He spat something black and glistening on to the flagstones, and then wiped his mouth. ‘That make you feel better?’
‘Steady on.’ Edris cast a glare in Vaunt’s direction. Mace knew he should reprimand the major, didn’t bother.
‘Why are we getting the civilians out of the way again?’ Dalli asked. ‘I’m a civilian, all us Wolves are. We still fight. Why aren’t this lot fighting?’
‘No weapons, no idea what they’re doing,’ Vaunt said shortly.
Dalli nodded. ‘Uh-huh. Take a lot of skill to throw a rock at a man’s head, does it?’ She waved a hand to cut off Vaunt as he bristled. ‘Get the archers off the wall and send these people up there. Arm them with rocks, stones, rubble, boiling water. Send them up there with heavy cooking pots if you have to. They can throw the fucking pigs for all I care, but get our archers down here where they can wield blade or spear alongside us and get the civilians on the walls out of immediate danger where they can actually do some good. They’re scared because they don’t have any control. They’re a second fucking army and they outnumber us and the Mireces put together. Use them.’
Mace knew she was right. They all did. ‘Do it, Major. We need all the help we can get and if they can take the pressure off us for a while, the rest of us might actually come up with a plan that’ll see us live through the night.’
The faces around him were grim and he probably shouldn’t have said that last bit, but someone needed to articulate exactly how deep was the shit they were in.
‘Actually,’ Colonel Edris interrupted in a low voice, ‘Dorcas and I have an alternative position to present.’ The man was grey with blood loss and exhaustion but his face was firm. Dorcas crouched by his side, head turning in exaggerated movements so his remaining eye could see everyone.
‘Abandon the city,’ Edris said and Mace wheezed as though he’d been punched in the chest. ‘It’s on its knees, it’s burning, it’s broken; let them have it.’
‘We can’t abandon Rilporin,’ Mace spluttered. ‘Not when we’ve spent so many lives defending it. What were all the deaths for if we just give up on it now?’ Anger was growing like a weed, strangling his weariness, his doubt. ‘We can still win this!’
‘Can we? I had this very conversation with your father a few weeks ago,’ a voice said and Hallos appeared out of the darkness, bloody to the elbows and haggard as a corpse. ‘Do you know what he told me when I said we should evacuate the king and the nobles prior to this siege beginning? He said Rilpor isn’t to be found in stone houses and golden crowns or noble titles. Rilpor is its people, its faith, its way of life. We save them, not a pile of shattered stone.’
Hallos put a fingertip on Mace’s chest. ‘That’s where Rilpor is. It’s in Edris and Dorcas here. It’s in Vaunt and Weaverson, Dalli and Tailorson and Carter, wherever they are and regardless of whether they still live. It’s in the people huddled here hoping you’ll protect them. It’s even in me. We are Rilpor, not these walls and houses. And if we’re to save Rilpor, perhaps we should let Rilporin go.’
‘And then what?’ Mace asked, spreading his hands and swallowing the bitterness of what tasted like defeat. ‘We just keep running, abandon the country to the Mireces, flee as every other town and village falls to the Red Gods? Save our own skins at the expense of everyone else’s? There are walls here to protect us; out there is nothing but leagues of farmland.’
‘There are walls here,’ Dalli said softly and he could see she was with the others. ‘Walls for us to die behind. These bastards won’t stop; we all know they won’t stop. At least out there we can form a line between the people and the Mireces, give them a chance to run.’
‘And not just them,’ Edris said, as patient as if he was answering a green recruit’s questions. ‘You need to go too, sir. Find new allies to bolster our strength so that we can wipe them and their religion from Gilgoras. This is the battle, sir; it’s not the war. Not if we can get you out.’
‘Fuck ’em up,’ Vaunt snarled before Mace could respond. ‘Come back here with a new army and fuck ’em right the fuck up. That’s a plan I can get behind.’
It wasn’t as though Mace hadn’t thought it himself, not for him personally to run, of course – that would never happen – but for the army to pull back to a new position of strength. But they’d just been thoughts, speculation in his darker moments. He’d been convinced there was still a way out, a way through to victory. Now all his officers, and Dalli, and even the bloody physician, were in agreement that the only hope of victory lay in retreat.
