fight his secret war. Before his sister died, screaming about shadows with claws, he was just some nobleman drinking and whoring his way through life, forever looking for a use for that big brain o’ his.’
‘And that’s all the nation is to him?’
Doranei shrugged and belched. ‘Maybe, maybe not. Who’s to say? You ever thought you knew his mind, truly?’
‘Narkang and the Three Cities is just a machine for this war, one built over two decades?’ Endine gasped. ‘No, there must be more to it than that — one loss doesn’t define a man like that. He’s not Vorizh — he’s not so cold that he’d see us just as tools-’
‘Sure, if you say so. He’s not one for being ruthless, our king, that’s for sure. All gentle smiles and gracious waving at the commoners; no surrounding himself with murderers and madmen who drag fucking great dragons out o’ Ghenna itself.’ Doranei made a show of looking down at himself, prodding the brigandine he wore and pretending surprise at the sword hanging from his hip. His point made, the King’s Man swung around and stared out at the dark camp beyond.
‘Question is, does that make you proud or angry?’ he asked over his shoulder. ‘Me, I got a touch of both.’ He slapped his belly and wandered off into the dark. ‘And a whole lot o’ piss besides,’ he muttered as he went, a shadowy figure already. ‘Where the fuck’d we put the latrine?’
Isak opened his eyes to a dead Land, scoured grey by the hot wind so that even the grasses underfoot were lifeless and withered. He saw buildings in the distance, a tiered city wall and great square towers. Even from afar he could see they were in ruins, their people long since killed: the bones of a city, broken, jutting from its corpse.
‘Where am I?’ he said aloud. The wind snatched his words away like a jealous child.
‘An ending,’ came a deep voice behind him.
Isak turned and regarded the figure that had appeared from nowhere: gaunt and insubstantial, and far taller than any man. The face was hidden beneath a black cowl, one bone-white hand bearing a double-headed spear. It was said the Harlequins and Jesters both wore white masks to echo Death’s own emotionless, featureless face, but even weakened, the God showed Isak nothing of His self.
‘Not my ending,’ Isak declared, fighting the bone-deep compulsion to kneel. ‘So why here?’
Death did not speak for a long while. Instead, He surveyed the wasteland they stood in, the destruction done there. Isak realised that beneath the dust and grey grass there were stones laid in some semblance of order. Few were visible, but there were enough to imagine the shape of the building that once stood there. There was no sun, just the dull grey sky of a permanent twilight.
‘Why here?’ Death said at last. ‘To show you the consequences of power.’
‘This is the City of Ghosts?’
The Chief of the Gods didn’t reply, but He didn’t have to. The dust clouds swirling all around contained shapes, Isak realised, figures and movement — snapshots of life, burned forever into the place they were erased. Long sinuous bodies, tall figures on horseback, a woman who stood over them all, sword raised high. Isak caught glimpses only before the wind shifted and then they were gone, only for other broken souls to momentarily appear elsewhere.
Pale lights, mournful faces and the lonely cry of the wind; that was all they were. This was no judgment of the Gods; this was damage so profound even Gods could not affect it.
‘This was a place of beauty once,’ Death said, ‘and in our rage we tore it apart — tore it from the Land.’ He raised His spear and pointed to a rounded plateau. ‘There we cursed Aryn Bwr and his allies, unmindful of what it would cost us.’
‘What you stole from yourselves,’ Isak finished. ‘You lessened what you were in the name of revenge — you who call yourselves Gods.’
‘And now you lessen us further. By your actions, we are forever diminished and the shadow will take domain over the Pantheon.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘All you have done — you opened the way for Azaer, a being of no power, only words.’
Isak took a step towards the God and looked up into the depthless black of its cowl. ‘You think the shadow’s words weren’t power? That it wouldn’t have slowly crept into position after years, decades of whispers in the dark eroding the whole Pantheon? I’ve cleared the path some, not opened the way. I’ve made my enemy hurry and adapt carefully laid plans rather than allow it to choose its own time and place for the battle to come.’
‘Azaer was just a voice on the wind, a spirit, like countless others. Azaer was nothing — until you made it so.’
The white-eye turned away and watched the shifting shapes on the wind. Behind them an unearthly light danced around the far ruins of a broken spire, half buried by the dust and sand that was all that remained of the ground here.
‘You made Azaer, not I. You brought reason into the minds of mortals. You blessed them with fear and envy, the power to create and dream — all in your need for worship.’
‘Azaer is no daemon, feeding off the fear of mortals. The shadow lacks even that.’
Isak nodded. ‘A shadow’s between the light of worship and the dark of dread. Those private thoughts and cruelties, the unspoken, unformed prayers that are mortal thoughts — that’s what shaped Azaer. The petty desires and spite; greed in forms as numerous as the creatures you gave mortals dominion over.’
‘You try to absolve yourself?’ Death asked, stalking stiffly forward. ‘You hide now from what you have done? Azaer will soon challenge us because of what you’ve done — Azaer is a challenge because of your actions.’
‘No,’ Isak said simply. ‘I know what I’ve done, the price I might yet have to pay. But you sowed the seeds of your own destruction, and I might yet be able to redress the balance of the Land. For good or for ill, I intend to try.’
‘Even if the entire Land burns in your wake?’
Isak’s smile was sad. ‘I am what you made me. Now you live with the consequences.’
They broke from nowhere, rushing up like a flock of flushed game but with murder in their hearts. Daken barely turned in time as the lead attacker hurtled towards him with mad abandon. The notched edge of the rusted sword he held above his head was already coming down towards the white-eye’s face. Daken spun to one side, his great axe following him round and catching the man so hard in the ribs he was thrown from his feet.
General Amber stepped in to protect Daken’s flank, his scimitars slicing the air towards the next attacker. Behind them Amber’s Menin bodyguards surged forward, hunched low behind their shields, taking the impacts in their stride, moving steadily forward, chopping and stabbing at the frantic, unprotected attackers.
Daken drove ahead again, battering a bloody path through the fanatics with great sweeps of his axe, and Amber followed him, embracing the rush of battle: no time to think, no use in it. A man drove on, carried by the tide of his comrades and fought until he could not move. That was the Menin way; that was what had been drilled into him, year after year. The strokes he performed without thought; his arm knew the movements as his heart knew to beat, and he let it subsume him into those blessed, empty moments when the loss in his mind was distant and forgotten.
And then the Land snapped back into focus. The enemy were gone, taken down in a blinding slaughter, none fleeing, all lying there dead or dying. Only a few-score men and woman in rags for armour, but they had fought to the end against veterans. Amber blinked down at the squirming figure at his feet.
It was a young man of no more than fifteen summers, barely an adult, thin-limbed and pale. Old scabs had formed around his mouth, and the white scars of ringworm were clear on his neck. His collarbone had been cleaved through and Amber’s scimitar had chopped into the ribcage below as well. Blood poured from the wound, bubbling up like oil from the ground. The youth stared in shock at the sky above, his mouth working feebly as he tried to scream his last pain. Before Amber could end it, he saw the light fade in the young man’s eyes; his body sagged and the flow of blood tapered off.
‘Guess that answers one question,’ Daken commented as he kicked a corpse out of his way.
Amber looked up with a frown.
‘What the reception would be like for us,’ Daken explained, pointing towards the city walls a few hundred yards off. ‘No Devoted, but plenty more o’ these fuckers.’
‘None of them ran,’ Amber muttered, wiping his scimitars and sheathing them again. As he reached up his pauldron snagged again and he was forced to tug it back into place. The straps holding it had been sheared through
