The Tree of Story Read online

  A huge hand gripped his shoulder and a voice growled something at him. It sounded like Balor Gruff, his old friend in the Errantry. But Balor had left the fortress hours ago with Will Lightfoot and Shade, in one of Corr’s skyships. He couldn’t be here.

  Finn climbed unsteadily to his feet and stood face to face with Grath, his brother’s mordog lieutenant.

  “I asked, are you alive?” Grath shouted at him. “Yes, looks like it.”

  Something had changed, Finn thought. The noise of battle had ceased. He looked around. There were no Nightbane to be seen. Still dazed from the blow to his head, he rubbed his temple and his fingers came away bloody.

  “Cut over your eye,” Grath said. “From the rim of your helmet.”

  “Is the battle over?” Finn asked.

  “They’ve fallen back to regroup,” Grath said. “We’ve got a moment to catch a breath, no more.”

  Finn nodded. He looked down, saw his sword in the dirt and picked it up. The mail coat he was wearing was splattered with blood, the fine weave of links torn in several places. He removed the helmet and saw that it was dinted so badly he had to cast it aside. How long had they been fighting? It seemed only minutes. All at once he realized he was desperately thirsty.

  Finn glanced around to see if anyone might have some water. To his surprise he saw Ord, the golem, not far from where he stood. The towering, impassive man of clay was holding up another section of the outer wall that appeared ready to collapse, while around him a party of dwarfs was frantically hammering together a makeshift brace of thick timbers. Finn had wondered if Corr would send the golem down to bolster the defence. Ord was, as far as anyone knew, impervious to harm and never needed rest. He would have been of great use at the breach, but Finn understood it was more vital to have him protect the wall from further collapse. Otherwise the breach would be twice as wide and the defence would be quickly overrun.

  Finn glanced at one of the Stormriders standing near him. From a leather pouch at his belt the man took a pinch of small black grains and slipped them into his mouth. He grimaced, then noticed Finn’s gaze and broke into a grin.

  “Back at it,” he said. There was a mad light in his eyes that Finn had seen in many of the other Stormriders. They all had pouches at their belts, even Grath. If the fighters were exhausted or fearful, even if they were wounded, the gaal rekindled the fierceness in their hearts and the strength in their limbs.

  It was what all this killing was really about, Finn thought. His brother, Corr, in league with the dwarf folk known as the Ironwise, was locked in a deadly struggle with the Nightbane over the precious and deadly ore known as gaal.

  Fever iron.

  The Nightbane had driven the Ironwise from their ancestral city, Adamant, with its vast lodes of unrefined gaal ore. Nonn, the Ironwise chieftain, wanted his people’s city back and Corr desired more of the gaal to keep his flying ships in the air and his men fighting.

  Corr was still in his command chamber, as far as Finn knew, high up in a tower of the fortress. He had left the defence of the wall to Grath while he directed his few remaining skyships against the motherworms, bloated flying dragons that spewed their fiery spawn like gobbets of fire.

  Finn still found it hard to believe what had happened to his brother in the years since Corr had left the Bourne. He was the Sky Lord now, a title he had taken from a mighty ruler of ancient legend, and his men followed him, nearly worshipped him, as if he was that legendary ruler returned from the dead. This fortress perched on the edge of the barren Valley of Fire, it was said, had been the first Sky Lord’s palace. Ages ago it had been raised by the power of the gaal into the clouds. Then came the first war against Malabron, and the sky fortress had fallen to the earth and into ruin, until the exiled Ironwise took refuge in it and rebuilt it.

  Now the fortress was once again under siege. With the army of Nightbane had come a host of fetches, mindless spectres encased in gaal armour. The Nightbane had begun their relentless assault on the fortress while the fetches marched south out of the valley. Will Lightfoot had been certain they were headed for the Bourne. Finn had agreed and had pleaded with Corr to abandon the fortress and fly his skyships south to defend his own country. Corr hadn’t listened.

