The Steel Remains lffh-1

by Richard K. Morgan

  You’ve got to laugh, Ringil would probably have said.

  No, you’ve got to unlock the fucking door, Archeth might have replied. But of course, by then the key was long lost.

  Perhaps, though—look at it this way, makes a lot of sense if you think about it, man—the dwenda were delayed by simple necessity. Perhaps navigation in the gray places was not the easy matter Seethlaw had made it appear. Perhaps, once in the Aldrain marches, the dwenda must cast about like wolves for spoor of Ringil and his sudden, murderous new friend from the steppes. Perhaps they must find the thin cool scent of the river with painstaking care, and sift it for the place where their prey disembarked. And perhaps even then, with their targets found, the dwenda storm-callers must struggle for position the way a swimmer struggles to hold station against a current.

  Could be. Those who managed to live through the battle would nod and shrug, touch old wounds and shiver. Who the fuck knows. Yeah, could be.

  Or could be—Ringil would have liked this one—it was politics that held them up, the disorderly individual dissent that he’d seen playing out among the dwenda. Perhaps it took Seethlaw awhile to convince his fellow Aldrain that this was something that needed to be done.

  Or perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps it was Seethlaw who had to be convinced, or at least to convince himself.

  And so it went pointlessly on, the theorizing and head shaking and wonder among survivors of the dwenda encounter at Beksanara—or Ibiksinri, to give it the name those who built it would recognize, those who, for political convenience and a treaty not one in a hundred would have been educated well enough to read, were driven away in cold and hunger or simply butchered there in the street.

  Ibiksinri, then. Site once again for blades unleashed and blood spilled and screaming across the murderous night. Funny, Ringil might have said, how nothing ever fucking changes.

  The dwenda came in the small, cold hours before dawn.

  But before that:

  NOT LONG AFTER MIDDAY, THE SUN CAME OUT.

  The villagers, who knew the value of such moments, got out and about in its warmth immediately. Bedclothes were brought out and hung up to air, lunch tables were set up in the street and in the small gardens of those homes that had them. Down at the river, while Rakan and some of his men watched in bemusement, the villagers stripped down to underwear and flung themselves into what was still very cold water, and splashed about like children. If the presence of the intensely black Kiriath woman and her soldiers put any kind of damper on the proceedings, it was hard to notice.

  The imperials themselves weren’t immune to the change. They muttered among themselves that it might be a good omen, and they took the opportunity to bask a little. But having come from the dusty heat of the capital only weeks before, they were neither overjoyed nor impressed, just faintly grateful.

  Basking, and reflecting on omens—my brother, my uncle, a friend of mine once saw . . . and so forth—also seemed to help the time pass faster, which was something of a blessing, because there wasn’t much else to do. Preparations for the battle were minimal, and largely symbolic. You can’t build barricades against an enemy that pops into existence wherever it wills, and dwenda tactics were in any case a mystery yet to be revealed. Plans of a sort were laid, but of necessity they had to remain flexible; in the end they amounted to not much more than keeping the locals in their homes under curfew once night fell, and scheduling regular patrols around the village.

  Archeth prevailed upon Ringil to give Rakan’s men a brief lecture on what he knew about the dwenda, which he did with a surprisingly deft touch that made her blink. The mannered Glades aristo irony she knew so well peeled and flaked away like scabbing from a healed wound, leaving a dry warrior humor and easy, natural camaraderie in its place. She could see the men taking to him by the second as he spoke. He made none of the threats he’d used earlier, though his overall prognosis for the situation was no more optimistic, and he offered no better hopes for the outcome.

  In the end, she realized, he had successfully invited them all to die simply by promising to do it with them.

  It was all they would ask of any commander.

