Heartwood (9 page)

As yet, there had been no sounds from inside the Domus. Chonrad drew his sword before placing his hand on the door handle and pushing it open.

He looked around him. He was in a wide corridor made of wood, and when he looked up he could see the walls of both sides of the corridor had been smashed through, as if something heavy had been thrown against them. Directly in front of him was another door, closed. To his right the corridor ran down to another doorway at the far end. To his left, the corridor ended in a flight of steps curving upwards to the first floor of the building.

“Those are the night stairs,” Beata whispered. “They lead up to the Dormitory and the Infirmaria, and we use them for the Night Service. I'll go up there, if you like.”

“Do you want the lantern?”

She shook her head. “I know the steps by heart.” She unsheathed her sword before walking to the bottom of the stairs. Silently, she began to climb.

He turned to Dolosus. “You should lead the way,” he murmured; “you know this place better than I.”

Dolosus nodded, unsheathed his own sword, stepped across the corridor and opened the door. Slowly, Chonrad and Fulco followed him through.

 

III

Beata made her way quietly up the night stairs, staying close to the wall as she climbed. It was completely black in the stairwell, but her feet had trodden the stairs in darkness every night for twenty-two years since she had arrived at Heartwood, and she knew each individual step, each crumbling edge and bump in the stone. Her breathing sounded loud in the silence, and she paused several times, sure someone was waiting in front of her. But her passage upwards remained unchallenged, and slowly she climbed to the top of the stairs.

When she got there, the oak door at the top was open, which was very unusual as the cold draught from the stairs made the dormitory cold and all the Militis were instructed from the time they arrived at Heartwood to keep it closed.

She sank into a crouch and waited, her eyes searching the darkness.

Beata was not easily shocked or frightened, and it was her calmness during moments of crisis and her unfailing commonsense that had led to her becoming Dean at the age of twenty-one. But it had been clear to Dulcis that Beata was a natural spiritual leader from a very early age. She had an inborn talent of being able to calm people and worked well with her companions both old and young.

However, in spite of her renowned unflappability, Beata had to admit to being nervous. The hilt of her sword felt clammy in her hands. She wiped them on her breeches before gripping the hilt tightly once again.

It couldn't be the darkness that was unsettling her, she thought. For one thing, the Lamb Moon was high in the sky and the Dormitory – though not brightly lit – glowed with a subtle light; and for another thing, she was used to moving around the Castellum at night. She had been used to years of groping around in the stairwells, finding the stairs with her feet.

No, it was something else… Something indefinable… Was it her just her imagination playing tricks on her, making her think there was something waiting for her in the shadows? Or were her instincts right?

The first floor dormitories consisted of a linked chain of almost circular chambers that formed the lobes of the leaf shape of the Castellum. She had to move through one room to get to the next. She looked around the beds of the first room, wondering if any Militis had been there when the water warriors arrived. The Custodes, who worked in shifts, slept in the Barracks outside the Castellum; it was mainly the Militis who carried out duties inside the Temple and who held positions in the Domus that slept there. They would have been at the Veriditas, and would probably have gone about their daily business afterwards and not gone up to the Dormitory.

She made her way through to the next room. The bottom edge of the oak leaf was the Infirmaria. There would have been several Militis there. She wondered what had happened to Otium, the Medica, in charge of those too old or unwell to work. A fierce, buxom knight, Otium would have brooked no nonsense and would have defended her patients to the death.

The rooms definitely seemed to be empty. Consisting mainly of beds with the occasional table and chest for clothing, there were no figures, live or otherwise, and no signs of water or battle. At the end, the door to the Infirmaria also lay open. She slid up to the frame, avoiding the patch of moonlight that had spilled across the flagstones.

