I narrow my eyes and try to pick out Rynn in the chaos below. Big as he is, I can't find him. There's Vamsa, one of the Cadre of Clan Kessin, darting back and forth as she lashes the enemy with poison-tipped whips. I spot someone who can only be Jutti, the legendary Cadre dancer-fighter, identifiable by his acrobatic killing style. But no Rynn.
Our troops surge towards the Gurta earthworks, a fortified line of trenches and barriers, the last obstacle before the port. I hear the sharp pucking of shard-cannons and a swathe of tiny men fall to the ground. Two of our Blackwings fly overhead, their pilots strapped beneath the kite-like frames, propulsion systems scoring sparkling trails of energy through the darkness. They're dropping bags of explosives onto the Gurta, sending them scattering.
Our chthonomancers are hanging back, pooling their efforts, protected by a ring of heavily armoured crayl-riders. I watch a section of the earthworks heave and collapse, demolished by some invisible force, burying the enemy beneath tons of suffocating dirt. The Gurta might be formidably determined opponents, but their Elders will never match the rock-magic of our chthonomancers.
The Gurta defences begin to fail. I'm no tactician, but even I can see their cause is hopeless now. I feel myself smiling bitterly. Good. Let's see how this crushing loss squares with their insufferable sense of superiority.
Then I spot the rider on the slope, far down the lake shore, silhouetted by the dim glow of the crystal formations. Sitting erect in the saddle of one of those bat-like creatures they ride. He's holding up a spyglass.
But he's not watching the battle. He's looking out over the lake.
'Hoy! Belama! Where's your spyglass?' I call over my shoulder. The soldiers are angling the shard-cannon down at the Gurta earthworks. At this range accuracy is impossible, but at least we can stir up the defenders some. Belama slings me his spyglass, and I pluck it from the air and train it on the horizon. The cavern is colossal, like most of the caverns at this depth; I can't even see the roof, let alone the far side.
But I can see the ships. Sleek-hulled, sharp-nosed, slipping across the lake under the silent power of chthonomantic propulsion. Three of them, each capable of holding a hundred men or more. I look for the rider, but he's gone. It doesn't matter. I know what he was doing.
Waiting for his moment. Timing his attack.
And suddenly I understand what's coming. The ships will make landfall further up the shore, behind the Eskaran force, driving them towards the port and into the Gurta defenders. The rider will lead reinforcements down the slope and into our flank as we retreat.
We thought this was a lightly fortified target, of little importance to the enemy, but it's something much worse than that.
It's a trap.
The shard-cannon whirrs into life behind me, but I'm gone, sprinting down the slope towards the lake shore. I tell myself it's because I have to report what I've seen to the Warmaster; but that's not what's uppermost in my mind. I have to find Rynn.
The Gurta earthworks are being overrun as I slip and scramble towards the water. The land steepens, thick with lichen and tall-stemmed fungi. I skid dangerously in my haste, battering my way through a clump of puffballs and leaving a cloud of spores in my wake.
The ground levels out as I reach the shore. Trampled moulds lie flattened underfoot. There are dead and wounded mixed among them.
The wounded are the worst. Dead bodies don't seem like people: some essential part of them has gone, leaving bags of meat. But the wounded are still aware, alive, screaming as they wave the stumps of missing limbs.
Some are being helped by comrades. Some aren't. I've seen enough battles to know that you can't care for everyone. You can't stay sane that way. So I race past the hurt and the dying, deaf to their cries. There's only one person here that I care about, and I dodge through the chaos of running soldiers to find him.
The whole force is moving forward, and I'm swept with them. He'll be near the front, leading the charge. He's Cadre; it's what we do. The soldiers look to us to inspire them, to lead. We are the elite, the heroes.
It's ridiculous, of course. We're not heroes. We're just very, very good at killing people.
