‘Brothers,’ Morghien whispered, a tiny spark of magic crackling on his tongue.
The Finntrail, hawk and wolf-spirit both turned to regard him, revelling in the strength they drew from Morghien’s Crystal Skull. They returned of their own accord, and he shivered as each entered his body: the wolf a delicate brush of chilly fur on his skin, the Finntrail coming as an ache in his bones and a bitter taste lingering on his tongue.
He did not withdraw Seliasei; she was the strongest of them and would do more good speaking to the villagers than he could ever hope to. But as he turned towards them he hesitated. The vil lagers had closed on them, creeping forward while they chopped down fifty men, and that disconcerted Morghien.
He tugged on the invisible thread of magic linking him to Seliasei and the Aspect came forward without question, gliding along the road until she was at his side and watching the advancing villagers with him.
‘ I see a Wall of Intercession, or what serves as one outside the cities, ’ she said, looking past them and into the village. ‘ A hedge of some sort, it is covered in strips of cloth — each one a prayer. I’
The Goddess broke off and Morghien felt a wave of revulsion wash through her. His concern deepened: Seliasei was always so assured and calm, and her reaction was profoundly worrying.
‘What is it?’ he urged.
‘ Devotion,’ she said in a horrified whisper, ‘ worship I cannot touch. It hangs in the air, a festering cloud of prayer surrounds this place.’
‘Shanas,’ Morghien called quietly, ‘get the men ready to move out.’ He took a few paces forward, then stopped as he saw the leading villagers flinch and tense like fighting dogs going on guard.
‘“We come in peace” might not be the best opening here,’ Morghien muttered to himself, roughly wiping the blood from his weapons and sheathing them. He saw now that several of the villagers were carrying weapons, hatchets or knives for the main. They might not be a soldier’s weapons, but they were enough to kill. There were a few-score of them now, and more were trickling out from the village behind. Now Morghien could smell the anger in the air.
‘Invaders, tattooed daemons!’ shrieked one man.
Before he could continue his tirade a tall woman with long, greying hair raised her voice above the mutters. ‘Leave our lands,’ she called. ‘We want none of your savage ways here.’
‘You would prefer the iron fist of the Devoted?’ Morghien called, ‘religious zealots writing your laws, fanatics torturing anyone who disagrees with you?’
‘Priests have ever ruled us,’ the man spat. ‘Now we are free of them, but assailed by your king’s heresy!’
‘There was no heresy.’
The woman shook her head. ‘Your king weakened the Gods; your king opened the gates of Ghenna! This plague we suffer, it comes from the hand of your lord.’
Morghien shook his head despite the sourness in his gut. He knew the king had done that — Morghien himself had threatened the Chief of the Gods not so many months ago, but the blame was not so simple as one isolated act.
‘It is Ruhen who has weakened the Gods. Ruhen is the heretic!’
‘Lies!’ hissed the man beside her, his face contorted with rage. He was smaller, and dressed in some sort of bleached cloak that Morghien realised was intended to echo those worn by Ruhen’s Children. ‘Your king brings an army of daemons to kill us all — your king brings the end of all in his wake!’
‘Ruhen has murdered priests of the Gods,’ Morghien continued, returning his gaze to the woman who looked to be a village elder. ‘Ruhen has weakened the Gods by killing and driving out their servants. He seeks himself to be made a God.’
‘Go, leave this place!’ the woman shouted, her gaze darting to those edging forward on either side of her, weapons in hand. ‘Your king is not welcome here; your cause is not welcome here.’
‘You prefer this peace promised by the Devoted?’ Morghien replied, aware he had little time before they ran for him and his men were forced to slaughter civilians too. ‘You tell me, who stands here with a Goddess at my side, that my enemy is an emissary of the Gods and my cause is a heretic’s?’
The woman stepped forward in front of her more hate-filled neighbours. ‘The Devoted promised us peace. Ruhen promises protection to those who follow him.’ Her tone turned bitter. ‘And you? You offer nothing but the slaughter of our protectors — whatever they might preach, daemons walk these woods at night. We’ve lost several of our children already — livestock have died and the chickens will not lay, the goats do not give milk any more. Will your Goddess fight for us tonight, if the daemons come?’
‘She will!’ Morghien declared, but the woman just shook her head sadly.
‘But tomorrow you’ll be gone. You have your war to fight; you’re not here to protect us, and the beasts of the Dark Place are legion. Either you go, or you stay and kill us too, but don’t pretend you haven’t condemned many to death already.’
Morghien hesitated. His relationship with Emin Thonal had always been rocky: two wilful men with certainty in their hearts, but of late Morghien had been increasingly nervous of the path they trod. He could see no other that led to victory, but he knew his friend well.
The King of Narkang and the Three Cities was a bold strategist. He had risked much during his conquest, and grown confident after decades of success. That he had only a half-mad white-eye and remorseless Mortal-Aspect of a dead Goddess to temper his plans was little comfort to a man who could sense just how great the upheaval in the Land was.
‘We leave,’ he said with a troubled heart, seeing even the clear-thinking people of these parts were against them now. Folk needed to survive the days and weeks, and only his enemy could ensure that at present.
‘Are we still on the side of right?’ he whispered to himself, though he knew Seliasei could hear him still. ‘Or has this Land been so turned upside down it’s now Azaer who’s right?’
Seliasei touched his arm and urged him to turn away. The Ghosts were formed up, ready to defend him if necessary. Shanas, at their centre, had a worried expression on her young face.
‘ Azaer forces you to do this, ’ the Aspect said softly. ‘ The shadow wounds you wherever it can, and this cuts both you and the king to the quick. The stakes have been raised by both sides. This must end one way or another, else both sides fall and chaos reigns.’
‘And that is what I fear,’ Morghien said. ‘We’ve both done so much damage in the name of victory — can either of us win now? Can this hurt be undone, stemmed even? Azaer would let it all fall to ruin rather than lose — but if Emin has the choice, what will he prefer?’
By way of reply Seliasei drifted inside him, embracing his soul and surrendering herself to him, as she had for decades now. The act wasn’t submission; he didn’t need to dominate the Goddess they way he did the Finntrail.
But can I trust Emin still? he wondered privately as he headed to their camp. Fate’s eyes, do we even know what we’ve done? Are we all damned?
CHAPTER 28
The column wound its way slowly towards the border, through lands scoured clean by the Menin invasion. Villages and towns were half-flattened or burned by foraging parties, the skulls of the slain piled high alongside the road by their newfound allies in honour of their lord.
The silence in the ranks of the Narkang Army was palpable. Emin felt it like a sickness in his gut. He was glad Amber had insisted his troops marched separately — how any general would be able to restrain his men after witnessing this, he didn’t know. The eastern flank of the nation had become a wasteland, a memorial of empty fields and settlements slowly returning to nature’s embrace.
The Menin lord had wanted his enemies to know the devastation he inflicted was as much the price of refusing battle as wanting his own troops to know there was no retreat. He had given them only one stark option: victory was the only way for them to survive.
From his saddle King Emin watched buzzards circling lazily over the fields. ‘The scavenging will have been good this summer,’ he commented sadly to his bodyguard, Forrow, then asked, ‘How many more days of this,