She peered around the doorway and couldn't stop the gasp that issued from her lips. The first thing that struck her was the blood – it seemed to have been sprayed around the room, over the walls, the beds, the floor; it pooled on the flagstones and had soaked into the bedding. In the bleached light of the Lamb Moon, the room was drained of colour and the blood was like thick black mud. Hardly breathing, she looked at the figures slumped around the room, bits of limbs and piles of innards and bodily fluids. Bile rose in her throat. This was different to the relatively straightforward battle that had occurred in the Curia. This was a
slaughter
.

Then, in the corner, she saw Otium propped up against the wall, her hand pressed tightly to her side, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Beata ran over to her and knelt down in front of her. The Medica's eyes were closed, but when Beata whispered her name they flew open in fear.

“It is only me,” said Beata.

Otium stared at her and blinked. She struggled to focus, but eventually she recognised the Dean. “Beata!” Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, thank the Arbor it is you!”

Beata knew better than to ask what had happened or bring attention to the pile of gore around her. She had to get Otium out of there, and fast. “Come on,” she whispered, “you have to get to your feet.”

“I cannot…” moaned Otium, and thick, dark blood flowed over her fingers. Her head twisted from side to side and, though her eyes were open, they were hot with fever. “Where is he, where is he?” she asked anxiously.

“Where is who?”

“The water warrior. I got him, Beata, I got him…” She shuddered, and her head rolled back.

“You have to get up,” said Beata firmly, placing her hands under the Medica's armpits. She went to lift her. Suddenly however, even though the room was dark, she became aware of a shadow rising over her.

Beata dropped the now unconscious Otium and drew her sword, bracing her feet and raising the blade in the standard defensive stance she had been taught from the age of seven. Her opponent's blade rang on hers, and then, to her surprise, the figure slipped to the floor, breathing harshly.

She waited a moment for him to rise but he stayed down, and so eventually she moved closer. She lowered herself to her knees and leaned over him. He lay on his back, and she could see where Otium had stabbed him – a wound in his armpit that had obviously penetrated deep inside. Dark liquid flooded out of him, covering the flagstones.

Why hadn't he disappeared with the others? She looked around, realising the place wasn't wet – of course, the flood wouldn't have reached to the first floor. He must have come up the stairs and, when the others withdrew, his wound would have stopped him from returning with them.

Curious, she put her hand on his visor and lifted it up.

Of course she had known there was something supernatural about these beings – the way they had reared out of the water, and how they had melted back in; there were no logical explanations for that. But still, she felt a deep shock as she looked at his face.

He was beardless and his skin strangely even, as if made of clay. But it was his eyes that were the most shocking; they opened slowly as she stared at him, and they were not the white orbs she was used to, but small, green flickering lights like marsh fireflies dancing in his sockets.

Reaching out a hand, she touched the skin on the top of his arm, above his wound. It had a strange consistency, firm like muscle, but also pliable; her finger sank into it, and she withdrew it with distaste.

He made a strange, gurgling sound, but she ignored him. She had to find out as much as she could about him before he died or vanished into the water like the others. Pulling out her small dagger, she cut the straps holding together the back and front of his armour and removed the curious breastplate, made from hundreds of tiny shells linked together. Placing it to one side, she looked down at his chest. His skin was flat, with no telltale ridges of ribs or mounds of muscle. The flesh had the same spongy feel as his shoulder.

The strangest thing, however, was that deep inside him, at the point which would have been at the base of his ribs, if he had any, was a round, circular glow. She frowned and pressed down on it with her fingers. He opened his mouth and a strange shriek issued from his lips, though his throat muscles did not move.

Beata had had enough. This thing had murdered her friends in a killing frenzy; even now she could not bear to look around the room at the display of frenetic savagery. Taking her sword, she rested the blade edge-down across his neck, kneeling up so she could put all her weight on it. Grasping a nearby blanket, ignoring the splashes of blood on it, she wrapped it around her left hand and then coolly pressed down on both sides of the sword.

