Darksoul

by Anna Stephens

  ‘Our little friend and informant, the Godblind.’

  ‘The god-what?’ Crys’s peripheral vision was attempting to count the numbers of the enemy, possible escape routes. Straight into the smoke-filled roads leading east was probably his best bet. He shifted, rolling on to his knees.

  Cold metal pressed against the back of his neck. ‘Easy,’ a voice growled.

  Corvus smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Valan. He won’t hurt me, will you, Major?’

  Crys managed a loose-lipped grin in return. ‘Won’t I? What makes you say that?’

  Corvus stood, dark against the bright sky. ‘Because for a start, neither I nor Valan will give you the chance, and second, because you’ve been promised to a friend of mine.’

  Crys snorted. ‘I can’t imagine having anything in common with any friend of yours.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you and Galtas will have a lot to catch up on. He’s been most insistent – to the point of fucking boredom, if I’m honest – on two things: that we capture you alive, and that we give you to him. Seems there’s some sort of blood feud between you.’

  Corvus’s words dried up as Crys began to laugh, choking giggles halfway to being sobs jerking their way out of his throat. ‘Galtas? Galtas is dead. I smashed his head in up there on the allure. I’d apologise but, you know, I’m not sorry.’

  Corvus’s pale eyes were unreadable. ‘Did you now?’ he said softly. ‘Well, isn’t it fortunate for us that we have other friends, like the Godblind, or Skerris and his Rank. Like the gods Themselves, here in Gilgoras.’ He winked. ‘I’m sure we can find someone to … deal with you as you deserve.’

  ‘Deserve? I’m just a soldier, mate. Execute me and get it over with.’

  ‘Sire, East Rank at the far gate, the one into the killing field,’ a Raider called.

  ‘They’ve taken the breach; the outer ring of the city is ours,’ Corvus shouted. A cheer went up. He turned to Valan, who was busy tying Crys’s hands behind him and threading a rope down and around his ankles so he couldn’t stand. ‘Second? How secure are we?’

  ‘Good as we’re getting, Sire,’ Valan said, tugging the knots tight and then kneeing Crys in the shoulder so he toppled sideways. The side of his face slapped into the stone and he grunted as he felt his eyebrow open up.

  ‘Safe to let them in?’ Corvus asked the messenger.

  ‘Aye, Sire. They’ve got prisoners, Sire.’

  ‘Good. Open the gate.’

  Crys waited in silence, his eye stinging with blood and dust, until shouts and curses heralded the arrival of the reinforcements and their prisoners. He rolled as far as his bonds would allow and lifted his head. The East Rank marched in, prisoners in their midst: soldiers, Personals, civilians.

  Skerris and the Blessed One walked at their head. At her side stalked a man, ragged, blue-clad, skinny to the point of skeletal, but familiar. He turned a glazed, mad face in Crys’s direction and Crys blinked. ‘Dom?’

  ‘Welcome, Blessed One, General. Skerris, I regret to inform you that it appears Lord Morellis is dead. Killed by his rival, in fact, Crys Tailorson, who we have captured …’ Dom jerked and his head swung, ponderous and slow, in Crys’s direction. ‘What?’ Corvus demanded.

  ‘The captain of Rivil’s honour guard?’ the Blessed One interrupted. ‘You’re sure it’s him?’

  Corvus nodded and pointed. Crys pulled at the ropes binding his wrists, suddenly sure he didn’t want to be under their scrutiny. Even Galtas would’ve been preferable to the animal expression on that woman’s face.

  ‘Sire, while you fought your way into the city, the Godblind provided some very interesting information about that man. You – go and make sure. If you’re wrong …’ She let the threat trail off.

  Dom advanced on Crys, the Blessed One and Corvus following at a distance, the king curious, the woman cautiously delighted. Crys was overwhelmed with the sudden desire to run, struggling against the bonds. He squirmed backwards until he hit the wall of the temple, the skin peeling from his wrists in strips as he yanked and twisted against the ropes.

  Dom dropped to hands and knees in front of him and crawled forward as silence fell over the square, scores of curious faces turned in their direction. Lanta, Skerris and Corvus came closer still, but Crys couldn’t look away from Dom.

  ‘Hello, Dom,’ he managed. ‘You look like shit. What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m the Godblind. I killed Rivil last night, and then the God of Blood came and ate what was left of him.’

