Ecko Endgame (25 page)

Our city is gone
, the rhythm said.
Our Lord is gone. Our homes are gone. And those we loved.

The vialer had killed thirty-one soldiers; thirty-one men and women had died down there in the cold and the muck and the darkness. A further twelve had serious injuries and were unable to be moved. Apothecarial care was limited – and came with some hard choices.

Newcomer to the army though she was, Amethea knew what those choices were likely to be.

Wrapped tight against the grey and bitter cold, her stolen mount in the hands of the supplymaster, she refused both herbal and rest, and went to find what passed as the hospice. As the camp packed up about her and orders puffed like vapour through the dawn, she found the bivouac where the injured had been gathered. They were huddled on pallets on a cold, frosted floor, their faces pale with inevitability.

Eleven of them had been badly physically hurt. The twelfth had no visible marks at all. He was hunched and rocking, his chin streaked with blood where he’d bitten through his lower lip.

Amethea understood all too well – not all harm was physical. She may not be able to call the Gods for miracles, but if she could save one mind, one life, it would be enough. Gorinel had told her: faith was in action, her shoulder to the wheel, and now, she knew her path exactly.

Outside, the soldiers formed into their tans and flags, upright and shivering. Their collective breath plumed over them, dawn mist. They stood in silence, in tribute to those they’d lost – their pennons fluttered like discovered pride. But then the commands rang loud and the damned drums began yet again, merciless and blood-pounding. Goaded by the sound, the skirmishers began to stretch and jump, and the horses shifted, stamping their hooves.

Turning back to the dim and stinking interior of the tent, she knew she had little time.

“Amethea.”

The voice behind her was quiet, very deep. Startled, she turned back to the lifted tent flap.

Rhan himself ducked in under the low fabric, blocking the sullen sky. He was grey-faced, dirty and bloodied. In places, his armour was split and filthy, rent to the padding.

He said, “I’ve come to help you.”

Wary, Amethea eyed him. “Help me do what?” If he’d come to slit throats, then she was…

But he shook his head, too tired to fight, and pointed at the young man closest to the doorway whose belly wound had him curling in sweat and anguish, hands across himself as if to hold his guts in. His garments had been cut away from the injury and the wound had been briefly dressed, but the dressing was blood-soaked, darkening like a new bruise. In the poor rocklight, his skin was leeched of all colour and shards of pain were caught between his teeth.

Even if she stopped the bleeding and dressed the wound correctly, the danger of infection was severe. The Count of Time would come for this one, and soon.

Rhan said, “There’s no ceremony to this, and no time to delay.” He met her gaze and she was surprised how serious he looked – and how old. “Amethea. Do you trust me?”

The wind gusted, made the fabric fold of the doorway slide down over itself. He turned and caught it, threw it back.

She said, “I—?”

“Do you
trust
me?”

“I… Of course.”

She watched him kneel at the pallet-side of the injured man. When the man realised who he was, he tried to sit up, speak.

“Lie down.” Rhan laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve come to help you.”

He peeled back the dressing, baring the wound to the rocklight. The wound had stitches, but they were fast, torn and ragged. She could almost see the infection eating at their edges. As she watched, Rhan laid a hand over the injury.

“What are you doing?” she whispered. Across the bivouac, others craned to look. The uninjured man cried aloud, formless and without words.

Rhan’s face flickered a frown, and then, carefully, he took his hand away.

And Amethea gaped.

Saint and Goddess!

The wound had gone. It was an angry, puckered scar, ends of fibrous stitches still peeking curiously from it. Across the young man’s abs, a jagged red lightning mark now decorated his skin. He stared at Rhan for a moment, then rubbed his hands across the scar and sat up, stammering and coughing.

Whispers rolled through the tent.

Amethea’s mind reeled after them, looked for something to cling to. She heard the Bard’s fireside story, the Promise of Samiel, she heard Gorinel,
Know that you are not abandoned
. She remembered Maugrim, attuned to the Powerflux and a wielder of fire – not only of its force, but of its allure, its sense of community, and its warmth.

