by Matthew Ward
“Should’ve taken my winnings and gone.” Thaldvar’s bow was slung, and he leaned on a borrowed halberd as though it was his only support. “Bad fortune always follows the good.”
The quarrel over cards. Last night and a lifetime ago. So much had changed. From broken-hearted to betrothed, and now broken-hearted again. Because for all that Rosa claimed she couldn’t die, that claim needed only to be once a lie to make a lie of all. And if a demon’s spear could not unmake that beautiful illusion, then what could?
Sevaka shook away her sorrow. It would wait. All the way to the mists of Otherworld if it must. Living or dead, Rosa lay beyond her reach. She clung tight to her cutlass, and to the unlikely promise of Third Dawn.
“I’m surprised you’re not on the walls with what’s left of the pavissionaires.”
Thaldvar grunted. “The thing about arrows – the truly important thing – is that they’re finite.”
“So are the shadowthorns,” said Sevaka.
So were the borderers. As she glanced about, she realised their numbers in the breach were thinner than on the walls. Had they suffered so badly in the gatehouse’s fall? The tower from which they’d taken their shots had lost most of its outer face, but it still stood, its crumbling rampart dotted with pavissionaires. For all the resentment flung their way by the garrison, the borderers had given their all.
The ground shook. The rumble that spoke of horses goaded to the charge. The golden thunderbolt of Empire flung forth from a merciless hand.
“Death and honour,” murmured Sevaka.
“Honour I leave to others.” Thaldvar hooked an eyebrow. “And I’ve no intention of dying today.”
“Steady!” Lady Sarravin tugged on her spread-winged helm and pushed through to the fighting ranks. “Keep your shields tight and trust to your neighbours!”
To the east, smoke parted in a blaze of gold.
The Icansae cataphracts pulled ahead, borne on by swifter horses and the banners of an impetuous prince. Men and horses fell screaming into the mud, cast down by volleys from the slighted wall. Those who survived reached the rubble crest not as a conquering fist, but splayed fingers, further prised apart by waiting blades.
Cataphracts perished under halberds’ axe-blades, or were thrust onto their spear-points by the impetus of their own onset. War spears splintered against shields, or lodged so deep that they were abandoned in favour of the sword. And all the while, quarrels rained down from vestigial ramparts, bleeding the charge of the bodies needed to break the wall of shields. The wall buckled all the same, leaving a tide mark of blue among the gold and scarlet of the Icansae dead.
As Naradna’s trumpets sounded the retreat, Kai spurred his horse to one last effort and came to finish what the prince had begun.
“Ashanael Brigantim!”
Elspeth’s whoop of joy ringing in his ears, Kai crashed home.
The line shuddered. A halberd shrieked against Kai’s shield. The moonfire sword jarred against a steel pauldron. A twist, a swing and the knight whirled away in a spray of blood. A woman in the second rank took his place, cursing and screaming even as Kai sent the alabaster flame to claim her.
To Kai’s left, halberds hooked a cataphract from his saddle and dragged him down behind the shields. To his right, a dismounted warrior in Icansae scarlet battered madly at painted willow until a sword took his throat. Others came forward, keening the wordless hymn of men driven to victory or death.
Inch by desperate inch, the king’s blue wall edged back.
“Death and honour!”
The woman, new-come to the bloody work, screamed her challenge. Kai checked her thrust and swept it aside. Her helm bore the brunt of his counterblow, and she rammed her shield up at his horse’s jaw. As Kai fought for command of the rearing beast, the woman tugged free her ravaged helm, revealing an expression bereft of fear.
“Death to the shadowthorns!” she cried.
The Tressian line, so close to breaking, came forward. Kai’s opponent wasted no effort on florid sweeps, but threw her all into short, stabbing thrusts. Kai parried one, felt another scrape his armoured thigh, then leaned low in the saddle and hacked down.
The woman’s pauldron yielded where her helm had not. The moonfire sword bit deep and she went back with a thin cry.
Tressian valour stuttered. Another thrust, another scream, and it crumpled entirely. A gap formed as shields split apart. Suddenly there was nothing between Kai’s sword and the regimental banners upon the crest. And beyond that, Ahrad’s inner bailey and a victory hard-won.
