The Dark Defiles (72 page)

Little fucker’s going to rein in now, and be right back around to finish the job
… 

The chase positions, hunter and quarry, neatly reversed.

What you get for taking on the Skaranak on their home turf, Archidi. Not like you weren’t warned. Not like you couldn’t have walked away.

She reached back down to the lance’s point of impact, felt for blood. Found none,
you lucky girl, you.
Knife harness or the mail shirt beneath, maybe both, something had stopped the lance blade getting through to her flesh. She’d have a bruise there the size of a court bard’s belly—if she lived—but for now … 

For now, you’ve had far worse and still stood up to fight some more. You’ve killed
lizards
with worse damage than this.

So let’s get to it, Archidi.

Get on and kill this little shit. Then we can all go home.

She glared back over her shoulder. Saw Ershal riding hard behind her, short sword out. He hadn’t bothered to stop and collect the staff lance, which meant he was feeling pretty fucking confident all of a sudden—

Use that, Archidi. Use it.

She huddled lower on her horse’s neck, let herself sag a little to the side. Not hard to act like she was hurt, her whole side was throbbing like a bad tooth. She patted the horse’s neck, let it drop its pace till she judged it just about safe, then, rapidly, before she could talk herself out of it again, she let go and rolled right off.

She hit the ground hard enough to smash her vision apart all over again. Pain spiked out from the site of the lance impact, killed the breath in her lungs, drew a sharp, involuntary cry from her lips. Her horse cantered on, she rolled to a breathless halt in the long grass. Felt the vibration against her cheek as Ershal rode in, rolled once more to get herself face up. Didn’t think a Majak mount was likely to trample a body; you had to train warhorses pretty hard to get that kind of behavior out of them, but then who knew what the Skaranak trainers got up to, they said they could—

She buried the fear. Lay still, eyes closed, tried to look broken.

I hope you’re somewhere watching this, Eg. I really do.

Hoof-falls, slowing, coming closer, circling in. The skin on her scalp cringed at the thought of what one of those hooves would do to her skull if she’d called this wrong. She heard the Majak muttering to his horse, calming it. Uneasy stomping as it quietened and then stood still. She heard the grunt as Ershal dismounted, the brushed-aside grass as he tramped up to her motionless form … 

Now.

She flung herself to her feet, tugged Wraithslayer and Bandgleam crossways down out of their sheaths and held them up. Found Ershal five yards off in the sunrise-tinged sea of grass, staring at her in comical disbelief. His face seemed to crumple with the shock, his shoulders sagged. He spat something at her in Majak, but more than anger, she thought there was a dull weariness in his voice. She thought she caught the name Poltar in there somewhere, but couldn’t be sure.

“The Dragonbane sent me,” she called. Harshly enunciated Majak—she’d had Marnak school her in the various phrases, rehearsed them to herself until she had them word perfect. “Your brother is dead, but he reaches down from Sky Home, and I am his hand.”

He stared at her, wordless, and for just one pounding heartbeat moment she saw herself through his eyes. Tall, burned-black witch, eerie kaleidoscope eyes, seemingly invulnerable to the bite of human steel, sowing slaughter and chaos in her path.

As if the Dragonbane had sent back some demon to avenge him from beyond the grave, and here she stood.

Ershal, Clanmaster of the Skaranak squared his shoulders and drew a deep breath. She saw the desperation on his face, saw him fight it down. She tipped her head in invitation. He jerked his chin at her, he spat on the ground at his feet.

Then he raised his sword and ran at her, screaming.

Wraithslayer took him in the throat before he got halfway.

H
E WAS LYING ON HIS SIDE IN THE GRASS, NOT YET DEAD WHEN SHE REACHED
him. His legs made spasmodic pumping motions sideways against the ground, as if in some dream he was still running at her, trying to finish the attack. He was choking quietly on his own blood, clutching vainly with one hand at the Kiriath steel that protruded from his throat, slicing up his fingers on the edges of the blade. His mouth moved, formed hissed words she had no way to understand. His eyes flickered as she stooped and her shadow fell over him, but she was never very sure if he looked at her or not, if he even knew she was there.