  “Yeah, he was like that at Gallows Gap,” Egar told her as they sprawled on the front steps of the garrison house in the sun, trying to avoid wondering how much longer they might have to live. “Similar situation, I guess. We all knew if we couldn’t hold the pass, the lizards were going to sweep down and obliterate everything in their path, kill us whether we stood or ran. It took Gil to show them that was a strength we had, not a weakness. That it just made everything simple. The choice wasn’t living or dying, running or fighting, it was facing death as an equal, or hearing it come up on you from behind like a hound, grab you by the scruff of the neck, and shake you apart.” He grinned in his beard. “Pretty easy choice to make, right?”

  “I guess.”

  She thought about the people and the things she still cared about—it wasn’t a long list—and wondered how truthful she was being, how honest with herself, let alone with the Majak at her side. She missed her home, with an abrupt, almost painful pang, now that she thought she might never see it again. She missed the brutal sun and the hard blue skies over Yhelteth, the bustle and dust of the streets; the cool gray cobbles of her courtyard at first light, the first seep of cooking smells from the kitchen side; Kefanin’s somber reliability and reserve, Angfal’s drily erudite, half-sane ramblings in the cluttered study. The long, majestic sweep of the staircase, the spectacular cityscape views from the upper rooms. The big canopied bed and the sunlight that splashed across it in the morning, and maybe someday Ishgrim’s supple, curving pale flanks under—stop that, you slut. Well, then, Idrashan’s warm, powerful girth under her at the gallop. The gusty two-day ride out to An-Monal, and the melancholy emptiness of the deserted buildings there, the soft, comforting murmur of the tamed volcano through the surrounding stonework. Feeding Idrashan an apple from the tree under Grashgal’s old study windows, murmuring to the warhorse as she clucked him homeward again.

  It occurred to her suddenly that quite a lot of her reason for not opposing Ringil’s stand might lie in an unwillingness to abandon Idrashan, who still lay on his side in the garrison stable and could not get up.

  “I saw men die that afternoon with a grin on their faces.” Egar shook his head, still lost in the memories of Gallows Gap. Sunlight gleamed on his face. “I saw men laughing as they went down. That was Gil, he made them like that. He was there at the heart of it, screaming abuse and bad jokes at the lizards, painted head-to-foot in their blood. I swear, Archeth, I think he was as happy then as any time I ever saw him, before or since.”

  “Great.”

  He looked around at her tone.

  “We’re doing the right thing, Archeth,” he said gently. “Whatever happens here tonight, he called it right.”

  She sighed hard, pressed hands flat to the tops of her thighs and rocked a little on the step.

  “Let’s hope so, huh?”

  Someone came out of the blockhouse door behind them. They both twisted about and saw Ringil standing there. He’d bagged a cuirass—from the militia store, by the slightly grubby look of it—along with a pair of battered greaves and a few other assorted chunks of plate. None of it matched, but it all seemed a reasonable fit. There was a Throne Eternal shield slung casually on his shoulder. He stood and looked at them in silence for a moment, and Archeth wondered if he’d heard what Egar was saying about him. Looked at his face and thought yes, he probably had.

  “Shouldn’t be long now,” he said gruffly. “Listen, Archidi, I don’t suppose you’re still doing krinzanz these days, are you?”

  She faced front so she could dig in a tight inner pocket, pulled out a cloth-wrapped slab she hadn’t started on yet, and handed it back to him over her shoulder. “All my old bad habits are intact, Gil. Disappoint you?”

  “Far from it. I’d hate to think you’d changed along with everything else.” He took the s
lab and weighed it in the palm of his hand with a critical frown. “Like I told your men in there, these motherfuckers are fast. And I was never faster than when I was riding a quarter ounce of this stuff. You might want to check with Rakan, see if any of them want a dab or two as well.”

  Archeth snorted. “No, I don’t think I’ll broach that one actually. Read your Revelation. It’s a first-order sin, pollution of the fleshly temple and estrangement of mind from the spiritual self. These guys are losing respect for me fast enough as it is. Trying to peddle them unlawful substances steeped in sin is going to just about finish it.”

  “You want me to ask? Got to get a helmet from Rakan anyway, and I think my faggot’s reputation is in sufficient tatters by now it won’t matter one way or the other.”

