Nina of the Dark

By Ken Catran

Against the forces of evil and night, who will stand true? Slave-born, fated to seek a terrible truth from lost centuries, her only allies are a thief, a giant and an ancient prophecy.
A sweeping epic fantasy adventure from a master of the genre, Nina of the dark tells the story of a slave girl in a medieval world where humans battle for existence in fortified towns scattered through a fertile lowlands, dominated by the grim mountains of Backbone. Beyond backbone is a land of demons, flying dragons, witchers, ogres and goblins. Born to fulfill the prophecy of a young woman with hair the colour of sunlight on snow, Nina the foundling is suspected of witchcraft when she starts to experience sharp pain in her thumbs, and has to flee for her life. A classical fantasy adventure for YA readers, Nina of the dark marks a new beginning for Ken Catran, back once again in the HarperCollins list.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jan 31, 2010
• ISBN: 9780730400196

Ken Catran

Ken Catran is an award-winning author of young adult fiction and fantasy, whose works have been adapted for television. With dozens of titles to his name, he is a highly respected contributor to the Storylines writers in schools programme, and has enthralled countless young readers and writers.

Book preview

Prologue

A shining angle of lightning cracked open the darkness, and Burl tensed. At night even the bleak foothills of Dragon Spine were full of terrible danger. There were witchers and dragons overhead, and mantises, trolls, and the smaller horrible things that moved unseen in the darkness. He moved slowly and carefully, tensing each time the rocks slid underfoot, because even the smallest sound would attract attention. He kept his spear ahead of him, even though he knew it would not defeat even a rock scorpion or spider.

Burl picked his way carefully, letting the lightning flashes mark his way. He paused a moment to wrap his cloak more tightly around himself, and the rain dripped into his eyes. Ahead lay a cave where the lichen might grow. If not, then he dared not go further, even for the love of his dying wife. Now he moved with more care, because every upward step increased the danger and he was far from home.

Overhead, a large, pale moon drifted through heavy clouds. Now, through the sleeting, misting rain, he saw a dreadful black outline cross it, glimpsing wing-beats and a dangling tail. Dragon, a big one, but far off. A whole herd of cattle will not satisfy that hunger, he thought. Then another lightning flash lit up a black slit in the rocks ahead.

Burl paused again. Something might have taken up residence—and there were nothing but creatures of horror in this mountain. He froze, and not because of the chilling rain—but a sound even more piercing and cold. A scream.

Burl huddled against the rocks. He knew screams, and this one shrieked a death-note. Lightning flashed again, and in a single flashing heartbeat he saw something hideous. Another dragon—the bat-wings were unmistakable—rose ahead of him, and in its taloned grip a human shape struggled. It was a small dragon, but the snouted mouth was sunk deep into its prey, the claws and talons holding tight. The person was struggling violently but was doomed; even a small dragon was many times stronger than a human.

In a heartbeat, the lightning flash blinked to merciful blackness, and Burl huddled against the cliff, sick with fear and horror. That had nearly been him and, brave though he was, he cringed at the thought of those sharp, awful claws sinking into his body. Nothing to be seen now in the rain-soaked blackness, the upward flap of wings fading into silence.

Even then, Burl the battle-skilled warrior was thinking hard. A dragon meant that nothing else would be in that cave, so he had a chance if he moved quickly, hoping that the rolls of thunder would hide the sound of more rocks sliding underfoot. He slipped inside the cave, shivering, throwing off his cloak. His sandalled feet rustled against a drift of dry grass and twigs in the entrance, and he scooped a handful into a pile, sparking his flint and blowing the spark into unsteady little licks of flame. He threw more leaves and twigs on the pile, glancing around and shivering hard. The fire would not stop even a small troll or goblin, but the light—ah!

He gasped as the fire lit up the cave to reveal the large globs of the jelly-like lichen that the village healers had assured him would cure his wife. He scraped some off the rocks with his knife, threw on his soaking, cold cloak, and made ready to go. Then, from the back of the cave, a sound came.

Burl whirled around. Scorpion, spider, even a small rock beetle…but the gurgling sound was like none of them. He stuck a larger twig into the fire and advanced further into the darkness; torch in one hand, spear in the other. Then he stopped, flinching. Ahead and half in shadow lay a woman’s body, a broken spear beside her. He was glad of the shadow, because the dragon’s claws had left horrible wounds on her. Then, from beyond her in the darkness, came movement.

He raised his torch, his skin crawling with horror as another little gurgle came. Burl gasped again, this time in utter disbelief. Before him, a baby wriggled and clutched tiny fistfuls of air. He brought the torch closer. A girl, on rags that had once been a cloak, an empty food pouch beside her. She gurgled again.