  There was a cry just then and Finn looked up to see black-feathered arrows soaring through the gap and falling into their midst. The man he had just watched swallow the grains of gaal was already on the ground, an arrow through his neck.

  Finn ducked with the others as the arrows whizzed around them. One of the shafts plucked at his sleeve as it shot past him. This was the reason the Nightbane had fallen back, he realized. This time they were starting with a barrage of arrows, to pin the defenders down and thin out their numbers before the second onslaught arrived. And it would arrive all too soon. The defenders could hear the shrieks and metal clamour of the Nightbane horde as it charged back up the slope toward the gap. They would be here any moment.

  The remaining shield-bearers were forming another phalanx. Finn fell in behind it, but he stood closer this time to the front line, because there were fewer Stormriders at the breach now and no more reinforcements had appeared.

  He gripped his sword hilt and felt a tremor in his hand that he couldn’t master. He was exhausted, he knew, and still dazed from the blow to his head. But there was no choice and nowhere else to take refuge. If the defence gave way here, the fortress would be wide open to the enemy.

  Then the second assault was upon them. As many Nightbane as before, their numbers seemingly endless, bounded and shrieked through the gap and down the heap of fallen stones.

  They crashed against the shield wall, and the shock rippled through the tightly packed defenders. Finn felt it strike him this time as if the blow had fallen directly on his own armour. He felt the strain as the shield-bearers were pushed back, and he lowered his head and pushed forward with all the strength he had left. For what felt a long time that was all he knew: the sight of men’s iron-shod feet, slipping and bracing themselves again in the bloody muck, the grunts and growls of effort, the dull bite and ringing of metal on metal, the stench of sweat and fear and death heavy around him.

  Then he felt the phalanx straining, buckling, and he looked up again to see Nightbane spearpoints thrusting into the gaps between the densely packed bodies of the defenders ahead of him. One barbed point made right for him and he lopped it away with his sword. He spotted another spearhead jutting from the back of the shield-bearer ahead of him, heard the man’s gasp of shock, saw him fall.

  Finn darted forward, grabbed the shield as it slipped from the dead man’s grasp and lifted it before him. A mordog’s axe-blade glanced across it with a clang and Finn staggered back. For an instant he lost his footing, then regained it and pressed ahead between the shield-bearers on either side of him.

  The Nightbane before him were like another wall, a seething wall that bristled with sharp metal.

  Then a barbed blade thrust out from that wall and drove in under his shoulder. He felt it bite and tear at his flesh. Something crashed into him and he fell.

  He found himself on his back in the dust and rubble, looking up at a patch of pale blue sky through the breach. He could hear the clash of metal and the roars and screams, but they seemed to be coming from far away. He tried to rise, but something was holding him down. He lifted his head. Someone had fallen on top of him. Another Stormrider, with an arrow in his neck.

  Finn struggled and heaved, and the dead man slid off him. He caught a glimpse of the Stormrider’s dust-caked face under a shock of dark hair. He was young. Not much older than Will Lightfoot.

  Finn knew he had been wounded, but the pain throbbing in the pit of his arm seemed as far off as the noise of battle. He struggled to his knees, searching for his sword. His arms and legs were shaking and he began to retch. He knew that the fear he had forced down at the start of the battle had broken loose and was taking him over and he could do nothing to stop it. Once he regained his feet he would run. He would
flee this place of death in blind panic. All his training as a knight of the Errantry, his oath to protect and defend, none of it would matter. Nothing could hold back this fear.

  Then Finn saw the leather pouch hanging from the belt of the dead Stormrider.

  Without thinking, he reached out, clutched the pouch and tore it free. His trembling fingers fumbled at the drawstring. Then the pouch was open and he dug in his fingers and took out a pinch of the tiny black grains. An acrid smell like burning tar stung his nostrils. He hesitated a moment, then slipped the grains onto his tongue. The fever iron tasted like ash and metal and something else, a sour wrongness that told him this poison did not belong in his body.

