A Clash of Shadows (21 page)

“To me!” the leader called in a steady voice and didn’t let the situation bother him.

Katja held her sword high and attacked the nearest man. From the corner of her eye she saw someone separate from the fight by the hole and head towards them. The cart had vanished from sight. The two of them had to finish this.

Another arrow flew through the air and Serdra twisted to avoid it. The missile hit the slope just above her and their enemies took the chance to move higher up the slope.

Someone by the hole screamed and the air vibrated as the sorceries reached a climax. The knot within Katja seemed to expand. This situation would get worse still.

She wavered a moment and wondered whether to rush the archer or aid her mentor against these dangerous foes.

“Keerva!” Serdra suddenly shouted at Katja. It was the secret word for a goal. The woman then attacked the group fiercely. Katja believed she understood.

“Keerva!” Serdra shouted again and made it a war cry as she slashed at all of them.

Katja ran. She swerved past the fight and headed out of the hollow and after the cart. Serdra kept the men busy as they tried to surround her to cope with her lightning-flash attacks. One man tried to go after Katja but Serdra used the opportunity to slash him in the thigh. The man fell but another one came running before she could slash again.

This was bad.

Katja lost sight of the battle and saw the top of the hollow. She beat down the urge to return and aid her mentor. The woman was fighting to keep them busy, to buy Katja a chance to go after the sarcophagus, rather than fighting to survive and win.

The third arrow whizzed through the air and hit a tree Katja ran past. Then the thicket received her and she had escaped for the moment. She knew the Night Hand would make every effort to catch her and that Serdra would make every effort to prevent that. The result of that was out of her hands.

She had a sick, ugly feeling she was starting to recognize and suddenly howls resounded through the dark forest as the Brotherhood’s sorcery bore fruit.

“Demons!” someone shouted needlessly.

This was followed by a piercing wail of pain and more bestial howls.

Don’t die Serdra
, she thought as she ran upwards.
This is too big for me. Don’t die today.

She felt her youth and inexperience pour over her. She wasn’t up for dealing with a Death Lord. Serdra had made a mistake.

Katja’s foot snagged on a root and she fell forward. Her left shoulder smacked into a tree and she sank down on her stomach.

“Klutz!” she hissed and sprang up. She shut out the pain in the shoulder and tried to convince herself that the blow had been minor and wouldn’t hinder her in the coming fight. She mustn’t lose because of clumsiness.

She heard the creaking of wood and the groans of men and the clattering of wheels over roots and earthy mounds. The men with the cart were a short distance ahead. She was running through a somewhat higher and more thickly-wooded area than they, but perhaps that was for the best. She could perhaps cut them off and surprise them.

Like a raptor, from the air!
she thought and tried to focus completely on the task. She tried not to think of the dead village or Serdra or the consequences of failure or how winded she was and how often she banged into trees or sturdy branches.

The ground ahead suddenly opened and the light incline turned into a nearly vertical slope. Katja came to a skidding stop on the edge. She heard water below, but couldn’t see it. She took a moment to wonder whether to run up behind the Night Hand or try to wade whatever lay below. She looked to the north, where the noise came.

The sword fell from her grasp and she screamed. The pain came from every direction and stabbed her everywhere. Her head was full of needles and could neither see nor breathe. Her heart seemed to be exploding from force. The world was nothing but darkness and pain and agony.

A death curse.

The word leapt up from her mind and she remembered Aron Vogn’s death.

No no no no!

She found her will and wielded it against the cloud that was smothering her. It was like trying to hold up a collapsed roof, but she pushed back and fought the spell.

She screamed again and became aware that she had fallen. The world spun and beat her all about the body until darkness took over.

--------------------

Arvar lowered the sword and looked at his brethren. They had a moment’s elbow room to get organized about the situation.

The Night Hand seemed to have scattered into the dark of the forest once the demons entered the game and the cart had vanished from sight. Arvar briefly wondered which of those two had been relevant to that decision, but shook it off. He had more important things to think of and thinking of the Night Hand as invincible wouldn’t help. His men had already killed two and the demons left behind the shredded remains of the third before running the rest.

