The planks underfoot creaked and bowed slightly and Brother Diligence turned to see that Shield Anvil Tanakalian had arrived on the platform. The man was pale, his face glistening with sweat. He approached the Forkrul Assail as if struggling to stay upright – and Diligence smiled upon imagining the man flinging himself prostrate at his feet. ‘Shield Anvil, how fare your brothers and sisters?’
Tanakalian wiped sweat from his upper lip. ‘The Bolkando forces possess a mailed fist in the Evertine Legion, Brother Diligence. Commanded by Queen Abrastal herself. And then there are the Gilk Barghast—’
‘Barghast? This is your first mention of them.’ Diligence sighed. ‘So they have at last come to the home of their ancient kin, have they? How fitting.’
‘They see themselves as shock troops, sir. You will know them by their white-painted faces.’
Diligence started. ‘White-painted faces?’
Tanakalian’s eyes narrowed. ‘They call themselves the White Face Barghast, yes.’
‘Long ago,’ Diligence said, half in wonder, ‘we created a Barghast army to serve us. They sought to emulate the Forkrul Assail in appearance, electing to bleach the skin of their faces.’
Frowning, the Shield Anvil shook his head. ‘There was, I believe, some kind of prophecy, guiding them across the seas to land north of Lether. A holy war to be fought, or some such thing. We believe that only the Gilk clan remains.’
‘They betrayed us,’ Diligence said, studying Tanakalian. ‘Many Pures died at their hand. Tell me, these Gilk – are they in the habit of wearing armour?’
‘Turtle shell, yes – most strange.’
‘Gillankai! Their hands are drenched in the blood of Pures!’
Tanakalian backed a step in the face of this sudden fury. Seeing this, Diligence narrowed his gaze on the Shield Anvil. ‘How many warriors among these Gilk?’
‘Three thousand, perhaps? Four?’
Snarling, Diligence turned to face the valley again. ‘The weapons of the Forkrul Assail are our hands and feet – the Gillankai devised an armour to blunt our blows. Shield Anvil, when they come, concentrate against these Barghast. Break them!’
‘Sir, I cannot command the presentation of enemy forces. I came here to tell you it is my suspicion that the Evertine Legion will engage the Grey Helms – a clash of heavy infantry. We shall lock jaws with them and we shall prevail. As such, sir, we leave the Gilk, the Saphii and other assorted auxiliaries to your Kolansii. In addition to the Letherii, of course.’
‘Any other threats you’ve yet to mention, Brother?’
‘Sir, you vastly outnumber the attackers. I expect we shall make short work of them.’
‘And does this disappoint you, Shield Anvil?’
Tanakalian wiped again at the sweat beading his upper lip. ‘Provided you do not seek to use your voice, sir, to demand surrender, we shall welcome all the blood spilled on this day.’
‘Of course. It is the slaughter you so desire. Perhaps I shall indulge you in this. Perhaps not.’
The Shield Anvil’s eyes flicked away momentarily, and then he bowed. ‘As you will, sir.’
‘Best return to your soldiers,’ Diligence said. ‘And keep a watchful eye on that Destriant. She is not what she would like us to believe she is.’
Tanakalian stiffened, and then bowed again.
Diligence watched the fool hurry away.
Watered Hestand thumped up on to the platform and saluted. ‘Blessed Pure, our scouts report the advance of the enemy – they will soon crest the ridge and come into view.’
‘Very well.’
‘Sir – there are not enough of them.’
‘Indeed.’
As Hestand hesitated, Diligence turned to eye the officer. ‘Your thoughts?’
‘Sir, surely their own scouts have assessed our numbers, and the completeness of our defences. Unless they hold some hidden knife or weapon, they cannot hope to best us. Sir …’
‘Go on.’
‘The High Watered among us have sensed the sudden absence of Brother Serenity, far to the northwest. Clearly, the forces that emerged from the keep are now advancing, and – somehow – they are proving their worth against even the most powerful Pures.’
‘Hestand.’
‘Sir.’
‘This is not the day to fret over distant events, no matter how disquieting they may be.’
