Dead Man's Steel

by Luke Scull

  ‘The Wolf?’ Sasha said quietly. ‘Jerek never broke his promises. Not when it came to the important stuff. For all his faults, he was true to his word.’

  Saverian’s laugh was as rough as grating steel, and just as humourless. ‘Your kind do not know what it is to be true. You are creatures of instinct – a fickle, impetuous race of children concealing your true natures in falsehoods and pretentions. Perhaps it is time the two of you learned the hard edge of the truth.’ The Fade general drew his crystal sword and took a single step forward.

  Cole drew Magebane, his sudden terror warring with the Reaver’s endless urging to kill and neither wholly winning out. He and Sasha were over-matched by this Fade commander. If they were forced to fight, there was no way they would leave this place alive.

  Fortunately, a fight never came to pass. Prince Obrahim raised his sceptre. Golden-haired brother turned to white-haired brother and uttered a single word – and there was such great sorrow in Obrahim’s voice that Cole himself was moved to tears.

  ‘Why?’

  General Saverian frowned. ‘Why what, my brother?’

  ‘Not “my brother”,’ Prince Obrahim said hollowly. ‘Never again “my brother”.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘You broke your word. You broke our word.’ Obrahim closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, the dismay in his voice brought tears to Cole’s eyes. ‘Tell me true, Saverian. Did you murder Isaac?’

  The silence that followed was deafening. The general looked from Prince Obrahim to the dead Adjudicator. His mouth twisted. ‘You do not believe me,’ he said eventually.

  Prince Obrahim raised his sceptre. ‘The final great invention of the Time Before allows me to read the truth of all things.’

  ‘You never told me this,’ Saverian said. He seemed uncertain now, disquieted by his brother’s reaction. Perhaps Obrahim was the only being in the world that could so unsettle the legendary general.

  ‘I never had cause. You were my brother. You did not lie to me, nor I to you. But you have forgotten the principles the Pilgrims established when they arrived in these lands.’ The Fade prince’s eyes filled with sadness deeper than the oceans. ‘I loved you, Saverian. For five thousand years you kept our people safe. But for this crime – for the murder of kin – there can be no forgiveness.’

  ‘I did what I had to!’ Saverian hissed. His grip tightened on his sword. ‘These humans could not be trusted! One day they would have turned on us. I am the shield that defends our people from harm. I am—’

  His words became a grunt as the crystal on Obrahim’s sceptre flashed. Suddenly he began to drift up into the air, a legend – perhaps the greatest legend of them all – made helpless in the blink of an eye.

  Cole was struck by the enormity of the events playing out before him: the final exclamation point to a year of titanic upheaval. Thousands of years of trust, the soul of a people, had just been irrevocably shattered.

  ‘I should end your existence,’ Obrahim announced, tears rolling down his cheeks now. ‘But I cannot. For I, too, fall short of what our ancestors expected of us.’

  The diamond at the top of Obrahim’s sceptre flashed again and Saverian fell, somehow landing in a crouch. He rose and faced the prince. ‘Listen to me, brother! Humanity is beyond redemption. Let me prove it. I will show you—’

  ‘No. It does not matter, Saverian. From this moment on, you are no longer of the People. You are never to return to Terra. You are banished.’

  ‘Prince Obrahim,’ Saverian pleaded, making one final appeal. ‘You cannot do this—’

  ‘It is done,’ the Fade prince announced. ‘The First and Second Fleets will accompany me back to Terra. Those who wish to remain will join you in exile. You may keep the Breaker of Worlds to ensure your protection and the protection of those who choose to stay behind. Do not ask me for anything else. Never again.’ The Fade prince turned to Cole and Sasha. ‘I remember now why we departed this continent two thousand years ago. We cannot live among humanity. Perhaps you are poison. Or perhaps you merely hold a mirror to our kind that we are wiser to avoid.’

  Cole put an arm around Sasha. She was weeping. ‘What of us?’ he asked. ‘What will become of us?’

  Prince Obrahim turned away. ‘Whatever you make of yourselves in your short lives. Perhaps in a thousand years I will once again take an interest in the fate of this continent. Until that time, mankind is on its own.’