They gathered by the edge of the hollow and three men immediately took up positions as guards.

“Getting into a double fight was damnably poor luck,” Arvar said and looked at Vajan. “I wasn’t expecting your Red friend.”

“Neither was I,” Vajan said, looking thoughtful and held out his hand. Arvar returned his knife.

“But let us not forget that another one is about and likely much more dangerous.”

“Indeed, we must act expediently,” Arvar said. He moved a bit higher up on the edge and looked over the men.

“Bori, take those five,” he said and pointed, “and go straight after our enemies. If you don’t find them then try to find the cart; they will surely gather about it once order returns. And if possible, let them and the other Redcloak batter one another. Let us not waste another such opportunity.”

He turned to Vajan.

“Take your boys and try to find the girl and make sure she is dead. And if successful or if you don’t find her, then try to either support Bori or overtake the Night Hand. If they don’t mean to use the road out of the village they must break through the forest and there can’t be many possible routes.”

“And what if they pass through the village?” Vajan asked. “The Hand and the other Red?”

“Then Karvam and I will have something ready for them. Now hurry. This forest belongs to us and we will keep it that way. All who know of our plans here must die.” He looked at Karvam. “Come. We must get ahead of the cart.”

18.

Katja was in pain.

She felt nothing else and wasn’t even sure whether she could move. It was as if she were lost somewhere; floating about through the history of the area.

But something pushed at her. Some sensation that didn’t leave her be and pulled her out of the darkness. It was a sound.

She grew aware of a presence of some kind and identified the sound as cooing. Finally she managed to open her eyes.

She saw a large, white dove, which sat on a rock and watched her. The bird was strangely visible in the darkness. It was almost as if a single beam of moonlight reached the ground and illuminated it. It cooed again.

Katja opened her mouth to say something but water flooded in past her lips and she coughed. It just sucked more water down her throat and she spent a few moments fighting to get her body moving. The drowning panic gave her strength and she managed to turn over on her back.

She lay in a bog. Katja blinked water from her eyes and saw the slope she had fallen down. Memory and consciousness returned in bits and she remembered that she was in danger.

The Death Lord!

Katja sat up with a moan and tried to recover her sense of time. How long had she been unconscious? Where was Serdra? Where was the sarcophagus?

Katja looked at the dove. The bird was gone.

Just then she heard rustling up above. She looked up and saw a glint of light approach the edge of the slope.

The sword!

She rolled about in bog water and for the weapon. The world spun before her eyes and her head felt made of loosely interlocked plates. She tried to rise to her knees but fell forward onto her face.

Get it together
, she said to herself.
Get it together.

The rustling stopped and was replaced by whispering. She felt for the knife and was slightly relieved to find it in the sheath.

“I heard something,” a man whispered and Katja froze.

“And I found something,” said a voice Katja recognized. “I know this sword,” Vajan added.

He walked to the edge. The light illuminated him from behind and Katja saw her sword in the Brotherhood man’s hand. Her own anger over it, in light of everything else, surprised her.

Vajan motioned for a man behind to come closer. Katja carefully rolled up protruding from the bog and tried to find cover behind it.

The one with the lantern moved up to his leader. He was a broad man with thick hair and a small beard. He held the lantern off the edge and Katja held her breath as the light approached her. The others joined their fellows and lined up on the edge. There were five of them.

“It looks like something happened here,” Vajan said quietly and seemed to be examining the spot where she had fallen. She knew she ought to lie as flat as possible, but couldn’t resist keeping her eyes on her enemy.

Vajan was the first one down. He went over the edge and let himself slide nimbly down. He stepped into the bog water with both hands on the sword and immediately began investigating his surroundings. He was looking for a corpse.

The others clambered down after him and the one with the lantern took the lead. Katja used the splashing of their feet as cover to move about and try to always keep the mound between herself and them.

