24

Fighting and Fratricide

The days at Dawn Watch soon settled into a comfortable rhythm. Early mornings they hunted any wights that had accumulated in the night. The bulk of their time was spent working below ground working to make the caverns below habitable. The weather was increasingly foul, with wind and rain lashing the mountaintop at regular intervals, so this task had a certain urgency.

When they were not in the castle cavern, there was training, cooking and devotions. Candle sneakily avoided burning her devotions by switching her finished artworks with blank papers. She burned the fake offerings with the others and hid the real ones in her bedroll, where she soon amassed a sizable pile. To her delight, it worked. Rasmus stayed away, and every night Candle slept well and deeply, waking full of energy.

Although the work was backbreaking and the climate unforgiving Candle had never felt happier. The rain was invigorating, if cold, and the food was plentiful. Her companions were good company. For the first time in her life, she felt included, wanted and useful. She was part of a team and part of something important. She even enjoyed the training, savouring the new feeling of strength in her body, and every day she put on weight.

Her parents wouldn't recognise her if they saw her now, she thought, admiring her reflection in a pool of water. She hardly recognised herself. Gone were the gaunt cheekbones and the stick thin, fragile limbs. Her cheeks had filled out, and her skin glowed with health. She was even developing muscles in her arms and legs, albeit small ones.

"I must say, the mountain air agrees with you," said Jory, later that afternoon as they got in a few hours of exercise. He knocked her back with an expert flick of his staff. "Ha! That'll teach you to take your eyes off my staff when I talk!" Candle jumped back up lightly, baring her teeth at him in mock anger and circling him slowly. Fighting still didn't come naturally, but she was pleased with her progress. She could now complete the warm-up with the rest of the team. She could fend off some of Jory's attacks with a staff. Occasionally she managed to land a blow of her own. She could string and fire a bow and arrow with a certain level of accuracy and was a decent shot, even with the blindfold. She was sure she would be better without it and longed to rip it off.

"One day," said Locryn, watching her fidget with it, "you'll know us well enough to take it off."

Candle froze, guilty fingers still touching the band. Jory's staff came crashing down, and she jumped aside with seconds to spare.

"Concentrate!"

"After all," continued Locryn, lounging on a sunny rock, "how bad can it possibly be?"

"It's bad," said Candle. "You don't want to see."

"Nonsense," said Delen, "if we can look at Loc's ugly mug all day..."

Candle shook her head and lunged towards Jory with her staff, turning her back on Locryn and Delen and making sure to keep her hands off her blindfold.

Once Jory was satisfied with her progress they moved on to hand to hand combat. Candle felt this was a complete waste of time, and had the suspicion that the others thought so too. Jory, however, was relentless.

"There will always be a strength gap," he said, "but size is less important than you might think. Delen," he waved at the petite woman, who stuck out her tongue, "can castrate a moving fly at fifty metres with a bow and arrow, and she's downright deadly with a dagger in each hand. My point is - I would try to avoid going up against a grown man with just your fists. But using your brain, your magic, the right weapon, situational awareness...all of these together are what will make you a fighter to be reckoned with. Got it?"

Candle nodded, unconvinced. She was enjoying herself so much she didn't really care. She would never be able to fight a grown man with magic, so it was all largely academic. Watching Locryn and Pasco spar with each other drove home this point. It was hard not to stare as they put each other through their paces.

Pasco fought with ruthless efficiency, conserving his energy as if his life depended on every movement. He kept his limbs close to his body, and his attacks were sharp and unpredictable. Locryn was a whirling tornado of deadly grace. He used his entire body as a weapon, from his head to his toes. He was poetry in motion to behold, and Candle had never seen anything like it. They were wasted as fighters, she thought. They could have been great dancers and toured the realm.

"Loc's holding back," commented Delen, from behind Candle. "Don't stare too hard or you'll inflate their heads so much we won't be able to fit them in the cavern."

"Where did they learn to fight like that?" she murmured.

"Pasco learned to fight in Teurek," said Delen. "Locryn worked with a touring theatre group before he was sentenced to the Ancestors Own. He did acrobatics and some other arty stuff. Jory taught him the rest. Don't tell Loc I said it, but he's probably better at unarmed combat than anyone I've ever seen." She raised her voice and shouted at the sparring pair. "You two fight like aetheling ladies at a festival, arguing over tea! No offence, Candle."

"None taken."

Locryn swept Pasco's legs out from under him with graceful efficiency and paused to snarl at Delen.

"Care for a bout, Delen?" He squeezed his fist at her, and she laughed.

"No, I'm quite comfortable, thanks."

Candle shook her head and went back to her own exercises. They weren't even using magic to augment their strength, she thought as she stretched. It might be a waste, to be fighters but their skills had a barbaric grace all of its own - an elegance that she envied intensely. She would never be that good, no matter how hard she trained. She sat back on her heels, in surprise, startled to feel disappointment. When had learning to fight become something she craved? She bent forward thoughtfully, flexing her calf muscles, one at a time, taking time to examine her feelings. She no longer felt so guilty about learning to fight, that was true - the joy of movement was just too intense. She had had dancing lessons when she was younger, but she had always been too weak to be any good at it. She carried on stretching, watching Pasco and Locryn out of the corner of her eye.

