Crowfall

by Ed McDonald

  ‘Nothing’s certain,’ I said. ‘We don’t have much time. Let’s move on.’

  The second bridge went down in a cloud of reddish dust, masonry splashing into the poisonous porridge below. I sent everyone who wasn’t needed over the bridge to take up their positions in the palace and the soldiers began rolling the barrels towards the final bridge. We were in a rat-trap of our own devising, and once that bridge came down, our fate was sealed. We’d fulfil our desperate mission in relative quiet. I wondered, if we survived, whether that would be any consolation as we sat, surrounded, and slowly starved to death.

  ‘I’m going to be stuck here forever, aren’t I?’ Maldon asked. He sat on top of an empty powder barrel, knees tucked up beneath his chin, a length of fuse dangling idly between his small hands. The soldiers were digging out the final pit for the last batch of explosives. Barrels stood stacked all around their frantic efforts. The third bridge was the biggest, widest, and we were going to try to blow three separate charges at once to bring down the central arch. We had a good lot of powder.

  ‘I wouldn’t count on that,’ I said. ‘Not if it goes down as we planned it.’

  ‘You think that it will?’

  I rubbed at the scars I’d carved into my arm in the Endless Devoid. I hadn’t understood their meaning at the time. But I’d learned it. I’d given my all to it. I couldn’t fail now.

  ‘I’ve never been more certain.’

  Maldon smiled. A true smile, one that I’d not seen since the day he’d vanished from Valengrad. My old friend, still there under all the pain and torture he’d endured. It had taken a long time for that light to shine through.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing at the heavy wrap of canvas I’d tied to my belt. I’d nearly forgotten it.

  ‘A gift from Valiya. Just my ego getting the better of me, I suppose.’

  Maldon smirked at me.

  ‘Spirits, Ryhalt. We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? And still it seems too soon for it to all be over. Seventh hell, but I could use a drink.’

  ‘Why the fuck not.’

  I reached inside my coat for the flask Nenn had given me, all the way back before we’d started out into the Range. Silver, the inscription Always with you, boss engraved across it.

  ‘Thought you never drink anymore,’ Maldon said as I handed it to him.

  ‘Never’s a long time.’

  Maldon raised the flask to his lips and took a swig of the brandy within. As I reached for it, North walked towards our end of the bridge. He had that jade-tipped spear resting on his shoulder. I nodded to him, but he did not return it. He stopped at the bridge’s edge, fifty feet away, and looked us both over. He was tense. We were all tense, brought to the frayed edge of our nerves, but I read his posture. I read the blank look on his face. He watched me, hard, but calm.

  ‘We need to get over to the other side,’ I said. ‘This bridge needs to come down. The drudge will be on us in less than an hour.’

  Rays of dappling moonlight shimmered across the ground, lighting the world in reds, blues, purples, sandstorm yellows, spring bloom greens. The cracks in the sky let out a sonorous wail, long and deep. I started towards the bridge.

  ‘If only I could let you,’ North said, no remorse in his voice. ‘But your road ends here.’

  I stopped. The bridge to the palace lay behind him.

  ‘What are you doing, North?’

  ‘You knew it would come to this,’ he said. He twirled the spear through the air, the point whispering through the sand. ‘What happened to Captain Amaira? Where is your criminal friend? Did you send them to their deaths, or did you kill them as you did the rest of the Blackwing captains?’

  ‘Don’t do this now, North,’ I snarled. ‘Whatever you think you know, you’ve got it wrong.’

  ‘You think that you’ve played the whole damn world for a fool,’ he said, without anger. He removed his glasses, tucked them into a pocket. Getting ready. He shouted, loud enough that the soldiers on the bridge could hear him. ‘Captain Josaf, drowned in a ditch? It would have taken a big man to hold him down. Captain Klaunus, dead in a locked room, with only a window to escape from – but you’d survive that drop from the clock tower, neh? Captains Silpur and Vasilov, conveniently vanished on a mission with you. Captain Linette, garrotted and a Darling at the scene? But it wasn’t a Darling, was it? It was this child-creature you’ve brought into the Misery with you.’ The waves that lurked in his eyes rose and swirled. ‘You betrayed your fellow captains. Then you took our men out there on a hopeless mission and destroyed them. You’ve betrayed the Range. You’ve betrayed your own Nameless master.’

