Darksoul

by Anna Stephens

  ‘Roger,’ she whispered, but she didn’t go to look. Mireces in front, Mireces behind. What were their choices?

  A soft grating had them both whirling away from the wall, weapons rasping into hands. Yellow eyes and a feral grin met their disbelieving stares. ‘You coming in?’ Crys breathed and they piled through the door in such haste they nearly went down again in a tangle of limbs. Crys slid shut the door and held a finger to his lips, a finger that was batted away and replaced with Ash’s mouth for such a length of time that Tara felt herself begin to blush.

  She turned her back on them and saw another figure huddled against the far wall, a man she vaguely recognised. He was so gaunt and haggard she couldn’t put a name to his face, and he had no weapons, so she ignored him and crept to a broken shutter on the opposite side of the room and peeked out. The street looked empty.

  A hand tapped her shoulder and Crys gave her a swift hug. ‘How are you?’ he asked. His eyes were still glowing and Tara felt her stomach cramp with awe.

  ‘Well, Lord,’ she said, ducking her head, feeling faintly ridiculous – this was Crys! – and yet unable to do otherwise.

  The corner of Crys’s mouth twitched. ‘None of that shit,’ he said. ‘You remember Dom.’

  Tara blinked and squinted at the hunched figure again. Then she let out a low, breathy whistle. ‘Wow. Right, let’s get back to the others.’

  ‘None of us are going back to the Rank,’ Crys said as Ash hugged Dom. ‘Me and the calestar and Ash are going south for reinforcements. You can’t come.’

  ‘We are?’ Ash asked, surprised.

  ‘I can’t?’ Tara said. Her eyebrows rose. ‘We’ve been looking for you for hours. We came out here, risked our lives and lost men, to find you and get you back to the Rank safely. Now you’re telling me you’re not only deserting, but that I’m not allowed to desert with you?’

  ‘I need you here, and it’s not going to be easy.’

  ‘Defences never are,’ Tara said shortly, folding her arms.

  ‘The city’s lost. The defenders will be dead, surrendered or fled by dawn. But I need you here, afterwards. I need you to do something for me.’

  Tara blinked rapidly, her eyes sore. ‘Is this a fellow officer giving me an order, or …’

  ‘Not the officer,’ Crys said softly. ‘The other one.’

  Shit.

  He handed her a bundle of cloth, and when she shook it out she coughed a laugh. ‘A gown? I have two questions for you. One: have you ever seen me in skirts? The answer’s no. And two: how do I fight in a dress?’

  Crys’s face was solemn; the other occupants of the room listened intently. ‘The Mireces know there are female Wolves, but they don’t know about you or your training, your ability to plan. Skerris might, but he’s never met you; you have no face for him to recognise. There are going to be hostages when this is over, and more than that …’

  Tara looked at the dress again and licked sweat from her upper lip. ‘You want me to kill Corvus.’

  ‘Yes. And the Blessed One.’

  Infiltrate the Mireces and kill the two most well-guarded and important figures in their army. Cut the head off the snake – or try to.

  ‘You’re the god; you do it.’

  She was shocked she’d said it aloud, but Crys smiled. His eyes – the Fox God’s eyes – were full of faith. She was the only one who could do this. He had His reasons and He’d chosen her. She appreciated His belief, but even so, she couldn’t stop her hands from crushing the gown.

  ‘What about those hostages?’

  Crys blinked. ‘What about them?’

  ‘If I’m going in, I may as well do everything I can before they take me down, because I think we both know I don’t get out of this pretty. So I’ll free any hostages they have – as you said, there’re bound to have some – before I ghost Corvus and the woman. Their deaths should give the rest the distraction they need to get out.’

  ‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ Ash murmured. ‘One woman, alone in that nest of vipers …’

  Tara’s face twisted with sudden rage that she knew was a thin veneer over gut-loosening terror, but even so Ash took a shocked pace backwards.

  ‘Fuck you, Bowman. Don’t preach to me about the dangers of being a woman in the Mireces’ world, because you have zero idea how it feels to be a woman in a Rank, surrounded by men who want to fuck you, not because you’re pretty, but just because they haven’t seen tits in a year and they think what they want is more important than what I want. That they have the right to take what they like, and my only right is to give it to them. I know exactly what I’m going to be up against and I know exactly what it is I might have to do.’