  The Aftermath

  ✥

  THE SUMMER MONTHS passed and Sasha, together with Cole, did her best to help the City of Towers recover from the events of that most traumatic of days. With the White Lady murdered, Thelassa’s rule fell to the surviving members of the Consult. Sasha spent many a morning arguing fruitlessly with men and women who had no concept of how to go about wiping their own arses, let alone attempting to rebuild a city whose foundations had been both metaphorically and literally shaken to the point of collapse.

  A month after the massacre outside the palace gates, Brandwyn the Younger arrived seeking an audience with the Consult. Aside from Magnar, the young chieftain was the sole survivor of Saverian’s assault. He claimed to have been wounded during the attack, and had returned to the Highlander camp near Westrock seeking sanctuary. The scar on his shoulder was consistent with his story, though it seemed uncharacteristic of the ruthless Fade general to permit anyone to survive the coup he had so meticulously planned. Nonetheless, Brandwyn helped arrange the transportation of Brodar Kayne’s body, as well as that of Carn Bloodfist and those of the other Highlanders, across Deadman’s Channel so that they might be buried nearer their kin. Like the Consult assassins, the warriors Brandwyn had brought with him to Thelassa had been thralls of Saverian. It struck Sasha as curious that the wily chieftain had allowed himself to be so easily manipulated. Perhaps it was her imagination, but he had appeared relieved upon learning that Magnar remembered nothing of the events of that day. Kayne’s son remained in the care of Cole’s friend, Derkin, and his mother, who had been moved from the undercity to a house not far from the palace.

  Arranging the funerals of the White Lady and Thanates in addition to everything else had kept Sasha so busy that she had not been able to accompany the ship carrying the bodies back to the sprawling Highlander encampment. Cole, however, had been insistent that he wanted to go. To say goodbye to Brodar Kayne one last time. When he returned a few days later, he reported that, while thousands had turned out to pay their respects to Carn Bloodfist, only a few dozen had attended Kayne’s burial, which took place beneath an old oak tree in a secluded spot below Westrock. Brick and Corinn had come to say farewell, the former crying until his eyes were raw. More surprising was that Rana had paid her respects as the Sword of the North was laid to rest – as had a young warrior with a wine-coloured scar on his face who called himself Finn.

  Brodar Kayne’s greatsword had been buried with him. No one knew what had become of Jerek’s body: Brandwyn recalled seeing the Wolf being shot to pieces by Saverian and insisted that he must have perished in the assault.

  As the days went by, it became clear that Brandwyn was exactly the leader the Highlanders needed. The two major surviving clans, as Sasha understood them, quickly rallied behind his leadership. His was the vision that drove his people to begin putting down permanent roots in the region, organizing irrigation systems and food supply chains. He sent impressive plans south via raven to Thelassa, outlining exactly where he planned to establish new settlements once the Fade departed the continent. The question on everyone’s lips was when exactly that would be.

  Early one clear morning, just before the rising sun burned the mist off the water of the harbour, a messenger arrived at the palace claiming a fisherman had espied the vast Fade fleet on the move. Sasha quickly got dressed and hurried down to the docks, having convinced the fisherman to take her out to Deadman’s Channel. There she sat and watched the fleet of hulking gunmetal behemoths sail down the channel to the Broken Sea, and beyond
to the Endless Ocean. She used her augmented vision to get a closer look at their decks, to seek a better understanding of how many of the immortals yet remained in the Grey City, but it was a hopeless task. All she knew was that Saverian still ruled Dorminia. While the disgraced general remained in the Trine, no human would ever be safe. The harsh truth was that, with its fleet destroyed and its Magelord dead, Thelassa was more vulnerable than ever to outside aggression. The Unborn might have granted some small measure of confidence in the city’s ability to repel an assault, but they too were gone. It was up to mortal men and women, poorly trained for the most part, to withstand whatever Saverian would eventually throw at Thelassa.

