Vengeance

CHAPTER 26

‘The devil you doin’?’ Tobry slurred. ‘Put me down.’

‘You’re not up to it,’ said Rix, heaving him higher on his shoulder. ‘You’ve been out for half an hour.’

‘Just restin’.’

Rix lowered Tobry onto his feet. He fell down.

‘Told you so.’

‘Noble of you to point it out.’ Tobry lay on his back in the snow and momentarily his pupils widened until his eyes went black. He shivered and looked away. ‘Thanks.’

Rix’s chill deepened. Whatever the wrythen had done to him, it was Rix’s fault. He had pressured Tobry to come up here, ignored his arguments and overridden his fears. Some friend!

‘What for?’

‘Getting me out.’

‘Any time,’ said Rix absently, keeping watch up the slope.

It was mid-morning now but the gloom was thickening, the snow falling more heavily than ever, and miserably cold. Now the action was over, the chill was creeping into him. The fresh snow was untracked and there was no way of telling where the horses had gone, which could prove fatal.

A branch cracked somewhere behind him, then he heard a tearing rustle as though something big was forcing its way through the vine thicket. A jackal yelped, its hoarse call identifying it as a shifter. And jackals never hunted alone.

Tobry was the most strong-willed man Rix knew, so what was it about shifters that terrified him so? Rix heaved him over his shoulder, then put him down again. It was too late to run.

‘That’s twice you’ve saved my life today,’ said Tobry.

‘Don’t keep on about things. You’re worse than my mother.’

‘How did you get past the caitsthe, anyway?’

‘Later!’ Rix snapped.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Jackal shifters, coming through the vine thicket.’ Even so, he had to ask the question. ‘What did the wrythen do to you? Your eyes were steaming.’

Tobry shuddered and one foot kicked involuntarily. ‘Don’t want to think about it. Where are the nags?’

‘Ran off,’ said Rix. ‘Can’t think why.’

‘Didn’t they come when you called them?’

‘Leather doesn’t come when called.’

Tobry put two fingers into his mouth and let out a whistle that shook snow off the twigs of the blood-barks. There came a frenzy of barking and yelping from upslope.

Rix helped Tobry to his feet. ‘Your face looks like a warthog’s arse.’

‘It never was my fortune.’ Tobry swayed and had to grab Rix’s arm. ‘Skull feels like it’s packed with needlebush.’

Something crashed through the trees, sending snowballs rolling down the slope towards them, growing as they came. Rix pulled Tobry behind a tree and watched them pass. Then a brindled, scarred cur loped out from the trees to their left. The jackal shifter was no bigger than a dog, though heavier in the shoulders, and its jaws were massive.

Tobry tried to make a joke, ‘Any last words?’ but choked.

Rix shoved him back against the trunk, put Tobry’s sword in his hand and drew his own. ‘Stay on your feet.’

‘Never would have thought of that.’

Putting most of his weight on his good ankle, Rix stood in front of Tobry, sweeping the titane blade from side to side. The cur’s eyes did not follow it, which was worrying.

‘Whistle the nags again, Tobe.’

As he did so, three more jackals appeared on the left, then another four to the right. They moved in slowly, black tongues lolling, yellow eyes focused on the same point — the tree trunk. No, on Tobry.

Rix’s alarm swelled. Their first instinct should be self-preservation, so why weren’t they watching his sword? He could only think of one reason: their instincts had been overridden by the shade that had sent them, and he wanted Tobry dead.

Rix took a half step backwards, trying to shield him.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ said Tobry. ‘Nearly jammed my blade through your kidneys.’

‘We’re in trouble, Tobe.’

‘They only want me. Clear out — I’ll be all right.’

Rix ignored that. The jackals were showing no signs of shifting, which was bad — unlike caitsthes, they were more formidable in the animal form. Cowardly creatures that they were, they only shifted when their victims were helpless.

The brindled leader darted in, snapped at Rix’s sword and retreated. The others on the left did the same, trying to draw him away from Tobry. He hacked at them but they were too fast; all he managed was a cut to the black nose of the third.

He saw it from the corner of an eye — the rest of the pack attacking from the right — and whirled, battle instinct guiding his hand. The blade made a muffled thump as it took the first cur’s head off and cleaved through the snow into hard ground.

Rix wrenched it out and was going for the second jackal when another, unseen, snapped its jaws around his calf and held him. He froze. It hadn’t broken the skin, but if it did, and shifter saliva got into the wound, it might turn him. Its blood definitely would.

