Raymel stopped advancing.
“Trying to lead me away from your nest, mother-bird?” He turned his head to stare at the cave and the bodies sprawled beneath it. Darla vanished into the cave mouth, Ara in her arms. A moment later and she would have been out of sight. “All this”—he raised a gauntleted hand to the steel plates over his neck where she had cut him years ago—“was over another nestling. I had to find out her name after I got better. Saida. A dirty little peasant just like you. That’s not something a Tacsis heir dies over!” He beckoned Nona closer. “Are you still angry about her? I bet you are. You should come and show me.”
Nona snatched up a rounded stone from the stream and kept backing away.
“No?” Raymel paused. “I’m glad she died. My regret is only that I didn’t get to do it, and in my own time. But Father just had her hanged, and quickly. Not one for scandals, my father.” He sheathed his sword and held his arms wide as if daring her to attack. “Do you remember how she screamed?”
At the back of her mind, where Nona had expected anger to flare, an image of Saida rose instead. Her broad face with its mixture of timid and friendly. If she had been here she would be treating the wounded. The soldiers that Nona had torn open. Saida had wanted to mend, not to break. Nona took another step back.
Raymel shrugged, his armour squealing in protest. “It looks as if some of your friends won’t be able to run away as fast as you can.” He started to march towards the cave, striding at a pace most men would have to jog to keep up with.
Nona threw the stone. It bounced off Raymel’s helm. He didn’t turn.
“Ruli! Jula!” Nona screamed. “Darla! He’s coming. He’s coming for you.”
Fear ran through her, cold water through the marrow of her bones. For the first time in an age she felt the chill of the ice-wind, ragged now as it lost its strength but still icy now that she had no range-coat. “He’s coming!” She didn’t know what to do. She wanted them to run, but if they left Ara, Zole, and Tarkax then Raymel would make the gullies ring with their screams.
Darla appeared at the cave mouth, Tarkax’s tular in her hand, still sticky with blood. Her jaw dropped as she took in the size of Raymel, striding across the corpses.
Nona cast her exhaustion aside and broke into a sprint. She caught Raymel five yards before the cave and threw herself upon him. Leaping and reaching as high as she could she drove her flaw-blades into the small of his back. One set punctured the steel plate armour, the other skittered across, leaving bright lines scored into the metal. Dragging herself higher, Nona reached up, slashing with all her strength to lodge her second set of blades just below his shoulder blades.
Raymel bellowed and began to turn. If the blades were hurting him, though, it was nothing more than scratches. There was no blood gushing or even leaking from the slots she had driven through his plate mail. She climbed higher as he turned, cutting and hauling her way up, an ice-climber sinking her axes.
A great hand reached back for her, large enough to wrap about Nona’s head and crush it like a nut. Releasing her grip, she grabbed a thumb and finger, each so thick in its gauntlet that she couldn’t close her own fingers about them.
Hunska speed enabled her to climb his wrist and reach the iron summit of his elbow before the grasping hand could close on the air where she had been. Locking one leg about his elbow, Nona slashed at Raymel’s visor, putting every ounce of her strength into two blows, a rising, left-to-right slash and, as she fell away, a descending right-to-left slash.
The obdurate steel resisted her blades until they met the first of the many perforations through which the warrior saw the world. Then, tearing in, the flaw-blades managed to cut from one hole to the next several times before jolting out to score the surface once again.
Nona turned in the air and landed on her feet, stumbling immediately and sprawling backwards across an injured soldier clutching his stomach wound. From her place on the ground she saw that the criss-crossing of her blades had cut out a number of diamond-shaped sections of the visor and she could now see one glaring eye, the cheekbone below, and part of Raymel’s nose. But his flesh had resisted her blades better than the steel, showing just red scratch-marks where his face should have been cut into shreds.
Raymel Tacsis’s great sword dropped like a thunderbolt, dividing the man that Nona had tripped over. She rolled clear as the blade hammered into the rock. Her speed was leaving her now, spent in too many acts of extravagant swiftness. Raymel straightened, scything his sword across the slope. Nona tried to dig into the moment but the gaps had grown slim and the spaces between heartbeats, once so cavernous, now squeezed her out. She leapt the cutting edge with just an inch to spare.