I dart through the crowd. The soldiers are yelling themselves hoarse, rallied by the prospect of victory. Weapons are thrust in the air in triumph as they run: serrated blades, billhooks, compound bows of rootwood. I want to shout at them that they're mistaken, that the enemy has outmanoeuvred them, but it would be useless. I need someone in charge. Cadre don't call tactics, as a rule; we're there on the ground, in the thick of it. That's why the soldiers admire us, more than the Warmasters or the Division Leaders or the chthonomancers. We're like them. We fight with them, take orders like them, die with them.
I clamber over the ruin of the earthworks. Gurta dead everywhere. Insectile helmets cracked, armour slick with blood. Pallid skin flecked with black dirt. Smoke rising from craters, bits of people everywhere.
The fighting has begun again, this time among the buildings of the tiny port village. Korok has been a ruin since the Gurta captured it. Gravel paths wind between shattered buildings perched on a rocky hump of land. A few jetties project out into the lake. It's one of many similar towns in the Borderlands: joyless, functional, little more than a fortified trading post. They say it's valuable because it's the only place to unload heavy cargo this side of the lake, but I think it's a point of pride. The Gurta took it from us. We're taking it back.
I'm getting to the leading edge of the battle now, where the charge has feathered and spread out among the buildings. Archers are hidden in the ruins of the inn and the shinehouse. Its glow is feeble; the Gurta haven't recharged it, so the shinestone at the top of the tower is dying. The town is steeped in twilight.
I grab a soldier roughly by the arm as he runs past me. He whirls, angry at being handled like that. Then his eyes flick to the skinmark on my bare shoulder. The symbol for Cadre, encircling the insignia of my Clan. Suddenly he knows who I am.
'Who's your superior?' I demand.
He gives me a name. I don't care.
'Find him. Tell him to pull the men out. Gurta are coming from the lake and the high ground. They'll cut us to pieces when they arrive.'
I see the fear ignite in his eyes. His confidence in victory has been replaced by alarm.
'Tell him I sent you,' I add.
He runs to fulfil his mission, and so do I. It's unforgivable that I've just passed such an important message to a common soldier instead of taking it myself, but I've got other concerns right now. In a very short time the Warmaster is going to know about the ambush anyway. I have to warn Rynn. I have to be at his side when it happens.
I can't shake the terrible feeling I have about this. Like something huge and dark and infinitely, chokingly empty is rushing towards me.
I can't shake it, and I'm scared.
The buildings are made from dark stone and wood, low and ugly. They were put together with whatever was to hand: a shambolic longhouse; a grim inn; soulless administration buildings and warehouses. All shattered by the previous Gurta assault.
I skirt close to the walls; enemy archers would pick off anyone gung-ho enough to be running out in the open. As I watch, a soldier takes a shaft square in the chest. It punches right through him and halfway out of his back. I try not to think about the amount of force that must have taken. Gurta bows are legendarily deadly.
'Where's Rynn?' I ask a soldier who I find crouching in a doorway. He jumps out of his skin and tries to stab me, but I catch his wrist and shake my head, and he realises who I am. I repeat myself. He tells me. Everyone knows Rynn. He's hard to miss.
The thick of the fighting is in a yard between several of the largest buildings, just turnward of the docks. The Gurta have made their stand there, behind a barricade of rubble. Seems a stupid idea, to try and defend a position that's open on all sides, but a lot of things the Gurta do are incomprehensible. Even to me, and I know them better than most.
It's almost over when I arrive. The a
rchers in the surrounding buildings have been taken out and the Eskaran swordsmen have gone in. Rynn towers over them, his enormous presence a rallying point for the troops. An axe in each hand, swinging left and right. He's not the fastest of the Cadre by a long shot, but there's something in his fighting style that makes him seem untouchable. He takes his swings with all the time in the world and still nobody gets close. The man's like a landslide.
It brings a smile to see him, just for a moment. Then I remember why I'm here, and the smile fades.