  Tara sucked in a deep breath, shocked at herself but thrumming with energy. ‘I understand the risks and accept the likely outcome. I choose what happens to me, and when I can’t choose, I fight. Right now, I choose to accept this task because my friend and fellow officer – and Lord – asks me to.’

  Ash looked stricken, and Tara poked him in the chest before he could speak again and undermine her courage any further. ‘And don’t ever underestimate me because of my gender, Wolf. Women have got more strength than you’d know what to do with. If this is how we fight these bastards, then this is how we fight.’

  ‘I’m a Wolf,’ he protested weakly, ‘I’ve been taught by women and knocked on my arse by women all my life. I’d never think you incapable. I just don’t think you should be alone.’

  ‘Like He said, I’m the only one they won’t suspect, so I’m the only choice.’

  Crys nodded his head once and Tara gathered the gown and backed away across the room, slipped through the door into the long kitchen and pressed her back against it. Nausea sloshed in her gut. What have I done? What the living fuck have I just agreed to?

  ‘Gods alive,’ she heard Ash mutter. ‘The woman’s a fucking menace.’

  Crys laughed, low, and Tara felt a little strength return to her legs. A flicker of a smile creased her face as she began to unbuckle her armour.

  ‘That she is, love,’ Crys – or the Fox God – said. ‘That she is.’ He laughed again. ‘If anyone can do it, she can. Corvus is fucked. Best of all he doesn’t even know it.’

  MACE

  Fifth moon, dawn, day forty-four of the siege

  Slaughter district, First Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

  Hundreds were dead, hundreds more captured or fleeing in all directions, cut off from the rest of the group and the Rankers doing their damnedest to save them. The Mireces ambush had slammed into the side of the crowd like a wolf into deer, scattering some, panicking the rest. The defenders had cut down the wedge of enemy, and now Mace was in line with a hundred or so others, falling back step by step, fending off the next wave, conserving strength. Only killing when there was no other choice, too shitting tired for more.

  The civilians who’d scattered raced down alleys and across plazas, lunging into cheap houses and low warehouses, pounding down smoky streets with more Mireces in pursuit, chased, cornered, beaten on to their knees and roped like cattle. A few made it into buildings without anyone noticing. Mace offered a swift prayer that they’d survive, somehow be safe when there was no one left in the city to protect them.

  Once we’ve abandoned them.

  Beyond the thousands of screaming, shoving, hysterical citizens yawned the North Gate and, beyond that, the harbour and the ships. Freedom. The heavy scent of old meat and stale blood rose from the warehouses nearby, clinging to nostrils and the backs of throats.

  A score of massive, burly men and women emerged from the nearest abattoir armed with hooks and cleavers, flensing knives and heavy hatchets, carrying crates or stools as makeshift shields. They stepped up next to Mace’s men, a trickle of support while the boiling mass of humanity behind forced its way through the gate, squeezing, falling, trampling. Screaming.

  Most of the butchers dwarfed most of the soldiers, and Mace found a tired smirk creasing his face as the Mireces h
esitated at the sight of them. The timing was perfect.

  From above came a volley of arrows, and then another and another. Dalli had unblocked the entrance to North Tower One and got archers on the allure. The Mireces scattered.

  ‘All right, lads, pause here. Give those behind some room,’ Mace panted. He knew the dangers of space opening between the line and the fleeing citizenry, knew too the worse danger of crowding already panicked men and women. Too many had died in Yew Cove under the feet of their brothers; Mace didn’t intend for the same to happen here.

  ‘They’ll be coming,’ a Personal Guard muttered next to him. ‘They want us alive for some evil purpose, so they’ll be coming. Can’t afford to let this many escape, arrows or not. There’s no getting out, not for us.’

  ‘That’s enough, soldier,’ Mace said quietly. ‘We all know they’ll be coming. Don’t go scaring your mates now. We have a duty here to protect these people; let’s see them safe, eh? And then concentrate on our own way out.’