Sevaka was in the third rank as Lady Sarravin’s body was dragged away, the 7th’s banner beside her and her cutlass untested. She saw the shadowthorn Emperor rearing high in triumph, the pale woman behind his saddle laughing even as she clung to the flanks of his emerald-studded armour; the backward steps as all heart went out of the men and women around her. Suddenly, she was in the third rank no more, but on a rubble slope thick with dead and thinning shields.
“7th!” she shouted. “To me! To me!”
The cry went unanswered.
Trumpets blazed brash triumph, and the cataphracts surged like storm-driven seas. One breach, and all would be washed away. One sword alone couldn’t hold back that tide.
“7th!” she cried once more. “To me!”
The battle swallowed up the words. Fear of shadowthorns. Distrust of a Psanneque. The weariness of soldiers who could give no more. Did the reason matter?
Sevaka cast about for an officer of the 7th whose voice might carry more authority. Even for Thaldvar, but caught no sign of either.
White flame shattered the last shield in the Emperor’s path. He spurred forward, the moonsilver crown brilliant against the smoke. At Sevaka’s side, the banner bearer moaned in dismay, and stumbled back across the rubble.
Make them listen.
Sheathing her useless cutlass, Sevaka ripped the banner free of its bearer’s grasp. Gripping the ash pole as tight as the Raven ever clutched a purloined soul, she levelled it like a lance and flung herself into the Emperor’s path.
In one moment, the crest was clear of living warriors. In the next, a lone woman charged headlong across the dead, screaming like a cyraeth torn straight from Otherworld, the pennant of the regimental banner ripping and snapping behind her.
Kai twisted in his saddle, sword blurring to turn the pole’s spear tip aside.
Driven by headlong impetus and desperate strength, the tip scraped past his guard. Golden scales shrieked. A wet, empty thump hurled him back in the saddle. The world shuddered and slipped away into murk.
The last thing he saw was a thin arm reaching past his to seize the reins.
The Emperor’s horse wheeled about, ripping the banner pole from Sevaka’s grip. Boots skidding on the blood-slicked rubble, she fought for balance. In the moment before she fell, a heavy hand grabbed her arm.
The slope filled with a rush of king’s blue and cheers. Soldiers stoppered the gap, shields uneven and ragged, but growing less so with every passing moment. The shadowthorns rode away, their Emperor a limp bundle held atop his horse only through the efforts of a woman half his size.
Sevaka stood slack-jawed, stunned amid cheers, as the middle bailey thinned of riders. As blades brought mercy to dismounted Hadari too slow to flee. Her rescuer, whom she tentatively recalled as a Captain Varnaz, nodded grimly and offered salute. To her. A Psanneque.
“That was well struck,” he said. “The 7th thanks you.”
Lost for words, she stared out over the mended shield wall. A bare rank remained where three had once stood. That the breach approach was choked with blood and gold did nothing to alter a bitter truth: when the Hadari came again, as they surely would, there were no longer enough bodies to hold the line.
“What now?” she asked.
“We do our duty,” said Varnaz. “We fight on.”
He walked down the slope towards the sparse shield wall. Retrieving the 7th’s fallen banner, he hoisted it aloft. “
Death and honour!”
A new chant rose up across the slope. “Varnaz! Varnaz! Varnaz!”
They called the captain’s name as if he’d ridden out with the light of Third Dawn and a host of serathi at his back. And more than that, Sevaka realised, for her victory. For her “well struck” blow. Disbelief soured with spoiled pride, and she hated herself for feeling thus when so few had survived to feel anything at all. But to so soon be again alone in a crowd was a bitter, black weight upon her thoughts.
“Don’t… take it to heart,” gasped a thin voice. “It was well done.”
Lady Sarravin sat propped against the rubble. Her armour was rent and bubbled at the shoulder; her once-splendid uniform sodden and dark. As Sevaka knelt beside her, the proctor tending her wounds gave a surreptitious shake of the head. Lady Sarravin waved him away.
