“Can't you see?” she cried, “All that I was I sacrificed for you! I am nothing! Nothing but this!” She pointed a shaking finger at the easel that held Max's drawing of her naked body. “I'm two-dimensional! Less real to you than your fictional characters. I'm a blank canvas.”
She broke down and sobbed. Max just stared at her, open-mouthed.
That was settled then. He had failed to take his last chance to show he cared about anything or anyone but himself. He had been her only reason for staying on this filthy island, and now she would leave on the very next ship that would take her.
Eva would find a new life for herself.
7.
Her eyes shone like two distant stars in the darkness. All else was black. Limpet could hear echoes of voices deep in the cave. Occasionally a single voice would rise above the rest, either in pain or excitement, he couldn't tell which. The only other noise was the sigh of the air circulating round the chamber, making it sound as though the cavern was a vast, slumbering beast.
Gradually, a faint orange glow illuminated her sunken cheeks, and the darkness surrounding those burning points of light in her eyes seemed even deeper. Her stark, angled face stood out like a floating, disembodied skull.
“Liss?” he whispered.
She did not answer. Her face seemed slack and expressionless, like a corpse.
“Liss?” he whispered her name again. He was afraid to raise his voice, though he didn't know why. The sighing of the cavern grew louder until the distant voices were drowned out and his ears were filled with the rhythmic sound of heavy breathing. He realised it was Liss, and the sound became a deafening, terrifying roar.
Transfixed by the lights in her eyes, he gazed, helpless, feeling himself being sucked into the blackness within, until they were all he could see. Floating in that infinite void, all was suddenly silent. The two lights seemed to watch him, as though judging him, and slowly began to grow. He wanted to pull away, to flee, but he was paralysed. He cried out as the lights engulfed him. Blinding white light and searing, intense heat overwhelmed him until he had no breath to scream any more, and he felt as if he was turning to ash.
Then he heard Liss' thin, reedy voice as though it were coming from inside him. Her words pulsed through him and echoed all around him.
The World Apparent from darkness dawned
And paradise's heart was formed
Then man woke one fateful morn
’twixt love and hate the heart was torn
Heart and mind and soul at war
Man fight in mud and blood and gore
To separate serf from knight from lord
While vices burrow, virtues soar
Beyond fist and knife and shield and sword
Celestial light, infernal horde
Serve the virtues, gods are born
Succumb to vice and demons spawn
Her voice repeated the rhyme over and over for what seemed like an eternity.
Limpet woke up screaming. He was slick with sweat and tears streamed down his cheeks. He sat bolt upright and looked over at Liss. She was sat up on her bed, her blank, twinkling eyes staring in his direction. Pale daylight seemed to wash the colour from the room.
He had brought Liss to the inn called The Enduring Hunger the night before, under cover of darkness—he felt she was too vulnerable to take out in the daylight, and he had never told anyone of her existence. His plan was to take a room there, for a couple of nights at the most, before he could buy passage to the mainland, or stow away if he had to. Though he did not know what lay ahead of them, he was glad to see her in a proper bed instead of their squalid little hovel in the Sandpit.
Today he had a few final errands to run. He had saved more than enough money to buy the things he needed, pay for their room and still have some left over for their journey, wherever that might take them. He fed Liss some bread and honey. He wasn't hungry himself. The dream had spoiled his appetite. There was something about it that played on his mind.
As he left Liss in their room at The Hunger, the last line of the rhyme Liss's voice had repeated continued to echo in his head.
Serve the virtues, gods are born
Succumb to vice and demons spawn
* * * *
The heat from Glint's forge seeped into Limpet's joints, and he was in no hurry to make his presence apparent to the hammering blacksmith. He wished he could have brought Liss with him to warm her by the fire. He turned away from Glint, who still hadn't appeared to notice him, and looked around the walls. Swords, knives, daggers, axes, shields, and an array of other weapons he couldn't name shone orange as the reflections of flames and sparks flickered and slid across their intricate contours.
