“Wait,” said Aeglyss.
Shraeve stopped. She passed from motion into perfect immobility in the blink of an eye. Her gaze remained locked onto Kanin. He found that he had come to a halt too. Two dozen paces separated Thane and raven. Kanin could feel his heart thumping, straining, in his chest. Its beat was the only sound in all the world. A silence descended upon them all, every warrior gathered there at Kan Avor’s centre.
Then Aeglyss was edging sideways, his gown trailing through the mud. He moved like an ancient, all brittleness and fragility. But his voice… his voice was like the ocean.
“You have done all that you could have done, Bloodheir,” the halfbreed rasped. “No. Thane. I forget. Or remember too much.”
He coughed and shivered. Blood was trickling from his nose. Hothyn followed him, a watchful, silent attendant.
“You never understood, though. Because there is something in you-this hatred-that deafens you, blinds you, you never grasped what has been happening all around you. You see only the surface of things. But you needed to feel, Thane, if you were to understand.”
Aeglyss extended a bony arm, and pressed his hand against a wall. He leaned thus, letting the ruined city take his weight.
“If you could have felt it, you would have understood that this is not something you can undo. Not with all your hatred, all your stubbornness. You are not equal to the task of opposing me, because I am become the world.”
There were cracks in the skin of the halfbreed’s naked scalp, Kanin could see. Fissures in him. Failings of the body. But it was not his body that filled the street, coiled like fog around the buildings, streamed out from the stones. It was not in his limbs that his awful strength resided.
“I am become the world,” Aeglyss repeated. His eyes were closed. His eyelids were seeping sores. “And it would be easy to let you die, for the world is finished with you. But that is not what I want. And the choice is mine to make.”
“No,” said Kanin through gritted teeth. The denial cost him a great effort, for the halfbreed’s monumental will had hold of him.
“Yes. You will be what I want you to be, Thane, because that is the nature of things now. Surely you do not imagine you could have come this far, had I not permitted it? I think a thing, and it becomes real. That is what… that is how… No, no. Things have happened… Did I dream them? Scavenge them from the memory of the world? Things I never wanted…”
Then something darted from the ruins, some dark fleck of movement that leaped towards the na’kyrim. It was too fast to follow, too fleeting for any of them to react. Any of them save the one Kyrinin. In the time it took Kanin to turn his head, Hothyn managed a single surging stride, set his hands on the halfbreed’s shoulders, twisted and hauled him aside, and caught the crossbow bolt square in his own back.
The White Owl fell against Aeglyss, and in the manner of that collapse Kanin could see at once that he was dead. Aeglyss swayed for a moment, reaching round to grasp the stub of the quarrel that had buried itself between ribs and deep into the heart beyond, then the Kyrinin’s weight was too much for him and he toppled backwards.
The passage of time slowed. Shraeve was pointing. Inkallim were running, homing on the source of that fatal dart. Kanin blinked-it felt glacial and leaden-and looked back to Aeglyss. The na’kyrim was pinned beneath Hothyn’s corpse, struggling feebly to roll it away. And Kanin moved. One long stride, then another, giant paces that swept him over the silt-packed cobbles. There was nothing save the sight of the halfbreed, down and distracted, and the feel of his own body, the might that coursed through his legs and his shoulders and chest. The world, the future, fate: all of it yielding itself to him and opening itself. He had but to reach out and take hold of what was offered. He ran towards Aeglyss, and his sword was rising, attaining the height from which it would fall, and in falling salve all hurts.
Shraeve hit him from the side, driving her shoulder into his armpit. It felt like a log of hardwood punching into his ribcage, and it knocked him from his feet. She somersaulted away from him and somehow twisted so that she came to rest facing him, crouched on one foot, one knee, hands already up and grasping the hilts of her swords. Kanin tried to get to his feet, but his shield hampered him. He was too slow, he knew. He had seen Shraeve fight; seen her speed.
But the Inkallim was smiling, rising without urgency. Her two swords eased free of their scabbards and she held them out, one on either side, rolling her wrists so that the blades stirred the air in lazy circles.
Kanin’s flank where she had hit him protested violently as he lifted himself off the cobblestones. He used sword and shield to lever himself up, and forced himself to straighten, ignoring the cramping pain from his ribs. He wanted to look for Aeglyss, but Shraeve was advancing slowly, that disdainful smile still upon her face.
“Come, then,” Kanin murmured. He would welcome it now, to be freed from the chains of sorrow and failed hopes.
“I killed your sister, Thane,” Shraeve said quietly. “Not Aeglyss. Me. It was necessary.”
“Necessary. Necessary.” Kanin repeated the word in incomprehension. It had no meaning to him, his mind could not grasp its shape. It bore no relation he could conceive of to Wain. To her death. Yet it filled him with renewed fire. It burned away the dull fog of surrender.
He threw himself at the Inkallim, and heard as he did so, as if from very far away, Aeglyss crying out, “Don’t kill him.”
She was all that he had imagined she would be. A dark and dancing flame, always and inevitably just out of reach. He fought as he never had before, knowing that there was nothing to preserve his strength, or will, or passion. It all came to this.
Shraeve’s swords wove fluid webs which he could not penetrate. They notched his shield and struck splinters from its face. Her body described patterns that he did not recognise, and could not follow or predict. His blunt attacks lagged always an instant behind, though he poured every last measure of his skill and effort into them. His boots scraped and slipped across the uneven surface of the street; hers flowed. She laid open his cheek. She dented the chain links on his breast.
Kanin had never been so wholly present within the moments of a battle. He had never been so fast or so acutely conscious of each movement, each fractional instant. He had never been a better warrior than he was there, facing Shraeve in the decrepit streets of the shattered city, beneath broken towers. And it was not enough. From the first ringing touch of their contending blades, he had understood that it would not be enough.
He cut at her hip. Shraeve blocked the blow. As he pulled his sword arm back to gather the distance for another attempt, he found the point of her second sword pursuing it, lancing diagonally between the two of them towards his elbow. He straightened that retreating arm out and twisted his shoulder back to let Shraeve’s lunge take her across him. She turned as she went, showing her back to him. He began to bring his shield sweeping up and around, aiming its rim at the side of her head. A sudden dip and surge and Shraeve was rising, still turning, in the air; moving no longer across him but towards him. Her trailing arm was snapping round. Kanin saw it, read its path, and could do nothing to prevent it.
A dark blur, as of a rock rushing down at him, and the pommel of her sword hit his cheekbone, just in front of his ear. He felt his shield strike Shraeve, but she rolled over it, like an acrobat playing games at a feast. The impact had blinded him. Pain flashed through his skull, as bright and loud as summer lightning. There was a ringing whine in his ears. His legs softened, the knee joints quaking and yawing as he staggered, sinking towards the cobblestones.
Another stunning blow, in the centre of his chest, deadening him. He plunged backwards, blind and deaf. His body was nothing but pain and crushing pressure. He hit a wall or perhaps the ground, the back of his head cracking against stone, and felt consciousness faltering. The beat of his heart slowed and slowed.
“Don’t kill him,” he heard the na’kyrim saying again as he receded.
As soon as the bolt had leaped from her crossbow, Eska was gone. She ducked and scrambled on all fours away from the waist-high stump of wall that had concealed her. Behind her, shouts, pursuit. She did not need to look. Shraeve’s ravens-perhaps even Shraeve herself-would be pouring through this labyrinthine rubble in moments. If she had permitted herself the luxury of such feelings, that might have given Eska a certain pleasure. She would, in many ways, welcome the testing of her skills against their cruder abilities. The Battle might benefit from a lesson in humility.