I go in. There's hardly anyone left for me to fight. The barricade has been all but overwhelmed. The Gurta are naturally small anyway, but Rynn dwarfs them, and they're afraid to engage him. I dart through the press of Eskaran soldiers and I've almost reached him when he spots me. A grin spreads, white teeth amid the bristling black of his beard- -the next thing I know I'm on the ground and my ears are singing with a high, pure note. Sheer disorientation prevents me from doing anything more than blinking. I'm caked with something damp. Faculties shuffle themselves gradually into order and I remember a sensation like being slapped by a giant's hand. An instant of chaos, of flailing limbs and a bright light.
I raise my head. It feels like my neck muscles have been replaced by wood. Everything is stiff, everything aches at once, so much that I can't tell if I'm hurt or not. There's someone lying on top of me, his face on my chest. What's left of his face, anyway.
Suddenly my only desire is to stop that yawning, jawless thing from touching me. To get out from beneath the blank gaze of those dead eyes, which stare up, pleading, as if I could reverse what has happened. I push at the soldier, frantic with disgust. Scramble away backwards, bump into something else. I know it's a corpse, so I don't look. The shrill whine in my ears is making everything seem very far away and disconnected.
I get my knees under me and raise myself a little. The buildings are gone. The ground is strewn with corpses. One or two, like me, are stirring; but otherwise everything is still. At first, I'm not sure if I'm even in the same place as I was before the explosion and it falls into place in one cruel tumble. Why the Gurta were defending the yard rather than retreating. They booby-trapped the buildings. They crammed as many of us in as possible and then decimated us with explosives.
I can see our forces in the distance, falling into disarray. They daren't enter the town now, for fear of more bombs, and they can't retreat. Gurta reinforcements are charging down the slope towards them. The enemy ships are clearly visible now, powering towards the shore.
We've been outclassed. It's going to be a massacre.
And with that thought I remember why I'm here and not still up on the high ground. Fear drives me to my feet, and I stagger through the tangled carpet of limbs and bodies until I see him.
He's lying on his back, eyes sightless, his massive bulk emptied of that burning vitality that I've known ever since I was an adolescent. I can't even see a wound. But he's dead.
I have no strength in my body. Something is dragging me down and it's too insistent to resist. I sink on top of him, my head on his chest, but the heartbeat I know like my own isn't there. My eyes are fluttering closed, and I realise I'm hurt worse than I thought. I think I'm dying too. But that's alright. I don't want to be alive any more.
Rynn.
He's dead.
My husband.
31
The graduation ceremony was a grand event, staged in the port city of Bry Athka on the turnward coast of the Eskaran Ocean. I hadn't been looking forward to it. Even as we arrived I was still hoping my son would change his mind and refuse his commission. It made me feel unworthy to think that way, but while I could feign happiness easily for the sake of others, I couldn't lie to myself.
Still, you can never get too many chances to dress up. Naturally, Liss and Casta had demanded that I premiere my outfit to them before anyone else saw it. They made politely uncertain comments, then took me out and bought me a riotously expensive alternative. Something in black and dark green, hugging me in all the right places. I'd allowed myself a little narcissistic pleasure in front of the seamstress's mirror while the twins drowned me in praise. Not bad at all, considering.
The hall was magnificent, its cream-coloured roof scalloped in gold and scooped like the inside of a clam shell. The sloping floor was broken up into tiers, enclosures and balconies linked by gentle stairs and crowded with guests. Colourful fungi grew from rockeries babbling with tiny streams.
Aristocrats hove this way and that, murmuring poisonous comments about their rivals and hunting for gossip. They glided from group to group, a slow dance of social manipulation, currying favour here and snubbing a former ally there. They wore elaborate head-dresses, gowns made of jewels and exotic scales, tight uniforms and ripped, faux-poor attire. Most of them had been chthonomantically altered in some way: their skin coloured or patterned, pupils changed to crosses, breasts honed. Many were skinmarked with artful designs, safe in the knowledge that their chthonomancers could erase them when fashions moved on. And for each style there was a counter-style, like the Purists, who refused to wear any decoration and dressed in strict black clothes, with their heads shaved to give the appearance of receding hairlines.
