Axebourne wasn't grinning anymore.
"But it had to be done," Pierce said quietly.
"And that's why we do it, Pierce, so others don't have to," Scythia said, putting a hand on her husband's arm. He put one of his over hers and squeezed.
CHAPTER TEN
The Everlasting Temple
Axebourne insisted that Gorgonbane follow the city garrison's routine, including training drills, sleeping in the barracks, eating in the mess, and maintaining their uniforms. It was the most organized Pierce had been in a long time. Axebourne himself met, slept, and ate as the garrison's officers did.
He said this would help the soldiers of the city to see Gorgonbane as comrades, rather than interlopers.
It was after being dismissed for his unit's R&R that Pierce found the time to visit the center of town, and the Everlasting Temple itself.
The Temple complex was like a city within the city and seemed to have its own peculiar traffic flow, schedule, and rules of decorum. In general, it was a quiet place, for most people there were either worshiping or studying.
Pierce wandered through the halls of the place, got lost in it, passed by holy mages, reverent pilgrims, groundskeepers, and curious tourists like himself. He paused in each lengthy gallery, their glass ceilings refracting the red sun's light, to study the paintings displayed on the walls. Most were of great battles and mighty feats, their subjects so ancient that hardly a reliable source was left to separate fact from myth.
Old kings were depicted in some of these - chiseled, regal men with ornate weapons who led their men into battle without fear. More than a few were of warrior queens, some of them armored and armed like Scythia, but most were clothed in rich red robes, dealing out death with gem-encrusted spellstaves.
It had never really bothered him, and it still didn't now, but Pierce did briefly reflect on the constant state of war these old images implied. How long had the rulers of the nations of Overland been fighting amongst themselves for the continent's dwindling resources and real estate? How many times had the minions and abominable creatures of the Underlands tried to conquer the surface realm?
Had there ever been a lull in the fighting as long as this past decade?
Was all of this conflict here just so men and women could learn to walk the Glorious Path? That's what the sages said.
Pierce had heard of a sculpture he wished to see, placed deep in the labyrinth of the Temple, in its own tall gallery. He asked a holy mage about it and was politely given directions. When he finally came to the gallery holding the sculpture, Pierce couldn't have said where exactly he was in the Temple complex, but he guessed it was somewhere near the center. He knew that the Great Sanctuary wasn't more than a few twists and turns away.
The sculpture was a statue of a human form, perhaps sixty feet tall, and the red sun looked down on it through the glass ceiling above. The form was a bearded man, with corded thews beneath taut, fatless skin. His teeth were gritted in exertion as he raised a mighty hammer above his head, in preparation for a strike. One side of the hammer's head was shaped like the front of a human skull, and the other dripped with blood. The giant man was down on one knee, his right thigh resting against the side of a weathered anvil. The sculpture defied perspective, bending this portion of the image downward to show viewers below what lay on the anvil.
It was a smaller human, half male, half female, with a distinct split down the middle, and different clothing on each half. The woman's hair had spilled onto the man's breast, and the man's only hand reached across their shared body to hold the woman's belly. They both had gritted teeth. Their legs were elongated into a tapered shape like the blade of a longsword, and the woman's arm was stretched out to one side in a partial crossguard.
Pierce could almost hear the blows of the hammer, swinging down to shape the blade into its forger's vision. The sword-people screamed or grunted with each impact, and their maker's sweat dripped from his brow and onto the steaming hot anvil.
This was the Blacksmith. He who forged from naught. Master of the weapons that would one day slay Oblivion itself.
How far along that path am I? Pierce wondered to himself. Was his own blade fully shaped? Fully sharpened? Had he been tempered? Would he be deemed fit to serve in the transcendent wars to follow this time of shaping and testing?
He wondered, too, if the process was really as taxing for the Blacksmith as it was depicted here. If he was almighty, it shouldn't be, should it?
Pierce let his eyes feast on the masterful artistry of the work - its lines, whether deep or subtle, and the little creases in the skin, hinted at by careful scrapes and gouges. That look in the Blacksmith's eyes, like what he did was right and necessary.
When his soul had its fill, Pierce left the gallery.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Attack at Grondell
Nothing went according to plan.
Thinking back on it later, Pierce was continually tempted to blame himself. Really he knew it couldn't be his fault, that he wasn't cursed with bad luck, that it couldn't spill over onto the people around him. Yet it didn't feel that way. It felt like he'd crashed into this city with the seeds of his own brand of chaos, and sown them all around.
At least the attack had been punctual. Ten days and no more.
The sun was bright and hot that morning, crawling across the black sky with its slowly writhing tendrils. The night mist had been heavy, leaving the city's structures covered with a sheen like sweat.
Grondell's defenders were stationed on and behind its walls, with higher concentrations of troops at the gates. The ramparts were packed with the bodies of men
