Konrad [01] - Konrad Read online

  He weaved away, slipping beyond the reach of the creature’s final clawing grab. It slammed heavily into the ground, and the whole forest seemed to shake with the impact.

  It lay on its side, still and silent.

  He stood several yards away, also still and silent, ready to leap away if it should so much as twitch a single muscle. Its eyes were still open, staring at him, but after a few seconds they began to glaze over.

  He rubbed his hands on his clothes, trying to ease the pain of the liquid fire which had burned into his flesh.

  He wondered what to do, and he glanced around warily. If there were more of the creatures near, they would soon smell the blood. They had no loyalty to their kind, and here was a feast for them.

  His knife was embedded in the being’s chest. He had to retrieve the weapon, but he still did not want to go too close to the monster.

  * * *

  He heard a movement behind him, and he spun around rapidly, poised for escape. But it was only the rider, who was by now sitting up.

  “My clothes!” she said. “They’re ruined!”

  She was clad in rare white furs. Her coat, trousers and boots were covered in mud. Would she have preferred blood? Her own?

  “Help me up!”

  For the first time he wondered why he had done what he had, risking his life to save her. It was such a stupid way to behave, he thought. He had not thought, however — that was the answer.

  He had acted instinctively, his body controlling his behaviour, not his mind.

  “Did you hear me? Help me up!”

  She was human. That was another part of the answer. All humans were allies against every other living being in the world.

  “Where’s my horse?”

  He ignored her and stepped towards the dead creature. He had to retrieve the dagger. It was all he had.

  She suddenly screamed, and he sprang back in surprise, thinking she had seen the monster move.

  “Is it dead?”

  She had become totally still, her eyes fixed on the thing’s corpse. It seemed that she had only just noticed it.

  He picked up a stick and moved closer again, prodding the creature. There was no response. It was dead. It had not the brains to pretend.

  “What happened?”

  The fall must have stunned her. As well as not seeing the fight, she could not remember the creature knocking her from her mount.

  He heard the suction of the mud as she lifted herself up, then the squelch of her boots as she walked slowly towards him. He bent down over the creature, holding his breath because of its obnoxious stink. He seized the dagger hilt with both hands and tugged as hard as he could. It would not budge.

  He turned his head for a breath of fresh air, braced his feet against the dead monster’s torso, then tried again.

  “What are you doing?” She moved closer for an answer to her own question.

  There was a slight movement of the knife. He wrenched again. Then he felt a pair of arms around his waist, pulling him, pulling the dagger, and the blade began to slide slowly free. Suddenly it was out. They both toppled over backwards.

  He prevented himself from falling and managed to retain his balance, but she let go and ended up on her back in the dirt again. He ignored her, examining the knife.

  The weapon seemed undamaged. He had never used it before, not like this. He had only ever pretended, played at fighting, attacking logs and ambushing trees. But he had never risked blunting the rippled metal by cutting wood or even stabbing the point into a sapling.

  He stared down at the dead creature, and he felt triumphant. He had fought with a being much bigger than himself, and he had been victorious. He leaned forward and carefully wiped his blade on the monster’s dark fur. When it was clean, he tucked it into his belt.

  He prodded the sword with his foot. It was chipped and corroded. He did not need it, did not want it.

  Then he turned and looked at the girl. She was about twelve years old, which was his own age — or so he believed. Her hair was short and jet black, her eyes dark, her skin very pale — where it was not splattered with mud.

  This time he did help her up, his bare hands around her gloved ones, and he winced as her fingers gripped his injuries.

  “Oh!” she gasped, staring at the fresh wounds.

  He tried to pull away, but she kept hold of his hands, then she stared into his eyes. He looked away, not meeting her gaze.

  “You’re the boy from the inn. They say you can’t speak, but you shouted to me. It was a warning, wasn’t it?”

  He made no response. He tried to pull loose, but she was holding his wrists.

  “Wasn’t it?” she prompted.

  He nodded.

  “You have my eternal gratitude,” she told him. “You saved my life.”

  He shook himself free. He had to go. He had firewood to collect. He should not be here, not with her.

  If his master found out, he would be beaten, beaten more than usual.

  “Give me your hands!”

  It was a direct command, the kind he had obeyed all his life. He held out his hands to her.

  She tugged her white kidskin gloves off with her teeth, then took his right hand between hers. She was almost the same height as he was, although her hands were smaller — and warmer.

  She raised his hand to her mouth, blowing between her fingers onto his sore flesh. It seemed that her palms became warmer still, heating his hand as if it were in front of a fire.

  She said something, a few soft words which were too quiet for him to hear. After a few seconds, she opened her eyes and released his hand. The warmth had numbed the pain caused by the creature’s venomous blood. She took his left hand and repeated her actions.

  He looked down at his hands and gasped in amazement. The wounds had closed up, scar tissue had formed: they were already healing!

