Hold The Dark: A Markhat story (23 page)

The angry voice came again, along with a metallic jangling as though an armoured man had tripped. “What are you doing down there? Get up!”

Her struggles were no match for the beast’s strength and it dragged her away. If she did not call now she was lost. She twisted in its grip and managed a strangled cry before the hand clamped down again. The creature lifted her by her throat and ran. Stars spun in front of her eyes. A black spot in her vision grew, almost took her, and then the creature threw her to the ground where she gasped and heaved for breath.

With a roar and a muted flash of steel, a sword buried itself in the beast’s shoulder. Dark rancid blood splattered over her and stung her skin.

A new voice, soft and menacing, spoke some unknown language. A burst of flame on the creature’s face made it scream and claw its eyes. The sword struck again, straight through its chest, and it fell dead. Its body ignited the grass briefly before the flames sank back to a sullen glow.

A shadow loomed over her and resolved into a face above mail armour. She scrambled away from him and bumped into another pair of legs. No armour on these, just the slippery leather of breeches.

The haft of her knife bit into her hand as the soldier bent and gripped her wrist. The man behind her leaned down, as though to get a better look. She could not see his face. A hand shot out and grabbed at the pendant that dangled from her neck.

“Where did you get this?” His soft voice was heavily accented.

“Not now,” the soldier said. “There’s more of them coming, a lot more.”

“We can’t leave her here.” Slender brown fingers wrapped round the pendant. He murmured a few words, a flash blinded Hilde and then darkness swallowed her.

Hilde landed with a crash that jarred her teeth, numbed her legs and made the claw wounds in her shoulder scream. She sat up carefully and looked round. She could make out the vague lumpy shadows of furniture. A room, of sorts. Her head whirled with thoughts that shouted at her from all directions so she could barely understand them. With a deep breath, she took a firm grip on herself.

She had no memory of travelling, but she was in no danger, for now. The beast was not here, at least. A shred of comfort. A faint strip of light caught her attention. After a small internal debate, she walked cautiously towards it and found a door but hesitated to go through. Who knew what was on the other side? Instead, she felt around the walls with her fingers. She tried to make as little sound as possible, but could not help but trip here and there on furniture. There was no other way out.

She pushed the door open a crack. It took a moment before her eyes adjusted to the brighter light, and then she saw a windowless octagonal room with abundant flickering torches and a spiral rune in the centre of the floor. On the rune was a heap of grubby red. She opened the door wider and stared at the ceiling, which flickered with colour and half-seen images.

The heap moaned. It was a man. She put her back to the wall and drew her knife.

He sat up and dislodged the large, stained yet still crimson cloak. With an almighty groan, he patted himself all over as if to check he was all there. Jet black hair fell over his face and shoulders. The man with the strange accent? Maybe. A small seed of suspicion wormed its way to her notice. The flaming face of the beast. No, it could not be. She was not about to start believing in tales.

Apparently satisfied all was in order, he got to his feet with a groan. He was flamboyantly dressed, with a red waistcoat over a voluminous white shirt, stained leather breeches, and a belt slung at a rakish angle across his hips. Various ornaments, tassels and bangles quivered and clinked as he moved. He picked up a battered hat with a round crown, checked the jaunty red feather on it and put it on.

She would not have called him handsome, exactly. He looked nothing like any other man she had seen. Striking in a dishevelled kind of way, with tanned skin and eyes so dark as to be black, now rather unfocussed as he tried to peer around him like a ten-pint drunk. A gash across his forehead dripped blood down one cheek. His face had few lines, and his hair and neatly trimmed little beard held no grey, so she could not tell his age. It could be anywhere between thirty and fifty.

He spotted Hilde, grinned a wolfish sort of grin and held out his hand. “Hello, I seem a bit lost. Do you know where we are?” A soft voice, with a syrupy accent she had not heard before.

She took another step back, but he was the first man she had ever met who did not make the sign of Kyr’s Ward when he saw her eyes, and that decided her.

“No,” she said. He squinted at her and swayed so hard he nearly fell. Anyone that concussed should be no threat. She lowered the knife. “Ten minutes ago I was on the plains of the nomads. So were you, I think.” She slid down a wall, her legs unable to hold her. Wherever she was, this man was no threat, at least at the moment. Besides, he and his friend had saved her from the beast. The beast that knew her name.

“I don’t know where I came from.” He frowned, and more blood dripped into his eye. He wiped it away absently. “I appeared about ten feet up in the air. The fall seems to have made me a little groggy. Have you any idea where here is?”

A good question, one she had been about to ask him. She stood up and held out the pendant at arms length. “You used this, there was a big flash, and then we were here.”

He steadied the moonstone with his left arm, before now hidden under his cloak. The arm was there but the hand was missing. A one-handed wizard. Foul-tempered and given to melting eyeballs.

Ilfayne.

He did not look anything like she had imagined a wizard to be. She had expected him to look older, for a start—he was said to be older than the Kingdom of Ganheim. This befuddled man looked more like a peacock. One of the rich merchant’s sons or idle nobles who occasionally passed through her village and did little other than preen themselves, drink, gamble and try to talk the girls into bed.

Yet he had only one hand, and there had been that flash of fire on the beast’s face. He did not seem too foul-tempered—the soldier had sounded far angrier—but then again he was addled from the blow to his head.

With luck, he had forgotten how to melt eyeballs along with everything else.