“You’ll need this, mate!” Another goon threw a heavy, fabric roll across to him – a bedroll of some sort. He caught it without thinking. “Get your basher up, it’s gonna piss. And tomorrow? You do your own damned chearl!”
For a second, a fragment of the dream came back to him – the last run he’d done, the one that’d gotten him the info on Grey. How it felt to be that powerful, to have that much skill at his fingertips...
He watched the flames, trying to reach for more images, a fragment of home, something familiar. He almost felt like London was waning, getting less real as the plainland around him got more so.
Over him, the sky faded to grey, to deep blue, and at last to silver-accented night. Tarvi was still beside him.
The air became cold. He unrolled the strange bedding, pulled it round his shoulders. He missed London, Lugan; he missed the Bard. Hell, right now, he missed his fucking mom.
Both of them.
Over him, the moons shone insanity – one, silver body swollen, far too low and far too big, lit the plainland to alien freakishness. The other was a crescent, a golden fingernail. Above them, the black sky was completely devoid of stars.
The night noises were all-the-fuck wrong.
“What the hell am I doing out here?” He didn’t even realise he’d said it aloud until Tarvi turned to look at him, face warmed by the fire.
“Huh?”
He didn’t meet her gaze. “Out here. It’s all fucking wrong. Why don’t’cha have any stars?”
“They were cast down by Samiel, Godsfather.” In the night’s stillness, Tarvi’s voice was perfectly serious. “All except one.”
“How fucking literary.” He chuckled. “That’s right up there with your moons being gods, for chrissakes.”
“Of course the moons are Gods.” She laughed at him. “They’re brother and sister. The sagas say they committed a... ah... terrible indiscretion and they gaze in yearning upon one another, only to know it can never be, and so they turn away.”
Faced with her sincerity, her soft skin in the firelight, he lost the ability to be scathing.
“Impossible – and incestuous,” he said. Something about it made him grin. He glanced sideways at her, head tilted. “How’d you know that?”
“I read?” She shrugged. “The yellow moon is named for Samiel’s daughter Calarinde, she who not only tempted her brother, but also lay with the last of the stars – causing him, too, to be cast down. Yet because his crime was one of love, he was condemned only to loneliness – he was sent here, as our guardian and champion. Tales say he walks the mortal world to this day.”
“Yeah.” Ecko tucked the bedroll closer round his shoulders. “That guy. I gotta bone to pick with him.”
The fire was warm on his face and it left its colours in his skin. He didn’t speak again.
* * *
Ecko watched Tarvi watching the ruin.
She was small, round faced and round figured, though her fitness pressed tight muscle against the fabric of her garments. Her days on the trade-road had sunburned her nose, she scratched at loose skin at its edges.
Her hair was haphazardly tied back, though wisps escaped the leather band and drifted constantly into her face. She blew at them, stirring ash. Ecko stifled a sudden urge to push them back.
Flanking her, the two spearmen were sharp-eyed, covering her back and each other’s.
They ducked beside a wall. Tarvi slipped along its length to peer out...
...and stopped dead, hands gesturing.
Low to the ground, he raced rodent swift to stand almost behind her, crouched upon a fallen crossbeam.
Before them was a small and blasted square, flagstones cracked, buildings seared and crumbling to every side. It was close to the heart of the explosion and even the stone had melted. The ground was still hot, colours spiralled lazily into the darkening air.
On the far side of the square, there was motion.
On a crumbling upper floor, inside a black-edged window. Tarvi held her spear and waited. Ecko hugged what remained of the building sides, slipping round the edges of the destruction.
His telescopics spun, found nothing, spun again. Whatever it was, it was below the level of the windowledge. Blinking, he flicked back to his heatseeker but the thermals of the square defeated him.
He reached the base of the building.
Behind him, Tarvi hadn’t moved. She and the spearmen were crouched in the partial cover of the wall. She was flicking gestures at Pareus. Ecko saw the commander call the patrol to his side. Keeping to cover, they moved to the edge of the square.
Ecko touched his fingertips to the wall.
It was shaking – just enough for his sensitive touch to detect. Its foundations fucked, it was coming down – and whatever was up there was coming down with it.
Hell, he’d take that chance. He’d have to watch his ass – the wall was covered in ash and shit and if he failed to grip, he could bring it down on top of himself...
...but it would be so fucking cool – and she was
With the ubiquitous prayer to the Bogeyman, he went up the wall.
* * *
Pareus skidded to a crouch beside where Tarvi waited.
“Movement,” she said. “Second window from the left. Whatever it was, I haven’t seen it again.”
“You’re sure?”
“There’s something up there.”
“Where’s Ecko?”
Her eloquent shrug made him snort – whatever that Ecko creature was, it was a royal pain in the arse. Skilled, doubtless, but he’d seen Banned with more discipline. Why the rhez he’d been landed with this...
Not the time.
His guys were young, but they knew the drill – they spread out to watch the area.
Pareus crouched with Tarvi, sword bared.
Then, shocking across the burned-out silence, he heard a sky-ripping, high-pitched shriek – a crumble of damaged stonework, a skittering of many claws...
...and a full-throated male scream.
He turned in time to see Rift go down under a mass of slither, a dull gleam of sunset from scales, a grey puff of ash cloud, a shredding of claws and teeth. The spearman scrabbled for a hopeless second – trying to fight a seething mass of them off him – then he tumbled, screaming, thrashing, to the broken stone floor, the flesh literally being stripped from his bones. Charcoaled wood shattered, dark fluid exploded up the wall as he simply vanished, ripped into pieces, flesh from bone.
Tarvi was on her feet, hands over her mouth. Her face white to the lips.
And the ripple of death came onwards.
“To me!” he called. They needed no urging, the nine remaining members of his tan were already moving, scrambling over obstacles to where he stood. They reached him in a jostle, wild-eyed and ash blackened – they stank of fear.