Heal and Harm. None could learn one…

But this was different. Rhan was
stark
somehow, vastly more powerful than Maugrim had been. She’d felt his sheer energy like lightning across her skin, felt it reaching into the injured man, crackling into his body as if it sought to illuminate his soul. Pure power had shuddered through the dirty tent, touched Amethea and made the hairs on her arms stand on end…

Promise of Samiel.

You are not abandoned…

She didn’t get time to follow the thought to its end.

“Amethea.” His voice brought her back to herself. From outside, she could hear voices, commands – they were almost out of time.

She found herself asking, “How did you…? How can you…?”

“Not now. Now, we get as many of these people on their feet as we can, find horses for the rest, and then we move before the nasties catch us with our trews down. So, are you going to help me, or are you going to sit back and let me do all the work?” His sardonic tone gave the words a twist of dark humour.

“I thought I might mark you out of ten.” Amethea was impressed with her own aplomb. The healed man was scrambling up now, his face flushed, and the others were starting to call out for help. The uninjured soldier cried again.

The man went to speak, but Rhan stopped him. “If you can walk, then take a message to the commander and tell him…” he paused, “…tell him no man or woman will be left behind. Not while I’m here, and I’ve still got the focus to fight. We’ve lost enough.”

We’ve lost enough.

Amethea stared at him, at a manifest and complex guilt, like an echo of her own. She was lost for anything to say. He raised an eyebrow at her. “What?”

“If you can do this,” she said, “then you don’t need me here. You don’t need me at all.”

We’ve lost enough.

Outside, the drumming was picking up speed.

“We need you, Amethea,” Rhan told her. “You’re the most experienced apothecary we have – and you’re worth your weight in terhnwood. Now, shall we?”

* * *

They ran.

They ran through winter and weariness; they ran through the dead plain and the deep cold.

By the third day, the increase in pace was beginning to take its toll, and the ground underfoot was becoming harder, scattered with angles of sharp and broken rock.

To the north, now to their right, the hard slope fell slowly away. At its foot was the valley of one of the Swathe River’s many tributaries, and a dense, usually wintergreen woodland.

Mostak had it marked as a place for potential ambush, but as they passed across the top of the slope and carried on southwest, they could see the woodland in the hollow was dead, like everything else. The trees had slumped into grey resignation, fallen one against another, their needles littering the ground.

The river itself was sluggish and rank. The mounted skirmishers ran as far as the banks but reported that the water was tainted, and could not be drunk.

With a collective groan, they ran on.

Towards evening, they saw the first signs of pursuit.

The threat was far away, but as the force broke for a rest, Mostak issued Ecko a new set of orders.

“I need to know all of it,” he said. “How many, how fast. What they’re armed with, what they’re riding. You saw the encampment – tell me how much of it is on the move.”

Hey! Lemme be your fucking intern!

Ecko was knackered, even his sense of humour was outta batteries. Plus, he’d gotten a pretty good idea what was what – if he tuned his telos, he could see the incoming bad guys quite clearly, thanks, horses an’ monsters an’ all. He could answer the commander’s questions without actually having to run that fucking far. Chrissakes, already, he needed a break – he hurt in places he’d forgotten he had. Mom’s trickery just wasn’t designed for this “hut hut hut” shit…

Before he could win smug points, though, a whole new problem bit them in the ass.

One of Mostak’s command tan dropped dead.

What?

Well, okay, not
dead
exactly – but he keeled over and he looked pretty damn sick. The guy was… Jesus Hairy Christ… in the failing evening light, the guy was
green.

Ecko gawked. Even Lugan’d never gone that colour and his hangovers were fucking legend.

You gotta be kiddin’ me…

The warrior was an older man, a proper vet, and he’d come in bearing a message. Now, he looked like he’d swallowed a bottle of Insta-Lawn – despite the cold, he was
growing
, for chrissakes. He was sprouting random vegetation from ears and eye sockets, more at the neck of his armour. Ecko didn’t scare easy, but grass popping out someone’s eyeball was enough to turn him carnivore for life. And somehow the man was still alive, hands blindly reaching out.

“Help me,” he said. “Help me. Please.”

The words sounded wrong.

Skin crawling, Ecko told himself to get a grip.

