A Reaper at the Gates

  "The city is lost. It belongs to Grimarr now." Skies help the poor souls who remain here under that fiend. I will not forget them. But right now, I cannot save them--not if I want to save those who do have a chance at escape. "Get out this order: Every soldier we have is to report to the Gap immediately. That is our last stand. If we stop them, that is where we will do it."

  * * *

  By the time Dex, my men, and I reach the Gap, just beyond the northern border of the city, the Karkaun force is on the march, bent on crushing us.

  As I watch them pour out of Antium's northern gate and up the Pilgrim Road, I know that we will not win this battle. I have with me no more than a thousand men. The enemy has more than ten thousand--and thousands more they can call from the city, if they must. Even with our superior blades, we cannot beat them.

  Pilgrim's Gap is a ten-foot-wide opening between two sheer cliffs that sit atop a wide valley. The Pilgrim Road curves across the valley, through the Gap and toward the Augurs' caves.

  I glance back over my shoulder, away from the Karkauns. I had hoped when I arrived that the Pilgrim Road would be empty, that the evacuees would have gotten through. But there are hundreds of Martials--and Scholars, I notice--on the road and hundreds more emerging from the tunnel entrances to make their way up to the Augurs' caves.

  "Get a message to Harper," I tell Dex. "Take it yourself. White smoke when the last person is through. Then he's to collapse the entrance to the caves. He is not to wait, and neither are you."

  "Shrike--"

  "That is an order, Lieutenant Atrius. You keep her safe. You keep my nephew safe. You see him on the throne." My friend stares at me. He knows what I am saying: that I don't want him back here. That I will die here today, with my people, and he will not.

  "Duty first"--he salutes--"unto death."

  I turn to my men--Masks, auxes, legionnaires. All have survived onslaught after onslaught. They are exhausted. They are broken.

  I have heard many pretty speeches as a soldier. I remember none of them. So in the end, I dig up words that Keris gave me long ago--and I hope to the skies that they will come back to haunt her.

  "There is success," I say. "And there is failure. The land in between is for those too weak to live. Duty first, unto death."

  They roar it back at me, and we form up, row upon row of shields and spears and scims. Our archers have few arrows, but they ready what they do have. The rumble in the valley grows louder as the Karkauns surge up the rise toward us, and now my blood sings and I pull out my war hammer and snarl.

  "Come on, you bastards. Come for me!"

  And suddenly, the Karkauns are a distant rumble no more but a thundering, frenzied horde of thousands who want nothing more than to annihilate all that is left of us. In the pass behind us, my people cry out.

  Now, I think, let us see what the Martials are made of.

  * * *

  After an hour, the Karkauns have ripped through the front half of our forces. All is blood and pain and brutality. Still, I fight, and the men fight beside me, as behind us, those fleeing the city continue up the road.

  Faster, I think at them. For the love of the skies, go faster. We wait for the white smoke as the Karkauns keep coming, wave upon wave. Our force dwindles from five hundred men to four hundred. Two hundred. Fifty. No smoke.

  The gap is too wide for us to hold it much longer. It is piled with bodies, but the Karkauns simply climb over them and down, as if the hill is made of rock and not their dead countrymen.

  From the city, a hellish sound rises. It is worse than the silence of Blackcliff after the Third Trial, worse than the tortured moans of Kauf's prisoners. It is the screaming of those I left behind as they face the violence of the Karkauns. The wolves are among my people now.

  We cannot falter. There are still hundreds on the Pilgrim Road and dozens emerging from the tunnels. A little more time. Just a little more.

  But we do not have more time, for to my left, two more of my men fall, cut down by Karkaun arrows. My hammer slips against my palm, slick from the blood that drenches every inch of my skin. But there are more coming--too many. I cannot fight them all. I shout for aid. The only responses are the battle cries of the Karkauns.

  Which is when I understand, finally, that I am alone. There is no one else left to fight at my back. All of my men are dead.

  And still, more Karkauns surge over the wall of bodies. Skies, are their numbers unending? Will they ever give up?

  They will not, I realize, and it makes me want to scream and cry and kill. They will tear through this pass. They will be on the evacuees like jackals upon injured rabbits.

