Crys screamed as agony filled him, there and then gone just as fast, replaced with a long, awful moment of absolute absence when he couldn’t feel anything at all, and then a steady, dull ache deep in his bones accompanied with a blinding flare of silver light. He gritted his teeth and lifted his arm, waiting for the pain, but there was nothing. He could move. The Trickster emanated a profound smugness entirely at odds with their predicament.
Gosfath was strutting before him like a triumphant bully, and Crys was more than happy to let Him prance as he checked escape routes again.
The god’s rage bounced from Crys’s skin like dull hammer blows, but it seemed to penetrate the Mireces and East Rankers, driving them into an even deeper frenzy, barely human now, all bloody teeth and wild eyes and clawing fingers and bright, sharp weapons. All across the square were fierce battles and indiscriminate slaughter, as the defenders who’d stormed the gates found themselves beset by madmen spending their lives without restraint.
The Dark Lady’s death and Gosfath’s presence – His pissed-off presence, we might add – enflames Their followers. Her loss fills them with agony; His rage directs that agony into violence. They won’t stop until every Rilporian is dead.
Let’s distract Him, then. Crys pushed himself upright, cast away the knife and raised his fists. Gosfath laughed, clapping His hands at the delicious joke. Crys didn’t much blame Him.
Well? Throwing away the weapons was your idea. What now?
Now we use our other gifts.
We don’t have any— He yelped as his feet began to move and he ran straight at Gosfath, his body not entirely under his control any more. He was screaming, and as he dashed across the square, silver light burnt all around him. Coming from his skin, from inside his skin. Radiant.
Gosfath’s laughter dried up, His eyes narrowed and He set His feet to accept the attack. Again Crys leapt for His head, again Gosfath reached for Him, but as the silver light touched His red skin, the god howled and snatched His hand away. Crys smashed into Him and they went down together, Gosfath’s roars becoming squeals as the light burnt wherever it touched.
‘Ha!’ Crys screamed in His face, punching anything within reach, knees pumping against the stone-hard stomach. He lunged and sank his teeth into Gosfath’s cheek and, though not even a knife could cut Him, they sank through the skin into the flesh below. As though his teeth were … different. A predator’s. Hot blood washed into Crys’s mouth, bitter as gall, and Gosfath bucked and squealed again, tried to throw him off.
Crys’s fingers were hooked into claws and tearing at Gosfath’s throat and chest as he shook his head from side to side, doing his best to bite the god’s face off. His light was growing brighter and he was getting stronger, he was sure of it, but then Gosfath gave a mighty heave and tore his face from between Crys’s jaws, grabbed him by the shoulders and hurled him away.
Crys twisted in the air and landed on his hands and toes, spitting blood and astonishingly unhurt. ‘I’m winning,’ he gasped, and then the poison in Gosfath’s blood reached his brain and he collapsed, thrashing on the stone, writhing as fire burnt inside his veins and froth bubbled in his mouth, as his heart was held in a steel gauntlet and squeezed and his skin became too small, too tight, too hot.
Head jolting and already weakened from absorbing the Dark Lady’s tainted divinity, he only saw in flashes as Gosfath rolled to His feet, face healed, burns from the light healed, and grew in size until He stood as tall as the southern towers which were His sudden focus. Around them, the fighting reached a new pitch of intensity. Citizens were hurled from the walls or beaten to death against the stone, Rankers fight-ing a desperate holding action and still being pushed back, Mireces soaked in blood howling madness in their faces.
The Afterworld come to Gilgoras. Muscles bunching beneath His skin, Gosfath grasped South Tower One in both arms and began to pull, clearly planning on crushing everyone in the square and not just Crys.
Crys managed a stuttering wail of pain as the thing inside went to work against the poison. We are Trickster, it said. And it is in our nature to deceive. Watch.
The tower began to rock and move and Gosfath was bellowing rage and joy at the imminent destruction of His foe, talons scoring deep into the stone of the tower. Crys’s spasms lessened to twitches and he managed to roll on to his belly, force himself up to his knees, but there was no way he was getting further than that. That tower was coming down on top of him and there was nothing he could do about it. He doubted if even the presence inside could heal him once he was a red smear on the stone.
