‘No,’ Bleda whispered. ‘Mother?’
A long silence, a look between Erdene and Israfil that spoke of pride and shame, of the victor and the defeated. The fear returned then, a chill in Bleda’s heart, seeping into his veins, carrying a tremor to his lips.
The cold-face. Do not shame Mother. Do not shame my people.
‘It is agreed,’ Erdene said, her face a mask, only her eyes speaking her message.
You must be strong.
‘It is the price that must be paid,’ the Ben-Elim intoned. ‘There will be peace in the Land of the Faithful. There is only one enemy, only one foe who shall be fought: the Kadoshim and their followers.’
‘No,’ Bleda said, both denial and refusal. He felt hot tears bloom in his eyes, snatched at them, knowing the shame they brought.
‘Altan and Hexa will not allow you to do this,’ Bleda said, anger and fear twisting his voice, then there was a rushing of air and a beating of wings as more Ben-Elim sped from the sky, alighting around Israfil. The first was fair-haired, a long scar running from forehead to chin. He threw something at Israfil’s feet. They dropped with a thud, rolled in the grass and fell still.
Two heads, eyes bulging, blood still dripping.
Altan and Hexa.
The world went silent. Bleda’s vision was reduced to the severed heads of his brother and sister. He heard something, distantly, realized that it was him, that he was screaming, twisting and bucking in Israfil’s grip, hands reaching to gouge the Ben-Elim’s eyes, but Israfil held him at arm’s length until slowly Bleda’s strength drained away, like wine from a pierced skin. Israfil regarded Bleda with dark, emotionless eyes, then finally shifted his gaze to the fair-haired Ben-Elim who had cast the heads at Israfil’s feet. Although Israfil asked no questions, did not even utter a word, the blond Ben-Elim spoke as if answering a reprimand, his eyes dropping.
‘They would not surrender,’ he said, his feet shuffling in the dirt. ‘They slew Remiel.’ His eyes came up, fierce and defiant, and met Israfil’s. ‘They slew a Ben-Elim, gave me no choice.’ Israfil held his gaze a long moment, then gave a curt nod. With a flick of his wrist he threw Bleda into the air, a giant catching him and placing him on the saddle in front of him. Bleda found new strength, fighting and squirming, tears blurring his vision, but the giant held him tight.
Israfil waved his hand and then the giant was tugging on his reins shouting a command, and the huge mountain of fur and muscle beneath Bleda was turning, lumbering away from the Ben-Elim and Bleda’s mother, from his kin and people, away from everything he knew, away from Bleda’s whole world.
Towards his new home.
Towards Drassil.
CHAPTER TWO
DREM
The Year 137 of the Age of Lore, Hunter’s Moon
Drem grunted as he lifted another shovelful of earth and hurled it out of the pit he was digging. He rested a moment, drank from a water skin, looked up and saw a cold blue sky through dappled branches that were swaying in a breeze. Birdsong drifted down to him; the angle of the sun told him it was close to sunset. The pit was deep, now level with his head, but he kept digging, swapping his water skin for a pickaxe that he swung with practised rhythm. Ten swings with the pickaxe, loosen the ground, fill his shovel and throw it out of the pit. Back to the pickaxe. His shoulders and back ached, sweat stinging his eyes, but he ignored the discomfort, blinked the sweat away and continued to hack remorselessly at the iron-hard ground.
A sound seeped through the rhythm of his labour and the noise of the river beyond the pit. Footsteps. He dropped his pickaxe, grabbing his spear and pointing it upwards.
A shadow fell across him.
‘That’ll do,’ Olin, his da, said, looking down to him through a mess of iron-grey hair.
‘Not deep enough,’ Drem grunted, putting his spear down and picking up the axe again.
‘It’s deep enough to hold any elk I’ve ever seen,’ Olin said.
Drem had been digging pits since he was ten summers old. How deep? he’d asked his da all those years ago. Twice your height, his da had said to him. Back then his da had been digging the pit with him, breaking up the soil and Drem doing the shovelling. Now, though, eleven years later and Drem did most of the digging himself, his da setting other traps along their hunting runs with noose and rope. He had to remind himself that he didn’t need to dig hunting pits twice his height any more, not now he’d grown into a man, and a tall one at that. It still made him uncomfortable to stop, though. He liked to do things the way he was told the first time, didn’t like change. With an act of will, he slammed the pickaxe into the ground one last time, felt it connect with something solid that sent a shiver up his arm.
‘Sounds like you’ve found the mountain’s root,’ Olin said. ‘Come on, let’s eat.’
Drem yanked the pickaxe free, threw it up to his da, then his shovel; last of all held his spear shaft out. Olin grabbed it and held tight as Drem pulled himself out of the pit. His da grunted with the strain, even though he seemed to be made of muscle lean and knotted as old roots.
Drem turned and looked at his handiwork.
‘You chose a good spot,’ Olin said, looking at a well-worn path that the pit cut across. It led down out of the foothills they were standing in towards a fertile plain, the ground around the river there soft and marshy.
Drem smiled at his father’s praise.
Together they cast a lattice of willow rods over the pit, then a thin covering of branches and leaves, finally some bark and lilies.
‘To an elk that tastes nicer than hot porridge and honey on a winter’s day,’ they said together, the end of their ritual, and then they turned and made their way up a steep slope towards their camp, the river foaming white alongside them.
The sun was a line of fire on the edge of the world by the time Drem was turning a spit over a small fire-pit, fat from a quartered hare spitting and sizzling as it dripped into the flames.
‘Smells good,’ Olin grunted as he finished tending to their packhorses and furs, then came and sat down, wrapping a deerskin about Drem’s shoulders and pulling one tight about his own. Drem felt cold now that he had stopped digging, the night’s chill seeping into his bones. Rolls of skins surrounded them, tied and piled high. It had been a bountiful hunting season, and now they were almost home.
Drem carved the meat with his favourite knife, the wide blade was wicked-sharp and longer than was usual for a hunting knife.