Goldenhand (Old Kingdom) by Garth Nix

Author:Garth Nix [Nix, Garth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-10-04T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

RED GLINTS MEAN GORE CROWS

Shale Ridge near Yellowsands, Old Kingdom

It grew brighter briefly as the last red light of evening sneaked in under the clouds, but when the sun finally dipped away it became very dark indeed upon the ridge of shale. Ferin and her companions had used the light well, climbing faster toward the peak called High Kemmy. But they were still several hundred paces short of the top, where they hoped to find the downward path that would take them to the valley floor, and then across to the estuary and swift water to protect them from the Dead.

But the necromancer did not plan to let them even reach the peak.

Ferin saw the attack first, a cloud of fiery sparks descending from above as she and her companions inched along the ridge. They were feeling the way forward, aided only by the very faint light of a single Charter mark that Young Laska had just cast upon the handle of Swinther’s axe, which he held reversed to probe the shale ahead and test their path.

The sparks were in fact Free Magic fires burning in skeletal eye sockets. The many eye sockets of creatures flying through the air.

“Gore Crows!” shouted Young Laska.

Ferin swung her makeshift cookpot-lid shield in front of her face; Swinther wove a defensive pattern with his axe, and Young Laska whipped her bow about to be a makeshift staff only a few seconds before they were charged by dead birds, an assault of animated lumps of decaying flesh, broken feathers, and shattered bones. Half-rotten beaks and skeletal claws gouged at every inch of exposed skin, most particularly at their eyes.

Gore Crows, prepared by the necromancer long ago and kept in the closed darkness of the tarred basket he carried on his back. Birds ritually killed and then infused with a Dead spirit, a single slain man or woman animating a flock of dozens, so they moved together with one fell purpose.

Ferin crouched and swung her shield blindly, covering her eyes with her right arm. She heard Swinther cry out, a bellow of pain, and then Young Laska shouted something inaudible. Her words were followed a moment later by a blinding light. Ferin peeked and saw the Borderer’s bow outlined with golden light, bright Charter marks falling from it like liquid fire. Where the bow hit, a Gore Crow fell and did not rise.

With the light, Swinther and Ferin were able to strike more accurately, smashing the remaining Gore Crows down. But even broken into something resembling porridge, the horrid lumps of feather and bone tried to move. All three companions were kept busy for several minutes, kicking the Gore Crows off the ridge and down the slope, once again precipitating an avalanche of shale.

“Nineteen of them, by my count,” said Young Laska. She was bleeding from her hands and on both cheeks, but not badly. She held her bow high, the light falling on the others. “I doubt he could have more crows prepared in that basket .

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