The Steel Remains lffh-1

by Richard K. Morgan

  The wind across the steppe seemed to hold its breath.

  Out of nowhere, there was a figure standing in the path of Ershal’s shot. Leather-cloaked, face shadowed beneath a soft-brimmed hat. It reached up and took the arrow out of the air with no more effort than a man grabbing a lance pennant in the breeze. The fingers of the hand seemed—Egar squinted hard—to elongate and flex in places no human hand could have. A voice whispered out to them in the still spaces left by the wind, distant and intimate at once.

  “Can’t allow that, I’m afraid.”

  And suddenly the wind came back, buffeting, and in it Egar caught the wash of chemical burning once more. His brothers’ horses scented it, too—they whinnied in terror and tried to back up. Ershal cursed and dropped his bow as he fought his mount for control.

  “Harjalath!” spat Alrag.

  “Not as such, no.” The apparition lowered its arm and snapped the arrow deftly in half, one-handed. It let the pieces fall. “Harjalath is . . . other, when he cares to manifest himself. Though for your purposes, the end difference here will be negligible.”

  Ergund spared one hand from calming his horse, made a hasty ward. “We are about Kelgris’s business, demon. Begone. You may not hinder us.”

  “It’s not that simple,” whispered the thing. “You see.”

  With the hand that had snapped the arrow apart, it brushed through the grass as if stirring the surface of water. Waves raced out from its touch, seemingly random, certainly in defiance of the prevailing breeze from the north. The grass bowed, it shivered and whipped about, it made mounds like the racing backs of sea creatures just below the surface.

  “Do you see?”

  In the space around the figure, the mounds grew suddenly still, rose silently and took on stricter form. Half a dozen separate shapes, maybe more. Egar felt the breath stop in his throat as he realized what he was looking at. The creature in the leather cloak had surrounded itself abruptly with men—but men woven out of the grass itself, and moving restlessly around on its surface like bathers immersed to the waist in a river.

  “No corner of the steppe,” murmured the figure. It sounded oddly distracted, almost sleepy. “But that the blood of men has fallen there and fertilized it. Occasionally, the steppe can be made to recall these things. Kill them.”

  And the grass men flung themselves forward.

  They had no weapons, nothing beyond their ill-formed stringy tendril hands, but they surged up at the terrified horses like ill-intending waves, and where they gripped, Egar saw blood spring out on the animals’ hide. He saw them pull Ergund’s mount right over in a flounder of limbs and rolling eyes, saw Ergund stagger briefly upright and make frantic warding signs, shrilling the name of Kelgris until they dragged him down into the grass as well, and his screams turned choked and gurgling. He saw Alrag hacking about him with his lance, yelling and cursing, Ershal wheeling his beleaguered horse about in the chaos, face a mask of horror . . .

  There was little enough time for more—a pair of the grass things came at Egar as well, and he was busy grabbing his lance back up off the ground where he’d dropped it. Grass came with it, blades of the stuff folding over and wrapping and clinging stubbornly to the shaft, trying to pull it back down. For one insane moment, it was like a tug-of-war for the weapon with some surprisingly tenacious toddler around the camp, and then Egar had the lance free and was swinging it up to defend himself against a long thin slashing arm and the empty eye sockets of the grass-formed head behind it. He scythed off the arm at what might have approximated an elbow joint, saw it simply re-form as more grass stalks slithered up into place. A ragged gap opened in the thing’s head where a mouth would have been on a man. The rustling, keening noise that came out of it turned his blood to ice.

  “Not him.”

  The leather-cloaked figure spoke without turning, hissed, furious words, made a rapid whiplash gesture back across its shoulder that would have dislocated the limb on a normal man. The two forms slopped like waves collapsing up a beach, and were abruptly gone. Melting motions in the grass and an errant gust of wind, and then nothing at all. Egar drew harsh breath and gaped around him in time to see Alrag hauled, lance still flailing, down to a bellowing death in the grass, and Ershal spurring his horse away at the gallop, lashing wildly behind him with his knife, chopping at the empty air alongside his mount’s rump like a man deranged. The summoned forms surged about for a moment or two, perhaps looking for more victims, then they, too, sank back into the grass that had spawned them and Egar stood panting, alone with the thing in the leather cloak.

