Godborn Read online

  She turned away and crossed to the cold hearth, staring down. “They came from the east, up the valley. They were so swift. So many.”

  “What clan was it? Did you know them?”

  “Clan?” She scoffed. “It was no clan.”

  Holkis shook his head, confused. “What else is there?”

  “Some were warriors. Some were captives, driven like cattle. But the leaders. The ones who killed us.” She shivered. “They were… not men.”

  A nameless fear tugged at Holkis’ spirit. “What were they?”

  She turned, her eyes shining with tears. “They were demons.”

  2. Demon Clan

  “Demons?” Holkis stared at her, his heart racing as if he had been running all through the night. “You would not lie.”

  She scoffed and spat at the floor between them. “I know what I saw. They could be nothing else.”

  “But how did you see them?”

  She crossed to one wall and pulled aside the edge of the sheet of felt there. A gap in the planks let in the dying light of the evening, softly illuminating her face and a line of swirling dust. “I watched them come. They came fast. So much noise. Great demons on two legs, taller than the tallest man. But they acted more like beasts than men… they were like nothing that lives on the plains or the valleys or the woods or the mountains. I watched as one of them alone killed all our dogs with a club and a spear, as if…” She stopped, letting the felt fall back into place.

  “How many demons were there?”

  She shook her head. “Ten? And hundreds of warriors with them. Hundreds of captives. Animals, also.”

  “Hundreds?” Holkis could scarcely believe it. “What of your men? The women and the children?”

  “Gone. All gone. My father and his brothers fell before the demons reached the camp, I have seen their bodies down by the marsh. My mother, my sisters, the women, the girls. They were taken. The demons came at a run, driving men and women in bonds and herds of cattle and sheep and horses before them and amongst them.”

  “Why were you not taken?”

  She stepped over the benches to the back of the house and looked at him until he went to her. Bending down, she lifted a pile of furs and heaved up a broad plank to expose a black square below.

  “Food store?” he asked.

  “I hid amongst the meat. Warriors came in. I heard them throwing everything down and trying to set fire to the wall. Their leaders called for them and they left.” She gestured, wrinkling her nose. “After pissing on the sacred flame.”

  Holkis looked around. “You hid? You were not found?” He looked at the evening light beyond the door and lowered his voice. “You were not defiled?”

  She stared at him with her chin up. Whether she shook from fear or from the cold, she did not flinch from his gaze. “And you will ensure I remain so.”

  Holkis shook his head. “Say nothing to any of them about this. Let them believe what they already believe.”

  “I will not lie. And you will protect me. You are strong.”

  He lowered his voice and grasped her arm. “You understand nothing, girl. I must obey my koryonos. If he wishes to take you, to kill you, to do anything, I will not stop him.”

  The seeress shook off his grasp and he let her go. “You are the stronger. I see it. Throw off your oaths, become the koryonos. Be a true wolf.”

  He looked down at her. “I thought you had wisdom. Now I see you know nothing. You are merely a girl.” He walked away.

  She stayed where she was. “You will give me to him, then?”

  Holkis turned back. “I swore an oath to Kolnos the wolf god to be loyal to my koryonos.”

  “What about the law?”

  He shook his head. “The koryos has no law but the word of our koryonos. Now, we cannot stay here. We must go on and you will accept whatever fate comes to you.” He pointed to her hiding place. “Bring that food.”

  Outside, the sun was low in the sky and the wind was growing in strength. “Brother!” he called.

  “Did you take her?” Belolukos said, thrusting his spear in the direction of the girl who trailed behind Holkis.

  “I would not risk a curse.”

  Belolukos waved his spear at Holkis’ face and sneered. “Perhaps you are warded against curses. What if I commanded you to test yourself?”

  Holkis shook his head, scowling. “How could I be warded against curses, Bel? How could anyone?” He lowered his voice and stepped closer, pushing the spear aside. “We should go.”