Even Rynn looked halfway to respectable, though he clearly felt uneasy. Social events weren't his forte. He'd trimmed his beard and allowed me to pick his outfit. I'd kept it simple and subtle, out of mercy. He stuck by my side as if fearing I'd cast him adrift in the sea of eccentricity that surrounded us. He'd always viewed the aristocracy as unfathomably weird, and this display was doing nothing to alter his opinion.
I'd never found their little quirks threatening like Rynn did. They upset his sense of decency. For myself, I thought them rather charming, though I never let my fondness cloud my perception. It was easy to see the Plutarchs and their Clans as silly children with too much money, but the truth was that they played a different game to the rest of us, for altogether higher and deadlier stakes.
'Can you see him?' I asked my husband, who was taller than most people in the room.
'They're just coming out now,' he replied, his voice a deep rumble. He slid his arm around me as he said it and I leaned into him automatically. I didn't know whether he was sharing his pride or reassuring me against the nagging vestiges of guilt that I felt. Maybe he was thanking me for my decision not to oppose him on this. But in the end, I didn't care. There was a certain primal safety in his arms, in his smell and the warmth and the bulk of him.
Then, too soon, we were making our way down the tiers towards the semicircular stage at the end of the hall. Most of the guests were not overly interested in the ceremony, obsessed instead with gathering intelligence on their friends and enemies. Locating the best place to insert a knife and twist, I thought uncharitably.
I towed Rynn through the knots of gaudy conspirators. His hand was clasped anxiously to mine, and I could feel it becoming damp with sweat. My husband would throw himself headlong into two dozen Gurta swordsmen and come out without a scratch, but the thought of a formal ball drove him into paroxysms of fear. He didn't like things he didn't understand. He was a man of simple pleasures, uncomplicated, honest. One of the many reasons I loved him. After wallowing in the treacherous mire of the Veyan underworld or gliding through the immaculate viciousness of high society, I liked to come back to a man who said what he meant.
Liss and Casta intercepted us just as we'd found our spot near the front. By now I had become used to the latest changes the twins had wrought upon themselves, and they no longer shocked me. I was accustomed to Liss's deathlike pallor, her shrunken chest, eyes the colour of dirty water and hair like torn dishrags. Casta was easier to look at, fuller-figured, dressed in darkness and flame, her skin black as coal and her hair and eyes red like lava.
Liss detonated at the sight of me and I was buried under a smothering of kisses, which at least interrupted her delighted squeals momentarily.
'Orna, my love! We're so happy for you! Oh, you look wonderful in that dress
. What a choice, what a choice. See? You can rely on us!' She darted a quick look at her sister. 'Aren't we happy?'
'Very happy,' said Casta, ever the more demure of the twins, who waited until Liss's assault was exhausted before placing a controlled kiss on my lips. 'Liss has been talking about nothing but the graduation for longer than I care to remember. Soon she hopes to be where you are, perhaps.'
'Oh, what wicked lies! See what words she puts in my mouth! I said no such thing!' She leaned in and whispered, her breath faintly rancid to match her attire. 'But I'm dying of envy.'
I laughed. The twins noticed Rynn and chorused their hellos before giving him a cursory kiss and ignoring him. Rynn was unfazed; he was watching the graduates lining up on the stage. He had an infuriating inability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. Right now, he was only hazily aware that we existed at all.
'Do you think my child will join the Army?' Liss gushed. I didn't get a chance to reply; most of her questions were rhetorical. 'I hope not. Oh, I wouldn't send him to the war, not my precious one. I hope he's an artist or a poet or a sculptor, like Rynn's grandfather!'
I suffered a twinge of remorse at that. Liss had an uncanny ability to cause accidental wounds with her verbal flailing. My husband appeared not to have heard, which was a good thing. He hated his grandfather.
'I've decided it's going to be a boy, anyway, just like yours,' she declared.
'Won't the father have something to say about it?' I asked. I glanced at her twin, but Casta's attention had drifted elsewhere.
'Oh, men don't care about such things,' she said airily. 'He'll be too busy running his… textile mills or whatever it is he does. I think that's what he does?' She looked to Casta for help, out of her depth when dealing with something factual.
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