'Even if the goddess did not guide you, someone or something did. Else Sha'ik would never have been given those visions.'
'Now you speak of fate. Argue that with your fellow scholars, Heboric. Not every mystery can be unravelled, much as you believe otherwise. Sorry if that pains you …'
'Not half as sorry as I am. But it occurs to me that even as mortals are but pieces on a gameboard, so too are the gods.'
''Elemental forces in opposition,'' she said, smiling.
Heboric's brows rose, then he scowled. 'A quote. A familiar one-'
'It should be. It's carved into the Imperial Gate in Unta, after all. Kellanved's own words, as a means to justify the balance of destruction with creation — the expansion of the Empire, in all its hungry glory.'
'Hood's breath!' the old man hissed.
'Have I sent your mind spinning in other directions, Heboric?'
'Aye.'
'Well, save your breath. The subject of your next treatise — no doubt that handful of obscure old fools will dance in excitement.'
'Old fools?'
'Your fellow scholars. Your readers, Heboric'
'Ah.'
They were silent again for some time, until the ex-priest spoke once more. 'What will you do?' he asked softly.
'With what has happened out there?'
'With what's still happening. Korbolo Dom reaping senseless slaughter in your name-'
'In the name of the goddess,' she corrected, hearing the brittle anger in her own voice. She'd already exchanged sharp words with Leoman on this subject.
'Word of the 'rebirth' has probably reached him-'
'No, it has not. I have sealed Raraku, Heboric. The storm raised around us can scour flesh from bones. Not even a T'lan Imass could survive the passage.'
'Yet you have made an announcement,' the old man said. 'The Whirlwind.'
'Which has raised in Korbolo Dom doubts. And fears. He is very eager to complete the task he's chosen. He's still unfettered, and so is free to answer his obsessions-'
'And so, what will you do? Aye, we can march, but it will take months to reach the Aren Plain, and by then Korbolo will have given Tavore all the justification she needs to deliver a ruthless punishment. The rebellion was bloody, but your sister will make what's already happened seem like a scratch on the backside.'
'You assume she is my superior, Heboric, don't you? In tactics-'
'There's precedent for how far your sister will go in cruelty, lass,' he growled. 'Witness you standing here …'
'And there lies my greatest advantage, old man. Tavore believes she will face a desert witch whom she has never met. Ignorance will not sway her contempt for such a creature. Yet I am not ignorant of
A subtle change had come to the distant roar of the Whirlwind towering behind them. Sha'ik smiled. Heboric's sense of that change came moments later. He turned. 'What is happening?'
'It will not take us months to reach Aren, Heboric. Have you not wondered what the Whirlwind is?'
The ex-priest's blind eyes widened as he faced that pillar of dust and wind. Sha'ik wondered how the man's preternatural senses perceived the phenomenon, but his next words made it clear that whatever he saw was true. 'By the gods, it's
'Dryjhna's Warren, Heboric, our whirling road to the south.'
'Will it take us there in time, Fel- Sha'ik? In time to stop Korbolo Dom's madness?'
She did not answer, for it was already too late.
As Duiker rode in through the gates, gauntleted hands reached out to grasp the halter and reins, dragging his mare to a stuttering halt. A smaller hand closed on the historian's wrist, tugging with something like desperation. He looked down, and saw in Nether's face a sickly dread that poured ice into his veins.
'To the tower,' she pleaded. 'Quickly!'
A strange murmuring was building from Aren's walls, a sound of darkness that filled the dusty air. Sliding down from the saddle, Duiker felt his heart begin to thunder. Nether's hand pulled him through the crowd of Garrison Guards and refugees. He felt other hands reach out, touch lightly as if seeking a blessing or conferring one, then slip past.
An arched doorway suddenly yawned before him, leading to a gloomy landing with stone steps rising along the inside of the tower wall. The sound from the city walls was building to a roar, a wordless cry of outrage, horror and anguish. It echoed with mad intent within the tower, and rose in timbre with each step that the warlock and the historian climbed.
On the middle landing she swept him past the T-shaped arrow slits, edging them both behind the pair of bowmen pressed against the narrow windows, then on, up the worn stairs. Neither archer even so much as noticed them.
As they neared the shaft of bright light directly beneath the roof hatch, a quavering voice reached down.
'There's too many … I can do nothing, no, the gods forgive me — too many, too many …'
Nether ascended the shaft of light, Duiker following. They emerged onto the broad platform. Three figures stood at the outer wall. The one on the left Duiker recognized as Mallick Rel — the adviser he had last seen in Hissar — his silks billowing in the hot wind. The man beside him was probably High Fist Pormqual, tall, wiry, slope- shouldered and wearing clothes that would beggar a king, his pale hands skittering across the top of the battlement like trapped birds. To his right stood a soldier in functional armour, a tore on his left arm denoting his commander's rank. He held his burly arms wrapped around himself, as if trying to crush his own bones. The stress bound within him seemed about to explode.
Near the hatch sat Nil, a disarrayed jumble of limbs. The young warlock swung a grey, aged face towards Duiker. Nether swept down to wrap her brother in a fierce hug that she seemed unwilling or unable to relax.
The soldiers lining the walls to either side were screaming now, a sound that cut the air like Hood's own scythe.
The historian went to the wall beside the commander. Duiker's hands reached out to grip the sun-baked stone of the merlon. Following the rapt gaze of the others, he could barely draw breath. Panic surged through him as his eyes took in the scene on the slope of the closest burial mound.
Coltaine.
Above a contracting mass of less than four hundred soldiers, three standards waved: the Seventh's; the polished, articulated dog skeleton of the Foolish Dog Clan; the Crow's black wings surmounting a bronze disc that flashed in the sunlight. Defiant and proud, the bearers continued to hold them high.
On all sides, pressing in with bestial frenzy, were Korbolo Dom's thousands, a mass of footsoldiers devoid of all discipline, interested only in slaughter. Mounted companies rode past them along both visible edges, surging into the gap between the city's walls and the mound — though not riding close enough to come within bow range from Aren's archers. Korbolo Dom's own guard and, no doubt, the renegade Fist himself had moved into position atop the mound behind the last one, and a platform was being raised, as if to ensure a clear view of the events playing out on the nearer barrow.
The distance was not enough to grant mercy to the witnesses on the tower or along the city's wall. Duiker saw Coltaine there, amidst a knot of Mincer's engineers and a handful of Lull's marines, his round shield a shattered mess on his left arm, his lone long-knife snapped to the length of a short sword in his right hand, his feather cloak glistening as if brushed with tar. The historian saw Commander Bult, guiding the retreat towards the hill's summit. Cattle-dogs surged and leapt around the Wickan veteran like a frantic bodyguard, even as arrows swept through them in waves. Among the creatures one stood out, huge, seemingly indomitable, pin-cushioned with arrows, yet fighting on.
The horses were gone. The Weasel Clan was gone. The Foolish Dog warriors were but a score in number, surrounding half a dozen old men and horsewives — the very last of a dwindled, cut-away heart. Of the Crow, it was clear that Coltaine and Bult were the last.
