by D. P. Prior
Nameless plummeted toward the sea, but with a glimmer of gold that flickered and waned, Paxy gave everything she had to keep him aloft. And she was slowing him, even if only slightly. If they had been above ground, Nameless might have stood a chance, but for all Bub’s wisdom, for all his planning, he’d been ignorant of one thing: Nameless couldn’t swim.
Ancient Bub bellowed, “Arnoch!”
And there was a colossal boom as the airship blew.
Air slammed into Nameless, and a chunk of dragon meat smacked into his back, sending Paxy spinning from his grip. She tried to zip back to him, as she’d done so many times before, but the fading glow left to her blades went out, and she, too, dropped like a stone.
Waves raced up to meet Nameless, as fleshy shrapnel rained down all around him. He scrunched his face up and shut his eyes. They’d done it. They’d stopped the dragon. But always there had to be sacrifice.
And then strong hands grabbed his shoulders and bore him aloft.
Startled, he craned his neck to see the husk girl, a sheen of argent washing her porcelain skin. Her hair was spun gold, flared out like the rays of a third sun, and from her back, eagle’s wings beat against the air as she carried him back toward Arnoch.
“Paxy!” he cried, as the debris of the dragon and the airship continued to splash into the sea. “Paxy!”
And she answered in his mind, weak and whispering.
I’m still here, my Immortal. And then with a trumpet-blast of triumph, I’m still here!
Brilliant gold broke the surface of the water and soared into the sky.
KING OF ARNOCH
The morning after the defeat of the dragon, the funeral pyres at the foot of the curtain walls still smoldered. None were as grand as the stone slab erected for Old Moary’s passing, but each marked the resting place of a hero.
Eleven Dwarf Lords had been lost. It was a wonder there hadn’t been more, but they weren’t the only casualties. Seven baresarks had fallen to the dragon’s ice breath. When the copper dome the dragon’s tail had sent crashing below had demolished a section of the barbican, two Red Cloaks had been killed, and another dozen injured. By some innominate mercy, the civilians—the men, women, and children of Arnoch—had emerged from the attack unscathed.
And now they were calling for a week-long wake those who had died, and a celebration for those who had survived. It amounted to the same thing, and booze was already in constant flow all about the citadel.
The Dwarf Lords were demanding a memorial day for Ancient Bub, and the Council of Twelve, in an uncharacteristic show of decisiveness, was in full agreement.
But the people of Arnoch had their own hero, too, and there were plans afoot for a statue of Nameless wielding the Pax Nanorum.
As he stood upon the parapet looking down through a charred hole blown out of the battlements, Nameless wondered when his people had grown so quick to forget. It hadn’t been so long ago they’d wanted to kill him for his crimes. Maybe, with so few of them left now, they needed heroes far more than they needed villains. He only hoped public opinion wasn’t as fickle as he’d always been led to believe, and that they weren’t waiting for him to slip up in some small way. He had visions of them defacing his statue with splashes of red, and painting the Axe of the Dwarf Lords black, in memory of the Ravine Butcher. With any luck, they’d have to get the project approved by the Council, which was as good as saying it would be shelved after decades of waiting for a decision.
Stonemasons on ladders were already studying the damage the dragon had done to the citadel. Notes were taken, and where the original stones couldn’t be salvaged, orders were sent to the quarries Old Moary had reopened shortly before he died. Cranes were being constructed that would hoist the dome back into place, once panel beaters had hammered out the dents in the copper.
“They don’t waste no time,” Shadrak said.
The assassin was perched atop a merlon looking down. He still wasn’t himself, but he was trying hard not to show it. The gruffness in his voice seemed put on, and the hardness of his expression was a mask of plaster that looked ready to crack for the slightest reason. He’d fallen back on his old rituals in order to keep going, which meant the brass trimmings on his flintlocks had a glorious shine, and each of the blades in his baldric had been polished so much they were in danger of being whittled away.