  Sasha was about to ask the fisherman to return to the city when a shadow passed swiftly overhead, leaving a long trough in the water. She glanced up to see the sleek metallic shape of the Seeker winging its way west. Aboard the craft, she knew, was Prince Obrahim. Departing these lands, perhaps never to return. Never to see his brother again.

  She wondered how that must have felt, for two siblings who had been so close for five thousand years to be torn apart in such harrowing circumstances. Then she realized she knew exactly how it felt. They’d only spent a few months together during their adult years, but the death of her sister Ambryl had left a void in Sasha’s life she knew could never be filled.

  She thought of Kayne and Jerek. The two men had been brothers-in-arms, as close in their own way as any blood relatives. They had died as they had lived – fighting side by side against overwhelming odds. In the end, they’d survived everything except betrayal. It occurred to Sasha that maybe that was the only way Brodar Kayne and Jerek the Wolf fighting together could ever have been defeated.

  That night, the dreams came again. Glimpses of lives she had no knowledge of, no understanding, as though she shared her mind with a host of strangers. She awoke covered in sweat. Unable to go back to sleep, she got up and lit the candle by the bedside table, then crossed to the small mirror in her private chambers and stared at her reflection. Her skin had a greyish tinge. Purplish veins spidered across her cheeks and forehead. She had dark circles under her eyes. She kept her hair shaved down to dark stubble now, but even that had begun to turn grey. The last few months had changed her as surely as it had the political shape of the Trine. As surely as it had Cole, whom she sometimes heard crying out in his sleep in the room next to hers. She hadn’t mentioned it to him. It would only make him angry. He seemed to spend a lot of time angry these days.

  The third night after the Fade departed for the west, General Saverian launched his assault on Thelassa.

  The alarms sounded out across the city as the first of the ships sailed into harbour. There were no Fade vessels among the invading force, only the remnants of Dorminia’s creaking fleet, warships constructed of oak and cedar that had seen better days. Though they lacked the devastating artillery of the Fade warships, they did not require superior weaponry to sail through Thelassa’s undefended harbour. The City of Towers no longer had any ships to speak of.

  Sasha and Cole were among the first to arrive at the docks, joining the bulk of Thelassa’s force of Whitecloaks, who were already arranged in formation. Before them were barrels filled with arrows dipped in oil, ready to be ignited and launched at the approaching vessels at a moment’s notice. Just before the ships came within range, they opened fire with their cannons. Rudimentary though they were in comparison with the Fade artillery, their initial volley nonetheless broke the Whitecloak line. The soldiers fell back, unprepared for dealing with death being rained down upon them from the ships. As she stared at the broken bodies smoking on the docks, Sasha understood just how vulnerable the city was without its ruthless mistress.

  We live in a world in which immortal wizards wield godlike power. Where demons inhabit the darkest places and dragons roam the skies. Where a supreme race decides who lives or dies using weapons beyond our understanding. How can any ruler face down such threats and retain their humanity?

  For the first time, she began to feel sympathy for the White Lady and Salazar. In a world filled with monsters, you became a monster too, or you died.

  Her moment of introspection was quickly shattered as another regiment of Whitecloaks arrived. The city’s soldiers took cover behind hastily erected barricades and Sasha and Cole joined them, listening to the explosions, praying the barrier would offer some kind of protection from the iron shots smashing down around them.

  Finally the cannons ceased. Sasha poked her head out to the unwelcome sight of a ship about to dock. She emptied her mind and focused, attempting to utilize what Isaac had called her ‘telekinetic manipulation’. She felt the tingling in her body and she pushed, willing the ship to topple over and dump its passengers into the churning waters of the harbour. Though it creaked and lurched ominously, the ship proved beyond her ability to capsize. She was quickly exhausted, her hands shaking, the effort of activating the implant in her skull claiming its price from her body.

  Rope ladders were tossed over the side of the ship and then a human crew began climbing down and leaping onto the docks, utterly fearless. They brandished knives and swords and cudgels, but they lacked the manner of professional soldiers and Sasha realized they must be thralls. Each of the ships carried hundreds of the enslaved men and women, all of them subject to Saverian’s will courtesy of the tiny metallic parasites inserted in their bodies. Having been exiled by his kin, the Fade general was utilizing every tool available to him in an effort to conquer the City of Towers.

