The tall soldier grabbed Megan and whipped out a knife. It stung as he pressed it to her throat. A droplet of hot blood welled up and trickled down her skin.
A hooded archer stood forty yards away, his weapon trained on them. He was slender and a good few inches taller than Megan. A dark green cloak flapped in the breeze, revealing mud-stained boots and trousers underneath. Leather and wool, no metal. He wasn’t one of the soldiers.
‘Let the girl go.’
A woman’s voice? Megan peered at the figure. There was a hint of female curves beneath the loose clothing, a glimpse of smooth skin under the hood.
‘Did you hear me?’ said the woman, drawing her bowstring back an extra inch. ‘I said let the girl go.’
The soldier had another knife stuck in his belt. He’d left Megan’s hands free, reasoning – rightly – there wasn’t much her fists could do against metal, but his limbs were only covered by leather. There were plenty of gaps though which a blade could cause a lot of damage. Megan stretched out a hand and eased out the knife, fearing any moment the man would notice and draw his own knife across her throat.
She got the blade clear and took a firm grip of the handle, then tensed, preparing to strike. The woman’s head flicked downwards, attracted by the motion. The soldier’s breath warmed Megan’s temple as he peered over her shoulder. Megan thrust, hard as she could.
Blood sprayed on to her hand as the knife ripped into the man’s thigh, provoking a scream that almost deafened her. She wrenched his arm off her neck and scrambled away from him. She got no more than a step away when his fist crashed at the side of her head.
The world went haywire. The ground swapped position with the sky a hundred times in a second. Dirt filled her mouth. Megan tried to push herself up, but a boot thudded into the small of her back and pinned her to the ground. Something split the air above her head. The pressure against her lessened. She looked up to see the soldier toppling to the ground, an arrow embedded into his eye socket.
Megan clambered to her feet, spitting out soil and rubbing her bruised flesh. She turned to the woman, intending to thank her, only to find an arrow trained on her. She yelped and took a step back.
‘Who are you?’ demanded the woman, advancing on Megan, her aim unwavering.
‘I thought you were helping me.’
‘Answer the question.’
‘This is my family’s land; I ask the questions.’ Actually it ended at the river, but if the woman wasn’t going to obey the rule of rescuing, Megan could fudge the technicalities of property ownership. ‘Who are you?’
‘I am Eleanor of the house of Endalay, Countess of Ainsworth, Baroness of Laxton and Herth, First Lady of Kirkland, Overlord of the Spice Isles and Defender of the Southern Lands. And you?’
‘Megan.’ And, because she was feeling conspicuously under-titled, she added, ‘Of Thicketford. What are you doing here?’
‘I saw the smoke. Did the witches touch you?’
‘What?’ said Megan. ‘Those aren’t witches.’
‘Yes, they are. And did they touch you?’
Megan shook her head. ‘They can’t be. The priests defeated them. My grandfather defeated them.’
‘Look at the tattoos,’ said Eleanor.
Megan glanced at the dead men. Their faces were inked with a multitude of designs: whorls and waves, suns and moons. None of them was the forbidden symbol, the symbol of the witches.
‘Lower.’
Lower was covered by clothing and armour. Eleanor jerked her bow, urging Megan on. Megan swallowed her distaste and crouched down by the soldier she’d stabbed in the leg. She tugged at the mud-caked scarf round his neck, exposing the skin below. Etched there, in faded ink, was a circle whose top was broken by two five-pointed stars.
Megan shot back as if the body was contaminated. She had seen the symbol only once before, carved on to the bridge. The whole village had been hysterical. The children – Megan and Gwyneth included – had cowered in cellars; the adults resorted to soaking themselves in the ford rather than risk the bridge. When the culprit, a twelve-year-old boy, had admitted to the graffiti – a joke, he had claimed – the whole village turned out to watch him be thrashed by the priest and his fingers reduced to a bloody pulp as he sanded away the offending image.
‘It’s a cheap trick to scare people,’ Megan said.
Eleanor nodded at the remains of Megan’s home. ‘You think the people who did this need to resort to cheap tricks?’ She spat on the ground. ‘These soldiers are witches.’
Megan shivered. The day had got colder and darker in a way the passage of clouds across the sun couldn’t totally explain. She remembered her grandfather’s stories, of men who had broken the Pledges of Faith so absolutely they knew there was no chance of salvation. Of men who, instead of waiting for death to condemn them to hell, had given their souls to the demons Ahebban and Jolecia and brought hell to Werlavia. Better to rule the fires than suffer them.
Edwyn the Fifth had led an aristocratic army against the witches, but his lords were decimated, leaving him a broken man. The Realm was all but lost until the priests rallied the Faithful. The witches had fought hard, but they were pushed back, inch by bloody inch, laying waste to the land as they retreated south through Werlavia. The priests’ army drove them to Trafford’s Haven, where the Endalayan Mountains had prevented any further flight. Rather than surrendering, the witches had chosen to burn the city and themselves with it, condemning themselves to the fate they had fought so hard to avoid.
That had been four decades ago. Was that whom Megan had abandoned her family to? Was this slaughter some kind of sacrifice? Ahebban and Jolecia were said to have slept on a bed of skulls and to have drank the blood of humans. Could they really have returned from death? But what was death to demons?
‘How have the witches come back? They’re meant to be dead.’
‘I don’t think anyone counted the bodies,’ said Eleanor.
‘Saviours help us,’ Megan murmured. The epithet was less a curse than a genuine plea.