The other jackals could have leapt on Rix and taken him down, but they were silently watching.

‘What the blazes are they up to?’ he said aloud.

Rix dared not move. He could kill the jackal with a blow, though before he did its jaws would have torn through his calf into the bone and, with such a crippling wound, the pack would soon finish him.

And where was the brindled leader?

There was a scuffle behind him and Tobry hit the ground, dropping his sword into the snow. The pack leader had leapt on him from around the trunk, pulling him off his feet and cracking his head against it.

As Rix swung around, the jaws tightened, the teeth passing through his trews and pricking the skin. Why didn’t the jackal bite? Why was it just holding him?

‘Tobe?’ he called, but Tobry was too dazed to answer.

Only one thing could be preventing them from indulging their natural viciousness. The beasts must be acting on the wrythen’s orders and it wanted them alive. Rix could do nothing to save them. Only Tobry could, but how to get through to him?

‘TOBE!’

Tobry grunted. Two more jackals sank their teeth into his collar and began to drag him up the slope, pulling his weight easily across the snow.

‘You’re letting me down, Tobe,’ said Rix. ‘You owe me.’ What a lie that was.

‘Ugh?’

‘I saved your miserable life. You could at least do the same for me.’

‘Can’t,’ Tobry groaned.

‘Useless bastard! Use your damned magery.’

Tobry’s limp fingers stiffened. He raised his head and managed to focus on Rix, then the jackal with its jaws around his calf. Pressing one hand against the elbrot in his pocket, Tobry pointed the other. With a muffled crack, snow blasted out of a trench stretching from his fingers to the jackal and every tooth in its head shattered. Its jaws snapped convulsively on Rix’s calf, which was like being bitten with a mouthful of gravel, then it ran, howling.

Another jackal came at Rix, and another, but blood-fury was driving him now and he bisected both with the one stroke. He leapt at another, spearing it through the chest. Rix whirled and, refusing to admit any pain from his ankle, took a hopping bound towards Tobry, who was holding his head with both hands. Snatching up Tobry’s fallen sword, Rix hurled it left-handed past his ear and through the skull of the brindled pack leader.

It fell dead, and immediately the pressure eased. The remaining two jackals retreated several feet, stinking saliva dripping from their black tongues, then ran. A horse whinnied, there was a gruesome thud, then the first jackal came flying through the air, a mangled mess.

Beetle, Tobry’s black-faced nag, poked its head out from between the trees. Leather was behind it.

‘I told you so,’ said Tobry feebly. ‘Put me in the saddle, there’s a good fellow — ’

Rix heaved Tobry onto his saddle and slapped Beetle on the left flank. ‘Go!’

Beetle bolted. Rix wrenched Tobry’s sword from the jackal’s skull, dragged himself into Leather’s saddle and followed. A second pack of jackals came loping down, then stopped, their tongues lolling.

‘What happened to that liqueur?’ said Tobry later, as they passed the entrance to the Catacombs of the Kings and all the upside-down heads. Rix, who might have died and been reborn in the past hours, no longer thought the insult a good idea.

He took the flask from the saddlebags and passed it across. Tobry took a deep swig and offered it back.

Rix shook his head. ‘I’ve never felt less like a drink in my life.’

‘I’ve never wanted one more.’ Tobry took another healthy swig. ‘How’s your head?’

‘Better. Ankle?’

‘No better.’

After a while, Tobry said, ‘That didn’t go so well.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Well,’ Tobry was trying to sound his normal self and almost pulling it off, ‘we’ve no idea what the wrythen is up to but we know it’s bad, the snow is getting thicker by the second, you’ve got one day less to finish the portrait, Lady Ricinus will be apoplectic by now — ’

‘I meant, don’t tell me about it,’ Rix snarled.

‘And to cap it off,’ Tobry continued, ‘you came all this way to kill something big, and haven’t.’

He didn’t know the caitsthe was dead and there wasn’t time to explain. ‘I still might!’ Rix brandished his sword.

Tobry chuckled and urged Beetle on.

Rix followed, trying to make sense of all that had happened. Something had changed the moment the wrythen had recognised his sword. Where had it come from? Traitor’s blade. Liar’s blade. Oathbreaker’s blade, he had said, and suddenly the attack had become personal, vengeful. He wanted revenge for an injury done in the past, by some previous owner of this sword.

And he had committed House Ricinus to memory.