A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,13

the Great Lie.

Morn thrust a flaming torch into the pyre, the falling snow hissed and steamed as tongues of fire crackled and writhed. Smoke billowed, in heartbeats the stench of burning wood and flesh mingled, swirling about the lakeshore, and Morn lifted her head and howled her grief to the snow-laden sky.

Fritha walked past Morn in silence, Gunil’s heavy footsteps crunching behind her as they passed through an open gateway in a stockaded wall, entering the mining complex. Lines of smoke still blackened the sky, timber frames charred and collapsing as she strode across the complex, making her way through a sprawl of buildings to the open square where the ritual had taken place, where Gulla had been changed, transformed.

Become the first Revenant.

Fritha shuddered at the memory of it, feeling a mixture of fear and exhilaration as she remembered the giant bat being nailed to the table, the excitement she’d felt coursing through her as she’d held a blade to Gulla’s throat, the jet of blood. And then Asroth’s severed hand, the power of his blood.

We did it.

I did it.

The courtyard opened up before her; a fresh layer of snow covered the gore-spattered ground. At the northern end stood a thick-legged table, long and broad, pools of blood, bodies and dismembered limbs still scattered across it. They were testament not only to last night’s battle, but also to the many moons of laboured experimentation and muttered spells that had been undertaken, the transformation of men and beasts into something… more. Fritha felt a flush of joy just looking at it, for she loved her work. To transform, to create.

One of the results of those experiments prowled past Fritha, something part man, part beast, a creature of tooth and claw, hunched and muscled, limbs elongated. A Feral being. It glanced at Fritha, paused as it bared its teeth, long and blood-crusted, nostrils flaring on its muzzle as it drew in her scent. A tremored growl as it recognized her and paced closer, dropping its head to her.

Fritha reached out and stroked the Feral’s cheek.

“My baby,” she whispered, and the Feral pushed against her hand, a moment’s affection, and then it was loping away and disappearing into the shadows.

Fritha walked around a mound of piled corpses, acolytes fallen in the battle, limbs twisted together in a macabre embrace. Their bodies steamed in the winter cold. Too many to count, though Fritha thought over a score of their number lay there, and still more were being carried in from the edges of the camp, a trail of the dead marking where Sig and her companions had carved a path to the stockade wall and made their escape.

How could they slay so many?

Four against many—over fifty acolytes and a score of my Ferals.

Sig and her companions had wreaked such havoc amongst them last night: three men, a giant bear, a wolven and a talking crow. They had fled into the night while the giantess Sig stood and bought them time with her sword.

Fritha shook her head, could still hardly believe it, though the growing pile of the slain was a stark reminder that her mind had not exaggerated last night’s events.

The dead tell no lies.

A crowd stood gathered about a figure beyond the table, tall and dark-haired, wings furled behind his back.

Gulla, Lord of the Kadoshim.

Fritha strode purposefully towards him, and shaven-haired acolytes parted for her. This was the first time she had observed Gulla clearly since last night; even he had not gone unscathed. A bandage wrapped his once-handsome, sharp-angled face, covering the ruin of his eye-socket where one of the Bright Star’s talking crows had taken an eye. But it was the ritual which had marked him most: his whole body was transformed, taller, limbs elongated. His muscles coiled like rope about his frame, each striation and fibre visible, veins pulsing, and a shadow seemed to edge him, like a dark halo. Fritha’s eyes were drawn to Gulla’s mouth, which appeared wider, the hint of too many teeth behind stretched skin, and the tips of two sharp canines protruding from his lips. Across his throat was a raw scar, scabbed and weeping a translucent pus, where Fritha had cut his throat and slain him, all the while speaking her spells of blood and bone.

And now he is reborn, the first Revenant—a new creation for a new type of war.

“My Lord,” Fritha said as she reached him, dipping her head.

“Priestess,” Gulla said. Even his voice was changed after last night’s ceremony. Where once