The blade sliced cleanly through the muscle, or whatever it was, until it met the stones below with a clang. For a second she saw dark green blood and broken sinew, and then suddenly his body melted, the skin and bone dissolving and forming a pool on the floor. The green circular glow in the centre of his torso dimmed and then vanished into the floor, and for a moment she was certain she saw the stones beneath glow with its eerie light. Then the glow died, and all that was left was a puddle of water on the flagstones.

She sat back on her heels and looked across at Otium. The Medica's eyes were open, but her chest no longer rose and fell. Beata sighed, went over and closed her eyes. Then, sheathing her own sword, she made her way downstairs.

 

IV

Dolosus said, “I will take the left side, you take the right.” He looked up at the night sky, seeing the Lamb Moon high above him hanging in the sky like a pearl earring. Just above the top of the Castellum he could also see the Dark Moon rising, much smaller than her sister, the two of them ready to take up their nightly dance.

Chonrad and Fulco went into the Armorium, but Dolosus didn't move. He looked around the Domus, feeling an odd mixture of emotions at the damage that had been done.

He had not been a member of Heartwood for as long as most of the Militis, as he hadn't come to the Allectus as was customary. Instead, he had joined the Exercitus on the road when he was twenty-eight after a lifetime spent as an itinerant mercenary fighting for whoever would pay him most. He had had a hard life; he had never known his father, and his mother – who had been a servant to an insignificant Wulfengar lord – had died when he was seven. At the age when he could have been sent for the Allectus, he was eating scraps of food off the floor and cleaning out the stables and the pig sty, the brand of servitude on his hand clear for all to see.

After a while one of the castle guards took pity on him and began to train him to hold a sword and defend himself. This went on for several years without anybody knowing, but when he was twelve the three sons of the Wulfengar lord caught him practising and, after he bested them all in a mock battle, complained to their father. He was beaten soundly, and when he was eventually able to walk again, he decided to leave.

He spent his teenage years moving from town to town, carrying out menial jobs for food, keeping the brand on his hand covered in case the lord should find him and try to bring him back. Eventually he was spotted by the leader of a raiding band who asked him to join them, and that was the beginning of his itinerant lifestyle, always moving, always fighting, believing in nothing but beating the person in front of him.

And then one day he was captured by the Exercitus during a raid, and he found himself in front of Valens. The Dux had been impressed with the raider's skills and for some reason saw something within the young man that reminded him of himself. He asked Dolosus if he would fight instead for the Heartwood army. At the time Dolosus had shrugged – one army was as good as another to him; he did not care which side he fought for. But although the only payment he received in the Exercitus was food and lodgings, and he only planned to stay until the wind changed, he had found in their ranks a purpose and a meaning previously denied to him. He did not fit in easily with the Militis, who disliked his mercenary approach and could not understand his dismissive attitude to their religion. But he kept himself to himself, and gradually they began to accept him. When the cohort he had been placed with eventually returned to Heartwood, Valens suggested he go with them, which he did, and he was finally accepted into the Militis and took his vows on his thirtieth birthday.

He had continued to fight in the Exercitus for another eight years, until he made a foolish mistake one evening and paid a heavy price for it. He had been stationed with a cohort whose responsibility was manning one of the lonely hill forts on the Wall. He could be a difficult man to live with in an enclosed space, and as he did not always understand the camaraderie and religious fervour that characterised the Exercitus knights, his cabin fever had resulted in repeated clashes that led to several warnings by his superior, and he was not in a good mood. He was given a late night shift and, in a show of rebelliousness, got drunk, something completely forbidden while on duty.

The Wulfengar raiders had come out of nowhere, taking those on guard completely by surprise. There had been a quick skirmish, and the raiders had eventually been repelled, but not before Dolosus had had a short and difficult struggle with a Wulfian knight, who had taken advantage of his dulled senses and slow responses. The knight had beaten him back into a corner and then dealt him a heavy blow to the left arm which had gone right through to the bone. The wound had become infected, and the Medica at the nearest town behind the Wall had had to remove the limb just above the elbow.