  Crys swallowed hard. ‘Well,’ he managed, ‘how about that?’

  Dom reached out and put his hand over Crys’s mouth to quiet him. His eyes were brown wells of torment, right eyelid flickering, his gaunt face ablaze with need. He pulled the hand away and inspected it, licked the palm, and then pushed his face into Crys’s and sniffed. Sniffed his mouth, his eyes, his hair, buried his face in the angle of Crys’s neck, sniffed his chainmail, hands pawing at his clothes.

  ‘The fuck is this?’ Crys yelped, shifting backwards again. It was like being smelt by a dog that could tear your face off at any second. ‘Dom? Dom, you crazy bastard, what are you doing? Get the fuck off me!’

  Dom froze, his face a hair’s breadth from Crys’s, so close they could’ve kissed. A string of drool hung from his lip and then dropped on to Crys’s chest. ‘Splitsoul. God’s eyes. Godlight.’ He inhaled slowly, breathing Crys in, and then sat back on his haunches. ‘Trickster.’

  This is the beginning of our trial—

  Shut the fuck up right now!

  ‘Blessed One, Sire, he is the Trickster,’ Dom said, his voice carrying across the square. ‘He is the Fox God in mortal form. He is the godlight, leading his people into death – and back out of it.’ He swivelled on his knees in the dust, looking up at Lanta’s intent face; Corvus was frowning with confusion.

  Dom reached out without looking and caressed the side of Crys’s face, wiped his thumb through the blood from his cut eyebrow, and sucked it clean. ‘Galtas is gone, but this one’s fate remains unchanged. Kill him, and you win the war.’

  TARA

  Fifth moon, afternoon, day forty-three of the siege

  Main hospital, Second Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

  ‘How can someone so small weigh so shitting much?’ Tara groaned as she adjusted Dalli’s weight over her shoulder. The other woman’s hand knocked against her back with every wobbling, burning step, but the hospital was only strides away and healers were already running towards them with stretchers.

  Hands reached for her. ‘Easy,’ Tara barked, ‘gut wound.’ They lifted her gently off Tara’s shoulders and she half expected to be left with a string of intestines festooned around her neck, but the bandaging had held and, though Tara was wet with Dalli’s blood and the Wolf was grey, she still breathed.

  ‘How long?’ a healer asked.

  Tara glanced at the sun. ‘I don’t know. Hour or two?’

  ‘Which, one or two?’ he snapped.

  ‘Did you see gut?’ another asked. ‘Was there a bulge?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tara said, bracing herself against a wall and answering the one she could. ‘Soaked the bandages in water and kept dousing them every time we stopped so the gut didn’t harden.’

  The healers exchanged a glance. ‘Might be enough if we move fast.’ They hoisted the stretcher and trotted for the hospital. Tara groaned and stretched the kinks out of her back before following them, breath whistling through her mouth and barely able to see through the swelling around her eyes.

  She stopped at the hospital entrance and counted her warriors in. Walking, limping, slung over shoulders or on stretchers. Fewer than three hundred Wolves had made it this far. She put a hand on Ash’s arm and stilled him and together they watched the rest file in, haunted.

  ‘Talk to me,’ she murmured when they were all inside.

  Ash’s face was expressionless. ‘Lim was our chief. Despite his rashness after Sarilla was killed, his denial of Crys’s … true nature, he was the best o
f us.’

  Tara kept her face stoic. She’d seen a lot of good Wolves in the last months; her opinion and Ash’s differed over Lim. But now wasn’t the time for her famous lack of tact.

  ‘And we had to leave him,’ Ash went on, pushing sweat-lank curls out of his eyes. As his hand came away it touched the new scar, the dent in the jaw.

  ‘He was dead,’ Tara began.

  Ash cocked his head. ‘So was I,’ he said quietly.

  Tara scowled. ‘Ash … they beheaded him. Crys couldn’t heal that. No one could.’

  ‘Suppose not.’ His face was bleak.

  She put her arm around his waist and squeezed. ‘Let’s go in, have a sit down, and then see how we can help.’

  Ash had the ghost of a smile on his face. ‘And for the love of the gods, get someone to fix that nose, woman. It’s fucking hideous.’

  Tara bit back a retort and gestured him inside, then turned and cast one final look up and down the road, lingering and suddenly reluctant to enter the hospital. Second Circle was locked tight, but Tara found she didn’t trust anyone or anything these days.

