‘The stresses of the storm and Sister Rozia’s death are wearing on your mind!’ Amalia yelled. She took another step closer towards Monika, close enough to be heard without yelling. ‘You’re frightened, and you’re hurting people, but I know you: you’re stronger than this. You’re strong enough to put your weapons down, to come inside where it’s safe. You’re strong enough to trust me.’
Monika looked at her hands, at the rain-streaked bloodstains.
‘Where’s the inquisitor?’
Sister Amalia shook her head. ‘She was called away on urgent business; a xenos raid in a neighbouring system. She swore she would come back to resolve your situation as soon as she was able.’
Monika frowned. The voice of compliance died.
‘No,’ she said, taking a step back. ‘Why would she leave without her lander?’
Amalia took another step forward, imploring Monika with her outstretched hand.
‘The Ordo Xenos sent a ship to pick her up,’ the sister said. ‘She left on that vessel. Please, Monika. Let’s go back inside. Take my hand.’
The final piece of the puzzle clicked into place for Monika as she remembered the white-clad arm stabbing her with a syringe, injecting the chem-restraint into her while she was trying to convince the inquisitor of the imminent attack.
‘Let me see your other hand, Amalia.’
The Sister’s eyes widened, which was all the proof Monika needed. She fired, the sound of the autopistol drowned out by the roar of the typhoon. Sister Amalia’s head snapped back and her body collapsed on the landing pad. A small chem-restraint syringe bounced from her dead hand to roll away across the rain-drenched rockcrete.
Monika punched her old code into the lander’s keypad, smiling when the ship unlocked for her. She could hear a chorus of screams from deep within the abbey announcing the arrival of the full force of the drukhari, but the door soon closed behind her, sealing her away from the wind, rain and noise. She slid into the cockpit, firing the lander into its pre-flight sequence. If the Ilarch wanted to waste her time searching a hospital full of maniacs and traitors, she was welcome. By the time the drukhari pirate realised her quarry wasn’t there, Monika would be gone. It was only a short jump to a port city, to a black market identity and to freedom. Let the Inquisition think her dead, let the drukhari think her vanished. It no longer mattered what other people thought about her.
Lifting off from the landing pad, Monika banked in a wide loop and flew into the storm.
Cade peered out from between the mountain crags and gazed across the forbidden lands beyond the Cradle. He was always struck by how those rolling prairies below seemed limitless, unbounded by the sheer cliffs that enclosed his own domain. He tried to pick out roads or villages, or perhaps one of those great walled cities of which Abi had spoken. He had been born somewhere out there in that ocean of green. In a farmhouse, perhaps. Or some lofty palace tower. Who knew? His parents had known, their graves lost too beneath these darkening skies.
Cade squinted at the storm clouds mounting a barricade across the horizon, seemingly in defiance of the prevailing wind.
A voice bellowed up at him from behind and he jumped in fright, almost losing his grip on the rocks.
‘Get down from there, boy!’
He looked back to see Barrion frowning up at him from below, a tusked hog slung across his huge shoulders and a brace of purple gillybirds strangled at his belt.
‘I got tired of waiting for you,’ said Cade, feigning annoyance as he clambered down the rock face as casually as he could manage.
The master hunter continued barking at his apprentice as he descended. ‘What’s gotten into you, lad? You know the Lands Beyond are not for your eyes. Nor for anyone’s.’ His icy blue stare was livid above the black beard that consumed the lower half of his face. ‘Unless you want the Nothings to come after you.’
Cade could not help but shiver at Barrion’s words and hoped his companion hadn’t noticed.
‘I’m too old to be scared by fairy tales, Barrion.’
‘Disobey the Horned Throne and you’ll soon see what’s a fairy tale and what’s not, lad.’
Cade jumped down beside him and threw him a look of defiance.
Barrion chuckled. ‘Oh, so he’s a big man now at seventeen harvests old? Big enough to carry that all the way back to the village, is he?’
Barrion indicated the enormous dead stag that Cade had somehow managed to roll onto a makeshift sled. It must have been some ten harvests old, its antlers grown to a sprawl. The thing weighed as heavy as sin, heavier still after being hauled from the woods in which Cade had killed it, those antlers catching on every root and branch on its way out.
Barrion shook his head. ‘Did I not explain that we were coming up here for small game? Sweetmeats, Cade. Easy to carry. The harvest feast is tonight. Do you think the women will have time to prepare a beast that size? ’Tis a mortal waste.’
Cade spoke excitedly. ‘I was in the trees gathering eggs when he plodded out the woods beneath me. The wind was before me for an hour. He had no notion I was there. It would have been a mortal waste not to take him.’
‘And how many herds did you scare away in taking him down?’
Cade grinned. ‘One shot, straight in the eye.’ He patted the slender throwing axes at his belt.
‘Like hell, you did,’ said Barrion, taking a sudden interest in the corpse. Cade waited, and Barrion concluded his inspection with a snort. ‘And why did you feel the need to perform such a feat, lad? Who were you looking to impress by dragging this monster through the village?’
Cade swallowed. ‘No one.’
Barrion eyed him doubtfully and spat over the trail’s ledge.
‘A man should choose his burdens wisely,’ he said and trudged away, muttering under his breath. Cade grabbed the rungs of the sled and dragged it behind him, the stag’s weight already unbearable. He clattered down the narrow mountain trail after Barrion, careful to avoid the sheer drop beside them as they descended towards their village buried deep in the foothills below.
They walked in silence until evening threatened the sky, casting an orange gloom over the horseshoe of mountains that encompassed the Cradle, shielding it from the Lands Beyond. Cloud-shadows crawled down those grey slopes, down acres of purple heather, over the bristling green woods and across the lake, a gleaming grey sheet spread across the valley’s basin.
The Cradle was said to be accessible by a single secret road known only to the Matriarchs. But Cade knew the truth. The mountains were not completely impassable. His exploits as a hunter had taken him into every corner of the valley and he knew where in the lower ranges a man might pass into the Lands Beyond. Yet he also knew ancient measures had been put in place to prevent such excursions.
The trail followed a bend and the Tor came into view. It had been carved out of the shoulders of the northern mountains aeons ago, a huge monarch reclining upon His throne. Even from this distance, Cade could see His cloven hooves awash with bright tributes of summer flowers and wicker poppets. The Horned King bowed His great goat’s head, forever contemplating His kingdom.
Cade mumbled a prayer. ‘I am an orphan of the Cradle. I give thanks to the Horned Throne. He is sky and soil, root and branch.’
A cooling breeze blessed him with the scent of wildflowers. The smell reminded him of his boyhood, exhausted in bed after a day of mad games in the fields with his friends, cool sheets wrapped tight and safe around him. How empty of such excitement and comfort the Cradle seemed to him now. For all its majesty, the valley seemed devoid of allure and mystery these days. The Horned Father could give him no answers and all Cade had was questions he wished he could ignore. Why were they forbidden from leaving the Cradle? What was out there in the Lands Beyond?