“He thinks I don’t know the Raven’s coming for me,” she wheezed. “But he’s here. See?”
She extended a bloody finger to the east. Sevaka saw nothing remarkable.
“You should run,” gasped Lady Sarravin. “There’s no duty here any longer… only a fool’s death. The daughter of Ebigail Kiradin shouldn’t be a fool, whatever kinship she claims.”
Sevaka shook her head. “I can’t.”
No reply came. Lady Sarravin no longer had ears for any words save those spoken by the Raven.
Sevaka rose. It was a fool’s death to remain. It might even be too late to flee. But duty remained. Not to the 7th, now the only officer who had showed her respect and comradeship lay dead. Not even to the Republic, that had courted her as a Kiradin and disdained her as Psanneque. No, only one duty remained, and there might yet be time to see it done before the Hadari came again.
Descending the slope as one in a dream, Sevaka pushed her way through the thin shield wall, crossed the rampart of dead, and went in search of Rosa.
The gasp drowned Kai’s world in red. Lesser agony than that awful breath taken beneath moonlight and birch trees, but not so much as to offer meaningful solace. Lungs emptied of air as soon as it was drawn in a howl that reached down to his toes. Spasm jack-knifed him upright. Fingers found handhold on stone.
“Don’t be a child.” Elspeth, kneeling level with his chest, threaded charred fingers and glared at him as one might a wayward pet. “The pain will pass. If I can bear what I have taken, you can most definitely endure what remains.”
A second breath. The pain receded. Stiffness remained. Senses took in the surroundings. A ring of lunassera around him, their backs inward, and their weapons outward. The rent scales, and the torn cloth beneath. And not just above his heart. A dozen tiny harms, unregistered before, now screamed for attention. Yet the pain was distant, numb, compared to the great draining horror of that first breath.
Kai spread a hand across his breastbone. “I should be dead.”
“Do you feel alive?”
The last of the pain dissipated. The vigour of recent days returned. “Yes.”
She rose, and held out charred fingers. “Then rise, my Emperor. You owe my mother a victory.”
He took her hand, marvelling at the strength of her grip, and wondered why there had been no blood.
Sevaka found Rosa fifty yards beyond the breach, held aloft by the demon’s spear and her own rigid body. Her smoke-blackened faced was set towards the rising sun, eyes closed and expression oddly peaceful, and her hands hung limp at her side.
Sevaka closed the distance at a run, unheeding of ramparts crowded with golden armour and the emblems of eastern kings. She clasped Rosa’s hand tight and stared blankly through the clearing smoke as a Hadari shield wall formed beneath the brilliant sun, and a moon that was little more than a hazy shadow.
“My life joined to yours,” she murmured. “For however little is left.”
She swore silently that she’d not die alone. Maybe she’d even make the Raven an offering so great that he’d permit them to walk Otherworld’s mists together until Third Dawn.
Fingers tightened about hers, the pressure so slight she first thought it wild imagining.
“Rosa?”
Sevaka stared anew, her thoughts racing. Rosa wasn’t impervious. Harm passed as her body healed. But how could she heal with a spear through her heart? Hope took strength from anger and burned away sorrow.
“I’ll have you down from there. I will.”
Though how was she to do so alone?
Hoofbeats thumped. Sevaka spun about, cutlass drawn. Thaldvar slowed to a halt, hands upraised in surrender. His grey cloak was torn ragged, and his cheek crusted with dried blood. The horse was plainly not his horse – nor any other Tressian’s either – for it wore barding of golden scales.
“I saw you leave the wall. Thought you’d gone mad.” He slid from the saddle and stared at Rosa. “Now? Now I understand. But you can’t stay here.”
“She’s alive,” snapped Sevaka.
“I know what I saw last night, but there’s being stuck with a dagger and there’s… this.” He shot a hurried glance east and stepped closer, his weary expression a poor job of masking incredulity. “My fellows have snagged horses. Lumestra knows there’s nothing more to do here but die. Come with us. The walls have emptied. Half of Varnaz’s lot have already turned heel, and the rest look like they mean to as soon as his attention’s elsewhere.”