“Can’t afford to have breaches in the walls out here, laddie. You saw what happened to the Dark Citadel on Thanatos, but I can tell you from experience, the husk life of Qlippoth is just as…”
He trailed off as he caught sight of her winging her way around the citadel. The husk girl. The girl who’d saved him as he fell; come for him in the guise of an angel.
She’d been flying circuits since he’d arisen this morning. At first, he’d thought she was patrolling, protecting them against any other nightmares that might come against the dwarves now their defenses were weakened. Then he wondered if she was just restless, or exercising her new wings. But now, as she slowed and then hovered, sapphire eyes flitting from the barbican gates to the battlements and finding Nameless, he realized it was something else. She was uncertain, not sure whether to stay or go.
With graceful flaps of her wings, she ascended to the top of the curtain walls and came to stand in the crenel between two merlons. Her golden hair played out behind her, glittering beneath the rays of the twin suns. Her skin was whiter than Shadrak’s and without blemish, her diaphanous gown doing nothing to hide her femininity. But it was not passion sight of her aroused. It was awe, and wonder that a creature of such immaculate beauty could exist. If she was indeed a husk, she was certainly no demon, as the Wayists of New Londdyr would have had you believe. And she was no nightmare, too. If, as they said, it was true that all life in Qlippoth was dreamed by the Cynocephalus, the dog-headed ape cocooned at the heart of the world, she was evidence that not everything that came from the mind of that hapless creature was a nightmare. Just as the first dwarves had been that demented god’s first line of defense against his worst imaginings, Nameless had the feeling this angelic being had been dreamed to counter some unspeakable evil.
Or was he reading too much into it, he wondered, as she smiled at him with the same gratitude in her eyes that he felt for what she had done for him? Could it be she was just a creature thrown up by chance, as the Technocrat would have insisted, a randomly generated being, sired by an uncaring and ultimately meaningless universe?
It would have been tempting to believe it, after experiencing the cruelty of Thanatos, a world where death came without warning and life did not matter. But Nameless had seen too much, traveled too far—twice into the bowels of Gehenna, and once into the Abyss itself—to know that the movements of fate he’d sometimes been caught up in were anything but random coincidences.
Abednago had said something similar, when he’d first clapped eyes on the girl. Or at least he’d raised the possibility that Shadrak bringing her to Brink, and all the events that followed, might have happened for a reason.
She reached down with a slender-fingered hand, and Nameless took it in his.
“Lassie, what is it you want? If it’s to stay among us, I would be one happy dwarf. But if there is somewhere else you belong, somewhere you wish to go…”
“Thank you,” she said. Her voice chimed like struck crystal, left its lilting echo long in the air.
Shadrak cocked his head at the sound, and for an instant, the mask of his face softened.
She communicated so much more with her eyes, things Nameless knew in some obscure way, but which he could not put into words. All he could say was that it felt right when she stepped back off the battlements and winged her way out over the narrow stretch of sea toward the shifting terrain of Qlippoth.
A solitary tear rolled down Nameless’s cheek, but it was not a tear of sorrow, not a tear of loss. He was happy for her, and privileged to have done something for her, whatever it might have been. Maybe it was refusing to let her be sold to Arecagen at t
he Academy, or maybe it was something else. He supposed he would never know, because he was certain one of the things she communicated with her eyes was that they would never see each other again.
Shadrak dropped from his merlon and stood peering with Nameless through the collapsed portion of the wall. Neither was focused on anything save the indistinct, wavering horizon.
“You’re going to tell me you’re leaving, too,” Nameless said. He didn’t know how he knew it. He just did.
“I’m not a dwarf,” Shadrak said simply.
“But you are being hailed as a hero, and not for the first time.”
Shadrak smiled and dropped his chin to his chest. “Yeah, but I’m still no dwarf. I’ll head back over the Farfalls, move about a bit, make a bit of money here, take a contract there. Same as ever. You know me.”
“The gym, laddie…”
“Don’t worry about it. Pay me if and when you can. And if you can’t, and if I don’t strike it rich, maybe I’ll just whack the scuts I owe a fortune to. Probably should have done that a long time ago. It’ll certainly make things easier that way.”
