The Steel Remains (Gollancz)

by Richard Morgan

  Now the clan colours were bleached with age, and the branches of the grown tree were naked and skeletal overhead. Only the shaped iron ornaments remained, though - Egar squinted suspiciously - it looked as if even one or two of those might have been stolen from the grave over the past year.

  ‘Motherfucking Voronak tinks,’ he muttered.

  Yeah, this far south and west it’s just as likely Skaranak renegades, or even some bunch of fuckwit explorers from the south. He’d seen Skaranak grave wards in more than one imperial museum over the years, had never quite been able to drive home to anyone the rage it aroused in him. In Yhelteth, in the city itself at least, they tolerated a variety of beliefs well enough, but behind that there was always the base assumption of a civilised superiority in the Revelation which never failed to piss him off. In the end, the imperials didn’t much care whose sensibilities they trampled on.

  Let’s stick to the task in hand, shall we?

  He left his horse to crop the grass a short distance off, unstoppered the rice wine flask he’d brought with him, held it lowered in clasped hands and stood a moment looking down at the grave.

  ‘Hey, Dad,’ he said loudly. ‘Brought you something special this time.’

  The quiet wind keened. There was no other reply for him.

  ‘It’s good stuff. Used to drink it in the south all the time. This tavern down by the harbour had it, not far from Imrana’s place. I think you would have liked it in there, Dad. Noisy, full of all these tough guys off the docks. You could see the sea from the front door.’ He paused, stared down at the cairn. ‘I would have liked to show you the sea, Dad.’

  He blinked hard a couple of times. Cleared his throat.

  ‘Can’t believe they’re selling this stuff in Ishlin-ichan these days. Bringing it all the way up here. Cost me a ball and an eye, of course, but hey, I’m the fucking clanmaster these days, right?’

  Got to relax, Eg. Loosen off. You’ve got a full night out here, and the sun isn’t even down yet.

  He lifted the flask and tipped it, poured slowly and steadily, working little circles into the action. The rice wine splattered and darkened the stones, ticked and dripped in the dark places between. When the flask was empty, he upended it and shook out the last drops, then placed it carefully against the base of the cairn. His fingers lingered on it a while, kept him bent there, face turned slightly away, listening to wind. Then, abruptly, he straightened up. A grimace chased across his face - whether from the brief, flaring pain of holding the posture too long, or something else, he couldn’t say. He cleared his throat again.

  ‘So - I guess, we’re going to build this vigil fire.’

  He unsaddled the horse, set out his weapons, blankets and provisions with drilled, soldier’s neatness. Unbundled the firewood and put the fire together on the scorched and balding patch of grass that marked the previous vigils. The sun dropped free of the tree branches, and hung increasingly low at the horizon. He shivered a little, gave it the occasional glance as he worked. He went about collecting a few storm-torn branches he’d noticed lying in the grass earlier, dragged them over and stamped them into manageable lengths, stripped the biggest of the twigs from them and piled it all up beside the waiting fire. He reckoned the bundle he’d brought with him should last until dawn, but the extra couldn’t hurt. More importantly, the work had shaken some of the shiver from his bones.

  He knelt by the unlit fire. Like most Majak, he carried kindling grass and flint in a dry pouch under his shirt - now he dug them out, struck sparks into a wiry fistful of the kindling until it caught, and then poked it carefully into the hollow heart of the fire pile. He tipped his head sideways, almost to the ground, and peered in. Smoke and tiny flames licked upward at the underside of the wood. The smaller pieces began to catch, smouldering and then popping alight. A cheery yellow light spilled out. The warmth of it washed his eyes and face, felt a little like tears. He hauled himself quickly upright again, back into the gathering gloom and chill of the air around him. He stowed the kindling pouch, brushed off his hands. Glanced back at the gnarled marker tree and the declining sun.

  ‘Well, Dad, I—’

  A figure stood there.

  It was a hammerblow to his heart, an icy clutch of fear that dropped his right hand reflexively to the hilt of the knife at his hip.

  It was not his father.

  At least, not in any form that made sense. He saw a drab, full-length patched leather cloak of the sort favoured by League sea captains, a soft-brimmed hat tilted forward to shade the face, though the sun was behind and in any case almost gone. Erkan, colourful, boisterous, a Majak to the bone, had never owned anything remotely resembling either item.

  No. Wouldn’t have been seen dead wearing them either.

  Egar felt the corner of his mouth quirk. The humour pushed out the shock, brought in a shrewd skirmisher’s calculation instead. The cloaked figure looked to be alone. No visible companions or weapons, no horse nearby. Egar sidled a glance across to where his own mount stood, still placidly cropping the grass and apparently unaware of the newcomer, then to the neat piles of his gear on the ground - staff lance and axe, both well out of reach. He could not believe he’d allowed himself to be ambushed this easily.

  He kept his hand loose on the hilt of his knife.

  ‘I’m not here to harm you, Dragonbane.’

  The voice came across the distance between them as if from much further away, as if carried on the wind. Egar blinked at the effect.

  ‘You know me?’

  ‘After a fashion, yes. May I approach?’

  ‘Are you armed?’

