by Matthew Ward
Rosa found no answer in the dancing sparks, nor in her opponent’s endless shadow. There was only the thirst. The dark man started forward. Her sword scraped from the claymore’s steel. Plate armour buckled at the shoulder. Her opponent bellowed and lurched away, slower than before.
“Listen to me!”
Rosa swooped. Viktor flung himself aside. Steel screamed as blades met, the throb of his wounded shoulder a drumbeat that drowned all else.
The blazing sword hacked down again and again. Even with one hand at the grips and another braced inches back from the tip, the claymore gave.
Viktor dropped to one knee and let his shadow run free.
Its embrace scarcely slowed her. He’d never expected it to.
As the black flame of her sword inched down, the shadow laid bare her withered soul. A part gleamed silver; timeless, deathless. Another was lost entirely, the void rotten black with malaise. Like enough to Calenne Akadra that Viktor’s gorge thickened, but where Calenne had been nought but Dark, a spark of Rosa remained. Sunlight, tangled in tarry bonds of loss and rage, swathed in mist.
His fault, for not being there when she’d needed him. For not paying full heed when he’d finally returned. You’re a terrible friend. Josiri’s words rang truer than ever.
Driven deeper, the shadow pierced mist. Viktor recoiled, repelled by a cold even deeper than his own. For a heartbeat, he beheld a world of crooked streets and viridian skies, of squawking ravens and forsaken spirits.
The claymore jarred loose and twisted away. Black flame screamed down.
Viktor wrapped his shadow about the mists, and squeezed.
The grey world drowned in colour, soul-sparks fading into sunshine. Rosa gasped as a woman drowning, the sword falling from her hand.
She stared past Viktor to the bloodied meadowlands. Anger congealed to shame.
In memory, each dancing soul-spark gained identity. The wounded. The dying. Men with hands spread in surrender. She’d killed them all. Not a knight of Essamere, a shield first and sword second. Not a soldier, who fought for those who could not. Not even a warrior. Only a monster fit for the axe and the pyre.
She felt the Pale Queen battering at the walls Viktor had built about her. Easier to think of her as someone else. As a construct of the Raven’s cursed “gift”. Harder to admit that she was born of the anger that had haunted Rosa all her life. That the wall between them was thin as silk.
She tugged at the silver wedding ring. It didn’t budge. A piece of her.
“Cut off my head,” she whispered. “I beg you. Weight me down with silver, and bury me deep.”
Viktor clambered upright, his bloodied left shoulder dipped as he embraced her. “I didn’t catch you just to shove you straight back off the cliff.”
Rosa pulled away, eyes averted. “You don’t understand. This is what I am now.”
“Then choose to be something else.”
The Pale Queen writhed, fed by surging anger. “You think it’s that easy?” Rosa bit out.
He dipped his head, the scar on his cheek pulled taut by a sad smile. “I know it isn’t.”
Aeldran found his sister stooped among the dead, ignored by the fleeing Rhalesh shieldsmen.
She stood, a green cloak bundled over her arms. The previous owner, a cataphract of the Emperor’s personal guard, stared skyward with empty eyes. “Help me.”
A hurried glance west confirmed no immediate danger from the reforming Tressian lines, though that would change soon enough. Hanging his shield from the saddle’s horn, Aeldran dropped down. “I don’t understand.”
“Take this.” She thrust the cloak into his hands and fumbled at the brooch holding her own. Icansae scarlet slipped from her shoulders. “The Emperor is missing. He may be dead. The army needs to see the princessa, or to think it does.”
He blinked. In truth, Aelia and Melanna Saranal were not hugely alike beyond a cast of build and colouring, but once she was on horseback, with a Rhalesh cloak streaming behind and men bellowing her name? All would believe. “Aelia… If you do this…”
“If I do this, no one will remember the part Aelia Andwaral played in victory or defeat. If I die here, my last deeds will be forgotten. But if I don’t, I’m guilty of every accusation I spat at Melanna, for I’ll be thinking only of my own legend.” Her lips twisted. “I need my brother’s help in one last deception. Will you give it?”
One last deception, and a paradox of honour. A lie that made gift of self and so became finest truth. Aeldran spread the Rhalesh cloak wide and pinned it about his sister’s shoulders.