“She hardly just threw the weapon away,” a man with an axe in his hands said.

The one with the lantern had two long knives in his belt. The third had a sheathed sword as well as a quiver on his back and a bow in his hand. Yet another one had a long axe and a short, thin man had a spear.

“Hardly,” Vajan agreed. Katja watched him through the tall grass. His eyes were alert and went carefully over everything before them. “And not the helmet either.”

Katja realized the helmet had fallen off her head.

“Perhaps she fell here and the other Red carried her off,” the thin man suggested.

“Perhaps,” Vajan said. “But then she must have been in quite the hurry to leave behind a good weapon.” The man slowly through the air. “I suspect our prey is nearby.”

He signalled for them to spread out a bit more and one of the axemen headed towards the little mound. Now Katja did stick her head down.

The man stopped about two  away. Katja bit her lip and had difficulty believing that the grass and mound could conceal her but t man didn’t shout out as she expected.

She heard the other walk about and the light of the lantern grew more distant.

“How shall we do this?” someone asked. “Shall we split up?”

Katja felt for the knife as she heard the splashes of the axeman in this foul wetness. He was searching. How quickly could she get to her feet? Was she able to fight?

“Let us eliminate any doubt before taking such a risk,” Vajan said. He was further away than before. “She might have staggered a few  and then drowned.”

The nearby man was almost upon her. She made a desperate, final attempt to think of something clever but the time for thought was over. She sprang to her feet with the knife in hand.

He wasn’t quite facing her but reacted quickly to her rising from the muddy water. She grabbed him with her left hand and thrust at his neck with her right. The man shook off the clumsy grip almost instantly and drove the axe handle into her chest.

Katja landed on her back.

“There!” someone shouted in the same moment and the rhythmic splashing of their feet became a continuous din. They were coming.

The man she had stabbed at advanced on her with the axe. Katja swung her legs up over her head and rolled into a reverse somersault. The axe hit the bog with a splash.

Katja rose and her enemy wobbled a bit. She stumbled back one step and then ran off without looking back. The second blow grazed her back. She had neither consciousness nor time to wonder whether the mail shirt had held. The blow threw her forward and had trouble doing their job.

This is how I die
, she as her head seemed to brush against the water. But the recovered her balance kept on running.

She heard a bump behind her and the splashing slowed down a bit.

“No!” Vajan said. “He is finished! Don’t let her get away!”

Did I get him?

There was no point in thinking of it, any more than how far she could run or whether the feeling of emptiness in her skull would pass before any further fighting. There was no point in caring about pain or letting fatigue dictate her speed. They didn’t face such hindrances and would catch her if she acted like she did.

She forced her lungs to work and her legs to keep pushing on with full force.

The forest received her. The splashing turned into rustling and snaps. She focused on not stumbling over something and ignored the branches smacking her in the face.

“Don’t lose sight of her!” someone shouted. “And stick together!”

Katja looked over her shoulder a moment. She saw a man with an axe and another one with a sword, then she smacked into a tree and kept going.

She arrived at something large and dark. She let fate decide and charged straight into it. It turned out to be a thick mass of branches and bushes, as she had suspected. She fought with all her strength to squeeze through the little, zig-zagging space available and simply smashing obstacles.

The Brotherhood men broke in after her, but they didn’t have fear driving them on. Katja got out on the other side, into a rather open area that still couldn’t count as a clearing. She picked a broad, vine-wrapped tree a few  away and leapt into cover behind it.

She drew three breaths and then heard the first one break out after her and the next was right behind.

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know!”

The rest broke out of the thicket and from the sound of it spread out a bit. She lay down in the grass and crawled away from them and behind another tree. Then she rose again.

“If she gets away we will have lost her,” someone said.

I don’t mean to lose you
, Katja thought as she snuck between covers. The rage over the village’s fate had started boiling over the rim now that the shock had passed and she had a moment’s peace.

Why had they done it? What in the world was worth such horror?

