The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3)

by Ian Irvine

  Now all twenty sprang out at once, and only two had fallen by the time they reached the defences. Four turned side-on on the narrow path so as to attack together up the rubble wall, though that left their stroke play rather cramped. Nish and Flangers finished their two, but the defenders to either side of them fell.

  Two more enemy took the place of the fallen two and Flangers’s opponent, a huge, brawny sergeant, snapped the blade of the jag-sword with a mighty sweep of his broadsword.

  Flangers hurled the hilt at the sergeant, striking him so hard on the forehead that he stumbled, dazed, but the others came on and no one had come forward to fill the breaches on either side of Nish and Flangers. Then a small, carrot-topped figure slid in beside Nish, waving a sword that was far too big.

  ‘Huwld!’ Nish cried. ‘Get out of here.’

  ‘I have to make up –’

  The sergeant shot up like a striking snake, lunging and trying to spit the boy like a suckling pig. Nish swung his sabre sideways, knowing that he couldn’t parry that fierce blow in time, but the sabre seemed to leap in his hands, dragging him with it, and slammed into the sergeant’s sword not far from the tip.

  Huwld screamed, and Nish was sure he’d been mortally wounded. He heaved the sabre sideways, slamming the back of the blade into the sergeant’s forehead with colossal force, and he fell away. But more of the enemy were coming up fast, and he knew the gate was lost.

  ‘Fall back!’ he cried, fighting two soldiers at once with the sabre.

  Flangers snatched up the sergeant’s broadsword and retreated down the uphill side of the wall, dragging Huwld with him. The other two militiamen were dead; Nish left them where they lay.

  ‘Same plan as at the eastern pass,’ Flangers grunted as they backed through the narrow gap behind the barrier.

  ‘What?’ said Nish, defending furiously. Within the gate, with its rock walls towering to either side, only two could come at him at the same time, but they were driving him backwards.

  Flangers dropped Huwld, who groaned. Taking hold of a dangling length of rope embedded in the wall, he heaved, and the cunningly constructed wall collapsed from the top, filling the gap and burying the two soldiers Nish had been fighting, plus another two behind them.

  ‘A little trick I thought up in my idle years as the Numinator’s prisoner,’ Flangers said with a wry smile.

  It had saved them, though, as with the collapse of the eastern defences, it had formed a rubble ramp over which seven or eight soldiers could storm the gap at once, ruining an almost perfect defensive position.

  Nish bent over Huwld, who sat up, weeping with pain. ‘My finger.’

  ‘There’s no time to look at it.’ Nish threw him over his shoulder.

  As they moved up the slope to meet the survivors from the eastern side, Nish did a quick count – twenty-five of the militia were still on their feet, counting the three he’d sent to guard the wounded.

  Another fifteen wounded were still alive, including Aimee and Clech, plus two healers, lanky Dulya and plump, palely pretty Scandey. The third healer, Ghosh, had been killed while Nish was up at the ice sheet. Forty-two still alive of the three hundred and sixty he’d had down in the clearing, but there was no way out now.

  They formed a semi-circle with their backs to the cliffed flank of the white-thorn peak, and waited. The enemy were coming over the western wall and gathering inside. The advantage was all theirs now and they could afford to wait until they had the numbers. There were at least seventy of them.

  The attackers from the eastern pass appeared at the top of the hill, just a handful at first, then more until another thirty stood there. They stopped, watching, waiting.

  ‘Where’s the rest of the army?’ said Nish. ‘Why is Klarm holding back?’

  ‘He doesn’t need any more,’ said Flangers. ‘A hundred of them versus twenty-five of us.’ He hefted the broadsword. ‘And yet, I’ve fought against worse odds.’

  ‘So have I,’ said Nish, ‘but not out in the open like this.’ He turned to Huwld. ‘Give me a look at you, lad.’

  Huwld held up his left hand, which was covered in blood, and his index finger was gone; the sergeant’s sword blow had severed it and badly cut the next finger and thumb. ‘It’s my punishment,’ he said limply. ‘It’s all my fault.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Nish, putting his arm around the boy’s narrow shoulders. ‘You were doing your best; it could have happened to anyone.’