  But it was too late.

  Before he could tell what the gaal was doing to him, a shadow fell over him and a huge hand gripped his shoulder.

  It was Grath.

  “Still alive,” the mordog said. “Lucky.” Then he spotted the pouch in Finn’s hand and he grinned. “Knew you’d see things our way sooner or later.”

  He held out his hand. Finn accepted it and was hauled to his feet by the mordog as if he weighed nothing. As soon as he was standing, he felt something rushing through him, like a cold fire coursing in his veins. The pain in his shoulder had vanished, as had his fear and weariness. Everything around him and everything inside him was as sharp and brilliant as crystal, as if he had stepped out of a dim room into dazzling winter daylight.

  So this was what fever iron did to you. Finn’s hands knotted into fists. He knew he would return to the battle and he would kill and kill. The beasts had to pay. They would pay for what they had done to him.

  Then he noticed there was no clash of metal, no harsh cries and screams. The Stormriders were standing at the breach, their weapons ready, but there were no Nightbane at all.

  “They’ve fallen back again?” Finn asked. He felt a strange surge of anger at the thought. He was ready now to fight and kill. He didn’t want to wait.

  “They’ve gone this time for good,” Grath said. “The lookouts confirmed it. The Nightbane are retreating to Adamant. Seems pretty clear it’s not a feint to draw us out.”

  Finn glanced at the men on either side of him, their faces grim and set. There were so few left. So few.

  “No one is left to be drawn out,” he said bitterly. The enemy was gone, but the rage of battle still blazed in him. He became aware that he was clutching the pouch of gaal in his hand. If he dropped it, the grains would spill onto the ground uselessly. Maybe he should, he thought, but he could not open his hand and let it go.

  “They mowed into us pretty good, didn’t they?” Grath said, and laughed.

  Finn glared at the mordog, startled by the callous tone in his voice. He took in the deep-set eyes on either side of the doglike snout, the lipless gash of the mouth. This was a face that Finn had been taught all his life to hate and fear, the face of the monster in the dark. The beast out there.

  The mordog laughed again. “You all do that,” he said.

  “Do what?” Finn said.

  “You men. The way you look at us. At my people. Like you’ve found a dead rat in your ale.”

  Finn looked away, angry that his thoughts could so easily be read by a creature like Grath.

  “My brother ordered you to watch over me in the battle, didn’t he?”

  Grath confirmed his guess with a nod.

  “You’re welcome,” the mordog said dryly.

  “I thank you for …” Finn began. “Thank you. But I don’t need watching over.”

  “You’re a good fighter,” Grath said, scraping the gore off his blade against the sharp edge of one of the fallen stones. “You’ve been in a few tight corners like this already, that’s clear. This is your first war, though, isn’t it?”

  Finn thought of the boy with the arrow in his throat.

  “Is that what this was?” he asked. “Seemed more like slaughter to me.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “Most of those we killed were mordog,” Finn said. “Those are your own people lying dead out there.”

  To Finn’s surprise Grath growled and spat.

  “Shu koth,” he snarled. “Puppets. They still dance to the Deliverer’s tune.”

  “The Deliverer?”

  “That is what my people call him. The Night King. Malabron.”

  “So they’ve hated and killed us all these years because he told them to?”

  Grath’s mouth twisted in a sneer. “Maybe, a long time ago, one of you killed one of us,” he said. “Maybe that’s how it all started. Have you ever thought of that?”

  Finn turned away angrily and the pain in his shoulder blazed up with such sudden fury he had to stifle a cry. The fever iron’s effect was already wearing off, and he caught himself wishing for it to come back. He still couldn’t let go of the pouch in his hand. Someone else might need this gaal, he told himself. He had to keep it for the others, not for himself.

  “It wouldn’t have happened like that,” he breathed. “My people only kill when we have to, to defend ourselves. We’re not beasts.”

  “Of course not,” Grath said with a shrug. “We are.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You believe it.”

  Finn was silent.

