by K V Johansen
No coffee. It always eased the headache.
Cool hand found the back of his neck.
“Sorry,” Ghu said, which was just so . . . He choked on laughter, fell into a coughing fit that left him gasping for air.
“Hey. It’s all right. Breathe.”
Rolled to his back. Ghu kneeling by him, coat and shirt still all undone, filthy, torn, broken scales. New scars, ridged and purple. Entirely beautiful. “Kill the empress for you?” Ahjvar offered. Rain cooling on his face, clean, washing headache away, or probably that was Ghu.
“You already did. I want the devil out of her, out of Nabban. She’s not him. There’s no true bond between them, only chains. He’s only—wearing her, does that make sense? He has his own body still, wherever he is. I want the souls he’s taken freed to their road. The assassins, the officers, the villagers of Numiya. Even hers.”
“Yes. Good.” Breath, still rasping. Another, easier. A third, and he could sit.
“I don’t know how we do this, Ahj. I don’t know what I can do.”
“You never do.”
“True.”
“It may be as much wizardry as anything.”
“Necromancy.” Easy to say the word. It didn’t touch him.
“Enslavement of a soul? He’s taken her, but I think she is not—in any way bound to her body, any longer. Possession of a corpse.”
“Red Masks. Something similar. Dealt with that.”
“You were part of that wizardry; inside it. And it was a great wizardry, not a devil’s powers. You said so.”
“Did I? Maybe not easy, then.” It was hard to care. They were alive, Ghu was alive, and Ahjvar felt drunk with it.
Which was a good way for them both to end up dead for good and all. The devils had destroyed gods. Remember there had been a true Lady of Marakand, once.
“Something you need to see. Some devilry. I don’t know what it was doing to you, but I took it from you. Ivah has it now.”
“I—remember. I told you. I saw you do it. The devil’s thorns. Growing into me.”
“A splinter of stone.”
Ghu shrugged. “Poetry. Words make a shape in the mind. Things make a shape in the world, for what has none. I saw thorns.”
“It was stone, and Ivah has it.”
“If you say so.”
Easier for him to deal with Ghu’s buckles than for Ghu to reach them himself, under the arm. Even torn and broken scales were some protection. It was that or go shirtless.
No sword. No forage-knife. Scavengers, the pair of them. There was bound to be a blade or two to be picked up between here and wherever the corpse of the empress walked.
They were in a hillside woods, the ground rising steep and rocky, and how they had come there he had no idea. Fallen from the cliff at Sand Cove—not likely. Ahjvar took the longest of the knives left to him and set off in the direction of the closest fighting. Trampling behind. He spun about to put himself between the threat and Ghu but had to jump back as Snow barrelled forward like an eager dog, dropping his head to push his long face against Ghu’s chest. Niaul, behind him, flicked a casual ear at Ahjvar like a nod.
They trailed the cut ends of rope halters. He wasn’t going to fight from horseback with neither stirrups nor bridle, but he gave Ghu a leg up and with Niaul at heel went beside the white horse.
An ox blocked their path, snuffed the air, and lowed. Another answered it off among the trees and it lumbered away.
Down a sudden steep plunge of stone, and the forest thinned, so that the brush and ferns grew thicker. A carriage, canted to one side and wedged between trees, an axle broken, its team—free and roaming up the hillside, which meant someone had taken the time to unyoke them. Just beyond, soldiers beset. They wore blue ribbons for the holy one, light leather armour. Archers of Alwu fighting now with sabre or axe, and Ivah, on foot. The old priest, his back to a tree, swinging a stick. Yuro’s mace descended on the imperial soldier pressing him.
Snow plunged ahead.
“Ivah!” Ahjvar shouted. “Sword!”
She didn’t look around, but when the man she fought went down she kicked him into Ahjvar’s path and he switched his knife over to his left and scooped up the short stabbing sword. Not his weapon of choice for such a melee but it would do. Ghu had taken Awan’s branch and was blocking the imperials from coming at the priest. A still and threatening island they did not want to approach. Had that word gone through the camp, the false heir of the gods is dead? And now they saw he was not. Ahjvar and Ivah pushed to collect Yuro. The Alwu folk gathered to them. Gave up his knife, short sword to his left to take up a dead man’s sabre. It was like dusk in under the trees, and rain spit suddenly down, but the white horse held what light there was as Ghu rode forward into them. The imperials fell back. Yuro beside him was panting, leaning on his mace.
