Gabriel was already speaking with some familiar faces out front, men and women Clay hadn’t seen for years. There was Geralt Snakewater, and Merciless May Drummond, and Red Bob, whose illustrious locks had long since fled and left him bald.
Barret, meanwhile, beckoned a pair of youths from the crowd and introduced them to Clay. “These are my sons, Rogan and Syd. Boys, this here is Clay Cooper.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” said Rogan. He was older, bigger, and damn near the spitting image of his father, while the other was slight of build, with Avery’s blue eyes and toothy smile. Both of them were wearing more eyeliner than a Narmeeri pillow boy and had bleached their hair platinum white.
“Our mother’s told us a lot about you,” said the younger one. “Every time we misbehave she swears she should have married Clay Cooper instead of the old man here.”
Barret had a chuckle at that. “Fine by me. Whaddaya say, Slowhand, you up for swapping wives?”
Clay was about to politely refuse when a familiar voice shouted his name.
“Clay Cooper? Well slap my ass and call me sister! What’re you doing this side o’ the Wyld?”
Jain pushed clear of the crowd, followed closely by her gang, which seemed to have doubled in size since they’d last met in Conthas. They were all dressed in a plethora of silks and fine furs, though none seemed to care that the rain would do them harm.
Clay grinned. You can take the girl out of Cartea …
Jain gestured grandly at the women behind her. “Behold, the Silk Arrows!” she said. “Got a full quiver now, as you can see. You look like shit, by the way. What happened to your face?”
Clay shrugged. “I was born this way.”
“Your momma keeps an axe in her womb, eh? Was thinking of trying that myself, to keep the boys out.”
That got another laugh out of Barret. “Oh, I like this one,” he said.
Gabriel, Clay saw, was arguing heatedly with one of the Skulk brothers. He broke from the crowd and physically dragged Moog out of conversation with May Drummond. “Fucking cowards,” he muttered as the two of them drew up.
“They won’t help?” Clay asked.
“They want us to close the Threshold,” he said. “They think we should abandon Castia, forget that thirty thousand people are trapped inside! Geralt Snakewater said this! The man who knocked out a rock-hulk with his bare hands! And the Skulk brothers—they killed a dragon once, didn’t they?”
“Small one,” said Moog, holding two fingers an inch apart.
“Yeah, well, they won’t come. They’re afraid.”
“Talk to them,” Clay said.
Gabriel held up his hands despairingly. “I tried! I thought if I could get the stone rolling that others might follow, but—”
“No,” Clay waved a hand to indicate the surrounding hills. “Talk to them. All of them. Forget Geralt Snakewater. You don’t need washed-up heroes, Gabe. You need new ones.”
“Damn right,” growled Rogan, and his little brother smirked by way of agreement.
Jain straightened and tapped the butt of her bow against the ground. “I like the sound o’ that,” she said.
Gabriel looked unconvinced, so Clay went on. “When May Drummond or the Skulks see you, they see an old friend. They see the Gabriel that rode a horse up the Riot House stairs, or the one that got so drunk during the siege of Castadar he fell off the battlements.”
“Priceless,” laughed Barret. “We rallied out the front gate to rescue you and decided to break the siege while we were out there.”
“Or maybe they see a rival. Maybe they think you got too big for your own good, which you did. Or that you were a loud, obnoxious ass, which you were.” Gabe opened his mouth to protest, but Clay rolled over him. “But when these kids look at you … they see a legend. They see Golden Gabe, who killed the Crypt Queen and held the bridge at Trolltoll against a legion of lizardmen.”
Gabriel cleared his throat. “Actually, that was Ganelon.”
“Fuck it,” Clay said. “Doesn’t matter. All these others, these old names …” He trailed off, fumbling for the right words. “They’re only candles, Gabe, and you are the godsdamned sun.” He pointed to the pediment beside them. “Now get up there and shine.”
For the span of five heartbeats Gabriel just stood there, dumbfounded. Finally he blinked, as though a spell of despondency had lifted from his mind. “Right,” he said, nodding to himself. “I’m the sun. Moog—”
“On it!” chirped the wizard. He scurried to the base of a nearby pine and back, pressing something dark and wet into Gabriel’s hand.
