The Crimson Guardsman came closer. ‘My fault,’ he said. ‘I had to sleep, thought you’d be safe for a bit. I was wrong. I’m sorry.’
‘The child?’
A pained look. ‘Run down by horses, I think. Some time past.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘Trate’s falling. The Edur fleet held off. Until Nekal Bara and Arahathan were finished. Then closed. The defences were swarmed by shadow wraiths. Then the warriors landed. It was bad, Acquitor.’ He glanced over a shoulder, said, ‘At about that time, an army came down from inland. Swept the undermanned fortifications and, not a hundred heartbeats ago, finally succeeded in knocking down the North Gate. The Edur are taking their time, killing every soldier they find. No quarter. So far, they’ve not touched non-combatants. But that’s no guarantee of anything, is it?’
He helped her to stand, and she flinched at the touch of his hands – those weapons, stained with murder.
If he noticed he gave nothing away. ‘My Blade’s waiting. Corlo’s managed to find a warren in this damned Hood-pit – first time in the two years we been stuck here. What the Edur brought, he says. That’s why.’
She realized they were walking now. Taking winding alleys and avoiding the main thoroughfares. The sound of slaughter was on all sides. Iron Bars suddenly hesitated, cocked his head. ‘Damn, we’ve been cut off.’
Dragged into the slaughter. Bemused witness to the killing of hapless, disorganized soldiers. Wondering if the moneylenders would be next. Udinaas was left staggering in the wake of the emperor of the Tiste Edur and twelve frenzied warriors as they waded through flesh, cutting lives down as if clearing a path through reeds.
Rhulad was displaying skill that did not belong to him. His arms were a blur, his every move heedless and fearless. And he was gibbering, the manic sound punctuated every now and then by a scream that was as much terror as it was rage. Not a warrior triumphant. Neither berserk nor swathed in drenched glory. A killer… killing.
An Edur warrior near him fell to a Letherii soldier’s desperate sword-thrust, and the emperor shrieked, lunged forward. The mottled sword swung, and blood splashed like water. His laughter pulled at his breath, making him gasp. Edur faces flashed furtively towards their savage ruler.
Down the street, carving through a rearguard of some sort. Udinaas stumbled over corpses, writhing, weeping figures. Blind with dying, men called for their mothers, and to these the slave reached down and touched a shoulder, or laid fingertips to slick foreheads, and murmured, ‘I’m here, my boy. It’s all right. You can go now.’
The apologetic priest, chain-snapped forward step by step, whispering hollow blessings, soft lies, forgiving even as he prayed for someone – something – to forgive him in turn. But no-one touched him, no fingertips brushed his brow.
For the burned villages. Retribution. Where were the moneylenders? This war belonged to them, after all.
Another hundred paces. Three more Edur were down. Rhulad and eight brethren. Fighting on. Where was the rest of the army?
Somewhere else.
If one could always choose the right questions, then every answer could be as obvious. A clever revelation, he was on to something here…
Another Edur screamed, skidded and fell over, face smacking the street.
Rhulad killed two more soldiers, and suddenly no-one stood in their path.
Halting in strange consternation, trapped in the centre of an intersection, drifts of smoke sliding past.
From the right, a sudden arrival.
Two Edur reeled back, mortally wounded.
The attacker reached out with his left hand, and a third Edur warrior’s head snapped round with a loud crack.
Clash of blades, more blood, another Edur toppling, then the attacker was through and wheeling about.
Rhulad leapt to meet him. Swords – one heavy and mottled, the other modest, plain – collided, and somehow were bound together with a twist and pronation of the stranger’s wrist, whilst his free hand blurred out and over the weapons, palm connecting with Rhulad’s forehead.
Breaking the emperor’s neck with a loud snap.
Mottled sword slid down the attacker’s blade and he was already stepping past, his weapon’s point already sliding out from the chest of another Edur.
Another heartbeat, and the last two Tiste Edur warriors were down, their bodies eagerly dispensing blood like payment onto the cobbles.
The stranger looked about, saw Udinaas, nodded, then waved to an alley-mouth, from which a woman emerged.
She took a half-dozen strides before Udinaas recognized her.
Badly used.
Seren Pedac took no notice of him, nor of the dead Edur. The stranger grasped her hand.
Udinaas watched them head off down the street, disappear round a corner.
Somewhere behind him, the shouts of Edur warriors, the sound of running feet.
The slave found he was standing beside Rhulad’s body, staring down at it, the bizarre angle of the head on its twisted neck, the hands closed tight about the sword.
Waiting for the mouth to open with mad laughter.
‘Damned strangest armour I’ve ever seen.’
Seren blinked. ‘What?’
‘But he was good, with that sword. Fast. In another five years he’d have had the experience to have made him deadly. Enough to give anyone trouble. Shimmer, Blues, maybe even Skinner. But that armour! A damned fortune, right there for the taking. If we’d the time.’
‘What?’
‘That Tiste Edur, lass.’
‘Tiste Edur?’
‘Never mind. There they are.’
Ahead, crouched at the dead end of an alley, six figures. Two women, four men. All in crimson surcoats. Weapons out. Blood on the blades. One, more lightly armoured than the others and holding what looked to be some sort of diadem in his left hand, stepped forward.
And said something in a language Seren had never heard before.
Iron Bars replied in an impatient growl. He drew Seren closer as the man who’d spoken began gesturing. The air seemed to shimmer all round them.
‘Corlo’s opening the warren, lass. We’re going through, and if we’re lucky we won’t run into anything in there. No telling how far we can get. Far enough, I hope.’
‘Where?’ she asked. ‘Where are we going?’
A murky wall of blackness yawned where the alley’s blank wall had been.
‘Letheras, Acquitor. We got a ship awaiting us, remember?’
‘Is he dead?’
‘Who?’
‘Is he dead? Did you kill him? That Tiste Edur!’
‘No choice, lass. He was slowing us up and more were coming.’
Vomit spilling out onto the sand.
At least, Withal mused, the shrieks had stopped. He waited, seated on grass just above the beach, while the young Edur, on his hands and knees, head hanging down, shuddered and convulsed, coughed and spat.
Off to one side, two of the Nachts, Rind and Pule, were fighting over a piece of driftwood that was falling apart with their efforts. Their games of destruction had become obsessive of late, leading the Meckros
