‘Why you?’ Lim roared the words so loudly that everyone in the room stilled and Tara found she was holding her breath, the urge to cough smothered by sheer animal instinct.
‘What makes you so special?’ Lim continued in a more normal tone. ‘Why not any of our dead in the Valley? My father, for instance? Why not anyone in Watchtown, any of the thousands of our people who died there? The children, Ash, the fucking children.’
Tara’s throat tightened.
‘Chief, I don’t think it’s that—’ Ash tried, his tone pleading now.
‘What about the tunnels?’ Lim went on, relentless, and they could all see it coming, inevitable as sunrise, implacable as death. His voice dropped to a timbre that made Tara want to run and hide. ‘What about my wife?’
‘I don’t think he knows how to use it,’ Ash tried, patting the air. ‘It wasn’t on purpose, it just … happened. I don’t understand any of this, but I do know that if he could, he’d have saved her. He’d have saved all of them. And he’d have saved Durdil too. I know—’
‘You know ever such a lot, don’t you, Ash?’ Lim’s hand was near his knife now despite Dalli’s desperate attempt to herd him away.
This is either the best or the worst time to step in. Thank the gods I’m wearing armour.
‘Mireces in Fifth Circle,’ she yelled and all eyes turned on her. ‘King Gate’s open and Corvus himself is leading an army straight here. Don’t know numbers, but I can’t imagine he’d set foot in the city without a sizeable force to back him up.’ She looked at Ash. ‘Galtas Morellis let them in.’
No one moved. ‘Come on,’ she tried, forcing her voice a bit louder. ‘We’ve got the chance to take Corvus himself and end this war. These are the Mireces – this is the man who burnt your city, slaughtered your people. Fucking move!’
‘This isn’t over,’ Lim snarled up at Ash as the taller man struggled back into his shirt and jerkin.
Ash poked Lim hard in the chest and Dalli’s mouth popped open. She took a careful step back. ‘I love you, Lim, you’re a brother to me, but Crys isn’t responsible for any of this. He didn’t kill Sarilla and if you want revenge, take it out on the men who did. The ones who are outside right now. Dom saw all this coming, he could have warned—’
‘Did he see the Mireces coming?’ Tara bellowed as loud as she could, cutting them off. ‘We have godsdamn fucking incoming, so save the sodding theology for later.’
She’d regained their attention and lowered her voice, her lungs aching, wanting to cough. ‘Major Renik is standing alone against them. He told me he’d send them here. Chances are extremely good that he died doing that, and I for one have no intention of disrespecting his sacrifice by not doing all I can to kill every last shitting bastard out there. Now, they must be nearly at the main entrance, so shut up and follow me. Right. Now.’
Ash got his chainmail back on and moved towards her, Dalli a step behind. The Wolves looked between her and Lim and then one by one they moved to her side. Lim’s lips peeled back from his teeth.
‘Chief Lim?’ Tara said. ‘I suggest an ambush in or near the war room; I imagine that’s where they’ll expect Mace to be. Your thoughts?’
Lim stared at her in silence and Tara’s palms prickled with sweat under his dead gaze. ‘Lead on,’ he said in the end, but his tone promised that they, too, would be having words when this was all done. Tara decided not to worry about it. She was fairly convinced she wouldn’t live to be shouted at.
Ash was next to her as they crept through the guest wing towards the public rooms and the servants’ passages that riddled the palace. She glanced at him, at the thick, jagged line on his face almost obliterating an older scar. Glanced away. Glanced back.
‘Eyes front,’ he snapped, blushing, and Tara complied with a red flush of her own, quartering the corridors.
I saw it myself; I saw him come back. Crys is who Ash says he is. Crys is the … the … She couldn’t even finish the thought. It all made sense until she put Crys in the picture but then she just wanted to laugh. And this wasn’t the time for laughter.
The servants’ corridors were mostly empty if you didn’t count the blood smeared over the walls and the echoing of their soft footfalls. They found a gaggle of cooks and sent them towards a smaller exit with orders to be swift and silent. Others were no more than tangles of meat heaped against the walls.