  He stumbled back a few paces, in a way more afraid of the girl than he had been of the monster. She was as unnatural as the creature had been: she was a magician…

  “Don’t tell anyone,” she warned, and put the index finger of her right hand to her lips. Then she smiled. “If you can tell anyone, I mean. You shouted a warning, but did you use any real words? Or was it just a senseless cry, like an animal? Can you speak, boy?”

  “I… I speak,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “I speak,” he said louder, defiantly.

  He spoke to himself when he was alone in the forest, but this was the first time he had ever let anyone else know that he could do so.

  Until now, the only sounds that he permitted to escape from his lips were the yells of pain when he was whipped. Not that the beatings hurt very much any more; he was used to them.

  “My father will reward you,” the girl told him.

  “No! Tell no one!”

  “Why?”

  He shook his head, not wanting to explain, not knowing how to. No one must know what had happened. His master must not find out that he had a knife, that he could speak. He glanced over at the dead creature.

  “A beastman,” said the girl.

  Beastman. He remembered now. That was the name the soldiers had used when they had hunted for the creatures which had slain the woodsmen.

  “Part man, part beast,” she continued. “There are all sorts of them in the Forest of Shadows, I’ve been told.” She glanced into the closely packed ranks of dark trees. “I hope there aren’t any more of them around.”

  “None near,” he said.

  “You can’t be sure,” she answered, then she looked away from the woods and back at him. “But you are sure, aren’t you? You know. You knew where that one was before it could even be seen. How?”

  “I saw.”

  He had seen it — but she had not. That was why the creature had been able to come so close to her.

  And that, he realized, was why those six tree cutters had died. They had not seen the beastmen which had stalked them through the forest. The same must have bee
n true of all the others who had been abducted and murdered by such creatures.

  She was watching him, looking into his eyes again. He glanced away, and after a moment she did the same.

  “Where’s my horse?” she asked.

  He turned, searching for it. “By river,” he said, pointing.

  “Good,” she said. “I’ll be in real trouble if I lose that animal.” She glanced down at her mud-encrusted furs. “I shouldn’t be out here, so maybe it would be best if we both kept quiet. But what about that?” She gestured towards the corpse of the beastman.

  “Soon gone,” he told her.

  The creature was nothing but dead meat. Within a few hours, the bones would have been picked clean by the carrion eaters. A few hours more, and even the bones would have been devoured.

  “Will you come with me to my horse?”

  It was more than a question, less than an order. He nodded his agreement. She picked up her fur cap from the dirt and walked away.

  He glanced at the sword. He did not want to touch it, but neither did he want to leave it there. Some other beastman would find it and use it. He tugged his sleeve down over his palm, then picked up the weapon.

  He followed the girl to the river bank, then threw the blade into the middle of the river.

  When they reached the grazing horse, he cupped his hands so that she could use them as a step up into the saddle. She did not move. He raised his eyes and saw that she was looking into them once more. Her gaze flickered from his left eye to his right, then back again. He stared down at the ground, waiting for her to step into his hands. She finally did and mounted her horse.

  He wiped the mud from his palms on the sides of his leggings, then glanced at the scars on his hands. When he looked up at the girl, she put her finger to her lips again, bidding him to remain silent.

  But he was always silent. Or had been until this morning.

  Even though she was splattered with filth and mud, she seemed so poised and elegant. In comparison, he was like a beggar dressed in filthy rags — yet he supposed that was almost what he was.

  “I won’t forget this,” she told him. “My father can’t reward you if he doesn’t know, but I can. Is there anything you need, anything you want?”

  He shrugged, not knowing what to say. He had nothing, had never needed more than that. He did have his dagger, however, and that was what prompted the thought.

  “Arrows,” he said. “And bow.”

  She nodded, a half smile on her pale and muddy face.

  “You shall have them,” she told him. “My name is Elyssa. What’s your name?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  They were united for this single unholy mission. A mission of mayhem and of murder, of mutilation and of massacre. Allied as never before, the events of this day should be recorded in the annals of history — had there been anyone left alive to chronicle such events.

  By the time the sun had finally set on today’s foul deeds, as red as the blood which stained the fields and the crops within them, the streets and the homes within them, and by the time the long shadows of night crept across the scorched earth and the smoking ruins, there would be no trace of any life in the valley below.

  It would be as though the place had never existed, its inhabitants had never been born, had never lived.

  The vanquished could never say what had transpired, and neither would the victors — because even the conquerors would not survive this day.

  Once the common enemy was slain, it was inevitable that the marauders would turn upon each other in a frenzied feud. And then the blood would flow even more freely, more crimson and scarlet, darkly shading the midnight landscape as they slew and sacrificed one another to their own lords of Chaos.

  Thus what had occurred would be completely forgotten, erased from all knowledge as absolutely as the village had been obliterated from the face of the world, its inhabitants annihilated.

  No one would ever know what had been — or what might have been…

  He had nothing. Not even a name.