  The Personal grunted, but he dipped his head in acknowledgment and kept further opinions to himself.

  ‘Fall back,’ he heard and chanced a glance over his shoulder; the crowd had thinned, even calmed a little, and Mace drew in a breath to order the line to pull back when the Mireces howled out of the darkness again. They’d got shields – some Rank-made, most just bits of scavenged crate – and they threw them up as protection against the volley and piled into the line.

  Fucking hundreds of them, hacking madly to split Mace’s line from the mass of non-combatants, peel them apart to scoop out the tender flesh of the unarmed, freshly screaming populace.

  ‘Hold!’ Mace roared, his voice breaking, his arm slow to counter, feet scuffing on the stone and tripping on the blood channels that ran down the edges of the road as he shuffled backwards. ‘Hold.’

  But they weren’t holding. Not his soldiers, not the butchers or the slaughterhouse men. The assault was all out and overwhelming; whoever was leading these Mireces had pulled in every available body and, once again, they spent their lives like copper knights.

  The Personal who’d foretold their deaths went to one knee next to him. When Mace extended his hand to pull the man up, an axe flashed through the air between them; Mace snatched away and the Personal was hacked in the chest plate, knocked on to his back, and dragged away out of the melee. Not dead, dear gods, not yet dead.

  ‘For Rilpor!’

  The shout echoed through the slaughter district and Mace recognised the voice as his own. His men stiffened the line, echoing his cry and bringing the Mireces attack to a grinding, shuddering halt, men straining chest to chest, snarling and biting at each other, weapons locked or flailing.

  ‘For Koridam!’ Mace heard next and his eyes stung with tears at the honour they did his father even as he dropped the spear and pulled a knife, better for close quarters, and pumped it into a belly four, five, six times. The man fell and more rushed to take his place and Mace waited to be overwhelmed.

  ‘Mace!’ men roared all around him. ‘Mace! Mace! Mace!’ and the constriction in his throat wound tighter. He half flourished his knife in acknowledgment and then hacked it into a Mireces’ neck, wrenched it free and kicked the man over on to his back, hoping to trip the next to face him.

  ‘Front rank! Rotate!’ the order came and Mace stepped to his left and then back two paces without thinking about it, the movement instinctive after thousands of hours of drill, a score of battles. Not all of the front rank obeyed, and Mace had time to wonder who’d ordered the rotate when hands grabbed him from behind and pulled him backwards, and that’s when he understood.

  For the second time in this siege, others were dying so he might live. While half of Mace’s front rank obeyed the order, the rest simply moved to the side to allow others to step up next to them in the line.

  Mace glanced back, sick with fear and hope, and the gate was almost clear. Close enough. ‘Break for the gate,’ he yelled, throwing off the restraining hands and putting all he had into the command. ‘All ranks, to the gate, at the fucking double!’

  He turned and pounded ahead of them, men clattering along. They fell in swathes, no longer attempting to delay the enemy, just to outrun them. For a second crystalline with hope, Mace thought they would make it.

  And then the Mireces brought them to bay.

  ‘Dancer’s grace,’ they shouted and Mace saw dozens of his men tap their fingertips to their hearts. He copied the gesture as he slid through the gap, and just before the gate was hauled closed, with his men on the inside, he saw them turn their backs on the Mireces and pair up, Ranker against Ranker, and before the Mireces could disarm them, they drove their blades into each others’ chests and throats.

  No souls for the Red Gods. No bodies for the Blessed One. Suicide over sacrifice.

  And a sacrifice Mace would never forget. A gesture that broke him, as nothing else these long months had managed to do.

  There were no words. He joined the others in piling barrels and rubbish and unstepped masts against the gate, and then they fled for the harbour, the ships, and the dubious safety of the river.

  It was standing room only on the ships. Five men and women could stand in the space occupied by one prone casualty. If they couldn’t stand and no one was able to hold them up, they were left on the dock with empty prayers ringing hollow in their ears.

  Their faces would haunt him until he died.

  We’ve lost the last dregs of our humanity. We’ve reached the level of the Mireces themselves, as savage as our enemies, as uncaring of our fallen as those we sought to defeat. We’re monsters, every one of us.

