Envy grunted to acknowledge that she heard, and then reached down once more.
Malice’s hands were cold. Skin and the meat beneath it slipped strangely until Envy could feel every bone, closing like talons around her arm. The stench of her sister rose up and she gagged, fighting to keep the contents of her stomach from rising into her mouth.
She felt Spite take hold of her ankles and begin dragging her out from under the shelf, and this helped Envy pull Malice after her. Moments later, all three rose to their feet in the darkness of the larder. That darkness proved no barrier to vision – one of Father’s gifts, Envy assumed.
Spite crept to the door and pressed her ear against it. She released the latch and pulled the door open.
They walked out into the kitchen.
‘Let’s sit close to the oven to warm up,’ Envy said. ‘Spite, find us a jug.’
Malice accompanied Envy to the oven. The fires beneath it had just been fed, to keep the oven hot until the midday meal needed preparing. Envy suspected that this day would see no such meal; still, the habit had been adhered to and so the heat emanating from the metal door and its brick flanks was fierce and welcoming.
‘I can’t feel it,’ said Malice, sitting down beside her.
‘Do you feel cold?’
Malice shook her head. Strands of hair drifted down to the floor. ‘I don’t feel anything.’
Spite reappeared with a heavy earthenware jug. She came up to them, and a moment before reaching them she took the jug’s handle in both hands and swung it against Malice’s head.
Clay and bone shattered, spilling wine and blood out over Malice’s body and the floor, and both sisters. Where the liquids splashed against the oven door there was savage hissing, and then smoke. Spite dropped the handle. ‘Help me lift her!’
Envy took up a wrist and an ankle.
One side of Malice’s head was flattened, although mostly near the top. Her ear was pushed in, surrounded by torn skin and cracked bones that made a pattern like the petals of a flower around that bloodied ear. The eye on that side stared up at the ceiling, leaking bloody tears. She made a moaning sound as she was lifted from the floor, but the other eye looked directly at Envy.
‘Wait!’ snapped Spite, setting Malice’s foot down and reaching for the oven handle. She cursed as she pulled down the door and Envy smelled scorched flesh. ‘That smarts,’ she said, gasping as she retrieved Malice’s right ankle. ‘Turn her round – head first into the oven.’
Envy could not pull her gaze from Malice’s lone, staring eye. ‘She’ll kick.’
‘So what. We can break the legs if we have to.’
Together, with Malice between them, they forced their sister into the oven, and this effort at last swept from Envy that terrible staring eye. The inside of the oven was lined with clay, and loud sizzling sounds accompanied every touch of skin, blood and hair against the rounded sides. Malice struggled, pulling at her arms, but the effort was weak. They got the upper half of their sister’s body into the oven and began pushing the rest in. The legs did not kick. They were limp and heavy, the toes curling upward.
‘No more bread in this one,’ gasped Spite as she folded the leg she held and pushed it past the edge of the door, the knee leaving a patch of skin on the metal rim.
‘They’ll have to smash it into pieces and build another,’ said Envy. She got the leg in on her side as well.
Spite grasped the door’s handle and slammed it home.
‘Feed more wood,’ said Envy, sitting back. ‘I want her crisp. She stank like the Abyss!’
‘I wonder what we did wrong.’
‘Don’t know, but it tells us one thing.’
‘What?’
‘You and me, Spite. We should never try to kill each other. If one of us did, well, I think it’s dead for keeps.’
Spite studied her for a long moment, and then went off to gather an armload of wood. ‘She won’t come back from this one, will she?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Because,’ continued Spite, ‘if she did, we’d be in real trouble.’
‘Throw some wood into the oven itself, and that kindling there.’
‘No. I don’t want to open that door again, Envy. In case she jumps out.’
‘All right. It’s a good point. Just fill it up underneath, then. Lots and lots.’
‘That’s what I’m doing! Why not help me instead of just sitting there giving orders like some fucking queen!’