She squatted and waited for it to be over.

Slowly, his legs stopped their kicking and grew still. His body heaved a couple of times, then subsided into twitching. His mutilated fingers slackened, his hand fell away from the wound in his throat. She watched intently, trying to derive some thin sense of satisfaction from the sight. But it was not her vengeance, she didn’t even know this man, and however much the Dragonbane might have rejoiced to see the light go out in Ershal’s eyes, when it finally happened, Archeth felt nothing at all.

Job done.

She hesitated a moment, then reached down to the dull blank stare and pressed the clanmaster’s eyelids closed. Took hold of Wraithslayer and levered the knife out of Ershal’s flesh. Wiped it carefully clean on his sleeve, stood up and stared about her in the soft-toned flush of early morning light.

Felt the nape of her neck prickle with being watched.

Her pulse kicked in her throat, she spun about.

Found herself face-to-face with a gaunt figure in a wolf-skin cloak, an impossible yard and a half away.

f the seven dwenda he took down in the fight, he apparently wounded three badly enough—
well enough actually, Gil
—to kill them outright or pretty fast thereafter. But the other four have all managed to crawl some distance away from where they fell. One of them is still trailing his own guts from the eviscerating slash Ringil put in his belly.

They are all trying to get out of the stone circle. They’re all trying, desperately, with gritted breath, to get away from
him.

And at the limits of its extent, crowding in the spaces between the stones, the dwenda host from the plain below have gathered close, massed ranks with helmets on and visors down, utterly silent, like an assembly of armored ghosts spectating at the cage of some captured wild beast.

Gil cuts them a thin smile, then sets about killing their comrades.

One of the injured dwenda has almost reached the edge of the circle, so he starts there. Bends and grabs the armored figure by one limp ankle, drags it bodily back from whatever perimeter between the stones it was trying to cross. Black gloved hands that grasped and tugged at the coarse grass, now lifting in imprecation toward the watching host. He thinks it makes a strangled noise. He puts a boot on its back and skewers the Ravensfriend down through the rib cage, pins the dwenda to the ground. He levers the blade back and forth to be sure he’s found the heart, waits until the creature’s spasms cease.

Next.

By the time he’s done all four, he’s working up a sweat, and the iron spiked crown is slippery on his brow when he bends. He straightens up from the last execution, the reek of dwenda lifeblood thick in his throat. Stares around at the watching host, the stones that hold them at bay, then up at the storm on the hill behind him. He pushes the crown up his brow with the back of his hand, sniffs hard and wipes at his mouth, though there’s really not much blood on it as far as he can tell.

Right. Clan Talonreach. Let’s be having you.

He turns and heads up the hill.

And the stone circle goes with him.

H
E REMEMBERS THE SAME EFFECT FROM TIME IN THE
G
REY
P
LACES A YEAR
ago. A prison of misshapen granite bars, a mobile ring of armor with Ringil at its heart. But back then the stones were fleeting phantom traces, flickering into existence when he stood still, fading out as soon as he moved toward the nearest of them.

Now, somehow, they stand solid as real world stone—he sees the detail of weathered granite and soft moss patching with a lucid vision that’s so sharp it makes his eyes ache—and yet each monolith moves through the grassy ground like a ship’s keel cutting water. The gathered dwenda host parts before the effect, surging back like broken waves off rock. The corpses of the dwenda he’s killed stay where they are on the ground, one or two of them catching against one stone or another in his wake, then tugging loose and finally free of the circle altogether. The monoliths leave them indifferently behind, keep pace with their master like some impassive honor guard.

And when they touch the outer edges of the Talons of the Sun, there’s a brief flicker of lightning that seems to light the entire gray sky from end to end.