We need to get out of … Crys began, but the thought faltered as a sudden bloom of yellow seared his eyes. The whump of explosion came a heartbeat later, and Crys had a vivid image of the candle he’d left in a pool of pitch beneath South One’s catapult, fire barrels stacked high all around with small holes hammered into their bases. That really was a lot of pitch, he realised belatedly. A whole lake of it, slowly filling the platform.
The explosion blew the tower to pieces and took Gosfath with it, hurling Him backwards, over the walls of both First and Second Circles, to smash down somewhere in Third. Debris rained across a quarter of the city, shrapnel whining overhead, people screaming as they faced the twin foes of enemy weapons and falling stone.
Crys rocked backwards and reached his feet, staggered as the world spun around him and vanished in plumes of dust and smoke, and then found a semblance of balance. He gazed around in bewildered triumph, shaking his head to stop the ringing in his ears. ‘Is He dead?’
What do you think?
‘Then I need to find Him. End this. Somehow.’
Not a fucking chance. That brought Crys to a halt. We need to go. Right now.
‘Why?’ Crys asked, looking for the shortest route through the chaos to Third Circle.
Because now we’ve really pissed Him off.
Gosfath brought His fists down on the tall, elegant spires of the goldsmiths’ guildhouse deep in Third Circle’s jewellery district, smashing them flat, before kicking holes in the wall through into Fourth Circle, a monstrous child destroying a mud castle for no other reason than that He could.
Thousands were dying: soldiers, civilians, children of Light and children of Blood. Gosfath made no distinction, lost in an orgy of violence and braying His challenge to the sky.
This is the worst idea I’ve had in a long history of bad ideas. The fact that it went against the express advice of the voice made it even worse.
Crys ducked through the chaos of battle, sliding through diminishing gaps, rolling past swords and axes, a judicious elbow or foot here and there to trip a Mireces and provide the defenders with a chance.
‘Run,’ he shouted as he passed a knot of hard-pressed Westies and Wolves, ‘get everyone out now! Go!’
Some turned in recognition but Crys was already past them, no time to do anything more to help. Please get out. Please.
‘Fox God!’ He heard the shout behind him, heard it taken up by more and more voices, behind and ahead now, to either side. ‘Fox God!’
It looked as though Gosfath was planning on wading through the whole city and slaughtering every inhabitant He found. He threw chunks of stone at buildings and walls, heaving them high into the air to fall in arbitrary, deadly arcs throughout the city.
Stop. Stop, you can’t do anything. We can’t do anything.
We can stop Him!
We can’t. But the Lady clothed in sunlight can. Stop, or be caught up in Her retribution.
That did it. Crys skidded to a halt, hands on his knees as he panted for breath. Gosfath was knee-deep in buildings and walls, plumes and pleats of fire springing up in His wake. He flung back His head and brayed another challenge. The sky muttered a response and lightning fizzed, then struck, arcing into the ground right next to Him. Gosfath staggered and brayed again, the sound lost in the thunderclap, and raised a bloody, talon-tipped fist at the clouds.
More lightning. More strikes shaking the earth around Him,
destroying even more structures, starting even more fires. Killing even more people.
‘Is this it?’ Crys demanded. ‘She destroys everything to stop Him? People are dying!’
The man-god-goat went to one knee and then rose up again, hurling masonry at the sky and bellowing. He was wild with rage and hate, leaping into the air and clawing at nothing, trampling shops and homes every time He landed, the impacts shivering through the city and toppling buildings as far away as the outskirts.
The god paused, glaring into the sky and all around the devastation, and then He retreated back the way He’d come and Crys knew, somehow just knew, He was going for the hospital in Second.
‘No, no we have to lure Him away. He’ll kill all the patients!’
Watch. And Crys found he couldn’t move.