  I flexed my fingers. ‘I’m no enemy to the Range,’ I said. ‘You know that, North. And he’s just a child. He’s no Darling.’

  North’s smile was a cold thing, the echo of sunken ships and the drowning cries of sailors.

  ‘Only one way to be sure.’

  Lightning fast he whipped out a pistol and shot Maldon in the chest. Maldon flew back from the barrel, blasted over by the force of the shot. He rolled across the dirt and lay still.

  ‘You chose now, of all fucking times, to see this out?’ I snarled.

  ‘We should have been four,’ North said. Smoke curled from the pistol barrel. ‘Me for the Lady, you for Crowfoot. The Guardians for Shallowgrave, Winter for Nall. But we’ll face the drudge as three. Your time here is over.’

  ‘You want me to just walk away?’

  ‘No,’ North said. ‘You’re far too much of a risk. Not even human anymore. Do you want the heart for yourself, Galharrow? Is that why you turned yourself into a monster? You want to take the heart’s power to become Nameless yourself, and cast the rest of us into the fire?’

  My brows drew in. My lips curled back from my teeth, baring them like a dog. I reached for my sword.

  ‘The mistake you’re making right now,’ I snarled, ‘is to think you can stop me.’

  I’d expected this betrayal. Crowfoot, for all his self-serving cruelty, was in this to win. But I’d known that the Lady of Waves never intended to see Crowfoot’s plan through. There was too much power on offer, too much for her to gain. She was vanity and she was never going to allow something so precious as the ice fiend’s heart to go to waste, even if it meant giving up the Range. She was not Crowfoot. Survival mattered more to her than the victory. I just hadn’t expected him to act here and now.

  North was as fast as he’d claimed. Pistols leapt into his hands and I lost him in the clouds of smoke and fire. One ball punched into my left shoulder, the other lodged in the muscle of my gut. I barely felt the impacts, ignored them, didn’t care. I’d taken far worse and come out grinning and the Misery had long since made me immune to such minor wounds. I charged for North, but by the Spirit of Judgement, he was fast. He flicked the jade-headed spear up from the dirt with the toe of his boot, caught it, and whirled it around, blocking my sword stroke in a shower of sparks. I cut again but he scampered back out of distance, his spear dancing. Thrust after thrust, a rapid succession of darting jabs towards my face, my chest, so fast that had the Misery not empowered me, I’d have taken the first strike through the throat.

  The soldiers on the bridge paused in pouring the powder into the holes that they’d created, watched.

  There is a reason that every army since the dawn of history has given its men spears. The spear is the king of weapons. It turns out that against all our cleverness, our intricate forging and metal craft, there is little more effective than a spike on the end of a stick.

  I parried once, twice, striking the shaft aside and trying to snatch at it, but North was too good, too sure, too fast. He wove the point in tight, deadly little circles, one way, the other, withdrawing, jabbing and eventually I could not keep up with him. He hammered the spearhead against my leg. The jade head scored across my left thigh, just above the knee, tearing the leather of
my riding trousers and scraping the skin beneath.

  North backed up. He’d expected that blow to punch right through the meat of my leg but my Misery-hardened flesh had ridden the impact and cast it aside.

  I growled low in my throat.

  ‘Not the effect you were expecting, was it?’ I said. ‘Don’t you get it yet? I’m not just a man. I’m more than any of you. I—’

  I stopped talking as a wave of icy numbness hit my knee, and I buckled into the sand. Something was wrong. North’s blow had barely scratched me. Just a scrape. But the cold was emanating upwards through my thigh, and down through my knee. I pressed a hand against it, not taking my sword’s point from North.

  ‘Your arrogance is colossal,’ North said. ‘You’re not the only one who plans ahead.’

  ‘What have you done?’ I growled.