While Candle had her plate full of learning during the day, during twilight devotions she suddenly found herself in a teaching role. Now they were aware of her background she no longer had to hide her skills in the finer arts. Gleefully she covered page after page with drawings and sketches. Images of each of them, cloudscapes and mountainscapes and one evening a merry piece she composed on Delen's peasant pipes to the amusement of them all. First Delen, and then Pasco and Jory asked her advice on their devotions. Seeing the results of their efforts, Locryn begrudgingly admitted he would like help too. She shyly suggested an exercise to improve his drawing.

"Exercises!" he exclaimed. "For drawing? What a crock of wight-ash." But he did them carefully and with concentration, and to both their delight, his Ancestor's rewarded him handsomely. He was so delighted he levitated Delen out of her seat and had to be warned by Jory not to waste his energy.

"I have a feeling we are going to need every bit, one of these days," he said, but his lips twitched in amusement as Delen made some very colourful suggestions about precisely what Locryn could do with his Gift.

The days slid by and happily, untroubled by the outside world. Candle made various attempts to subvert the geas, all of which failed miserably and left her feeling deflated and defeated. She tried to draw pictures on parchment and in the soil, she tried to write messages, she tried to act it out. Nothing worked. The geas seemed to guess her intent and not only choked her voice but froze her hands and left her feeling weak and miserable.

In the still of the deep night, Candle's brain would slide traitorously to the dual problems of her brother and Belias; to the Mester and Moloch. It was a problem that could be the death of her. Sooner or later trouble would come visiting and the more prepared she was the better.

So one evening when she found herself cooking with Pasco, she found herself with the perfect opportunity to discover just how deep his knowledge of demons ran. The fire was a warm, peaceful place to be, and she found the tall, silent man's presence calming. For someone who knew his way around the aggressive arts, Pasco was surprisingly at home around a campfire. His recipes were nothing fancy, nothing her family would be caught dead eating, but they were hearty and nourishing. He knew how to make the humblest ingredients into the tastiest dishes; soups and stews, pot bread and lots of tea kept them all warm and moving in the cold. Among the myriad other new things Candle was learning, she now knew a little about preparing food. Candle grinned to herself, as Pasco bent over the cauldron, adjusting the coals. She was a wight killer who knew how to cook. She much preferred this Candle to the one who had slunk around her parent's manse, looking for scraps.

She enjoyed the food preparation so much she didn't want to spoil it by speaking about demons. But ask she must.

"What do you want to ask me?" Pasco signed, dropping a handful of chopped onions into the big iron pot. Candle blushed, hugging her knees.

"Am I so easy to read?" she signed back.

"No," he replied. "Well yes, but Jory warned me you might ask me about demons."

"Do you mind?" Pasco paused for a little too long, stirring the onions a little.

"No. It's in the past."

He bent over the pot frowning and added the chopped carrots to the pot. Candle waited patiently, inhaling the warm smell of the sizzling onions.

"A shaman in thrall to a demon," he signed at last, "is immensely powerful. More powerful that you can imagine. You would have to paint and compose for years before the Ancestors could give you enough magic to stand against a shaman." He swallowed, clenching his fists reflexively, then continued. "A person in thrall to a demon can have that sort of power in an instant, by sacrificing a human, or part of a human."

"Part of a human?" She shuddered eyes on Pasco's mouth; the mouth that had no tongue because of just such a shaman. "Why don't the Teurek destroy us then? If they are so powerful."

"Because the price is madness," Pasco signed, pausing again to add more ingredients to the pot. "The demon demands more and more, and over time the host becomes more and more unstable, making more and more irrational decisions. Eventually, the host becomes insane. Then it is not long before they die. They fall off a cliff or forget to eat, or someone manages to kill them." His expression was grim, and he gripped the spoon so hard his knuckles turned white. He dropped it like a hot poker.

"It that what you did? You killed the shaman that hurt you?"

"Yes, eventually. I got lucky. Others were not so lucky." His face took on a haunted look and Candle didn't dare speak for a few minutes. They watched the bubbling cauldron in silence, and the wind whistled through the ropes holding the camouflage in place.

"What happens to the demon? After the shaman is killed, I mean?"

"Then the demon consumes their soul and goes looking for another host."

Pasco added some salt to the pot. Candle shivered, wrapping her arms around her knees.

"So... to get rid of the demon you have to kill the host?"

Pasco nodded.

"You can't just... kill the demon?"

He shook his head.

"You cannot kill what is already dead."

Candle's good mood popped like a bubble in the boiling pot. For all her new skills, for all her newfound enjoyment of sparring, she did not think she could kill Rasmus. Or try to kill Rasmus. Or anybody for that matter, no matter how evil and deranged they were. She imagined looking at her brother down the length of an arrow. Perhaps in an ambush, well prepared she might be able to kill him. That was it, an ambush. Preparation would be key, or she wouldn't stand a chance. Could she do it? Could she plan it out in such a cold-blooded manner? Did he deserve to die?

"Excuse me," she murmured to Pasco. She ran from the fire and was violently sick into the bushes.