He looked at their grimy, bloody, sweaty faces one by one and he knew the decision had already been made, and that it wasn’t one he could stand against. If he countermanded it, they’d stay and fight and die for him without hesitation. And he’d be haunted by their deaths until it was his turn to die.
‘King Gate?’ he asked, refusing to let his shoulders slump in defeat.
‘North Gate and the ships,’ Dalli said. They all looked at each other.
‘Split our forces, take half the non-combatants each?’ Edris suggested. ‘A double break out means they’re fighting to contain us on two fronts, gives us a greater chance.’
‘I think that’s our best option,’ Mace said. ‘Vaunt, Dorcas, take the tunnel to the King Gate with Palace and half of South. Edris, you’re with me and the West. We’ll take the Wolves too and go for the north harbour and the ships.’
‘What’s our staging location?’ Vaunt asked. ‘Listran border?’
Mace thought for a moment. ‘No. Head due south, straight into the forest. Get out of sight before dawn. We’ll take the ships downriver until we’re out of sight of the city, then set them adrift and make our way to you. I want them thinking we’re fleeing to Listre.’
Vaunt’s smile was feral. ‘When really?’
‘When really we’ll be looping wide and then making all speed for the South Rank forts. Three thousand rested, unbloodied soldiers in those forts. They’ll have a point to prove, and we’ll have a score to settle.’
Mace stood a little straighter, feeling a flicker of hope. Not a retreat, just falling back to a position of strength.
‘All right, give the order. Arm as many civilians as you can with whatever you can scavenge; as soon as the Mireces see we’re gone, they’ll be forcing their way in through the gate and over that breach, so we’ll need a rearguard. I want volunteers only for that duty; you all know why.’
Grim glances were exchanged and Mace swallowed, his throat thick and dry at the thought. ‘Get the non-combatants moving now. Let’s use the darkness for as long as we can. Dancer’s grace.’
The others saluted and left him and Mace stared up at the gatehouse, black against the blackness. ‘Where the fuck are you, Major Carter?’ he muttered. ‘And where the hell is the Fox God?’
DOM
Fifth moon, night, day forty-three of the siege
Jewellery district, Third Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
Something was missing. His body was distant and blunted, and something was missing. Something that had been with him for what felt like forever.
Her.
She wasn’t there any more and the godspace was a shrivelled womb empty of life. Dom shivered, aching with the intensity of Her absence. My love, why have you abandoned me? Am I not your good son, your loving son? Where are you, my love? I need you.
‘Everything else was a lie.’
The words were quiet, innocuous, floating on a smoky breeze. But they were familiar, too. From before. A frown creased Dom’s brow, and deepened when he heard noises that sounded like distant battle. Screams, thin and high.
‘Everything else was a lie. That’s what you said. After you’d tortured me.’
Pain, from his heart into his head. Torture? The memory of the last days was lost beneath an impenetrable shroud, all of it tainted and stained by the awful absence of the Dark Lady.
‘Godblind. That’s what Lanta called you, isn’t it? Come on then, Godblind, open your ey
es. I know you’re awake. Time to face your truth, and the consequences of your actions.’
Dom looked and roof beams swam into view, almost lost in shadow, light from a single candle barely illuminating the shape at his side. ‘Who?’ he managed.
‘Crys Tailorson. Or maybe you know me as the Fox God, the Trickster. I know I once knew you as a friend. I’m the one you betrayed to Lanta and Corvus, the one you took knife and pliers and branding iron and fists to. Remember? Do you remember that, Godblind, my torture and the delight you took in it? Or are you honestly expecting me to believe that was a lie as well?’
‘Splitsoul?’ Dom muttered.
Crys raised an eyebrow. ‘Not any more. Though you’re still a Darksoul.’ Face in shadow, his mismatched eyes flared yellow as he grabbed Dom by the shoulders and wrenched him upright. Dom screeched as pain flared in his left arm all the way up to his neck. He wriggled away until his shoulders cracked into a wall.
