Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago: Tales of the Lost Isles by JOSEPH A. MCCULLOUGH

Author:JOSEPH A. MCCULLOUGH
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472824707
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

THE JOURNAL

BY

GAV THORPE

There was a moment – just a moment – when the poisoned darts were whistling past her ear, when the wet leaves slapped her face, when the tangle of roots and sucking mud threatened to trip her, when Marianne Amontill wished she had stayed at home.

The instant of regret, the thought of slinking back to her family begging for them to take her back, set a fire of indignity raging in her chest.

‘Keep running!’ she shrieked to her companions, ducking beneath a branch as she continued headlong down the winding game track.

Alongside her pounded Gordwyn van der Klyde, curly hair lathered sweatily across his red face, paunch bulging like a sail in a full gale.

‘Thanks… For… The… Advice…’ the First Mate panted with a scowl. ‘I… hadn’t…’

‘Save ya breath, foe of many pies,’ laughed Oata. Her scarlet headscarf and shirt was bright against dark skin, amber pendants and bronze torqs flashed fitfully in the shafts of sun that broke the canopy. Her brow, nose and ears were pierced with small copper bands studded with flint, opal and malachite. The Stone Warden covered the ground with light strides, barely a drop of perspiration on her. She ran with her flint-topped staff strapped across her back, obsidian-edged daggers in hand, eyes scanning the close-growing trees to either side despite her apparent humour.

The three remaining members of Marianne’s crew were Gabbri Sala Amaal, sprinting perfectly well despite his traditional dishdasha and veil; Solomon ‘the Serpent’, his face creased and heavily scarred as evidence of a life spent in the rougher parts of the world and a red-veined nose to indicate much of it passed in the company of a bottle; and Dmitry Freyger, a wiry, pale-skinned deckhand and sometime cook and scribe, whose claim to be fluent in fifteen languages had seemed impressive until it transpired none of them were spoken in the Ghost Archipelago.

‘We need to find another boundary marker,’ declared Gabbri, who was close on the heel of van der Klyde, almost tripping over the lumbering sailor’s feet. ‘We’ll be off their territory.’

He referred to the waist-high totem poles adorned with skulls and feather fetishes they had blithely ignored earlier. They still had no clue what they signified, nor to whom, for their assailants, from the moment of the first rustle of leaves and whistle of dart in the air, had shown nothing of themselves but for fleeting diminutive shadows and movement in the undergrowth.

Ahead, the path split.

Marianne made a quick decision, drawing again on that part of her that remained of Copernichol’s legacy, the part of her that marked her as one of the Heritors. She felt the faintest of sensations through her body, a warmth that was not entirely pleasant. Instinct flashed, bringing formless insight. This was her gift, an intuition beyond reason, the ability to know something before understanding it.

‘High ground,’ snapped Marianne, flicking a hand towards the left fork, to the volcanic peak that could be seen through the trees.

‘Why?’ asked the Serpent.

‘I’m not sure,’

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