Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (66 page)

Only a man.

A traitor and a murderer certainly, but that made
him less not more. Aedan had been trained to fight such as these.

And then it struck him that Rork was making that
most inexcusable of mistakes – he was underestimating his adversary and
exposing himself with a wild, undefended attack.

Aedan gathered himself and lunged, thrusting at
the soldier’s chest. The tip pierced the armour, but barely. It produced little
more than a deep scratch. Aedan recognised, from the exercises with pig
carcasses, the springy feel of hitting a rib. Rork leapt back, clutching his
chest, seeing the patch of blood on his hand. He smiled.

“So you want to fight now, do you? That suits me
fine.” He stepped forward and unleashed a series of cuts that Aedan managed to
block and deflect, but he was driven backwards.

“Aedan!” Liru cried. “He’ll push us over the edge!
Don’t step back again!”

Aedan had no advantage or opportunity, but neither
did he have a choice. He lunged forward. His thrust was easily parried and Rork
swung the pommel across into Aedan’s eye, then drove a knee into his midriff. Aedan
collapsed and, by sheer force of hard-learned habit, rolled away as the point
of a longsword sparked off the ground beside him. Dun had been strict. Boys who
lay and groaned after an injury were punished severely enough to purge them of
the habit.

Completing the turn, Aedan lunged along the ground
at Rork’s ankle. The steel nipped through the skin and Rork leapt back, giving Aedan
the space to scramble to his feet.

He realised he would not be given another chance
like the first. This was a soldier who had picked many fights and won them all.
As he watched Rork take his guard, he noticed the sturdy foot placement and the
ease with which he flicked the long blade from side to side. Rork favoured the
double grip, it was becoming clear now. His feet were planted wide and square
for powerful swinging. It was a single-minded, forward-focussed style that was
slightly rigid, leaving his back rounded, shoulders and neck tight, and his
eyes blind to anything that might threaten him from behind.

It gave Aedan an idea.

He remembered how Liru had been trained and how
they had worked together when teamed against Osric. Without turning, he spoke.

“
Liru, kiel na aviestros le malatia ena. Keu ni
ra nam.
” It was Fenn. He did not trust his Sulese at such a moment. He knew
Rork spoke Orunean, but no more. Liru came up behind Aedan.

“So you think you can protect your wench, do you?”
Rork jeered. “Want her to stay behind you? Let’s see you manage that.”

Aedan did not smile, but he could have. Rork had failed
to notice Liru slip a long dagger from the sheath behind Aedan’s back and
conceal it in her sleeve.

The next attack was brutal. Blows fell like rocks.
It was all Aedan could do to keep from being sliced in two. The man’s guard was
impenetrable. The length of his blade preserved a distance too great to permit
any kind of counter; not that Aedan could have exploited one if it had appeared
– he was staggering under the onslaught. Twice he had been too slow to recover
and almost lost his arm. Two cuts, one deep, bled freely. Blood ran down onto
his hand, slicking the grip.

For all the tricks he had learned, this man’s
practiced skill and far greater strength were too much. Rork drove him along
the edge of the platform. Aedan blocked a furious swipe. His left hand broke
from the slimy grip and he stumbled to the ground. Rork stabbed and Aedan was
not quick enough this time. The tip drove into his left shoulder and held him
on the stone. Rork lifted the sword up over his head.

Liru was no fool. As soon as Rork had separated Aedan
from her, she had trailed the big swordsman. His frontal style kept his neck tight
and his attention forward, so he had no idea of the danger that stalked him. Aedan
had seen her raise the blade more than once, and he knew what held her back.
She had seen the force of Aedan’s thrust reduced by the armour. Her attack
would need to find a chink, and would need to be pinpoint accurate. It would also
need to be a surprise, so there would be only one opportunity. She could not
afford to squander it.

