A Time of Dread (Of Blood and Bone #1) - John Gwynne Page 0,122

bow, a little less so when she’d heard where it had come from.

‘All these years she’s kept it from you,’ Jin had said.

‘She has,’ Bleda had agreed. ‘But she has given it to me now.’ And Jin had seen something in his eyes then that she hadn’t liked. Not one little bit. Ever since then Jin had hidden it well, but whenever he used his bow or spoke of it her voice had been gilded with spite, veiled threads of jealousy leaking from her.

Jealous of his bow, or of Riv, he did not know.

‘Don’t worry for my safety,’ Jin said as she stood over the dead White-Wing, turning the fallen man’s head with her foot. ‘I just wanted to make sure he’s dead. I have no intention of getting involved. Let them kill each other, what do I care? Good, I say. The world is better for fewer Ben-Elim and White-Wings.’

A short while ago and Bleda would have agreed without thought, but now, at Jin’s words the first image to flash into his mind was Riv.

A fledgling White-Wing.

He had missed her since she’d been gone, over a ten-night, which had surprised him, but now he just felt a sense of relief that she was not here, was not fighting, risking death in this courtyard.

Though she may be no safer, wherever she is.

He pushed the thought away, brought back to the present by another death-scream.

How did they get in here? Get the gates open, take Drassil by surprise? And where are the Ben-Elim?

As if answering his thoughts, he felt the air shift above him, saw shadows flitting across the sky.

But they weren’t Ben-Elim.

Bleda knew it in a moment. The shape of them was different, their outline – silvered by starlight above, red-flamed glow from below – looked wrong, somehow. Their wings were ragged and thin, like wind-torn clouds after a storm, and they were edged in sharp-curved talons.

Kadoshim!

Even as he thought it, one of the winged figures was descending to the ground, only fifteen, twenty paces from Bleda and Jin. And it was carrying something in its long arms, another figure that it as good as hurled into a knot of White-Wings who were forming a small shield wall of a dozen men, calling others to them.

The figure thrown into their midst scattered them like kindling, roaring a battle-cry as the White-Wings scrambled to their feet. Its arms swung, some kind of sickle-like blade in its hand, and a head was spinning through the air. Then it leaped at two more White-Wings, the three of them crashing to the ground in a roaring tangle of limbs.

The Kadoshim alighted between them and Bleda, its wings furling behind it with a snap, a rush of air that tasted of the grave, of rot and decay. Bleda and Jin just stood and stared at the creature. All his life Bleda had heard of the Kadoshim, dread foes of the Ben-Elim, their opposite in every way. But no tale had prepared him for the sight of one in the flesh, living, breathing, stinking, just ten paces away. It was taller than a man, black eyes set in a reptilian face, fixing upon him, dark veins cobwebbing its pallid flesh. Its face shifted, smile or snarl, Bleda was unsure, revealing white, pointed teeth, and it strode towards them, drawing a sword from its scabbard, dark wings framing it like a cloak.

‘Kill it!’ Jin hissed beside him, but Bleda was frozen, those black eyes burning into him. He felt the closeness of death, a cold breath down the back of his neck. He fumbled desperately with the arrows in his grip, dropped them clattering about his feet, beside him Jin moved into a fighting stance, knees bent, her knife gleaming in her fist.

The Kadoshim raised its sword.

Bleda nocked an arrow to his bow, fingers feeling numb, swollen, like when he’d been stung by a bee. He tried to draw his arrow, aim, knew he was too slow, too late, the Kadoshim’s shadow falling across him, the stench of its breath filling his senses, and all Bleda could do was stare into its pale-as-death face.

Jin stepped forwards, crouched, knife levelled. She hissed a challenge.

An axe slammed into the Kadoshim’s skull, its head gone in a heartbeat, an explosion of blood and bone and brains, the axe continuing its descent, carving down deeper, through clavicle bone, sternum and ribs, on and into its chest cavity. Then the axe-blade was being ripped free, the Kadoshim collapsing to the ground with