She was not from his village, therefore was nothing to him. All the laws of survival said that he should leave now; she would die soon anyway, as her mother and father had died—protecting her from the dragon. Death was common: his own baby had just died and his partner was now in the deliriums of her birth-fever. This child was nothing to him, but still he brought the torch closer. Something flashed around her neck: a copper amulet etched deeply with a thumb-mark of power.

Even here, in this close, dark cave, lit by the spluttering torch, Burl’s mouth opened, and another feeling—a mix of horror and superstition—stole over him. This child was a thumb-hurter. He turned the amulet over, seeing the name cut deeply into the copper. The cut-marks smooth, as though centuries old. The name itself, an instinct of power. The power enfolded him in stabbing prickles, more freezing than the black outside and his rain-wet cloak.

Nina.

Then the baby cried again, and a tiny hand clutched his finger. Burl was a hard man, because life was hard. And all too often life was violent and short, beset by monsters and devil-craft. But his own baby, who had lived only short hours—long enough for a tiny hand to grip his finger—had been like this. So, without thinking whether he was prompted by a fate-pattern or by the tiny finger touching a softness deep within, he wrapped up the baby in her rags and moved to the entrance. She squalled, and Burl slapped her roughly as he trod out his torch and paused in the entrance.

She was silent and he made to go. Wrong perhaps to slap her, but she must get used to blows. Taking her from the cave would save her life, but now she was slave-born, according to the harsh rules of his village. Burl swung his laden pouch around to the side, the little baby bundled in the crook of his arm. Ten rain-wet black miles lay downhill among these monster-crawling foothills; a further ten to his village. There, the jelly-lichen in his pouch would boil to a life-saving brew for Longbraids. And when she recovered, he would put the new child into her arms. Burl knew that she would welcome his gift, even slave-born.

He stepped out into the freezing, wet darkness, hefting his spear again. A sudden curious feeling came over him. This was right, this was the pattern, and he would find no danger in those ten wet miles down through those stony, dark and perilous foothills. The baby wriggled in its rags and sent a strange, hot feeling through him. One that somehow touched inside him as he moved off, head bowed and eyes slitted against the squalling rain.

A feeling as though he had done something good. As though, with all hardship ahead, the good would remain. He did not know why. Perhaps because the name on the copper amulet was a name of power. A name commonly given, but not among his clan. So if the amulet bore the child’s name, he could see further trouble in her life: it would link her with the old legends and the new troubles.

Burl trudged on down, the baby wrapped close, her soft cries against his own closer heartbeat. There would be troubles in the village, but he did not care. Those little soft cries stole quietly into his inner softness, and he thought about that name, etched into the copper amulet.

That name. Was it the full title? That he might never know. Nor would he tell the other townsfolk, because they would kill the baby, just out of fear. In case she was not just Nina, but more, the full title—the full curse.

Nina of the Dark.

A foundling was Nina, abandoned at birth, Swaddled in rags and her bed was the earth.

Beaten, rejected and worked as a slave, She asked for nothing and nothing they gave.

Then came the morning of the Rutland horde, Came the bloody hour of fire and sword.

‘Nina’s Saga’ by Bard the Restless

She was Nina of the Dark. Listen you, while I tell her great story from the beginning. She was light-skinned and not called ‘Dark’ because of her raven hair. Some say because her thoughts were dark; and some, her journey. Her story is words and verse, of Nina and her time, when humans contested with terrible creatures for their world.

First, to speak of her birth. Alone in a cave, in demon-haunted mountains—a miracle the goblins or spiders did not take her. And although the town where she was taken was rich and strong behind its high stockade walls, her childhood was nothing but work. The townsfolk were cruel and greedy, thinking that because the corn grew, good times would stay. They were blind to the fearsome storm gathering. The Ruts were stirring like vermin in a granary; worse than an iron tempest with hailstorms of flint.

Raven-haired Nina was not liked. All the townsfolk had red or brown hair, eyes of brown or hazel—her eyes were dark green. They worked her hard; they beat and mocked her as the slave without family. She ignored their insults and grew tall and strong.

But when the thumb-hurting came, they began to fear her.

And then came the red morning of the Rut attack.

Chapter One

Out of morning fog, the Rut horde came, Swarming from the hills, every armoured one the same.

Over the stockade wall and mad for plunder, Their iron-shod feet trampling all under.

Battle-noise starting at the sentry’s yell, Battle-noise and blood-screams, growing into Hell.

Life is very simple these days,’ said Burl. He wiped his sword carefully, because it was said that Ruts’ blood corroded the metal. ‘Life is about living and killing.’ He inspected the blade carefully before ramming it back into the long leather scabbard. ‘And it is never easy to kill a Rut.’

Nina nodded. Ruts were warriors, like the armoured ants that sometimes swarmed in great numbers from the rocks. She was cleaning her own weapon, the axe she had been chopping wood with when the alarm sounded, and now looked up at the stockade walls that encircled their village. They will need repairing, she thought. It was just as well there was a double row of those stockade walls, because the Ruts had come so suddenly out of the fog that they had slaughtered the first-wall sentries, but not before their death-cries gave warning.

