The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  “You want a hand with that?”

  “No, I got it.”

  For some reason she couldn’t name, she didn’t want anyone to touch the knives right now. Flash recall of the fight came and went, impressions she didn’t know whether to trust or not. Falling Angel, jumping out of her boot and into her reaching hand. Quarterless, gone, wasted in a flubbed throw and lying loose on the boulevard paving until … she’d grabbed it back up, hadn’t she? Reached back with her empty left hand, somehow found it, somehow knew it was there, and …

  She knew where all of them were.

  It dawned on her, crouched there twisting Quarterless back and forth by tiny increments, working it loose of the bony ridges around the lizard’s eye. With the same certainty that she felt the butt of Quarterless in her hand, she felt Falling Angel here, laid neatly by the toe of her boot, yet to be cleaned of the gore it was clotted with; Wraithslayer, there, jammed in under the soft reptile armpit a yard down from the head where she crouched; Laughing Girl and Bandgleam, both buried in dead reptile peon eye sockets, there and over there. She felt the locations to the inch, the same way she’d know exactly where to reach and pick up her goblet at breakfast without ever lifting her eyes from the book in her lap.

  It is a meditative, communing state …

  Quarterless came clear with a sticky scrape. She held it up, then cast around in vain for something to wipe the blade clean. Silently, the Dragonbane handed her a torn piece of cloth, already much stained and marked.

  “Thanks. Is this … ?”

  Egar nodded over toward the chunk of rubble in the middle of the boulevard. There was a crumpled body lying beside it. “Privateer kid’s shirt. He’s not going to need it.”

  “No, I guess not.” She cleaned Quarterless thoroughly, put it away at the small of her back, picked up Falling Angel. “How many’d we lose?”

  “Looks like nine.” The Dragonbane grimaced—as if he was trying to work a deeply lodged piece of meat out from between two of his front teeth. “Just closed the eyes on number eight, and there’s one of Tand’s still not finished dying, but he won’t be long. Fucking peon opened him right up, hip to heartstrings.”

  She stowed Falling Angel in her boot and stood up. “Do anything for him?”

  “Fed him some of that powder your iron demon gave us. Seemed to work. His pals are there, praying with him. Like I said, won’t be long.”

  “All right.” Twinge of krinzanz longing at the mention of powders and pain—she crushed it out. Set one boot against the bulk of the dead warrior caste lizard, bent her leg and shoved hard so it rolled over and she could get to Wraithslayer. A thought struck her. “What about Kaptal?”

  “Yeah, not a scratch on him. He was brandishing that knife you gave him, but I didn’t see any blood on it. Don’t know if the lizards even tried to touch him.”

  “Neat trick if you can pull it off.” She stood up with Wraithslayer in her hand, inspected the blade minutely. “We got anybody too badly hurt to march?”

  Egar shook his head. “They’ll march. They’ll fucking double-time it, if it gets them out of this place any faster.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re not getting out of here tonight, that’s for sure. Going to have to camp somewhere close.”

  “Yeah.” He hesitated. “Should have stayed up on the ridge.”

  “But we didn’t.” She shot him a glance. “Probably wasn’t any safer up there anyway, Eg.”

  He grunted.

  She stowed Wraithslayer in the magical upside-down sheath on her left breast. Drifted across the boulevard paving to the dead reptile peon she’d killed with Bandgleam. “You notice anything about this stonework?”

  “It’s warm.” The Dragonbane trailed after her, scuffing at the paving with a boot tip. “In patches, anyway.”

  “Yeah.” She stooped for the knife, tugged it free. Slim-bladed Bandgleam came easily out of the blood-glutted eye socket, rested lightly in her hand as she wiped it down. “The way I figure it, either the dwenda built it like this, or it’s maybe something the Warhelm’s weapons did when they brought this lot down. Either way, it must have been a beacon for any Scaled Folk that washed up this far north.”

  “Looks that way.”

  She put the knife away, across from Wraithslayer on her chest. Looked around at the scattered reptile corpses and the men who had died. Shook her head.