The sudden stillness of Glint's hammer told Limpet he'd been spotted.
“Sneaking around again, young Limpet?” Glint eyed him with an expression of mock suspicion which was soon spoiled by a half empty grin.
“That's my job, ain't it?” Limpet replied.
“That it is, boy.” Glint put down his hammer and wiped his hands on a filthy rag, his hotchpotch of brown teeth shining like a tumbledown wall in the rain. “I expect you're here to collect your order.”
Limpet nodded. Glint turned and disappeared into another room, pushing through a heavy skin which hung in the doorway. He returned moments later with a bundle wrapped in a large cloth. His thick fingers worked delicately as he set the bundle down and slowly pulled away its outer folds to reveal the contents. Limpet had placed an order with the burly blacksmith some time ago, knowing these were things that would take the man a while to craft.
Glint grinned again as he carefully pulled a shining mail shirt from the bundle with both hands and held it up. He gazed at it as if he had just delivered a baby. The shirt jangled faintly as he laid it down, reached back into the folds of the cloth and brought out a sword. It wasn't a particularly ornate weapon, but that wasn't what Limpet wanted. He wanted something functional, that didn't stand out too much.
Glint handed it to him ceremoniously. He took the hilt in one hand and pulled the blade free from the scabbard.
“It's a good blade,” said Glint, his eyes sparkling, “born in this very forge!”
Limpet held the pommel up to his eye and peered down the length of the blade. The steel gleamed as he turned it this way and that. As he turned it, the rhyme Liss had recited over and over in his dream played on his mind.
Serve the virtues, gods are born
Succumb to vice and demons spawn
“Here,” said Glint, holding up the mail shirt again, “let me help you get this on.”
Limpet removed his tunic and Glint lifted the mail shirt over his head. The shirt fitted well, and the tunic fitted easily over it. Glint's workmanship was worth every sovereign.
Limpet buckled the sword on last. The weight of the mail was reassuring, and the sword at his side gave him confidence—he felt almost like an adult. The blacksmith stood back and nodded his approval.
“Well,” said Glint, with a surprisingly wistful look in his eye as he reached up to Limpet’s shoulder and slowly turned him full circle, “you came in a boy. You’ll leave a man.”
“Thank you, Glint,” Limpet nodded, handing over two sovereigns. “It is exactly as I requested.”
“It’s my job,” said Glint, shaking Limpet’s hand. “See you around.”
Limpet did not reply, not wanting to reveal his plans to leave but somehow finding himself unable to lie to the man. He simply nodded again and turned towards the door.
Limpet stepped out on to the streets of Hardway with newfound hope. He had almost done the thing he had planned for years. Hardway had been the source of sorrow and suffering, but he was finally going to take Liss away. But the hardest part of his plan was next, and he strode toward the docks, one hand propped on the hilt of his new weapon, to find a ship.
As he walked, he heard Liss' voice in his head, repeating the same words.
Serve the virtues, gods are born
; Succumb to vice and demons spawn.
8.
A light wind rippled across the hillside. The Grey Queen folded her slender hands on her lap and studied the panorama below.
Her carriage, a monstrous creation of human bones and cunningly forged iron, was perched on the summit of the hill at the rear of her army, protected by long lines of swordsmen, axemen, archers and halberdiers. Her personal bodyguard, the elite red-armoured troopers of the Crimson Guard, were drawn up in a phalanx directly in front of the chariot.
The army was a human fortress. Squadrons of infantry in the front line, interspersed with wedge-shaped units of archers and crossbowmen, formed the outer walls. Her brigades of cavalry on the flanks were the bastions, while the triple line of reserve infantry formed the inner ward.
Forty thousand soldiers, she thought. I marched them here, but how many will march back again?
Behind the plain steel mask she was required to wear in public, the Queen was a young woman, barely eighteen years old, her fair youthful looks spoiled by the ritual scars burned into her cheeks. She felt too young for the burden of absolute power. At the same time she cherished it as her right.