The imperial officer rushed at Ghu, sword raised, blind or uncaring, and met Ahjvar’s left-hand blade. His men didn’t choose to follow.
“Go,” Ghu said gently. “You don’t want to be here. Your empress is dead. She was never the Daughter of the Gods. The devil Jochiz is in her. Lay down your weapons and go.”
And they did.
Not even the officer had carried the antique court sword, damn him. Damned the man was. No ghost.
“Where’s Yeh-Lin?” Ahjvar demanded.
“Gone to take over command,” Ivah said.
“Can you lot not count? What in the cold hells was she thinking? Ghu said to hold at the ferry.”
“What were you thinking, to let him just—make us all stand aside and let him go? You’re both mad. And you weren’t—Old Great Gods, Ahjvar, how can you be standing? How can he? Even demons don’t recover from something like that, nor heal so quickly. You weren’t breathing, either of you.”
“He’s not a demon.”
“Empress,” Ghu said. “Ahj?”
“Yes. If we see a heavier sword, I want it.” He offered Ghu the short sword, but he shook his head. He’d discarded even Awan’s branch.
The Alwu-folk who had made their stand under the forest eaves afoot were retrieving horses. More horses than riders now, even though some must have, like the oxen, decided discretion was the better part of valour and headed up and deeper into the woods. He didn’t bother taking one of the saddled spares, got up bareback on Niaul anyway. He didn’t think they were going very far.
A smothering heat in the air. Sheet-lightning flared in the west, and the thunder rolled above them. Smoke hung over the imperial camp and many of its tents were gone, overrun, trampled down or burnt from a grassfire that had blackened half the valley. The blue banners were within the camp, bunched into a narrowing front, the imperials folded around them. Fighting towards . . . nothing they could hope to oppose. Drawing the devil’s attention away from the woods . . . all those lives no more than another wrecked carriage, artfully crammed between trees.
They had no banner to ride under, but as they drew nearer the camp two of the huddled figures—the dead, the wounded, the overcome—rose up in their way. Girl, young man, slight figures unarmoured. The girl wore a collar of heavy jade beads, many strands, leaned on a spear-headed standard now, not threatening, but like a bored guard. And the youth had two hilts slung at his shoulder, one most familiar, and a forage-knife in his sash.
“Nabban.” The girl straightened up, nodded. The other bowed.
Ghu sat back, bringing Snow to a halt. Seemed to consider the girl a long, long time.
“Little Sister,” he said at last, and there was something ironic to his tone.
“Well, that’s yet to be seen. Maybe. Someday. Or maybe the devil takes us all. Call me Rat, for the time being. Do you want this? Darru and Lathi will ride with you, but I think we’ll not carry your banner.”
“I—” the young man began, doubtfully.
“No, you won’t, Kaeo, my boy. You’re mine.” A wicked grin. The man Kaeo didn’t look displeased.
Rat swung the spear down, offered it over both ha
nds. Sky blue silk, stained and torn, furled around it. Ti-So’aro’s, their own and first banner. It was Ivah who brought her horse up to take it.
Kaeo shrugged the long Northron sword off his shoulder, held out it and Ghu’s forage-knife too. “Yeh-Lin took them up, back there. She said you would want them.”
They did, and Ahjvar took both weapons, but when he would hand the forage-knife over to Ghu, it was refused.
“Carry it for me.”
Ivah shook the banner loose and someone brought up horses for the strangers. The Dar-Lathan girl took her companion up behind her, though; he seemed as ill-at-ease on a horse as the priest. She had claimed another spear before she mounted. Weapons to spare littered the field.
Lightning tore the sky once more, and thunder, closer.
“Where have the dogs got to?” Ghu asked, of no one in particular.
“Haven’t seen them,” Yuro answered. “Anyhow, it’s no place for them, my lord.”
“You think?”