Crys dragged the candle closer and pulled up his ragged shirt, exposing lines and welts, brandings and great slicing cuts all over his belly and chest, down into the waistband of his too-short trousers, decorating his shoulders and forearms and probably other places Dom couldn’t see. But they weren’t red or purple, not fresh, plump lips silenced with stitches. Dom frowned and looked closer despite himself; then he gasped, skin going cold.
Every wound on Crys’s body was healed, and each one had healed silver, like lines of precious metal seamed into his body, a miner’s fortune. Like sunlight on ribbons of water. The scales of a fish.
‘Remember giving me these?’ Crys hissed. ‘What about taking away these?’ and he shoved his hand in Dom’s face; three of the nailbeds were exposed and hardened, the flesh cauterised and silvery, winking in the candlelight. ‘Remember torturing me on behalf of Lanta, on behalf of the Red Gods? Do you? Do you?’
Dom’s mouth tasted of blood as he stared at the silver scars decorating Crys’s skin. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.
Crys slapped him across the face. ‘Not good enough. Not ever going to be good enough. Why did you do it?’
My love? My love, what’s happening? What’s he saying?
There was no answer, and Dom’s fear grew like the emptiness inside. She’s abandoned me. I let Her down, stumbled from the Path somehow and my hand slipped from Hers.
My hand …
The sense of wrongness in his body found its source, the pain its origin. Dom held his breath and raised his left arm in front of his face, squinting in the yellow light. It didn’t end in a hand and fingers. It ended halfway past his elbow in a swathe of white and red linen. Dom’s left arm … ended.
‘Where’s … where’s my hand?’ he asked, knowing it was stupid. ‘What happened to my hand? Where’s my fucking hand?’
‘I cut it off.’ Crys laughed, his features ugly with triumph, and ice and heat chased each other through Dom’s body, his stomach rolling slowly. Images rose and fell in the mist of his memory, disjointed, tangled with sounds and scents that didn’t belong.
Nothing makes sense. My love, I can’t think without you, I can’t live. Please come back. I don’t understand any of this. Why did he hurt me? Why is he saying I hurt him? Those memories aren’t real.
Are they?
He remembered the touch of the Dark Lady in his soul, Her voice in his head and he reached blindly, straining. There was nothing there. ‘Why?’ he asked eventually.
Crys lifted his shirt again in answer, growling when Dom rolled his head against the wall in wordless denial.
‘I don’t understand. I just did what She asked of me, what I had to.’ He met Crys’s eyes, bewildered. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’
An axe appeared in Crys’s hand, a big double-headed axe, and Crys laid one of the blades against Dom’s other arm. ‘It’s not your fault?’ he hissed. ‘It’s not your fault?’ he repeated, louder now. ‘You will fucking well take responsibility for your actions or I will make you pay in ways you couldn’t imagine.’
‘But I can’t … What do you want me to say?’
‘I want you to admit everything you’ve done. Remember,’ Crys ordered, and Dom did, in a painful rush that scoured away the tatters of his dignity.
Shame constricted his throat, breath whistling, shame that crept dead fingers over his skin, shame that tore. ‘I told them how to get in, when and where to breach the defences. I tried to kill Gilda; I did kill captives. Friends, war-kin. I told them about Rillirin; I told them about you.’
Each word was a knife, cutting away pieces of the man he’d always thought himself to be. Always fought to be.
‘I remember hurting you now,’ he stuttered. ‘I remember telling the Blessed One that if we could get the Fox God out of you, we’d – they’d – win the war.’
‘But why you?’ Crys whispered, and the anger bled into sadness. ‘We were friends. Why was it you who hurt me?’
Dom looked at the split and swollen knuckles on his right hand, knuckles he’d skinned against Crys’s face and ribs and humiliation flooded him, so hard and sudden that he gagged. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered again.
The fury reignited in a blink, whitening Crys’s lips, tightening the muscles around his eyes. ‘You’re sorry. You’re sorry? Do you have any idea how inadequate that is? Thousands of men, women and children are dead. Thousands. The city is overrun, the Mireces control the outer Circles, the Ranks are in retreat. They’re killing everyone they can find. Because of you.’
