But he felt himself being torn apart. He felt his mind shredding away. He could not do much more of this. Yet Bottle did not relent.
Tarr stumbled into a knot of marines. Glared round. ‘Limp-where’s your-’
‘Dead,’ Limp said. ‘Just me an’ Crump-’
‘Ruffle?’
The round-faced woman shook her head. ‘Got separated. Saw Skim die, that’s all-’
‘So what are you doing sitting here? On your feet, marine-those heavies are dying where they stand. And we’re going to join them. You, Reliko! Pull Vastly on his feet there-you’re all coming with me!’
Silent, without a single word of protest, the marines clambered to their feet. They were bleeding. They were exhausted.
They gathered up their weapons, and, Tarr in the lead, set out for the trench.
Nearby, Urb plucked away the shattered fragments of his shield. Hellian crouched beside him, breathing hard, her face streaked with blood and puke, with more of both drenching her chest. She’d said she didn’t know whose blood it was. Glancing at her, he saw her hard eyes, her hard expression. Other soldiers were drawn up behind them.
Urb turned. ‘We do what Tarr says, soldiers. Back into it. Now.’
Hellian almost pushed past him on the way to the trench.
Henar Vygulf reined in beneath the hill-he could see fallen horses and sprawled, scorched bodies where the Adjunct’s command post had been. He slipped down from his horse, drew his two swords and jogged up the slope.
Reaching the summit, he saw four Nah’ruk arriving on the opposite ridge.
Lostara Yil and the Adjunct were lying almost side by side. Likely dead, but he needed to make sure. If he could.
He charged forward.
The clash of iron woke her. Blinking, Lostara stared into the sky, trying to recall what had happened. Her head ached and she could feel dried blood crusting her nostrils, crackling in her ears. She turned her head, saw the Adjunct lying beside her.
Chest slowly rising and falling.
Someone grunted as if in pain.
She sat up. In time to see Henar Vygulf stagger back, blood spraying from a chest wound. Three Nah’ruk closed.
Henar fell on to his back almost at Lostara’s feet.
She rose, drawing her blades.
He saw her, and the anguish in his eyes took her breath away.
‘I’m sorry-’
‘You’re going to live,’ she told him, stepping past. ‘Prop yourself up, man-that’s an order!’
He managed to lift himself on one elbow. ‘Captain-’
She glanced at the Nah’ruk. Almost upon her, slowed by wounds. Behind them, a dozen more appeared. ‘Just remember, Henar, I don’t do this for just anybody!’
‘Do what?’
She stepped forward, blades lifting. ‘
The old forms returned, as if they had but been awaiting her, awaiting this one moment when at last she awoke-possibly one last time-no matter.
The Shadow Dance belonged to this.
Henar watched her, and his eyes slowly widened.
A league to the southeast, Kisswhere dragged herself from her fallen horse. A badger burrow, the den mouth of a fox, something. Her horse thrashed, front legs shattered, its screams shrill in the air.
Kisswhere’s left leg was bent in four places. The stub of bone thrust through her leggings. She drew a knife and twisted round to study the horse, eyes fixing on a pulsing artery in its neck.
Didn’t matter. They were all dead. Even if she could have reached the Mortal Sword and that mad red-haired Queen, it wouldn’t have mattered.
She glanced up. The sky was flesh, and that flesh was rotting before her eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Four
On this dawn they lined the banks of the ancient river, a whole city turned out, near a hundred thousand, as the sun lifted east of the mouth that opened to the deep bay. What had brought them there? What ever brings the multitudes to a moment, a place, an instant when a hundred thousand bodies become one body?
As the red waters spilled into the bay’s salty tears, they stood, saying little, and the great ship pyre took hold of the fires and the wind took hold of the soaked sails, and the sky took hold of the black column of smoke.
Ehrlitan’s great king was dead, the last of the Dessimb line, and the future was blowing sands, the storm’s whisper was but a roar of strife made mercifully distant, a thing of promise drawing ever closer.
They came to weep. They came seeking salvation, for in the end, even grief masks a selfish indulgence. We weep in our lives for the things lost to us, the worlds done. A great man was dead, but we cannot follow him-we dare not, for to each of us death finds a new path.
An age was dead. The new age belonged to generations still to come. In the stalls of the market rounds the potters stacked bowls bearing the face of the dead king, with scenes of his past glories circling round and round, for ever outside of time, and this was the true wish of the multitudes.
The tale dies, but this death will take some time. It is said the king lingered, there in the half breath. And people gathered each day at the palace gates, to weep, to dream of other ends, of fates denied.
The tale dies, but this death will take some time.
And the river’s red tongue flows without end. And the spirit of the king said:
DEATH OF THE GOLDEN AGE
THENYS BULE
Nom Kala stood with the others, a silent mass of warriors who had forgotten what it was to live, as the wind pulled at rotted furs, strips of hide and dry tangles of hair. Dull, pitted weapons hung like afterthoughts from twisted hands. Air pitched into the bowls of eye sockets and moaned back out. They could be statues, gnawed by age, withering where they stood facing the endless winds, the senseless rains, the pointless waves of heat and cold.
There was nothing useful in this, and she knew she was not alone in her disquiet. Onos T’oolan, the First Sword, crouched down on one knee ten paces ahead of them, hands wrapped round the grip of his flint sword, the weapon’s point buried in the stony ground. His head was lowered, as if he made obeisance before a master, but this master was invisible, little more than a smear of obligations swept aside, but the stain of what had been held him in place-a stain only Onos T’oolan could see. He had not moved in some time.
Patience was no trial, but she could sense the chaos in her kin, the pitch and cant of terrible desires, the rocking rebuffs of vengeance waiting. It was only a matter of time before the first of them broke away, defying this servitude, this claim of righteous command. He would not reach for them. He had yet to do so, why imagine he would change-
The First Sword rose, faced them. ‘I am Onos T’oolan. I am the First Sword of Tellann. I reject your need.’
The wind moaned on, like the flow of sorrow.
‘You shall, however, bow to mine.’
She felt buffeted by those words.
