A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,3
that foul ceremony last night?”
Drem frowned, thinking about that. “Gulla would be transformed, still. A Revenant, Fritha called him.”
“They wouldn’t be needing to spend half a day burying their dead, or torching them, and that’s a fact,” Cullen said.
“Cullen and Keld are mighty warriors,” Rab muttered. “And Drem,” the crow added, bobbing his head at Drem.
Is that crow trying not to hurt my feelings?
“Aye, true enough,” Keld agreed. “Gulla turned some of his acolytes into the same corruption as him,” he said thoughtfully. “This is part of the Kadoshim’s plan, part of the Long War. So, I’ll ask you again, Drem, what would be happening now?”
“He’d be raising his army,” Drem told them. “Sig said the Kadoshim are too few to win the war against the Ben-Elim, that they need numbers, warriors.”
“That’s right,” Keld said, “and their acolytes are not enough. They’ve been experimenting at that mine, using dark magic to make those Feral beast-men, and now these new creatures, Revenants. Once Gulla has what he needs, he’ll fall upon the Banished Lands like a plague.”
Drem shook his head. Part of him had known this, but in the madness of battle, the grief at losing Sig and the following exhaustion of flight, the weight of it had not settled in his mind. It was starting to make sense now.
“Without you, we would not have known anything about it,” Cullen said, squeezing Drem’s shoulder.
“Aye. Long have we searched for Gulla, High Captain of the Kadoshim. He is second only to Asroth, and you led us to him. You’ve given mankind a chance,” Keld said. “Course, they may still catch us and leave us bleeding out in the snow, or those Feral things might end up gnawing on our bones and sucking out our marrows, though I’ll take a few of them with us before I’ll let that happen.” Keld patted his axe lovingly, face twisted in a maniacal grin. “But at least we have a chance now, and that’s because of you. Olin would be proud.”
Drem felt a flare of warmth in his chest at that, though edged with the grief that every memory of his da brought with it.
“Though he wouldn’t be so proud of that,” Keld said, nodding at Drem’s seax.
“What?” Drem said, putting a hand on the bone-hilted knife at his belt.
“Oh, dear Elyon above,” Cullen said.
“Can you even take it from its scabbard?” Keld asked.
Drem tried, but it was stuck. He looked closer, saw blood had crusted black on the scabbard, thick where the bone hilt met leather. He tugged and twisted the seax free. It was a big knife, more like a short-sword, as long as his forearm, the blade thick and single-edged, curving on the sharp side to a tapered point.
“Ach,” Keld said with a disgusted twist of his lips. “You should have a ten-night on latrine duty at Dun Seren for that.”
Shamefaced, Drem set to scouring the blade clean, taking a pumice stone and oil from a pouch on his belt. There were new notches in the blade, testament to the battle at the mine. Blood had congealed in the pits of the steel. Drem scraped it away, scrubbing hard with the pumice.
“Can I see that?” Cullen asked beside him.
Drem passed him the seax. The hilt was worn and smooth from Drem’s grip, a perfect fit for his fist.
Cullen hefted the weapon, noting the weight, gave it a twirl in his fist, firelight gleaming red. Then he looked closer at the blade, with Keld leaning in as well. Cullen passed the seax to the huntsman.
“Did Olin forge this?” Keld asked.
“Aye, he did,” Drem said. He remembered his da in the smithy at Kergard during their first winter in the Desolation. That had been five years ago.
Keld drew his thumb along the blade’s edge, blood welled. He let a few drops land on the flat and smeared them in. “Nochtann,” he said, and the steel of the blade seemed to shimmer and ripple.
Drem blinked; carved runes were winking into life along the blade. He leaned forwards, staring.
“Where did they come from?” Drem muttered.
“They’ve always been there.” Cullen smiled.
“Aye, lad,” Keld said. “Olin put them there, when he forged it.”
“How? Why have I never seen them?”
“We learn more than swordcraft at Dun Seren,” Keld said with a wink.
“I haven’t, yet,” Cullen said sullenly.
Drem shook his head. He’d had a lot to come to terms with over the last couple of moons, foremost of which was the fact that there was much more to his da than