facing down Acidtongue.
It was Cutbill. The old guildmaster of thieves, dressed like a peasant in a shapeless russet tunic.
Cutbill grabbed the priest by his baldric. The priest tried to bring Acidtongue up to defend himself but he was too slow. Cutbill launched his head forward, connecting his forehead viciously with the priest’s nose. Cartilage snapped with a sickening crunch and blood splattered down the front of the priest’s tunic, turning its red fabric black in the moonlight. The sword fell uselessly to the bed of the wagon in a pool of its own acid.
Cutbill had a knife in his hand, no bigger than the belt knife he might use to cut and eat his food. He struck with it three times, perforating the priest’s neck in three precise, almost surgical cuts. The priest fell backward, out of the wagon, without a sound. Malden had no doubt the man was dead before he hit the cobbles.
Then Cutbill grabbed Malden and hauled him out of the wagon. He pushed him toward a disused horse trough that had frozen over in the night. With his bloody knife, Cutbill smashed up the ice and shoved Malden’s face into the bitterly cold water.
The effect was immediate. The cold shocked his system-left him feeling still weak as an infant but at least able to gasp for breath and look around him. He saw the wagon standing exactly where it had stopped, the starveling horse waiting patiently for a command that would never come. He saw the deserted streets, saw the three bodies lying on the cobbles.
“How… did,” he said, but lacked the strength to finish his thought. How did you know they would do this? How did you know where to find me? Those were only his most pressing questions.
Cutbill, though, never gave away his secrets. Rather than answering, he grabbed Malden’s face and slapped him mercilessly. “Fight it, son,” the guildmaster told him. “You’re going to need to walk in a moment. After that, you’ll need to run.”
Malden forced his left hand to clench into a fist. It didn’t quite make it, but he felt the blood surging through his fingers. He tried again. Cutbill nodded and went back to the wagon. When he returned, he had Acidtongue, its scabbard, and Malden’s sword belt. He helped Malden strap it back on.
“Not… your usual… style,” Malden forced himself to say. He’d never actually imagined Cutbill capable of leaving his various lairs and bolt-holes. Certainly never thought the guildmaster of thieves capable of such a daring-and savage-rescue.
“In fact this was exactly my style, once upon a time,” Cutbill assured him. “In a less decorous era. These days I find it more to my advantage to plot and scheme from the shadows, yes. But I’ve done my share of desperate things in the past, when plans fell apart. I need you still, Malden. I’m not done with you, not quite yet. I still need a hero to save my city tomorrow.”
“Too bad you only… have me,” Malden joked.
“You know I hate false modesty. You’re exactly the man for the job. If only because no one else is here to do it. Bend this knee,” Cutbill said. “Farther. Does it pain you to bend like that?”
Malden shook his head. “Nothing hurts.”
“It will. When the drug wears off it’s going to hurt a lot. Now. Bend the other knee. Good. Again.”
Chapter One Hundred Eleven
An hour before dawn the snow burned a deep blue. Fires burned low in the barbarian camp, untended now by men who expected to be inside walls and warm in a little space of time. Morget dropped to his knees before the wall of Ness and spread his hands wide, for that was how the men of the East prayed.
O mother, O Death, come today for my enemies, he beseeched silently, for no man of the East prayed aloud when another could hear. O my mother, come for my men, too, my warriors, who I would slay myself to please you, until their blood painted this world. Come for the little people of the West, and conquer their little gods. Come for the innocent. Come for the women. Come for the children, and even the little babes.
Slake this thirst inside me with hot blood.
Or come for me, if that is my doom.
But come, and reap, and take many souls into your arms.
No one was there to ask him what he begged for. Hurlind the scold was passed out drunk in his tent. Balint the dwarf was gone, spirited away in her own tunnels by hands unseen. Morgain was riding for Helstrow, well beyond Morget’s reach. Morg the Wise, Morg the Merciful, Morg the Great Chieftain was dead by his son’s red hand. The chieftains who remained, their reavers and their warriors, their thralls and their berserkers, did not dare approach a man communing with his wyrd.
Morget was alone. No one remained to share in his glory.
Which meant it would all be his.
Everything was in readiness, and everything was planned for. The berserkers would be first and already they danced before the wall of the city, danced wildly, working their blood up, danced and sang with great ululating shrieks and shouts, with atonal, wordless chants to drive themselves mad. When the wall came down they would rush inside and slaughter indiscriminately anyone they found. After them the clans would pour through, a river of iron to wash away any defenders that remained. He would be in among them, with axe and Dawnbringer, and he would reap a great harvest.
Or so it had been planned. Yet destiny, or doom, whichever it might be, was known to laugh at men who schemed, and so it was to be that day.
The sign, the portent of what was truly to come, was a ring of steel against iron, and it was repeated not once but a hundred times even before Morget looked up from his prayer. Behind him at the edge of the camp horses screamed and men cried out in pain. Morget jumped to his feet and grabbed his weapons.
He was not expecting this, but still it brought a smile to his face. He hurried past surprised-looking chieftains standing outside their tents, past thralls holding the ropes that would bring down the wall of Ness. He hurried to where men held weapons in their hands, and pushed into their ranks so he could see what gift his mother had brought him.
An armored man on a horse nearly put a lance-tip through Morget’s chest as he looked around him. Morget was fast enough to spin out of the way and bury his axe deep in the haunch of the horse as it passed. The animal faltered and went down, and the knight on its back had to jump down into the snow.
Morget did not recognize the armor the man wore, nor the way he braided his mustache. This was no man of Skrae. He found this fact deeply intriguing.
The knight got to his feet while Morget waited. The barbarian could have struck his enemy down a dozen times, but he wanted to see what this new foeman would bring to bear. The knight had a long, tapering shield across his left arm, and his right hand came up with a flail, three spiked steel balls whirling over his head. If they found purchase on Morget’s flesh, they would tear away skin and muscle and crush his bones. With an ease and a grace that came from a hundred such encounters, Morget stepped inside the knight’s reach and thrust Dawnbringer into the air. The Ancient Blade burst with light as it fouled the chains holding those deadly orbs, clattered as they wrapped around and around Morget’s foible.
Morget’s axe came around and bit through the wooden shield that came up to meet it. The boards groaned and split and the steel rim of the shield twanged as it snapped away. The shield fell to pieces and the arm underneath it steamed with blood.
The knight let go of his flail-trapped and useless now-and punched Morget hard in the face with a steel gauntlet. Morget’s head spun around to the side and spittle launched from his lips as his entire skull rang with the impact.
He shook off the blow and brought his head back around to see the knight dancing backward, reaching for a long dagger at his waist.
“Very good,” Morget laughed. “You’re very good,” he said, in the same moment that he flicked Dawnbringer to the side to free it of the entwined flail. The knight did not reply as he brought his knife around, the blade held diagonally across his chest to ward off Morget’s next blow.
Morget feinted with his axe, and the knight drove hard with his knife to parry. That left his chest open, so Morget impaled him on Dawnbringer. The blade lit up inside the knight’s body and red light glowed from inside the dying man’s rib cage.