Envy giggled at the swear word and could not help but look round guiltily, if only for an instant. Then she set to collecting more wood.
In the oven, Malice burned.
* * *
Rint remembered his sister as a child, a scrawny thing with scraped knees and smears of dust on her face. It seemed she was always climbing something: trees, crags and hillsides, and she would perch high above the village, eyes scanning the horizons or looking down to watch passers-by. Her moments of fury came when it was time for Rint to find her and bring her home, for a meal, or a bath. She’d spit, scratch and bite like a wild animal, and then, when at last he had pinned her arms against her sides in a tight hug, and lifted her from the ground to stagger his way back to the house, she would moan as if death had come to take her.
He bore stoically the wounds from her thrashing about, as befitted a brother who, while younger, was still bigger, and he was always mindful of the smiles and jests of others in the village when he passed them with his sister in his arms. They had been amused, he thought, even sympathetic. He had refused to think such reactions belonged to derision, contempt or mockery. But every now and then he had caught an expression and he had wondered. Some people took pleasure in the discomfort of others: it made a balance against their own lives.
There was no reason for thinking these thoughts now, as he looked across to his sister, except for the way she was studying the Houseblades forming up below. From her perch on her horse, atop this hill, she was wearing the same expression he had seen many years past. He thought of the daughter growing inside her, and felt a deep pang in his gut. It was said the soul only came to a child in the moments after birth, when the world opened out to wide, blinking eyes, and the lungs first filled with breath and on that breath rode the soul, rushing in to claim what had been made for it. In the time before all of this, with the vessel still trapped inside the mother’s body, the soul hovered near. He imagined it now: rising high above them to look down, with a girl’s closed expression, a strange steadiness in the eyes, and a wall of mystery behind them.
All at once, his love for his sister almost overwhelmed him, and for an instant he felt tempted to steal her away from what was to come. Perhaps the disembodied soul of the child sensed the risk, the terrible danger awaiting them, and was crying out to him, in a voice faint as the wind that reached through him, slipping past his own hurts, his mass of wounds. Then he looked round to study his companions. Ville, silent and hunched – there had been a young man he had longed to give his heart to, but was too frightened of rejection to make his feelings known. That young man had been a potter, possessing such talent with clay that no one questioned his rejection of fighting ways, and were ever pleased at his work. He was dead now, cut down in the village.
Rint’s eyes travelled past Ville and settled briefly on Galak. In the days before they had left on their mission, Galak had lost the love of yet another young woman in the village, the last in a pattern of failures. Galak had blamed only himself, as he was wont to do, although Rint could see nothing in the man to warrant such self-recrimination. He was kind and often too generous, careless with coins and his time, prone to forgetting meetings he had arranged with his mate, and hopeless at domestic tasks – but in all these things he had displayed a child-like equanimity and innocence, traits which seemed to infuriate women. As they had ridden out for House Dracons to begin their journey west, Galak had sworn off love for all time. Looking upon him now, Rint wondered if his friend regretted that vow.
H
e saw Traj, with his red face and belligerent expression, both permanent fixtures. Rint could not recall ever seeing the man smile, but his wife had loved him deeply, and together they had made four children. But now Traj was alone in his life, and no love surrounded him to soften his stony presence, and he sat as one exposed, suffering the weathering of a harsh world.
There were others, and each one he looked upon reminded Rint of his stoic marches through the village, with his sister trapped in his arms. The wounds could not be hidden and so must be worn as a child would wear them, struggling not to cry at the pain, or the shame, determined to show everyone else a strength well disguising its own fragility.
The sun stood high above them. Below, on the killing field beyond the plots of farmland, the heavily armoured Houseblades sat motionless on their caparisoned mounts. Some bore lances; others held long-handled axes or strangely curved swords. The round shields slung on their left arms were black and showed no crest. There were, Rint judged, more than five hundred of them.