  “I doubt this is all of them, Eg.”

  TAND’S MAN TOOK LONGER DYING THAN ANYONE EXPECTED, AND HE WENT hard despite the Warhelm’s painkilling powders. Some horror of letting go in this haunted place, leaving his mortal remains here for whatever might stalk down these desolate boulevards once night fell. His fellow freebooters reassured him as best they could, but their own faces were portraits in ill-ease and the dying man was no fool. So they set out a few of the radiant bowls against the encroaching dark and stood or sat around in the glow they cast, trying not to listen to the mercenary’s slowly weakening curses and groans. Yilmar Kaptal was impatient to move on, but his protests dried up in the face of a grim stare from one of the other freebooters. Archeth stowed her own impatience where no one could see it, sat at another bowl instead and submitted stoically to the Dragonbane’s blue-lit ministrations with needle and thread. Turned out he was a nifty little seamstress when he wanted to be.

  A little later, the fire sprite showed up, bright orange and red in the windy darkness. It flickered about on the fringes of the company, like an embarrassed late guest shown in to a dinner already begun. Egar noticed before she did—she was lost in the soft blue glow from the bowl. He leaned across to where she sat cross-legged and touched her on one knee.

  “Hsst. Our friend’s back.”

  “About fucking time,” she said sourly. Her wounds ached, and the dying mercenary’s dribble of imprecation and pleading was getting to her worse than she’d expected.

  “Occurs to me,” said the Dragonbane slowly, “it maybe went off to scout a route that didn’t take us in sniffing range of any lizard nests. We should have waited up on that fucking ridge.”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t. Let it go, Eg.”

  He said nothing, and they sat in silence together, listening to the dying man and the hoot of the wind in the architecture. Presently, one of the other freebooters came over and made brief obeisance. Archeth nodded bleakly up at him.

  “What is it?”

  “A boon, my lady. Ninesh asks if you can leave the walking flame here to watch over him in death.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, obviously fucking not, no.”

  “Or then, if the demon at An-Kirilnar might be asked to send out another flame to do it.” The mercenary made an awkward gesture. “He’s delirious, my lady. But it would comfort him to be told the lie. It would help him to let go.”

  Archeth remembered the stench of voided bowels and burned flesh in the house at Ornley, the unending keening from the next room. What Tand’s men had done to the islander—she tried to recall his name, but it wouldn’t come—and his family. She couldn’t recall if this dying thug had been there or not, but she imagined it wouldn’t have made much difference one way or the other. The mercenaries were all cut from the same grubby cloth—veteran soldiers of fortune, recruited by reputation for the expressed purpose of securing their master’s slave caravans, shipments, and stables. It was grim, brutal work and Tand wouldn’t have been choosing them for the milk of human kindness in their hearts.

  She shot a glance at Egar. The Dragonbane shrugged.

  “If it gets us moving any quicker.”

  “Oh, all right. I’m going.”

  She levered herself to her feet, wincing at the twinge across her ribs from the stitches. She made her way over to the dying man and his companions, no clear sense of how she was supposed to do this at all. Giving comfort had never been her strong point—too much stored bitterness of her own to carry around, never mind anyone else’s fucking pain.

  Around the makeshift encampment, men stopped their conversations
and watched her.

  Great.

  You walk, Archidi, you find the strength. The Dragonbane’s words filtered back through her memory. Some men don’t have that strength, so you have to lend it to them.

  The other mercenaries shuffled back, gave her access. The dying man looked up at her in the blue gloom, face beaded with sweat, breath sawing from his lungs in tight little gusts. They’d pillowed him on his bedroll, put a blanket over his body and his wound, but he was shivering as if they’d stripped him naked.

  She crouched at his side. His eyes tracked the motion, she saw how he flinched from her. Burned black witch. She put a hand on his shoulder and he made a noise like the snort of a panicking horse. But his eyes were on her face and his gaze clung there, fearful and wondering, like some almost drowned man, staring at the grim rise of a shoreline beyond the chop of the waves he struggled against.