“You need not ask, essavim.”
Viktor glanced over his shoulder as he reached the Tressian lines. Rosa stood where he’d left her, half a mile distant and staring westward across the meadowlands. Less a woman than a mourning spirit, buffeted by the wind. Lost in a world of self-hatred and sorrow. Too much the mirror to his own recent past for comfort.
“Viktor, my boy.” Shields parted and Elzar strode out – bruised, and leaning heavier on his staff than was normal. “Someone told me they’d seen you. D’you know what I said? That they must have been mistaken. Viktor’s a farmer now, I said. And a good one. No crop dares defy that scowl.”
The self-same scowl bled away before the relentless cheer of a man more surrogate father than friend. “I got lost on the way to market, high proctor.” Viktor scratched his head. “I never did have much sense of direction.”
Laughter and weary smiles rewarded the words, and he was glad, for all that both were at his expense. Blood and bandages betrayed wounds taken. Averted gazes showed hope bleeding away. Empty pouches and dulled swords stood as tokens of a battle hard-fought.
One way or another, that battle would soon be done. But at least it would be a contest. The battered line of king’s blue had been stiffened in his absence, not just by Keldrov’s army, but by unhorsed Thrakkians – even a trio of kraikons and a pride of simarka. Vanaguard riders mustered on the southern flank; a draggle of knights to the northern. Inkari waited with the former. Izack sat among the latter, roped into the saddle, and a splinted arm bound across his breastplate.
Elzar drew closer, the salt-and-pepper stubble of his beard creased in concern. His words carried no further than Viktor’s ears. “I’d say we’ve lost, but this isn’t a field of winners and losers. The dead outnumber us all. Where have you been?”
Where to begin? “Making terrible mistakes.”
“Your shadow?”
“In part.”
Concern became annoyance. “How many times have I told you? Deeds matter more than their guiding hand. Stop letting other peoples’ fears define you.” His eyes flicked past Viktor’s shoulder. “Hello. Seems our shadowthorn friends have found their courage.”
Viktor turned and beheld a distant woman, tall in her stirrups and sword glinting in the sun. He heard snatches of words, but the Ash Wind bore most away. A gathering of shields betrayed intent. The owl of Rhaled, and the black tree of Corvant. Britonis’ bleak grey sail and Silsaria’s white stag. And at the centre, the scarlet serpents of Icansae.
The wind dropped. Drums growled to life. A battle cry echoed out. “Saranal Brigantim! Ashanael Sifas!”
“The Emperor’s heir?” murmured Elzar. “I wonder what’s become of old Saran?”
The Hadari at least believed he was still alive, or the cry would have proclaimed victory for a new Empress. Amyradris Brigantim. “That’s not her,” said Viktor.
Elzar squinted. “I’m sorry?”
“Her hair’s too short, and she’s too low in the saddle. Melanna Saranal rides as though the steed is holding her back, not bearing her forward.”
“Does it matter?”
“No.” Not when the Hadari line was twice as wide and three times deeper than Viktor’s own. “It doesn’t matter at all.”
Elzar withdrew, muttering under his breath. Viktor lingered as the Hadari line came forward, not as a wall of shields, but as a tide of bodies come to sweep all away. His eye
s rested again on Rosa. The piece of her he’d taken railed and writhed against his shadow, begging to be free. But the more he dwelt on it, the more it didn’t feel like a piece of her at all, but something older. Apart from the world, and yet connected to everything.
A piece of the Raven? Was that even possible?
And if that were possible, what else? A horrific notion gained ground, one to test Elzar’s principles of ends mattering more than means, to say nothing of his own determination. But with the prospect conjured, Viktor found it impossible to set aside.
He joined the line beneath the 14th’s banner. Commander Keldrov offered formal salute. “I was wrong. One man can’t make a difference. But it’s an honour to fight at your side once more, Lord Akadra.”
“Not Akadra.” He spoke the words without thinking, the half-formed decision inevitable in hindsight. “Viktor Akadra can’t win this battle.”
Viktor set his back to the Hadari and held his claymore aloft. “You know my name, but I’ve learned the Hadari know me by another. A man-of-shadow. A Droshna. They claim the Dark runs thick in my blood.” He paused. “It’s true.”