“And what would Kadee have thought about that?”
Shadrak chuckled. “Why do you think I haven’t done it yet?” He looked up, turning his pink eyes on Nameless. “You had that talk with Cordana?”
Nameless shook his head. He’d been dreading it, and, at the same time, anticipating it like a child waiting for birthday gifts. “No, but we will. She’s been too busy putting together this medal ceremony and keeping the Dwarf Lords in check.”
“The joys of leadership, eh?”
“Well, she won’t always be Voice, laddie, not if I know Cordy. She hated it when Thumil got the job. No, Cordy’s still a brewer’s daughter at heart. She’d sooner open a tavern than head the Council.”
“Like the one you’ve got in your gym back home in Brink?”
Nameless smiled, but it only because the thought would have been nice, if only it had been possible.
“Even if she’d have me, she’d never leave Arnoch, laddie. These are her people.”
“About my reward money,” Shadrak said. “From King Arios’s coffers…”
“Yes, about that,” Nameless said. He’d been hoping the midget had forgotten. The idea of broaching the subject with Cordana was causing him nearly as much agitation as their other looming conversation.
“I was thinking you could keep it,” Shadrak said. “Not you, exactly. The dwarves. I dare say it’ll come in handy for the repairs to the citadel, you know, if they have to ship stuff in from Malkuth.”
That would involve contact with humans, something the dwarves had studiously avoided for centuries. But it might not be such a bad thing.
“Are you sure, laddie?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. What I did, I did for Kadee. Seeing her was reward enough.”
“And me,” Nameless said. “You did it for me, too.” His voice was thick with emotion. Shadrak had come through for him like he always did. For a backstabbing, throat-slitting little pipsqueak, he was as good a friend as a dwarf could hope for.
“No, just Kadee.”
Shadrak was grinning ear to ear. For a moment, it looked like he was going to say more, but then he turned away and looked back out over the battlements.
A companionable silence settled between them. Nameless had already made up his mind, but it didn’t quite feel real yet; wouldn’t until he gave it voice.
“I meant you could have it, laddie. The gym.”
“What the shog would I want with a… Oh. You’re not going back, are you? You’re staying here.”
“Don’t see I have much choice. The Matriarch’s none too happy about ‘common-bloods’ ruling the roost. I’m the only one she listens to, and then only if I get nasty.”
“Don’t tell me: Immortal blood?”
Nameless puffed out his cheeks. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” Save for when you needed it in a fight. But more and more, he was convinced it was there, in all the dwarves, a latency in their blood. Whether or not there was a way to activate it was a mystery for minds smarter than his. And yet, Sektis Gandaw, the Technocrat, had experimented on the dwarves as thoroughly as he did all his other victims. No stone would have been left unturned, but there had been no indication he’d discovered the dormant Immortal blood, let alone found a way to use it. But it was there. No one was going to persuade Nameless otherwise. It was the thing that made all dwarves equal, in his mind. And as Gitashan seemed to believe about its bestowal, maybe its activation was in the lap of the gods.
“You wouldn’t have to run it,” Nameless said. “Big Jake can take care of that. But there’s my office in the back, with a bed and… Well, it would be a place for you to stay, till you get back on your feet.”
Shadrak chewed it over for a minute, and then he clasped Nameless by the forearm, looked him in the eye, and nodded.
“Nameless! Shadrak!” Duck called from further along the wall, black cloak flapping in the wind. “They’re ready to start.”
“Be right with you, laddie.”
Movement on the steps halfway down to the ground caught Nameless’s eye. Shadrak had noticed, too: a woman, her red hair bound into a bun atop her head. It was Glariya. She must have walked there with Duck, but left now he had the ceremony to attend. It was a fine thing, the Kryptès spending so much time consoling her. But he’d been Kal’s closest friend, and that’s what friends did.
And then the denarii dropped. Nameless shook his head and grinned.
“Duck, you sly old dog.” Then to Shadrak, he said, “Coming?”
The midget chuckled. “Can you honestly see me on a podium receiving some poxy medal?”