There are too many. All this time, while we were away, that damned captain was building his forces, preparing for war. We sat and watched them, and pretended to be unimpressed, and not once did we take heed of the portents.
‘Refuse their charge,’ Traj now growled. ‘We part before them. Nothing changes.’
But everything has. We saw these warhorses. We even remarked on their impressive size. But not once did we see them arrayed in full complement. Now, even at this distance, to look upon them is to feel … diminished.
‘We will dance around them,’ Traj continued, as if seeking to convince himself, ‘striking and then withdrawing. Again and again. Those mounts are burdened. They will tire fast, as will their riders. See the grilled visors on their helms? Their vision is restricted. They’ll not hear commands – the battle will roar through their skulls. They’ll flounder in confusion.’ He rose on his stirrups. ‘Skirmishers, stay well guarded behind our advance – close only when and where we lock blades with them! Close in and kill the ones we unseat. Gut or hamstring the horses if you can. Scatter if they seek to charge or surround you.’
An odd way to use the skirmishers, but then I see your point, Traj. They don’t wield pikes, and there’s not enough dismounted besides, not for a square, not even a hollow one. Their only hope is if we can make this messy.
‘It’s time,’ said Traj.
Rint glanced over to see his sister staring at him. Her eyes glistened and he saw once more in her face the little girl she had once been. Before things broke, before the hands trembled before all that was suddenly out of reach. Climb a tree, sister. High above all of this. You had it right back then. I know now why you fought me so, every time I dragged you back down, every time I carried you up the street and people smiled at your temper or laughed at your wretched moans.
Not all of us wanted to grow up. I should have followed your lead. I should have stayed a child with you, clinging to a high branch while everyone else aged below, aged and fell so helplessly into their futures.
Every child born sent mother and father back to their own childhoods. Like symbols of nostalgia, they were set down and watched as they made their journey away from simplicity, from the bliss of unknowing. And if, in the witnessing of this, tears came, then those tears were warm, and the sadness that joined them somehow comforted the soul, even as it reawakened old pains and old losses. To lose a child was to feel unbearable grief, as if some vital thread had been severed. Nostalgia was a bitter curse, with every memory of that journey ending in sudden loss, yielding emptiness beyond all solace.
Rint understood her now. And wished with all his heart that he didn’t.
She turned away then, gathering her reins in her left hand and drawing her sword with her right. She shifted in her saddle, firming the grip of her feet in the stirrups.
When Feren looked for that witch, her eyes lifted to the trees. And hidden up there, as my sister had known, Olar Ethil looked down with unreadable eyes. A child eager to watch.
Until I gave her fire.
Women are right to fear us. Oh, Feren …
Traj gave the command, and then they were riding down the slope.
* * *
Ivis watched the Borderswords begin moving down the slope. ‘Yalad! Signal wedge formation!’
He remained in front of his troops, listening to them assume the new presentation. Horse hoofs thumped to make a rumble of thunder through the hard-packed ground of the killing field. Dust roiled past Ivis in thin clouds, a fortunate direction for the wind, at least to begin with. ‘Centre line count right left!’
He heard voices barking the word ‘right’ and then ‘left’ in an alternating pattern down the heartline of the wedge formation. This command alone gave the Houseblades all that they needed to know for this initial engagement.
The Borderswords poured over the first stone wall, slowing up to give time to their skirmishers to do the same. Ivis saw how the foot-soldiers lagged and nodded slightly to himself. They would serve little function until all momentum was lost. Unfortunately for them, he intended no loss of momentum from battle’s beginning to battle’s end.
Under his breath, he cursed Lord Draconus. The man should be here, commanding this first bloodletting for his Houseblades. Instead, every order – upon which so many lives depended – would be coming from a lowly captain who had grown sick of war decades ago. The only thing going for me is that I’ve seen all this before, dozens of times. And the only thing going against me is the same fucking thing. He tightened the strap of his helm and then wheeled his mount.