“A pinecone?”
“Ha! Can you imagine? All this at stake and I give you a pinecone?” Moog’s cackle died in silence, and everyone simply stared until he went on. “Okay, yes, it’s a pinecone. But it’s a magic pinecone. Hold it like this.” He arranged Gabriel’s arm so that the cone was near his lips.
Gabe looked skeptical, but he climbed onto the pediment at the base of the Threshold and shouted, “Warriors, hear me!!!”
His voice boomed from the trees all around them, so loud the pines shivered and the maples shed half their leaves at once. The grey sky came alive with startled birds.
“My name is Golden Gabe,” he announced. “You know me—or you know of me—from some poem, or song, or story. You might have heard I slew the Crypt Queen Nazalin in single combat, or that I was first over the wall at Castadar.” He winked at Barret. “Those things are true. Maybe your father told you he fought beside me once, or perhaps your mother said she met me in a tavern twenty years ago. Well … if you’ve got blue eyes and the wits of an ox, that might be true as well.”
He paused while a ripple of laughter rolled up over the surrounding hills, then cast an anxious glance through the Threshold before going on. “I’m in a band, and you’ll have heard of them too. Matrick Skulldrummer. Arcandius Moog. Slowhand Clay Cooper. And Ganelon.”
He was dragging it out, Clay realized. Playing for time. As if on cue a wyvern came crashing through the portal, a tumble of burnished red scales and thrashing wings, screaming like a sickened eagle. The crowd scrambled back a few steps as the creature slid to a stop. Ganelon was with it, clinging tightly to its long, sinuous neck. The muscles in his arms bulged as he gave it a wrenching twist; there was a loud crack, and the beast went still.
Something like sixty thousand people stood in rapt silence as Ganelon got to his feet, rolled his neck against either shoulder, and stalked back toward the Threshold.
“You need help?” Barret asked as the southerner passed him by.
Ganelon dragged the axe off his back. Runes pulsed across the black steel, steady as a heartbeat. “Naw, we’re good.”
Gabe went on. “Some of you—hell, most of you—are too young to remember why we’re famous, so let me give you a few recent examples. We rescued the king of Agria from his wife’s hired assassin. We burned the Riot House to the ground. We brought down a chimera, and took the Maxithon for a spin.” He waited as a spatter of laughter came and went. “We crossed the Heartwyld, though it wasn’t easy. We walked the Cold Road, and we paid its toll.”
The fingers on Clay’s newest hand tingled as the ettin’s lullaby drifted through the echoing corridors of his memory.
“We found a druin keystone,” Gabe was saying, “and opened the Threshold behind me. And oh, yeah, we killed a dragon. Akatung is dead,” Gabe announced, to the audible disbelief of those listening. Which was everyone now, since the very trees were carrying Gabriel’s voice over the hills and beyond. When he sighed, the leaves shivered as though the wind itself had raked its frigid fingers through their boughs. “But I didn’t come here to brag,” he said.
“Could’ve fooled me!” shouted Red Bob, who looked mighty pleased with himself until someone else yelled, “Fuck off, Bob!” to ensuing laughter.
Gabe took no notice of the exchange. “In fact, let me start over. My name is Gabriel, and I need your help.” He pointed through the Threshold. “That th
ere is Castia.”
Dark murmurs arose from the crowd. If any had wondered what it was they were seeing beyond the arch—or where, rather—they knew now.
“Some thirty thousand men and women are trapped within its walls,” said Gabriel. “Once, they hoped for salvation. Now they pray for death. One of them is my daughter, Rose. But that darkness … that shadow you see between us and them … is the Heartwyld Horde.”
The murmurs grew into a fearful babble. The blanketing multitude seemed to wilt like grass on fire. A nearby blade merchant rolled up his sodden carpet with the swords still inside and jogged off through the crowd.
Gabriel pressed on. “Every nightmare you’ve ever had, every monster you feared to find beneath your bed, is right there. And it brought a thousand friends. They’ve already crushed one army, and sooner or later Castia will fall to them as well. The Horde is hungry. It is cruel. Those inside will wish they had died on the battlefield before the end.”