“I’m going nowhere without Rosa.”
The Hadari lines, so distant when there had been no hope, now seemed close enough almost to touch. And in the centre of the front line, beneath banners of emerald silk, a bear of a man beneath a moonsilver crown. Sevaka’s gorge thickened.
“That’s not fair. I killed him.”
“Not well enough, it would seem,” Thaldvar replied.
She turned away, more determined than ever. “Help me get her down.”
“And if she’s dead?”
“Then I’ll stay with her.” Sevaka clenched a fist and cast about for something – anything – to convince him to help. “You owe Rosa for last night. Or is it true that borderers don’t settle their debts?”
He stiffened. “I’ve paid my debts and more this morning.”
“Not to her.”
“All right. But as soon as the first shadowthorn takes a step this way, I’m off – with or without you.”
Sevaka cast her cutlass aside and looped her arms about Rosa’s waist.
“Stay out of the mists just a little longer,” she whispered. “For me.”
She took her weight while Thaldvar dug the silver spearhead free of the ground. They laid Rosa, who made no sound through it all, on her side as gently as circumstance allowed. Sevaka could only imagine the pain it set her to, and the insidious fear that her love’s spirit had fled returned full force.
No amount of hacking at the spear staff would split its timbers, no matter how Sevaka swore or struck. In the end, half-mad with desperation, she whispered Rosa an apology. Then she tipped her onto her front, planted a foot on her chest and hauled for all she was worth.
With a wet tearing sound, the spear at last came free. Sevaka cast it away and fell to her knees. Rosa spasmed and rolled onto her back. Eyes flickered once and closed, but her chest rose and fell.
Thaldvar clenched his fist in the sign of the sun, and tapped it to his brow. “Queen’s Ashes.”
“So you finally…” Black blood coughed across Rosa’s lips and dissipated as silver steam. “… finally got around to saving me.”
Sevaka wiped her cheeks free of tears. “Ingrate.”
Trumpets sounded to the east.
From her hillside vantage, Melanna watched as her father’s distant shields ground across the inner bailey. Only a thin scattering of Tressians remained. They fought to the last, a knot of defiant blue amidst the embers, but the outcome was never in doubt. She watched until the first owl banners stood proud above the inner walls, then turned away.
“What do you see?” croaked Ashana.
The shrunken goddess sat among the rushes beside the pool, lost in
contemplation of a lined and withered reflection. Silver dust spilled from ashen hair, turning lifeless and dark where it touched the water.
“Victory,” said Melanna. “My father’s triumph.”
Ashana nodded jerkily, and returned her gaze to the pool. “I don’t recognise myself any longer. Maybe that’s fitting. What I’ve done this day… But the sacrifice will be worth it, in the end.” She looked up. “Remember your promise.”
“Yes, Mother.” Kneeling, Melanna threw her arms about the Goddess’ thin shoulders. “I won’t fail you. I will see the Dark destroyed.”
Wind gusted. When it passed, Melanna was alone among the rushes, and the waters of the pool thick with tarnished silver dust.
Thirteen
Dawn found Malachi too exhausted to sleep. The chandelier’s fall had spawned a score of thankless tasks. Guests ushered home and servants steadied. The grim matter of attending to the dead. He could’ve left these things to others, as was expected for one of his rank. But for all that the deaths had come at vranakin hands, the blood stained his also. And so, he saluted the dawn from the terrace, a glass of Selanni brandy in one hand.
“Is my husband crawling into a bottle? Didn’t we agree to discuss weighty decisions?”
Lily stood in the doorway, still in housecoat and night-robe. The silken veil remained in place, muting her golden hair and hiding the scars granted by a kernclaw’s talons.
For all she pretended otherwise – for all her wry inflection – Lilyana Reveque hadn’t quite been the same since that day. Her wit had grown harder, her tongue harsher. Strange then, that husband and wife were closer than ever. Or perhaps not so strange. Of all Malachi’s friends and allies, only Lily knew of his crooked bargain. Knew of it, and had agreed its necessity.
Malachi swirled the dregs. “I burn it off too quickly for that. Nervous energy.”