Something sighs, something unfolds.

It’s as if he’s suddenly standing in freezing fog. Vague, tentacular stripes of darkness reach up around him like riverbed weed caught in a current, or bend away in all directions like leather straps tied tight. Through the mist, he sees the figures of dwenda, locked into postures that he only slowly recognizes as glyph casts, frozen in time. There’s a shivering tension through the air, like lightning undischarged, and he understands that if this is Clan Talonreach, then they already have a fight on their hands. Against what, he cannot tell, except to know that it isn’t him.

Is it over, then?

A voice like the wind, soundless in his head, and weary beyond anything he’s ever heard in the real world. For a moment, he thinks of his father and the exhausted bitterness in his voice back at Eskiath house, but this is something astronomical magnitudes beyond. As if Gingren had somehow managed to live an eternity, travel every land under the band, and still find no solution for his woes, for the city leadership that failed to live up to his martial dreams, the wife he could not domesticate, the son he could not own.

You talking to me?
he asks.
Is what over?

The war. Is the war finally done?

Ringil blinks.
Just getting started, last time I checked.

And yet you have come. The first Core Blood commander we have seen since the Binding. The first full human to enter here since our Purposing. Have you come to stand the cadre down at last, as was promised? To reverse the Codes, to dissolve the Bond and set free the Source?

I, uh
… Ringil gives up and sighs. Lowers the Ravensfriend until its tip touches the grass.
Look, whoever you are, you’re going to have to slow down. I just got here.

A long pause.
You wish me to file a report?

He pauses himself, for almost as long.
Yeah. That’d be nice.

I
N THE
D
AYS OF
D
ESPERATION, THE VOICE TELLS HIM SOUNDLESSLY, A FINAL
weapon was forged.

The war had torn great rifts in the fabric of the world, damaged it in ways that were impossible for the minds of men to either understand or repair. Great storms blew up, winds howling from places humankind was never equipped to venture, unleashing desolation on all they touched. Whole armed hosts were sucked into these gray spaces, never to be seen or heard from again, whole territories were submerged. Skies darkened for generations, it rained fire and jellied gray horror, the moon itself tore apart and died.

Some few survivors trickled back, most of them no longer sane. A handful who still had mouths to talk with, and minds to recall, spoke of a race of beings within the Grey Space Beyond, alien things either summoned by some faction of warring mankind or simply drawn scuttling to the scent of the damage done—and these creatures were powerful beyond belief. Some said they appeared in some strange way to be repairing the wounds gouged in the fabric of the world, others that they merely waited outside the boundaries of the real, biding their time for an invasion.

A plan was scaffolded, materiel assembled, a cadre formed. Honor bound warriors from among the scant remaining cream of human soldiery, changed by human science at depths so basic that they could now survive and function comfortably inside the Grey Space, then tasked by the High Command with passing through the wounds of the world, building a beachhead there, capturing one of the creatures and harnessing its powers. It was thought that such a weapon would obliterate the existing impasse, negate the threat from the rifts, and create a victory so total that a negotiated peace was the only possible option for the defeated side. It was thought that such a weapon would end the war forever.

A
… 
creature?
Ringil says faintly, because he can really only think of one candidate, and it’s making the inside of his head ring, as if from a close call battlefield blow to the helm.
What kind of
… 
never mind. Did they manage it? Did they chain this thing?

Of course.
Slight note of offense in the voice.
The preparation was impeccable, the cadres dedicated, the Codes strong. How could the mission not succeed? You are Core, you are the Blood of Command. Look on us—do you not see?

Ringil peers at the vague forms in the mist before him. Tangled straps and slow waving tentacles, perhaps some wrenched and twisted, darkened core over there at the center. He can make no sense of any of it.
Uh
… 
yeah, sure. I see. But if you think, I mean, uhm, if the war still isn’t over, then something went wrong. Right?