‘Sir, it is my thought – perhaps the enemy now arraying before us possess similar efficacy, when it comes to the Forkrul Assail.’
After a long moment, Diligence nodded. ‘Well said. I appreciate your persistence on this matter. By your courage you chastise me. Hestand, you are wise to awaken caution. As you have observed, the enemy before us cannot hope to prevail, nor can they be so blind that they cannot see the hard truth awaiting them. Raising the question, what secret do they possess?’
‘Sir, what can we do?’
‘Only wait and see, Hestand.’ Diligence turned back to the valley, tracked with his eyes down the paths leading to the centre redoubt – and the wolf standards of the Perish. ‘Perhaps I should compel the Shield Anvil. He is holding something back – I see that now. What I took for nerves before battle – I may have misread him.’
‘Shall I retrieve the Perish commander, sir? Or perhaps send a squad down to arrest him?’
Diligence shook his head. ‘And invite a mutiny among the troops holding our centre? No. I believe I must undertake this task in person.’
‘Sir – is there time?’ And Hestand now pointed to the south ridge.
The enemy were presenting in a solid line along the crest. Diligence studied the distant scene for a moment, and then he nodded. ‘There is time. Await me here, Hestand. I shall not be gone long.’
She had ascended the Spire and now stood, her back to the altar and the Heart it held, facing out on to the bay. The fleet of anchored Perish ships rocked like wood chips in a cauldron of boiling water, and as she watched she saw a trio of masts snap in a writhing fury of shredded stays. The white spume of the waves sprayed high into the air.
Sister Reverence found that she was trembling. There is something down there, in the depth of the bay. Something building to rage.
Strangers have come among us.
Spinning, she faced inland, eyes darting as she studied the vast array of defences crowding the approach to the narrow isthmus. Twenty thousand elite Kolansii heavy infantry, their pikes forming thick bands of forest in solid ribbons all down the tiered descent. Fifteen hundred onagers clustered in raised fortlets interspersed among the trench lines, each one capable of releasing twelve heavy quarrels in a single salvo, with reloading time less than forty heartbeats. The defilade down the choke-point ensured devastation should any attacker strive to close on the lowest fortifications.
There was a taste of bitter metal in her mouth. Her bones ached despite the gusts of hot, rancid air belching out from fissures in the stone on all sides. I am afraid. Should I reach out to Brother Diligence? Should I avail myself of all these unknown terrors? But what enemy can I show him? An unruly bay – that vague bank of fog or dust to the south? These things are nothing. He prepares for a battle. He has his mind on real matters – not an old woman’s gibbering imagination!
She should never have sent Brother Serenity away. And now he was dead. She had shared his last visions – raging fire, the flames blackening his once-white skin, scouring the flesh of his face, boiling the water of his eyes until the balls burst – and his cries! Abyss below, his cries! The fire filling his mouth, the flames sweeping in, sucked past charred lips, igniting his lungs! Such a terrible death!
These humans were an abomination. Their brutal ways shook her to the core. There was no end to their capacity for cruel destruction, no end to their will to deliver horror and death. The world would find a clean breath once they were all gone, finally, a clean and blessedly innocent breath.
Akhrast Korvalain, attend me! This is the day we are challenged! We must prevail!
Reveren
ce walked to stand before the altar. She glared down at the knotted object set in the surface of the stone. Awakening her sorcerous vision, she studied the now visible chains binding the Heart down – all her ancestors, their bones given new shapes, but their strength had not changed. There was no weakness in what she saw. The sight relieved her. No one shall take this from us. If I must, I will destroy it by my own hand.
The warren surrounding the Heart had kept it hidden for all this time. What had changed? How had it been found? Not even the gods could sense it, not hidden here at the heart of our warren. And yet we are about to be attacked. We are about to be besieged. I feel the truth of this! Who could have found it?
A sudden thought struck her, clenching like a fist in the centre of her chest. The Fallen One! But no – he is too weak! Bound by his own chains!
What gambit is he playing? To think that he could challenge us! No, this is madness! But then, was the Crippled God not mad? Tortured in agony, broken, ripped apart – fragments of him scattered across half the world. But I am the one holding his heart. I have … stolen it. Ha, and see how deep and how vast my love! Watch as I squeeze it dry of all life!
