The Raven Collection

‘I hope my hip stands up to this,’ he muttered.

‘I think you’ll find it’s your head they’ll be aiming at,’ came a voice from beneath the canvas.

‘Thank you, Hirad. Here they come.’

Sol tensed. The risks of his strategy became depressingly apparent and his words to Diera sounded awfully hollow. Eight giant soldiers in full body armour landed on the roof in a semicircle around him and began to close, their weapons trained exactly as Hirad had said.

Sol hefted the shovel, patting the shaft into his open left palm. The Garonin closed, stopping only when they could almost reach out and touch him. Weapons dropped very slightly. Diera and Jonas were way too close but getting more distant with every passing moment.

‘Fascinating weapons,’ he said. ‘You must show me round one.’

‘Sol,’ said a voice full of beguiling melody. ‘How disappointing. You stand alone. All your subjects have deserted you.’

Sol shifted his feet, taken aback. ‘You. You’re joking with me? I killed you.’

‘Not so. Some among you are fascinating and worthy of some small investigation to further our knowledge of your world. You are one such. No other has demonstrated understanding and belief. No other has been able to leave our domain by an act of self-will.’

‘Your domain? I’ve heard from several reliable sources that it is no one’s domain but a transit to everywhere. A place you have infiltrated and where you can be beaten.’

Sol considered he might have shown too much of his hand.

‘The risk of such an eventuality is small. But we do not deal in small, we deal in nil. And so your journey ends here, Sol. As it will for all your people in this city, your other major population centres and for those you think are escaping beyond your western mountain range.’

Sol’s face must have betrayed him. One of the Garonin cocked his head.

‘Did you think we were not aware of those ru

‘So why are you talking to me? If you intend to wipe us out, why bother to tell me all about it? Seems a waste of time.’

‘Not for us. Respect is a ritual.’

‘But all rituals are finite, aren’t they?’

Sol tapped the blade of the shovel on the ground, once, twice, three times.

‘It is time,’ said the concerted voices of the Garonin.

‘Yes.’ Sol ceased tapping the shovel. ‘Time for you to meet The Raven.’

Chapter 28

Sol was fast. Even at fifty-one, he was the better of most men half his age. The shovel blade whipped up and forward, Sol darting in a step simultaneously. The cutting edge struck under the chin of the centremost Garonin. Sol felt it bite into flesh. Blood poured down the shovel’s muddy face.

The Garonin reacted quickly. Weapons snapped up to ready. They spaced themselves for clear shots at Sol, who dived into the midst of them, bowling the stricken Garonin over. He pulled the shovel clear of his victim and rolled onto his back with the blade covering his face.

A Garonin soldier readied to fire. He jerked violently. Blood flew from his mouth and he slumped forward onto his knees revealing Sirendor behind him, bloodied cement trowel in hand. He did not pause. The crowbar in his other hand swung across the back of an enemy skull. The soldier’s head rocked forward but he did not drop, turning instead to backhand Sirendor across the face with his weapon. Sirendor tumbled back into the barrels, scattering them.

At the same time, Hirad leapt up from his hiding place and planted his pickaxe straight through the midriff of his nearest enemy, driving the man backwards from his feet. His weapon fired. Hirad screamed in agony.

‘Keep down.’

It was Ilkar. Winter’s Touch flew from his open palms. A howling, super-cooled blast of air that struck the Garonin square on. Two turned their backs, taking the force of the freeze on their armour on which the runes flared white. Two were caught in the helmet, burning cold drilling into their eyes, freezing them blind in moments. Weapons dropped from hands to clutch at faces and claw inside eye slits.

A weapon sounded close by Sol’s head. The half-built wall disintegrated into a shower of stone shard and cement dust.

Sol scrambled to his feet, thrashing the shovel blade in front of him, clattering it into the legs of one of the two Garonin still facing him. The enemy fell. Sol moved to finish him. A blow caught him on the side of the head, sending him spi

Sol spat grit from his mouth. He looked up into the darkening sky. The cloud framed the helmet of a Garonin soldier and his cruel weapon. Sol held his gaze. The weapon was raised. A black shape flew from left to right. Howls split the dawn. The Garonin’s fire flashed past Sol’s shoulder, kicking up sand.

Sol sat up. The ClawBound had arrived. The panther was ripping the throat from one enemy, the elf had enveloped another. Wolves streamed in. A solitary Garonin weapon traced teardrops through the air. One of the animals fell, soundlessly. The other three feasted in revenge.

From behind him Sol heard the thump of metal on leather. Again and again. He climbed painfully to his feet. Back, arms, legs and now the side of his head. Everything was bruised. He put a hand to the hinge of his jaw. It came away wet. Sirendor straightened up from behind the tumble of barrels. His nose was bent across his face and blood covered his lips and neck. His crowbar too was covered in blood, hair and gore.

‘Never take a fallen man with a crowbar as beaten,’ he said.

‘Hirad,’ said Sol, starting to run across the roof.

He jumped the bodies of the fallen Garonin, those that had not already faded back to whence they came, and dropped to his knees by the barbarian in his merchant’s body. That body was broken. White tears had blasted through his right shoulder and all the way down his body to the hip. Clothing had been burned away and the flesh was smoking and cauterised. Hirad still clung on to the pickaxe handle, his face buried in the Garonin armour.

Sol rocked back onto his haunches. ‘Damn it,’ he breathed.

Sirendor placed a hand on his shoulder and crouched by him. ‘Don’t despair, not just yet. He’s still with us. Just.’

‘What does it matter? He will never survive a journey to the west like this. His soul will be lost. We can’t stop it.’

Sol’s mind filled with visions of Hirad’s outstretched grasping hands disappearing into the murk of the void, his mouth open in an eternal scream.

‘Not west. College.’

Sol looked up into the eyes of the ClawBound elf. Blood dripped from the ends of the sharpened nails on his long fingers. His black and white halved painted face was impassive and his voice, as with them all, was hoarse and unused to speech.

‘What do you mean?’ Sol searched the roof for Ilkar. ‘Sirendor, find our mage, would you? Assuming he’s alive behind that pile of broken stone, I need him to do whatever he can for poor Hirad.’

‘Thraun. Speak.’

The ClawBound elf pointed to where the shapechanger was kneeling by his downed wolf. Sol nodded and dragged himself away from Hirad. The barbarian’s soul could barely be breathing and Sol feared to move him lest he do more harm than good. Sirendor had made his way over to the shattered half wall and was kneeling behind it, already talking.

Sol made his aching way to Thraun.