The mission was a success, they bound the creature, and the Codes held. The cadre waited, entrenched beyond the borders of the real, ready to deploy. But while they held station, the one command they could not have predicted came in. Stand down. Abandon the field. Dismantle the weapon, set the creature free again and return home. Circumstances have changed, no need to deploy.

I bet that went down well.

The cadres recoiled. They could not believe,
would
not believe that after all they had done, after all that had been done to them, to fit them for purpose—that now there was no need for any of it. They believed instead,
chose
to believe instead, that they had been betrayed. They fell back into the Grey Spaces, and they took the weapon with them. Here, they had the whole of time and space to hide in, to roam, to use the weapon if need be to defend themselves, but holding back its full force, haunting the margins of all human history instead, dipping in, dipping out, listening, always listening for true word from the High Command, to deploy at full strength and then to return home in triumph.

But they stayed longer away than they knew, stayed far longer than had ever been planned. And in time, the gray spaces changed them, made them something else entirely. They bred and dispersed, formed clans and alliances, became a whole race unto themselves. And as they grew into their new existence, as memory faded with the unnumbered centuries, so they lost all track of what they once were. Mission brief became legend, legend became myth, myth became unquestioned truth. They went everywhere with their new truth, and finally they came home behind it—only to find home unrecognizable.

In place of the glorious homeland their myths spoke of, they found a shattered world and only the primitive remnants of the mortal race to which they once belonged. And there they raised an overlordship built on the myths they thought they remembered. Perhaps they lied to themselves for comfort, perhaps they had really lost track of the truth by then. In any event, they reached a kind of peace, would perhaps have returned slowly to sanity but, just when they believed the war might really be done, they faced invasion from the veins of the Earth—a dark new foe from another place who drove them back out into the Grey Space and
… 
are you
laughing?

Ringil stifles his chuckling with an effort.
I, uhm, I’m sorry. It just fits so well with all the rest of Findrich’s fake antique shit. He summons supernatural allies from the shadows and all the time they’re a perfect match for his lizardshit bas relief wall art. They’re just as fake, and he never knew it.
He wipes at his eyes.
I’m sorry, you were saying
… 
no, look, wait. Wait. Who
… 
who exactly the fuck are you again?

I am the Codes and the Binding Force, I am the Way and Means. I am the Chain that Holds the Source Restrained.

And you couldn’t tell them—these cadres,
he gestures at the frozen glyph-casting figures in the mist,
these, the dwenda—you couldn’t
tell
them any of this? You couldn’t talk them down?

It is not my place. I am the Way and Means only. I am bound to execution. I observe and I obey. I may not open fresh protocols.

Ringil thinks of Anasharal and its magicked limits, of the Warhelm Ingharnanasharal and the spells that had somehow kept the one from becoming the other until the end. He nods soberly.

I get it—you’re just another Helmsman.

I’m not familiar with that term.

Doesn’t matter.
He looks again at the locked-up postures of Clan Talonreach in the mist. Feels the way they are aware of him, but cannot do anything about it—like catching the desperately rolling eye of an opposing soldier on the field, locked in combat with someone else.
You want to tell me what’s going on in here? Why they’re all frozen like that?

The Source stirs. It senses something. It is trying, for the first time in tens of thousands of years, to break loose. They have compressed its range to a fraction of a second in time so they can contain it more easily.

How long’s that going to last?

It is hard to know. The last time, the struggle was short—only a few decades in duration.

Right.
He turned the Ravensfriend in his hand, looked around in the foggy light.
Maybe I can save you all some time here. Would you excuse me a moment?

He turns and steps back out, away from the mist and what it contains. He stands on the coarse grass slope, facing down toward the gathered dwenda. The rough-hewn monoliths stand like sentinels, the storming fog and tentacles that form the Talons of the Sun tower and fountain up behind him like some murky, insubstantial kraken rearing to strike.