But now her eyes enlarged, her jaw locked and Aedan
knew she had committed. She darted forward and drove the narrow blade deep into
the exposed armpit, withdrawing it in the same instant. Rork screamed and spun
towards Liru. From where he lay, Aedan reached up and thrust his sword deep
into Rork’s leg, then fell back beneath the sweep of the longsword, narrowly
escaping decapitation. The blade cut through his shirt and sliced across his chest.
He rolled to the side as the enraged soldier prepared for another cut. He heard
Rork shout again, and saw Liru dancing away with a crimson dagger dripping,
while Rork clutched his other leg.

The man staggered, but he was far from spent. And
he had learned their tactic. Keeping now to the parapet, he clenched his sword
in one hand. Aedan got to his feet, but he was dizzy from the injuries and
struggled to keep his distance from the advancing soldier. He tripped over the
pile of shoes and almost fell down the stairs while backing away. The longsword
rang on the stone where he had sprawled an instant earlier. Liru darted in, but
Rork swung on her too quickly and she avoided the blade by a hair, ducking
beneath it and diving away.

“
Ena bruer
,” Aedan called: I tire. He was
losing strength faster than Rork. He had hoped to wear the man down, but he
could see that it was not going to work. They needed to do something else, and
quickly.

“
Nega ra loyi. Ena lok
,” she said: Make him
stand. I throw.

Aedan knew that this would leave her defenceless
if she missed. But he could think of nothing better. He stopped retreating,
braced his feet and took his guard. To his right, Liru stood. He knew she was
estimating the turn of the dagger and measuring the distance to her target. He
had seen her practicing. She could hit a small tree from that distance eight or
nine times out of ten. Getting the turns right was always the tricky part. The
first throw could sometimes strike on the handle or the length of the blade. As
well as getting this rotation right on the first throw, she would need aim for
neck or head – small targets. She was not strong enough to pierce armour.

Aedan glanced down to his left. The parapet was
low – barely over his knee – and beyond that, air. Deep air. A long free,
uninterrupted drop to the ground.

Rork approached, keeping to the edge. He could not
afford to let Liru circle him again. He prodded fast and hard. Aedan parried,
weakly, dropping to one knee. Rork grinned and drew back, preparing to run Aedan
through.

Liru’s action was quick, no swaying or lurching,
just a sliding back of her arm and an even throw. The dagger sang as the blade
flashed in the late sun, sliced through the air and cut Rork across the back of
the neck.

The turn had been a fraction too slow and where he
should have received the point, it was the edge that struck his skin, leaving
no more than a shallow gash. The dagger glanced off. Aedan saw it spinning away
over the edge, growing smaller and smaller until he lost it against the distant
grass.

He staggered to his feet and braced himself. He
did not see a way through this, but he would not cringe again.

“It was a good throw. You did well,” he said to
Liru, not caring now that Rork understood.

Liru was moving around on the platform, but Aedan
could not afford to look. His eyes were fixed on the swishing longsword.

“It was a pig of a throw!” she yelled. “But this
one won’t miss.”

Aedan and Rork both turned to glimpse something streaking
towards Rork’s head. He raised his hands to ward it off, stepped backwards, and
caught his heel on the low parapet. With a mounting scream and swinging arms,
he tipped slowly away and dropped into the emptiness beyond the platform,
twisting and tumbling through the air. The cries faded, faded, and then ended
abruptly.

Aedan could find little pity for this soldier who
would have murdered children, though, he decided, he was feeling a lot less
like a child.

Liru came up and guided him away from the edge.

“How did you find another weapon?” Aedan mumbled,
remembering now that he still had a knife he could have given her.

“Hush, Aedan. You have lost too much blood. I need
to get help to bring you down those stairs or you will fall.”

She made him lie down, then bound the wounds with strips
cut from his shirt.

“Don’t attempt the stairs, you hear me?” she said.

Aedan looked at her.

“Promise me Aedan.”

“Promise,” he said.