  It was always “boy!” or “you!” or “hey!” or “vermin!” or “little rat!” or some more obscene description. Names were for people who had a real home, a true family, a proper place to sleep. For those who did not live in a barn with the animals, for those who did not have to fight off the dogs for the scraps of meat from discarded bones — bones meant for the hounds. His master treated his dogs better than his “boy”.

  Names were given by parents, but parents were something else he did not have. Adolf Brandenheimer was his master, but he was sure that the innkeeper was not his father. No father would treat his son in such a fashion.

  Nor could Eva Brandenheimer be his mother, for the same reason. If anything, she treated him worse then her husband did. It was she who used to chain him up with the pigs when he was a child. One of his earliest memories was of crying and of her beating him with a leather strap. The more he cried, the more she beat him.

  He had learned not to cry, just as later he had become immune to punishment.

  Children resembled parents, he knew, and he was glad that he looked nothing like the overweight Brandenheimers and their six fat children. Even if he had been properly fed, there would be no similarities between him and the tavern owner’s family. He knew that he could not possibly be related to them.

  But who were his parents? And why was he with the Brandenheimers?

  Those were questions which had often puzzled him, but there was no way of discovering the answers. No one ever told him and he had no intention of asking. There had never been any reason to speak to the Brandenheimers, which was why he had never done so. To them, he was merely another of their animals, a beast of burden.

  Animals did not speak; he did not speak.

  Animals did not have names; he did not have a name.

  Many weeks passed, so many that he thought Elyssa had forgotten him. Their paths had crossed in the village on two or three occasions, but they had ignored one another, as they had always done previously. That was the way he assumed things would continue until he heard her horse upon the wooden bridge one cold and icy morning.

  He was used to being ignored or treated with contempt by everyone else in the village. He was the lowest of the low, and she was the complete opposite — the only daughter of Wilhelm Kastring, the richest and most powerful man in the whole valley.

  It was past mid-winter, the second week of Nachexen. The sun had ceased its southward drift and slowly, inexorably, the days had begun to grow longer. On each one, as ever, he had been collecting firewood from the forest.

  For him, every day was the same. He began each day by collecting wood and lighting the fires; he ended each one by making sure that the embers in every hearth had been damped down. It was all he could remember — and all that lay ahead of him.

  Sometimes, however, it seemed that he had lived out his whole life in a dream. It was as though his memories were those of another person, that he had been told of his life, not experienced it.

  Elyssa halted her mount once she was across the river, and she stared around. It could have been that she was out for a dawn ride, deliberately disobeying her father’s wishes as she had done on the day when they first encountered one another.

  He stepped into the open, even though he had not finished collecting that morning’s quota of kindling. He did not call out. If she wanted him, then she would see him.

  She kicked her heels into her mount’s flanks and rode towards him. A minute later she reined in her horse by his side.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

  “Always,” he told her. “At dawn.”

  “This is the first time I could get away.” There was a bundle tied to her saddle; she passed it down to him. “These are for you.”

  He unwound the linen and found a bow, a quiver, ten arrows. They were magnificent. They were the weapons of a warrior, not of a huntsman. They were meant for war, for killing enemies, not for stocking the larder wit
h animal carcasses.

  They were all black. The bow was of sleek black wood, the grip bound in soft black leather. At each tip, near the notch for the string, a golden crest was embossed in the wood. It showed two crossed arrows, and between the points was a mailed fist. Even the bowstring was black. The same gold arrows and fist design was wrought into the rippled black hide of the quiver.

  He examined each of the shafts in turn, taking his time while he tried to think of something to say. They were identical. Ebony shafts, coal black feathers, heads of midnight metal. A single narrow band of gold encircled the centre of each of the yards, and the crossed arrows and clenched fist motif was etched out to show the black wood beneath.

  He stared up at Elyssa. All he could do was shake his head in bewilderment. He wanted to speak, but could not find any words.

  The girl was smiling as she watched him, and he noticed her gaze shift from one of his eyes to the other. He glanced away quickly, pretending to examine the perfectly matched feathers of the flights.

  What could she see? It seemed as though she knew about his eyes. No one else did, so how could Elyssa? Then he remembered: she was a magician…

  “They belong to my father,” she told him, as she dismounted. “But he’s never used them, he’s probably forgotten that he even has them. Look at all the dust.”

  She ran her fingers across the soft leather of the quiver, then showed him the dirt on her glove. He imitated her action, studying the dust on his fingertips.

  “How are your hands?” she asked.

  He showed her. There was no sign of the wounds which the beastman’s foul blood had burned so painfully into his flesh. He had been hurt many times before, but injuries which had been much less serious had left scars that would always mark his body.

  Elyssa pulled off her right glove with her teeth, and she touched the backs of his hands with her warm fingers. Her eyes were wide with wonder, as though she could not believe she had healed him. But she said nothing, and he did not ask. He preferred not to think of it.

  She asked: “What’s your name?”