  ‘It is my fault. It is! I gave the knife to Uncle Boobelar. Why didn’t he cut himself free and jump? Why did he have to drag those three men over with him?’

  Because he’s scum, Nish thought, but he could not say it. The boy felt guilty enough as it was. No wonder he’d been working himself to exhaustion, day and night, trying to make up for it.

  ‘We all make mistakes, Huwld,’ he said gently. ‘I should know. I’ve made more than most.’

  ‘Not as bad as this,’ said Huwld.

  ‘Even worse,’ said Nish. ‘Hush now; go back to the ranks, lad.’

  A little man had appeared beside the troops at the top of the pass. He said a few words to them and headed slowly down. It was General Klarm, here for the victory.

  He stopped ten paces away, nodding stiffly to Nish and Flangers. He wasn’t carrying the tears, Nish noticed.

  ‘What a waltz it’s been, these past days,’ said Klarm.

  Nish bowed ironically. ‘I don’t suppose you get many.’

  ‘Many what?’

  ‘Dances. Being what you are.’

  It was a low blow, sneering at any man’s physical attributes, and Nish had suffered as much as anyone for his lack of stature and unhandsome features, but it had been a terrible day of an awful week and he had to do something to wipe the smile off the face of his enemy.

  Too late he remembered Flydd telling him, way back in the days of the lyrinx war, that the dwarf was a great favourite of the ladies – not just for his equipment, which had the stature he lacked and more, but for the inventive ways he wielded it.

  Klarm laughed in his face. ‘Weakest yet, Nish. I’ve been insulted by masters, and you’ll get no rise out of me that way. I’ve got to hand it to you,’ he went on in that rich, melodious voice, ‘I never would have thought it possible, but you’ve beaten me over and again. Another few hours and well … you didn’t get them, did you? What a tale this struggle would make for the Histories, if I could permit it to be told. But it never will be.’

  ‘What do you mean, another few hours?’ said Nish. ‘You’ve still got half an army down below – haven’t you?’

  ‘If only it were so,’ said Klarm. ‘If you could have held out an hour longer, you might have had the victory you so desperately crave – and the Great Tale to go with it.’

  Nish could not speak. How could it be so? Klarm had to be lying, or making a monstrous joke, just to grind them down even further.

  ‘And if you had won,’ Klarm went on after a studied pause, ‘and I’d survived, I would have been the first to salute you, for I know a brave man when I see him, and a born leader. I would have honoured you, but you broke too soon and the victory is mine –’ He smiled, then dropped the bombshell. ‘Though these are the only men I have left.’

  ‘Out of ten thousand?’ Nish cried. He couldn’t help himself.

  ‘I lost half of that number to dysentery, fevers, ulcers, flesh-eating worms, broken legs, arms and heads, and all the other hazards of this aptly named Range of Ruin, before my advance guard even reached the pass. Five hundred fell in the clearings on the first day of battle, or were swept away by the flood, and well over a thousand died at the two passes before …’

  ‘My avalanche took most of the survivors,’ said Nish wonderingly. ‘And all but a hundred of them have been killed today.’

  We went so close, he thought, fighting to contain his anguish while knowing it was written large across his face. If we’d known how few the enemy were after the avalanche, surely we would have found that little
bit extra in courage or cunning to hold them off.

  A well-placed rockslide, even a higher defensive wall might have done it. But I gave up hope of winning; instead, as Flydd pointed out, I took refuge in stolid defence which could never bring us victory. If only I’d known, he thought bitterly.

  ‘How come you didn’t use flappeters against us? That’s what I would have done.’

  ‘Almost all of them were wiped out when the sky-palace came down on Mistmurk Mountain; and the bladder-bats too. Plus the pens of other flesh-formed creatures Jal-Nish had aboard, just in case …’

  Klarm’s handsome face twisted in disgust. Evidently he did not approve of such creatures.

  ‘So the avalanche was your doing, Nish,’ he went on. ‘I thought I saw your hand in it. Who else could have the clear-sight to see the flaw in the ice up there, and the imagination to find a way to release it. Tell me, how did you unbind the ice?’

