The Crippled God

But then, was the Crippled God not mad? Tortured in agony, broken, ripped apart — fragments of him scattered across half the world. But I am the one holding his heart. I have … stolen it. Ha, and see how deep and how vast my love! Watch as I squeeze it dry of all life!

A marriage of justice with pain. Is this not the torture of the world? Of all worlds? ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘I will never relinquish my … my love. Never!’ This is the only worship worthy of the name. I hold in my hand a god’s heart, and together, we sing a thousand songs of suffering.

Distant eruptions drew her round. The Perish ships! Torn from their anchors, the huge vessels now lifting wild on the heaving swells — white foam spouting skyward, splinters as ships collided, broke apart, the wolfheads drowning on all sides — she saw the Kolansii ships in the harbour directly below, moored to the moles and the inside of the breakwater, all stirring, like beasts milling in blind confusion. Waves hammered the stone breakwater, lifting enormous sheets into the air. And yet. And yet … there is no wind.

There is no wind!

Grub was almost lost in the moulded scale saddle behind the shoulders of the Ve’Gath, and yet, as the beast loped forward, he was not tossed about as he would have been if on a horse. The scales were still changing, growing to shield his legs, including his thighs, as if the saddle sought to become armour as well — he was amazed at seeing such a thing. Flanged scales now rose to encircle his hips. He had a moment of fear — would this armour, extruded out from the beast he was riding, eventually encase him in entirety? Would it ever release him?

He turned his head to the rider travelling beside him, to see if the Ve’Gath’s thick hide was growing up in the same way, but no — there it remained an ornate saddle, that and nothing more. And Mortal Sword Krughava rode it with all the ease and familiarity of a veteran. He envied such people, for whom everything came so easily.

My father was not like that. He was never a natural fighter. He had nothing of the talent of, say, Kalam Mekhar. Or Stormy or Gesler. He was just an average man, forced to be more than he was.

I am glad I did not see him die. I am glad my memories see him as only alive, for ever alive.

I think I can live with that.

I have no choice.

They had left the K’Chain Che’Malle army halfway through last night, and now they were swiftly closing on the Letherii and Bolkando armies. If he stretched up — as far as the sheathing armour round his thighs would permit — he could see directly ahead the dark, seething stain of the troops ascending to the ridge. Grub glanced again across at Krughava. She was wearing her helm, the visor dropped down and the hinges locked. The wolfskin cape was too heavy to skirl out behind her, despite the swift pace the Ve’Gath were setting, but still it flowed down with impressive grace along the horizontal back of the K’Chain Che’Malle, sweeping down to cover its hips and the projecting mass of its upper leg muscles, so that the fur rippled and glistened as the muscles bunched and stretched.

She would have made a frightening mother, he decided, this Krughava. Frightening, and yet, if she gave a child her love, he suspected it would be unassailable. Fierce as a she-wolf, yes.

But I have no mother. Maybe I never had one — I don’t remember. Not a single face, swimming blurry in my dreams — nothing. And now I have no father. I have no one and when I look ahead, into my future, I see myself riding, for ever alone. The notion, which he trucked out again and again, as if to taste it on his tongue, stirred nothing in him. He wondered if there was something wrong with him; he wondered if, years from now, on that long journey, he might find it — that wrongness, like a corpse lying on the ground on the path ahead. He wondered what he would feel then.

Thinking back on their parting from the K’Chain army, Grub tried to recall the reasons behind his decision to leave Sinn’s side. Something had pulled him to Brys Beddict and all the Letherii and Bolkando, a vague belief that he would be more useful there, though he had no idea what he might do, or if he had anything to give. It was easier thinking of this like that, instead of the suspicion that he was fleeing Sinn — fleeing what she might do.

‘No one can stop me, Grub. No one but you.’ So she’d told him, more than once, but not in a reassuring way, not in a way that told him that he mattered to her. No, it was more like a challenge, as if to ask: What have you got hidden inside you, Grub? Let’s see, shall we? But he didn’t want to know what he had inside him. That day they’d come to do battle with the Moons, that day when there had been fire and stone and earth and something cold at the centre of it all, he had felt himself falling away, and the boy who had walked at Sinn’s side was somebody else, wearing his skin, wearing his face. It had been … terrifying.

All that power, how it poured through us. I didn’t like it. I don’t like it.

I’m not running away. Sinn can do what she likes. I can’t really stop her, and I don’t want her to prove it, to spite her own words. I don’t want to hear her laughing. I don’t want to look into her eyes and see the fires of Telas.

They had been seen, and now the warrior-beasts under them were shifting their approach, angling towards a small party that had ridden out to one side. Prince Beddict. Aranict. Queen Abrastal and Spax, and three people he’d not seen before — two women and a tall, ungainly-looking man with a long face. Just behind this group, standing alone and impossibly tall, was a woman shrouded in a cloak of rabbit-skins, down to her ankles, her hair a wild, tangled mane of brown, her face looking like it had been carved from sandstone.

The thumping gait of the Ve’Gath fell off as they drew nearer. Glancing down, Grub saw that the armour formed a high collar up past his hips, flaring out just beneath his ribs. And behind his back, an upthrust of overlapping scales formed a kind of back-rest, protecting his spine.

The K’Chain Che’Malle halted, and Grub saw Brys Beddict studying Krughava.

‘You are a most welcome sight, Mortal Sword.’

‘Where are my Perish positioned?’ Krughava demanded in a voice like grating gravel.

Queen Abrastal replied. ‘Centre, nearest line of defences and a little way past that. Mortal Sword, their position is untenable — they are provided no avenues of retreat. With a little pushing, we can attack them on three sides.’

Krughava grunted. ‘We are meant to maul ourselves on this studded fist, sirs. And should they all die, my Perish, it is of little interest to the Forkrul Assail.’

‘We more or less worked that one out,’ Spax said. The Gilk Warchief was in full turtleshell armour, his face painted white, the eyes rimmed in deep red ochre.

The Mortal Sword was momentarily silent, her gaze moving from one figure to the next, then slipping past to narrow on the huge woman standing fifteen paces back. ‘You have found new allies, Prince. Toblakai?’

Brys glanced back, made a face. ‘Gods below, I’ve never known a woman as shy as her. She is Teblor and she commands three hundred of her kind. She is named Gillimada.’

‘Where will you place them?’ Krughava’s tone was, if anything, yet harsher than it had been a moment earlier.

Grub saw them all hesitating, and this confused him. What is wrong?

Aranict lit a new stick from her old one and flung the latter away, speaking all the while, ‘Mortal Sword, there are over forty thousand Kolansii on the other side of the valley.’

‘Forty thousand?’

‘We are faced with a challenge,’ Brys Beddict said. ‘We must endeavour to engage the entirety of this force, for as long as possible.’

Queen Abrastal spoke. ‘Once the Pure commanding here learns of the real assault — the one upon the Spire — he will seek to withdraw as many of his troops as he can safely manage. We judge three bells to fast-march to the isthmus — in other words, they can reach that battle in time, Mortal Sword, and strike at Gesler’s flank. As yet, we can determine no way in which to prevent this happening.’

‘I will turn the Perish,’ pronounced Krughava. ‘I will pull them from their position and wheel them round, placing them to block the way east. We need only slow the enemy, sirs, not stop them.’

‘If you so succeed in regaining your command of the Grey Helms,’ said Brys, ‘will you welcome the company of the Teblor?’

Krughava’s thinned eyes switched to the Teblor commander. ‘Sirs,’ she said, loud enough for all to hear, ‘to fight alongside the Teblor would be an honour unsurpassed on this day.’