A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos)

They made their way up a long mountain pass, where the Hraustr crest was emblazoned on teal banners. Wulf could smell snow on that wind, a skill known to most Northerners – an early promise of autumn. He stopped to wait for Thrit, who trudged up to join him.

The pass opened straight on to the ice helm, which looked about a mile wide, filling a deep valley between two sides of the Oxhorns. Snow covered its gaps, like butter smoothed with the flat of a knife. That made it far more dangerous than if it had been naked. Wulf swung his longaxe into his hand, watching the ground for the shadows and tucks that boded a hidden crack in the helm. At least the layer of snow was thin.

About halfway across the ice, an isle of rock hunched free. Hróthi buildings huddled on it, flying the same banners. Wulf tested the ice underfoot before he took the first step, Thrit at his side.

‘I used to have nightmares about falling into a break,’ Thrit said. Their cleats rasped through the snow. ‘Vell always said they were bottomless.’

‘Don’t talk about it.’

‘Fine. I’ll think about it.’

Wind whistled along the frozen valley, battering their cloaks. Wulf let himself imagine a merry hearth, a song or two to cheer the soul. He stopped when he saw movement, expecting a scout. Two figures were on the ice, and seemed to be fighting.

‘Now, what could that be about?’ Thrit said, nose pink with cold.

Wulf shook his head and kept going. As they got closer to the outpost, he slowed again.

He recognised one of the people on the ice.

Karlsten was near as white in the face as his surroundings. Gaunt and filthy, in greasy furs, he swung his greatsword at a small woman with dark hair, who was narrowly keeping out of his reach.

‘Get away,’ Karlsten roared at her, the words almost snatched by the wind. She parried with some manner of blade, but the shock of it almost felled her. ‘Wyrm-loving witch!’

‘Karl.’ Wulf cupped his hands around his mouth to bellow it. ‘Karlsten!’

He was too far away. Wulf threw himself into a run. He spied a telltale crinkle in the snow and jumped it without breaking pace.

Now he was closer, he could see a third person, sprawled on her side. Straight black hair swung off her shoulders, damp with snowbrowth. She shouted in a language Wulf had never heard.

As he approached, her eyes locked on to his. They were dark and wide, their lashes speckled with snowflakes. She was not a Hüran rider. The Hüran did not wear armour like hers – in fact, he had never seen clothes like hers, except for the pelt. She had to be Eastern.

Wulf raised his axe a little. Since she was in armour, she had likely come to raid Járthfall. She held up a sickle with a fortified handle, face hardening around her pain. Blood smudged the snow where she had been, and her free hand was pressed to her waist.

The injury would keep her down. Wulf ran past her. ‘Karl,’ he shouted again. ‘Karl, it’s us!’

Karlsten let the blade fall, panting. The other woman stole the chance to run towards her fellow raider. Her weapon was an identical sickle, and she wore no armour at all.

‘They’re all dead,’ Karlsten said, with a hoarse laugh. Under the sweat and blood, his face was tearstained, eyes raw. Red sleeved him almost to the elbow, but not the red of the plague. ‘I had to kill Sauma, our Sauma. She wouldn’t stop screaming. None of them would.’ He pounded the side of his own head. ‘No place in Halgalant now.’

‘Karl, come here. Let’s go home.’ Thrit held out a wary hand. ‘These women are no threat.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Karlsten spat on the ice. ‘No surprise that you turned up, Wulfert Glenn. Did you summon this pair of witches here, too?’

Wulf chanced a look at the women, who were backing away.

‘I don’t think they’re here to fight,’ he said to Karlsten. ‘Scavenging for food, maybe. These are brutal times.’ He widened his stance. ‘I can’t let you kill innocents, Karl.’

‘Innocents.’ Karlsten let out a bitter laugh. ‘Those two rode here on a wyrm. I saw it.’

‘No one can ride a wyrm.’

‘The Saint didn’t bury the old world deep enough. Its vice must burn away.’ His face lost all mercy. ‘This is the way I take back my seat. I should have done this years ago.’

‘I don’t want to fight you, Karl,’ Wulf said, ‘but I will.’

‘Good.’

Karlsten swung up his bloody sword. Wulf stood his ground, and raised his own weapon.