‘They’re already in,’ Tara whispered. ‘Element of surprise is gone. We’ll have to improvise.’
They haunted the corridors and public rooms, listened at doors to private chambers and found them empty, and finally reached the war room. She could hear strident voices inside and put a finger to her lips, rose on to her toes and crept forward.
The voice rose into a hysterical shout. ‘I tell you, I am a captain, just a captain. I have no idea where the Commander is! He doesn’t come here; no one does. He fights on the wall. No! I’ve told you—’
Tara burst through the door in time to see the man Galtas had called King Corvus stab a Palace Rank officer in the throat. The captain fell choking, vainly trying to stem the bleeding, and Tara yelled and launched herself at his attacker with no thought whatsoever.
The war room was small and more Mireces were crowded in the doorway that led out into a wider space, some sort of function hall. ‘On me,’ she yelled and Wolves spilt through the door at her back. Corvus spat a curse and retreated through into the hall, forming up with his men.
‘We follow through there, we’ll be coming at them a few at a time,’ Tara began, before Lim pushed past her, screaming, sword raised. He charged the door.
‘No!’ Dalli screamed and ran after him, and then they were all moving, pelting after the pair and squeezing through the door like a bunch of bloody amateurs.
‘Fucking shit.’ Tara ran with them, and somehow they made it through the door without all being killed. The hall was huge and marble and chilly, banked fires and tall iron candlesticks breaking up the darkness.
She cleared the door, but there wasn’t time to line up or form a wedge. Corvus was backing rapidly into space. To either side his warriors formed a line and then each end advanced, curving around so that they could come at the Wolves from three sides. If they got to the door and cut them off, it was all over.
No way she was going for the centre of the half-circle and Corvus; too easy to be surrounded. Instead she lunged for the man on the end of the line, a Mireces with a neck as big as her head and an axe the size of the end of the world. She ducked the first swing, helping the axe over her head with a parry of her sword, then cracked the hilt into the bastard’s face.
He reversed the swing and she danced backwards to avoid the blow, slipped and her left knee slammed into the marble with a sickening crack. The axe whistled down and smashed chips from the floor. He hefted it again and Tara stabbed at him, trying to force her numb leg to move, skating sideways across the floor on her arse.
The Raider took a lumbering step and she shuffled further back, then rolled to her left to avoid another blow from the axe. She jumped up, left leg shuddering with pain, and stabbed at him again, raking a line down the outside of his thigh. He bellowed like a castrated bull and batted the sword away.
Tara let the shove carry her and her blade in a circle and this time as she faced him, she rammed the tip up beneath his chainmail, gouging through his other thigh and ripping open his groin as the wind from the axe flittered across her face and stirred the scant hair poking from her helmet.
The Raider’s squeal was nasal and blubbering and the axe clattered against the marble as he grabbed at the wound, blood spurting between his fingers. Tara rammed the sword through his neck and he toppled like a felled tree, choking on steel.
Wolves were engaging the curved ends of the line, securing the door but vulnerable to flank attacks from those in the centre, breaking ranks only long enough to disrupt the Wolves’ rhythm before scurrying back to protect Corvus.
There were too many of them, hundreds too many. Th
ey needed to split the line if they were to have any hope of surviving.
Lim had clearly come to the same decision. He lunged past her with a howling war cry that made her shiver. Corvus ran to meet him, ignoring the warning yells of his bodyguards. He caught Lim’s sword squealing on his own and skipped out of range before the Wolf could thrust past his guard. They circled and clashed again, and again, Corvus’s seconds lunging to their king’s defence, Lim’s friends running to his.
The line broke, dissolved into a melee as Tara felt a warning tingle down her spine. She threw herself flat, knee cracking the marble again, flipped over and scythed a man’s legs from beneath him with her foot. He fell, helmet clonking off the ground, and Tara managed an awkward kick to his ribs that scooted them in opposite directions on the slick floor.
Someone fell over her, their knee sending white lights through her head as it connected with her broken nose. Over her own roar of pain, she heard a jubilant cheer from deeper into the hall. She twisted just in time to see Lim over-balance, one hand pressed against his neck, his sword arm falling to his side. A corresponding screech of denial went up from the Wolves. Corvus glanced around the room and then kicked Lim over on to his back. The Wolf’s hand came away from his neck and blood fountained in the gloom as he fell.