  I search the sky for white smoke--please, please. And then I feel a sharp pain in my shoulder. Stunned, I look down to see an arrow sticking out of it. I deflect the next one that comes at me, but there are more bowmen coming. Too many.

  This is not happening. It cannot be. My sister is up there somewhere with the hope of the Empire held in her arms. She might not have reached the caves yet.

  At the thought of her, of young Zacharias, of the two little girls who said they'd fight the Karkauns, I draw on every last bit of strength I have. I am a thing from the Barbarians' nightmares, a silver-faced, blood-drenched demon of the hells, and I will not let them pass.

  I kill and I kill and I kill. But I am no supernatural creature. I am flesh and blood, and I am flagging.

  Please. Please. More time. I just need more time.

  But I have none. It is gone.

  One day soon, you will be tested, child. All that you cherish will burn. You will have no friends that day. No allies. No comrades in arms. On that day, your trust in me will be your only weapon.

  I fall to my knees. "Help me," I sob. "Please--please help me. Please--" But how can he help me if he cannot hear me? How can he offer aid if he is not here?

  "Blood Shrike."

  I whirl to find the Nightbringer standing just behind me. His hand rises and flicks, and the Karkauns stop, held back by the jinn's immense power. He surveys the carnage with dispassion. Then he turns to me but does not speak.

  "Whatever you want from me, take it," I say. "Just save them--please--"

  "I want a bit of your soul, Shrike."

  "You--" I shake my head. I do not understand. "Take my life," I say. "If that is the price--"

  "I want a bit of your soul."

  I rack my mind desperately. "I don't--I don't have--"

  A memory comes to me, a ghost out of the darkness: Quin's voice, weeks ago, when I gave him Elias's mask.

  They become part of us, you know. It is only when they join with us that we become our truest selves. My father used to say that after the joining, a mask held a soldier's identity--and that without it, a bit of his soul was stripped away, never to be recovered.

  A bit of his soul . . .

  "It's just a mask," I say. "It's not--"

  "The Augurs themselves placed the last piece of a long-lost weapon in your mask," the Nightbringer says. "I have known it since the day they gave it to you. All that you are, all that they molded you into, all that you have become--it was all for this day, Blood Shrike."

  "I don't understand."

  "Your love of your people runs deep. It was nurtured through all the years spent at Blackcliff. It grew deeper when you saw the suffering in Navium and healed the children in the infirmary. Deeper when you healed your sister and imbued your nephew with the love you have of your country. Deeper still when you saw the strength of your countrymen as they prepared for the siege. It fused with your soul when you fought for them on the walls of Antium. And now it culminates in your sacrifice for them."

  "Take off my head then, for I cannot remove it," I say, sobbing. "It is part of me, a living part of my body. It has sunk into my skin!"

  "That is my price," the Nightbringer says. "I will not take from you. I will not threaten you or coerce you. The mask must be offered with love in your heart."

  I look back over my shoulder at the Pilgrim Ro
ad. Hundreds make their way up, and I know thousands more are in the caves. We have already lost so many. We cannot lose more.

  You are all that holds back the darkness.

  For the Empire. For the mothers and fathers. For the sisters and brothers. For the lovers.

  For the Empire, Helene Aquilla. For your people.

  I grab at my face and tear. I claw at my skin, howling, wailing, begging the mask to release me.

  I don't want you anymore, I just want my people to be safe. Release me, please, release me. For the Empire, release me. For my people, release me. Please--please--

  My face burns. Blood pours from where I have already clawed at the mask. Within, some essential part of me cries out at the recklessness with which I tear it away.

  A mask holds a soldier's identity . . .

  But I don't care about my identity. I don't even care if I am a soldier anymore. I just want my people to live, to survive to fight another day.

  The mask lets me go. Blood pours down my neck, my cheeks, into my eyes. I cannot see. I can hardly move. I retch from the searing agony of it.

  "Take it." My voice is as raw as the Cook's. "Take it and save them."

  "Why do you offer it to me, Shrike? Say it."