They were a handful, and something waited behind the imperial centre; the peony-red and golden banners clustered there, while those about the blue were pushed back into themselves. Yeh-Lin, on her piebald, held her place like a statue, or the boss of a shield, sword raised as if she caught some descending blow on it, and around her the air was edged in a shimmer of heat.
Ghu cast a look around. Whistled.
The lightning cracked over them. Thunder answered.
They came like storm, and rain in their wake, a rolling grey wall. Shadows in the clouds, racing the rain, descending, pale and pewter-streaked, tawny and black. Wolfish heads, wild-maned, bodies iridescent, scaled like fish. They ran with the clouds, on the wind, and the wind struck in a rush. Ghu laughed aloud.
“Go!” he shouted. “Ride for Yeh-Lin!” and in Praitannec, “I told you, Ahj.”
They rode in the wake of the dragons, and the rain rolled over the field. In a broad path before them, men flung themselves flat or turned to flee for the forest and the hill. A few shot wild in the downpour before they scattered. There was a rippling like currents stirring with the change of the tide through all the companies, scattered thin or clustered in savage packs, and it was the many of the imperials held in reserve that began to break first into disorder, after those beneath the dragon’s flight had fled.
The storm-wind flung the blue banner streaming ahead, as if it cut their way.
The imperial right wing that had turned in about the wedge of Yeh-Lin’s companies was fraying and unravelling, and broke entirely as the dragons dropped over it. Lightning tore the clouds, deafening in its roar, blinding white. Ahjvar felt it, as if the heavens had fallen on him, through him, burning. “Yeh-Lin!” he shouted. She was gone, where the lightning had fallen.
All about them, horses reared or ran wild. Niaul’s ears were back but he held to his course. People dropped to cower, covering their heads. They lost some of their escort, carried away by panicked mounts, and more imperials were in flight, men as mad with fear as horses. They were in among their own folk and officers. Drums and shouting forbade any flight or impulsive pursuit of the fleeing foe, but it was the sight of the white horse brought them back. Order was lost regardless, horse and foot all sweeping wild about them, the sides of the wedge that had turned to face outward as it was engulfed and pinned down turning to a rush, a charge that quickly spent itself, horse outrunning the foot, losing themselves ahead. But all faltered, even as the rain crossed them and passed. Ghu’s small party swept in around where Yeh-Lin had stood. The piebald stallion was down and she knelt by it, holding herself up only by her sword planted in the earth, leaning head on hands on hilt. Dead horse. Dead standard-bearer beside her, half under his dead horse, and others were fallen, horses struggling up sweating and unsteady, banner-ranked and messengers on the ground or struggling like their horses to stand again.
The dogs pushed in beside her, wolfish, barking a deep and deafening defiance, fell silent and circled away, bodies lengthening again, and snouts, fur silvery and burnished pale gold merging over their shoulders with scales, tall, horse-high as they crossed and returned, to crouch like sentinels. Jiot snarled, an echo of the thunder.
The empress strode to meet them, her giants about her, and her commanders. She still wore the court robes and armour of the previous day, and the bloodstained bandages still covered her eye. She carried a long court sword lightly in one hand. Not Buri-Nai, only the shell of her. Ghu leaned over and brushed the back of a knuckle over Ahjvar’s face, as he had before, to gently nudge him back when he fell into darkness, but Ahjvar hadn’t lost himself here, he did not think.
The touch lingered like a ghost on his skin.
Yeh-Lin found her feet. He was seeing her strangely now, all edged in light and a fire behind her eyes. The empress was an empty thing with light like a star cold between her breasts, and thread-fine roots flying out and away from it, or into it, too attenuated to follow.
Not his vision.
“You should have come against me in your own right, and not as a godling’s lapdog, Dotemon,” Buri-Nai said. “Why so willingly hobbled? Did you let them break your mind and chain your souls as well as your body? What use are you to him now, do you think?”
Yeh-Lin didn’t answer, but though breathing heavily she stood straight again, between the empress and Ghu.
“No,” Ahjvar said. Not her place. This battle—could not be fought between devils. Must not be.
“He has no foothold in this land but her, Ahj,” Ghu said, softly speaking Praitannec. “He is not here. You see it?”
