“And so…?”
“And so I break heads and fight my kin until I have enough who do what I say, and I say, go into the mines, go on the human boats, go build or tear down or spread your arse cheeks if that’s what they want, but make them see we have value. Or it is war for us, and without him, a war we would lose. Kill many many human and Oerni and the rest, but lose all the same.”
“You sound like you’re not so glad he’s gone,” Celestaine pointed out.
Thukrah looked at her for long enough to make her uncomfortable. “He made us strong by killing those who were weak. He made us hard by killing those who were soft. He made us obey by killing those who said no. And it is good to be hard and strong, and what leader does not want those who obey? With him, you would have lost. We would have destroyed you all, even you with your magic sword we all hear about. But who wins when you lose? The Yorughan? General Thukrah? No, none of us. Only him.” He shrugged. “Plenty out there in forts and holes still thinking, if only we had him still, still believing maybe he is not so dead, maybe coming back to make us his fist again. We fight them, day after day. We make them believe different or we kill them. Because there is no room in this world for a Yorughan who wants the Reckoner back.”
She saw him wanting to bite back the name, because of course the Kinslayer hadn’t defined himself by that word. To his minions, he had been the instrument of just vengeance, and woebetide any who had said otherwise.
“So you’re selling yourself as the lesser of two evils,” she suggested.
His grin widened. “Less evil is less evil, hrm? Besides, you’re not here to hire strong backs or avenge old wrongs.”
She searched within herself to see whether the death of General Thukrah—probably swiftly followed by the death of Celestaine the Slayer—seemed like a worthy cause, and decided not. Less evil, as he said. Or he was lying to her. Either way, it wasn’t why she’d come.
“Heno tells me you want to go through the Kinslayer’s toys,” Thukrah said, and she shot the Heart Taker a sharp look, because he and the general had been talking in their own language and she didn’t know what might have been said.
“Maybe,” she said cautiously.
“Unfinished things, or things only just finished, he said,” the general went on, and she nodded. “Here in Bleakmairn, down below, is his main mage-forge, all sorts of bad things made there. You hear of the Blade of Severance?”
“I cut it in half about ten miles from here, along with its wielder,” Celestaine told him.
Thukrah exploded with a whoop of surprised laughter. “Ahah! Yes, it was so! Made here, beneath us. Many other bad things, too. Some things probably still there even now. Maybe what you’re looking for, hrm?”
“Well, can we go and see?”
“Not so simple. Those parts, we’ve not got to yet.”
She frowned, and Heno bent forward with a quick question that Thukrah shrugged at.
“You think we’re here for our health?” he asked. “I got plenty no-goods say they’re Thukrah’s men, not their own, not his, but they don’t see me for a few days, maybe they forget just who they make their promises to, hrm? So we move around, fort to fort, make sure nobody’s forgetful. And we go where they’re holding out. Bleakmairn is mine, up top. Below? Not so much. Got some bad things down there, got some still waiting for him, or who say they’ll never clasp wrists with any human or Oerni or the like. So I come here with my fists to change minds or cut out livers.” He cocked his head. “Want to come?”
“Me?”
“You want the mage-forge? It’s down there. Why not be first in when we clean it out?”
Celestaine glanced at Heno, then back at the general. He had a calculating look in his eyes, behind the smile.
“We’ll need to talk about it,” she told him.
“Tomorrow we’re in there breaking heads,” he said. “Offer’s open.”
“DO YOU TRUST him?” she asked Heno, when the four of them had been shown to a room high in one corner of Bleakmairn, overlooking the courtyard.
“Thukrah? Not really.”
“But I thought…”
“All Yoggs together?” He gave her a lazy smile. “You heard him, it’s every Kinslayer’s minion against the rest right now. Do you want a strong, unified Yorughan here?”
“It would be better for you, wouldn’t it?” she asked.
“Better for Thukrah.” He shrugged. “I’m me. I’m not the Kinslayer’s creature, I’m not any general’s follower. Besides, the regulars hated us Heart Takers about as much as your side did. Shur-meh, ‘Slackers,’ they called us, because we didn’t do the hard work. That right, Ned?”
