by CF WELBURN
“Get up!” It was Tre, hauling him to his feet.
Oben opened his mouth to shout thanks, but a hammer came down on the back of Tre’s head, crushing his skull, making an eye pop out. Oben gaped, looked at the knight and grappled him.
“Fucker!” he yelled, using his dagger, finding a gap in the jade armour and plunging it again and again, until Gadziel dragged him off.
“Enough! He’s dead!” Oben wiped the blood from his eyes. He looked back to where Tre had fallen, but his friend was already lost, trampled beneath a hundred boots.
Another volley of fire lances exploded into the Taliskans, Oben heard a scream, saw Gadziel consumed by fire. Then the big soldier was up again, fighting on. His face was melting, dripping like a candle, his hair burnt, his scalp blistered. He roared, cleaved his axe into one knight’s ribs, grabbed the next headbutting him then stabbing. He leapt for the next, but was overwhelmed, disappearing as three different spears skewered him in the back and neck.
“No!” Gulmorgon roared, sweeping her axe, severing the head of one of the knights, the momentum so great that the blade buried itself in the groin of the knight standing on the next step.
Oben wiped the blood from his face. Somehow, they had passed the statues of the Tender. They were halfway up.
* * *
Dead bodies were kicked ruthlessly from the side of the stair to tumble down the hill, leaving the golden bricks stained and slick.
Oben's ears rang with the explosions, the soldiers grunting and panting, the death cries. The stench of the pungent powder made the air hard to breathe; it was already thick with the stink of sweat and blood and viscera.
Oben heard a mighty crack and four men in front of him exploded in gore.
He tripped and fell, landing on top of a dead Taliskan. He knew the man’s face, he’d been one of the Tiandol that had joined them at Tey. He’d never learnt his name. Never would, now. A hand grabbed his wrist, hauled him up. Blin nodded at him.
“Not getting off that easily.” she said, her face dripping red, and with what looked to be a burnt finger on her shoulder. Then she ducked, plunging her knife into the next knight, disappearing in the sea of knees and hammers and sprawling corpses. Someone bumped into the back of him. Oben was amazed to see Ortho still standing, his face a mask of blood, his eyes wide in shock.
From somewhere above a great horn sounded, and to Oben's astonishment the final few hundred knights began withdrawing into the temple, but not all of them retreated. Some still fired lances down into the Taliskan vanguard. A flaming spear hit the man next to Oben in the chest and slammed him back into the soldiers behind them. It had been Jank.
Oben found himself face to face with a giant Jade Knight. The knight slashed his sword down, and Oben parried with his axe blade, feeling the force shudder through his shoulders. Then Oben rammed the head of his axe into the knight's gut to keep the press moving up the steps. The knight toppled backwards onto the edge of the stair, groaned, and the Taliskans stomped over him. Oben found some space and sank his axe into the next knight’s thigh. The man wailed and fell beneath the surging invaders. The stair ahead was mostly clear. He paused to look back. Not many Taliskans remained. Less than half.
There was an earth wrenching explosion from above, and Oben staggered as the stair erupted. Huge chunks of mortar soared upwards and came crashing down on the Taliskans. Pieces of stone larger than Oben's head crushed men where they stood, gaping. He shielded his eyes as a cloud of thick dust rolled over them and grit and shrapnel stung his face and bare arms. Men coughed, spluttered and choked.
When the dust settled, Oben saw the damage. The great stair was broken, shattered, half of its width crumbled away about halfway between where he stood and the golden temple above him. The carnage was almost overwhelming. Bodies and body parts tumbled down the hill on both sides of the stairs. Less than three thousand Taliskans still stood, their faces caked with white dust and blood. He wiped the sticky pink paste from his cheeks. His ears hummed, his eyes and throat stung, and his skin was raw with pebble-dashed, grazes.
No one moved. Then he saw the banner of Gulmorgon, tattered and dirty.
“Onward!” she roared, shaking them from their stupor, invigorating them like a shot of burning spice wine.