Eleanor nodded over to the mill. ‘That your home?’ Megan could manage only the briefest nod.
Eleanor headed for the ford. Megan spun round in confusion. ‘What are you . . . ?’ Eleanor ignored her and started to wade across the river.
Megan didn’t want to confront the dead bodies of her family, but neither could she leave them to a stranger. She stumbled to the ford and plunged in, gasping at the shock of the icy water, waded across and hauled herself up the bank.
Her grandfather lay where the soldiers had shot him down, the arrow holes weeping dried blood, his body far enough from the mill to have saved him from the flames. She knelt down and kissed his forehead. Tears brimmed in her eyes and fell on to his cheek.
‘We should say the funeral prayer,’ said Eleanor.
‘We need a priest to lead it,’ said Megan.
‘If God was that bothered, He would have spared us one.’
They could at least try. Megan made the sign of the circle over her heart. The words of the funeral prayer came easy to her. They were the first words she could remember, intoned on a sweet summer’s day when they had buried her parents, who had succumbed to the sweating sickness when she and Gwyneth were just four years old.
‘God, born of the eternal universe, ultimate arbiter of man, take these souls we deliver unto You. Show them Your mercy and love and the wonders of Your creation. Rejoice, for though life ends in death, out of . . . out of . . .’
Her voice gave out. Eleanor placed a hand on her shoulder and finished the prayer. ‘Out of death comes life.’
Together they recited the Pledges of Faith. ‘I pledge obedience to God and His priests. I pledge to uphold the Faith and destroy its enemies. I pledge to accept no other God. I pledge my body and all that I am for God’s purpose.’ Sorry about that, Megan added silently, her hand drifting to her stomach. ‘I pledge to defend His people. I pledge truth in all I do.’
The mill that was once her home was a blackened shell. The wheel had slumped into the river and although water flowed through the slats it failed to turn. Megan had to go inside, but the prospect terrified her. The glimpses she’d had of the villagers, the charred corpses and contorted faces, were haunting enough. To see her sister like that – the girl with whom she had shared her sixteen years in the world and before that their mother’s womb – made her want to throw herself in the river and hold her head under the surface until oblivion took her.
She forced herself to enter. Dust motes swam in the hazy columns of light that spilled in through the punctured roof and illuminated a burnt body with a knife in its chest. It had enough of its features for Megan to recognize it wasn’t Gwyneth. It was a man, or rather a boy: Holt. She fled the room, eyes squeezed shut, trying to excise the image from her mind.
Megan advanced through the house, her stomach lurching every time she entered a new room, expecting to find Gwyneth dead on the floor. There was a heavy smell that reminded her of hams being smoked. Residual heat trapped in the floorboards warmed her soles. Odd bits of wall and furniture had survived the fire and she could make out scraps of paint and varnish on otherwise blackened wood. The fragments of familiarity hit her hard, a reminder of what she had lost.
Gwyneth wasn’t here. The walls groaned as if in empathy. There was a scuffle up on the fragments of roof. A whisper of soot dropped on to her shoulders. Some bird disturbed at the destruction of its resting place.
‘This place isn’t safe,’ said Eleanor. ‘We should leave.’
Megan turned. The countess had followed her inside. Water dripped from her cloak, soddening the ashes that carpeted the floor. The bow was now strapped to her back, but she kept her hand on the hilt of a short sword hanging from her waist. Her hood was still up, leaving just a hint of a pale face visible in the shadow.
‘I’m not leaving until I’ve found her,’ said Megan.
‘Who?’
‘My sister.’
‘They’ll have taken her with them.’
‘What?’ said Megan. ‘Why? That doesn’t make sense. Why cart her body around with them?’
‘Body?’ said Eleanor. ‘You think she’s dead?
‘You think she’s alive?’
‘I . . .’
‘She was in here. Holt called her name but she didn’t get out and I waited and waited and she still didn’t come out. That’s when I . . .’
‘Ran?’ said Eleanor.
Megan nodded. She recalled the witch at the ford, the one who had killed his compatriot rather than have him shoot her. ‘They were waiting for me. They wanted me alive. They wanted us alive.’
‘It would appear so.’
‘But why?’
‘You must have heard what the witches do,’ said Eleanor.
Megan’s stomach churned, and not just from morning sickness. She couldn’t think about that. Gwyneth was alive. That’s what she had to concentrate on. But if she was, it led to an awful implication. ‘I could have rescued her,’ she said. ‘I should have rescued her.’
‘There was nothing you could have done,’ said Eleanor, reaching out.
Megan knocked her away. ‘I should have tried!’
‘You did the right thing.’
‘By saving my own skin?’
‘If the roles had been reversed, what would you have wanted for your sister?’ said Eleanor. ‘At least one of you got away.’
It was the logic of a coward, impeccable but wrong. Megan had been the one person Gwyneth should have always been able to count on, but instead she had abandoned her. Somewhere out there, Gwyneth was suffering and wondering why Megan didn’t come for her. There was only one thing to do now.
She stormed out of the mill and headed for the ford. Eleanor hurried after her. ‘Where are you going?’
Megan spun on her feet. She saw her grandfather’s corpse out of the corner of her eye. She should bury him properly, but there were no tools to do so and she didn’t have time. He would understand what she had to do.
‘I failed Gwyneth once,’ she said. ‘I won’t fail her again. I’m going to find her and rescue her and God help anyone who tries to stop me.’