  “Do what you like. It won’t go down well, though, I’m telling you. These are pious, clean-living men, worshipping at the temple of their own bodies.”

  “Hmm. Sounds distinctly erotic.”

  “Pack that in, Gil.” She squinted around in the sun to see if anyone was listening to them. “You’re going to spoil the good impression you just made on the troops.”

  “Yeah, all right. Fair point.” Ringil glanced at Egar. “What about you?”

  The Majak skinned another grin. “Too late to make a good impression on me, Gil. I know you.”

  “The krin. I’m talking about the krin.”

  Egar shook his head. “Interferes with my breathing. I fucked up on that stuff back in the summer of ’49, made myself really sick. Couple of friends of Imrana’s had this high-quality supply through someone they knew at court, and I overdid the dose because I didn’t realize. Fucking nightmare. Can’t even stomach the taste anymore.”

  “Okay.” Ringil turned to go back inside. “I’m still going to ask Rakan. Might save some lives if I can convince him.”

  Archeth squinted up at him again. “Nice shield he gave you.”

  “This? Yeah, it’s his spare, apparently.” The ghost of a smile touched Ringil’s mouth. “I think he liked the speech as well. Seems maybe I’m not such a total degenerate dead loss after all.”

  “Well.” She tried to think of something to say, to stave off thought.

  She was starting to feel slightly sick, even with the better weather. “It was a pretty good speech.”

  Egar grunted. “Yeah, not bad for a fucking faggot.”

  And they all laughed, long and hard in sunlight, while there was still time.

  CHAPTER 32

  The small cold hours before dawn.

  Ringil was seated on a low wall down near the river, feeling the rush and scrape of the krin through the valves of his heart and barely aware of the outside world at all. He’d been waiting too long. The initial pounding anticipation in the first few hours of darkness had sagged and slumped sometime after midnight; for an experienced warrior, it wasn’t something you could sustain for long. The tension, the itching preparedness to fight, even the fear itself grew dull after a while. He rode the krin looser, let himself detach from what it was doing to his physical body, topped himself up every couple of hours with another pinched fragment from the slab rubbed into his gums. Began to wonder if he hadn’t made a mistake.

  “Blue fire! Blue fire! They’re coming!”

  He snapped back to awareness, swiveled off the wall—more effort than expected, he’d forgotten he was wearing the armor—and snatched up his shield. He slung it on his shoulder, grabbed his helmet from beside him on the wall and crammed it on as he ran, up toward the main street. Unsheathed the Ravensfriend with a chime as the scabbard lip parted and grinned at the sound. The night breeze off the river seemed to hurry him along. The alarm had come from the boathouse end.

  “Blue fire! Blue fi—”

  It ended on a gurgled scream. He cursed and sprinted flat-out, went around the boathouse corner, and ran straight into the first dwenda. They bounced off each other, staggered and nearly fell. The Throne Eternal who’d yelled the warning was on his knees in the street, head bowed, bleeding out between futilely clutching fingers and a neck wound. His companion, the other half of the patrol, lay beyond in a broad pool of his own blood. Blue light shone off everything, made the imperials into melancholy silhouettes and the puddle of blood a solid, polished plate. The same glow clung about the big, black-clad form that had killed them like some enchanted armor.

  The Ravensfriend leapt to block and Ringil saw the sweeping blue glitter of the Aldrain blade a second after. Lock, scrape. The impact shivered through him. He whipped his sword back, changed stance. The dwenda attacked again, up out of a low guard. He chopped it down, backed up, let the krin take his senses and smear them thin. The dwenda nodded its smoothly helmeted head and said something incomprehensible. He had a moment to wonder if it knew him.