  "Because they are my people!" I hold it out to him, and when he does not take it, I shove it into his hands. "Because I love them. Because they do not deserve to die because I failed them!"

  He inclines his head, a gesture of deep respect, and I sag to the ground. I wait for him to wave his hand and wreak havoc. Instead he turns and walks away, rising into the air like a leaf.

  "No!" Why isn't he fighting the Karkauns? "Wait, I trusted you! Please--you said--you have to help me!"

  He looks over his shoulder at something behind me--beyond me. "I have, Blood Shrike."

  With that, he is gone, a dark cloud carried away by the wind. The power that held back the Karkauns fails, and they tumble forward toward me, more than I can count. More than I can fight.

  "Come back." I have no voice. It wouldn't matter if I did. The Nightbringer is gone. Skies, where is my war hammer, my scim, anything--

  But I have no weapons. No strength left in my body.

  I have nothing.

  LVI: Laia

  When I emerge from the tunnels and into the bright sunlight, I grimace at the reek of blood. A massive pile of bodies sits a hundred yards away, at the base of a narrow gap. Through it, I can make out the city of Antium.

  And beside the bodies, on her knees with the dark-cloaked Nightbringer standing before her, is the Blood Shrike.

  I do not know what the Nightbringer says to the Blood Shrike. I only know that when she cries out, it sounds just like Nan did when she heard about my mother's death. Like I did when I understood how that jinn beast had betrayed me.

  It is a cry of loneliness. Of betrayal. Of despair.

  The jinn turns. Looks in my direction. Then he disappears on the wind.

  "Girl." Cook scrambles up behind me, having swept the tunnels at my side to make sure that no one else lingered. The last Scholars have long since disappeared. It is only us now. "Let's go! They're coming!"

  As more Karkauns make their way through the Gap, the Shrike crawls toward her war hammer, attempting to stand. She lurches around to look behind her at the sky--

  --where a plume of white smoke curls into the heavens.

  She sobs and sinks to her knees, dropping her hammer, bowing her head. I know then that she is ready to die.

  I also know that I cannot let her.

  I am already moving--away from Cook, away from the path to safety and toward the Blood Shrike. I throw myself at the Karkaun attacking her, and as he snaps at my throat with his teeth, I shove my dagger in his gut and then push him away. I only just manage to pull my knife free in time to shove it into the throat of another Karkaun. A third attacks me from behind, and I stumble and roll out of the way just as an arrow explodes through his head.

  My jaw drops as Cook lets arrow after arrow fly, executing the Karkauns with the precision of a Mask. She stops to snatch up a quiver full of arrows from the back of a dead Karkaun.

  "Grab the Shrike!" Cook gets her arm under the Blood Shrike's left shoulder, and I take her right. We stagger up the Pilgrim Road as swiftly as we can, but the Shrike can barely walk, and our progress is slow.

  "There." Cook nods to a cluster of boulders. We clamber behind it and put the Shrike down. Dozens of Karkauns climb through the Gap. Soon, it will be hundreds. We have a few minutes--if that.

  "How the hells do we get out of this?" I whisper to Cook. "We can't just leave her."

  "Do you know why the Commandant never fails, girl?" Cook doesn't seem to expect a reply to her bizarrely timed question, because she barrels on. "Because no one knows her story. Learn her story, and you'll learn her weakness. Learn her weakness, and you can destroy her. Talk to Musa about it. He'll help you."

  "Why are you telling me this now?"

  "Because you're going to take vengeance on that savage demon queen for me," she says. "And you need to know. Get up. Get the Shrike up that mountain. The Martials are going to seal off those caves soon enough, if they haven't already. You need to move quickly."

  A group of Karkauns races up the Pilgrim Road toward us, and Cook rises and shoots a dozen arrows. The Barbarians fall. But more come through the Gap.

  "I have another fifty arrows, girl," Cook says. "Once I'm out, we're done for. We could fight three or four of those bastards at the most--not hundreds. Not thousands. One of us has to hold them off."

  Oh. Oh no. I take her meaning now. Finally, I understand what she is saying. "Absolutely bleeding--no. I will not leave you here to die--"

  "Go!" My mother shoves me toward the Shrike, and though her teeth are bared, her eyes are filled with tears. "You don't want to save me! I'm not worth it. Go!"