  ‘I told you, didn’t I?’ North said. He allowed himself his own small, cruel smile. ‘The Lady of Waves forged this weapon. Strong enough to take down even the most terrible monster in the Misery. And it has. You see, Galharrow? We’ve been on to you from the start.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I growled. But the numbness was spreading. Through the tear in my trousers I saw my leg glittering like diamond. It grew heavier as flesh changed and grew stiffer, harder. I tore at the fabric and looked down at the gleaming, statue-smooth, translucent flesh beneath. I could see the muscle and bones through my own skin, but those too were hardening, locking up as they transformed into sparkling diamond. The black veins continued to pump blood through me, a dark network in a prison of glass. The Misery-taint within me shivered away from this magic. It was different; it was alien; it was raw with the crash of surf and tempest waves. The Lady of Waves’ own power. The Misery-taint crashed against it and was driven back, screeching like claws of flint, but not strong enough to resist the Lady’s curse.

  ‘Do you recall throwing me a broken quarrel back in that nothing-town?’ North said. He leaned against the spear now. ‘You gave me your blood and the Lady forged it into this spear. She knew Crowfoot could not be trusted. She sees so much, Galharrow. The rivers and oceans of the world are all hers. She knows what your master did. I’m surprised you didn’t realise that she’d see that. And there’s power in blood, Galharrow.’

  I tried to heave myself back up to my feet, but my knee had locked solid. The numbness was moving inexorably down my shin. I couldn’t stand. Panic hit me. I saw my own death coming, too soon, and not death in battle as I’d always imagined, but slow transmogrification into silent crystal. With a bellow, I threw my sword at North with all the strength that I had. He swayed, neatly and without excitement and it sailed past.

  ‘Your master betrayed the Nameless,’ North said calmly. ‘He even betrayed the Bright Lady, who should have ascended long ago. She should have joined the ranks of the Nameless, but Crowfoot crushed her. He would never have activated his weapon. He would have kept the power for himself. You know that.’

  His words were dizzying, but I couldn’t focus on them. My groin was gone now, my foot too. Feeling was leaving my body, as inch by inch the Lady’s enchantment worked through me. I felt the Misery inside me still warring with it, fighting battles for glands and arteries, clutching to bones before the Lady of Waves’ power drove it back. I drew breath with difficulty.

  ‘The Lady of Waves will never claim that power,’ I wheezed. ‘You’ve lost.’

  ‘Not yet,’ North said. ‘Perhaps it is time for the Lady of Waves to strike a new alliance. The Deep Emperor cannot be stopped now. But my Lady will endure.’

  My chest began to constrict. The muscle that let me breathe, whatever it was called, was locking into a plate of rigid diamond inside me. I thought of Valiya. Pictured her in my mind as she’d been in the good days, when we worked together side by side. See something beautiful when you go. Amaira had told me that, once.

  To have come so far. To be so near the end, and then to suffer this indignity. What a way to die.

  Up on the bridge, a soldier stood over the powder-filled pits. He took out a phos-powered sparker, held it over the bed of black powder. It was too soon. The fuse had not been laid. But then, with a rush of horror that swept through my crystallising body, I saw the twin tracks of blood running from his eyes. I caught the stench of rotten entrails, saw the mismatched colour of his eyes.

  Impossible. No. No, no no. I thought I knew the game. I thought I knew who the players were. The weight of my own arrogance descended on me.

  The soldier had been fixed. Saravor was dead. I’d seen him die. But somehow this man still obeyed his will. A soldier shrieked a warning, lunged for him as he struck sparks from his device.

  The bridge went up in a thunderous roar. I stood immobile as soldiers went flying in all directions, stone showering outwards in a deadly rain. North was bowled over by the impact, tumbling across the ground. My ears pounded with the noise, but my body was still locking up, piece by piece. I strained against it, willed my crystallising limbs to move, willing the Misery-magic to free me, but the numbness was pushing up through me. I couldn’t move my legs at all.

  Maldon had been shot through the heart and playing dead, but he sprang up now and ran for North, a curved black spike as long as my forearm in his hands. Snarling, he raised it above his head in both hands, ready to plunge it down into North’s back.

  North heard the patter of feet and lashed out with the spear, grounded though he was. He swung a wide arc, the haft cracking against Maldon’s legs and sending him crashing down. Maldon rolled, one leg flopping broken beneath the knee. He struggled to rise and crashed down again. Groping blindly, North struck out with the spear, the jade head piercing Maldon in the back. He screamed, but he’d taken worse and the magic of the spear had been tailored against me. It might not be killing him, but the spear pinned him. He raised the Shantar’s stinger and with a grunt, threw it at me.