So the town rallied behind the second wall. Men and women threw on their iron-plated leather jackets, snatched up their weapons, and met the tide of Ruts sweeping up to the wall. The clash of battle rose as the two sides met; axes, pikes and swords jabbing and slashing. Desperation gave courage, because the Ruts would spare nobody. The townsfolk formed into a war-band and, with the intensity of despair and hate, fought back without fear of dying. Ruts were death, anyway.

The Ruts’ axes—there were none sharper—chopped through the second stockade, but the townsfolk were hill people, raised on a hard land and with hard rules. They linked shields at the breach, and there the battle swirled its blood-stained tide. All morning this battle-tide beat and churned around the broken logs and the scream of battle without pause. Hawks and crows swooped overhead, waiting for their rich harvest of food at fighting’s end.

Nina had fought with the others, because even slaves had weapons training. A sword slashed her arm, but more than once her axe clanged and cut on black Rut armour. As the fog thinned, the Ruts retreated, still snarling like the wild beasts they were. As they retreated, their yellow eyes gleamed with hate behind the point-nosed iron helmets that enclosed their faces. Then they were gone; but the town still stood to arms until scouts reported that the Ruts were back across the Whitethroat River; their way marked by bodies and blood, the blood thinned then lost in the rushing waters.

Burl bound up Nina’s arm and grinned at her. The old warrior had lost wife and child years ago, but in his rough, surly way he treated Nina well. He had wounds, too, and Nina bound them for him. She looked around at the wreckage as she did, at the Rut bodies being piled for burning. They were still armoured and helmeted, because it was the worst of luck to look on a Rut face. She smiled. It must be bad luck for the mean-minded townsfolk to destroy all that scrap-iron.

There was still an urgent bustle around the broken wall, because Ruts were not the only danger. The walls would need to be repaired before night, and smeared with grease to prevent the spiders climbing up; the spikes on top sharp enough to impale their swollen bodies if they did. And the houses burned out by Rut fire-arrows would be empty until they could be rebuilt and the roofs made strong enough to resist the swoop of brass-scaled night dragons or mantises.

Suddenly Nina’s mind sparked as it often did now, a hot and strange searching fire. Thought-fire and then a thumb-pain —always her right thumb—sudden and as sharp as her axe blade. Then came the question that she so often thought of: Was life always like this?

Always through her thoughts came the thumb-hurting pain. Fifteen summers now, but it was only two summers before that she had first complained of her hurting thumb. At first, she thought the prickling was only cramp from too much work, but the village healers just shook their heads and muttered that it happened to nobody else. Burl—closing his big brown hand over hers—had said she must hide this pain. She must work and endure the pain; so she had done so, without knowing why, only that it stabbed sometimes, hard. But where would the thumb-hurting take her?

As she mused aloud, Burl grimaced at her and his bearded mouth set in an angry scowl. ‘No wonder you get beaten so often. You ask too many questions and that is not right for a slave.’

Nina’s thumb was tingling sharply, and she rubbed it against her fingers. Burl saw this, too, and was about to speak when a horn blared, announcing a town meeting.

Nina walked to the town square with Burl, aware of the usual sidelong looks being shot in her direction. Somebody snatched the axe from her hand, but she dared not protest because that meant a beating. Some spat, and she ignored that, too. But there was a new tension and an undercurrent that even Burl could feel. He glanced at Nina, scowling under his thick eyebrows, his lips curling into his thick moustache. He whispered: ‘Be careful.’

Karno Blacksmith had called this meeting as town leader. He was a thick-set red-haired man whose coat of chain-mail bore the dents of hard fighting. Beside him, Leenca Needlesharp, sharp-faced and brown-haired. ‘His brains,’ Burl muttered. She was also mail-clad, and she leaned on her spear with an elegant poise that gangly Nina longed to copy. Now Karno, his red hair tangled and matted on his cheeks, held up his pole-axe for silence. His brown eyes glared out from under the brim of his iron helmet.

‘So, the Ruts are back!’ he yelled, shaking the pole-axe. ‘Why? After so long! How did they know when to attack? How did they know about the fog?’

Beside Nina, Burl moved uneasily and she knew why. Even Karno knew that Ruts always broke their promise of peace, and that there was always morning fog at this time of year. But people were hurt and scared, friends and family dead, which mean that Karno’s leadership was under threat. And, thought Nina, remembering how he had deposed the last chief, so is his life. Leenca will have told him what to say, and as she whispered this to Burl, he gave a sour, uneasy nod.

Moments later, Nina realized that Burl knew the townsfolk better than she ever would.

