Blood of the Red

Chapter 8 - Shallo

Chapter 8 – Shallo

Midnight missed its stroke. The tower bell held its tongue and the silence woke Shallo like a slap. The cold air bit, making her gasp. Moonlight, fingered through the shutters and caught the bloom of her breath. It shouldn't be so cold. Goosebumps patterned her skin. She twisted, naked beneath the heavy quilts, reaching for her knife. Her fingers closed about the familiar hilt, and she felt dressed.

Tension ran through the room, the darkness taut with threat. Shallo felt the chill creeping over her, marching through the short hairs. The moonlight fell in three irregular bars, contouring the swell of her body beneath the covers. Three strands of sterile light taking away her night-sight. Around the island of her bed the blind night crawled.

Something is out there. She knew it with cold certainty. Old murder lurking in the corners, grisly and flayed, mouthing bloody whispers beneath the silence. Something evil watched her. She felt its hand about her heart, an ache in her nipples, a tightness in her bladder, a sliver of pain between her shoulders. In the corner by the door . . . something crouched... watching.

The air cracked as Shallo's blade sliced it. A snap of her wrist, and the dagger flew from her hand. Before the wet thunk and the thin shriek reached her she had rolled across the bed and wrenched the shutters wide. In the corner a large black rat convulsed around her knife. Outside the snow fell, silent in the moonlight.

Shallo released the breath she'd been holding. It escaped in a long sigh. Spooked by a rat! Her instincts were betraying her - the burning in the town-square had haunted her dreams. The snowflakes' cold kisses made her shiver. She began to turn back to her bed, but dead hands seized her wrists. A corpse lunged up from beneath her sill, its face a mottled nightmare of frozen blood, black and blue on torn white flesh.

With strength born of momentary terror, Shallo threw herself back toward her bed. The grip on her wrists was iron and ice, the body came with her. A scream fought to get out but Shallo wouldn't let it. She braced her feet against the body and forced it from her. The broken face twisted into a grin, ice cracking and bones grating,

"Shallo. So kind of you to invite me in."

The moonlight glinted on ring-mail. Shallo recognised the uniform of the Night-Watch. She guessed a few more hours would pass without comment from the tower bell. The dead watchman released her wrists, and she rubbed at them to encourage the blood back into her fingers.

"So sorry. A fall down the watchtower stairs makes quite a mess. This one wasn't pretty enough to march through the front door of the inn." The dead man grinned, bloody and gap-toothed.

"So you came calling at a lady's window?" Shallo went to tug her knife from the rat corpse, her composure returned. She scooped up her tunic, wriggling into it with knife in hand.

"The man you have been waiting for has arrived." Dead lips moved to the will of Utta of the Black. "Across three thousand miles we have seen him. Ingold."

"I don't suppose you saw where he was staying?" Shallo said.

"He comes as a bard. Not yet fifty. Red hair. There is a child with him. Kill the man. Bring the iron disk to the Towers of Silence. Bring the child also."

Shallo yanked the laces tight on her trews and looked up sharply, "You said nothing of a child before!"

The Black Priest's voice broke from the watchman's dead throat in thick clots. "The disk and the child. The disk and the child, Shallo, or you'll pray to burn."

The body fell. A puppet with cut strings, head bouncing on the boards. Shallo swept her thick black cloak about her shoulders and shivered despite herself. Nothing like a dead man in your bedroom to encourage a midnight departure. She left without looking back.