Crowfall

by Ed McDonald

‘I said, what then?’ Kanalina demanded.

  ‘We take the fight to them,’ I said. ‘We choose the ground. We choose how to attack, and what. And we break their advance. We divert them and let the Misery take them somewhere else.’

  ‘You want to go for their navigators,’ North said. He was much sharper than he had any right to be.

  ‘Yes, but they aren’t using astrolabes or navigators that we’d recognise,’ I said. ‘Acradius has locked himself onto Adrogorsk. It’s a fixed point, and he has a ribbon of power stretching across the Misery, making a crow-flight line straight here. They have an old cadaver, the mummified body of a sorcerer. Spirits alone know where they found it, but it’s pointing them right in our direction. If we can destroy it, maybe the Misery itself will stop them.’

  ‘How many drudge do we need to go through to get to it?’ North asked. I met his eye.

  ‘A lot. But they’re riding in a column, spread thin. An ambush is our best shot at destroying the thing that’s guiding them.’

  ‘And if we destroy it?’ North said.

  ‘Then anyone still alive runs,’ I replied. ‘And hope to the spirits that the drudge are too tired to chase us down.’

  ‘That is not the Lady’s plan,’ North growled.

  ‘I bet it isn’t.’

  ‘Enough,’ Kazna snapped. ‘You can parade your feathers and work out whose sword is longest later. Your plan makes sense. We can’t stop twenty thousand drudge. We’ve assessed the defences. We have neither the men nor the walls to stop them. But the Misery could.’

  ‘I could,’ Nenn put in, helpful as ever. Marshal Venzer had climbed back onto the windowsill, but his neck was still broken, and his head lolled awkwardly to one side.

  ‘I’ll lead our attack force to intercept them, and I can take us there fast. What the drudge cover in two days, I can navigate in less than one. The farther from the city we strike the better,’ I told them. ‘I want the Guardians and nine hundred men. And I want the Spinners. They can cloak us until we’re ready to strike.’

  ‘I need to stay here to spin the light,’ Kanalina said. ‘I’ll need some measure of protection.’

  ‘Kanalina and fifty men stay,’ Kazna said. ‘The rest of us go.’

  ‘I stay.’

  Heads turned in First’s direction. His voice was awkward, the grinding of millstones. A voice that had never been used before.

  ‘You’ll follow orders,’ Kazna said.

  ‘I stay,’ First repeated. ‘Guardians go. I stay.’

  There wasn’t much that any of us could say to that. It wasn’t as though we could force him.

  ‘I’m not attacking twenty thousand bloody drudge!’ one of the officers snapped. ‘That’s not just a suicide mission, it’s utter madness.’

  ‘This has been madness from the start,’ I said. ‘Attack is our best chance of surviving it. I’ll lead out at dusk. The swift-riders won’t stop by night. Not when they’re this close. We’ll hit them at dawn. Whatever spirits you need to pray to, I suggest you pray hard.’

  The Guardians didn’t need to discuss anything. When the time came to move, they were gathered outside Adrogorsk’s walls, their glaives shouldered, staring out to the east. Our tired men rode out of the city in columns. There were no wagons, no tents. If the rain hit us out there, it was all over. But the sky was cloudless, and in war, sometimes you have to trust to luck. Two of the Spinners joined me, one tall, the other with an old web of burns beneath one eye. She seemed too young to be out here. Ripples of colour seemed to wash over the sand, a sheen of iridescent, flowing oil. I blinked at them until they went away or, at least, stopped demanding my attention.

  ‘Not riding with your friends?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re to keep you alive,’ the tall woman said. Her name was Dovroi. The scarred woman was Spinner Vurtna. ‘If we succeed then you’re our only way back, so Kazna has given orders that you’re not to engage in the fighting.’ Dovroi shook her head.

  I looked around.

  ‘Where are the other Spinners?’

  ‘There have been desertions. The other Spinners and the navigators took what they could carry and rode west. What they thought was west, anyway.’

  ‘They deserted?’ I said. The word always carried an acrid taste.

  Dovroi nodded. Vurtna kept her distance from me, preferring the ice-skinned Guardians for company. I wondered how many of our soldiers had chosen to go with them.