Barret shifted uncomfortably, no doubt afraid that Gabe was unravelling the threadbare glamour his earlier words had wrought, but Clay knew better. He and Gabriel had been friends for thirty-five years, and Gabe had been talking him into doing recklessly stupid shit for damn near all of them. He was a charismatic craftsman: every heart a furnace, every soul a blade.
And here comes the hammer, thought Clay.
At least he hoped there was a hammer, because even Barret’s sons looked as dismal as the weather.
“Why did you come to here, to Kaladar?” Gabe asked. “Was it to show off the paint on your face? Your latest tattoo? The colour of your hair? Or was there something more? Did you come to find a band, or a booker? Did you want to make a name for yourself? Was it glory you were looking for?”
Something about that word stirred the embers in Clay’s gut. It didn’t matter that he was old, or tired, or that he’d drunk deep enough from glory’s cup to slake a lifetime’s thirst. Saying glory to a warrior was like saying walk to a dog—you got its tail wagging, sure as shit.
“Because you don’t find glory at a fair. It isn’t something that just lands in your lap. You need to go after it and take it for yourself. You need to risk everything for it.”
There was a flurry within the Threshold. Ashe and Piglet were tussling with a pair of harpies; Ganelon was squaring off against something that looked like a centipede with tiny wings along the length of its body.
“But glory is a hard currency to earn nowadays. It isn’t just wandering in a forest, or lurking in a cave. You have to breed it, keep it in a cage, and parcel it out so everyone gets their share. I’ve heard it said—and so have you—that all the great bands have come and gone.” There was a smattering of unrest among his audience, and Gabe kept nudging. “People think the world has already been saved, that we don’t need mercenaries anymore. They say heroes are a dying breed!”
That got them going. There was jeering, and shouts of “It’s true!” and “Fuck that noise!” from everywhere at once.
“He’s right,” Clay heard Barret’s younger boy admit to his brother.
“So what can you do?” Gabe asked them. “You tour from city to city fighting whatever sorry thing the local wrangler can drudge up. You dress up and dance while some beer-swilling asshole hopes a goblin gets lucky and slits your throat so that he can see some blood!”
Moog laughed at that. So did a lot of the older mercs. But the younger ones nodded, tight-lipped, or else yelled their agreement.
“Who will remember you?” Gabe asked. “What have you done?” He waved a hand toward the Horde and the city it besieged. “Tell me: does the world look safe to you?”
First there was grumbling, but then someone ventured, “NO!” and hundreds more followed suit.
“Castia needs fighters!” he shouted above the thunder of stamping feet. “It needs great and glorious bands!” he yelled over the percussive crash of sword and shield. “Castia needs heroes!” he roared, and they roared back at him. Barret’s boys were grinning like jackals. Jain’s girls were howling like wolves. “Are there any heroes here?” he screamed.
“YES!” bellowed ten thousand. Twenty.
“I said: Are there any fucking heroes here!?”
“YES!” bellowed thirty thousand. Forty.
The hills seemed to be rolling, rising beneath the back of conjured leviathans. Birds were circling the sky, spooked by the spectre in the trees.
Moog was bouncing excitedly on his toes, and Kit, who’d slipped through the arch sometime during Gabriel’s speech, was peering over the assembly as though committing the sight to memory.
Clay thought of what the ghoul had told them in the mountain cave, about the marvels and horrors he’d seen throughout the course of his extraordinary life, and he wondered if their bard had ever seen anything quite like this.
“This day,” said Gabriel, “this moment, is when you step out from the shadow of the past. Today you make your name. Today your legend is born. Come tomorrow, every tale the bards tell will belong to you, because today we save the world!”
Clay sighed in relief. There’d been a hammer, after all.
Gabriel tore Vellichor from its scabbard and leveled it at the encroaching Horde. “This is not a choice between life and death, but life and immortality! Remain here and die in obscurity, or follow me now and live forever!”
Chapter Fifty
The Battle of the Bands
Barret’s boys were the first ones through. Three other youths (the remaining Wight Nights, presumably) came with them, each sporting the same dark-rimmed eyes and bleached-bone hair.
Jain’s girls were next; the brigand turned bandleader gave Clay a touch with the tip of her bow as she passed.