Almost in the same moment, darkness unfurled across the ice in the near distance.

Wulf stared, fingers turning bloodless on the axe. A great black lindworm had appeared at the top of the valley, near as large as Fýredel. In unison, he and Thrit went for their bows.

The ice creaked and strained under the sheer bulk of the creature. Its eyes were blue, like the seat of the hottest flame, and icicle teeth glinted in its maw. Wulf blinked away a sudden wash of memories.

‘Saint’s bones,’ Thrit said, voice fainter than its wont. ‘Wulf – I think that could be a dragon.’

And then, with a howl of pure rage, Karlsten charged up the snow towards it.

****

Dumai ran after the Northern warrior, fighting the pain where his sword had caught her. She pitched over the ridges and swells of the glacier, using her sickle to surmount the larger surges.

Ahead, the Northerner leapt across a deep blue rift, while Dumai was forced to stumble around it, the deep wound in her thigh pulling. Furtia, get away, she tried to call, but her leg seared like hot iron, yanking her focus off her mind. She tripped and fell hard on her knee.

Furtia watched the enraged human run at her, baring her teeth. He swung his enormous sword, slicing through scale and flesh in a spray of white sparks and silver blood, and the dragon screeched, twisting away from him with a swing of her tail. Dumai heard herself cry out in anger.

He was going to kill a god. The sight brought tears to her eyes. Furtia snapped at him, and her clawed foot broke straight through the ice, making her blunder.

Dumai reached the Northerner just as he raised his blade again, and blindly drove her sickle at him, punching it between his shoulders. She wrenched it free, finding blood on its tip.

Her hand shook. She had never attacked anyone, never wanted to. The Northerner rounded on her, hate oozing from every crease of his face, and dealt a sickening blow to her stomach. Before she had even felt the pain, he had slammed his head into hers and shoved her away from him, down a steep icy slope. She heard Furtia roar before she hit a solid fold.

Earth child. Dumai tried desperately to get up, her spikes grating. I cannot fly . . .

Come to me, great one . . .

‘Dumai—’ Nikeya reached her, turning her on to her side. ‘Are you hurt?’ Dumai could only cough in answer, agony flaring in her middle. The other Hróthi overtook them. ‘Stop him,’ Nikeya shouted at them in Lacustrine. ‘Is this how Northmen treat a god?’

The pale Northerner was driving Furtia up the glacier, hacking at her with his heinous sword. The other two men went after him, wielding axes. Dumai could only slump on her side.

‘Help Furtia,’ she wheezed at Nikeya, who snatched up the sickles, face set in resolve, and ran towards the dragon. Dumai felt a strange twinge of recognition and looked towards the outpost, far away – to where two figures had appeared on the frozen river.

One was slightly ahead of the other, closing in at a tremendous pace. Whoever the woman was, she ran faster than anyone Dumai had ever seen. Greying curls sprang around her brown face, flecked with snow, and she dressed like the Hróthi. She held a jointed spear in one hand.

Furtia caught her attacker with the slender end of her tail, whipping him away from her. He flew backwards, struck his head, and lay still, while the dragon pried her leg free of the glacier. Dumai struggled towards her, leaving a smear of blood in her wake.

Furtia . . .

But Furtia was not looking at her. She was looking at the woman with the spear.

Something changed in the dragon. Dumai stared up at her, feeling a crackle through the hairs of her arms, tasting metal. Furtia reared over them all with a deafening rumble, and when she crashed on to the ice again, her foot came down hard on the murderous Northerner.

Dumai muffled another cry with her fist. Not once in her life had she heard of a dragon killing a human, intentionally or otherwise. One of the Hróthi men let out a wordless bellow, but Furtia ignored it, her gaze nailed to the newcomer, tongue rattling.

The tall woman stopped and took up a defensive stance. She regarded Furtia as if she were a wolf or a bear, the barest shadow of caution in her gaze. Furtia roared, eyes flashing bright as lightning, a storm on earth. Rushing straight past Dumai, she charged the woman, forcing her into retreat. Dumai crawled in their wake.

Furtia, we have to leave, now!

SHE HOLDS THE RISEN FIRE.