A single stroke from Corvus’s sword parted Lim’s head from his body.
‘Oh, shit,’ Tara bubbled and got to her feet, spitting blood and checking her surroundings. The Wolves charged again in a shrieking onslaught, apparently intending to die on Mireces blades in order to accompany their chief into death.
The fighting reached a pitch of savagery Tara had never seen, not even when they’d sounded the all-out at the Blood Pass Valley and slaughtered the Mireces army to the last man. The Wolves were spending their lives like copper knights, with thoughtless, reckless abandon, trying to reach Lim’s corpse deep in a tight knot of Mireces.
‘We need to pull back.’ She spoke without thinking, quiet, no one close enough to hear, and then louder. ‘We need to pull back.’
For all their earlier shouting, Ash had almost reached Lim; Dalli, Isbet and a score of others at his back. Tara gave them a chance to recover their chief’s corpse, but only one. As soon as Ash was forced back a step, she gave the order. ‘Fall back! Fall back!’ The Wolves closest to her looked in her direction, and the Mireces let out another bellow of triumph and surged forwards, pushing against the line, hacking madly.
‘Fall back,’ she yelled again, and then Dalli was shouting it too and Ash was screaming wordless rage as he was pushed away from Lim’s body. ‘Controlled retreat,’ Tara added, knowing there was no such bloody thing but needing to sound like she was in charge.
In step and in time, the Wolves began to move backwards, losing fewer than Tara thought possible amid the storm of steel. She stayed behind them with a few others, picking off those who tried to slip around to the rear, until her back pressed against the plaster next to the door.
‘Down!’ bellowed a new voice and Tara spun to the doorway to see a squad of Palace Rankers armed with longbows.
‘Down!’ Tara echoed and most of the Wolves complied. The flight of arrows thrummed overhead and cut down the first rank of Mireces, then the second. The attack faltered and warriors began throwing themselves through the doorway as more and more arrows cut the air above them.
‘Who’re you?’ Tara gasped as she made it to the lieutenant’s side. ‘Weaverson? Roger?’
The young man grinned despite the situation. ‘Hello, Major. Fifth Circle gate guard reporting for duty. Heard the commotion and then some palace servants came to fetch us, said you’d sent them out in a hurry.’
Of course. Gate guards carry bows. Sweet Dancer, thank you.
‘I’ll have you promoted for this, Lieutenant,’ she said. ‘All right, cover us. We need to pull back and then trap them in Fifth Circle somehow, send for as many reinforcements as we can and then take him.’ She pointed. ‘Mireces king. Corvus himself. See?’
Weaverson’s eyes were wide but he nodded. ‘Got it. Get into the tunnel and lock the gate behind you – no point us all being trapped in here with them. Once you’re safe we’ll break for the gatehouse, barricade ourselves in. They’ll either go for the tunnel or the gatehouse; they can’t know about the guardsman’s exit. We hold them at whichever exit they attempt and they’ll be fish in a big barrel.’
Tara eyed the doorway. All the Wolves who were coming were through; the Mireces were out of bowshot to either side of the door, shouting threats but keeping out of sight. She tapped Ash and Dalli. ‘Pass the word. Let’s go.’
GALTAS
Fifth moon, before dawn, day forty-three of the siege
The breach, western wall, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
‘Skerris! Good man, still alive. Listen, Corvus is in. He’s going for Mace at the palace. We should be able to force a— What?’
Skerris handed Galtas the distance-viewer and pointed. ‘Might not be able to make him out, but I’m almost certain that’s Mace up by Second Tower. His presence rallies the defenders; they’re holding the breach.’
Galtas felt his stomach drop into his feet, but then a surge of excitement had him grabbing Skerris’s shoulder. He leant close, wincing at the agony spiking through his knee. ‘This could be perfect,’ he hissed. ‘Corvus gets trapped in the palace, executed or killed in the fighting, and Rivil has an uncontested claim to the throne and all of Rilpor. He— What now?’