The Grey Queens had started this war of conquest, and now the Eighteenth Queen would end it, here, on this broad expanse of rolling grassland. Snow-capped mountain ranges loomed in the distance to north and east, providing a suitably dramatic backdrop.
The enemy was drawn up on some high ground to the east. They had no war-machines, no cavalry save a rabble of spearmen on ponies. Compared to her mighty host, they looked like a band of vagrants that had wandered onto the field by accident.
They were all that remained of the Confederacy, a coalition of independent provinces and kingdoms banded together to resist the aggression of Calisse. For almost six hundred years, the armies of the Grey Queens had waged war, invading each realm in turn, burning and destroying and slaughtering. One by one the nations of the Confederacy had surrendered or been wiped off the face of the map.
Now only three rebel clans remained in arms. All the fighting men and women they could muster had come here, to give their lives in a final gesture of defiance.
“There he stands, Your Glory,” said Jordi, her Commander-in-Chief and captain of the Crimson Guard, pointing at the centre of the ragged enemy line, “the Bear himself.”
She adjusted the set of her mask and peered with interest at the huge man standing under a great square banner displaying a clenched black fist against a white field, the symbol of the Confederacy.
Titos the Bear, he was called. The Queen’s breath caught in her throat as she studied him, the half-mythical champion of the Confederacy. Rumoured to be the son of a shepherd, he had appeared out of nowhere seven years ago, leading bands of peasant archers and woodsmen in savage raids on her troops as they marched through the high forests and mountains of the Eastmarch. They attacked supply lines, burning wagons, driving off beasts and slaughtering the guards before melting back into the trees. The Bear had swiftly become a legend, a beacon of hope to those who resisted the encroaching shadow of Calisse.
Most of the great rebel kings and generals were dead, or suffering gruesome torments in the hell-pits under the Necropolis. The few survivors had begged the Bear to command them in this final stand. He might have stayed hidden in his forests, a thorn in the side of the Grey Queen’s armies of conquest and occupation. Instead he chose death.
Assuming he could be slain. The Queen’s legions might smash one poorly-armed rebel host after another in the field, but the Bear was seemingly indestructible, a byword of terror among her soldiers. She had listened to their talk at night, as she rested in her pavilion and let her mind wander among the campfires.
“The Bear is no man at all,” she overheard one captain of archers say, “but a ghost, a demon summoned from the pits of the Underworld. We may as well try and fight the wind.”
His companion, a red-faced quartermaster, snorted in derision. “The Bear is a man with the blood of the Old Ones in his veins. He can snap a man’s neck between finger and thumb. His blood is acid. If he is wounded it spits out and burns the one who has cut him.”
These claims and many more she listened to, smiling to herself at the credulity of rough, common men with little education. She knew what the Bear was, had caught glimpses of him as her mind searched the hills and pine forests of the enemy hinterland.
The reality was almost as impressive as the legend, and more interesting. A giant of a man, almost seven feet tall, blessed with fierce charisma and a deathless love of freedom and homeland, yet a man for all that. He and his outlaws prowled the uplands, whipping up hatred against her troops and rekindling the smouldering embers of resistance.
The young queen admired him, had even fallen in love with him a little. Now she would kill him.
She sighed. “Begin,” she said, her voice slightly muffled by her mask.
General Jordi bowed smartly, banged one red-gauntleted fist against his armoured breast, and flung up his arm. A host of shouted orders rippled down the line, and the artillery crews sprang into action.
They were drawn up across the side of the hill, trebuchets and catapults and a few of the new-fangled mortars, squat grey iron tubes mounted on wheeled carriages. The Queen watched sadly as the machines flung their loads of rocks and burning phosphorus. There was a pause, and then the mortars belched, filling the air with the stench of black powder.
Most of the missiles overshot or flew wide. The Queen could have exercised her will to steer a few closer to their targets, but the effort was unnecessary. Two mortar shells burst deep in the heart of the rebel lines, flinging soil and broken bodies high into the air. A barrel of phosphorus exploded directly above their centre, showering the men below in golden fire. For a second the Bear himself vanished, and the Queen’s heart sank as she imagined him consumed by flame.