“Shur-meh,” Nedlam agreed enthusiastically. “I trust him.”
Celestaine blinked at her. “You do?”
“Was with him a year, two. Three?” Yorughan had difficulties telling time, coming from a dark place without seasons. “Before I got chucked over for special guard stuff with the Slackers.” A leer at Heno. “Thukrah? Best leader I had. You knew he’d get you killed, but not stupid-killed.”
“What choice do we have?” Amkulyah broke in. “If it’s down there, it’s down there. Or did you want to go down now, before they do, just the four of us? Fight whatever’s there on the way down, fight this general and his creatures on the way up.”
Celestaine sighed. “I’m sorry. I’d hoped to find something already liberated, not… not still where the war is.”
“Don’t be sorry,” the Aethani told her harshly. “What use is that? Just do. If this is what is needed, I will go into the dark again. I will wear this general’s colours if he asks. I will polish his boots with my tongue. And if he takes the crown for himself I will put out his eyes and open his throat. I will do what is needed. Will you?”
Celestaine just stared at him. He had been so quiet, so retiring and mannered. Even now he was not shouting. The anger in him was not a flare of heat that would gutter once the moment had passed. It was like the fires of the earth that were molten forever, always ready to crack their shell of stone and vent. He had been a slave for years. He had done whatever it took to survive, things she knew she didn’t want to know about.
“I will,” she said slowly. “And that might mean fighting General Thukrah on the way out. Can I count on you two? Would you rather stay behind?” She eyed the two Yorughan.
“Fight him? In a moment.” Heno looked as though any expedition that didn’t involve crossing swords with Thukrah would be a wasted one.
Nedlam scowled fiercely, which meant she was thinking.
“Don’t want to stay behind. Don’t want to fight the general.” She didn’t look unhappy often, but it came out now. “If he gets in the way, though, we’re going to have to, right?”
Why? Celestaine was afraid of asking the question. Heno’s loyalty warmed her. Nedlam’s worried her. It wasn’t as though the big warrior owed her—all debts were quit once the Kinslayer died. It wasn’t as though she and Heno had a long history either; they were from very different classes amongst the Kinslayer’s forces, allies of convenience once Heno decided to betray his master. And yet here Nedlam still was.
And, in the end, she had to ask. “Why, though?”
Nedlam grinned. “You ever hear me turn from a fight?”
“Seriously, Ned.”
The Yorughan warrior looked mulish. “I can’t want to do the right thing? You think I’ll stab your back when Thukrah’s at your front, now?”
“I don’t think that,” Celestaine told her, and it was true, to her surprise. “I don’t want to put you where you do things you’re ashamed of.”
“Being left behind’s what’d shame me,” Nedlam insisted, and perhaps it was as simple as that. They were her squad, her friends, her family, however she thought of it. She didn’t want to be left out.
When Thukrah formed up his people ahead of the dawn, they were already waiting in the courtyard, armed and ready for the fight.
Chapter Ten
CEL
ESTAINE WAS SURPRISED to see Thukrah there, buckling on a gold-chased Arvennir helm, plainly about to lead the expedition in person. First it made her think better of him, then it made her worry that his control of his troops wasn’t such that it was guaranteed to survive contact with the enemy, absent his presence. Especially if those enemy were hardline Kinslayer followers and might win over the general’s soldiers with a little rhetoric. She only hoped he was leaving a solid henchman in command up top.
He rolled over on his crooked legs and grinned appreciatively. “Good to see you back in something that suits you.” It would have been a weirdly offensive comment if he hadn’t meant her armour. She had her breastplate and the swept-back Forinthi helm that covered her neck, tassets protecting her legs halfway to the knee, then greaves for her shins and bracers from elbow to wrist. It was far simpler than the war loot Thukrah was wearing, and it was as light as possible because the Forinthi liked to take the battle to the enemy. And, according to the Cheriveni, take it back and run off with it if they started losing, but that was just calumny.
