Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,195

what was going on.

Then he saw the heavy door of the hall being swung shut, a pale face at the edge. “Door!” he bellowed, and ran for it, pounding across squelching mud and up the wooden steps, making the boards rattle. He shoved one bloody, muddy boot in the gap just as the door was slammed and gave a howl, eyes bulging, pain lancing up his leg. “My foot! Fuck!”

There were a dozen Fox Clan or more crowded around the end of the yard now, growling and grunting louder and uglier than the hogs. They waved jagged swords, axes, rough clubs in their fists, a few with shields too, one at the front with a rusted chain hauberk on, tattered around the hem, straggling hair tangled with rings of rough-forged silver.

“Back.” Whirrun stood tall in front of them, holding out his sword at long arm’s length, hilt up, like it was some magic charm to ward off evil. “Back, and you needn’t die today.”

The one in mail spat, then snarled back at him in broken Northern. “Show us your iron, thief!”

“Then I will. Look upon the Father of Swords, and look your last.” And Whirrun drew it from the sheath.

Men might’ve had a hundred names for it—Dawn Razor, Grave-Maker, Blood Harvest, Highest and Lowest, Scac-ang-Gaioc in the valley tongue which means the Splitting of the World, and so on, and so on—but Craw had to admit it was a disappointing length of metal. There was no flame, no golden light, no distant trumpets or mirrored steel. Just the gentle scrape as long blade came free of stained leather, the flat grey of damp slate, no shine or ornament about it, except for the gleam of something engraved down near the plain, dull crosspiece.

But Craw had other worries than that Whirrun’s sword wasn’t worth all the songs. “Door!” he squealed at Yon, scrabbling at the edge of it with his left hand, all tangled up with his shield, shoving his sword through the gap and waving it about to no effect. “My fucking foot!”

Yon roared as he pounded up the steps and rammed into the door with his shoulder. It gave all of a sudden, tearing from its hinges and crushing some fool underneath. Him and Craw burst stumbling into the room beyond, dim as twilight, hazy with scratchy-sweet smoke. A shape came at Craw and he whipped his shield up on an instinct, felt something thud into it, splinters flying in his face. He reeled off-balance, crashed into something else, metal clattering, pottery shattering. Someone loomed up, a ghostly face, a necklace of rattling teeth. Craw lashed at him with his sword, and again, and again, and he went down, white-painted face spattered with red.

Craw coughed, retched, coughed, blinking into the reeking gloom, sword ready to swing. He heard Yon roaring, heard the thud of an axe in flesh and someone squeal. The smoke was clearing now, enough for Craw to get some sense of the hall. Coals glowed in a fire pit, lighting a spider’s web of carved rafters in sooty red and orange, casting shifting shadows on each other, tricking his eyes. The place was hot as hell, and smelled like hell besides. Old hangings around the walls, tattered canvas daubed with painted marks. A block of black stone at the far end, a rough statue standing over it, and at its feet the glint of gold. A cup, Craw thought. A goblet. He took a step towards it, trying to waft the murk away from his face with his shield.

“Yon?” he shouted.

“Craw, where you at?”

Some strange kind of song was coming from somewhere, words Craw didn’t know but didn’t like the sound of. Not one bit. “Yon?” And a figure sprang up suddenly from behind that block of stone. Craw’s eyes went wide and he almost fell in the fire pit as he stumbled back.

He wore a tattered red robe; long, sinewy arms sticking from it, spread wide, smeared with paint and beaded up with sweat, the skull of some animal drawn down over his face, black horns curling from it so he looked in the shifting light like a devil bursting straight up from hell. Craw knew it was a mask, but looming up like that out of the smoke, strange song echoing from that skull, he felt suddenly rooted to the spot with fear. So much he couldn’t even lift his sword. Just stood there trembling, every muscle turned to water. He’d never been a