  I could hear an old marching song drifting out from the gaps in the walls. Some of the boys from the Third Battalion were having a good old time at least.

  I pressed my hand into the Misery-sand and listened. I sensed the enemy, felt the heavy black tether that drew them on to us. It was rancid, sick with the soul-essence of the Deep Kings’ magic. Even to me, steeped in Misery-pollution, it felt corrupt. I tried to shake it off as I drew my knife. I bared a forearm, made a shallow cut, and squeezed blood from the wound. It was dark, thick, and sluggish as it dripped onto the sand. The Misery felt it, absorbed it. A waypoint, to bring us back. I hoped we were going to need it.

  Dantry rode out on a black charger, armoured in gleaming black steel. He looked like the cadaver of a fairy-tale prince, golden hair around bog-corpse skin.

  ‘You should stay here,’ I said.

  ‘Everyone else is going,’ he said, shadow and frost in his voice. ‘Don’t ask me to sit back. Because I won’t. I’m not yours to command, Ryhalt.’

  ‘You’re still angry with me,’ I said.

  ‘Angry? No.’

  ‘Then what?’

  He sighed, not for my benefit, just a dry expulsion of spirit.

  ‘It was all for nothing,’ he said. ‘Even if we succeed. Look at what they’ve made of us. Look at what we’ve done. What was the point in any of it, if this is who we have to be? We’re no better than the Deep Kings. Murderers. Warlords. Assassins. We’re everything we’re supposed to be fighting against.’

  He kicked his horse along the column, emptiness trailing in his wake. I mounted, and led my band out into the night. The cut in my arm healed over in minutes.

  Acradius’ invisible leash ploughed through whatever the Misery shifted in front of it. Patches of razor grass had shrivelled and shrunk away from it, and even banks of rock and sand had been driven aside. Acradius’ road, cut slowly by invisible forces, defied even the Misery. Whatever my link to her, not even I had that kind of power to alter her. Questing out, I found a gully, shallow slopes rising to the height of a castle wall around it for a stretch of cracked and broken rock a third of a mile long. The leash had forced sand and rock aside, creating a road to hurry the riders along. They would pass right below us.

  We rode quickly and without chatter. Each man and woman prayed to whatever spirits they favoured, checked their lucky amulets, adjusted straps that didn’t need adjusting. They knew the mission, and it was simple: destroy the corpse. The night was lit by Eala, a waxy golden light upon us as we pressed on.

  As we rode I let my mother braid my hair. I’d never had long hair before, and her rocking chair was oddly silent as she focused on it, working the threads and strands. I’d missed her touch so much down the years. It was comforting to sit with her in her parlour. I knew that I couldn’t be in her parlour, because I was riding a horse through the Misery, but it was good to be there all the same.

  In the quiet of the rising dawn, we took up positions and made final preparations.

  I found Amaira. She sat alone, tending to her weapons, the scraping of the whetstone against her blade a quiet squeaking in the calm morning air.

  ‘I want you with me,’ I said. ‘On the ridge.’

  She glanced up at me, then frowned as though irritated with herself for noting my presence.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. I’m going in with the cavalry.’

 
I sat down beside her.

  ‘I don’t want to risk you. One more sword won’t make any more difference. Even one as sharp as yours.’

  She stopped her grinding, tested the edge with a finger. Not satisfied, she went back to it.

  ‘I used to idolise you,’ she said. ‘No, that’s not right. I trusted you. Trusted you like I’d never been able to trust anybody. I always knew you’d come for me. Always knew you’d do what you had to. Was I a fool?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  Amaira grunted, tossed the whetstone aside. Stared towards the horizon, wrapped her arms around her knees.

  ‘I’m going to die today,’ she said. ‘We’re all going to die today. And I could have died in love. You took that from me. You burned the best thing I’d ever found.’ She looked at me then. ‘For her.’

  ‘Stay on the ridge with me,’ I said. ‘Don’t die. There’s time for reparations, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Captain Linette was my friend,’ she said. ‘You deceived me. All of you deceived me.’

