‘Two of my children are about to fight to the death. You’ll just have to wait and see, Calestar,’ the Dark Lady purred. ‘Just you wait and see.’
Not the answer he’d been expecting and Dom felt a flicker of disquiet. His was the right and he knew it. She knew it. Didn’t She?
Dom pushed away the unease, intent now on his prey. On his last battle.
There were only two outcomes, and both of them suited Dom: Rivil died and Dom had his vengeance; or Dom died and he could rest in the lap of his Bloody Mother forever. Cracked lips stretched in a smile and he turned his face up to the setting sun, let the dying light brush against his eyelids and cheeks. Maybe the last light he’d ever see.
‘Let’s get this fucking farce over with,’ Rivil snarled at him, settling the shield on his arm. ‘There’s a war on, remember, and your wife was fair game to any of the true faith. I have nothing to apologise for. My feet are on the Path and my faith is strong. The gods will see all I have done for Them. They will judge fairly.’
Dom didn’t have a shield. He was weighed down by mail and helmet already and wasn’t sure he could stand the extra bulk. Two days of rest and food were nowhere near enough to restore his strength.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose. Scents of crushed grass and smoke and death, the taint of shit and rot. The air was still, the breeze dying with the noise of the crowd and men stilling, waiting for the violence to begin. The irony was that Dom could barely remember Hazel’s face any more. The compulsion to kill Rivil was the final dying kick of a drowning man. It was the last thing from his old life, from the time before the gods, before Her. There was nothing else.
There’s Rillirin.
The thought prompted a spike of pain behind his eye. It didn’t matter; she didn’t matter.
She’s carrying my child.
Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t.
He’d made the challenge and there was no backing out. Corvus nodded encouragement when Dom met his eyes, and the Blessed One was praying, Skerris at her side intoning the words with her. They were praying for truth, not for him, and Dom felt another, bigger flicker of doubt.
‘The gods are watching,’ Lanta shouted. ‘Let them judge. Begin!’
Dom leapt. His feet barely touched the grass as he closed the six strides between them. Rivil snapped up his sword, but Dom’s weight was behind his overhead blow and he forced Rivil to take a step back. The clash of blades hung copper-bright in the silence.
As Rivil recovered, Dom’s blade swept down and around, screeching off his breastplate. Without pause, he reversed direction, a vicious upsweeping backhand arcing towards Rivil’s left armpit and the gap in the armour there. Rivil twisted his torso sideways out of reach and punched Dom in the face with his sword hand. Dom’s blow slid wild and his momentum faltered.
Eyes watering, nose throbbing and his lungs already heaving, he took a step back and surrendered to instinct. Sensing rather than seeing the attack, he blocked two-handed above his head, Rivil’s strike so powerful that it battered his own sword down almost to his helmet. Rivil hammered another blow at his head, and another. And another. And another.
Dom gave ground under each attack, slipping away from the force of the blow towards the ring of Mireces at his back, the sunset smearing in his eyes. He backed, and backed again, until the men behind started clattering blades on shields and he knew he was out of space.
Rivil was red, grunting with each smashing blow, all force and fury and burgeoning embarrassment. Not killed me yet, eh? You’re supposed to be the king and you can’t even defeat a madman who’s been beaten, tortured and starved for weeks. Now that’s just humiliating.
Dom huffed a laugh despite his wobbling legs, his burning shoulders, and as the next blow arced towards him, he angled his sword, planted his feet and parried, driving upwards from the thighs. Rivil’s blade screeched along his and off the edge, plummeting towards Dom’s right leg. Dom skipped forward, brought his right foot up and stamped it heel-first through the outside of Rivil’s right knee.
The joint came apart with a crunching pop like breaking a chicken’s neck, only louder, meatier. Rivil’s sword thudded into the sod and he fell forwards with an agonised howl. Dom stepped through and pivoted, the movement driving his sword in a flat trajectory, red light gleaming along its edge in a long, unstoppable backhand at the kneeling Rivil’s neck.
Rivil fell on to his face and Dom missed, blade hissing above his back. The prince twisted on to his side and flailed his sword, forcing Dom away. His vision swam as knowings chased the black dots in his eyes. The Dark Lady wasn’t playing fair and he could hear Her laughter as the wind picked up, whipping clouds across the dying sun and making it even harder to see.