  There was no harm in telling him now. Nish lifted the serpent staff over his head. ‘With this. Are you going to take it from me?’

  Klarm’s eyes crossed and he took an involuntary step backwards, but hastily came forwards again. ‘Why do you think I left the caduceus behind?’

  ‘You were too scared? Or wouldn’t the tears like the competition?’

  Klarm smiled thinly. ‘I don’t think they would, since you mention it. I didn’t go near it because it’s a trap I didn’t plan on falling into. Stilkeen left it in the clearing for a reason, and not for our good.’

  ‘It helped me when I needed help, and has done nothing to hinder me at other times.’

  ‘And what does that tell you?’

  ‘Nothing, so far.’

  ‘It means that Stilkeen wants you to tear down your father. But if you should ever do so, unlikely as that seems, beware of its price. You can bet your personal equipment that there will be one, and it will be unimaginable.’

  Nish knew he was right. He’d always been uncomfortable with the caduceus; it had to be more than it seemed. ‘What are you going to do now?’ He felt sure he knew, since Klarm was a man of his word.

  ‘Exactly what I promised when you rejected my offer after Stilkeen took my God-Emperor. You and Maelys will become my prisoners, and everyone else will be put to the sword. Where is she?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her since the flood, three days ago.’

  Klarm paled. He had not expected that. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Search the camp,’ Nish said. ‘After she freed me, I ran ahead to get to my militia, and she was following. Clearsight told me to strike up through the forest, and it saved me from the flood, but only just. If Maelys was on the river path she could not have survived.’

  He met Klarm’s eyes, so the dwarf could read the truth and the grief in them, then bent his head. Nish regretted her loss more than anything, even his failure to correctly read the enemy’s numbers. Why hadn’t he waited one extra minute for her? In all his life he’d had no better and more loyal friend.

  Nish reeled at the thought, for it was one he’d never had before. He had never compared anyone to his beloved Irisis, not on equal terms. She had been friend, comrade, lover and life partner – Irisis had been everything to him, and he to her. And yet, though Maelys had been neither his friend nor his lover, and in the early days he had often treated her badly, she had remained steadfast.

  He analysed the heretical thought, but found it genuine. Maelys had been as good and loyal a friend to him as Irisis, which meant that he must finally be coming to terms with her loss. He would never forget her, and a corner of him would always grieve for her, but Irisis was gone forever and he had to live again. Unfortunately, that realisation had come too late.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Klarm with genuine regret. ‘Maelys was a fine woman, one of the best I’ve ever met.’ He bowed his own head for a minute, then said, ‘Are you going to surrender?’

  ‘No,’ said Nish.

  ‘I’m sorry about that, too.’ Klarm nodded formally and headed back to the top of the pass with that rolling dwarf’s gait, as if he had lived his life on the deck of a ship.

  Nish returned to the militia, debating whether to tell them what Klarm had said, but decided he had to. In the last hour of their lives he owed them absolute honesty.

  He met their eyes, one by one. ‘This is the end, my friends, and no better friends has any man had. You’ve done everything I’ve asked of you and much, much more, and I love you every one.’

  He went down the line, embracing each of them, and the wounded and the healers too, before going back to the front. ‘We’ve done miracle after miracle in defence of Gendrigore, and Klarm has just revealed that these are all the men he has left.’

  The militia turned left, then right, staring at the hundred enemy, incapable of believing that they were the only survivors of such a vast army.

  ‘He began with ten thousand,’ Nish went on, ‘and is now reduced to these hundred fighting men. We set out with five hundred, sent a third back with illness, and now have twenty-five able-bodied. Had we known – had I known his numbers were so few – we might have beaten him. No, I say we would have sent him scurrying home with his tail between his stumpy little legs. We would have beaten him.’

  The militia cheered, laughed, cried and embraced one another.

  ‘But it was not to be, and now it’s over.’ He bowed and they cheered again, then he turned and saw Klarm giving the signal to his troops above and below. They drew their swords and advanced, slowly and steadily, as if they were expecting one final trick – part of the mountain to fall down on them, perhaps, or a pit to open up beneath their boots.