  I hadn’t known, but there was no point setting her right about that now. I wasn’t there to bring more conflict. I knew, the sensation of quicksand all around me, that I’d done enough of that. My obsession had blinded me. I regretted it, now. I could have left it all alone. Should have left it alone. Spirits, but I was a bitter, cruel old man. I’d objected to the love that she’d found with Dantry only partly from a sense of fatherly protectiveness. The other part was black, bitter envy.

  ‘Stay alive,’ I said. ‘Do that for me.’ She didn’t reply.

  The riders appeared first as a column of dust, dirt tossed into the sweltering Misery-air by their mounts’ bloodied hooves. A vicious heat rose around us as the sun crested the horizon. Above, two of the moons had already started their slow crawl towards one another. Eala would follow last, her orbit the shortest. Three great spheres of crystal, focusing the power of our yellow sun down in a spear of magical intensity so powerful that even the Nameless craved it. Acradius was out in the Misery, exposed, but if we failed, Kanalina and North would be forced to pass our own weapon into his hands.

  Fail now, and everything was over.

  I began to make out the front ranks of riders as they came on. They did not travel at full-tilt, but their mounts continued relentlessly, pace by aching pace. The ridge had a sharp peak, keeping us from their eyes and in the racket of hooves scraping at the earth they were unlikely to hear us. I lay in the dirt, looking out. They drew closer, a mile away, half, and then below me, the first riders began to pass by. The drudge were the corpse-blue-skinned breed, intricate glyphs across their faces, the magic so deep that it furrowed their flesh. Prayer strips streamed from their arms and legs, and at their fore, a huge warrior encased in sweltering steel bore Acradius’ own banner on a twenty-foot pole. The drudge clattered on past. Dust and grit clung to them, the hurks’ muzzles thick with foam, but every eye stared resolutely onwards towards Adrogorsk. The column was huge, stretching back across the Misery. The sight of that vast horde was enough to put an icy chill through the bones of every soldier there, me included. But they were stretched out, a ragged, hell-bent charge. If they were massed together we’d have no chance, but spread – that was our opening.

  More than three thousand had ridden past when the anchor came into view.

  The cadaver faced west, one mummified arm outstretched, signalling the direction, binding them to the thought-rope stretched between Acradius and Adrogorsk. Its gilded throne was dragged on a sleigh by a dozen of the hurks, a mocking indignity for a long-dead sorcerer-king.

  ‘That’s the target,’ I said to Dovroi and Vurtna, who lay beside me. Vurtna had woven a web of light over us to conceal us from any drudge that might look up at us, but none of them had. They were focused, intent on their destination. Not expecting an assault. Not caring about one, maybe. ‘Do whatever you can.’

  ‘We’re doomed,’ Dovroi said quietly. ‘There’s no escape once we attack.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Probably not. You have my thanks, for whatever that’s worth.’ The tall Spinner didn’t look at me.

  ‘I have family in the city-states. It’s them that I’m doing this for,’ she said. I nodded. It was the same for me. Why Vurtna had come, I couldn’t have said.

  The sled bearing the dried-out corpse ground by beneath us.

  ‘It’s time,’ I said. I stood, the dawn light reflecting from my armour. ‘Now.’

  Dovroi channelled phos from her canisters and sent a flare of light out over the lip of the ridge. It sped down towards the drudge below and detonated in a flash. Bodies flew into the air, screeching as limbs disintegrated. It was the signal to attack.

  The cavalry surged forwards over the lip, a black-armoured tide of horse and steel, and their hooves churned red dust into the air as they galloped full-tilt down the slope. I saw Amaira amongst them, her cavalry sabre high above her head and my heart reeled. Charging onwards, the cavalry ploughed towards nightmare. Here and there a horse lost its footing, crashing down, bringing down other riders behind it, but the wedge held. The drudge began to wheel their mounts around in an effort to meet them.

  The Marble Guardians erupted from the sand on the far side of the gulley. Buried, lying in wait, sunlight caught on the polished steel of their glaives as they burst forth. The drudge raised a keening wail as the huge, white-skinned warriors began to advance. Spears and axes found hands and the best that the drudge could send against us readied to meet a charge from legend.

  Is this all you have to bring against me? Acradius hissed in my mind, his words floating out from the corpse. Leathery old skin split, ancient bones cracked as the cadaver’s head turned in my direction. I had no reply worth giving.