  Belolukos frowned. “There is much here that the raiders left. Such wealth as you would not believe. The tents contain skins, furs, even weapons. And we shall butcher the dead cattle and sheep and preserve the meat.” He waved a hand at the trees upriver. “We should make a camp there tonight and feast. And this is a good place. We will clear the dead and spend the winter here.” He smiled. “The gods have favoured us at last.”

  The wind gusted hard, rattling the branches in the woodland and whistling between the tangle of poles and slashed skins of the broken tents. A long tether thrashed in the air, the frayed ends whipping up and down and lashing the earth.

  Holkis almost argued that living on the scraps of a raided camp was nothing for a koryos to be proud of. No songs would be sung of their deeds when they returned to their own clan. But if the girl was to be believed that was the least of their concerns.

  “Bel,” Holkis said. “Evil was done here.”

  Belolukos turned and spat downwind, making the sign against evil. “A raid is not evil.”

  “Depends on who the raiders were, no?”

  “Who were they?”

  “What if they were not men?”

  Belolukos scowled. “What do you mean? What else could they be?” His eyes darted to the figure of the girl over Holkis’ shoulder as she bent to the body of an old man lying twisted in the mud. “What lies has she spoken?”

  “She says this was done by demons. Great demons, twice the size of a man, leading hundreds of warriors.”

  His brother’s eyes widened and his mouth hung open. “Demons?” He laughed. “She is mad and you are mad for believing her.”

  “I did not say I believed her.”

  “So why repeat the lies?”

  “I do not believe she is lying.”

  Belolukos scowled. “Why do you always speak nonsense, Holkis?” He glanced around at the figures moving through the shadows. “Say nothing of this madness to the others.”

  “I am speaking to you alone, Bel. But believe her or not, think on this. Whoever raided this camp, destroyed it, has acted strangely, have they not? Why slaughter so many beasts and leave them rotting on the earth? Why leave all these skins, furs, weapons lying here? If it was a raid then perhaps they were driven off by others or chased after some who were fleeing. They could return at any moment. Or other raiders could be following on their trail. We should be gone from here. For now at least. We can get beyond the horizon and keep watch from afar.”

  “And lose what is here to others who might come?” Belolukos scoffed. “Anyone would think the mighty Holkis was afraid. But that cannot be so, can it?” He looked up at the darkening sky. “The gods sent us here, this is ours. But we will watch from the shelter of the woodland tonight, if that will help your knees to cease their quaking. You will stand guard while the rest of us warm ourselves.” As he said this, he looked at the girl, smiling.

  Holkis clenched his teeth and nodded. “As you wish, koryonos.”

  A sudden call from the other side of the camp sent them running through the wrecked tents and dead bodies toward their spear-brother Kasos. He was crouched by a dead cow at the edge of the long, dying grass by the river. The water frothed over the shingle and rocks close to the bank as half of the others ran up to join them and peer through the gloom at Kasos.

  Belolukos almost growled in annoyance. “I thought there was danger with you shouting like that. What is it?”

  “Something is wrong, here,” Kasos sai
d. He pointed with his spear at the tattered skin around the neck and belly of the cow. “What did this?”

  Belolukos stared in bafflement at the question. “Dogs?”

  Kasos shook his head. “No dog, no wolf, could do this. Look at the holes in the neck. Nothing has teeth that big.”

  “Spears, then,” Holkis said. He noted that the girl had kept close behind him.

  Kasos nodded slowly. “But they would have to be big spears. Bigger than would make sense. As big around as your wrist.”

  “That is what they are, then,” Belolukos said, rolling his eyes.

  “Perhaps,” Kasos said. “But look at how many wounds there are. Look at the size of the cuts. No man could wield a spearhead of that size. And you see how some of them have been ripped through the flesh?”

  “I see nothing,” Belolukos said. “Who cares how a cow died, Kasos? Cattle die. You are almost as strange as Holkis. Enough of this.”

  “It is not this cow alone. The cattle, the dogs, the men. I never saw anything like this. It is as though the gods themselves came down from the Sacred Mountain and exterminated this clan.”