  But Nish had nothing left. He swallowed. They would take him first, and there was nothing he could do about it … unless the serpent staff could save him. He raised it in his right hand but it felt cold now, heavy and inert, and he could sense nothing at its core. Why had it helped him before, only to abandon him now? Or had it not been helping him at all, only Stilkeen?

  The enemy were less than fifty paces away, and advancing with wary, remorseless tread, when Nish made out a faint, familiar hissing whistle. His heart jumped, for it had to be the air-sled. But Klarm showed no reaction; he did not even look around, and the faint hope died. One of Klarm’s subordinates must be flying the craft.

  The air-sled came shrieking up the slope towards the western gate of Blisterbone, lifted and passed high over their heads, then shot towards the cloud-wreathed tip of the white-thorn peak. After banking at the last second, it came shooting down in a series of exuberant spirals that it had certainly never performed when Klarm or Jal-Nish had flown it, and Nish’s skin rose in goose pimples, for he knew it wasn’t any of Klarm’s men at the controls.

  He’d only ever met one pilot who flew with such extravagant, exuberant daring. Chissmoul had to be at the helm. The air-sled rocketed over Klarm’s head, buffeting his hair, skidded sideways though the air, slowly rotating horizontally on its axis as it did, then settled like a feather in front of Nish and his militia.

  ‘How does she do it?’ Nish said, laughing for sheer joy. The craft was far more battered and bent than before, and covered in dried, flaking mud, and it looked as though it had crashed several times since he’d last seen it.

  Chissmoul, still wearing the bloodstained bandage around her head, sprang off, her eyes searching the militia. Then, spotting Flangers, she ran and hurled herself into his arms so forcibly that he went over backwards and the troops behind him had to hold him up.

  The militia laughed and cheered and wept to a man. It was a second wonderful moment in the grimmest of days. Nish turned back to Flydd, who had remained aboard.

  ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ he said, though inside he was exultant. Of course Flydd hadn’t betrayed them, and with the air-sled, and his mancery, they might get out of this yet. ‘You were supposed to be back yesterday.’

  ‘I had to take a little detour and was delayed longer than I expected,’ Flydd said blandly. ‘Pile on. We don’t have
much time.’

  ‘Lieutenant?’ Nish called to Flangers. ‘Bring your troops to the air-sled without delay.’

  ‘Don’t move!’ rapped Klarm in an amplified voice. ‘I’ve got your wounded, and the healers.’ He gestured to the left, and half a dozen of his troops rose from behind the healer’s tent, where they had disarmed Nish’s three guards. ‘Surrender or they die.’

  Flydd glanced at Nish and some message flashed in his eyes. Was he telling him to abandon the prisoners and run while they had the chance? Nish gave a tiny, imperceptible shake of the head. He wasn’t leaving anyone behind.

  Flydd sighed. ‘I didn’t think you would. Too bad, though.’ He glanced up at Klarm, then down the slope towards the troops moving up from the western gate.

  Klarm came towards them and Nish made out the faintest humming – the song of the tears. The dwarf had them around his neck, just as Jal-Nish had worn them. Was he planning to use them on the militia, or would he leave that pleasure to his exhausted but blood-lusting troops?

  ‘Lay down the serpent staff, Xervish,’ said Klarm. ‘And step right off my air-sled.’

  PART TWO

  THE QUEST FOR FIRE

  SEVENTEEN

  The whirling blast of snow settled and Maelys could see again. The portal had taken her, Yggur and Tulitine from the Range of Ruin to the low, windswept shore of a treeless land whose further reaches were lost in the distance. Granite boulders littered the shore; wiry shrubs and spindly clumps of grass struggled for life between them. Though the ice that had once covered the bleak landscape was gone, she knew where she was.

  Ahead lay a vast, sullen sea, grey as slate and covered in ice, except near the shore where the slanting rays of a red sun, hanging above the horizon, reflected off still water.

  ‘When we came here last time, we were trying to find the antithesis to the tears,’ said Maelys.