A murmur of assent rose from the mercenaries. A moment later they were all on their feet, drawing straws to see who’d stay at the top and mark the path for Talon and the others when they came. That done, they began to pick their way down from the top of ridge. The first part was the worst, a sheet of rock a dozen feet high. Below that, a steep slope covered in springy tufts of grass fell away down towards the bottom of the bowl and more trees. Berren clambered down the rock face easily enough, while others simply jumped and then slid through the grass. From there, Tarn led them forward. The trees down here were different — the leaves lighter, sunlight streaming in through gaps in the foliage. The ground was covered with ferns and the soldiers crept among them, slow and silent.
Screams rang out again. The trees muffled the sound but everyone heard it. As they came closer, Tarn made a sudden gesture and the soldiers dropped. Berren did the same, although he had no idea what Tarn had seen. For a minute they stayed absolutely still. Then Tarn began to move again, hunched right down into the undergrowth. There was another short pause and he waved the rest of the cohort towards him.
‘I can smell the smoke on the air,’ he whispered. ‘When we’re close enough to see what this place is, we stay hidden unless I say otherwise. We stay out of sight until we see what’s here.’
More screams. This time they were sharp and clear. Tarn winced.
‘And once we’ve seen, then what?’ asked someone. ‘There can’t be more than a cohort here.’
Tarn ran his thumb across his throat. The rest of the soldiers nodded and grinned. ‘But we look first. No one moves until I say.’
At the edge of the trees Berren finally saw what the screaming was about. A crude wooden frame made from branches lashed together with ropes stood at the near end of the clearing. A man was tied to it, naked and spread-eagled. Three other men were clustered around him. They were untying him, and as they dragged him away back to the largest of the three buildings, Berren could see that the naked man’s back was bloody and raw. A minute later the men emerged again, hauling another man with them, kicking and struggling. They beat him until he stopped and soon had him tied to the frame. Berren looked away. He’d been on the wrong end of enough floggings in his years as a skag. ‘What is this?’ he whispered. ‘What is this place?’
Tarn shrugged. ‘Talon didn’t say. Could be all sorts of things. My guess is White Water Reavers.’ He spat. ‘Don’t see why anyone else would come all the way out into the middle of nowhere just to beat up a few slaves.’
Berren winced at the name. Pirates in small fast ships who sacked villages, killing the sick and the old and carrying away the rest to their ships to be sold as slaves to the insatiable Taiytakei. Word of them made veteran sailors turn pale and mutter words to the gods under their breath.
A sudden tension filled the air around him. Three more figures had appeared, walking towards the men at the whipping frame. One tall, two short, all three dressed from head to toe in grey. Berren could feel the silent snarls from the soldiers around him.
‘Death-mages!’ hissed Tarn, and almost as if he’d heard, the tallest of the three suddenly stopped. He turned and looked round, and now Berren saw his face.
Saffran Kuy. The warlock.
10
Time slowed. The warlock stared into the trees where Berren and Talon’s swords were hiding. The two other figures with him turned to stare as well. They were little more than children, a boy and a girl, although what children might be doing in a place like this was beyond Berren. He felt sick. A strange taste filled the air around him. He struggled to breathe. A few yards away, one of the soldiers sprang to his feet. Steel scraped on steel, swords drawn, and as one the mercenaries leaped forward and hurled themselves out of the trees. Berren stayed frozen, pinned like a butterfly by his memories of Deephaven. Of the warlock driving Berren’s own hand to cut out a piece of Berren’s own soul. Of the same hand striking down Radek of Kalda. If Kuy knew he was here, Berren was bound to obey the warlock’s every desire, just as he had when he’d murdered Radek.
Saffran Kuy turned to face the rush of soldiers. His hands twirled. Dark smoke boiled in the air around him and then broke into pieces, each piece darting outwards. The shadows struck Tarn and his men and coiled around their throats, yet Tarn and the others seemed not to notice. Then Kuy turned and hurried his two young charges away. The slavers who’d been flogging their prisoner ran with him.
Berren snapped out of his trance. He ran after the others, after the cries and shouts of surprise. Slavers still blinking in the sunlight were cut down where they stood, too shocked by the suddenness of Tarn’s onslaught to put up a fight. There were more men here than Tarn had thought. The soldiers seemed not to notice, though — they were after the warlock, chasing him down with a vicious certainty of purpose — sure of their victory; but Berren had seen those shadows before, wrapped around Radek’s throat, paralysing him. They were all in terrible danger and they didn’t even know it!
More slavers emerged, put to the sword before they understood what was happening. Kuy scuttled into the building from where the man on the whipping frame had been dragged. Tarn charged after him with his cohort; Berren followed more cautiously, skirting fallen bodies on the beaten earth. Some of the slavers weren’t dead yet; some reached out for him with their hands or their eyes, silently pleading for help; those who were hurt but knew they might yet live watched him with fear, hobbling or crawling away as fast as they could. Still more of them spilled out into the light, shouting and squinting and waving clubs and axes. Berren ignored them. He ran after Tarn and the rest into the building that had swallowed Kuy.
It was dark, windowless, lit only by dim curtains of sunlight that crept between the cracks in the walls. The air stank, the rancid stench of too many men in too little space, covered in their own filth. Berren had smelled it before, when his ship had carried a hold full of slaves for a few weeks. The smell had lingered for months, but here there was something else as well, something even more familiar, the old smell of rotting fish that he knew from Deephaven.
His eyes began to adjust. The soldiers had stopped. They were right in front of him, clustered in the centre of the room, formed up in a semicircle. They looked like men who’d cornered a tiger and now weren’t sure what to do with it. Each still had a swirl of dark mist coiling around him, and now that he was closer Berren could see the mist for what it was — the terrors that Kuy had summoned in Deephaven, the ones that he’d thrown at Tasahre until she’d called down the light of the sun and banished them.
Berren shivered. Couldn’t they see what was wrapped around them? But if they did, they didn’t show it.
His eyes shifted. Dozens and dozens of filthy naked men were fettered to the walls. In the corner the warlock was pressed among them. He had one hand reached out towards Tarn while the other clutched one of the prisoners. The boy and the girl in their robes — apprentices? — huddled next to him.
‘No closer.’ Kuy’s voice was thin. The strength and the venom that Berren remembered were gone. ‘Dance in the darkness with me and this life will be mine!’
‘You!’ One of the soldiers poked at Berren. ‘Watch the door! Keep them out!’
‘Sun and Moon protect us,’ muttered another.
Tarn shook his head. ‘Death-mage!’ he hissed. He raised his sword and took one lunging step.
The shadow around Tarn’s neck that only Berren could see drew tight. Tarn fell as though he’d been struck by an axe. A surge of anger swept over the others, but before they could throw themselves on Kuy and tear him to pieces, their terrors sprang to life too. The prisoner Kuy was clutching screamed. He began to spasm, twitching as black blood dribbled and then poured out of his mouth, until he finally slumped silent. A sudden darkness filled the room and a terrible keening wail began. Berren bolted, stricken with terror, too full of the memories of what he’d seen once before; but outside in the light a dozen slavers were waiting now, clustered together with swords and axes and spears drawn, watching from a distance. He skittered to a stop, not knowing which way to run. Behind him, the shouts and screams of soldiers and the chained slaves alike filled the room.