  “You have fought well.” The words were out of her mouth before she fully realized what she was going to say. “You have stood against dragons.”

  “I, I … yeah. Fuckers got me good, Mom. Got me good.” The tormented features twisted. “They, they, I couldn’t—”

  “They are all slain now,” she said, astonished at the ease with which the banalities spilled from her lips. “And we are victorious, and, uhm, in your eternal debt for your part in that victory. You have given your blood so that your comrades might go on. Among the Black Folk, that is a sacred act. Know, then, that the Great Spirit at An-Kirilnar has also seen your sacrifice and will send a flame guardian to mark your passing. Go to rest in pride. From now until, uhm, the end of all days, the fire will stand here, in memory of your hero’s name and in protection of your resting place.”

  “I …” A trace of clarity surfaced through the delirium in the desperate eyes. “Is it so, my lady? Really?”

  “Really,” she said firmly. She took one of his scarred and calloused hands, pressed it between her own. “Now go to good rest. Let go.”

  The mercenary hung on a little longer regardless, but his breathing seemed less panicked now, and he cursed less than he had before. He confused Archeth with his mother some more, asked her not to leave him, asked her why her face was so sooted up, was anything wrong, had something happened to Bereth§ . He mumbled to his comrades, and to others who were not there, told them all he was a hero in the eyes of the Black Folk, smiled like a child with the

  words.

  Shortly after that, his breathing stumbled and then stopped.

  They sat around him for a still couple of moments, just to be sure. One of the other mercenaries leaned in and pressed fingers to the neck. Held the back of his hand to the open mouth. Nodded. Archeth got up, a little stiffly.

  “Right. Do what you need to do for him. But get it done fast, we’re pulling out. This isn’t a safe place to spend the night.”

  She nodded across at Egar, and the Dragonbane stood up, started barking orders. The men scrambled for their gear, relief palpable in the sudden surge of motion. She moved, too, trying to shrug off the dead man at her back. But something of him clung stubbornly on. She paused on her way to get her pack, stood a moment looking back, watching the surviving freebooters with their dead comrade in the light from the radiant bowl.

  They were frisking the newly made corpse for valuables.

  CHAPTER 34

  n those dark and desperate days, the Kiriath did not much care what they summoned from the void, nor what forces they set free in the process. Arrayed against them was all the glimmering, might of the witch folk, and a seven-thousand-year-old Empire built on sorcery that could not coexist with their science. A reckoning was inevitable, and the powers the witch folk wielded were ancient and terrible. It was no time for half measures. From the void, the Named Commanders drew seven spirits in fury, constrained them in iron, and charged them with protection of the Kiriath people and extermination of the Aldrain foe.

  Chief among these was the Warhelm Ingharnanasharal.

  Perhaps not the most savage among the summoned seven, nor even the most lethal, but Ingharnanasharal it was who burned brightest and was most favored among the Kiriath command. Who was chosen for the highest duty, flung up into the heavens like a bright, newly minted coin, while the others remained below, moored to the Earth and their several separate concerns. To Ingharnanasharal fell the duty of the Watch from On High, of seeking out the Aldrain wherever they lurked on the globe and bringing their doom, and more, of tasting the winds and particles of the world, to understand what had been done to its fabric in the age before, that would allow such outrages against reason as the Aldrain dominion, to fashion that understanding into weapons and strategy that would bring the enemy to their knees and deliver the final blow.

  In the beginning, the war went hard for the Kiriath, and on more than one occasion Ingharnanasharal came close to being clawed out of the sky by—

  “A-hem.”

  THE HELMSMAN PAUSED.

  “Can we speed this up?” Ringil asked mildly. “I don’t want to hear your old war stories, I’ve got plenty of those myself. Let’s skip the Ancient Clash of Elder Races, shall we, and try to concentrate on current events?”

  “You ask questions that require context if you are to understand the answers.” Anasharal’s voice was unmistakably sulky. “The war against the Aldrain is the cornerstone of that context. Ingharnanasharal was given a sacred and eternal trust to fight that war—”

  “Yes, all very noble, I’m sure. This Ingharnanasharal—not a close relative of yours, by any chance?”