  The first wave of thralls marauded up the docks and the Whitecloaks went to meet them. Though they were better trained, the Whitecloaks lacked the single-minded aggression of Saverian’s mentally enslaved army. Sasha raised her crossbow and tried to pick out a target, but the knowledge that these were innocent people, puppets dancing to a ruthless master, made it tough to pull the trigger.

  Cole noticed her hesitation. He drew Magebane and took a deep breath. ‘If we don’t fight,’ he said slowly, ‘we die.’ But he didn’t sound convinced. Nonetheless, he rolled out from behind the barricade and sprang into action, his magical dagger cutting and slicing, killing with terrifying ease. The boy she’d once known, the cocky cutpurse and thief, had become a master assassin to rival his mentor, the Darkson. The realization hurt Sasha more than she could explain.

  A cloaked figure launched itself from the deck of the foremost ship and landed on the very edge of the dockside, thirty feet covered in a single leap. Time seemed to stand still.

  General Saverian rose and raised his deadly shoulder-cannon. The terrible ra-ta-ta-ta-ta of the weapon tore through the air as it unleashed a storm of projectiles upon the combatants. Whitecloak and thrall alike were mown down. Cole somersaulted away, trailing shadows, taking shelter behind a stack of crates, the deck splintering around him.

  Saverian’s gone mad, Sasha thought, staring at the mighty Fade. He had a crazed glint in his obsidian eyes, as though something in him had broken following his exile. That’s what happens when you cannot bend. You break.

  The towering general took a single step forward, his jaw clenched. He seemed to bite off every word as he spoke it. ‘Surrender your city and I may suffer some of you to live. To serve me and my kin.’

  In answer, several Whitecloaks unleashed a volley of arrows. Saverian exploded into motion, his cloak sending the arrows skittering away, deflecting them in mid-air. One or two struck his silver armour and bounced off, unable to penetrate the Fade-forged material. He raised his shoulder-cannon once again. ‘So be it,’ he growled. ‘You shall all die.’

  Sasha focused on the devastating weapon in Saverian’s hands. She reached deep within herself, summoning all the strength she had left.

  The shoulder-cannon was torn from Saverian’s grip. It hung suspended in the air for a moment, before Sasha tossed it into the harbour, where it made a small splash. The general roared his outrage, but the Whitecloaks were already melting out from behind their cover, closing on the exile, who was all alon
e. The cannons on the ships were unable to fire for fear of hitting Saverian.

  This is the moment, Sasha thought, hope blossoming. The other ships had yet to unload more thralls onto the docks. Saverian was surrounded, a victim of his own hubris. The general had decided to lead from the front, for no other reason than he believed himself invincible.

  But then Saverian drew his sword, and hope was quickly extinguished.

  He moved like a whirlwind. Whitecloak after Whitecloak died, limbs sliced off, their bodies cut clean in half. Blood sprayed everywhere, drenched the docks until it was dripping into the harbour in a steady patter.

  ‘Witness,’ thundered Saverian, as one of Thelassa’s soldiers seemed to fall apart right in front of him, his head soaring in one direction, his arms in another. ‘I am the sword that has vanquished every threat for five thousand years! None can stand against me!’

  Cole stepped out from behind the crates.

  Sasha’s heart hammered in her chest. No, she wanted to shout. You’ll die, Cole!

  But he was no longer the Cole she remembered. Just as in the cave of the Nameless cultists in the Devil’s Spine, her friend had become a living embodiment of the Reaver.

  He stalked towards Saverian, seeming to glow from within, a crimson radiance suffusing his skin, while behind him shadows crawled and leaped. The Fade general seemed entirely unmoved by the sight. He merely waited, his jaw clenching and unclenching, the illusion of iron self-control slipping by the second.

  Glowing dagger and crystal sword came together in a deadly dance, too fast for her to follow. Once more, Sasha dared hope.

  And, once more, hope died. Magebane skittered across the docks and Saverian emerged from the melee with one hand around Cole’s throat, holding him a foot off the ground.