Crys slammed the axe into the wood above Dom’s head, making him cower. ‘Time to wake up, Darksoul,’ he snarled. ‘Time to face it all. To remember why I cut off your arm.’
The words were splinters beneath the skin, barbs in Dom’s flesh, tugging, tearing him a little wider until he broke open and the awful truth, the memory that he’d fought to bury beneath all the rest, surged back.
She’s not here, my love, my Bloody Mother. She’ll never be here again.
I killed Her.
His heart gave one great lurch and then started pounding so hard his vision greyed at the edges. A thin, high keening broke from him and he slid on to his side and curled up tight, racked with pain, with the knowledge that She was gone from the world because of him. All the other deaths, all the betrayals, were as nothing.
‘No,’ he pleaded. ‘No, tell me I didn’t. Please, tell me I didn’t kill Her. Not my love.’ It hurt to breathe, hurt to look at the angry delight in Crys, the dark justice.
He could feel the vortex swirling back, the black madness. He reached for it, blind. ‘She was … everything, my whole world.’ Dom seized Crys’s hand. ‘Kill me. Please, however you like, as slowly as you like but please, please kill me. Please.’
Crys blinked and then changed, subtly. Power rose in him as he ran fingers over the stump of Dom’s arm, ignoring his pleading. ‘You have caused great evil, Dom Calestar. Godblind and Darksoul are fates we did not foresee, and we regret them. But your task is not yet complete.’
Dom stared at the Fox God from the ruins of his pain and cold sweat bathed his back. ‘No more,’ he begged. ‘Please, Lord. Please, I can do no more. It’s too much. Let me die.’
‘Be healed,’ the Fox God said and silver light rose from his skin and snaked down Dom’s arm and beneath the bandages. Dom sobbed as the splintered bone and flaps of meat and skin that was all that was left of his sword arm healed into a useless, misshapen lump, as all his hurts and wounds closed and faded, filling him with exhaustion and crystalline memories with edges sharp enough to cut.
His path, which had been so muddied and hard to find within the mists and confusions laid by the Dark Lady, lay straight and clear again before his feet, to an outcome he couldn’t yet see but which filled him with dread. To either side yawned the chasm of Her loss, beckoning him in. A need so deep it didn’t have a name.
Dom stood at the edge for a long time, looking down while the Fox God waited, silver as moonlight, hard as steel. Then he turned, weary as the end of the world, and took his place be
hind his Lord. There was no mercy and no forgiveness, not for the likes of him. But there was a task to do, and Dom would see it done.
Perhaps then he could rest. Perhaps then They’d let him die.
TARA
Fifth moon, night, day forty-three of the siege
Jewellery district, Third Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
‘West is best!’ Tara bellowed as she sprinted up the King’s Way towards the closing gate into Fourth Circle. ‘Friendlies. Don’t close the fucking gate!’
Tara and her companions put on a last desperate spurt of speed as arrows whickered past them from behind. They were still twenty strides out when the gate slammed shut, trapping them in Third with the enemy. ‘Mother … fucker,’ she panted. ‘Roger?’
The lieutenant didn’t even pause, dashing past the closed gate and dodging into an alley so narrow Tara barked her elbow against the stone as she followed him in, Ash labouring behind.
The air in Third was thick with smoke, and Tara’s lungs pumped for air. Despite herself, her legs were slowing and Roger was a mere shadow ahead. She tried to force her legs faster, but they simply wouldn’t respond, and less than a minute later Roger burst out of the end of the alley. A second after that he was punched off his feet by a flight of arrows, vanishing out of sight.
Tara skidded to a halt, Ash crashing into her back and sending them both on to the hard-packed dirt and rotting vegetable scraps. Then Ash’s hand found her face and tapped twice, and then twice again – don’t move.
Arrows clattered overhead, loosed blind into the alley, and Tara just closed her eyes and tried to suck air into her lungs, bruised with effort, crushed by Ash’s weight. After what felt like an hour, he slid slowly to the side and then up the wall, keeping to the darkest shadow. Tara waited some more, in case his movement triggered a challenge, and then rose next to him.
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