  It turned slowly to face him. That the features below the brim of the hat were no more than nondescript human seemed like the final impossible thing. The voice that drummed around the inside of his skull hit him like the pulse of a bad hangover.

  “You were supposed to run, Dragonbane. That’s the purpose of a warning.”

  “Who—” Egar struggled to master his breathing. “—the fuck. Are you?”

  The eyes beneath the hat glinted, another warning in them for him. “That’s complicated.”

  “Well, hey, everybody’s fucking dead. We’ve got some time.”

  “Not as much as you think. You heard your brother Ergund call upon Kelgris? She is awake and abroad. Poltar the shaman has her favor. All I have done here is hold back the tide a little.”

  Egar found his rage still had the better of his fear. He clenched fists on the staff of his lance, drew clamped breath. Grimaced.

  “Listen. Don’t think I’m not grateful to you, because I am. You saved my life. By sorcery or not, I still owe you a blood debt for that, and you won’t find me stingy on the payback. But I will have a name for my debt, or it can’t be called honorable.”

  It was hard to tell in the poor light, but he thought the figure rolled its eyes. It turned away from him for a moment. It seemed to be staring out across the steppe, or maybe just at the thin plume of smoke rising from Egar’s fire.

  “Can’t fucking believe it’s come to this,” it muttered. “Negotiating with a fucking herdsman—you know, sometimes it’s—listen, I was the thief of fire once, you goat-shagging thug. You know that? The fucking doom bringer to kings.” An arm thrown out in exasperation. “Back when the earth was young, back when there was still a moon in the fucking sky, I pulled on whatever flesh was needful and I struck terror into the hearts of the powerful and enthroned all across this mudball world, and another dozen like it. I took the spirit form and strode across measureless . . . ah, fuck it, never mind. All right, a name. You know my name.”

  And, abruptly, he did.

  It was as if someone had taken a binding from his eyes, as if he’d suddenly shed the blurry fog of a fever. He saw the sea captain’s cloak as if for the first time, remembered tales and associations from a lifetime of Majak myth. A traveler, by land but more often by sea, a master of disguises and stratagems, a murderous, barely discriminate force when unleashed, a wry borrower of the human form. The least predictable, most violently capricious of the Sky Dwellers.

  The chill of it blew through him.

  “Takavach,” he whispered.

  The hat-brim-shadowed visage tipped back toward him. There might have been the glimmer of a cold smile. “Good. Are you happy now, with your name, with your knowing?”

  “What?” Egar swallowed. Voice still a whisper. “What do you want with me?”

  “That’s better. First and foremost, I want you to shut up and listen. Your brother Ershal has escaped. In a matter of hours he’ll have roused the whole camp and told them that you are possessed by demons.”

  “Demons? There’s no fucking way they’ll be—”

  “The next time you interrupt me, I’ll sew your fucking lips up with grass. And don’t think I won’t.” The thing that claimed to be Takavach drew a deep breath. “Now listen to me. Ershal will say that he and your other brothers, perhaps drunkenly—which would explain the impropriety of the matter—rode out to greet you at your vigil. That you
flew into a fury, summoned demonic forces, and slaughtered Alrag and Ergund; that he barely escaped with his life. Poltar will vouchsafe his story with the usual superstitious horseshit about your southern manners polluting your Majak purity, which is a line he’s been spreading about you for some time now, incidentally. And at dawn, they’ll all ride out here and see for themselves. Would you like to take a closer look at how your brothers died?”

  The question appeared to be rhetorical. Takavach was already drifting through the grass to where Alrag had fallen. Egar went after him, mouth pulled tight for what he was about to see. They came upon the occluding bulk of his brother’s murdered horse first, collapsed massively sideways, streaked everywhere with blood and clinging blades of grass. Egar stepped around it at the rump end and saw, mingled with the animal’s spilled entrails, the ruined mess that lay beyond.

