The Steel Remains lffh-1

by Richard K. Morgan

  Archeth mimicked herself savagely as she stared out of the window. The Beksanara garrison tower was a stubby affair, barely two stories higher than the rest of the blockhouse, and the view from the top room was the same as everywhere else in this bloody country. Swamp and bleak trees, under a sky the color of spilled brains. You couldn’t even see the river from this angle. You certainly couldn’t see any trace of the morning sun.

  She’d had the whole fucking Empire to choose from.

  She could have been on a beach somewhere in the Hanliahg Scatter right now, bare feet in the sand and a pitcher of coconut beer for company, watching morning flood the sky across the bay with light. She could have been on the balcony of an Uplands Watch garrison lodge beyond the Dhashara pass, hot coffee and lung-spiking mountain air to wake her up, and the swoop-and-squabble courtship of snow eagles like a duel overhead.

  But no, no, you had to follow your fucking hunch to this shit-hole end of the realm. You had to drag Elith back into her past and all the memories too painful to face that she’d left behind. Just couldn’t resist it, could you? Archeth Indamaninarmal returns in triumph with the answer to the Empire’s mysterious woes.

  She’d found nothing. Two weeks of crisscrossing the settlements on the fringes of the Ennishmin marshes, of quizzing bored and resentful imperial officials already out of sorts with their miserable luck at being posted here. Two weeks of barely concealed sneers and sullen reticence under questioning from the artifact scavenger trash whose patriotic help she’d tried—and failed—to enlist. Two fucking weeks of old wives’ tales and rumor, and trekking through swamp to look at a succession of curiously shaped boulders or rock outcrops with no significance whatsoever. The big triumph so far was unearthing another glirsht marker to match the one Elith had hauled to Khangset. They dug it out of soggy mud, six miles into the swamp from Yeshtak where it had fallen on its face and lain, apparently for centuries, undisturbed. It was moss-grown and pitted with age, and one of its beckoning arms was broken off. Sweat-stained and mud-streaked, they let it lie where it was and plodded back to Yeshtak.

  She saw the way Faileh Rakan and his men looked at her when they thought she wouldn’t notice, and it was hard to blame them.

  She was chasing phantoms, and it was turning out exactly as you’d expect.

  And now this—sabotage or random viciousness, Idrashan fed something in the stables that brought him mysteriously to his knees and forced them to stay overnight while they waited to see if he would live or die. There was no veterinarian worthy of the name in Beksanara, and not much in the way of law enforcement, either. Rakan bullied the village administrator into rounding up a few likely suspects, and the Throne Eternal men took turns knocking them around in the blockhouse cells. Outside of the exercise, they got nothing remotely useful from it. Blame cycled back and forth as it tended to in these situations, backstabbing and local family feuds, petty criminal misdemeanors brought to light and frankly implausible confessions, all seeded with the usual marsh mist crap: a mysterious plague on the air that afflicted horses when the wind blew from the northeast; bandits, the feral remnants of families driven out in the occupation, hiding in the swamp and slowly turning into something less than human; a tall figure in brimmed leather hat and cloak, sighted recently prowling the streets at night as if surveying the village for some evil purpose; shadowy child-sized figures seen skittering about in the gloom and making eerie, whinnying sounds. After six hours of it, Archeth made Rakan let everybody go.

  They were still waiting to see if Idrashan would pull through.

  Her mouth clamped. By the Holy fucking Mother, if that horse dies . . .

  Boots on the stair.

  She turned from the window, crossed the small square room, and went out onto the staircase. Faileh Rakan came around the turn below and looked up at her, eyes a little smudged with being up all night, tiny scrape on his temple where one of the tougher suspects had inadvisedly put up a fight. He stopped in midstep when he saw her standing there.

  “Milady,” he said, and inclined his head. It was an automatic deference but one, she thought, that was wearing rather thin.

  “How’s my horse?”

  “It’s, uhm—there’s no change, milady. I’m very sorry. It’s not that. There has been a fresh development.”

  “Ah. And what’s that?”

  “Well, the village administrator tells me his militia have arrested some boat thieves. They found them asleep and run aground on the meander below the village. The boat is without oars, so it’s the usual thing.”