  "I will not--"

  "Do you know what I did in Kauf Prison, girl?" There is hatred in her eyes as she says it. Before I knew who she was, I would have thought that hate was directed at me. I understand now that it was never for me. It was for herself. "If you did, you would run--"

  "I know what you did." Now is not the time to be noble. I grab her arm and try to drag her toward the Shrike. She doesn't budge. "You did it to save Darin and me. Because Father and Lis weren't strong like you, and you knew that they would give us up eventually, and then we'd all die. I knew that the moment I learned of it, Mother. I forgave you the moment I learned of it. But you have to come with me. We can run--"

  "Damn you, girl." Cook grabs me by the shoulder. "Listen to me. One day, you will have children. And you will learn that you would rather suffer a thousand torments than let one hair on their heads be harmed. Give me this gift. Let me protect you as I should have protected L-L-L-Lis." The name bursts from her lips. "As I should have protected your f-fath-fath--"

  She snarls at her inability to speak and spins away, nocking her bow, letting arrow after arrow loose.

  The Ghost will fall, her flesh will wither.

  The Ghost was never me. It was her. Mirra of Serra, risen from the dead.

  But if that's the case, then this is one line of the prophecy I will fight.

  Mother spins, grabs the Shrike, and heaves her up. The Blood Shrike's eyes flutter open, and she leans heavily on my mother, who then shoves her at me.

  I have no choice but to catch her, my knees nearly buckling at the sudden weight. But the Shrike rights herself, trying to stay steady on her feet, using me as support.

  "I love you, L-L-Laia." The sound of my name on Mother's lips is more than I can bear, and I am shaking my head, trying to tell her no through my sobs. Not again. Not again.

  "Tell your brother everything," she says, "if he doesn't know already. Tell him I am proud of him. Tell him that I am sorry."

  She rises up from the rocks and darts away, drawing the Karkauns' fire as she skewers them with more arrows.

  "No!" I scream, but she is doing this, and if I don't move, it wi
ll be for nothing. I look at her for one more moment, and I know I will never forget how her white hair snaps like a victory banner, and how her blue eyes shine with fury and determination. She is finally the Lioness, the woman I knew as a child--and, somehow, more.

  "Blood Shrike!" I call to her as I turn up the Pilgrim Road. "Wake up--please--"

  "Who--" She tries to see me, but her ravaged face is drenched with blood.

  "It's Laia," I say. "You must walk, do you understand? You must."

  "I saw white smoke."

  "Walk, Shrike--walk!"

  Step by step, we make our way up the Pilgrim Road until we are high enough to see over the bodies and into the Karkaun force, diminished but still enormous. High enough to watch as my mother picks them off one by one, grabbing the arrows the Karkauns are hailing down upon her, giving us as much time as she can.

  And then I do not look back anymore. I just move, half dragging, half urging the Blood Shrike onward and upward. But it is too far and the Shrike is too injured, her clothes soaked with blood, her body heavy with pain.

  "I'm so-sorry," she whispers. "Go--go on without--"

  "Blood Shrike!" A voice from up ahead, and a flash of silver. I know that face. The Mask who helped me at Kauf. The one who set me free months ago. Avitas Harper.

  "Thank the bleeding skies--"

  "I've got this side, Laia." Harper throws the Shrike's other arm over his shoulder, and together we pull her up the path, then down across a shallow bowl to a cave where a handsome, dark-skinned Mask waits. Dex Atrius.

  "Harp--Harper," the Shrike slurs in a whisper. "Told you . . . collapse the tunnels. You disobeyed orders."

  "With respect, Shrike, they were stupid bleeding orders," Harper says. "Stop talking."

  I twist my head around as we enter the cave. From this height, I can see down the hill to the Gap.

  To the Karkauns who are now making their way up the path with no one to block their way.

  "No," I whisper. "No--no--no--"

  But we are in the cave now, Dex ushering us forward quickly.

  "Blast it," Avitas says. "Laia, come quickly. They're not far behind."