the man screamed his agony over the fevered chanting from the crowd.
Then the Kadoshim saw Sig and the shadowed figures of her companions behind her. Their eyes met and the chanting about the chamber stuttered and died.
The Kadoshim pointed its blood-slick knife at Sig, faces turning.
‘Kill them,’ it rasped.
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CHAPTER SIX
BLEDA
Bleda stood upon the walls of Drassil, looking down at the weapons-field below. All manner of warriors were training, learning the craft of spear, bow and sword, as well as other things.
‘Strategy, they call it,’ his friend Jin said as she pointed to a shield wall that had formed near the centre of the field. She was a ward of the Ben-Elim, too, taken the same day as him. That had been grounds enough for a friendship.
‘Cowardice is what I call it,’ she continued, head cocked to one side as she considered the warriors far below. Her jet hair was short-cropped to her head, the sharp features of her cheeks and the slight hook of her nose reminding Bleda of the stooping hawk that was the sigil of her Clan. ‘A warrior should stand one against another, whether with bow, spear or blade. That is skill, that is honour. Not that! Hiding behind your weapons-kin, hiding behind wood and iron!’
‘Huh,’ Bleda grunted, his eyes drifting from the shield wall to the figure of a mounted warrior galloping, spear raised, charging a straw man. The drum of hooves drifted up to Bleda, simply the sound of it stirring his blood, even if the horse was a huge, muscle-bound beast as far from the swift and hardy ponies he had grown up riding as he was different from a giant.
Ah, to ride through the plains of grass with nothing but wind and sky before me. A recollection of doing just such a thing filled his mind. It was a dim, faded memory, more precious to Bleda than gold, silver or jewels. He closed his eyes a moment and concentrated, almost feeling the wind whipping across his face, could almost hear the distant echo of his laughter mixing with his brother’s, who had been riding at his side on that long-ago day.
Altan.
Before he had a chance to control it, another image flashed through his mind. His brother’s severed head in the dirt, eyes bulging, tongue lolling. With an act of will he pushed the memory away, forced it into a shadowed hole in his mind and let out a long breath, as if he had completed some physical exertion.
‘They are cowards, no?’ Jin said, clearly enjoying her rant against the warriors of Drassil, and wanting Bleda’s support on this point. It was not often that they were alone enough to be able to speak like this, always someone was around teaching or watching over them. Even now they were supposed to be with a loremaster and hard at work learning their letters. Instead they had sneaked off and made their way onto Drassil’s walls, finding a rare spot between guards on watch duty.
‘Their ways are strange and without honour,’ Bleda said, and in truth many of the Ben-Elim’s ways still seemed so to him, even after five years of living amongst these people as their ward. But there was much more to the Ben-Elim and their allies than that. Much of what had once seemed strange now made a lot more sense.
And they are not cowards, as much as I would like to agree with Jin on that point. But Bleda kept his opinion to himself, as he often did. I’ll not argue with my only friend, the closest thing I have to my kin in this strange land.
In truth, Jin should have been his enemy. Until Bleda had been snatched away by the Ben-Elim on that dark and distant day, Jin had been his enemy: daughter and heir of the Cheren’s lord, the Clan that Bleda’s people had been fighting the day the Ben-Elim came. Technically there was blood feud between Bleda and Jin, as Bleda’s da had been slain by members of Jin’s Clan, and in return Jin’s older brother and heir to the Cheren Clan had been slain by the Sirak. But now, for five long years, all they had had was each other, each of them acting for the other as some tenuous bridge to home.
The thrum of arrows leaving bows dragged his eyes from the galloping horse, in time to see a score of straw targets shudder as loosed arrows hit their mark. Even Bleda could not stop his