  The girl spoke up. “It was not the gods.”

  Belolukos’ head snapped up and he glared at her. “Keep her quiet, Holkis, or she will regret it.”

  He looked at her and she glared at Belolukos for a moment before catching Holkis’ eye. She lowered her head but he knew her anger had not subsided.

  “All I mean,” Kasos said, standing and looking at all of his spear-brothers gathered around him, “is this all seems… wrong, doesn’t it?”

  Holkis looked again at the girl behind him. She stood watching them through her eyebrows while the strands of hair loosed from her braids whipped her face in the wind. He exchanged a look with his brother.

  “That is not all,” Dhomyos said, stepping forward from his place behind the rest of them. “Come and look at these tracks.”

  They walked to him and looked down at the churned ground. It was as deeply pitted as the edge of a river where a herd of cattle drinks daily through the autumn rains.

  Belolukos waved his spear at the ground. “I may not have your talent for reading the earth, Dhomyos but even I can see a hundred men and beasts walked here, with a dozen or more wagons. What of it?”

  Dhomyos lowered his spear point and jabbed it. “Look closer. Here, you see these? Look at the size of these prints. Like a man’s but far larger.”

  “So a big man walked here,” Belolukos said. “What of it?”

  Dhomyos shook his head. He had never been wise or quick-witted but he was no fool either. “Holkis? Your feet are huge. Step into this print, will you?”

  Holkis pushed through the others and did as he was bid. His foot was lost inside the massive footprint. “Half as long again,” he said, looking at Belolukos. “And twice as wide.”

  Nodding, Dhomyos pointed at a dozen places all around them with his spear. “Once you start looking, you see them everywhere. You see? Here. And here. You see, koryonos?”

  “He is right,” Kasos said.

  Holkis looked at his brother. They all did.

  “All I see is footprints,” Belolukos said. “Horses there, oxen there, lines of wagon tracks. A great clan moved through here and one of them was even bigger than Holkis. That is all.”

  They stared at him and many glanced at Holkis.

  “Very well, koryonos,” Holkis said. “That is all.”

  His brother nodded slowly and then pointed at the black shadows of the woodland upstream. “Night is upon us, brothers. We will spend it there.”

  They made a camp deep inside amongst the old oaks, building a fire so they would be comfortable through the night while the wind howled above them. As the flames grew to a stuttering roar and the meat roasted above the coals, Holkis thought about what the seeress had said about the demons. He believed her, especially after seeing the tracks in the mud. The others knew something strange had happened but none understood it as he did. At every strange sound in the woodland he sat up with a jolt and reached for his spear. He wondered if the demons and the warriors they led were out there in the darkness, waiting to fall on them.

  When the meat was cut up and passed around, his koryos brothers stared at the girl who sat hunched beside Holkis. No longer did she wear the white robes of a seeress but had dressed much like they were in woollen trousers and a belted tunic with a fine cloak of fox fur that the raiders had missed. She had stayed close enough to touch him since changing and leaving her home but had said nothing.

  “You know you cannot keep her,” his brother said, his mouth full.

  Holkis chewed his piece of undercooked meat. The outside was burned and the centre was cold and bloody but it was the best thing he had eaten since the new moon. Of late, exposed out on the plains, they had eaten their dried meat cold.

  The girl kept her head lowered but stared up at them through her wild hair.

  Holkis swallowed. “I know.”

  His brother kept his voice low, looking between them. “What are you doing with her, then?”

  Attempting to be relaxed, Holkis shrugged. “We cannot touch her. Cannot harm her without being cursed.”

  “Says you,” Belolukos replied.

  “It’s not me that says it.” Holkis looked across the flames. “Kasos? What does the lore say about this?”