‘They had help!’ yelled Karno. His voice croaked with harsh anger, and spittle flecked his bearded lips. ‘They knew when to strike because they have a spy amongst us, a viper we should have crushed years before. Her!’

Now his pole-axe flashed point-first, straight at Nina. At the same moment, Leenca screamed and Nina almost felt the stab of her pointing finger. ‘Her! The Black One. Cast her out—stone her!’

Tension broke into sudden uproar, like the snapping of a bowstring. The crowd caught up the cry, and looks filled with hate were directed at Nina. Even from Burl; but somehow his outflung arm only pushed her away, and she could have sworn the bearded lips mouthed ‘Run!’ Her mind was sending her the same message in thought-fire, her thumb jabbing with pain as she turned and ran.

Quick as she was, the stones were quicker. Karno’s followers had been ready and waiting to throw. One thudded hard on her shoulder; another struck her hip. Nina ran, blessing her long legs—and that the stockade breach was not yet closed. The workmen ducked as stones meant for her flew among them; another banged hard on her arm. Then with a leap over the broken logs, nearly skidding on a pool of black Rut blood, she was through.

Nina ran down the slope, her short tunic flapping around her. Shouts followed and more stones; once a crossbow bolt. But she was faster than any lead-footed townsperson, and she knew that they would not follow—memories of this morning’s fight were too strong in their minds. More stones and another bolt whizzed past, then the last traces of fog hid her like a wispy, shredded blanket.

Down in the valley, she stopped and looked back. The rocks had stopped, and there were no sounds of pursuit. She was breathless, panting at her narrow escape, thumb still stabbing as though an arrow-point were driven into it. She had often dreamed of leaving the town, but never like this.

Half an hour on, Nina came to the banks of a gurgling creek. She drank, and began turning over rocks to look for the little freshwater crayfish. Sometimes she came here to cut willows, but all of that normal life was gone now. Shocked still at the sudden change in her life, she sank to her knees among the clumps of big red flowers at the creek’s side and shivered. There were still the remains of the mist, and in the distance rose bleak stone foothills, the outcrop of Dragon Spine, whose massive stone upthrust she could not hope to get over. Behind her was the town and people who would stone her to death.

It was a month’s trek around the foothills, past towns like hers, where she would be enslaved or pelted with stones. The stony roads were beset with outlaws, free-lancers and tribers. Then lay Doom Hold fortress and the sprawling Walltown, where she would be no safer. She was named an outlaw now, and outlaws were enslaved or hanged. So she was lost and alone, with nowhere to go.

Nina shivered in her thin leather tunic, torn now where clutching hands had grabbed her. The water was ice-cold on her lips and she was hungry, but there were no crayfish. She took her frozen fingers from the water. She was bruised, the knuckles of one hand skinned, alone and friendless. Even so, she felt no fear, only shock, and the thought-fire raged burning-hot in her head. They will pay for this!

‘Nina?’ whispered a hoarse voice.

Cat-like, she ducked behind rocks and her hand closed over a stone. She waited to make sure Burl was alone, before standing. He saw her and grunted with pleasure, throwing down the bundle he had been carrying. ‘I hoped you would stop here a time.’ He kicked the bag with his foot. ‘Some food, your cloak and sandals. Flint and steel for fire; a knife. All I could get away with.’

So Burl had not turned on her with the others. Even so, Nina approached warily, her instincts wild and sharp. The old man seemed to understand this, and shuffled some steps back. Still wary, she pulled some bread from the bag and began to eat.

‘Why do they hate me?’ she asked between mouthfuls. She winced as the pain in her thumb stabbed harder, and closed her hand over it. ‘I am no spy, I fought like them.’

Burl shrugged and pulled at his beard. ‘They never liked you, and Leenca stoked that fire. It took the blame for the raid from Karno, too.’ Burl paused, looking at her clenched hand. ‘And you have the thumb-hurt, so she fears you.’

‘Fears me?’

Burl sat down heavily on the rock; Nina squatted, still alert for the sound of others. Burl pulled at his beard again and grunted. ‘I never knew where you came from. But wanderers told stories, rumours of a woman, the last of a priest clan; spiders took the others. They said that when your thumb hurt, you would have magic and power over all.’

‘Power over all!’

Burl nodded and took something from his pouch. ‘When I

Reviews for Nina of the Dark

[missdiggy · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A fair enough read, suitable for 10yrs up. Nina is found as a baby by Burl, an old warrior who lost his wife and child years before. Nina is protectively raised by Burl until the villagers revolt against her, fearing she is a "thumb-hurter" - a powerful being, rumoured to have magical powers - and chase her into the hills. This read has everything a good adventure should - mystery, surprise, strange creatures, magic, war, friendship - but it seemed to stretch out too long, I found myself impatient to finish. Nice use of language; perhaps a few too many adjectives... Not sensational, but ok.