She knelt down and put her hand on his good
shoulder, looking at him with uncharacteristic softness. “Because if you do, I
really will mix poison into the salve.” She smiled in the simple, direct way he
knew so well, the rare smile he had missed for so long.

He smiled back.

Then she squeezed his shoulder and left.

Aedan felt happy tears slipping down his cheeks as
her footsteps receded. If his chest had not ached so, he might have laughed.

The late summer air was warm on his skin. He
closed his eyes. Time passed, and he began to drift.

But before he could find sleep, something
disturbed him – a sound that did not accord with Liru’s return or wind in the
ivy. It was a soft, drawn-out scraping, and with every breath he took, it grew
louder.

Long shadows stretched over the grass. They were the
shadows of giant statues, silent watchmen that were even more imposing for their
silence – a soldier with a spear, a robed and hooded man clutching a twisted
knife, a strange lizard-like being with terrible claws and a tail, a giant with
a club hidden behind his back, and many more that encircled the fortress. But
it was the giant that broke the stillness. At first it might have seemed a
shadow, a trick of the light, but a closer look would have revealed that a
shape was moving, flowing like a dark stream of liquid rock over the statue’s
back. Flowing upward.

Aedan’s dreamy thoughts vanished and he propped
himself up on his elbows. The sound was growing louder, drawing nearer. He
could almost feel it in the stone now. He decided that, in spite of Liru’s
warning, he had no choice but to attempt the stairs.

The numbing battle-fire had cooled, and his wounds
ached as he turned over – and froze. The trapdoor was only a few feet away, yet
it was too far. He would not make it.

Each lemon-sized eye glittered like a gem in the
sunlight, even more radiant for the setting of leathery scales which were still
coated in the museum’s dust.

Aedan held his breath.

The snake glided swiftly around him, more and more
of its long body being pulled up onto the platform until he was surrounded.

As slowly as he could, he rolled to his side and
drew his knife – Liru had taken the sword. Then, by gradual inches, he pushed
his weight up onto one knee and slid a foot out and forward. That would provide
the balance he would need. The snake had stopped coiling. It was facing away,
but turned and watched him now.

He remembered how Osric had aimed for the eye. This
would be a much easier throw – a half turn. He rotated the knife in his fingers
until he was holding it by the blade. If the snake held still during the
movement of his arm he would be unlikely to miss, and the eye would be ruined.

But the snake did not hold still.

It rose up, solid as a tree trunk, and looked down
at him. The knife shook in Aedan’s hand, but he held onto it and fixed his
attention within a ridged and featured iris, concentrating on the large, round
pupil in which he and all of Kultûhm were clearly reflected. The way the head
faced, the right side presented the most direct target. But as he took aim, the
strangest feeling of reluctance came over him.

It was in those eyes. This was not the mere
calculation of a predator. The look of intelligence he had seen or imagined in
the face of the great fox – it was the same here. These creatures were not just
bigger. There was more that was changed in them than size.

But while that colossal serpentine monster had
chilled him with its air of ancient cunning, this animal had the look of a
child – full of questions, full of awe, drinking in the world around it,
gulping as fast as it can and still being flooded. And the way it was looking
at him was almost the way a child … but that was impossible.

Relaxing his throwing arm, he let his eyes travel
over the creature before him. This was the snake he had woken. The marks of his
hands still lingered on the dusty sides of its magnificent head. Frog indeed!

How long had it slept? For dust to gather like
this, it must have been years well beyond his lifetime, or many lifetimes. What
was it thinking while holding his gaze?

And that was when he had the most overwhelming
impression that the snake was not only thinking but speaking, or trying to
speak, though it had no words.

It lowered its head, one tentative inch at a time,
and approached his. Every master in the academy would have condemned what Aedan
now did. He loosened his grip on the blade until it had almost dropped, and
then reached out the other hand. The snake blinked, watched for some time, and
began to lean forward.