Where Nona was tiring Raymel seemed possessed of boundless stamina, howling a chilling mix of glee and hatred as he pursued her. Nona grabbed a discarded sword and, running beneath another swing, hacked at Raymel’s leg. It was like hewing a stone pillar. The sword jolted from her hands, and the shock transmitted along the blade sent white agonies lancing up her wrists.
The gleaming arc of Raymel’s next swing held Nona’s attention, and a kick caught her a glancing blow, coming from the side while she watched the sword. The impact spun her and she fell among the bodies, clutching the hot wet pain in her side: broken ribs at the least.
“You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that,” she snarled at him. “But not for very long.” She tried to leap up at him, furious, but for once her body betrayed her, too broken and filled with too much hurt to obey.
Raymel towered above her, lifting his foot to stamp down on her legs.
Nona raised her arm in futile defence and as she did, something small and spinning tore through the empty space above her. It vanished through the gap she had made in Raymel’s visor and thunked into his eye.
With mad screams Darla, Ruli, and Jula came tearing down the slope, whirling stolen swords above their heads. Raymel, howling, dropped his own blade, and raised a huge hand to his face. The three novices thrust and hacked at every part of him from his ankles to his chest. Nona crawled clear of the melee, sliding down the gore-slick slope, holding her ribs.
Raymel weathered the sword-storm. He spun around amid the clatter and clang, swinging his left arm. Darla took the main force, his forearm slamming into her belly and lifting her off the ground. She landed yards away with a horrifying thump. Ruli and Jula, both knocked from their feet, tumbled down towards Nona.
Iron-shod fingertips closed on the point of the throwing star and pulled it from the ruin of Raymel’s eye. He flipped the weapon away. Behind the intact section of visor the scarlet eye, devil-owned, stared at the sprawl of novices, the hatred so intense that it seemed a physical thing, pressing on them, both burning and icy at the same time.
Nona seized a spear and rolled to her back. She would die facing her enemy, weapon in hand, not crawling away. Close by, Ruli lay dazed, her head bloody. Jula rolled over beside Ruli, her wrist at a sick-making angle, and took her knife in her off-hand, eyes blazing. And Raymel stood over them, all in shadow now with the setting of the sun, his huge sword recovered and poised to end three of them in a single slash.
From the darker shadow of the cave mouth a small figure broke, tottering and awkward on stiff legs. Arabella Jotsis, her golden hair in disarray, staggered weaponless down the slope towards them. Nona wanted to scream at her to run, but it was too late. Too late for anything. At least Ara might die with them, in a bloody moment, and escape Raymel’s cruelties.
Some warrior instinct—perhaps just sharp hearing—made Raymel glance back, but seeing a stumbling child he quickly returned his attention to the victims before him.
Ara tripped and fell most of the last few yards, jerking her arms overhead only at the last moment. And in that moment Nona recognized the power of the Path shuddering there in Ara’s empty palms. Ara clapped both to the giant’s backplate and the energies she had gathered, f
inding her serenity in the worst possible situation, pulsed into Raymel Tacsis. The raw stuff of creation detonated against Raymel as it had once detonated in the fight-dummy that had suffered Ara’s wrath in place of Zole. A light lit within Raymel’s armour and with a violent and deafening crack things blew apart.
Nona shook the echoes from her head and looked up to find that although Ara had been blown off her feet, Raymel had not. He stood in the fractured remains of his plate armour, five hundred pounds of bleeding muscle stacked three yards tall. The livid purple mark that reached up the side of his neck continued down across the broadness of his chest, swirling out into patterns that remembered the complexity and form of sigils. On his side and below his shoulder great patches of scarlet scar tissue, as if from old burns, seemed to hold leering faces in their ridges and hollows. Flying pieces of his armour had torn the odd furrow through his flesh, but by and large he stood unharmed. The force of the detonation had blown his helm clear and he stared at her with one eye ruined and dripping, the other a scarlet window into the mind of a devil. Below them hung an echo of the smile he’d worn when he broke Saida.