Expected accusations of witchcraft never sounded. Gasps of horror fell silent. On a day filled with impossible sights, one more coaxed forth little surprise. Good. At the back of the line, Elzar offered an approving nod. To the east, trumpets flared. Drums quickened.
“The Dark is my servant,” shouted Viktor, “as I am the Council’s servant. You’ve nothing to fear from it, or from me. So whatever you see, you will stand. You are soldiers of the Republic. The line that cannot be crossed. The bough that does not yield to the axe. You will hold your ground!”
He drove his claymore deep into the mud and let his shadow billow free, a cloak spread to suffocate the sky. For a moment, the stolen piece of the Raven resisted his will, but only for a moment. The merest thought, and it unravelled into a thousand gossamer fibres. Ten thousand. More. They went taut as Viktor gathered them close, the weight unbearable, inevitable.
Drums drowned beneath the thunder of hooves and running feet.
“The Hadari came to our land in fear of Viktor Droshna,” he shouted, throat thick with strain. “Let them behold him now.”
Aeldran’s blood ran cold as shadow drowned the western skies. The Droshna. The danger warned of by goddess and Emperor, and then gainsaid by their daughter. He was real.
Aelia stiffened in her saddle and drove back her spurs. “Ashanael Brigantim!”
“Ashanael Brigantim!”
Aeldran shouted with the rest and gripped his sword until his knuckles ached. The Tressian line drew closer. Fifty yards. Thirty. Cataphracts to his left pulled ahead, red silk ribbons streaming from the pommels of their whirling swords.
Cries of alarm broke out. The whinny of panicked steeds. The crash of men falling from their saddles. Trumpets faltered. Drums fell silent. Ahead, twenty yards from the enemy shields, the cataphracts went down in a sprawl of men and horses, tripped by twitching shapes rising from the mud.
Others stumbled upright into Aeldran’s path. He glimpsed blank, unfocused stares and weaponry slack in bloody hands. Then his horse twisted away, hauled by a yank of the reins more born of horror than conscious thought.
Hooves slipped on mud. Aeldran’s horse slewed into a grave-woken Immortal and barged him aside. The cadaver clambered haltingly to his feet, one arm dragging with the tell-tale of a broken shoulder and his face split open to the sky.
A hand squeezed tight about Aeldran’s heart as he beheld others. They filled the gap between the faltering charge and the Tressian shields, bearing between them all the colours and heraldry that had come to Govanna. Thrakkian claith. King’s blue. Icansae scarlet, and more besides. All were marked by grievous wounds and shared that vacant, lifeless stare. They clung to weapons but made no move to wield them – made no move at all, save to regain their feet if struck down.
And clinging to the shoulders of each, a veil of flickering shadow, a figment of that belonging to the Droshna.
Wherever Aeldran glanced, the tale was the same. The meadowlands were thick with lurching bodies. They were infested with them. Too many to count, those slain in preceding hours roused to new and abhorrent effort.
A cage of mangled, dead flesh closing tight about the living.
At every moment, Viktor’s bond with the dead threatened to unravel. Fifteen thousand empty husks hoisted aloft by the union of plundered Raven-fragment and unyielding shadow. Viktor dared not speak, not even breathe, for fear that illusion would shatter to nothing, and the Hadari realise that the dead were of no danger save to a man’s resolve. They had no will of their own, no urge, no presence.
The first handful slipped away. Flashes of pain turned dark as the bodies dropped. Viktor gritted his teeth, felt mud under his knees and beneath the palms of his hands.
The rot spread. Corpses flaked away from his control. The disease rippled outwards, rushing from cadaver to cadaver. Faster and faster. Viktor’s breath ran red and ragged, tinged with iron from blood shed and blood shared.
A trumpet sounded. Another. Wild. Desperate. The trample of hooves and the screams of men who could take no more. The ground shook as the Hadari retreated.
“Kill the buggers! Run them down!”
The voice, unmistakeably Izack’s, rose above the din. Others joined it. Keldrov. Inkari. Thrakkians, southwealders; praises to fire and phoenix, to duty and honour. The abandon of men and women who had stared death in the eye, and now brought it as gift.