They surged upwards, clambering over bodies and broken stone. Their progress hindered by the crumbling hole in the stair.
The Persuasion rained arrows down on them from the thin narrow windows and high balcony that fronted the temple. More Taliskans fell, full of feathered shafts, knocking others down with them. Several took arrows and continued to run, though Oben doubted they’d make it far.
No more than two thousand made it between the final statues of the Harvester and up to the huge oak doors. The temple had not been designed to withstand an attack. The very notion must have been unthinkable. He glanced back and felt a wave of dizziness, not only from the height and wide view of the smoking keep, but from the blood and death he saw. Bodies, broken, bent, in their thousands sprawled upon the stair, halfway down the hill, and in piles at the bottom.
Oben heard a wheezing next to him, turned to see Ortho, bent double, struggling for breath. He looked up, his face covered with dust and blood.
“This is worse than the trip to Skarvor.” he said, weakly. Oben almost laughed.
“Bet you wish I’d left you in the cage now.” Ortho tried for a smile, but didn’t quite achieve it.
“Against the walls!” Gulmorgon cried, as more arrows filled the sky. Oben ran, throwing himself against the wall, hearing the hiss and thud of the arrows.
Someone slapped him on the shoulder, and he spun around.
Blin grinned at him. Her face paint was smudged, black, white, red, but her eyes shone.
“Still here?” she asked.
“I think so.” Oben said, patting himself down, checking for wounds.
“Good. Here comes the fun part.”
Oben grinned.
“Hear that, Ortho? We’re not done yet.” When Ortho didn’t answer Oben looked back over his shoulder. The disciple lay face down, two long arrows stood in his back. He looked like he had been trying to run away. Oben’s grin faded. He looked back to Blin who seemed not to have noticed.
“Let’s fucking kill them all!” he said, spitting on the floor and grabbing his axe with both hands.
* * *
Gulmorgon shouted and Lief shouldered the door open, the rest following.
They stormed into a vast open space, lined with rows of ornate alabaster pillars and intricate arches, supporting muralled ceilings glistening with gold leaf. The huge stained-glass window on the back wall, bathed everything in a rich green light. The years he had worked his fingers to the bone, sleeping fewer than four hours a night to bring in the harvests, to scrape and pay for… this! It repulsed him.
Flanking the room, standing in organised units between the pillars, were two hundred or more Jade Knights. The elite of the Persuasion. Two hundred against two thousand would normally be favourable odds for the latter. But they were the hand-picked personal bodyguards of the most important man in Edale; trained, focused, unwavering. They were well armoured and looked rested. The Taliskans looked beaten, bloodied, exhausted, and Oben had to admit, somewhat laughable in their bear pelts and patchwork leather amour.
On a dais below the stained glass sat the High Priest. He regarded the rabble over steepled fingers and looked unnervingly calm. Then he stood and seemed to wrinkle his flat nose at the smell the heathens had brought in.
“How dare you!”
“No,” Gulmorgon shouted, removing the stolen Persuasion helm, and tossing it clattering to the marble floor. There was a collective gasp, and Oben wasn’t sure if the Persuasion was more shocked that she spoke Edalian or that she was a woman. “How. Dare. You!” she said.
Golmin took a shaky step forward.
“You trespass in the Jade Temple, attack our city, challenge the Persuasion, spill foul blood on the holy stair, and yo
u presume to blame us?”
“What is more blood on a temple built of death.”
“We know of you, Gulmorgon and this little... uprising. You are out of your depth. Your story ends here today. And you—” the High Priest thrust his new sceptre at Oben. “Your head will find a spike for this, farmer!”
Oben wanted to say something cutting and profound. He had become so much more than a farmer, but here in the temple, confronted by the High Priest with so many men hanging on his words, he suddenly felt as if he had just wandered in from mucking out the stables. He opened his mouth but shut it again when Gulmorgon took a step forward. As one the Jade Knights glared at her beneath their helms and tightened their grips on their war hammers. The farmer faded into obscurity once more.