  “All my life I was taught that your kind hated us and wished us dead,” Grath said. “I never saw anything that proved otherwise. The cunning ones, we called your kind. You were always smaller and weaker than us, but just a little quicker, a little cleverer with tools and plans. We lost everything we had to you, the elders said. They said it was because the true lord of this realm, the one you call the Night King, had been defeated and banished long ago by you and your allies, the Ancient Powers. So we took him as our lord, our god, and fought his battles for him, waiting and hoping for the day he would come again and lead us to victory.”

  “Malabron only wants power for himself,” Finn said. His head was pounding, making it difficult to form his thoughts into words. And his wounded arm was burning and throbbing worse than ever now. “He’ll destroy everything to get it, even those who serve him.”

  “And yet my people still die shouting his name,” Grath said. “But I no longer serve the Night King.” He gave a dry laugh. “Maybe that means I am no longer mordog.”

  “How did it happen?” Finn asked. “How did you become an enemy of your own people?”

  “When I was still very young, there was a healer in my village who began to preach a strange new idea: that we did not have to make war on your folk, the cunning ones. That we could learn to live in peace with you if we renounced the Deliverer, who was no god but only a weaver of lies. My people thought the healer mad and drove him from the village. For years I wondered what had happened to him. Finally, when I was grown, I went looking for him. I needed to see the healer for myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was my father.”

  “Did you find him?”

  Grath nodded.

  “He was living in a cave in the hills like an animal. He knew who I was before I said a word. He had known I would seek him out one day. I told him what had happened in our village since he’d been driven out. His own family—my mother and my sister and I—shunned and spat on by everyone. Living like dogs on the few scraps the others tossed away. And now that I was old enough I had sought him out for one reason. To kill him.”

  Finn stared at the mordog. “Did you?”

  “I raised my blade and he just sat there, not moving, not looking at me. Then he said, ‘If it’s my time to die, at least I will not die a slave.’ And I put down my sword. I asked him why he had spoken against the Deliverer. Why he had slandered our god. He looked at me then, and he said that if I wanted an answer, I would have to stay with him. I stayed with him a long time and he taught me many things. He showed me the truth—that I was a slave. That we mordog served a master none of us had ever seen, who cared nothing for us. Our purpose was only to hate and to kill. To be the monster that
others feared.”

  Grath lifted his blade and examined the notched edge.

  “It was a very hard thing to do, he told me, to walk away from your own story. But it was the only way to freedom. So I took the path he showed me. I walked away. A few of my people followed me. The rest turned against us.”

  He looked up at Finn with a bitter smile.

  “I walked away, but I didn’t get far, did I? I’m still fighting someone else’s battles.”

  A Stormrider approached carrying a water bucket with a ladle hooked to its side. At the sight of the water Finn remembered how thirsty he was. He reached for the ladle, but had to use his left hand because he could no longer lift his sword arm. He drank and the water left a bitter, metallic taste in his mouth. There was gaal in the water, too, he realized. A trace of it, anyhow, and he felt a craving for more. He wanted to feel that icy fire surge through him again. To see everything with that sharp, cold clarity.

  Finn thought then of Freya Ragnarsdaughter. He had met her on his journey with Will Lightfoot. Before, he had thought the Skaldings were little better than savages, but he’d soon found out how wrong he was. He remembered the soft, warm touch of Freya’s hand in his as they danced, her bright blue eyes. Her city was far from the Bourne, a journey of many days through dangerous wilds. At least, he thought, she would be far from Fable when the fetch host arrived there. But if Malabron wasn’t stopped, Freya’s city would eventually fall, also. There would be no more music and dancing in Skald.

  Grath’s harsh voice broke into his thoughts. The mordog was standing again, looking out over the valley.

  “Your brother walked away from his home, too,” he said.

  “And you travelled all this way to bring him back. That I don’t understand.”

  “That wasn’t why I set out in the first place,” Finn said. “But yes, I want him to return home to Fable.”