It was his turn to wave the issue aside. ‘Don’t be. My friend killed most of them. He’s very good at killing. I’m not.’
Kiska was caught off guard by this surprising claim, or confession. ‘Really? What are you good at then?’
Now came an unmistakable broad smile behind the scarf. ‘Living.’
Kiska almost shared the contagious smile before quickly turning away. After walking again for a while, she began, ‘Yes. I was a Claw. I trained as one. Was offered command of a Hand. But I refused. I withdrew.’
‘I thought they wouldn’t allow that,’ he said. ‘That they’d just kill you.’
‘Sometimes. If you go independent. Not if you join the regular ranks. Or, as I did, serve as a bodyguard within the Imperium.’
‘It must have been hard… walking away from all that…’
‘Not at all. It was simplicity-’ She stopped, peering aside. ‘What’s that?’
The undulating terrain had brought a hollow into view where a large dark shape lay twisted among broken ground. Jumbled tracks led from it off to their right.
‘It’s not moving,’ said Jheval.
Kiska gestured onward. ‘Let’s just keep going.’
‘We should at least take a look.’
She shook her head. ‘No. This is Shadow — we mustn’t involve ourselves.’
But Jheval was already heading down the slope. ‘Aren’t you even curious?’
‘This is no place for curiosity… or stupidity,’ she added under her breath, peering warily about. Yet follow she did. It was the fresh corpse of a titanic lizard beast. Upright, it would have stood twice her height. Its forearms ended in curved blades, battered and stained. Jheval was crouched by its great head. He had pulled down his face scarf.
‘So… this is K’Chain Che’Malle,’ he said, musing.
‘Yes. A warrior. One of their Kell Hunters.’
‘What is it doing here, I wonder.’
‘I have no idea.’ Whatever had happened, the beast’s death had not been easy. Great savage wounds gouged its sides and legs. Dried blood sheathed its scaled skin. Kiska noted a track close by and she knelt: an enormous paw-print wider across than the span of her hand. She straightened, rigid. ‘Jheval…’
The sandpaper hiss of the tail shifting warned them and one forelimb scythed through the air where Jheval had been crouching. His morningstars appeared almost instantly as blurs. The beast twisted, lumbered to its clawed feet. A kind of harness of leather and metal hung from it in tattered ruins. Kiska saw there was no point in running: the thing’s stride was greater than her height. Jheval desperately gave ground in a series of clashing parries, somehow deflecting each of the Kell Hunter’s ponderous slashes. Kiska was appalled; it seemed to her that any one of those blows could have levelled a building.
Since they could not outrun it she had to slow it down. And it seemed to be ignoring her. She lunged after the beast, long-knives drawn. A forward roll brought her within reach of its trailing leg and she slashed. A bellow of pain rewarded her, together with a blow from its tail that crushed the breath from her and sent her tumbling across the sands.
She awoke coughing and gagging. Jheval was crouched over her, water skin raised. She wiped her face and peered about. Off in the distance a trumpet roar of pain and frustration blasted the air.
‘You carried me.’
He sat heavily, out of breath. ‘No. I dragged you.’
‘Thank you so much.’
‘You’re welcome.’
She suddenly remembered what she’d found next to the fallen Kell Hunter and struggled to rise. ‘We have to move.’
He pressed her down gently. ‘No, no. You crippled it. And it was too stupid to know it was dead anyway.’
She batted his hand aside. ‘No, you fool.’ Then, failing to stand, she grabbed the hand. ‘Oh, help me up.’
He pulled her to her feet and she hissed, cradling her side. It felt as if someone had swung a tree at her. ‘We have to go,’ she gasped. ‘They might return.’
The man was eyeing her, suspicious. ‘Who?’
Clutching his shoulder, she tried a step. ‘The creatures that tore that Kell Hunter apart. The hounds. The Hounds of Shadow.’
‘Even they could not-’
‘Trust me,’ she said, impatient. ‘I’ve seen them.’ She took a tentative step all on her own. ‘Now, we have to go.’
The man was scanning the surroundings, scowling, clearly dubious. But at length he shrugged, acquiescing. ‘If you insist.’ He took her elbow to help her along.
The corpses may have been fishermen unlucky enough to have had their boat sink, or overturn. Perhaps. They were found tangled on the shore of the tiny Isle of Skytower, a rocky outcropping at the centre of Tower Sea. Yet since the sea, and the isle, were forbidden to all by order of the Korelri Chosen, it was unlikely they had arrived by choice.
Summoned by the watch, Tower Marshal Colberant, commander of the garrison, reluctantly climbed his way down the bare jumbled rocks of the isle’s steep shore. He was old, and frankly cared nothing for the world beyond his life’s duty overseeing this, the most isolated and secure fortress of the Korelri Chosen. Living fishermen or sailors from nearby Jasston or Dourkan barely interested him; their dead remains could hardly be worthy of his attention. But Javus, their youngest recruit to this, the most demanding and important posting achievable for all Chosen, had been very insistent. Such keenness ought to be encouraged.
So Colberant hiked up his long cloak and steadied himself with the haft of his spear as he carefully tested each foothold among the jagged black rocks that led down to the island’s desolate shore. Desolate because within Tower Sea no fish swam, no bird nested, and no plant spread its green leaves. For here against Skytower ages ago the full fury of the demon Riders smashed winter after winter while Colberant’s ancestors fought to complete the final sections of the great Stormwall. And here even now, after so many thousands of years, the land had yet to heal and find its life again.
Downslope, Javus waited a good man-height above the tallest of the high-water marks. At least, Colberant mused, the lad knew better than to extend an arm to help his ageing commander. Planting his spear, Colberant made a show of peering about. ‘So where are these bodies that have so spooked you, young Javus?’
The youth smiled, already familiar with his commander’s teasing manner. He slipped an arm from his wrapped cloak. ‘Just there, Marshal. And it is not the corpses that are unsettling — rather the manner of their passing.’
Colberant arched a sharp brow. ‘Oh?’ But the young Chosen, his gaze lowered, would say no more. The marshal probed the rocks and continued on a few more paces. Here he halted, then lowered himself to his haunches, both fists tight on the spear haft.
He would not have thought them corpses had he come across them alone. Tangled lengths of sun-dried driftwood, perhaps. More than ten individuals certainly, deposited high above the highest of all the tide lines. Yet each was as browned and desiccated as if found within a cave.
It had been many years since he, an elder among the Order of the Chosen, had heard of such things. Squatting on his aching haunches he glanced up at the heights of the black volcanic rock tower looming above them. They say the Blessed Lady spurns many and that few achieve permission to sit at her right hand. Is this a warning? Have we angered her with our weakness of late? Who was to know? Not even he, considered the most ardent in his devotion, dared guess her moods. He straightened, returned to the waiting Javus.
He smiled his reassurance. ‘Drowned fishermen. Their boat must have overturned. No matter how many times we tell them not to enter Tower Sea, still they come.’
The young man remained troubled. ‘With all respect, Marshal, I’ve seen drowned bodies. Those men and women have not been in the sea.’
Colberant shrugged his indifference, began searching for a way up. ‘The sun, then, has dried them since.’
‘I only say, Marshal, because I am from Skolati originally…’