She had thought she would be underdressed for the occasion, but instead of the great ironclads of the Yorughan vanguard, most of Thukrah’s force were kitted out for mobility as well, armed for close-up, vicious work. Even Nedlam had left her great club behind, swapped out for a pair of short-handled cleavers. Heno had his staff, of course, but he was unlikely to resort to bludgeoning with it.
“You didn’t need to come,” she said. Because Amkulyah was in Ned’s shadow again, unarmoured because there would be nothing for a hundred miles small enough for him, bow slung over his shoulder.
“I said I would go into the earth again.” There was a tremor in his voice; perhaps the enemy he really wanted to defeat was inside him. “Besides, I don’t trust these creatures. Not enough to be left alone with them.”
The courtyard was lined with Thukrah’s troops, calling out rough encouragement to the expeditionary force, each of them four times Kul’s weight and unlikely to make allowances for his frailty. She conceded the point.
“General,” she called, “is this all we’re taking?” She counted around forty besides themselves.
“Going to be close down there, numbers just get in our own way,” Thukrah told her. “Besides, words first. Been down there a while, they have. Some already thinking, ‘This Kinslayer business is an old thing, just like being back home. I want the sky again.’”
“How much do you know about what we’ll find down there?”
“Some. We know the rooms, we know there’s some of the old garrison and some of the Borun Atta battalion that fell back here in the last fighting.”
“‘Gut Eaters,’” translated Heno, at her shoulder, which she felt she could have done without.
“We found seven ways in, blocked up the last a few days ago,” the general went on. “They’re down in the dark, not much food, we think. And other things with them, also hungry. Come play nice with Uncle Thuk, hrm? Sound like a good deal to them right about now.”
That sounded overly optimistic to Celestaine, but she said nothing. Thukrah barked something out in the Yorughan tongue that Heno didn’t bother to translate, and his force formed up and, to her surprise, marched into the keep itself.
They tracked down to the cellars, where a handful of skinny Grennishmen were busy about what she thought at first was a well. Closer, she saw a perfectly round hole down into the dark, with a corkscrewing ramp shallow enough to walk down.
“Probably they wait at the rubble for us to dig down to them,” Thukrah explained. “But no! We make our own way. Nice surprise for all those no-goods down there.”
Make their own way how? But the answer came before she could ask the question, as the Grennish coaxed a nightmarish creature out of the hole. It came out backwards, a great fat grublike body rippling in pallid bloated waves as it extricated itself from its burrow. Its head was a nightmare, a half-dozen chewing mandibles still grinding against each other even though it was free of the rock, and two stalked eyes popping free of its dark-shelled head to goggle about at them. Nedlam let out a fierce whoop, and for a moment Celestaine thought she was attacking the creature, but instead she had put her face right up close to those horrifying mouthparts and was cooing over it like a puppy—apparently the equivalent of Who’s a little deathworm, then?
Thukrah coughed pointedly and she stepped back, looking a little mutinous. The worm-monster was hauled off by the Grennishmen, leaving everyone looking down at the hole.
“It doesn’t go all the way through,” Thukrah said. “Or maybe they’d think something’s up. We were going to pick through, but now we have a Heart Taker.” He nodded to Heno. “You going to follow a general’s orders for once in your life?”
“No,” Heno told him, unapologetically and to his face. “I’ll do it if Celest asks nicely, though.”
Thukrah chuckled. “Sounds like you’re his new Kinslayer.” Which made her feel very uncomfortable indeed. “Right then, get your Heart Taker to crack open the last hand’s breadth of it and we get to say hello.”
The Yorughan went down the spiralling ramp with a will, virtually shoving Heno and Celestaine ahead of them.
“You can do this?” she asked, as she fought to keep her footing.
His expression was caught between offence at her doubt and a stubborn dislike of what was obviously menial work.
“Save your strength,” she suggested, and grinned when he arched a silver eyebrow. “I want to show General Thukrah what he’s getting.”
Then they were at the bottom of the well. Celestaine glanced up, seeing ascending rings of Yorughan faces, beady eyes and tusks glinting beneath their squat, boxy helms.