Only when the dying screams began did Viktor relinquish his grip, let the dead fall like Lumenwake blossoms. Spent, he slumped sightless.
Elzar caught him in wiry arms, held him upright as the din of slaughter reached new heights. Viktor eased a stuttering breath, and let darkness carry him off.
The madness of the rout pulled at Rosa with every step. The hedonism of victory, the horror of defeat.
She longed to join it, to indulge again that which had consumed her ever since Vrasdavora. The thought sickened, for she knew that it risked rousing the Pale Queen from her cage. But nor could she turn aside as unseen soul-sparks guttered and died. A familiar spoor danced on the air, kin to the slaughter at hand, but separate from it, as she was. It tantalised. Called to her. A hallow-wisp that drew her on over meadow and fen, and thence to a wooded copse on the Silverway’s southern bank.
Shadowthorns fled her. Tressians shunned her. And so Rosa walked on in the vapour of her guttering self as those she’d once named comrades ripped dreams of conquest to wet rags. The living, the dead and she in between.
A horse skidded sideways in the mud, crushing the rider beneath him. The shadowthorn cried out, the snap of bone sounding as his sword spun away. The horse clambered up in a spray of mud and galloped off through the trees, dragging the man behind until tangled reins at last ripped free.
The maddening spoor grew stronger, thicker as Rosa approached.
Soldiers of the 14th pressed close with swords drawn, then peeled away, leery of chancing her attention. The pursuit moved on, and she was alone with that forlorn rider.
The Icansae prince. The one from the false parley at the bridge. Aeldran Andwar. He scrabbled in the mud for his sword, and howled as the broken leg folded beneath him. Rosa snatched the sword from his trembling hand and set the point at his throat. The spoor was mystery no longer, confirmed by instincts that had come with the Raven’s gift. Old blood, faded with time, clinging to guilty hands. The only desire she any longer had left, begging for consummation. Maybe even the last peace of her mortality.
“You are Aeldran Andwar.”
The shadowthorn’s eyes went wide in a mud-spattered face. “What are you?”
“I am Death. You killed my love, so now I come for you.”
Terror turned to defiance in the other’s eyes. “I have killed many. A warrior’s duty.”
“You’d remember her. She was a naval officer, far from the sea. Her name was Sevaka Psanneque.” Rosa’s throat cle
nched, the words barely more than breath. Where was the anger now, when she needed it? “She held the wall at Vrasdavora.”
His throat bobbed. His eyes never left her sword. “She died well. I will do no less.”
She died well. No rancour. Even respect. Enough for the sword to grow heavy in Rosa’s hand, and to clog thought with doubt.
Choose to be something else.
All her grown life, she’d been a soldier. And despite the oath she’d taken to Essamere, she’d never been a shield, only a sword. The Reaper of the Ravonn, never its defender. She’d revelled in her ability to kill. Its purity. Its simplicity. And when she’d become eternal, killing had become her world.
Sevaka was gone. She’d died well, contesting another’s duty. Could Rosa say the same of all those she’d killed? How many hearts had she broken with her blade for no better reason than she could?
“What are you waiting for?” hissed Andwar. “Send me to Evermoon. Let it be done.”
What was the point of death if death was the only point? It would do nothing to fill the void left by Sevaka’s passing. It would only fester, until the last of what she’d loved was gone.
Rosa dropped the sword. “I give you back your life.”
She walked away and felt nothing at all.
Sixty-Six
The moon was an ailing crescent against night’s shroud. To the west, the fires of the Tressian sentry line granted shape to palisades thrown up with battle’s ceasing, defences mustered against a counterattack that would never come. To the east, tents clustered tight around the village of Sirovo. And between, where the lone hawthorn tree stood vigil over trampled fields, Melanna drew her cloak tight and waited as Tressian banners grew close. Her own waited a hundred yards back, her father’s Immortals – her Immortals – unhappy to be left behind.
She’d been glad to escape the encampment, its air thick with blood, and fear, and loss. In the hours since the Huntsman had returned her to the ephemeral world, she’d walked the campfires, seen for herself the warriors staring silently at sputtering fires, voices low and bereft of song. No pyres blazed to ease the dead to Otherworld, testament to vigour drained to sickly dregs.