He’d been short-tempered enough as the siege progressed, but the hours it’d taken Galtas to limp around the outside of the city, expecting at any moment to feel an arrow between the shoulders, had drained him of the last of his patience. Now Skerris looked like a partially deflated waterskin. ‘What?’ Galtas repeated.
‘Milord, you’ve been gone for weeks. Much has happened.’ Skerris paused to roar more orders at an exhausted Fifty and their lieutenant. The men stood up – slow, laboured – and made their equally laboured way out of sight. Galtas had no doubt they’d sit down again as soon as they could.
‘The Godblind who the Blessed One told us of arrived. He challenged the prince to single combat in the rite of Hoth-Nagarre, a fight witnessed and judged by the gods Themselves. It is a fight to the death and once a man has been challenged, he may not refuse the trial.’
Galtas’s hand came up to stroke his restored eye patch, the familiar, soothing gesture the only indication of his sudden unease. ‘Yes, all right, a duel. What of it?’
‘Lord … the gods saw fit to pass judgement. The Godblind triumphed; Rivil is dead.’
Galtas stumbled back a step, his splinted leg sliding in the mud. He would have fallen if Skerris’s huge paw hadn’t darted out and steadied him. ‘What shittery is this?’ He forced a laugh. ‘Rivil cannot be dead, and certainly not because of some heathen prophet.’
‘I’m afraid he is, milord. The gods Themselves witnessed it. The gods Themselves … were present.’ Even in the flickering torchlight Galtas could see how he’d lost colour. He found he didn’t want to know what Skerris meant. ‘Corvus is our only hope now if we are to restore the faith to Rilpor and all Gilgoras. He is the king we must follow.’
Corvus as king? Rivil is supposed to king! I’m supposed to be his First Adviser, Commander of his Ranks, heir to his throne until he has a child. The faith was a distant fucking second to that.
And yet … he said the gods passed this sentence.
‘Of course, the faith is all,’ Galtas muttered piously. He had no wish to anger gods who had determined Rivil should die. ‘Though this is a fucking setback. And the Godblind killed him? Why? Tell me, damn you!’
Skerris let him go. ‘He accused the prince – and you, milord – of raping his wife and then killing her and his unborn child. Her name was Hazel. In the western woods, about seven years ago, I think. Does it sound familiar?’
He knows it does. Rivil clearly admitted it or there’d be no reason for the duel. Godsdamnit, he waited seven years to get his reven
ge? No wonder he went bastard mad.
Galtas nodded slowly. ‘I know what you’re referring to, yes.’ He spat, trying hard to hide how shaken he was. ‘Ironic, no, that he ends up being a kind of ally and still manages to fuck up all our plans?’
Skerris licked his teeth and inspected Galtas through piggy eyes. ‘Not really, if I’m going to be honest, milord. While I am a good son of the Red Gods, I still don’t want Mireces running my country. Rivil was a king I could get behind. Corvus … less so. Irony’s the last thing I’m feeling right now and I know many in the Rank are beginning to question just why we’re still fighting.’
Probably time for that backup plan, Galtas thought, though being crippled doesn’t help me execute it. ‘The nobles I spoke with in the city said that Rastoth’s distant cousin Tresh is next in line. He’s in exile in Highcrop in Listre, but perhaps it is time to sound him out. It might be good to have a backup – we don’t know what might happen to Corvus, after all.’
Skerris pursed his lips and rubbed at the sweat in the folds of his neck. ‘Not sure what good that’ll do us now, Galtas,’ he said, dropping the man’s title for the first time. Galtas noticed it; he saw as well the corresponding decrease in deference. It did more than Skerris’s words to convince him just how far his star had fallen when Rivil did. ‘Tresh can lay claim to the throne if he wants, but any army he raises will be facing us. Despite the rumblings of dissent in the Rank, we’re here to restore the faith, not to elevate just one man. If Tresh wishes to convert, or indeed already walks the Dark Path, then excellent. Otherwise, we go with Corvus. There is no one else.’
There’s me, Galtas thought, but didn’t say it.
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