  The Marble Guardians charged. The drudge, organised swiftly by one omnipotent will, kicked at their mounts and charged right back into them.

  A cavalry charge is a terrible thing to stand against. Without a solid wall of pikes in front of you, or a ditch, or a wall, there’s little way for infantry to stand against heavily armoured lancers, and most men will break and run, or throw themselves down and cower, praying not to be trampled by the thundering hooves. Only disciplined soldiers, long drills overriding the natural urge to save themselves, could fight the urge to run, knowing that their best odds lay in bunching tight and hoping. It is discipline and numbers alone that can face such a stampede of beast and steel.

  The Guardians had little discipline and were few in number. They still met the charging line like a battalion of battering rams. With a crash, they smashed beasts and riders out of the way, or took the impact head-on and went rolling through the sand, tangled with arms and stirrups, legs and fur. In moments the organised lines broke down into a swirling, thrashing melee. A single swipe of a glaive opened a drudge soldier from shoulder to hip, a drudge lance punched through a Guardian’s chest, but didn’t slow it. The press of drudge bodies became a wall through which the Guardians began to drive, smashing enemies from their path with the hafts of their weapons, hooking them down and sending sprays of blood into the air as they dealt death blows. One of the Guardians took a savage axe stroke to the neck but carried on fighting, grabbing one of the drudge that had struck it and ripping its arms off.

  They were magnificent.

  The soldiers met greater resistance. The enemy were the drudge’s best, their biggest, toughest warriors, bred for war. The din of battle, the screams of men and beasts filled the air. A drudge-spear punched through a rider’s side, but he rose up in the stirrups and delivered a colossal stroke with his sabre that carved the drudge’s helm and head apart before he toppled from his saddle. I saw a man dragged from his horse, a knife flashing. I saw a woman blasting around her with pistols, then hurling them at the enemy that two lead balls hadn’t stopped. A swirling, bloody mass of hacking, firing, spearing mayhem.

  I looked for Amaira, but she was
lost to me in the mass of swirling bodies and hacking blades.

  Our gunners and archers lined the ridge and poured fire and arrows down into the packed drudge. There were no volleys, just tamp and spit and stoke and fire, nock and draw and loose, a continual cracking of guns and thrumming of strings. Smoke rolled down the ridge like plumes of swamp mist.

  The drudge who had already passed had heard the sounds of battle, and turned back. Those advancing from the east began to press in. Our nine hundred men looked pitiful in comparison.

  ‘Get ready,’ I said to Dovroi. ‘Wait for your chance.’

  The two Spinners siphoned power from their canisters. Their skin took on the faint, smoky glow of gathered phos energy. Lights on their canisters winked out as they absorbed the power slowly, calmly. Their magic was calm, controlled, but there was fear in their eyes.

  The Guardians were warriors like I’d never seen. One reared up, a pair of spears lodged in its chest, tongue lolling as it brandished a broken glaive like a sword. The mushroom-white of their bald heads was slicked with red, but they were gaining ground towards the corpse-king, even as more and more drudge pressed in from fore and aft. The drudge were better, stronger than any I’d seen before. Their weapons were honed, their muscles bunched, but even the fine armour they wore buckled beneath the impact of the Guardians’ blows. A drudge who must have weighed more than I did was tossed ten feet into the air. But still more came, and the Guardians’ advance slowed as they smashed and tore at the wall of bodies before them. Drudge surrounded the Guardians. Spears punched into their backs, arrows whipped into them, and though the Guardians weren’t going down easily, still their advance slowed.

  A group of drudge had seen us up on the ridge. They drove their mounts up the slope, hooves clawing up sand behind them. Arrows lashed out to meet them, riders and beasts falling, but others reached us. The first came at me with an axe raised over its flat-faced head, but the long spear I held had the reach to meet his charge head-on and I struck him from the saddle. The second faltered as the body crashed into its path, and I went after him before his stumbling mount could right itself. I speared him in the face, forced him from the saddle, then went after each of them in turn with a flurry of thrusts. Some found armour, but others found exposed flesh, driving into muscle and organs. North worked alongside me, as fast as he’d claimed to be, gunning them down as he worked through his brace of pistols. All five were spent in short order, and our attention was back on the fight below.