Drums sounded orders.

Rhan arrived at a run.

“Seneschal.” The Commander was on his knees in the muck, gripping the fallen man’s hand in both of his own. “This man is my friend.”

“Samiel’s
balls.
” Expression contorting, Rhan dropped to his knees on his other side. He held the man’s head in one hand, tried to clear the growth with the other.

“Ghar, it’s Rhan.” The words sounded like a knell. “This is getting to be a habit.”

Ghar repeated, like a litany, “Help me.”

Propelled by an obscure impulse, Ecko picked up the soldier’s discarded spear and turned it over – then dropped the thing as if it’d stung him.

It was
growing.

Just like the blade from the Amos wharfside, the one that had led them to the House of Sarkhyn – the terhnwood fibres in the resin were struggling for life.

Help me.

What the
hell
?

Glancing back in the direction of the blighted woodland, the symmetry of the two things was unmistakable – but why the hell would one die while the other tried to grow?

Something about all of this made him shiver, right to the core of his being. Ecko had the oddest fucking feeling…

The oddest feeling of what?

So. Do I get a cookie when I solve the puzzle? Or just a piece of veg grown outta my ass?

Rhan was speaking. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.” He was freaked, Ecko could hear it, freaked right the fuck out of his socks – and hell, he wasn’t the only one. Resignation and horror fell from his words like stones. “Mos, I don’t think I can help him. Maybe Amethea—”

“Rhan…” Mostak’s tone was dangerous.

“I can’t tell what’s the matter – can’t feel it!” It was halfway between anger and plea. “He’s not sick! He’s—!”

“Rhan!” It was a bark, an order. “You—!”

But the moss-grown man had gone into spasm. His eyeless body was jerking, arms and legs and hands and feet hammering against the cold ground. He was still trying to speak, and green froth came from between his lips. Rhan and Mostak were trying to hold him down. The commander’s face was thunderous with accusation. Ecko stared, car-crash fascinated, and saw that the man’s body temperature was all over the shop. He was cold at the core, but the places where he was growing were
hot.

Ecko found he was rubbing his hands like Lady Macbeth.

Jesus fucking Harry Christ and little fuckin’ fish…

He managed, “What…?”

“I don’t know,” Rhan said, baffled, furious. “He’s not injured, not infected. It’s not a disease. It’s like – it’s almost like a parasite, but I can’t even see all of it. And the
smell.
Like Foriath, like the terhnwood. Like Mael saw in the market. I don’t
understand.
” His appeal was to the commander, but even as he spoke, Ghar arched his back and gagged a mouthful of green. Then he collapsed like a broken thing, still.

Holy shit
. Ecko swallowed, shuddered.

Mostak placed two fingers on the fallen man’s lichen-grown neck, then smoothly rose to his feet, his expression set. For a moment, he stared down at the still-kneeling Seneschal.

“Lost enough, have we?” The words were thrown like acid.

Then he turned his back and he walked away.

“I don’t… I don’t understand.” Rhan’s response was a whisper. He stared at the dead man, at his own helpless hands, then up at Ecko, his face full of ghosts. He was grey and his shoulders were shaking.

Across the site, the drums had started to call the muster.

“Why the fuck’re you lookin’ at me?” Ecko picked up the spear again and examined it with his telos flicked in, looking at its odd, struggling growth. He threw it at where Rhan was kneeling. “Get up, for chrissakes. I dunno what that shit was, but we better hope it’s not contagious.” Green froth trailed down the sides of Ghar’s face, oozed into the cold dirt. “Otherwise we’re fucked.”

* * *

They ran.

They ran for real now, ran with the cold night vast over their heads and the winter wind behind them, ran knowing that their enemy was hunting them, right at their heels. Vahl himself was behind them, coming like the end of the world…

Or some such poetic bullshit.

Ecko was tired, more tired than he would’ve believed possible. He kept going on defiance alone:
Yeah, beat me, willya?
Around him, body heat came off the soldiers in waves, like panic.

He was still thinking about Ghar and the spear, about green froth and growing things, and about the dead woodland. Life and death, sides of a coin, philosophical shit maybe – but he was so gonna work out why.