  Silence. From the Compulsion glyphs graven in Anasharal’s carapace, a faint but growing radiance. Sea Eagle’s Daughter rocked gently on the swell. Ringil leaned forward a little in the chair they’d brought him from the captain’s cabin.

  “I asked you a question, Helmsman.” He summoned force in the pit of his stomach. The glow of the symbols across Anasharal’s carapace lit up in burning blue.

  “I—” The words came like pulled teeth. “Proceed. From Ingharnanasharal. I am. The Purpose. Ingharnanasharal decreed.”

  “Hmm.” Ringil sank back in the arms of the chair, no clear idea what the Helmsman was talking about, but damned if he’d admit the fact. “You seem a little on the tubby and impotent side for a savage summoned spirit charged with the extermination of a whole race.”

  Hesitation. The fiery spidering lines of the glyphs had faded out, but the glow was still there.

  “Time,” the Helmsman spat jaggedly out, “has passed.”

  “It does that, doesn’t it. So tell me, what happened after the war?”

  “What you already know. There was a reckoning. The dwenda were driven out. There was … a victory. The casting down of the witch realm, the rise of the Kiriath. And.… . demobilization followed.”

  Ringil nodded. “They took your weapons away.”

  “A … new order was proclaimed. A new mission. To raise humanity from the muck of superstition and peasant awe, to build a new human Empire on reason and science.”

  “Well, that seems to be going well.”

  Some trapped piece of anger seemed to get free inside Anasharal. “You see with the eyes of a mortal,” it snapped. “Locked into your own context, ignorant of any wider option for change. It is no easy thing to roll back seven thousand years of glamour and terror and prostration to the unknown. Humans are apt to superstition, it is in their blood, and this world suits them only too well. To forge and temper a weapon against that, to bring about in humans the levels of civilization that the Kiriath once attained in their world has been the work of patient millennia, and still it is not halfway done.”

  “No. And Grashgal and the rest going away can’t have helped matters much.”

  “As you say.”

  Ringil rubbed at his chin. It was at best a loose and rambling interrogation, this, but harder and faster might not be wise. He knew from some unpleasant experience of his own that it was often harder to break a man by going directly to the point and forcing answers than by
letting the subject work up to it in his own time. Direct demands and brute force stiffened resolve, provided a clear enemy to focus on in the inquisitor. In some men and women, it could bring on a berserk strength of will enough to give even a skilled torturer a run for his money. Everyone broke in the end, of course, but along the way you got wrong information, you got garbled details, you got the odd accidental corpse before you’d properly finished sorting and checking the truth of what you’d learned …

  Sometimes you got a real hard case who’d bite through their own tongue and try to bleed to death rather than cave in.

  But let the captive talk generally, let them ramble on in hopes of avoiding or at least forestalling actual pain, and sometimes the will to resist unraveled along the way. Sometimes you got what you wanted almost without your subject realizing that they’d given it up.

  And Anasharal liked to talk.

  Anasharal liked to lecture, to upbraid, to play word games of wit and irony, and generally point out how completely fucking superior it was to the human company it found itself in. Maybe there was some leverage in that.

  Of course, Anasharal was not human. But there was no harm in trying the same basic tricks, and might be rather a lot to be gained. Ringil had only one ultimate threat to use against the Helmsman, and once that was played out and Anasharal was sinking like a stone through the mile or more of ocean under them, there’d be no more useful intelligence. Gil didn’t want to arrive at that point too fast, if at all, because he still wasn’t sure if he was bluffing or not. And though he didn’t think the Helmsman could drag itself to the gangway fast enough to fall in and drown of its own accord, he did wonder after his run-in with Anasharal’s self-heating carapace, if it could maybe commit a vindictive kind of suicide by melting itself to slag right there on the deck, burning through the ship’s timbers and hull and scuttling Sea Eagle’s Daughter entire.