Chapter 1

A ground mist was rising. The sun brushed the dew-soaked grass, and after days walking through the stink and dirt of the eastern sourlands the riotous excitement of yearsbirth made me drunk on the scent of early-morning blossom. Far over the horizon the Birthstorm swelled, towering pillows of dark cloud that heralded the giant storm which told us yearsbirth was truly here.

It felt like a weight on my back.

The mercenaries came upon us in that moment when the world seemed unreal – poised between outgoing night and incoming day. Six attacked, four men and two women of the Glynti, a hard and relentless people from the arid mountains far across the Taut Sea, where water was as valuable as bread and those who could not prove their worth were killed out of hand. If our attackers had been men of Maniyadoc they would have come for me first, seeing a man in armour as more of a danger than a woman, but they were not. The Glynti tribes kept to the old ways, and besides, if they hunted us they knew who we were. They knew my master was the real danger.

Four went for her, two for me. They had roarers, long sticks that sent out shards of sharp metal in a cough of smoke and fire; as weapons they are as ugly and as poor at killing as most Glynti. One exploded, killing its bearer and wounding the woman with him. The other made a horrendous noise and shredded a small bush by my side.

My master and I were tired, we fought in silence.

The Glynti are fierce but rely on numbers and savagery. I had spent five years as a mercenary, stood in shieldwalls facing down charging mounts and wasn’t scared of a few men and women in animal skins, no matter how hard they fought.

“I’ll skin you alive, boy,” hissed the huge Glynti, the first to approach me. His long beard was dyed with a blue stripe and his blond hair was tied in braids which snaked out from underneath a rusted helmet. In one hand he held a heavy sword and in the other he twirled a skinning knife, laughing all the while. “I’ll carve the skin from your bones, child,” he said, his mouth an unkempt wall of missing teeth.

I have lain back in silence while my master carves magical glyphs which twitch and move of their own accord into my flesh.

I am not afraid of pain.

“In truth, I’ve never been comfortable in this skin.” I smiled at him, and for a moment he was confused, but only a moment. He feinted with his knife. I ignored it. Then he brought his sword over and let its weight bring it down on me. I angled my large shield, taken in single combat from a Loridyan champion and painted with a bleeding eye, and his blade slid away on it and bit into the earth as I brought the beaked warhammer, taken from a man I had killed in vengeance, round in a swing which punched a neat hole in his helmet and felled him.

I glanced over at my master. She fought with two stabswords, dancing lithely in and out of the flashing blades of her attackers as if they did not exist. For a moment her skill stole my breath away, and then the second Glynti was on me. This one was far more careful and held a long spear – a better weapon against an armoured man with a shield – but like his fellow he was too used to ferocity winning his battles. His only skill lay in attack and he lacked the warrior’s greatest ally – patience. He came in, jabbing his spear against my shield with a teeth-grating screech of metal on metal. As he jabbed again I put all my strength into a forward push of the shield. I felt the strength of his blow in the jarring of my shoulder joint. He felt it in his hands and though he did not drop the spear his control of it lapsed for long enough to let me in close. The warhammer rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell until his head was a pulpy mush of grey brains, white bone and bright red blood.

“Girton –” my master’s soft voice behind me “– they are done.” Blood dripped from a cut on her arm. It ran down her hand, along the hilt of her stabsword to mingle with the Glynti blood that stained her blade. It was only when she spoke that I heard myself, heard the noise that I was making, the screaming of an animal. I dropped my weapon in the mud. The warhammer was heavy.

“One still lives,” I said, and pointed at the woman who had been felled when the roarer exploded. I walked towards her, unsheathing the black metal stabsword I kept on my left hip.

“Wait, Girton.”

“Why?” I continued towards the woman, she was burned down one side but had no killing wounds. “She will only tell others where we are.”

“Wait!” My master jumped over a corpse and ran to me, grabbing my arm just as I was about to kneel down and slit the wounded woman’s throat. “There are better ways.” I stared at my master, the muscles of my arm tight against her grip.

“So you say.” I brushed her hand from my arm and sat back on bloodied grass.

The burned woman watched all this with eyes as bright as those of the black birds of Xus the unseen, god of death.

“Your lover is fierce even though he’s mage-bent, Merela Karn,” croaked the woman to my master. If she had ever had beauty for the burns to spoil it had long since fled.

“He is not my lover,” said my master.

“Are you one who prefers women, then? He is young, strong . . .”

“Quiet!” My master grabbed the woman’s face with her hand, breaking the burned skin around her mouth and leaving a raw fingerprint that had the woman hissing in pain. “What tribe are you?”

The Glynti woman had eyes like a hunting lizard, as blue as the sky they dived from and full of the same scorn for life.

“Geirsti.” she said, the name of her tribe distorted by my master’s hold on her face and the pain of her burns.

“And your name?”

“Als.”

“Well, Als of the Geirsti. Listen to me. I am Merela Karn and my companion is Girton Club-Foot. We have killed many Glynti as we travelled back to Maniyadoc. Seventeen of the Corust, twelve of the Jei-Nihl and fourteen of the Dhustu. By my reckoning that means if you head back to your mountains the Geirsti will outnumber the other tribes. Take this information to your leader, conquer new lands and send no more of your young to die in search of the price on our heads.”