Three great spitting bolts of lightning struck Gosfath in the chest one after the other after the other. He screeched and shook His head, groggy, hurting, one hand pressed to the blasted, blackened ruin of His ribs, and as the sky built again, rumble upon rumble with threat, He vanished, tore back through the veil and into the Afterworld to escape the Dancer’s wrath. His departure was marked with a thunderclap so strong it felled the remaining buildings in the vicinity and blew smoke and flame out in a horizontal plume, a great wheel of orange blackness crouched above the city.
More thunder muttered but there were no gods this time, no lightning. Instead rain fell, icy and bleak, in great grey sheets that cut off everything more than ten paces distant. Crys stared at the space where the god had been, open-mouthed, dazed, shuddering with cold and shock and just barely holding on to the contents of his stomach and his arse. There was a prolonged moment of frozen, drenching silence, and then the wailing began, rising and falling against the roar of the storm.
‘He’s still not dead, is He?’
He has fled back through the veil. He has failed.
‘Failed? Look at this, look! He’s destroyed the city, killed thousands.’
We still live.
‘We still live? Who cares if we still live? And if She controls lightning, She could’ve done that earlier,’ Crys added. ‘Before I was nearly flattened by a building. Before all these people were killed. She could’ve just done that to the Mireces villages years ago, in fact, wiped them all out. No worshippers, no gods, isn’t that how it works?’
The voice was uncharacteristically silent about what Crys felt was an important theological point. ‘Couldn’t She?’ he insisted.
It’s not that simple. We are gods; we see things – events here on Gilgoras – differently. And besides, such intervention is draining, only used when all else has failed.
‘When I’ve failed, you mean. Thanks, that really helps. So is it over? Who won?’ The clash of arms rose once more to overtake the screams of the shocked and the injured. ‘More fighting?’ Crys asked dully. ‘Haven’t they had enough? I fucking have.’
He began picking his way back through the blasted city, every muscle aching, bare feet bruised and torn and the storm washing blood in sheets from his naked, shivering skin. It took him a few minutes to realise the silver light was back, but this time it was spreading out across the city, flowing like slow water down streets and through doorways.
‘What are you – what are we doing now?’ he asked, suddenly weary beyond all measure, as if the light was sucking away his strength.
Healing people. As many as we can.
‘Good. If the Mireces insist on fighting, we’ll need everyone to get clear of this graveyard.’
We heal the Mireces too.
Crys halted, staring at an arm, fingers delicately curled as though beckoning him, sticking out from beneath a collapsed building. He was surrounded with corpses, most still clutching weapons, some still locked together in eternal struggle. At the end of the street three Rankers fought to escape two ravening Mireces.
‘We’re doing what?’ he croaked.
Everyone is welcome in the Light. So everyone is welcome to be healed.
Crys turned in a circle. ‘Look at this!’ he screamed. ‘Look what they’ve done, them and their foul gods. You cannot. We cannot.’ He clapped both hands to his head. ‘I. Will. Not.’
He fought to reel in the silver light, to draw it back into his body, constrain it. It pulsed and flowed, ebbed in and back out, as Crys trembled and sweated and forced his will against the other’s.
We are one, Fox God and man. We do this because it is right. You – Crys Tailorson the mortal – were chosen because you understand right and wrong. Let their bodies heal.
No. They’re still fighting us. We need every advantage.
You gave them the grace on the battlefield. This is no different.
‘This is completely different,’ he bellowed aloud. ‘The battle’s not over! The city is in ruins; our defences are gone. The only advantage you could give us over them is health. Do you want us to lose?’ He roared the last words, hurling them at the other like a spear. There was no reply.
Crys didn’t feel the impact as his knees hit the stone, didn’t hear the clash of battle behind him or smell the opened-bowel stink of the body next to him, axe clutched tight in dead fingers. He closed his eyes and wept, knowing he was saving men just so that they could destroy more lives and spread their poison across Rilpor. Aiding the enemy. Collusion. Betrayal.
Justice. Good. Right.
‘Fox God?’
It was so easy to ignore the voice, to ignore everything as the silver light shone across the city and blazed through Crys’s eyelids. To wait for it to fade. To pretend it wasn’t him betraying his people.