It was the growing racket of footsteps from the
stairs that broke the spell. The snake swung across and peered down through the
trapdoor in a movement so fast that there was no doubting its strength. It
turned back to Aedan, this time pausing only inches before him, then darted
over the edge, its long body whisking around the platform and slipping over the
parapet. Aedan crawled to where it had disappeared. He looked over to see a dark
trunk gliding along the body of the giant, around its club, and down towards
the plain.

“Aedan! What are you doing over there? Come back
here!” It was Liru using her angry-nurse voice, one that normally produced
instant obedience. But this time Aedan beckoned for her to join him. She, Senbert
and Holt approached the parapet at a crouch and looked down where Aedan was
pointing. From this height it looked like an earthworm or a centipede slipping
through grass towards the fortress. When it reached the stone walls, it rose
up, pressed itself into a corner between wall and turret, and threaded its way
up as easily as a man would climb a ladder.

“What made you look for it?” Liru asked.

There was no reply. Aedan had lost consciousness.

It was the restful sounds of a camp that awoke him –
crackling fire, wind-shaken leaves, quiet talk. When he smelled stew, he tried
to sit up, only to groan and flop back down again. There was another fire in
the camp – it was located in his shoulder. And his head felt like it had been
boiled. In fact, his whole body seemed to have been subjected to some horrible torture
and drained of strength.

Liru rushed over and put a hand to his forehead.

“The food is not ready yet. I’ll give you a bowl
when it’s done. You rest now. Are you thirsty?”

“As sand,” he croaked.

Liru handed him a waterskin and Aedan drank until
he had to break for air. When he passed the skin back it was empty.

“Chew this,” Liru said, putting something that
tasted like a stick into his mouth.

“What is it?”

“Willow bark. Might help with the pain.”

“By distracting me with the taste?”

Tyne came over and sat down, but did not attempt
to nurse him. She appeared almost to defer to Liru. Aedan looked puzzled at
this and Tyne read his expression.

“Liru knows more about the physician’s arts than I
do,” she said. “I expect she knows more than her instructors at the academy.”

“I can believe that,” said Aedan, talking around the
half-chewed bark and noting with amusement how Liru refused to show any
bashfulness at being the subject of the discussion.

“Liru told us what you did, Aedan. Rork was a
well-known fighter, and a ruthless one. None of us would have enjoyed facing
him. Except Osric perhaps. We are all very impressed with you. You overcame
your fear. When Osric heard what happened he looked as proud as a father.”

“It was Liru who knocked Rork off the platform.”

“We can all see by the injuries where his
attention was focussed. Liru would never have had her chance had he not been
completely fixed on you, and that could not have happened unless you were a
threat to him. It was your courage that gave Liru the opportunity she needed. Both
of you have earned great respect.”

Aedan had lost too much blood to colour with the
praise, but he did feel Tyne’s words warming him. “Where are we?” he asked
after a brief silence.

“About seven or eight miles from the fortress,” she
replied. “Osric, despite his injuries, wanted to cover more ground, but Liru has
been protecting you with some ferocity. She did not think you were fit to
travel any further with your loss of blood. She said that if we carried on she
would remain here with you. She’s a very stubborn girl.”

Aedan smiled.

“It was amusing to see them glaring at each other,”
Tyne continued. “I don’t think Osric has experienced that in a while.”

“I did not wish to be insubordinate,” said Liru, “but
the general, he was worried about uncertainties, and it was a certainty that Aedan
would not last long being bounced around on a horse’s back. Among my people, it
is the doctor who makes these decisions.”

“Don’t worry,” said Tyne, “Osric is not angry. He suspected
it was the right call from your first objection. If he had really believed you
wrong he would have tied you to your horse and led it himself – for your own
good.” She rose and sniffed her coat. “I’m going to wash this reeking slime
off. Don’t want it spoiling the taste of supper.”

“No!” said Aedan, sitting up and collapsing again
with another groan. “Don’t wash it off. Nobody must wash it off. The wolves –
last time it was the smell that kept them at a distance. Maybe they are afraid
of it.”