A marriage of justice with pain. Is this not the torture of the world? Of all worlds? ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘I will never relinquish my … my love. Never!’ This is the only worship worthy of the name. I hold in my hand a god’s heart, and together, we sing a thousand songs of suffering.
Distant eruptions drew her round. The Perish ships! Torn from their anchors, the huge vessels now lifting wild on the heaving swells – white foam spouting skyward, splinters as ships collided, broke apart, the wolfheads drowning on all sides – she saw the Kolansii ships in the harbour directly below, moored to the moles and the inside of the breakwater, all stirring, like beasts milling in blind confusion. Waves hammered the stone breakwater, lifting enormous sheets into the air. And yet. And yet … there is no wind.
There is no wind!
Grub was almost lost in the moulded scale saddle behind the shoulders of the Ve’Gath, and yet, as the beast loped forward, he was not tossed about as he would have been if on a horse. The scales were still changing, growing to shield his legs, including his thighs, as if the saddle sought to become armour as well – he was amazed at seeing such a thing. Flanged scales now rose to encircle his hips. He had a moment of fear – would this armour, extruded out from the beast he was riding, eventually encase him in entirety? Would it ever release him?
He turned his head to the rider travelling beside him, to see if the Ve’Gath’s thick hide was growing up in the same way, but no – there it remained an ornate saddle, that and nothing more. And Mortal Sword Krughava rode it with all the ease and familiarity of a veteran. He envied such people, for whom everything came so easily.
My father was not like that. He was never a natural fighter. He had nothing of the talent of, say, Kalam Mekhar. Or Stormy or Gesler. He was just an average man, forced to be more than he was.
I am glad I did not see him die. I am glad my memories see him as only alive, for ever alive.
I think I can live with that.
I have no choice.
They had left the K’Chain Che’Malle army halfway through last night, and now they were swiftly closing on the Letherii and Bolkando armies. If he stretched up – as far as the sheathing armour round his thighs would permit – he could see directly ahead the dark, seething stain of the troops ascending to the ridge. Grub glanced again across at Krughava. She was wearing her helm, the visor dropped down and the hinges locked. The wolfskin cape was too heavy to skirl out behind her, despite the swift pace the Ve’Gath were setting, but still it flowed down with impressive grace along the horizontal back of the K’Chain Che’Malle, sweeping down to cover its hips and the projecting mass of its upper leg muscles, so that the fur rippled and glistened as the muscles bunched and stretched.
She would have made a frightening mother, he decided, this Krughava. Frightening, and yet, if she gave a child her love, he suspected it would be unassailable. Fierce as a she-wolf, yes.
But I have no mother. Maybe I never had one – I don’t remember. Not a single face, swimming blurry in my dreams – nothing. And now I have no father. I have no one and when I look ahead, into my future, I see myself riding, for ever alone. The notion, which he trucked out again and again, as if to taste it on his tongue, stirred nothing in him. He wondered if there was something wrong with him; he wondered if, years from now, on that long journey, he might find it – that wrongness, like a corpse lying on the ground on the path ahead. He wondered what he would feel then.
Thinking back on their parting from the K’Chain army, Grub tried to recall the reasons behind his decision to leave Sinn’s side. Something had pulled him to Brys Beddict and all the Letherii and Bolkando, a vague belief that he would be more useful there, though he had no idea what he might do, or if he had anything to give. It was easier thinking of this like that, instead of the suspicion that he was fleeing Sinn – fleeing what she might do.
‘No one can stop me, Grub. No one but you.’ So she’d told him, more than once, but not in a reassuring way, not in a way that told him that he mattered to her. No, it was more like a challenge, as if to ask: What have you got hidden inside you, Grub? Let’s see, shall we? But he didn’t want to know what he had inside him. That day they’d come to do battle with the Moons, that day when there had been fire and stone and earth and something cold at the centre of it all, he had felt himself falling away, and the boy who had walked at Sinn’s side was somebody else, wearing his skin, wearing his face. It had been … terrifying.
All that power, how it poured through us. I didn’t like it. I don’t like it.