“It’s more of a stage than a podium, and it’s Arnoch’s highest honor. The medals were cast according to the pictures in Ancient Bub’s Annals. Abednago has them now, at least till the Dwarf Lords ask where they are.”
“Maybe you can send mine to me in Brink. You know, if you get the time.”
“Oh, I will, laddie. You can be sure of it. So, you’ll go there, then? Move into the gym.”
Shadrak shrugged. “Seems as good a place as any.”
“Just don’t accept mead from Dame Consilia. She’ll damned well wear you out. Took me a week to…” He trailed off. The less said about that, the better.
“Right, I’ll be off, then,” Shadrak said, vaulting to the space on the battlements the husk girl had recently been standing in. “And you should get going. They’ll be waiting. Or should I say, Cordana will?”
Nameless smiled and felt a prickling heat hit his cheeks.
“Good luck, Nameless.”
“You, too, laddie. And don’t forget where I am.”
Suddenly, Shadrak dropped out of sight.
Nameless started, and rushed to the crenel, looking down.
The assassin was a few feet beneath the battlements, clinging to a barely perceptible mortar line with his fingertips.
“Always wondered if I could climb dwarf stonework,” Shadrak said with a grin. “Not that shoddy crap at the Dark Citadel: real dwarf stonework.”
“Laddie, you’ll break your neck.”
“Not today. Shog knows why, but for some reason, today, I feel lucky.”
And with a grace and speed that should have been impossible for so impossible a climb, he scuttled down the curtain wall like a spider, leaping the last ten feet to the top of a buttress. From there, he scrambled down to the melted rock of the shoreline and sauntered toward the sea.
For a minute, Nameless thought he was going to jump in and swim, but then the fish-ship broke the surface a little way out from the breakwater, and Shadrak took a running jump into its wide open mouth.
So, it had been pre-arranged with Abednago. Homunculi! Wasn’t that just the way of things with them? But whatever the two had arranged, one thing was for certain: it had given Abednago the excuse he needed to miss the ceremony, not to mention the meeting between the Council of Twelve and the Ma
triarch that everyone knew was bound to happen when it finished.
***
The ceremony wasn’t half as bad as Nameless had imagined. The ale Cordana provided might have had something to do with it.
The great hall off of the throne room was packed with every soul left alive in Arnoch, Dwarf Lord and common-blood alike. Shadrak’s absence was noticed. Cordana seemed to understand, and so did Cidruthus Tallish, although he was visibly disappointed. He’d planned to give Shadrak the long gun he’d borrowed during the attack. As regards Abednago absenting himself to take Shadrak ashore in the fish-ship, Cordana simply rolled her eyes. Apparently, it was nothing new.
There was a long list of heroes to be called up to the stage, and Cordana greeted each of them with a hand shake and a few words. When it was her turn to go up, Matriarch Gitashan avoided eye contact with Cordana, and said not a word in return. With an expression of stoic indifference, she took her place in the front row of Dwarf Lords, Red Cloaks, and Kryptès on the stage.
Nameless was the last to be called, and the dwarves of Arnoch were up on their feet applauding him. The Dwarf Lords not on the stage, those who hadn’t been directly involved in the fighting, glanced awkwardly at the Matriarch. When she didn’t acknowledge them, Thyenna beside her started to clap, and indicated they should stand. It was a shogging embarrassment, is what it was, and Nameless muttered as much to Cordana when he went up to accept his medal.
“They need this,” she whispered in his ear. “They need a hero.”
Someone in the crowd whistled, clearly thinking whatever Cordana had just said to Nameless was about something else.
“But is it enough?” Nameless said. The doubt that it was, that it ever could be, was starting to twist up his innards. He’d long ago told himself nothing could assuage the guilt of what he’d done, and no matter how many times he was told he had been forgiven, he could never quite believe it.
“Listen to them,” Cordana said. She turned him to face the cheering crowd. “Look at them. If anyone’s to judge how much is enough, surely it is the dwarves of Arnoch, and now, the Dwarf Lords, too.”