“But it stinks!”

“So does the belly of a wolf. And after the belly
it only gets worse.”

“Aedan!”

“Could the slime draw the serpent?” Liru asked.

“It didn’t follow us last time. But the wolves
did.”

Tyne sat back down again, wrinkling her nose.

“Tell me,” Aedan said, trying to ignore the
pounding in his head. “What happened in the staging room? How did you get past
the soldiers?”

“They didn’t give much trouble,” Tyne mumbled.

“Oh yes they did,” said Liru, interrupting as she
might do to an older sister. “Fergal told me what really happened. When he and
Tyne got Osric to the bottom of the stairway, they stopped at the tips of those
two soldiers’ swords – they’d armed themselves again, though the one had to use
his left hand. Osric was barely able to stay on his feet, and when they tried
to stab him, Fergal said it was as if someone had slapped a wasp nest. Tyne was
everywhere at once. By the time Fergal had found a weapon there was nobody left
to fight.”

Tyne was far less comfortable with being discussed;
she was studying some arbitrary point in the dark canopy of leaves.

“Osric was in danger you say?” Aedan asked. “Then I’m
not really surprised.”

Liru grinned.

Tyne glanced at them and blushed. “Ooh, you two
are merciless brats!” she said.

Later, Aedan finished three helpings of a stew that
tasted of beans and barley, and drained a second waterskin. Liru was delighted,
saying an appetite like that was good news to any doctor.

During the second watch, Aedan’s sleep became
shallow. Something was disturbing him, a sound that did not belong in his
dreams. His fingers closed around the knife handle. He opened his eyes without
moving and listened. There it was again, a soft metallic scrape. He turned his
head as quietly as he could. Tyne was on watch. Her tall outline moved
gracefully on the far side of the camp. But the noise he had heard was nearer.
He glanced towards the fireplace. Something seemed to be in front of the
embers, a dark silhouette, but he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it.

It moved.

Aedan jolted with such violence he almost lost his
knife, but he did not lose his voice and shouted for all he was worth. He tried
to jump to his feet and, instead, collapsed in a spasm of aches. The rest of
the party was up in no time, weapons in hand, converging on the fireplace as Aedan
pointed and continued shouting.

The creature stayed where it was, either unaware
or supremely confident.

Aedan was prepared for a horrifying attack – an
explosion of fangs and claws and a wild, thrashing escape, or a whirr of blades
and screams – but he was not prepared for the voice that now spoke from within
the crouching shape.

“Is there any more stew?” it asked. The voice was
familiar, yet it could not be.

“Merter?” Tyne’s voice trembled.

“Sorry for sneaking in. I didn’t want to wake
anyone after –”

That was as far as she let him get before smothering
him with a weepy hug. Poor Merter was crushed with embraces, handshakes and
back-claps until he looked almost panicked with claustrophobia.

The fire was rebuilt and everyone settled down to
hear the explanation.

“After that cage dropped away – Oh, and thank you
Tyne for getting me out, else I’d be done – I fell in stages until the
structure jammed just long enough for me to catch onto the wall. It was just at
the roof of the cave and I could see those giant coils directly beneath me –
that creature is even bigger than I’d thought. I heard you calling but I
decided that if I yelled back I’d be as likely to get the beast’s attention as
yours, so I moved into a corner of the rock channel and started climbing up.
The walls were rough and the holds were good. The corner also made things a lot
easier, but it still took most of the afternoon.

“By the time I got out, it was late and the
fortress was still as a crypt. I decided not to follow the highway of prints
you’d left through the dust and debris because I was afraid you might reset the
locks on the entrance and I have no idea how to open them from the inside. I
headed west instead, the main gate. I knew wolves would be about, and seeing as
I’d lost my sword in the cave, I broke into a large house and took two bronze
display swords – the steel swords were all rusted to nothing, and these are
really fine weapons.”