“You are responsible for this! Your treachery at Tristleton.”
“You would have come anyway. We know how you envy our lands, heathens! No wonder you can’t make a life in that godless place.”
Gulmorgon looked up at the myriad statues, murals and mosaics. “Tell me, why is your Trinity so concerned with shiny stones? This—” she waved her hand about “—has the stink of man on it. The stench of greedy priests and fat lords.” Golmin’s lips pinched so tight that his chin almost touched his nose, but Gulmorgon continued, “the bloodstains of my people who trusted your treaty.”
“You judge us when thousands lie dead here today?”
Gulmorgon shrugged.
“Our acts shall be judged by Ishral and the Black Swan alone. This act, for example, in which we will destroy the southern oppressors and free the people.”
“Homes smoke and children scream. Is this how you choose to free a people?”
“Once you are dead, we will rebuild. We don’t come to conquer Edale. We come to be a part of it. As our fellows you betrayed at Tristleton did.”
“I’ve heard enough,” Golmin spat. “We will not tolerate heathens, not in our hills, not on our fields, and certainly not here, in our temple.”
“I agree.” she said, turning to address the Jade Knights. “You have lived your lives blinded by lies. Cease listening to this man. Look at the greed about you. Tell me your gods demand such opulence, and I will spit on them. Join me, and you will be given opportunities to redeem your honour.”
None of the knights moved, and after a brittle silence, Golmin let out a rasping laugh, dry as old parchment, humorous as a burial.
“You speak, heathen, to the Persuasion. They are not common soldiers you can intimidate or coerce. You should know that by now. Perhaps the Grim Cages were too subtle.”
Gulmorgon dipped her head. She had tried, but it was like convincing a puppet not to obey its strings.
“Then we will be rid of them.”
Golmin return to his chair and sat, slowly folding his arms in his lap. Then he said softly,
“Kill them.”
Two hundred knights stamped their feet to attention, gripped their hammers, and turned towards the invaders.
Gulmorgon turned to her Taliskan horde and roared,
“Leave none alive!”
She ran directly towards the priest. Oben hesitated, then followed her. There was a wrenching clash as the two armies met. Hammers on flesh and bone, axes on plate and mail. The two sides may have spoken different tongues, but the screams and roars unified their discourse.
Gulmorgon and Oben dodged the main crush, but a score of knights gathered around the dais.
Oben spun his axe, smashing into the nearest knight’s jade armour, then ducking and weaving as a hammer crashed to the ground, shattering the marble. Gulmorgon lurched in, striking a knight through the neck, pulling back, swinging full circle and taking another’s head from his shoulders. Blood fountained upwards, turned the floor slick. A knight slipped, and Oben crouched, shoving his dagger up underneath his helm and into flesh.
The Taliskans chopped and cut their way forward. Some of them fell, some writhed on the floor, heads and chests crumpled by the knights’ hammers.
So much blood, it no longer seemed to matter who it belonged to. Oben focused on Golmin, who had started to shrink back. He ducked a jabbing spear, leapt over a dead knight and ran for the dais.
A huge hammer smashed into the floor next to his left foot, rupturing the thick flagstone. The knight grunted and raised the weapon, but Oben drove Mascal’s axe through his ribs.
He heard a roar to his right, rolled under a swiping hammer up on to his feet and swung the axe around squarely between the knight's armoured shoulder blades. Oben wiped his eyes; his hand came away red. He was smiling. Had he become as mad as Blin? As crazed as Kai? As rabid as Mascal?
He sensed another blow and moved almost calmly to avoid it. He chopped into the back of the knight’s thigh, and when the man fell, again through his helm.
Gulmorgon rushed past him. No one was left standing between her and Golmin. She shouldered her axe and strode silently onto the dais.
“Persuasion!” Golmin cried desperately, but the remaining knights were dead or cut off. The floor was littered with bodies, the white pillars splattered with blood. A few knights fought on, but they were all but defeated. Many fewer Taliskans remained fighting, too.