She wants me to lose?
The wind strengthened and torches failed, men crying out in fear, praying in loud voices. Hoth-Nagarre had never been fought quite this close to the gods before. This is what it’ll be like every day once we’ve won, Dom thought muzzily. Them so close, always so close.
An image of Rillirin seared into his head, nearly blinding him, forcing him to step out of range and shake his head like a dog. He’d always known what would come should he fail, but now he began to see what would come if he won, and it was almost enough to make him drop his sword and throw himself on to Rivil’s blade; a quick end no one could deny or prevent.
‘No, you won’t.’ The words were a whisper in his head, the voice all around and inside him, pain pulsing low in warning. ‘Think of the horrors that would await you if you displeased me.’
‘I won’t,’ he panted. More cries of terror as one of the dead torches popped into life on its own. Men scrambled away from it and more voices were raised in prayer. Rivil was somehow on his feet again, weight on his left leg, using the shield as a crutch. Dom lunged, slid in beneath his guard and slashed at his stomach; again the heavy plate resisted. He leapt away, almost blocking Rivil’s counter; the sword tip raked across the back of his forearm, slicing through the vambrace. He winced and jerked away, felt the blood begin to flow.
Circling slowly, seeking an opening and trying to slow the bird-fast thumping of his heart. Rivil bent and grabbed his knee, then slipped his hand into the top of his boot. Dom snapped his sword into guard, too late. Rivil threw the dagger and the slim blade thudded into Dom’s thigh.
Dom screeched and his leg folded. He flailed at Rivil as the man hobbled in and tried to drag himself to his feet, but Rivil struck out and disarmed him. Dom’s sword spun away.
‘Is that all you’ve got, Wolf?’ Rivil asked, though he was panting. ‘Is this what seven years of vengeance looks like? A starving madman kneeling in the grass before his rightful king, unable to defend himself. Unable to save his wife’s memory, just like he couldn’t save her life? Gosfath’s balls, but you’re pathetic. I’d hoped for more of a contest.’
A sob bubbled out of Dom’s throat as he clutched his leg in both hands, blood soaking through the wool, pain making him dizzy. ‘Please,’ he mumbled, ‘please.’
The Dark Lady laughed and Gosfath lapped up his pain like a cat.
Rivil limped closer. ‘Please what?’ he mocked, poking Dom in the shoulder with the tip of his sword. ‘Please what?’
With one savage move, Dom ripped the dagger out of his own leg and drove it upwards, beneath the faulds that protected Rivil’s waist and hips, and into his groin. It ripped through bladder and bowels and Rivil’s scream was so powerful it burst the blood vessels in his eyes.
‘Please just die,’ Dom snarled, ripping the knife out and stabbing it back in as Rivil went over backwards. Stabbing over and over at thighs and lower belly and into the groin, sawing away gobbets of flesh, reaching inside to rip out handfuls of meat, slimy and warm and unidentifiable, hot blood pumping-spilling-jetting, on his hands, in his face, in his mouth. ‘Die, die, you cunt. Fucking die!’
He forced a hand in through the mess, up into Rivil’s body cavity, and tore out whatever didn’t slip throu
gh his bloody fingers and threw the handful of innards into the prince’s face, laughing madly.
Rivil was on his back, twitching and mewling, his hands torn from trying to fend off the knife, a couple of fingers hanging by strings of flesh.
Dom bent over him and grabbed his face in a bloody hand. ‘Judged,’ he snarled. ‘Judged and found wanting.’
Rivil was incapable of answering, life pumping out in a thick red flood, so Dom forced himself to stand, his dead wife’s face before him for the last time. Men were staring at him with horror, with disgust and not a little fear. Dom cackled, blood on his teeth.
The circle shimmered and the Dark Lady appeared, and then Gosfath too, the god ignoring the onlookers, straddling Rivil and peering into his eyes, fascinated. Rivil’s bubbling whimpers found new strength. Everyone in the circle fell to their faces in the dirt, horror, devotion and pure terror rising like steam. Dom groaned as he dropped to one knee, torn leg shaking.
