A Time of Dread (Of Blood and Bone #1) - John Gwynne Page 0,136

that he’d seen feasting on Fritha’s hound was pinned to the table with a spike through its chest, wings spread wide, pierced with iron nails. It tried to flap its wings, a feeble movement, head swivelling to regard him with its red eyes. On the table beside it was a human hand, an iron rod jammed into the gaping wound of its wrist, tendons somehow attached. Other things, unrecognizable. A wooden frame, some kind of fabric stretched across it. Drem peered closer.

Skin! It’s flayed skin!

‘Help … me,’ a voice whispered, Drem leaping around, spear pointing. A shape moved in one of the cells, a dark shadow shifting.

‘Please,’ the voice whispered, slurring, as if drunken or broken-jawed.

There were rush torches set in holders about the table, some blackened, burned-out stumps, others still fresh. Drem took his fire iron from his belt pouch and struck sparks, a torch flaring to life. He knew how dangerous it was, here in the middle of this place, enemies all around – but that voice. He recognized it.

‘Sten?’ he said, holding the torch up, approaching the boulder. Darkness retreated, orange glow washing the rock face, shadows flickering and dancing, the cells looking like myriad dark eyes staring back at him, silent as secrets. ‘Sten?’ Drem said again.

Sten was one of the trappers from Kergard who had not returned from the Bonefells, along with his partner, Vidar. Drem remembered Ulf telling him and his da over a skin of mead and a warm fire. That seemed like so long ago.

Light from Drem’s torch pushed back the darkness in the cell, a figure slowly emerging, a man, stooped and hunched, shambling forwards, dragging one foot that was twisted at an odd angle.

‘Stennnn,’ the figure whispered, finally looking up at Drem.

He almost dropped the torch.

It was Sten, but not as Drem remembered him. His lower jaw was distended, looking too big for his head and hanging open, sharp teeth rowed within red, swollen gums, and his eyes were yellow. His hands were curled, as if sore and swollen, nails grown long and black.

‘Sten, what have they done to you?’ Drem whispered.

‘Killll me,’ the thing that had been Sten breathed.

‘Vidar; where’s Vidar?’ Drem asked, stepping close to the iron bars. Sten twisted his head, bones clicking. Muscles bunched in his shoulders and back, unnaturally large between shoulder and neck, taut as knotted rope.

‘Vidarrrrrr gone,’ Sten groaned, eyes flitting to the table behind Drem. He slumped, like a sail with no wind, then suddenly grew, swelling, and hurled himself at the iron bars of his cage, clawed hands clutching at Drem, snagging in his torch, his cloak. Drem leaped backwards, stumbling and falling into the snow. Sten pounded and snarled and smashed at the iron bars, a feral fury sending an explosion of dust and fragments of stone from where they were buried into the rock face.

All along the boulder things swarmed to their cell bars, crouched things, things on all fours, looking like huge, mutated wolven, bears, badgers, other creatures of the Wild. And then there were things that stood like men, or half-men, bodies unnaturally muscled, furred in parts, bones elongated. At one cage a bairn stumbled forwards, feet stretched and clawed. It wrapped its too-long jaws around an iron bar and shook it, saliva and blood dripping down the iron in long streaks.

Drem staggered to his feet, backing away, spear levelled at the cages as his torch sputtered and went out. His hands shook. Horror and fear swept through him, threatened to overwhelm him.

Behind him the bear roared in its pen, the door rattling, a loud crack as it swiped a paw at the lock. Voices shouted. The guard groaned in the snow.

A horn blew, further away, faint and distant. Beyond the enclosure, from the direction of the lake.

Drem ran, blindly, no destination in mind, just away from these creatures of nightmare. He kicked the rousing guard in the head as he raced past, then rushed into the darkness. In moments he was at the encampment wall, felt a wild moment of panic, feeling trapped, knew that if he was found he’d be thrown to those things in the cells, or worse, turned into one of them. He saw a set of stairs that climbed the palisade and sprinted up them, slipped on half-frozen snow, righted himself and reached the top.

He turned and stared back into the compound, saw figures holding torches running to the boulder, one thrusting his burning torch into a cell, a high-pitched scream rang