axman s sure-footed brace slipping on mud, and down he goes on his arse before the cut can land. A life spared where no mercy should be looking down, a city sacked where it should stand against the besieging horde an error in the Book of Days, some shit like that.
In his mind, he builds a suitably dismissive shrug, but finds he s shivering too much to give it physical form. His body is ceasing to feel like anything he owns or has much control over.
This time, it occurs to him, he might really be dying.
The chunk of masonry comes level with his head, and wobbles there a moment. Blind impulse as realization catches up, he finds he s grabbed it. Is now hugging the worn-smooth contours of the lettered stone. He travels upward through the black, with a force that tugs and aches in his shoulder joints. The stonework is chilly against his face, the carved characters print their patterns into his flesh, he feels his body and legs rise devoid of weight until he hangs horizontally out from the stone like a windblown pennant at the mast.
The black around him is graying out.
A bruise-colored sky billows into being overhead, spreads itself to the horizon like a briskly snapped-out blanket.
He falls out of it.
Catches the sudden reek of salt water on the way down, the scent of fresh-cut kitchen herbs out of childhood memory
He hits a surface that gives soggily under his weight. Water presses up from the ground and soaks through his clothes. He blows some of it, bitter and black-tasting, out of his mouth. Turns his head a little so he can breathe. Understanding catches up with the sense impressions of before.
He lies full length in a marsh, cold and clinging to a solitary chunk of stone.
Oh well
Something stalks over his head like the fingers of a hand. He knows at once what it is, flails out with instinctive revulsion and flings the soft body away from him. Insistent squirming under his own body now, somewhere below his ribs, floundering panic fuck! fuck! and then the hot scissoring of jaws through his shirt and into his flesh as he rolls too late. A gossamer nuzzling at his neck, more soft, exploratory fingers. He swipes the touch away, comes frantically up on his knees. Cobwebs everywhere, plastering his arms, thick on the marsh grass around him like yards and yards of rotted gray muslin, he s in the burrow, he s landed right on top of the fucking thing.
He staggers to his feet, casts about, panting.
Rips loose sword, scabbard, cloak. Flings them away.
Brushes himself down with brutal strokes. Marsh spiders are communal, fiercely territorial, grow to a foot across if you re unlucky. A couple of bites from a big one is usually enough to finish a grown man. Ringil turns a taut full circle about, airheaded and struggling for balance as his feet shift and sink in the slippery springy turf and the ooze. The bite in his belly stings like scalding. He feels the slow, hot creep of the poison under the skin. He peers hard in the poor light, wishing he had a torch. Thinks he sees movement amid the coarse cobweb coatings and the marsh grass, but can t be sure.
He gets his breath back with an effort.
At his feet, the spider that bit him lies half crushed by his weight and flexing feebly. It s the size of a man s head. He stares numbly at it for a couple of seconds, then stamps down with convulsive anger until it dies.
It s all the energy he can summon. He stands swaying. The poison creeps some more in his belly, seems to be spreading. He rubs reflexively at the wound, then wishes he hadn t. Searing acid bites under the skin.
The marsh stretches featureless to the horizon. Thickly cobwebbed marsh grass in every direction, and an icy winter wind, knifing at his ears.
Great. Just fucking great.
He picks his way carefully over to his fallen sword and cloak, picks each item up in cautious turn and looks it over. He shakes three more fist-sized spiders out of the cloak s folds, finds another crawling on the scabbard and flicks it off. Stands a moment to make sure they all scuttle away. Then he fits the cloak across his shoulders fighting the wind for possession and fastens it there, hangs the Ravensfriend on his back once more, and stares defiantly around.
He reckons the cobwebs look somewhat thinner off to his left.
He starts walking.
Behind him, the abandoned chunk of masonry sits ringed in black water and offers its words to the empty sky. the Keys of a City greater than
It might be the poison, might not. in the gray places, who can tell?
He begins to hear a voice shouting down from the clouds, hoarse with anger but somehow soft as fine wool on his fingertips at the same time.
Just look at him down there
Just look at him down there
A female voice, or maybe something that knows how to imitate one, more or less. Faintly, eerily familiar. It comes and goes with the wind, seems to rush past him in sudden gusts, and then rush back. Ringil spins tiredly about, trying to face it. look at him
The standing stones begin to flicker in and out of being around him, huge misshapen bars on some jail cell built for trolls, a circular prison that keeps pace with him as he walks. They chop the marsh horizon in segments for him, stand for a couple of soggy heartbeats, rising solidly out of the cobwebbed marsh grass, then vanish as he lurches toward them. After a while he learns to ignore the effect, much as you have to with so much else in the Gray Places.
He stumbles on, feeling steadily sicker with each pace. look at him
Tilting vision of gray on gray, stone on emptiness, there and gone, there and gone.
Just look at.
He sags to a halt, feels the world go on a few steps without him as he stops. The voice goes abruptly silent, as if in interest at what he ll do next. He breathes in a couple of times. The wind jostles cold and blustering at his back. It s trying to shove him onward.
He lifts both arms. Calls out hoarsely.
Yeah, look at me. Risgillen, is it? Go on and look: Ringil Eskiath, brought low. Is this what you wanted? You can t have wanted it any more than I did.
No response. If Risgillen is out there, she isn t in the mood for a chat.
Can you blame her?
He can t really.
The ghost of the stone circle, painted like sunset shadows onto the backs of his eyes. The fleeting memories of Seethlaw snarling, wrestling passion, cool flesh under his hands, the taste of the dwenda s come in his mouth like juice from some salt-sweet bursting berry on his tongue. The deep, clenching thrusts as he hauled and molded himself against Seethlaw s ivory-hard buttocks. The noises the dwenda made with each stroke.
And then the collapsing to the dew-soaked grass, the shuddering release, the laughter on the edge of weeping. The letting go, and all that came after.
He remembers suddenly how the stones kept Dakovash out, how the Salt Lord prowled beyond them but would not step through. How he threw the Ravensfriend in to Ringil like a man feeding meat to a beast whose cage he dares not enter.
Try not to drop that again. You re going to need it.
I am not your fucking cat s-paw.
Out of nowhere, a laugh coughs its way up into his mouth.
There s not much to it, certainly not much humor. But the smile it stamps onto Ringil s lips is down-curved and ugly with sudden strength.
He looks back the way he s come. The low-growing marsh vegetation is broken in a wavering line where he s passed. It seems he s walked out of the marsh spiders territory without noticing. The cobwebs are gone. The smell of salt seems stronger now.
He rubs at his wound again, and this time when the pain sears, he breathes it in like a perfume from fond memory.
He casts about and thinks he sees the bright spark of a fire on the gray horizon.