  Alrag lay in a flattened, blood-drenched patch of grass, and he was roped to the ground. The blades and tendrils had lashed around his limbs and trunk at every juncture and pulled him down so tight that at his wrists and neck they had sunk through the skin and into the flesh beneath. They’d burrowed into his eyes and nose and ears, had turned the eyes themselves to bloodied mush in the process. Had twisted his head and neck sideways, wrenched his mouth down to the ground and so wide that the jaw was dislocated. Had crowded inside and down his throat in a twisted rope of grass as thick around as Egar’s forearm and now slick with blood.

  Bandlight turned the image unreal, like an acid etching on metal. Egar made himself stare at it, unblinking until his eyes began to hurt.

  Brotherslayer.

  He was not sure whom the voice in his head was accusing.

  At his side, Takavach shot him a curious glance, then went and crouched by Alrag’s head. His leather cloak pooled around him, made him seem hunched and unhuman. Egar thought of a solitary vulture settling to feast. The Dweller looked back up over his shoulder at the clanmaster.

  “Would you like to see Ergund as well?”

  “No,” Egar heard himself say thickly. “That won’t be necessary.”

  “No, I suppose not.” Takavach took hold of the woven rope emerging from Alrag’s broken mouth and tugged at it experimentally. It didn’t move much. “Well, I think you’d agree that outside of sorcery, this is going to be hard to explain.”

  “Explain?” Egar drank in the sight of his eldest brother for one more measured moment, then turned on his heel. He slung his lance across one shoulder, cast a glance at the sky, and gauged a straight line back to camp. “I’ll fucking explain it. I’ll cram that bow down Ershal’s throat the exact same fucking way.”

  “And the—where do you think you’re going?” Takavach’s words came hurriedly after him. “And the shaman? Kelgris?”

  Egar didn’t look around or stop walking. “I’m going to gut that scrawny motherfucker, the way I should have done months ago, and then stake him out for the buzzards, still living. And if Kelgris shows up in support, I’ll do the same fucking thing to her.”

  Faint rumble of thunder walking at the horizon. The clouds there lit briefly from within with a malevolent mauve radiance.

  “So.” Takavach was suddenly at his side again. “Now it’s Egar the fucking Godbane, is it? Do you not think you’re biting off a little more than you can chew here, herdsman? Kelgris is a Sky Dweller. You don’t know how to kill her, you wouldn’t know where to start.”

  Egar kept walking. “So tell me.”

  Brief silence. Takavach kept pace with him. “I’m not at liberty to do that. There are certain . . . protocols that have to be observed. Agreed rules, if you like. Oaths and ties that bind.”

  “Fine. Then don’t tell me. You’ve already done enough.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” Egar said violently. “It means nothing. Two of my brothers are dead back there, I’m on my way to finish the job. That’s all. Now will you stop fucking following me!”

  To his surprise, the Dweller did exactly that. He stood in the grass and watched the clanmaster stride away. The thunder at the horizon came again, and if Egar had looked back then, he might have seen Takavach shiver.

  “Fine. Go to your fucking death, then, if that’s the way you want it. Kelgris will put a legion of steppe ghouls between you and the camp, a legion of rabid fucking wolves, maybe even a flapping wraith or three if she’s feeling inventive. And you’re on fucking foot!”

  Egar ignored it. The image of Alrag’s death danced behind his eyes.

  “So,” the Dweller shouted furiously after him. “This is what it means to be owed thanks and a blood debt by a Skaranak clanmaster, is it?”

  It stopped him like a crossbow bolt. He lowered his head for a moment, breathed deep. Nodded to himself and turned back to the cloaked figure that stood behind him.

  “What do you want from me, Takavach?”

  “At the moment, I want to help you stay alive. Would that be so terrible?”

  His brothers lay dead and cooling in the grass behind him, scant yards from their father’s grave. Marnak’s words floated back through his mind. You start wondering why you made it to the end of the day, why you’re still standing when the field is clogged with other men’s blood and corpses. Why the Dwellers are keeping you alive, what purpose the Sky Home has laid out for you.

  Thunder rattled at the chained doors of the world.