‘Fox God?’
But then Crys recognised the speaker and his eyes snapped open and there he was, kneeling opposite, confusion creasing his face, saying, ‘Can you tell me what’s happening?’
The light winked out as Crys slammed both his palms into Dom’s chest and sent him over on to his back, head cracking from the stone hard enough to split scalp. Anger boiled in his veins as he snatched up the axe and hacked at the blackened arm. He expected it to shatter it looked so withered and dry, like a stick of charcoal. It didn’t though, and the inside of it was red and meaty, thick viscous blood splattering as the axe rose and fell, rose and fell, Dom screaming with every impact until it was done.
Crys leant in close and spat in his face. ‘That’s for torturing me, you sick fuck.’
He sat back, picked up the severed limb and hurled it as far as he could to be lost with the other severed limbs amid the blood-washed, scream-stained streets.
‘And we’re not healing it, either.’
RILLIRIN
Fifth moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Guest quarters, Fort One, South Rank forts, Western Plain
The fire in the hearth was a cheerful orange, a warm flag of humanity and defiance after the cold camps of their journey. Rillirin took an obscene amount of pleasure from its heat despite how warm the last days had been. Besides, Gilda needed it.
The wound from Dom’s knife – don’t think about that – was angry and full of thick yellow pus, the flesh swollen red and hard to the touch. Corrupted. Dealt by a Darksoul, a traitor.
Don’t think about it!
The last few days of their trek to the forts had been a feverish nightmare for Gilda and a helpless torment for Rillirin as she did all she could to halt the spread of infection and tried not to rail against Dom and his betrayal. As she attempted to reconcile that night in the forts when he’d eased her fears and shown her his soul, when they’d created a life, with the monster he’d become.
‘Nearly done now,’ she muttered, forcing her mind back to the present. Gilda lay on her bed, her face turned away, but Rillirin could see the cords of muscle in her throat, the tension in the old shoulders despite the opium the Rank’s healer had given her. Rillirin sat on the other side of the bed, holding Gilda’s good hand and trying not to gag as the man cut away the rotten flesh and then cleaned and stitched the wound, pulling the
lips of skin tight together. He poulticed it and bandaged it with crisp fresh linen, and then left them with a promise to return in the morning.
Rillirin sat in silence as Gilda drifted on the edges of unconsciousness, occasionally dabbing the sweat from the priestess’s face. The healer had muttered about amputation if the infection could not be stemmed, and all Rillirin could think in her selfishness was how would Gilda deliver her babe with only one arm?
How much credence had General Hadir and his staff given to their tale, with Gilda feverish and having to work hard not to ramble, while Rillirin’s very voice betrayed her, loaded down with mountain harshness, the accent narrowing eyes and generating scorn and suspicion?
For hours they’d been in his office, the same questions over and over from different angles, searching out inconsistencies, separating fact from emotion. They’d agreed beforehand not to mention Dom, neither his betrayal nor his knowings. They knew instinctively that their task would be hard enough without mentioning calestars and prophecies and Fox Gods in mortal guise.
‘He believed us, of course he did. He had to. We gave him the most up-to-date information he’s received since the siege began. The only bloody information he’s received. He’ll reinforce. He can’t do otherwise. He can’t.’
Gilda stirred at her voice and Rillirin watched with dismay as the pain intruded upon her consciousness and she woke.
‘Do you think you can manage some more stew?’ Rillirin asked when it was clear Gilda wouldn’t drift back into sleep.
Gilda licked her lips and grimaced, scowling at Rillirin. ‘I feel sick to my stomach but yes, I’ll eat. Unlike most of the idiot men I’ve treated over the years, I take my healer’s advice seriously and understand the need to keep up my strength.’
Rillirin brought her a bowl and spoon and then sat at the small table with a third helping for herself. The irritation in Gilda’s tone was new and Rillirin felt an old, instinctive urge to hunch her shoulders and fade into the shadows. She didn’t, swallowing the old habits as best she could along with the food.
Darksoul Page 30