‘You have been found wanting, Rivil Evendoom, Prince of Rilpor,’ the Dark Lady said as Gosfath grinned and ripped open the plate and chain as though it was eggshell. He reached in through the mess of Rivil’s groin, his arm disappearing up to the elbow. Blood trickled from Rivil’s mouth.
‘Your faith was tempered with greed,’ the Dark Lady continued and Dom giggled when he realised that the prince was, through some bloody magic, still alive and listening.
‘You thought to use us instead of serving us. Your punishment was just. While you, my love,’ She said, turning to Dom, ‘you serve me well.’
She reached down and slid a hand over the wound in his thigh and Dom gritted his teeth against the pain, groaning as pale fire, so familiar from his time in the Waystation, licked down Her arm and into the wound, cauterising it. He smelt his flesh burn and groaned again. ‘There is still much to do, my love. I must have you well to do it.’
Her eyes were golden and black, human and goddess and dead. Mostly they were pools beckoning him in, promising him lusts and agonies he would delight in. She put Her head on one side and studied him, while Her palms ran warm and gentle over his arms and more fire burnt in the hole in his shoulder and then his cheek. He could see it, burning below his eye. She pulled him to his feet, took his hands and placed them around Her waist, and leant in towards him.
‘Despite everything, despite even this, I know there is something you hold back from me. That there is a secret you have somehow managed to guard through all our little … intimacies. I let you live because I want to know what it is.’
Dom smiled into those flat, dead, beautiful eyes and pressed a soft kiss to the tip of Her nose. ‘There are no more secrets. I am a still pool and you can see all the way down through my depths. I have nothing left to hide and nowhere to hide it that you can’t reach.’ His red hands tightened on Her waist. ‘I am nothing but what you make me.’
‘Your whore carries your babe inside her.’
‘She is nothing, and I do not know what the child may become. I care not unless you tell me to care.’
‘You are my voice and eyes and will in this world, Calestar,’ She said. Fires burnt in the pupils of Her eyes and Her teeth were pointed when She bared them at him. ‘And I know you still lie. I will find your last secret, and I will rip it from you.’
‘There’s nothing to find,’ he began, but the words ratcheted up into a scream as She wrenched at Dom’s face and pushed. His knees buckled as She ripped open the godspace in his mind, searching for what She thought he still kept hidden. The night filled with screaming – not just his as Holy Gosfath began to feed – and the scent of lightning; the torches blazed up and into searing bright life and Dom’s nostrils filled with the smells of blood and sex and triumph.
Weeping, hands clawing at his head, seeking to soothe pain like he’d never known, pain that rippled from his skull down his spine and into every limb, Dom pressed his face to Her thighs and drooled, unable to breathe or think. Dimly, he was aware of blood leaking from his nose, his right ear. His thoughts were slow and his limbs heavy, a weight dragging him down into the depths of agony. There is nothing left. There’s nothing, my love. Nothing.
‘Dark Lady, beautiful goddess of death and power, your presence honours us. We glory in your beauty, your strength.’ Lanta’s voice was ragged around the edges, trembling with fear, but she approached her gods bent from the waist, hands out in supplication. Skerris trailed a few steps behind. ‘We serve your holy purpose, shed blood in your name and that of your brother, Holy Gosfath. We exult in you.’
Dom felt Her shift, turning slightly to examine Her subjects ringed around Her.
‘I welcome you, Blessed One. You have done well, you and my brother’s high priest Gull, who yet lives and worships in the pit of vipers that is Rilporin.’ Lanta preened just a little.
‘King Corvus,’ the Dark Lady called and Corvus stood, pale and hesitant, rightly afraid. ‘Take men to the King Gate in the eastern wall. It will be open. Go now and kill for me.’
‘At once, Lady,’ Corvus said as he backed away, grabbed Valan and Fost and vanished out of the torchlight. Hundreds streamed after him, their relief palpable that they would be facing mere mortals in a fight to the death instead of their gods here in Gilgoras.
The Dark Lady caressed the back of Dom’s head, soothing the splintering pain just a little, then stood him up and turned him to face the remaining men. Gosfath came to stand on Her other side, His mouth and chin bloody, chunks of flesh beneath His black talons.