  Egar’s face twitched as he heard it. Closer now, and out across the steppe the clouds were massing. He felt his own future come and touch him with one cold hand at the neck. The long purpose of the Sky Home was rarely beneficial to those who served as its instruments, heroes least of all. You only had to look at the legends.

  He spat in the grass.

  Went back to where the cloaked god stood waiting for him. He met the glimmering eyes beneath the hat brim and discovered that in the strange storm blowing through his heart now, there was no longer any room for fear.

  “All right,” he said.

  CHAPTER 23

  Waking up felt like riding one of the huge iron navigation buoys in the channel at Yhelteth port. The taste of rust in his mouth, a cold, black watery rushing around him, and a wavering patch of light on the surface of the dark above. He felt a hot twinge through shoulder and chest, wasn’t surprised to feel it but couldn’t quite recall why. Through the jagged glimmer of approaching consciousness, he thought he saw a dark figure waiting for him.

  Don’t you fucking get it, Dad. Mumbling through an oddly aching jaw. It’s all a fucking lie, the whole stinking edifice from the marsh up . . .

  And awake.

  He lay on smooth, cold stone. Limestone drip of water somewhere in the gloom. A pale light danced on raw vaulting rock overhead. The dark figure stood against a dressed stone wall to his left.

  “Why did you do it?”

  But the voice came from the right. Ringil blinked and propped himself up on one shaky elbow. Pain lanced up from his jaw and through the right side of his head. Memory crashed in on him. The fight—the dwenda—the damage he’d taken. He peered around, saw little beyond the vague loom of overhanging rock and stalactites.

  “Do what?” he asked groggily.

  Shadows moved on the stone floor where he lay. It was paving, he noticed, dressed to match the wall on his left. He squinted and made out a cross-legged form seated just beyond the fall of light around him. Whoever it was seemed to be staring down into cupped hands.

  “Why did you fight for them?” There was a music to the voice, a deep-toned, melodic vibrancy, for all that the words themselves came quietly across the gloom. The language was Naomic, but tinged with archaisms from old Myrlic and a quaint grammatical ornateness. “They’d execute you on a spike for your choice of bed partner, and call it righteousness; they’d watch it done and toast your agony with tankards and songs, and dedicate it to their idiot gods. They’re brutal, moronic, they have the ethical consciousness of apes and the initiative levels of sheep. But you took the field against the
reptiles for them nonetheless. Why?”

  Ringil sat up with an effort. Tried to speak, coughed instead. Got it under control, finally, managed a weak shrug.

  “Dunno,” he croaked. “Everyone was doing it, I just wanted to be popular.”

  Arid laughter, echoing in the cavern. But the question still hung there in the silence that followed, and the figure did not move. An answer was required, a real one.

  “Okay.” Ringil took his jaw between thumb and forefinger, flexed it and grimaced. He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t swear to it after all this time. But looking back, I think it was probably the children. I saw a couple of towns hit by their raiding parties early on. You know, the Scaled Folk tend to eat their prisoners. And for children, well, that’s got to be the ultimate nightmare, right? Being eaten. Chained up watching, knowing it’s going to happen to them next.”

  “I see. For children.” The seated form cocked its head. The voice stayed soft and silky, but somewhere it held the underlying tensile strength of Kiriath skinmail. “Children who would in all probability grow to be just as ignorant and brutal and destructive as those that spawned them.”

  Ringil pressed fingers to the throbbing side of his head. “Yeah, probably. When you put it like that, does seem kind of stupid. So what about you people? You eat your prisoners at all?”

  The figure rose smoothly to its feet. Even in the gloom, Ringil could see the physical power and grace the motion implied. The speaker came forward into the light.

  For a moment, Ringil forgot to breathe.

  Throbbing pain in his jaw and head, the twinges from the sword-tip slash on his shoulder and chest, a messy, soiled feel to his consciousness and clothes, and behind it all a vague, disconnected sense of fear—still, Ringil felt the spurt of nascent lust in the base of his belly. Grace-of-Heaven Milacar’s words spilled back through his head.

  He’s beautiful, Gil. That’s what they say. That he’s beautiful beyond words.