The words were a thunderclap in her skull. Whiteness frosted her sight. She looked up just in time to see Furtia bearing down on the woman, who threw up her hand, palm facing the dragon. Fire exploded from her, a swathe of red and smokeless flame. It seared through her glove and melted the snow in one sluff, revealing the thick ice beneath.

Dumai stopped with a gasp. She had seen many bizarre things in a year, but her mind could not make sense of this. This woman had just made fire out of nothing, as a dragon summoned rain. Furtia screamed in fury. She blew a stormwind at the enemy, who slid back and dug her boots into the ice, her fire still leaping forth.

For the first time since Furtia had emerged from the lake, Dumai saw her as she was – inhuman and wild, an ancient celestial.

Someone grabbed her from the side. For a moment, she thought it was Nikeya, but Nikeya was still coming back down the ice. This face was unfamiliar, cowled in a hood, framed by golden hair.

And she knew. Looking at her, touching her, Dumai knew.

‘Sister,’ she breathed. ‘Is it you?’

There was no more pull. They were together. Dumai laughed in relief, but the woman only tightened her grip.

‘The stone,’ she said in Seiikinese, her voice deep and cold. ‘Did you bring it?’

‘Yes, but—’ Dumai looked harder, chilled. ‘Are you the voice from my dream?’

There was no recognition or love in those eyes, none of the tenderness of their dreaming.

I am one of them, came a whisper in her mind.

Dumai stiffened, the joy freezing inside her. ‘No.’ She tried to get loose, but the woman had an iron hold on her. ‘This stone is mine. Where is yours?’ she rasped. ‘Who are you?’

She could not think clearly before this icicle of a woman, whose gaze was flat and terrible. A blade flashed, and then she was cutting at Dumai, into her coat. They grappled for the box, thrashing like two fish on land, Dumai trying to kick away.

‘I don’t want to hurt you, Easterner.’ A hand fastened on her throat. ‘Give it to me now. It is not yours—’

Then the weight was off her. Furtia had seized the woman between her teeth. She flung her down the ice, towards the fire-wielding one, who had buckled to her knees.

Furtia was bleeding from the old wound in her side. The red fire – wyrmfire – had melted another slew of scales. As Dumai shuddered with uncontrollable cold, Nikeya wrapped an arm around her, pulling her on to Furtia.

‘Furtia, go,’ Dumai gasped, reaching out to touch the dragon. ‘Go, now. Get away!’

She clung to a frond of manehair as Furtia turned, splintering the ice. The sound of churning waters grew louder.

I will find it, sister. Dumai risked a look back, and there was the pale woman, staring at her. Do not think that you can hide it for ever. Only one of us will live that long.

Nikeya dragged her into the saddle. As Furtia clawed up the weakened glacier, it heaved and cracked wide in her wake, and the whole valley broke in two.

****

Tunuva forced her hands closed, smothering the wyrmfire she could only just control. It had never blazed so hot, so red, as when she turned it on that wingless beast. Her fire had retaliated in a way it never had to other wyrms, licked out of her like sap from a tree.

Though it had resembled a horned serpent, it had not been like Dedalugun. Neither was it an amalgamation of animals; it was too large for that. It had not tried to breathe fire, and had not been redolent of siden, not at all – it had smelled of the sea, and the way it plucked her senses had reminded her of Canthe.

The glacier had yawned open, a split that ran from the Hróthi outpost almost to the top of the valley, too wide to clear with a jump. Canthe had been thrown a long way, and was sprawled on the ice, her hair tangled around her.

‘Canthe,’ Tunuva said, giving her a hand. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’ Canthe looked different, her gaze hard and her white face stiff. ‘Tunuva—’

Tunuva followed her line of sight. With her last strength, she ran towards the point of the breach where one of the three Northerners had been standing. His friend was on the other side.

He had fallen into the glacier as it broke. Gripping the wall with gloved hands and spiked boots, the young man tried to lift his weight, but he was too far down. Tunuva swung off her cloak and tossed one end to him, and she reeled him up, muscles working.

As soon as she pulled him to safety, he crumpled into her, shaking all over, and slowly he opened his brown eyes. Tunuva stared into them, and he stared back.

She had seen those eyes in mirrors for half a century. She had seen his face in a dream of bees.

And a name escaped her before she could stop it.

‘Armul.’