  What did I have to lose?

  Wordlessly I caught it. I felt the Misery thrum through it against my hand, ancient power from the purest days of the Misery’s transformation. It was a weapon that would do for North, but my last breath was wheezing out of me as my chest and lungs became crystal. I had nothing to lose. No way back.

  I thrust the Shantar’s stinger into the base of my neck, seeking the major artery. I felt the bite of the point, the tingle of the venom, then squeezed the venom sack. Blackness flowed through my veins, sudden pain, vicious ants swarming inside my skin, biting and tearing. The venom crawled, then roared as dark energy swam down through me, challenging, screaming. My mind seemed to detonate, flooding outwards into the sky as raw, primal power overrode my control. This was no feeble scuttling beast. The Shantar was a relic of the Misery’s beginning, when the power to change had been at its pinnacle. Piece by piece, the Misery’s purity burned back through me.

  It should have killed me, should have melted me as it had the Guardians, but I had long since become immune to even the worst of the Misery’s venoms. I was steeped in them. Part of them. We were one.

  Exultation. A rush of power coursing through me. The Misery powered through me, railed against the Lady of Waves’ magic, and drove it back. Feeling returned to my chest and gut as muscle flexed and softened once again. The lead shot that North had put into me was forced out, bouncing off the debris. My skin darkened to the gleaming obsidian of the Shantar’s hide, wisps of smoke rising from it as its power consumed me. I felt the bones in my face changing, warping and welding back into new shapes. Spurs of pain ran through my jaw, through my fingers as my nails blackened and grew harder, sharper. My skin blackened to the gleaming obsidian of the Shantar’s hide.

  The Misery had taken my body, but I held on to me. Whatever me was. My fingers were black talons and the man with the spear would be torn apart. The world could be torn apart.

  I screamed. A cloud of oily shadow erupted around me blotting everything out, fraying and re-forming, a swirlin
g cloud of smoking Misery-essence. My eyes blazed with the Shantar’s power, and when I cracked my lips to roar, my teeth were sharp as knives.

  North ran for the bridge. I felt the fading of dying soldiers as their last breaths gave out. I felt the dark presence that awaited the traitor on the far side, a presence I thought I’d dealt with once before but was somehow, impossibly, here amongst us. But even as the Shantar’s dizzying power coursed through me, stronger, more violently than anything I’d ever consumed before, those things seemed small concerns.

  Out beyond the walls, I felt the drudge army tearing across the last miles towards us. Desperately holding on to thought as the Misery-energy tried to flood my mind, I saw, as the coiling smoke cleared around me, that the explosion had not destroyed the bridge. Bodies littered it, torn and smoking, but the traitor had detonated it too early, before the earth had been packed atop, and most of the blast had launched upwards into the air. Three shallow craters made hollows in the stone, but it was strong, and broad, and the drudge were going to swarm across it like a flood of rats.

  36

  Betrayed on all sides. Enemies before, after, and within, and a fire raging through me. Change and change again. Ripples of unmaking swam across my skin, smoke curled from me in waves, light bled from my eyes.

  Maldon managed to force himself up onto one leg using a twisted matchlock as a crutch.

  ‘Ryhalt,’ he coughed through the smoke. ‘It didn’t work. The bridge is standing. Spirits, Ryhalt, you’re – you’re—’

  I shuddered as the energy coursed through me. My toes wanted to bury themselves in the sand, lay down roots, become one with the ground. I shook my head, fighting back the Misery’s desire to claim me. It needed me. Needed me as its outlet, needed me to channel all the dark hopelessness forced upon it. But I held it back.

  I should have known that it would all come back here in the end, to Adrogorsk, where I’d first given that devastating, pride-crushing order. Where I’d done the thing that I’d always sworn that I’d never do in the face of the enemy. I had led the rearguard. It was my task, to hold the drudge back as what was left of our forces evacuated the city. But then I’d looked out at the drudge as they prepared for yet another bloody assault. Fall back, I’d signalled. Fall back and run. Run, and run, and keep on running back home where we could shelter beneath our mothers’ skirts. And there had been no rearguard then, and the drudge had descended on our soldiers and the orderly withdrawal became a chaotic, bloody rout.