  “Come on then, you fuck. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  He leapt in behind the snarl, swung the Ravensfriend high, and kicked out sharp and low at the same moment. The blade deflected with a clang, no surprise, the lack of balance had made it a slow, graceless move. But his boot got through, hard into either shin or knee. The dwenda staggered. Ringil followed up, swinging his shield in and out as required, looking for a gap. They traded blows back and forth. Ringil saw his chance, looped the Ravensfriend under the other blade and swept both weapons aside. He got in close enough to belt the dwenda back with his shield and tried a Yhelteth technique to trip the creature. It didn’t quite work; he was clumsy with the unaccustomed weight of the armor and the dwenda didn’t go down. But it was clearly still off balance. Ringil screamed in its blank-visored face and launched a rapid flurry of attacks. The other sword blurred in response. He felt a blow get through and bounce off his helmet, another screeched and slid off the cuirass. He rode it all and drove the dwenda back. The krin gave him an edge he hadn’t had with Seethlaw, and custom had robbed him of any fear the blue-glowing figure might once have inspired.

  He killed the dwenda.

  It came from nowhere, it was like a gift of dark powers. The black-clad form went almost back to the boards of the boathouse wall, then abruptly leapt out at him. Off the ground, not quite the floating grace Seethlaw had used to take him down in Terip Hale’s cellar, not quite as high or as fast, or maybe it was just the krin again that made it easier to beat. Ringil flinched aside, hewed in with the Ravensfriend, and the dwenda gave up a muffled scream inside the helmet. The blade had sliced deep into a thigh, right through the black skinmail-looking garb. He felt it hit the bone and twisted instinctively, pulled back to free it. The dwenda fell out of the air and hit the ground hard, tried to stand on its damaged leg and fell again. Ringil stalked in and hacked down, into the right shoulder. Another muffled shriek, the Kiriath blade had gone deep again. The dwenda floundered, thrashed about, long-sword dropped somewhere. Ringil kicked it flat, stood on its chest, and stabbed the Ravensfriend through his opponent’s throat. The dwenda shuddered like a pinned insect and made desperate choking sounds. Ringil kept his boot where it was, worked his blade back and forth to make sure, then yanked it back out. Blood spurted from under the lip of the strange smooth helmet and the dwenda shuddered once more and stopped moving.

  Ringil threw back his head and howled.

  Faintly, down at the other end of the street, he heard it answered, he did not know by whom or what.

  EGAR MET HIS FIRST ATTACKER IN TORCHLIGHT ON THE STEPS OF THE blockhouse. The blue fire threw him for a pair of seconds, but he’d listened to Ringil’s lecture just like everybody else. He stood firm, looked for the form at the center of the storm, and whipped the staff lance in at knee height. He hit something, but not with the solid chunking impact he was used to. It was more like swirling the lance through deep water. The dwenda moved at the heart of its radiance and seemed to chuckle.

  A long, slim blade came leaping.

  He blocked it, swung on the move, and shoved back hard with the lance. The dwenda retreated, seemed to wait for something.

  Only the blue light from above warn
ed him.

  He caught it reflected in a puddle made in the angle of an unevenly laid flagstone at his feet, glimmering cold and separate from the glow of the blockhouse wall torches. He understood at some instantaneous, visceral level, and was swinging about as the second dwenda leapt from the roof of the blockhouse at him. He got the lance shaft up at chest height just in time, caught his attacker on it, and shunted him sideways onto the ground. The impact shocked him back a couple of steps, but he stayed on his feet, just. He saw the way the dwenda recovered, rolled upright again still indistinct in the blue glow of the storm, knew the other one was about to rush him from the left. Saw it happen out of the corner of his eye. No time for conscious thought—reflexively, he dropped his stance and slashed the lance back up to a braced horizontal.

  The right-hand end sent the second dwenda stumbling, maybe wounded, maybe not; the left was a brutal skewer pointed back past Egar’s shoulder.

  The first dwenda ran right onto it.

  He felt the impact and knew without looking back. He grunted and twisted the shaft of the lance—the dwenda shrieked. Now he looked, saw the damage, grinned and jerked the lance blade free. The injured dwenda sagged backward, sword gone to the floor, both hands clutched over the wound the lance had made. Egar vented a berserker howl and swung back to where the second dwenda was squaring up to him with its sword in both hands. The last traces of the blue storm flickered around its limbs, inking out.