  The sun was lightening the sky and Mace stood at the stern of the rearmost ship and watched the black and orange and rubble of Rilporin fade with distance. His arm was wrapped tight around Dalli, and the short Wolf’s hands were hastily bandaged; she’d burnt them raw sliding down a rope from the northern wall in the last seconds before the Mireces cleared the gate and charged towards the dock and the departing ships.

  The early sun blushed the eastern tower pink and turned the river into a ribbon of molten gold leading to safety.

  Somewhere on deck, quietly at first but with slow-growing vigour, someone began to sing. Cracked and broken over the weeping and the weary creak of oars the voices rose until the song jumped from ship to ship and Mace’s heart was lifted, heavy and broken though it was, borne up on a shivering, delicate hope and a flickering ember of promise. Retribution, it breathed. Vengeance.

  ‘It shouldn’t be this way,’ Dalli whispered.

  ‘But it is,’ he murmured, ‘at least for now. But the next time I see that city, it’ll be over the corpses of our enemies. This isn’t over. Not by a long way.’

  He stared at the city. ‘I swear it.’

  The sun rose on a shattered landscape, on the graveyard of all they were, the pyre of all their hopes.

  It shouldn’t be this way. And yet they sang.

  EPILOGUE

  TARA

  Fifth moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

  Grand temple square, First Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

  The square was filled to capacity – Raiders, Easterners and as many slaves as could fit thronged outside the grand temple. It was a charnel pit now, the Light washed away in sacrificial blood, and Tara couldn’t look into its gaping, stinking maw. She followed Valan – her master, her owner these last ten days – through the crowd and then paused at the edge as he moved to stand beside Corvus and the Blessed One.

  ‘Rilporin is ours,’ Corvus suddenly shouted, and the crowd fell into rapturous silence. ‘Ours, though it has cost us more than we ever knew to pay. And though we all grieve, there is much still to do. Know now that all is not lost. While many of our enemies fled to Listre, the bulk of this city’s inhabitants and its defenders now belong to us, prevented from fleeing through the King Gate like the cowards they are by our brave allies in the East Rank. They will serve us as slaves and consorts until our own can be
brought down from the mountains. The rewards of holy war.’

  Tara glanced around; either Corvus’s calculations were wildly inaccurate or he couldn’t count. From what she could see, only about a third of Rilporin’s citizens remained, though the captured Rankers weren’t present. She hadn’t seen them once since Valan had bought her, had no idea where they were being held. She was unwilling to risk taking out Corvus and Lanta until she knew whether or not she could free them.

  Soon, she promised them in the silence of her skull. Trust me and stay alive. I’m coming.

  The Blessed One held up her arms. ‘Our next steps are decided. The East Rank will be sent to the main towns and cities of Rilpor to bring them under our control. Their first act will be to secure a tithe of food and goods suitable to our status as their overlords.’

  Tara grunted in reluctant agreement, the sound lost among the rustle of approval. Sending Rankers was less contentious than a band of ravening Mireces descending on the towns. The Rankers would initiate martial law and enforce it ruthlessly, but without unnecessary bloodshed.

  ‘The rest of us will remain in Rilporin, to see it restored and its walls rebuilt against the threat of further assault. And we of the true faith, who have walked the Dark Path in gladness and in glory all our lives, have another task: to practise the blood magic of faith and search for our Bloody Mother.’

  What?

  Lanta indicated the stains on her arms and face, the black swirls that, if the rumours were true, were the Dark Lady’s very blood decorating her flesh. ‘My faith told me to do this, my connection to the gods and Their realm, my understanding of Their needs all guided me. I am guided still. I have not moved from this square and newly dedicated temple since I begged our Red Father to come for vengeance. Even when He stalked this damned place I did not move. I have lain here and I have searched – my soul, the world, the veil and past it, the Waystation. I have been to the limits of the Afterworld itself,’ she said and there was a ripple of awe.

  ‘And do you know what I have learnt?’ Lanta suddenly screeched. ‘Our Bloody Mother is not gone. Not forever.’