  Finally, she ducked in through the door and followed the corridor to the main room. Every bed was occupied, as were the spaces on the floor in between. Soldiers lay on stretchers on the floor; walking wounded queued up for treatment in a second, smaller room, while blood-curdling shrieks echoed from the operating room deep inside the hospital. Healers, apprentices, soldiers and civilians moved among the beds, administering water, changing bandages, feeding soup to the injured. Praying.

  She found Mace sitting in a chair in the second treatment room, stripped to the waist, while a woman dabbed his burns and wrapped them. Tara spared a second to wonder where they’d even found fresh linen among all this horror. Then she noticed the embroidery around the hem and realised it was a lady’s fine scarf. Seemed as though at least some of the nobles were prepared to help the war effort.

  ‘Major Carter reporting for duty,’ Tara croaked.

  Mace looked up at her and his eyes widened. ‘Bloody hell, Major, what happened to you?’

  Tara touched a fingertip to her nose. ‘You know, I don’t even remember.’ She tried to think, realised she was swaying gently, and put her hand on the wall again. ‘Oh, yeah. It was Galtas. He was in the city. Gone now,’ she mumbled as the room began to spin. ‘Fucker.’

  She was sitting on the floor, legs splayed in front of her and no idea how she’d got there. Mace crouched at her left, the woman to her right. ‘Hello,’ Tara said, knowing she was grinning stupidly and unable to stop.

  ‘Hello,’ the woman said, ‘I’m Elissa Hardoc, Lady of Pine Lock. I think you could do with some food and water and a lie-down. What do you say?’

  Tara pawed at her arm; then she patted her own face. ‘Can you fix this?’ she asked.

  Elissa looked horrified. ‘Me?’

  ‘Tara.’ She turned to look at Mace and he put one hand on the back of her head, grabbed her nose and wrenched it sideways. Elissa fell backwards, shrieking and flapping her hands, while Tara bellowed snot and blood and contemplated puking on him. After a long moment full of white lights and the peculiar almost-scent of pain, she dropped her head forward and let the blood run into her lap.

  Now would be a really good time for hysterics, she thought, and gave it a moment’s serious consideration.

  ‘Lim died,’ she said instead and Mace grunted, lowered himself to sitting.

  ‘Gods. Lim. How?’

  ‘Corvus. In the palace. We tried to hold them, sir, I swear, but there was just too many of them. We had to retreat, and then—’

  ‘Corvus is in the city? Is that who’s dug in in the temple district? Shit, if we can get him, this is over. How long ago?’

  ‘Fought them in Fifth,’ Tara mumbled. ‘Fought them again in Third. Couldn’t hold.’

  Fresh tears ran, tears that had nothing to do with the pain in her face and everywhere else. ‘Tried, sir. Can try again.’

  Mace squeezed her leg. ‘Not you. Take a breather, Major.’ His voice was soft. ‘Someone needs to attempt it, but the losses … How many more retreats before it becomes a rout? Or we run out of room to back into?’

  ‘We blocked the tunnel to Fifth; they can’t flank us, at least. They’ll be coming from First Circle and nowhere else.’

  ‘That’s a mercy, I suppose,’ Mace said, his tone dull with bone-deep weariness as Elissa patted at his burns again.

  Tara swallowed a sticky mouthful of bloody mucus. ‘About the losses, sir. Dalli’s here. Gut wound. It’s bad, sir.’

  Mace lurched to his feet, reached down and hauled her up. Both of them rocked on their feet and fresh blood pattered on to the floor. Elissa made a noise, half concern, half disgust, and shoved a wad of material into Tara’s hand. She clutched it on reflex.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I didn’t see where they took her, but I’d guess the operating—’

  Mace was gone before she could finish the sentence. She watched him disappear, still naked from the waist up, his burns half treated, swathes of blistered, weeping red standing proud and raw.

  ‘Lady Elissa,’ Tara said, turning to the woman. ‘Please take your bandages and your … whatever that is and follow the Commander. He’ll be fussing over his future wife, but when he realises he’s not allowed to help, he’ll stay still. When he does, treat him. And don’t take no for an answer. You’re a noble lady; if he protests, remind him of that.’