“Going to be dark down there,” Heno told her. “Not pitch, but dim. You humans have bad eyes. But, you know me.”
She nodded, finding Nedlam in the press, with the owlish stare of Amkulyah glowering from under her armpit. Keep him safe! “They know we’re coming, right?”
Thukrah shrugged. “I got warriors kicking up a fuss at all the places we blocked off. They are split, I hope. But yes.”
Celestaine nodded. First into the breach. It was the Forinthi path to glory. Did the Yorughan feel the same way, or was it just duty to them, ground in by the heel of the Kinslayer’s boot? And was glory even a thing worth having?
Enough procrastinating. She drew her sword, wincing as it bit into the scales of her new scabbard. In one motion she reversed it and drove it down into the stone beneath. The blade slid in smoothly—not without resistance, but, however reluctantly, the stone parted for her. She cut out a circle that left the end of the ramp intact and thought, Look out below.
There was more than one awed Yorughan intake of breath when the disc of stone simply dropped out of the bottom of the shaft—and a brief cry of appalled shock as it landed fatally on someone underneath. Then Thukrah’s people were rushing past, dropping down into the hole, landing hard on bent knees and then pushing out of the way for those behind them. Celestaine heard the first shouts and a clatter of steel on steel. She glanced at Heno and saw him roll his eyes in the dim light, eloquently suggesting that all this first-into-the-breach business wasn’t a Heart Taker thing.
Nedlam leapt past with a whoop and Amkulyah clinging to her shoulders, and Celestaine followed suit, sword held high to prevent any friendly decapitations.
Below everything was chaos. She hadn’t missed the part of the plan that gave them no ready way to retreat. Thukrah was already in the thick of it, though, so the exercise wasn’t intended to be a suicide mission. She had to blink and blink before she got an idea of what was going on. The only light came from pale crystals set into the walls—junior Yorughan blood mage work, she reckoned—that were calibrated for their keen eyes, not human ones. For seven heartbeats she just stood, holding her sword out of trouble and letting her eyes adjust. She might only be human, but she’d fought the Kinslayer’s minions in places like this for years. She knew the drill.
That ululati
ng Yorughan battlecry rang out, firing her blood with the need to fight and kill things. It came from every throat around her, though, friend and foe. She made out Nedlam’s own yell over the others, louder and longer as she laid about herself with her cleavers. Half of Thukrah’s warriors were still above, without clear space to jump down to, and for a moment the defenders hemmed them in, trading blows furiously, shoving and kicking and headbutting.
Heno shouted something from above, in their language, but she knew what he would be saying. You know me, he’d told her, and she did. She knew that he was the least reliable creature in the world, unless it was for her.
He thrust a hand down into the room below him and unleashed white fire in ribbons across the ceiling, incandescent serpents crawling across every crack and imperfection. Thukrah’s people were mostly facing away, but the defenders were looking straight into the blaze and they fell back, trying to shield their eyes. Celestaine cried out, “Fiddlehead blades in!” though it would mean nothing to anyone else there, and then shouldered her way between two Yorughan to bring her sword to the enemy.
They were veterans, the Yorughan buried down there. They were the die-hard Kinslayer followers, and she wished they understood who she was and what she’d done. News of their master’s defeat had either not reached here or had been thrown out as lies, though. She had to show them what her blade could do.
There was an art to fighting with the Wanderer’s blade. She had come so close to death so many times with textbook parries that lopped off the last two inches of a sword but left the razor-edged rest of it still on a course for her throat. Now she parried in, striking towards the hilt and the hand in a way her Fiddlehead swordmaster would have despaired of. She made her swings obvious, showed her enemies precisely where she would take the blade so that they would line their blocks up neatly for her. She sheared through their swords, carved their shields up, and the armour beneath, then the flesh, then the bone, feeling the minute variations of resistance with each layer. It was a bloody thing, that sword, for those who faced it for the first time, and precious few had much chance at a second. With four strokes she cleared the way in front of her, and Thukrah’s people were sweeping on either side, heading towards a tall arch thronging with new enemies.
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