She waited briefly in the cover and tried to tell the footsteps apart. One seemed to be approaching her tree. She peeked and saw a faint silhouette in the darkness. He wasn’t facing her. He seemed to be heading the other way .

Katja counted to three as she listened to the man’s footsteps and then crept from behind the tree.

She glided on silent feet as Serdra had taught her in the hills above Maron’s homestead. A mere five steps brought her up behind him and she struck before instinct could warn him.

She kicked into the back of his knee and brought him down on the other one. She drove the knife down into his neck.

It was the archer. The bow fell from his left hand but the long knife wound up under the torso when the man fell forward in the start of death. Katja heard the first shout from his comrades. She only had a moment.

She stuck the knife between her teeth, snatched the bow off the ground and a few arrows just as they attacked.

Then she ran from them.

“Damn it! All at once!” Vajan shouted. “Don’t lose her again.”

She looked back as she ran. They kept up with her and she had no time to loose an arrow at them.

She saw a broad, fallen trunk ahead and an opportunity with it. She leapt over it, came to a hard stop beyond it and turned around. She dropped all the arrows but one, which she put on the string. All the training now paid off tenfold and arranging the missile and pulling it back only took a moment.

The one in the lead threw himself to the side and into cover the moment the arrow flew. Katja bent down for another one and once that one was ready she had lost sight of the men.

Katja quickly looked both ways. She seemed to have enough space to spot the bastards if they tried to circle around to her. She would hopefully be able to pull and release the arrow before they got too close. Assuming she was correct.

What now, Katja?
she thought harshly and began to question this idea. They would hardly sit in hiding for long. They
needed
to kill her.

She let a quiet sigh out through her teeth and bent down. Then she crept a bit to the left. There seemed to be more space there and hopefully easier to use a bow.

She knelt by some tall grass and waited for the moment to draw the arrow all the way.

Just then she felt something new. Something evil and rotten and unnatural. Katja looked in the direction it came from. This new disturbance was some distance away. She hadn’t oriented herself within the forest but felt the distance roughly matched the distance she assumed was to the village. This was reminiscent of the Brotherhood’s sorcery but was different than anything she had detected before.

What is going on?

She heard a sound that snatched her attention back to the situation at hand. She squinted into the darkness and saw something move on her side of the trunk. She didn’t see it well but it fit a bent-over human silhouette. It was headed to the spot she had positioned herself on earlier.

Katja drew the arrow back and saw some reaction pass through the man; he had probably seen her. She estimated his position in an instant and released the arrow.

The man moved but it was too late. He issued a choked scream and it sounded like she had hit him in the throat.

“Karl!” shouted one of the voices she had been hearing. It was followed by the rapid footsteps of two men, and from separate directions at that. They were at a hard sprint and Katja suddenly realized she had left the other arrows by the trunk.

She cursed silently and sprang to her feet. She lost her balance and stumbled a few steps, still feeling effects from the curse. She toughed it off.

She sprinted with all her strength
, strength she couldn’t maintain for more than a few moments, to create some elbow room and saw that she had arrived among several overgrown, man-high lengths.

She struck a pose with the bow in her left hand and the knife in her right and went over her surroundings before the fight. These weren’t rocks or natural mounds. Only humans were this precise. These were ancient walls.

Katja spotted a hole on her right, which was either a collapsed portion or a doorway. Then they came.

Vajan still had her sword and the other one held an axe in both hands.

Katja dove through the opening and out the other side. On her right was nothing but a wall, a trap that would cost her life when they cornered her. And ahead was nothing but dense forest. She ran to the left along the wall. She heard another one of them running to the opening, but then saw the other one come around the wall and head right at her.

It was the axeman. And Vajan would flank her after a moment. There was no time for complex plans.

She ran straight at the axeman with the knife at the ready and he raised his much longer weapon and braced for the meeting. When three metres were between them she threw the bow at his head. He flinched a bit and Katja bowed beneath the axe swing and stabbed him in the gut.