The Glynti woman stared at my master. Before she replied we were interrupted by a grunt from behind us. I turned, the first man I had hit with the hammer was convulsing.

“My man,” said the tribeswoman. “He fought well. Let your boy give him a good death, and I will consider what you say.” I looked to my master and she gave me a nod so I walked over and slit the man’s throat with my black blade. By the time I returned the Glynti woman was on her feet. “I will give your message to our clanwoman.”

“My master told you to stop sending people after us . . .” angry steps towards her, blade in my hand, but my master held me back once more.

“Thank you, Als of the Geirsti,” she said. “Leave here and die well.”

The woman staggered away into the ground mist, turning at that moment when wisps of thickened air made her look like a ghost.

“I will die well,” she said, “but you won’t, Merela Karn. No, you won’t. You will die hard.” The moist air swallowed her figure, leaving only laughter behind.

“She did not promise to leave us alone,” I said. “You should have made her promise to leave us alone, or killed her.”

“One more Glynti won’t make a difference in the great scheme of things. Girton, but if I can convince them to start a tribal war they’ll be too busy killing each other to come after us. The Geirsti are the biggest tribe, and . . .” Her voice tailed away and when I turned to her she looked stricken, her dark skin grey with shock “Geirsti,” she said, and stared at the cut on her arm. “Dark Ungar’s stolen breath,” she hissed, “the Geirsti are poisoners.” As she spoke she was pulling the rawhide cord from the neck of her jerkin and wrapping it around the top of her arm. “Girton, start a fire, hot as you can get it. Quickly.”

“Yes, Master.” A cold fell upon me, far deeper than could be explained by the yearsbirth morning chill, and it froze the simmering resentment that had been my companion for the years of our exile. I was running almost before I was aware of it. Wood is sparse in the Tired Lands, especially so near the border of the sourlands, but I found a derelict haystack, sodden with dew on the outside, and I burrowed within to pull dry grass from it. Beyond the haystack was a field where cows had been kept, and dry circles of dung punctuated the grass. When I returned my master had wrapped the cord so tightly around her bicep that her forearm had ballooned up and gone corpse blue.

“Quickly, Girton.” My hand shook as I struck flint to steel. The flame refused to catch, as if the morning mist sought to foil me by sucking away the sparks. Finally I got an ember and set the grass to crackling, but I could see impatience on my master’s face and knew the fire would not be hot enough quickly enough. “Give me your Conwy blade,” she hissed.

“Why?” I asked. Stupid, time-wasting words.

“Because mine have crossed with the Geirsti’s weapons and yours never leaves its scabbard,” she spat. “Give me it.” Her hand flashed out. I pulled the blade from the scabbard at my back and handed it to her; she gave me hers. “Stick this in the fire, Girton, get it hot, you know what to do.” I nodded. “The poison acts quickly. I don’t have time to wait for mine to heat so I will lose a lot of blood. Be ready.”

“Wait, Master.” And I was scared, like a child. “I should check the bodies for an antidote.”

“You would know it how?”

I stood, my hands trembling, fear chasing anger in circles like a mad dog after its tail.

“I could go after the woman.”

My master shook her head. “I’d be dead before you got back.” She gritted her teeth against a spasm of pain. “No. It must be this way and we must be swift – I do not want to lose my hand. Give me your belt.” Her teeth were chattering as I slipped the thick leather belt from my skirts and passed it to her. She paused before folding the leather double and forcing it into her mouth so she could bite down on it. Then she stared into my eyes, removed the belt for a second. “If I pass out, Girton, you must finish this.”

“Yes, Master.” Fear returned: fear of losing her, fear of being alone. She gave me a small smile, bit down on the leather and started taking short deep breaths through her nose. Then she nodded to me and pushed my knife into her wounded left arm.

She screamed against the leather belt, more in fury than pain, when she pushed the razor edge into her flesh three fingers’ breadth above the wound. Then she forced the sharp metal down into her arm and along the bone, growling and moaning like an animal all the while. With a sound like a rotten apple being squashed underfoot the blade came out of her, taking a chunk of flesh as long as my fingers with it. Her hand convulsed, and my Conwy stabsword fell from it as she slumped forward, unconscious. I dived for her, grabbing her hand and pulling it into the air with one arm and using my other to cradle her limp body against me. Thick blood poured over my arm as I lay her down on the damp grass and pushed a cloth hard against the wound, the muscles in my arms straining and sweat starting from my forehead as I worked to keep up the pressure. I willed the knife in the fire to speed its way to glowing cherry red. “Don’t die, don’t die,” going round and round in my head like a ride at Festival. The thicket of scars on my chest that kept the magic in check writhed as the dark flow within tried to rise up and take advantage of my fear.

When the blade was hot enough I cauterised the wound in my master’s arm – I doubted she would ever have the same skill with a blade after this – then I covered her in blankets from our packs. There was nothing else I could do past that so I sat, miserable, in front of the fire and tried not to think of the agony she had just put herself through or of how much mental discipline was required to cut out such a large piece of yourself.

I could not have done it.

The sun burned away the mist and winged lizards trilled a welcome to yearsbirth, flowers opened their colourful eyes in search of the sun, but I was as blind to them as they were to me. Somewhere, far in the distance, thunder rumbled.