“Yes.”
Ahjvar dismounted, warily, with an eye to the giants. They were afraid. It was in the set of mouth and eye, the tension of hands on weapons. The dead returned, and there was a weight to Ghu, as though the broken light and the shadow both were on him more strongly—as though he were real, and the rest of them only dim ghosts.
Watch the waiting-women. Ladies, slaves—some were Wind in the Reeds. Maybe all.
“Neither I nor Dotemon is the necromancer here,” Ghu said. “Your empress is a dead woman. Buri-Nai was deceived and seduced by the lies of a devil. She was never any chosen or champion of the Old Great Gods. You are a devil and you lie. What goddess of the land kills the children of the land—”
“Kill them,” Buri-Nai said. “Cut the Northron slave of the devil in pieces, once he stops moving, and bring me the body of the pretender.” She clutched at the light against her chest, and it glowed through her hand, made shadows of her bones. Stone, with a sliver sheared away, or a knot of thorns, fed by many roots?
And what could the god’s champion do that Yeh-Lin Dotemon could not, against the devil Jochiz?
He was already moving inside the reach of the spear and halberd, and now they had missed their chance to keep him at the distance they would prefer.
Nothing against a devil, but rather a dead woman unburied, who was an open door into Nabban.
The sword of the god.
The giant in his path shouldered his spear and leapt back. “We killed them yesterday, Exalted. We saw you killed, yesterday. I don’t know what any of you are, but none of you are the Peony Throne I was sworn to serve.”
One of the ladies-in-waiting flicked a knife that took the giant in the cheek. He dropped, too swiftly for that wound.
“Poison!” Ahjvar shouted, and dodged the other giant, who was swinging his halberd around like a scythe. Yeh-Lin could deal with him. An arrow took the woman who had thrown the knife. One, at least, had kept a bowstring dry. The bodyguard closed up around the empress, who swore at them in some language he didn’t know and swept a hand that trailed fine white threads of light. They dropped, the closest three. Souls ripped away. The remaining three gave her space.
The women had scattered. Not in flight. Bring her the god, she had said. Or his corpse.
And the mother of that splinter under his tongue to be bedded in his heart, Ahjvar saw it, vision, nightmare, her desire—the devil’s—so strong.
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The air was growing heavy again. Thunder gathering. Not, he thought, hers. The dragons were out over the field, driving flocks of men before them, bunching them like sheep.
She laughed at him, brought her blade up with much of Yeh-Lin’s grace. One eye to spoil her judging of distance, and what strength in a body confined to the quiet life of a palace daughter? But she had had months of travel to make something other of herself, and the skill that handled that sword was old.
She grinned, teeth bared, as they closed together.
“What does Dotemon call you? The dead king? But you bleed, and dream, and weep. What your necromancer god should make of you, if he wants you obedient in his bed for long, is what my dead empress is.”
“A corpse and a puppet? Not his taste.”
She did not bleed. His point had scratched her face. She flinched, though. The devil felt it, and didn’t like it.
“The sword of the ice is coming for you.” The Lady’s words, almost, and he was sick to find them in his mouth.
“I expect it to.” She had him pushed away, turned. Deliberate, to make him face his embattled comrades. Couldn’t afford distraction. Yeh-Lin by Ghu, defending him. Ghu with his head bowed, hands braced on Snow’s shoulders, not wounded but fallen into some other place. Don’t look. Buri-Nai pressed Ahjvar hard, and there could be nothing but her unwavering eye and the blade’s edge. Not the light that reached for him, like cobweb on the skin, and reached—leave Ghu to do what he did. Ahjvar could feel him, as if he stood almost within the same space, the same skin, breath within his breath. It was not his own vision saw those tendrils. A blow that should have sent her reeling. Should have ripped through and laid half her arm bare to shattered bone. Had. She lost her left-hand knife and the hand hung strangely, but no blood and no weakening followed, only fury. Sword’s point punched through already-torn armour into his ribs. She leapt back and a whirling blow came at his head. He went down avoiding it and she recovered, reversed her grip and stabbed. He was already rolling aside and came up to his knees, sword thrusting up over his shoulder.