‘Want,’ He rumbled.
‘Soon, my love,’ She soothed, reaching out to take His hand and lick blood from it. She patted Dom’s shoulder. ‘See what I give you, Calestar? See the power you command? They kneel to me and to Gosfath, yes, but it is you at my side also. You they bow to.’
‘I …’ Dom tried, his voice thick, his thoughts sluggish. Whatever She’d done to him, something inside him had broken, something he didn’t think was going to mend. ‘I don’t want them kneeling to me. I just want you.’
Again he saw Rillirin, those great grey eyes watching him, always watching. He couldn’t read her expression, but it looked sad.
‘Don’t think about her,’ the Dark Lady murmured. ‘You have me now. You have all this.’ She kissed him, flooding him with lust and need and rage and want and desperation and fear, and more lust, and more, until he moaned into Her mouth and pulled Her hard against him, ignoring Lanta hovering close by and Gosfath watching through veiled eyes. Ignoring the jealousy. Ignoring the shattered parts of himself and the woman who would make him a father.
His goddess wound Her arms around him and the world fell away and there was nothing but Her and him and they were wedded, to each other and to darkness, mouth to mouth and soul to bloody soul.
King of the fucking world.
CRYS
Beltane, night, day forty-two of the siege
Main hospital, Second Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
He’d tried, gods know he’d tried, but it seemed the thing inside wasn’t to be bribed or bargained with. Durdil had died and he wasn’t coming back. He’d seen how his failure had broken Mace’s final hope, and once out of the room he’d shrugged off Tara’s supporting hand and fled back to Ash. His lover had slept through the night and all day, peaceful but deep, and Crys had sat with him, willing him to wake. It was Beltane, the holiest of days. The fire festival. If anything could wake him, it was this day. And he would wake. He had to.
But now they wanted to take him away again.
‘I’m not going anywhere until he wakes up.’
‘You are an officer, Tailorson. You have a duty. He is more than safe in the care of this hospital, and I need to be at the palace soon.’
‘I can’t.’ And it was true. He couldn’t. He didn’t physically have the will to stand up from the cot and walk away. It had nearly killed him to leave Ash just long enough to visit Durdil’s body; he couldn’t do it again. Ash was pale and quiet, deeply asleep, not fevered, not in any danger. He just woul
dn’t wake up, and Crys needed him to. Needed it as he’d never needed anything before in his entire life.
‘Trickster’s cock, man,’ Renik hissed and Crys twitched, ‘he’s asleep and breathing easy. He has no life-threatening injuries – if you and the overly curious physician are to be believed, he has no injuries at all. He’s just sleeping. Therefore, you’re going to damn well do your part in the defence of this city even if I have to drag you to the wall and throw you at the enemy myself. Get up.’
It was a good rant, an excellent rant, and if Crys had delivered it himself the men it was aimed at would already be vibrating at attention. It washed over Crys like smoke.
Renik gripped his shoulder and forced him to meet his eyes. His were suspicious and worried in equal measure. ‘There are a lot of rumours flying around about you, Tailorson. One of them is most unseemly. Major … it cannot stand.’
‘But it’s true,’ Crys said, his voice steady. He found he didn’t care what anyone thought; he didn’t care that what he was about to admit was tantamount to courting a death sentence because of some idiotic and ancient law. ‘This one, anyway. Ash and I are heart-bound.’ Renik’s mouth fell open. ‘And Mace knows. He hasn’t arrested me.’
‘Be that as it may,’ he spluttered, ‘I will arrest you for dereliction of duty if you do not get off your arse. Durdil is dead and Mace’s grief has eaten up his capacity for mercy. Yarrow is dead. At this rate we’ll be promoting Dorcas into his command and I worked with him years ago. He was an arsehole then and he’s an arsehole now. So you’re going to say your farewells and then you’re going to report to the south wall which is your command and you’re going to godsdamn fucking command it. Am I clear?’
Everything Renik was saying made sense. Renik was prepared to pretend he hadn’t heard Crys’s confession, and in a way that was worse than being punished for it. It was a dismissal of who they were and the oath they’d sworn to each other. He looked helplessly at Ash, at the small furrow between his eyebrows.
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