In that moment the warrior in Nona roared again, finding a last touch of speed, a last gasp of strength. She threw the spear she’d been clinging to. It hit hard enough to bury a couple of inches of the blade between Raymel’s ribs, enough to keep it there, standing proud. Rising with the throw, Nona tumbled between Raymel’s legs, plucking a discarded knife from the ground between them and slashing at the back of his knee where the armour plate hung on one rivet, exposing flesh. She cut deep, slicing tendon and muscle. Unbalanced, Raymel fell with a roar. Ruli and Jula scrambled clear with no time to spare as he fell, crashing between them.
The head of Nona’s spear erupted from Raymel’s back as the butt of the haft hit the ground when he fell, arms out to take the impact. Nona scrambled up Raymel’s pale and naked back as the huge man surged to hands and knees with a muted roar. She plunged the knife between his shoulders. Again and again. The devils beneath his skin screamed and surged, strange and alien forms moving beneath his flesh. Nona sliced at them, like serpents beneath a rug. The blood that spurted from those wounds came scalding and stinking, staining her hands, filling her with a black agony beyond comprehension—but her rage proved larger than any hurt and still the steel in her fist rose and fell. Nona rode her enemy, her howls a counterpoint to his bellows.
And still, despite the ruin of his back, Raymel turned and rolled, reaching for Nona, the spear through his belly snapping against the ground. She scrabbled away on her back but one huge hand closed around her leg below the knee.
“No!” Nona drove her dagger through his wrist, fear warring with her anger now. “Die!”
“I can’t die.” He kept his grip, spitting blood, and drew her towards him. “They won’t let me!” His red eye met her black ones and she knew in that moment that no wound would stop him. “I can’t die.”
In the last heartbeat remaining to her Nona spotted Yisht’s amulet gleaming blackly between two rocks almost within reach. She lunged for it, arms out before her. But for the blood she would never have made it. Raymel’s gore-slick hand slipped down her leg from knee to ankle, and with the tips of her fingers she snagged the iron sigil.
“I can’t die.” Raymel loomed above her on all fours. Nona sat up and pressed the black sigil to his forehead with her thumb. “Yes you can.” Her other hand pulled the knife from his wrist and drove it up beneath his chin, hilt-deep.
Raymel roared. Nona saw the blade, gleaming behind his teeth. The sigil of negation seared into his forehead, corroding, falling apart, a red mist rising around it, and with a chorus of screams the devils fled his flesh. The grip on her ankle slackened and Nona rolled clear, twisting her knee as she yanked her leg free. Behind her, Raymel Tacsis collapsed, twitching to the ground, arms sprawled, the rocks about him drenched with crimson.
EPILOGUE
IT IS IMPORTANT, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient bravery. For when Sister Cage of the Sweet Mercy Convent steps onto the battlefield courage is often found to be in short supply.
She came from the undercaves, and the Rock of Faith shuddered to its base as if deep in the blindness of its roots the Rock itself had given birth to her.
She rose amid the convent buildings, behind the great Dome of the Ancestor. The youngest of the novices were still within their dormitory, a single ancient nun seated at the door. They watched at their windows, open-mouthed. Years ago, before some of these girls were brought wet and screaming into the world, a different set of novices had watched Sister Cage first arrive at Sweet Mercy.
There is little of that child to be seen in Sister Cage. She stands shadowless in the torch-ringed courtyard and in one moment the novices know that the stories are true. She glances their way, each eye utterly black, as if that missing shadow had been poured into both until it filled her skull.
A distant scream rings out, past the Dome of the Ancestor, deep among the pillars. Sister Cage turns her head. She is deadly pale, strange in her beauty, her hair jet and jagged, cut close. Her habit is faded, stained, trailing ragged tails of cloth, but it is still red, and as she runs she looks like death descending from some high place.