  Archeth shifted impatiently. The village administrator, name of Yanshith, was a miserable tub of guts, the depths of his incompetence matched only by the size of his belly and his self-importance.

  “Yes? And this concerns us because?”

  Rakan cleared his throat. “Well, it also seems that these boat thieves claim to have been fleeing from uhm, magical beings that live in the swamp. And one of them carries a Kiriath blade.”

  HORSESHIT.

  She muttered it to herself a couple of times at least as they went down the stairs and out into the street, because there was an inexplicable pounding in her chest that she didn’t want to be there, and she didn’t know which scared her more—to be wrong and disappointed once again, or to be vindicated in her fears.

  Horseshit, a fucking Kiriath blade. It’s going to be some half length of scavenged scaffolding iron, ground to a ragged edge and wrapped around at one end with cord to make a grip. Seen it enough times before.

  But it wasn’t.

  They reached the combined boathouse and storage shed at the other end of the village, where the thieves were apparently being held. On approach, she saw the confiscated weapons piled up between a pair of unkempt militiamen apparently detailed to keep the door. The thunder in her chest went up a notch at the sight: dirk, hand ax, a Majak staff lance and dragon-tooth ceremonial dagger, and there, dumped unceremoniously on top of everything else, the layered gleam of an An-Monal battle scabbard and the woven hilt of the broadsword it was clasped lovingly around.

  She stopped dead and stared at the weapon. It gleamed back at her like an old and slightly smug friend, first meeting for years and suddenly made good beyond all expectation.

  And then the drawling voice from within, faint through the door’s wood but unmistakable. The soft over hard, slightly absent tone and the outrageous disrespect it accorded the tightly bound syllables of the Tethanne it spoke.

  “You know, Sergeant, you really must have better things to do with the next few hours of your life than trying to stare me out. Like get a shave, for instance? Or just write your last will and testament. You can write, I take it?”

  She almost took the door off its hinges going in. It banged back against the wall with a flat crack, bounced back again, and she had to catch it on her forearm, which hurt.

  “Ringil?”

  “Well, now.” But behind the mannered monosyllables, she saw her shock mirrored back to her in his eyes. He leaned back a little on the upended rowing boat where he sat. Pause, recovery, all on the turn of a second. “Archeth Indamaninarmal. Enters dramatically, from center stage. The Powers really are getting their act together, it seems.”

  “Told you,” grunted the man at Ringil’s side, and then she recognized him as well. “Didn’t want to believe me, did you?”

  “Dragonbane? You here, too?”

  “Hey, Archeth.” The Majak grinned at her. “Why so formal? No one calls me that anymore.”

  “Well, now you know how I feel then,” muttered Ringil.

  There were four halberd-equipped militiamen in the room, weapons now drooping, faces gaping at this incomprehensible exchange between visiting Kiriath nobility and the three boat thieves they’d herded into the corner. Faileh Rakan said it for all of them.

  “You know these people, milady?”

  “Yes, I do. Well, this young woman, no, but—”

  “Sherin Herlirig Mernas,” supplied Ringil, with a courtly g
esture, while the woman at his side stared in silence with hollow-eyed fatigue and wonder. “And this is Egar, son of Erkan, of the Majak clan Skaranak, known in your part of the world, perhaps rather grandiosely, as the Dragonbane.”

  Archeth watched Rakan’s face change. In the whole Empire, there were perhaps twenty men honored with the title Dragonbane. Most had died earning it. The Throne Eternal captain took a short step forward, put fist to right shoulder, and bowed his head briefly at the Majak warrior.

  “It is an honor,” he said. “I am Faileh Rakan, commander first class, the Throne Eternal.”

  “Rakan.” Egar frowned and scratched an ear. “You the Rakan who led that charge down the flank at Shenshenath fields back in ’47, that time they had to dig Akal out of the ditchwork?”

  “It was my honor to command the action, yes.”

  The Majak’s face split in a grin. He shook his head. “Then you’re a fucking madman, Faileh Rakan. That was the most insane thing I’ve ever seen. Not one soldier in a hundred I know would have run that risk.”

  Rakan’s mouth twitched primly, but you could see he was pleased.