Gulmorgon did not bother with her weapon and instead seized the small man and hurled him against the jade window. Spidery cracks shot out across the glass and the lead frame bent. Golmin crumpled to the ground.
“Help me, farmer,” he said, raising a frail hand.
Oben looked down at the High Priest, but said nothing, Gulmorgon already on him.
“You’ll go to the Plague for this!” Golmin hissed.
Gulmorgon grabbed his robe and flung him again into the cracked glass. He clawed himself to his feet, his grey face gushed red and he staggered back against the window, eyes darting to where the last of the knights fought.
Gulmorgon went to grab his robe again, but Oben stepped around her, and shoved the priest hard in the chest. The great window smashed open behind him, and he tumbled through a thousand sharp green teeth into the night.
Oben and Gulmorgon peered through the jagged hole. Its edges were wet with Golmin’s blood. The priest slid and tumbled down the dark slope.
The cool breeze snapped at Oben’s hair; the burning city flickered in Gulmorgon’s eyes.
“I’m no farmer,” he said, watching the priest fall. “I’m the Conduit.”
He turned back to the room. The fighting had stopped and the Taliskans began to cheer and raise their weapons. Oben cheered, too, and pumped his fist in the air. There weren’t many of them left.
Gulmorgon laid a hand on his shoulder and he turned to face her.
“Thank-you, Conduit. We could not have done this without you.” Then she turned to Lief who stood next to the dais.
“Lief.”
“Yes, my lady?”
“Arrest the Conduit. We’ve got a busy night ahead.”
29
AS WRITTEN IN FEATHERS
Oben tried to speak to Lief, but he was having none of it.
“Finally got what’s coming to you.” the big Taliskan spat.
Oben tried to catch Blin’s eye as he was bundled out, but she was still in a frenzy, holding a severed head up by its hair and tossing it across the room at a pillar. It all happened so quickly. He was locked in a room off the side of the main temple and waited in silence. His pumping adrenalin faded to anger, and slowly dissipated into despair.
He’d become an expert on cells. This was perhaps his fourth since leaving Gilden. It was not the worst. There was a window high up on the eastern wall, a half-filled bookcase, an oil painting of the Sower, a three-armed candelabra and even a wooden bench with a cushion. But it was still a cell.
For almost two days he was made to endure his solitude until Gulmorgon paid him a visit.
“What the fuck, Gulmorgon!” he said, leaping to his feet. “What’s going on?”
“You knew this end was coming,” she said.
“What end? We won, didn’t we? We
did it! It was my plan!”
She smiled, sadly.
“You’ve always known your fate could not be avoided. We’ve spoken of it several times.”
”Wait, you mean to hang me?” Oben asked.
“You saw it yourself.”
“I told you about it. If I hadn’t said anything—”
She waved a hand to silence him.
“Peace will not come easy.” she said. “What we have achieved here is miraculous, but there remain many years ahead before things settle down. I cannot rule with a traitor at my side. One who betrayed the people of Edale—my people. Hanging is not the Taliskan way, but it will show the Edalians that I am willing to play by their rules, to make changes, to punish all who have done them wrong.”
“They’re not your people!”
“They will be, once they see the changes I bring are for the good.”
“But, the vision… I thought I’d changed it.”
“Oh, Oben.” she said, shaking her head. “You cannot change prophecy. You should know that better than anyone. You told me yourself you would never give us the South, and look what you did! No, no… I’m afraid this is the only way things were ever going to end, just as Ethra showed you.”
“But we ended the Persuasion! The people are free! Let me make my case, I can convince them I acted in their interests.”
“It is true, you have been the catalyst for great change. Edale is better for it. But the way in which you did these things has aggrieved many. There are Ferra that want justice for Mascal; Kazra that hold you accountable for Grinchell. You tried to escape from Threlwich after I had made you welcome. Your own people feel betrayed that you returned with an invading force at your back. You cannot be trusted. You cannot be a part of this new future.”