• • •
THE PELARTHI STOOD between the pillars, a loose halo around the place where Sister Thorn lay in her blood. Clera Ghomal stood above the fallen nun, that once and long ago she had in this place called friend. It seemed that the world revolved about them, the pillars spinning about the axis that stood between Thorn and Clera as all the stars in heaven revolve around a single point of darkness.
Clera Ghomal opened her mouth to speak, and said nothing, for the years rob us of the words for such moments, making each truth too bitter for the tongue, too heavy to be spoken. She stood among strangers before the body of a sister.
• • •
SISTER CAGE DREW her sword as she ran towards the first of the Pelarthi. Sister Tallow had pressed the weapon’s hilt back into her hand less than an hour before. A long blade, thin, carrying a slight curve, its edge cruel enough to cut silence and make it scream.
She didn’t seek the Path, uttered no battle-cry, made no challenge. She spun through a group of six and the clash of her sword upon the metal collar of the last of their number announced her arrival.
Sister Cage stopped, head down, sword trailing at her side, a crimson line stretching out across the rock from its point.
Before her dozens of mercenaries turned their heads to see what threat faced them, and behind her six bodies collapsed to the stone, some not yet realizing they were dead, for death had come among them so swiftly.
Out in the convent compound Bitel rang out. Where Sister Thorn offered protection Sister Cage offered only war, utter and without quarter. The years when they had called her the Shield were long past. Sweet Mercy would open her doors. Everyone who drew breath within its walls would issue forth, from youngest novice to ancient nun.
Sister Cage lifted her face to her enemies, night-eyed, a narrow beauty among the scars, half a smile that promised her to be more than a little in love with death, and invited them to dance.
Bows creaked among the Pelarthi ranks, spears were lifted, knuckles whitened on the hilts of sword and axe. A hawk-eyed archer, her cheek torn and bloody where Thorn’s throwing star had sliced past, took aim at the new nun’s face.
They knew her by many names, the Pelarthi did, but “Cage” held as much fear as any other. Cage. She would not release you; you would not escape. The tales said she made her first kill in the same year she learned to walk. They said she tore a boy apart with her bare hands and took his heart to show her mother.
Sister Cage found the torn-faced archer among the crowded strength of the Pelarthi and a knowing passed between them, between the archer’s cold grey eyes and the sister’s black orbs. The arrow fell with a clatter. The archer turned w
ithout a word and began to push her way back, past the warriors of her clan. To her left another turned, a man thick with muscle, the names of his forefathers inked in runes along his arms. Two of those he pushed aside turned and ran with him.
A trickle became a flood. The Pelarthi left the scores of their dead, still scattered or heaped where Sister Thorn had killed them. They ran, pursued by a terror they couldn’t name, something larger than the sister who stood behind them, but perhaps as small as the disappointment in her eyes when they turned to flee.
• • •
CLERA WAITED BESIDE Ara as Nona strode towards them through the pillars. In the heavens above the first crimson stars dared open their eyes.
“Is she dead?”
“How are you here?” Clera ignored the question. “You weren’t supposed to be here! How did you know? . . . and even then, how did you get here?”
“Is she dead?” Nona rushed forward, pushing Clera back, away from Ara, who was still coiled about the spear. She knelt, reaching out to touch the spread gold of her hair. “Ara?”
“You should never have let me go.” The words sputtered from Clera as if she were hurt, as if it were her wrapped around a spear. “You had me bound. Guilty. You should have let them drown me.”
“I wouldn’t do that to a friend.” Nona set her fingers to Ara’s neck, seeking a pulse. The smallest of groans, the smallest tremble of a hand.
A short laugh burst from Clera, sounding as much like pain as mirth. “They all think you’re the big bad. The church’s hammer. Cage the Shadowless. And you’re still a child, Nona! You run into everything heart-first, expecting . . . what? You didn’t understand how people work when the abbess brought you here, a dirty-footed peasant. You didn’t understand when she sent you away. And you don’t understand now. People lie, Nona, they steal, they cheat, they’re unfaithful. People hurt you, they let you down. They sell you out.”