I’m not running away. Sinn can do what she likes. I can’t really stop her, and I don’t want her to prove it, to spite her own words. I don’t want to hear her laughing. I don’t want to look into her eyes and see the fires of Telas.
They had been seen, and now the warrior-beasts under them were shifting their approach, angling towards a small party that had ridden out to one side. Prince Beddict. Aranict. Queen Abrastal and Spax, and three people he’d not seen before – two women and a tall, ungainly-looking man with a long face. Just behind this group, standing alone and impossibly tall, was a woman shrouded in a cloak of rabbit-skins, down to her ankles, her hair a wild, tangled mane of brown, her face looking like it had been carved from sandstone.
The thumping gait of the Ve’Gath fell off as they drew nearer. Glancing down, Grub saw that the armour formed a high collar up past his hips, flaring out just beneath his ribs. And behind his back, an upthrust of overlapping scales formed a kind of back-rest, protecting his spine.
The K’Chain Che’Malle halted, and Grub saw Brys Beddict studying Krughava.
‘You are a most welcome sight, Mortal Sword.’
‘Where are my Perish positioned?’ Krughava demanded in a voice like grating gravel.
Queen Abrastal replied. ‘Centre, nearest line of defences and a little way past that. Mortal Sword, their position is untenable – they are provided no avenues of retreat. With a little pushing, we can attack them on three sides.’
Krughava grunted. ‘We are meant to maul ourselves on this studded fist, sirs. And should they all die, my Perish, it is of little interest to the Forkrul Assail.’
‘We more or less worked that one out,’ Spax said. The Gilk Warchief was in full turtleshell armour, his face painted white, the eyes rimmed in deep red ochre.
The Mortal Sword was momentarily silent, her gaze moving from one figure to the next, then slipping past to narrow on the huge woman standing fifteen paces back. ‘You have found new allies, Prince. Toblakai?’
Brys glanced back, made a face. ‘Gods below, I’ve never known a woman as shy as her. She is Teblor and she commands three hundred of her kind. She is named Gillimada.’
‘Where will you place them?’ Krughava’s tone was, if anything, yet harsher than it had been a moment earlier.
Gru
b saw them all hesitating, and this confused him. What is wrong?
Aranict lit a new stick from her old one and flung the latter away, speaking all the while, ‘Mortal Sword, there are over forty thousand Kolansii on the other side of the valley.’
‘Forty thousand?’
‘We are faced with a challenge,’ Brys Beddict said. ‘We must endeavour to engage the entirety of this force, for as long as possible.’
Queen Abrastal spoke. ‘Once the Pure commanding here learns of the real assault – the one upon the Spire – he will seek to withdraw as many of his troops as he can safely manage. We judge three bells to fast-march to the isthmus – in other words, they can reach that battle in time, Mortal Sword, and strike at Gesler’s flank. As yet, we can determine no way in which to prevent this happening.’
‘I will turn the Perish,’ pronounced Krughava. ‘I will pull them from their position and wheel them round, placing them to block the way east. We need only slow the enemy, sirs, not stop them.’
‘If you so succeed in regaining your command of the Grey Helms,’ said Brys, ‘will you welcome the company of the Teblor?’
Krughava’s thinned eyes switched to the Teblor commander. ‘Sirs,’ she said, loud enough for all to hear, ‘to fight alongside the Teblor would be an honour unsurpassed on this day.’
Grub sought to see the effect of these words, but from Gillimada there was no reaction at all.
‘Mortal Sword,’ said Queen Abrastal, ‘are you confident that you can resume command of the Grey Helms? And before you answer, this is not the time for unrealistic bravado.’
Krughava stiffened at that. ‘Do you imagine that I do not understand the severity of this moment, Highness? I will speak plainly. I do not know if I will succeed. But I will give my life in the effort – would you ask more of me?’
Abrastal shook her head.
‘We must, however,’ said Brys, ‘present ourselves to the enemy in such a manner as to deal with either eventuality.’
A loud voice suddenly boomed, ‘They talk bad!’
Gillimada was suddenly among them, her eyes level with the mounted men and women.