‘More Behemoth bits, I assume? Well, I have had a full bottle of wine, so you might have to remind me of the specifics,’ he said.
Vintage glanced up at his tall form. He did not look like a man recently rousted from bed with a bottle’s worth of wine inside him. In the gentle lamplight his handsome face looked carved from fine marble, his long black hair tied and bound into a tail on the back of his head. His clear eyes, the irises a deep ruddy colour in this light, were bright and alert, and he was dressed in his infuriating manner – that was to say, he appeared to have thrown together a collection of silks, furs and worn leathers and somehow managed to look exquisitely elegant. In the years they had been travelling through Sarn together, Vintage had never seen him look anything less than composed, even when turfed out of someone’s bed. The only sign that he’d had to rush was the lack of jewellery – he wore only a single silver earring in the shape of a leaf, and a silver ring with a fat red stone on his left hand; in the daylight, she knew, his eyes were the exact same colour as the stone. His sword belt was already in place, and his sword, the Ninth Rain, rested comfortably across his back. She grinned up at him.
‘More Behemoth bits or, at least, the potential to find some. Let’s get going. We’ll ride and talk.’
Together, they mounted their horses and made their way through Mushenska’s wide, cobbled streets. It was a large and crowded city, spilling over with lights on every corner and from every window; people felt safer when the shadows were kept at bay. Eventually, the great city wall loomed up ahead of them, and Vintage noted the beacons along it, the men and women armed with powerful longbows, and the solid black shapes of cauldrons. They would contain oil, which could be lit and tossed over the side at a moment’s notice. She had never witnessed an incident while she had been staying in Mushenska – much to her annoyance – but she had returned from travelling once to see the smoking body of a great Wild bear, and the claw marks it had left on the walls. It had been twelve feet tall, its muscles so enormous it was misshapen. What it could possibly have been thinking to attack the wall, Vintage did not know – but the poisoned wildlife of Sarn did not always behave rationally.
At the thickly reinforced gates they met a trio of guards who expressed a great deal of concern about them leaving at night, until Vintage passed them each small bags of coins. Even so, the eldest, a stocky woman with a scar slashed across her blunt nose, fixed Vintage with a pained expression.
‘If it can’t wait until morning, then that’s your lookout.’ She glanced once at Tor, then looked away. ‘But keep to the road. There are places further out that are getting overgrown, but it’s still better than being out in the Wild.’
Vintage nodded seriously, touched by the woman’s genuine concern. The gates were opened for them and they passed through, riding their horses out into a balmy night. Ahead of them stretched the northern road out of Mushenska, a featureless stretch of brown beaten earth. Scrubby grassland flanked the road, and in the distance was the darker presence of the forest – or, as the guard had called it – the Wild. Vintage knew that the further they travelled from the city, the closer the Wild would get. The people of the city worked to keep it back, but their efforts only stretched so far, and the Wild was always growing. Vintage cleared her throat as the gates rumbled closed behind them. The road was utterly clear, with not a soul in sight, and it was eerily quiet.
‘What’s the story then, Vintage? What’s the hurry? Surely this could have waited until the morning.’
Vintage touched her boot heels to her horse and they moved off smartly down the road. ‘There is a settlement, not too far from here. Well, I say settlement. It’s more a place where a few people bumped into each other and decided they were done travelling. A woman from there arrived early this morning, asking for aid. They have been visited. Half their livestock dead, and they’ve lost people, too.’
Tormalin snorted. ‘What do they expect, living out in the Wild?’
‘They expect to live their lives, just as all people do.’ Vintage shifted in her saddle. ‘Besides which, it is not the lively wildlife that is bothering them. It is a parasite spirit.’
Tor was quiet for a few moments. In the distance, the high and lonely call of some night bird rent the air.
‘They’ve not been bothered by one before?’
‘No. Which leads me to believe that there could be Behemoth remains nearby. Undiscovered ones.’ She looked over at Tor and smiled. ‘Can you imagine that, my dear?’
Tor didn’t look nearly as pleased. ‘Why now?’
‘A shifting of the earth has uncovered them, perhaps. A tree fallen in a storm has disturbed them, or perhaps just the rain. Or maybe something large has been digging.’ She shrugged. ‘Either way, it is worth a look. And the sooner we get there, the better chance we have of witnessing something ourselves. Besides which, we have decided that it is better to tackle these things in the dark, if we can. Have we not?’
Tor sighed. ‘You are right, of course.’
Vintage nodded. A year ago, they had been investigating an eerie stretch of land known to its locals as the Thinny. It was a ravine, partially filled with rockfall and the usual explosion of plant life that was typical of the Wild, and the far end of it, the stories went, was haunted by parasite spirits. A local man had insisted on accompanying them. Berron, his name had been, and he had been kind – just like the guard on the gate, he had been genuinely concerned for them. Had wanted to help. They had spent hours clambering through the shadowy strangeness of the ravine, until they had come to an unexpected clear patch. The walls of the ravine had fallen there, letting in bright sunshine. The three of them had stood blinking for a moment, dazzled by the unexpected light, and that was when the parasite spirit had taken Berron. A being mostly made of light is harder to see in the daylight. It was as simple as that.
A comfortable silence settled over them, and they rode for some time with only the sound of their horses’ hooves striking the dirt road. The night was still and the moon was as fat as a full tick, dusting the tops of the trees with a silver glow. In time, the Wild drew closer, eating up the scrubby grass and creeping towards the road.
‘It stalks us,’ pointed out Tor. Vintage felt a shiver of relief at the sound of his voice. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘Nonsense, my dear.’ She forced herself to smile. ‘The Wild is not a living thing. Woods is woods, is what my father used to say.’
‘Did you spend much time in the vine forest at night?’
‘Not as such, no. The work we had to do there required daylight, but I did go walking after dark a few times. The night transforms a place like that. I grew up in between those trees, learned to walk and skinned my shins there, but at night it was like it no longer belonged to me.’
She could feel Tor’s eyes on her now.