  Elissa’s eyes were wide. ‘He’s to marry?’ she breathed and her bottom lip wobbled. ‘My dear, dear Ned fought today, you know,’ and Tara could see her winding up for a story. ‘He fell. Lord Hardoc of Pine Lock, he fell in First Bastion. A hero, they say, a true hero.’

  Elissa sucked in a breath and dabbed at her eyes. ‘I will honour his memory by doing all I can here,’ she said before Tara could think up a platitude for a nobleman she’d never met but heard a couple of stories about. The woman gathered up the pot and the bandages, bobbed a curtsey as though Tara was the lady, and scurried after Mace.

  ‘I … have no idea what’s going on,’ Tara mumbled, dabbing at her face with what was, she now realised, a silk stocking. ‘Bloody hell.’ She stuffed it into her sleeve and made for the table at the side, replete with pitchers of water and trays of bread and cooked meat. Her stomach warbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten that day, maybe, and she grabbed a jug and drank until she sloshed with every movement.

  She’d taken her first bite of pork when Ash found her and she didn’t like the look on his face one bit. ‘What now?’

  ‘Crys is missing. We need to find him.’

  She blinked at him, and had another hard think about those hysterics as she chewed. ‘How long and from where?’

  ‘Apparently he went to disable the southern siege engines, stop them being used against us. He volunteered. This morning. No one’s seen him since. He sent a spotty lieutenant to do the ones on the northern wall and he got back within an hour, but Crys has vanished.’

  ‘He’s going to be stuck on the wall with Mireces between him and us, isn’t he?’ Tara said. She stuffed more meat into her mouth, as much as she could manage without choking, and then shoved a few more slices under her vambrace for later.

  ‘Probably. I’m sorry to put this on you, but there’s no one else. The Wolves, we’re done for a while, exhausted, and …’ Ash trailed off and rubbed his face.

  ‘They’re not the only ones,’ Tara mumbled and then patted his arm to take the sting out of her words. ‘Gods, Mace is going to kill me. All right, let’s go. He’s too good an officer to lose, whatever else he may also be.’

  ‘You’re a good officer as well,’ a voice said as she felt someone come into the room behind her. ‘Lieutenant Weaverson. The spotty one,’ he added and gave Ash a stare. ‘With so many senior officers dead, I’d have to report it if you took matters into your own hands and went off without informing the Commander.’

  Ash rounded on him, but Tara recognised the look
in Weaverson’s eye. ‘Hello again, Roger,’ she said. ‘The antics in the palace whet your appetite, did they? Want to come with?’

  Weaverson grinned. ‘Lead on, Major,’ he said. ‘Six eyes are better than four, and Major Tailorson always treated me well. Least I can do now is watch his back.’

  ‘And his front,’ Tara muttered. ‘If we die because of him, I swear I’ll come back and haunt the bastard, Fox God or no.’

  ‘Fox God?’ Weaverson asked and then chuckled. ‘Oh yes, the eyes.’

  Tara and Ash exchanged a glance; clearly the rumour hadn’t reached every corner of the city just yet. ‘That’s right,’ she mumbled. ‘The eyes.’

  CRYS

  Fifth moon, afternoon, day forty-three of the siege

  Grand temple square, First Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

  The woman Lanta had taken seven of the captives so far and killed them, sacrificed them, butchered them while Crys waited bound on his knees in the centre of the square.

  He’d thrown up as the first was killed even though he’d seen worse by now, so much worse. The woman died howling and writhing, bent backwards over a barrel and carved open. It was messy and fast, nothing like the sacrifice of Prince Janis that still gave him nightmares. As though Lanta was just warming up for the grand event.

  Us.

  The ground beneath the barrel was a red slurry of blood and piss and dust pooling on the stone, the sky fractured with screams as the crowd of prisoners shrank and the pile of corpses grew. Mireces were picking through the confiscated armour and weapons, while others checked the belts and hands of the dead for money pouches and rings. Scavengers. Raiders.

  Lanta’s blue dress had darkened to purple and black in great sodden swathes, the cloth clotting about her legs as she chanted obscene prayers and slaughtered helpless men and women, even children, cutting hard and deep, opening the victims from sternum to groin while General fat fucking Skerris helped hold them down.

  Dom watched, face bright with blazing exaltation, cackling at the screams. It was almost as bad as what Lanta herself was doing to the victims, seeing Dom so changed, so other. Almost.