  ‘No. I have no real need for such accoutrements.’

  Egar set his mouth in a thin line. ‘You’re a shaman?’

  Abruptly, the cloaked figure loomed a scant two feet in front of him. It happened so fast, Egar would have sworn he never saw the newcomer move at all. A hand clamped brutally on his wrist, held it down so he could not have drawn his knife if his life depended on it. The face beneath the brim of the hat loomed, gaunt and hard-eyed. A gust of acrid chemical burning swirled in the wind, something like the smells that sometimes blew off the Kiriath brewing stacks south of An-Monal.

  ‘There is not much time,’ the voice admonished, no less distant sounding than before. ‘Your brothers are coming to murder you.’

  And gone.

  Egar jumped, and nearly fell down with the sudden release of the pressure on his arm. He cleared his knife from its sheath, belatedly, whirled about. The figure was nowhere to be seen. It was gone, into the chill of the air and the long grass, like memory of the voice into the wind, like the acrid chemical tang into the sweeter smell of wood-smoke from the fire. Like the fading pressure on his wrist.

  He wheeled about once more, breathing tightly, knife balanced on his palm.

  Quiet, and thickening grey gloom across the steppe.

  The band like a hoop of blood. His father’s cairn, the emptied flask laid beside it. The blackening silhouette of the tree.

  ‘My brothers are in Ishlin-ichan,’ he told the silence. ‘Getting drunk.’

  He jerked his head westward, roughly the direction you’d take. Threw a glance out to the setting sun.

  Saw silhouetted riders there, approaching.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Ringil tried, just the once, on fading hope, for the outrage of imperial nobility.

  ‘Just what is the meaning of this? You intend to rob me, like common criminals? My father will have you—’

  Terip Hale shook his head. ‘Let it go, friend. I don’t imagine that accent is any more real than the rest of this charade, so drop it, why don’t you. This is going to be painful enough for you as it is. Now, like I asked you before, who the fuck are you? What are you doing here, asking after barren marsh dwellers?’

  Ah.

  ‘All right,’ Ringil said, because he guessed he had perhaps another half minute, at most, before Hale did the obvious thing and had them all disarmed.

  Ye
ah, and after that, it’s down to whatever disciplinary facilities Hale keeps around here for recalcitrant slaves. Where we’ll he put to the question repeatedly, until Hale gets what he wants to hear from us, and then, if we’re lucky, they might put us out of our scorched and mutilated misery with a quick slit throat.

  Nice going, Gil.

  Ringil measured the possibilities. Eril and Girsh had both frozen when the trap was sprung, arms well out from their bodies so as not to invite a crossbow bolt for twitching a hand the wrong way, faces taut with concentrated tension. They looked like men wading belly high across an icy river, like adults caught out mid-step in a children’s game of Closer, Closer, Statue. They would have already assessed the odds. Now they watched for Ringil’s lead.

  There were three crossbows levelled at them, as far as he could see. The rest was hand-to-hand cutlery.

  ‘All right what?’ grated Hale.

  ‘All right, you win. I’m not Laraninthal of Shenshenath, and I’m not an imperial. My name’s Ringil Eskiath.’

  Hale blinked. ‘The Ringil Eskiath? Yeah, right.’

  But Ringil had seen how that same taken-aback flinch ran round the armed men in the alcoves. He felt the way their casual thug focus gave way to curious stares. He saw a couple of them mutter to each other. The siege of Trelayne was eight years in the past, the triumph at Gallows Gap a year older than that. The war itself had been over now for more than half a decade. But the stories lingered on, attenuated maybe, but still there in the city’s consciousness.

  ‘Eskiath died at Ennishmin,’ someone sneered. ‘Fighting imperials.’

  Ringil forced a calm he didn’t feel.

  ‘Heard that one before a couple of times,’ he said lightly. ‘And it’s almost true. Still got the scars. But it takes more than three Yhelteth sneak assassins to put me away.’

  Another of the men voiced a faint cheer. His companion elbowed him savagely to shut up. Ringil pushed as hard as it would go. He raised a cautious thumb, well out from his body so it wouldn’t be misinterpreted, gesturing up at his left shoulder.

  ‘This is the Ravensfriend,’ he said loudly. ‘Kiriath steel. Forged at An-Monal for the clan Indamaninarmal, gifted to me by Grashgal the Wanderer. Rinsed in lizard blood at Rajal Beach and Gallows Gap and the Siege of Trelayne. I am Ringil of the Glades House Eskiath.’

  Another voice from one of the alcoves. ‘He does look kind of—’

  ‘Yeah?’ Terip Hale wasn’t having this. ‘Well, you know what I heard? I heard Ringil Eskiath was a fucking queer. That true as well?’

  Ringil bent him a smile. ‘Would I have come to you looking for slave girls if it were?’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re here.’ Hale nodded at the muscle with the flail. ‘But we are going to find out. Varid.’

  The big man moved across to Ringil, stepped in close enough to block any attempt to bring the Ravensfriend out of its scabbard, far enough off to beat a grapple move. It was done with sober professional care - no grin like the doorman’s, no jeering. Just a custom-hardened watchfulness in the eyes. Chances were that Varid had been a soldier once.