“Long way from stealing socks on the roadside, eh Slowhand?”
“Long way,” Clay agreed. “Stay safe, Jain.”
She laughed and called over her shoulder, “Little late for that!”
Geralt Snakewater came after. The big man was too ashamed to look Gabe’s way, but he spared a respectful nod for Ganelon, who was standing on the carcass of the flying centipede with one eye on the sky.
Next came a whole host of bands Clay didn’t recognise, though many of them announced themselves to Gabriel as they went by. The men of Giantsbane were big blonde northerners, each wielding an axe almost as huge as Syrinx; Courtney and the Sparks bore southern scimitars and red silk skirts; the Silent Sons were ashen faced, mute as corpses as they marched into line; the Banshees ran past screaming; the Dustgalls shouted greetings in a language Clay had never heard; the Renegades sported an array of black eyes, bloodied noses, and gap-toothed smiles, as though they’d already been in a scrap that morning and were eager for more.
Mercenaries were announced by their bards as they emerged from the portal: Layla Sweetpenny, Jasper the Creep, Brother Sandman, Hasdrubal Doomflayer. There was a man called the Blind Tiger who might actually have been blind, and another named Ben the Stalactian who looked as though there was giant’s blood in his veins.
Plenty of old names showed up as well—Tushino the Wicked, Jorma Mulekicker, Queen-Killer Lysanthe—and a great many bands Clay was surprised to see still touring: the Dreamers, the Locksmiths, the Wheat Kings, Slade and the War-Dancers. Red Bob strode proudly toward the front, trailed by a frightened bard that looked as if he were contemplating a sudden retirement. Neil the Young hobbled by, leaning heavily on a gnarled staff, prompting Clay to wonder if the grey-bearded wizard went by Neil the Old these days.
They kept on coming, streaming from the Threshold like a river delta flooding into the sea. Here came Deckart Clearwater and his double-hafted hammer, followed by Hank the Beholder, whose shield, due to an elaborate contraption built into the grip, could spout fire from the red eye painted on its face. Here came the Black Puddings, the People Eaters, the Shewolves. Five men jogged past wearing the livery of Fivecourt guardsmen. Each one waved at Clay as if they knew him.
Here came the Sisters in Steel, barrelling toward the wing on sl
eek white horses. They looked considerably more deadly and significantly less glamourous than they had during the parade back in Conthas. Here came the Stormriders as well, one of which stopped to shake Gabriel’s hand and mutter an apology for, as he rather flippantly put it, that whole business with the chimera.
Clay felt a prickle on his skin and caught some kid glaring at him. It took him a moment to place where he’d seen that scowl before, but he finally did.
“The fuck you looking at?” he asked the platinum-haired frontman of the Screaming Eagles—the one who’d managed to provoke Ganelon into a fight in the Riot House back in Fivecourt. The young man bore a crooked nose as a memento of that ill-fated confrontation.
“A legend, apparently,” said the kid, waving his bandmates by.
“Same here,” Clay told him. The frontman nodded, obviously heartened, and trotted off.
Truth be told, Clay didn’t even know the kid’s name, but it never hurt to bolster someone’s confidence before a fight, and who said Gabriel had a monopoly on kick-ass pep talks? Clay was watching the boy go when Gabe took his shoulder and turned him round.
Barret had taken Vanguard to the front already, and Kit was watching the endless stream of wild-eyed warriors still arriving from the fair-grounds in Kaladar, which left Clay and his bandmates alone for the first time since they’d raided Kallorek’s compound more than a month before—something each of them seemed to apprehend at once.
Moog and Matrick put an arm around each other. The wizard slung his other behind Clay’s back, while Matty reached up and placed a hand on Ganelon’s broad shoulder. The southerner shifted uncomfortably but didn’t shrug him off, nor did he shy away when Gabriel clasped his left wrist to complete the circle.
Clay had no idea how long the five of them stood like that, though afterward he thought it might have been an absurdly long time, considering the fact that the Heartwyld Horde was now bearing down on them. For a while no one spoke, because in the roundabout course of thirty-some years they had said just about all there was to say to one another, until finally Clay could bear the silence no longer and cleared his throat.
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