  “Not one soldier in a thousand is chosen for the Emperor’s guard,” he stated, as if reciting it. “It was my duty, nothing more. The throne of Yhelteth is eternal, life in service to it must reflect that eternity in honor. Death is a price that must sometimes be paid, like any other honorable debt.”

  “Glad to hear that,” said Ringil breezily. “Very uplifting. Hang on to that attitude, you’re going to need it.”

  Rakan turned a frosty eye on him. “We have not had your name, sir.”

  “Oh, I?” Ringil raised one hand to mask a sudden, jaw-creaking yawn. “I’m Ringil of the Glades house of Eskiath in Trelayne. You may have heard of me as well.”

  Rakan’s face changed once more. It became abruptly impassive.

  “Yes, I have heard of you,” he said shortly.

  Ringil nodded. “Gallows Gap, no doubt.”

  But the Throne Eternal captain shook his head. “No. That name is not familiar to me. What I have heard is that Ringil Eskiath was a traitor to the imperial peace in the northern provinces, a corruptor of youth, and a faggot.”

  Egar bounced up off the curve of the upended boat back, face darkening. Archeth saw Ringil’s hand fall on his arm, and felt a pang of relief. The distribution of weapons in the room did not invite brawling.

  “Fascinating, Eg,” Ringil’s tone was light and soft. Only someone who knew him well would have spotted the steel edge sheathed in it. “Don’t you think? What they must be teaching in history books down south these days. I’ll bet we find the Empire won the war against the Scaled Folk all by itself. And that the good people of Ennishmin and Naral were so grateful they spontaneously vacated their homes to allow imperial settlers to live in them.”

  Rakan lifted a finger. “I will not hear you—”

  “That’s enough, Rakan.” Archeth stepped between the Throne Eternal captain and the others. “Gil, Egar, you told the militia you were running from dwenda, is that right?”

  Ringil and Egar exchanged a glance. Ringil looked grim.

  “Actually, I wasn’t that specific,” he said quietly. “What do you know about the dwenda, Archidi?”

  The pounding in her chest seemed to be subsiding, settling to something colder and more patient that she recognized from the war years.

  “I know they’re here,” she said. “In Ennishmin, in the swamps.”

  Ringil bent her a hard little smile.

  “That’s not the half of it. By tonight, they’re going to be right here in Ibiksinri, walking the main street and knocking on doors.”

  THEY HELD THE COUNCIL OF WAR IN THE GARRISON HOUSE, AWAY FROM prying eyes. No point in alarming the locals, Faileh Rakan said. No, Ringil agreed, they’d only gather up their children and flee for their lives. Can’t have that, can we? Not in a border province. The Throne Eternal captain fixed him with a baleful stare, but by this time Ringil had back the Ravensfriend and his dragon knife, had breakfasted heartily, and wore a faint, inviting smile on his face that Rakan knew well enough how to read.

  Archeth put out the flames again, kept the two of them apart. They put Sherin with Elith in an unlocked cell downstairs, one of those the village administrator had been prevailed upon to equip with a few comforts when Archeth and her men were forced to stay the night before. They sent the administrator and his men away with some simple tasks to perform, told them there was nothing much to worry about, really, and locked themselves in the tower room. They got down to business, got up to date on the varied paths that had brought them to Ennishmin, which in itself was a lengthy business—and not without its awkward moments.

  “Impossible! This is heresy.” Halgan, one of the two Throne Eternal lieutenants Faileh Rakan had detailed to sit in, was not dealing very well with Egar’s tale of his encounter with Takavach. “There is but One God and He has made himself known to us in the One True Revelation.”

  Ringil rolled his eyes. But Darash, the other lieutenant, was nodding agreement, and even Rakan’s ordinarily impassive face was turned toward the Majak with a frown. Archeth couldn’t be bothered; she let them get on with it. She stared out of the window and wondered why the mention of Takavach’s leather hat and cloak seemed so familiar. Meanwhile, Egar grinned and poured himself more coffee. He was used to this sort of thing, had in fact always derived a rather childish satisfaction from scandalizing the imperials when he lived in Yhelteth. He lifted the callused blade of a hand at Halgan.