  He nodded at the sword pommel. ‘Unstrap that. Make it slow.’

  A tiny breeze got in from somewhere and made the lantern flames flicker behind their metal mesh. Shadows danced and shivered across the floor.

  Ringil dropped the dragon knife from his sleeve. He took one rapid step left.

  The Majak had made them, in the last years of the war, once the tide had turned. Mostly they were ceremonial, a statement of the victory to come, not ideal for fighting, even close in. Egar had given him his in a drunken fit of affection one campfire night on the Anarsh plain. Fucking useless thing, he’d mumbled, looking away. You might as well have it. It was basically an infant dragon fang, triangular in section, serrated up the two back edges, razor sharp and smooth at the front. The artist, whoever he was, had carved a serviceable hilt into the base, weave-patterned it on both sides for grip. The whole thing was barely nine inches long - small enough to conceal, long enough to prick the life out of a man’s heart. It shone a dirty amber in the lantern light as it came clear.

  Ringil pivoted from the hip, rammed the knife home under Varid’s chin.

  ‘No!! ’

  Someone bellowing with hysterical fury. It certainly wasn’t Varid - his tongue was nailed to his palate on the fang; his mouth was jammed shut. The best he could manage was a strangling agonised grunt, and his eyes were already turning up in their sockets as the rest of the dragon knife ripped his brain in half from below. Blood burst through his locked teeth in a gurgling crimson spray. Ringil held him up, stayed close in to his bulk, blinking the blood from his eyes, recognised the yell as Hale’s - no one else could have seen quite what was going on yet, probably no one else would be giving orders ...

  ‘Shoot, fucking shoot, will you!’

  What Ringil had hoped for happened. He heard the flesh-cringing twang-clatter as the crossbows went off at close range. All three - skirmish schooled, he counted them off and knew. Varid jolted with the impact. A quarrel head tore through the big man’s shoulder and nearly clipped Ringil’s nose off. The other two went somewhere else, Ringil couldn’t tell where. Crossbows - now there’s a fucking useless weapon for you. He grinned - quick, pulse-jumping relief. Sensed rather than saw Hale’s men come storming out of their alcoves. Bolts shot, the advantage thrown away - now it was down to the steel. He shoved Varid’s corpse away, left the dragon knife where it was. Gained a scant few necessary feet of space as they rushed him. The combat moments seemed to float loose of each other, spun out and unreal ...

  Freed hands both rising for the pommel now, so natural, so smooth, it was like Kiriath machinery, as if he were machinery, a cunningly crafted clockwork Kiriath mannequin, built to complement the steel.

  He felt the accustomed kiss of the grip on his palms, felt the grin on his face turn into a snarl.

  Cold chime as the scabbard gave up its embrace.

  And the Ravensfriend came out.

  You want to know how it ends, Gil? Grashgal, cryptic and rambling and more than a little drunk one evening at An-Monal, holding up the newly forged Ravensfriend in scarred black hands and squinting critically down the runnel. Fireglow from the big room’s hearth seemed to drip molten off the edges of the steel. The carved beam-end gargoyles leered down from the gloom in the roof space above. I’ve seen how it ends. Someday, in a city where the people rise through the air with no more effort than it takes to breathe, where they give their blood to strangers as a gift, instead of stealing it with edged iron and rage the way we do, someday, in a place like that, this motherfucker is going to hang up behind glass for small children to stare at. Grashgal hefted the Ravensfriend one-handed, made a couple of idle strokes through the air, and the sword whispered to itself in the fire-lit gloom. I’ve seen it, Gil. They look at this thing through the glass it’s kept behind, they put their noses up so close to that glass their breath fogs it, and you can see the small, slow-fading print of their hands in the condensation after they’ve run off to look at something else. And it doesn’t mean a thing to them. You want to know why that is?

  Ringil gestured amenably from the depths of the armchair he was sprawled in. He wasn’t hugely sober himself.

  No. I mean, yeah. Can’t guess, I mean. You tell me.

  No one in that city understands, Gil, because it doesn’t matter to them any more. They’ve never learnt to fear the steel and the men who carry it, and none of them ever will, because they don’t have to. Because in this place I’ve seen, men like that don’t exist any more. We don’t exist any more.

  Sounds like a beautiful fucking place. How do I get there? Ringil grinned fiercely up at the Kiriath clan captain. Oh, wait - you’re going to tell me the rents are sky high, right? And how am I going to earn a living if they keep their swords in a museum?

  Grashgal looked back down at him for what seemed like a long time. Finally, he smiled.

  You don’t get to go
, I’m afraid, Gil. Too far off, and the quick paths are too twisted for humans to follow. And on the straight road, you and I will be dust and half-remembered tales before they even start to build that city. But it will come, and when it does, this sword will still he there to see it. Kiriath steel - built to harm, built to last. When all the damage it’s done and the grief it’s caused have been forgotten, even by the gods, when the Kiriath themselves have passed into discredited myth, this murderous fucking ... thing ... will hang unused, and harmless, and gaped at by children. That’s how it ends, Gil. With no one to remember, or care, or understand what this thing could do when you set it free.