“A poor end,” she whispered, and willed it not to be so.
Moments later a cheer rippled down the battered rebel lines as the Bear emerged unscathed from the deadly barrage. The blackened bodies of several of his chiefs lay strewn around him, burned to cinders. Untouched, he raised his massive battle-axe in a gesture of defiance and careless contempt that made the Queen’s heart sing.
“They must charge,” said General Jordi, his voice filled with smug satisfaction, “or else stand where they are and be blown to bits. Either way, Your Glory’s victory is assured.”
The Queen scowled inside the privacy of her mask and bit back harsh words. Jordi was a brave and competent man, utterly devoted to her, on the verge of securing the triumph she had long demanded. How could she berate him for doing his duty?
There was a pause in the bombardment while the machines were reloaded. The silence that followed was broken by the deep, droning note of a bull-horn. It was swiftly joined by others until the hills echoed and re-echoed to the magnificent sound, signalling the last rebel charge.
The horns died away, replaced by a war-shout that made the Queen shudder. This was the sound of despair, ripped from the throats of men who had lost everything—family, country, all they held dear—and would now lose their lives.
She watched through a mist of tears as the rebels broke into a charge. No orderly, disciplined advance, such as her legions might have executed, but simply a great mob of yelling men. The Bear sprinted at their head, a doomed figure in furs and leathers and rusting mail, his long fair hair shining like burnished gold.
The Queen used the sight to study his face. He might have been handsome once, but an oft-broken nose, a network of scars and deep marks of suffering and privation had spoiled his looks beyond repair. His blue eyes were fixed on her chariot, yellow teeth gritted in a snarl of pure hatred.
Drums beat, and the Queen’s archers bent their bows. They alone outnumbered the enemy two to one. The storm of arrows blackened the sky and fell among the charging warriors like lethal rain. Within seconds the field was carpeted with twitching bodies, stuck full of shafts. Still the surviv
ors came on.
“Mad dogs,” sneered Jordi. The Queen noticed a bead of sweat on his brow.
Her forward lines of infantry braced for impact. Rows of gleaming pikes and halberds dipped, forming an impenetrable steel wall.
Contact. The rebels leaped onto the spikes, bawling their death-songs even as they cast javelins and hacked and stabbed at the soldiers. Many were spitted, and writhed like gaffed salmon as their blood ran in streams. Their selfless sacrifice opened gaps for the men advancing behind them. Howling like wolves, the rebels surged into the suddenly disordered lines of pikes.
For a moment the Queen’s men buckled under the wild fury of the rebel charge. Trumpets sang. The second line advanced, pikes levelled, to shore up the broken ranks.
The Queen watched with a mixture of disgust and fascination. She had seen men fight to the death before, in the gladiatorial arenas of the Necropolis, but never witnessed a full-scale battle. For that reason she had insisted on coming in person to the battlefield.
“I am tired of listening to songs,” she told her advisors. “I want to see and smell a real battle. To know what drives men to acts of heroism and cowardice.”
Now she knew. There was nothing magnificent about the barbarous spectacle below, nothing grand or romantic. Her men fought with grim, disciplined efficiency, holding their line and fighting shoulder-to-shoulder to hold back the waves of howling savages that hacked and clawed at them, putting the Queen in mind of fierce waves breaking on a rocky shore. She winced at the dreadful carnage, the crippling wounds and severed limbs, and grieved for the poor souls that tried to crawl to safety, their innards strewn on the grass.
Her forward squadrons started to advance, step by steady step, herding the Confederacy back across the plain. She glimpsed the Bear, towering above the throng, his long, unbound hair rank with blood. A young infantry officer pushed through the melee to get at him, determined to win the honour of cutting down the famous rebel hero, and was split from scalp to groin by the Bear’s terrible axe.
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