  “Look, mate, I saw this Takavach take a crossbow bolt out of the air in midflight with his bare hand. Like that. He summoned an army of demons from the steppe grasses the way you’d call your children in from play, and he brought me the best part of seven hundred miles southwest to Ennishmin in the time it’d take you to snap your fucking fingers. Now—if that’s not a god, then it’s a pretty good imitation.”

  “Yes, an imitation.” Darash insisted. “An evil spirit. A trick to steal your allegiance.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Egar slurped his coffee, put it down again and grinned. “Guys, you don’t get it, do you? Takavach saved my arse out on the steppe. He butchered my enemies for me and then made me a gate out of air and darkness and hung it from a branch of my father’s grave tree so I could escape. You know, for that—he’s pretty much got my allegiance.”

  “But this is a demon, Dragonbane.” Halgan was aghast, almost pleading. “You must see that. This is a devil, trying to steal your soul.”

  The Majak snorted. “My soul will walk the Sky Road anyway, whatever happens to me here on earth. It’s not something you can steal like some lady’s silk underwear. I killed a fucking dragon, man. My ancestors will have been polishing up my seat in the Sky Home ever since, grinning like idiots, probably. My father must be boring the Dwellers rigid with tales of my prowess.”

  “This is superstition,” said Rakan dismissively. “This is not . . . truth.”

  “You calling me a liar?”

  Ringil rubbed hands down his face. “Maybe, Rakan, it’s your Revelation that’s the superstition. Ever think of that? Maybe the Majak have gotten hold of the right end of the arbalest after all. Has the One True God shown up to save any of your skins recently? Has He appeared to any of you?”

  “You know God does not manifest Himself,” Halgan shouted. “That is also heresy. The Revelation is not corporeal. You know this. Why do you persist in this perverted speech?”

  “I like perverted. Maybe you would, too, if you gave it a chance.”

  “Leave my men alone,” Rakan said coldly. “Degenerate.”

  Ringil smooched a kiss at him. Rakan, out of nowhere, spat a curse and was halfway to his feet before Archeth snapped out of her daydream. She grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back into his seat.

  “That’s enough. You lot can sort out your religious differences someday when there isn’t anything more important to do. Right now, I want to know, Ringil, why you’re so sure
they’ll come after you?”

  Ringil exchanged a glance with Egar.

  “You want to tell her?” he asked the Majak.

  Egar shrugged. “We saw them on the bank. Twice during the night. Blue fire and a dark shape at its heart, watching us go past.”

  “Could that not be something else?” Halgan asked. He didn’t want to believe in this any more than he had in Takavach. “Reflected light through mist around some scavenger taking a piss in the river? Or some effect from the marsh gases. The locals say—”

  “The locals talk a load of shit, is what they do,” Egar said flatly. “I’ve been working the swamp for the best part of a month now, and I’ve never seen anything like what I saw last night. And anyway, Archeth, it fits with what you told us about Khangset. Blue flickering light, shadow figures.”

  “It’s how they come through from the gray places, the Aldrain marches.” Ringil rubbed tiredly at an eye. Falling asleep in the drifting skiff had left him stiff and unrested. “As far as I can work out, there are places they don’t need this aspect storm to do it, but there don’t seem to be many of them. The heart of the swamp apparently, near where this Kiriath weapon is buried. Or maybe it’s got something to do with these glirsht carvings you’re talking about, I don’t know. All I can tell you for sure is that Seethlaw turned up in Terip Hale’s cellar as easily as if he’d just opened a door in the wall.”

  “That was at night, though.”

  “Yes. And I’d say the legends are right as far as that goes, too. The dwenda don’t seem to like sunlight very much. Most of the time I was in the Aldrain marches, it was dark or dim, like twilight. One place we went, there was something like a sun in the sky, but it was almost burned out. Like a hollow shell of itself. If that’s where the dwenda are from originally, it might explain why they can’t tolerate bright light. And this pirate raid on Khangset you were talking about, I think I met one of the dwenda who went on it, name of Pelmarag. He told me they pulled out well before dawn because the sun was going to be too strong for comfort. With that kind of sun coming up in a couple of hours’ time, he said.”