The wedge was arrayed before him: a point of three elite soldiers directly opposite, the leading line swept back sharply, twenty to each side, to form the chevron.
‘Houseblades! We didn’t ask for this argument. We have no cause to hate our enemy. Do not fight your grief in what’s to come, but set it aside with an honest vow to return to it in the days, months and years ahead. This is the soldier’s burden. Now, I trust you’ve all pissed before mounting up – if I see a single soldier slick in the saddle it’ll be the public lash!’ Hearing a few laughs, he scowled. ‘You think I am jesting? I have told you before but it seems you need to hear it again. In the Houseblades of Dracons, you will be told when to eat, when to drink, when to sleep, when to rise, when to shit, when to piss, when to fuck and when to kill. Now, you’ve done them all by our orders, except for the last, and that last has now arrived. It is time to kill.’
He rode closer a step, then two. ‘I’d like to be with you for this. If our lord was here I would be, at the point of this wedge, and you all know that. But he’s not, so command falls to me. Left flank, strip your shields!’
The soldiers on the left flank of the wedge rested their weapons and tore at the thin layer of dyed felt covering their shields, revealing lacquered white beneath.
‘Troop sergeants and corporals, keep an eye out for flags on the keep slope! And if you can’t see those, look higher, to the gate towers. At all times, you will see two flags upon each pole. Two flags on the white pole, two flags on the black pole—’
Someone’s shout cut him off. ‘Begging pardon, captain! But if we don’t know all that already we deserve to be cut down!’
Ivis subsided, feeling foolish. ‘Fine. I’m an old man and I want to dither, Abyss help us all.’
Laughter answered that comment.
‘Sir! Kindly get out of the way!’
Grimacing, Ivis collected up his reins and kicked his horse into motion, swinging left and riding down that wing, his gaze fixed forward.
Voices reached out for him as he passed.
‘Sir, I missed that order to fuck!’
‘You lie, Shanter! You never miss an order to fuck!’
‘I’ll see you after, Shanter!’
‘That’ll take an order, Brusk, at sword’s point.’
‘Wait! Did I hear Shanter’s taking orders?’
And then he was past, nodding to himself. He had heard it all before, a
thousand flavours but ever the same taste. It broke his heart to hear such life pushing through the gathering, suffocating fugue that came in the moments before battle. Each jest, each voice raised in rough banter, shone like a gold flag in a black forest, making all that was to come that much harder to bear.
Reaching the slope, and the flag station, he reined in and swung round to face the field once more.
The Borderswords were assembling at the far side of the field. They formed up in a rough, uneven line, some readying lances and others drawing their long stabbing swords. The dust that had travelled across the field was now mostly gone, and the clear air between the two armies wavered like water in the day’s heat.
This latter detail was unpleasant, as it invited dehydration and heat prostration from his heavily armoured men and women. Then again, if the battle went on too long, all was lost anyway.
‘Signaller!’
‘Sir!’
‘Commit the advance.’
‘Yes sir!’
Moments later, the wedge lurched into motion, a walk rising to a trot.
The enemy was now as committed as were his own Houseblades. With the field walls behind them, retreat was impossible. He saw them move forward.
Off to the left of both forces stood the two standards. One had loosened its grip on the soil and tilted to rest against the shaft of the other. He could not tell which was which, as dust now covered both banners. And, as the ground began to shake, when the Houseblades rose into a canter, both standards fell to the ground. Ivis frowned at that, but distant shouts from the Borderswords drew him round.
* * *
Sandalath watched, wide-eyed, as the two armies surged in a final rush to close. Venth was swearing under his breath at her side. He had said earlier that the enemy was an army of Borderswords, and the reason for battle was unknown.
The cantering Houseblades lifted into a charge, but as they did so the wedge formation unravelled, the centre slowing as the wings swept out, spreading wide. Opposite them, half obscured through the ever-thickening dust, the enemy line seemed to waver.