  Kasos yawned and shifted closer to the fire. “If it’s as she says and she’s the chief’s daughter and he was Gendryon’s guest friend, that’s clear enough in itself. Shouldn’t harm her. But that would dishonour Gendryon, not the gods necessarily. Although to transgress is to anger the gods, so perhaps. But if she was the keeper of hearth, she carries her ancestors within her.” Kasos waved his piece of meat around at the koryos around the fire, all listening to his words. “Just as we do.”

  “We must not harm her,” Holkis said. “So we must let her go free.”

  “If we do that,” Belolukos said. “We might as well kill her now.”

  Holkis took another bite and chewed while he thought about what to say. He knew what his brother meant. No one could survive the winter alone without a herd, not even in a sheltered valley.

  “Killing is different to leaving to die,” Holkis said.

  “Is it?”

  “You know it is,” Holkis said and regretted it immediately.

  His brother frowned. “You will go to the edge of the trees and keep watch until dawn.”

  Holkis stood, took both his spears and the fur he had been sitting on and turned away from the warmth of the fire. The girl got to her feet also.

  “Not you,” his brother said to her. “You can stay beside the fire. Better yet, sit beside me.” He patted the ground beside him.

  “I go with him,” she said, jerking her head.

  Belolukos frowned. “I did not give you permission.”

  “I serve the gods, not you,” she replied and came to Holkis’ side.

  His spear-brothers looked between them all from under their eyebrows, waiting to see what their koryonos would do. After a moment, Belolukos scoffed and waved a hand. “At least we’ll discover if you are warded against the curse when your manhood rots off.”

  They laughed and yet they were uneasy. The authority of their koryonos had been challenged and he had not reasserted it. Holkis knew it was his fault and he knew it would be best for his brother if he, Holkis, told the girl to stay. Better yet if he struck her, knocking her down. Best of all would be to cut her throat there and then, taking the resulting curse upon himself to rid his koryonos of the problem of the girl.

  Instead, he turned into the darkness and made his way back toward the edge of the woodland closest to the camp, the girl hurrying to keep up with him.

  “How do you see in the dark?” she muttered at his back.

  “I do not,” he replied, holding his spears before him and lifting his feet high with each step. After months in the wild, living only on what they could hunt or steal, he had learnt much about ste
alth and moving in darkness.

  Before long, they could see by faint moonlight the edge of the wood and the open camp beyond, with the glint of the river beside. He found a dry patch of fallen leaves beneath a stand of young oaks and sat on one fur, pulling another around his shoulders. The girl stood beside him, shivering.

  “May I sit by you?”

  “Of course.”

  Still, she hesitated. “Only to sit, I mean. Nothing more.”

  He shifted sideways on the fur and she placed herself upon it with her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. She flinched when he draped his fur around her shoulders.

  “I knew you would protect me,” she said, her voice low and steady.

  “Be silent.”

  They sat while the wind whipped through the trees above and the river rushed ceaseless in the distance. Fast clouds passed in front of the moon and he frowned at the shadows flickering. Were they out there now? Would they return? And if they did, could he and his koryos hope to stand against them?

  “My people are gone,” she muttered.

  “You will be silent or you will go back.”

  “There is no one here.”

  Holkis sighed, shaking his head. “How can anyone be so disobedient?”

  “And who are you that I should obey you?”

  “Obey me by choice or you will find yourself compelled into obedience by my koryonos.”

  That silenced her for a long while and he thought she was falling asleep when she spoke again. “Why should you be warded against a curse?”

  “I am not.”

  “But why would your koryonos say you were?”

  Holkis considered telling her but he could not bring himself to do it. It was good to be with someone who did not know about him. He had never before spoken to someone who did not know what he was.

  “I am on watch while my spear-brothers sleep. Their lives are in my hands. We must be silent.”

  “There is no one here.”

  “Why can you not hold your tongue?”

  She turned to glare at him. “Because my people are gone. Those who are not dead are taken by those demons and that is worse than death. In the morning, or soon after, your koryonos will rape me and my worth will be nothing. You are a koryos and none of you can take wives or followers and so I will be killed or abandoned. So with the life I have left, I will not be silent, not even for you, who has protected me.”