laughed heartily at that. ‘Good one, lad. I do not suppose we should fear such a thing from you now, should we?’

  ‘Gäel’s been moaning again. Says he’s tired of all the mystery. Lop never stops talking of his tribe.’

  ‘We’ll have to see then, shall we not?’ chuckled Gaspid. He was a man obsessed with his own moustache. He was always either stroking it or combing it. Korrin had always imagined that it made up for his baldness, and that was why Gaspid was intent on keeping it.

  ‘Something tells me that we are almost at the end now, lad. We’re close to the reason why we’re here. Why else would they give us such a treat?’

  ‘Is that how you see it? A treat?’

  ‘Of course! Did you know I have over twenty brothers, Korrin lad? That I do. I’ve damn near forgotten all their names. Whatever is to become of us, I should like to see them one last time. Perhaps that is why the Pens are doing this.’