The Crippled God

Remain for ever untouched

With lessons unlearned

By the fool who can do nothing

But stare ahead

To where stands the future

Grinning with empty eyes

Helpless Days

Fisher kel Tath

Time had become meaningless. Their world now rolled like waves, back and forth, awash with blood. Yan Tovis fought with her people. She could match her brother’s savagery, if not his skill. She could cut down Liosan until the muscles of her arm finally failed, and she’d back away, dragging her sword behind her. Until the rainy, flat blackness unfurled from the corners of her vision and she staggered, chest screaming for breath, moments from slipping into unconsciousness, but somehow each time managing to pull herself back, pushing clear of the press and stumbling among the wounded and dying. And then down on to her knees, because another step was suddenly impossible, and all around her swirled the incessant tidal flow and ebb, the blur of figures moving from body to body, and the air was filled with terrible sound. Shrieks of pain, the shouts of the cutters and stretcher-bearers, the roar of endless, eternal battle.

She understood so much more now. About the world. About the struggle to survive in that world. In any world. But she could find words for none of it. These revelations were ineffable, too vast for the intellect to conquer. She wanted to weep, but her tears were long gone, and all that remained precious could be found in the next breath she took, and the one after that. Each one stunning her with its gift.

Reaching up one trembling forearm, she wiped blood and grime from her face. A shadow passed over her and she lifted her head to see the close pass of another dragon — but it did not descend to the breach, not this time, instead lifting high, seeming to hover a moment behind the curtain of Lightfall before backing away and vanishing into the glare.

Relief came in a nauseating rush that had her leaning forward. Someone came to her side, resting a light arm across her back.

‘Highness. Here, water. Drink.’

Yan Tovis looked up. The face was familiar only in that she’d seen this woman again and again in the press, fighting with an Andiian pike. Grateful, yet sick with guilt, she nodded and took the waterskin.

‘They’ve lost the will for it, Highness. Again. It’s the shock.’

The shock, yes. That.

Half of my people are dead or too wounded to fight on. As many Letherii. And my brother stands tall still, as if it’s all going to plan. As if he’s satisfied by our stubborn insanity, this thing he’s made of us all.

The smith will bend the iron to his will. The smith does not weep when the iron struggles and resists, when it seeks to find its own shape, its own truth. He hammers the sword, until he beats out a new truth. Edged and deadly.

‘Highness, the last of the blood has shattered. I–I saw souls, trapped within — breaking apart. Highness — I saw them screaming, but I heard nothing.’

Yan Tovis straightened, and now it was time to be the one giving comfort. Yet she’d forgotten how. ‘Those lost within, soldier, will for ever stand upon the Shore. There are … worse places to be.’ If she could, she would flinch at her own tone. So lifeless, so cold.

Despite that, she felt something like will steal back into the young woman. It seemed impossible. Yedan, what have you made of my people?

How long ago was it? In a place where days could not be measured, where the only tempo was the wash and flood of howling figures, this tide seething into the heart of midnight, she had no answer to this simplest of questions. Lifting the waterskin, she drank deep, and then, half in dread, half in disbelief, she faced Lightfall.

And the wound, where the last of the Liosan still alive on this side were falling to Shake swords and Andiian pikes. Her brother was down there. He had been down there for what seemed for ever, impervious to exhaustion, as units disengaged and others stumbled forward to relieve them, as the warriors of his Watch fell one by one, as veterans of the first battle stepped to the fore in their place, as they too began to fall, and Shake veterans arrived — like this woman at her side.

Brother. You can kill for ever. But we cannot keep up with you. No one can.

I see an end to this, when you stand alone, and the dead shall be your ground.

She turned to the soldier. ‘You need to rest. Deliver this news to Queen Drukorlat. The blood wall has shattered. The Liosan have retreated. Half of us remain.’

The woman stared. And then looked around, as if only now realizing the full extent of the horror surrounding them, the heaps of corpses, the entire strand a mass of supine bodies under blood-soaked blankets. She saw her mouth the word half.

‘When in the palace, rest. Eat.’

But the soldier was shaking her head. ‘Highness. I have one brother left to me. I cannot stay in the palace — I cannot leave his side for too long. I am sorry. I shall deliver your message and then return at once.’

Yan Tovis wanted to rail at her, but she bit down on her fury, for it was meant not for this woman, but for Yedan Derryg, who had done this to her people. ‘Tell me then, where is your brother?’

The woman pointed to a boy sleeping in a press of Shake fighters resting nearby.

The vision seemed to stab deep into Yan Tovis and she struggled to stifle a sob. ‘Be with him, then — I will find another for the message.’

‘Highness! I can-’

She pushed the waterskin into the woman’s arms. ‘When he awakens, he will be thirsty.’

Seeing the soldier’s wounded expression as she backed away, Yan Tovis could only turn from her, fixing her eyes once more upon the breach. It’s not you who has failed me, she wanted to say to that soldier, it is I who have failed you. But then she was alone once more and it was too late.

Brother, are you down there? I cannot see you. Do you stand triumphant once more? I cannot see you.

All I can see is what you did. Yesterday. A thousand years ago. In the breath just past. When there are none but ghosts left upon the Shore, they will sing your praises. They will make of you a legend that none living will ever hear — gods, the span of time itself must be crowded with such legends, for ever lost yet whispered eternally on the winds.

What if that is the only true measure of time? All that only the dead have witnessed, all that only they can speak of, though no mortal life will ever hear them. All those stories for ever lost.

Is it any wonder we cannot grasp hold of the ages past? That all we can manage is what clings to our own lives, and what waits within reach? To all the rest, we are cursed to deafness.

And so, because she knew naught else to do, in her mind Yan Tovis reached out — to that moment a day past, or a breath ago, or indeed at the very dawn of time, when she saw her brother lead a sortie into the face of the Liosan centre, and his Hust sword howled with slaughter, and, with that voice, summoned a dragon.

She tightened the straps of her helm and readied her sword. Down at the breach the Liosan were pouring like foam from the wound, and Yan Tovis could see her Shake buckling. Everywhere but at the centre, where her brother hacked his way forward, and all the enemy reeling before him seemed to be moving at half his speed. He could have been cutting reeds for all the resistance they offered him. Even from this distance, blood washed like a bow wave before Yedan’s advance, and behind him Shake fighters followed, and she could see how his deadliness infected them, raised them into a state of frenzied fury.

From one flank two Letherii companies pushed in to bolster her people, and she watched the line stiffen, watched it plant its feet and hold fast.

Yan Tovis set off for the other flank, increasing her pace until she was jogging. Anything faster would have