The Dark Defiles (75 page)

There were so many plans, so many possibilities, so many endings. You gave us this one. In the end, the Book-Keeper saw you more clearly than we gave her credit for.

You don’t look too upset about it.

A divine shrug.
The game plays out. Some you win, some you lose. No god could take a more precious attitude and survive.

The others seemed pretty pissed off.

Yeah, they’ll get over it.

Ringil rubs the last grainy traces of the krin into his gums with a finger. The drug’s icy fire is already kindling in his head.
Why are you helping me? Why come back like this?

Why? Did you not know that among the Majak, I am thought the most wildly capricious and impulsive of the Sky Dwellers?

Yeah, and your reputation in the Dark Court isn’t very much better. That’s not an answer.

Well.
Dakovash’s smile is back, and this time Gil thinks he sees a sadness in it.
Let’s just say you remind me of
… 
someone I knew, a very long time ago.

Wildly capricious and nostalgic, then.

The god inclines his head.
If you like.

Do me a favor out of nostalgia, would you?

A favor?
Dakovash coughs on a laugh.
It’s a little late in the day for that, my lord Fuck-all-you-Gods. I can’t get you out of this one, I already told you that.

That’s not what I’m asking for.
He hesitates a moment, thinking it through. How it might be done.
Outside Hinerion, you gave me a shadow guard of your own. A cold command, the Book-Keeper called them—

Yes, the boy, the smith, the swordsman. Quite a neat little symbolic bundle, I thought. Nice resonances. So what of them?

They’ve served me well. Saved my life more than once.

Yes, that was the idea.

They’ve done enough. Can you release them now?

Release them?
And now, in the rising, incredulous tone, he thinks he hears something of the old Dakovash leaking back through, the bad-tempered, impatient god he’s dealt with before.
What do you think this is, a fucking fairy tale? No, I can’t release them, they’re
already fucking dead.
They’re
ghosts.
They’re haunting you, precisely because they have nowhere else to go. You want them
released,
as you put it, then get on down this hill and get yourself killed. When you cease, so will they.

Right. Guess it was stupid, thinking a lord of the Dark Court could do anything useful for me.

Don’t you fucking start with that.

Quarter of cheap krin—that’s about as far as your demonic powers stretch, is it?

I
said—

What are you, a god or a fucking drug dealer?

That is enough!
An arm swings up, one gnarled, pointing finger inches from his face. You
locked yourself in here, not me.
You
made the big gesture. Told us all to go fuck ourselves. Don’t come whining to me about the consequences.

That old nostalgia not what it used to be, eh?

ASK ME FOR SOMETHING IN THE REAL WORLD AND I WILL DELIVER IT!

Black lightning forks through the air around them. The ground shivers. Beneath the god’s hat brim, the eyes kindle like the fire in the pit at An-Monal.

Ringil grins into it.
Excellent. Then I ask you to watch over Archeth Indamaninarmal and Egar Dragonbane, wherever they are. Keep them both safe from harm.

The pointing arm drops as if severed.
What?

You heard me. And try to keep your shit a little tighter than you did with Gerin Trickfinger.

Dakovash makes a noise in his throat like rocks coming apart. He swings away from Gil, and the same black lightning shimmers suppressed in the air around him. His shoulders seem to hunch under the battered and patched leather coat, far more than a human frame would allow. Ringil thinks he hears bones, cracking. The voice comes out a gritted whisper.

You think you’ll
… 
trick me like this? You think you’re going to stand here on the precipice of your own mortality and drive slick bargains with the gods?

I think I already have,
Ringil tells him soberly.
What’s a god’s word worth these days?

The Salt Lord comes back around, and for just a moment Gil thinks he sees something unhuman writhing for escape under the hat brim. Then it’s gone and only the burning bright eyes are left to show he’s facing anything other than a man.

Dakovash stalks a tight circle around him. Leans in at his shoulder.

I am the most wildly capricious of the Sky Dwellers.
His voice is a serpent hiss.
What’s to say I am bound to the promises I make?

You shouted it loud enough for us all to hear.

And who else do you think is here to listen?
The Salt Lord prowls around him again, gestures at the dimmed earth and sky, the locked moment they stand within.
What power do you think there is that will force me to honor this?

Ringil summons a shrug.
The Book-Keepers, perhaps? In the end, it doesn’t matter. You and I both heard it. You and I both know.

Yes, well you’ll be dead shortly. And I’ve been known to keep secrets.

From yourself?

Oh, you’d be surprised what a god can manage to forget.

Haven’t forgotten that old friend I remind you of, though. Have you?

A long pause.
I didn’t say he was a friend.

Ringil says nothing. The god continues to circle him, like some wolf around a treed quarry.

You’re wasting your time asking favors for the Dragonbane.
A cruel smile glimmers up in the hat brim shadow.
He’s dead. Eaten down to the bone by dragon venom in the Kiriath Wastes.

It’s a pike-butt blow to the sternum, for all he already sensed the truth. Gil tenses his whole body against it and still he feels himself staggered. He reaches for the krin-fire in his head and belly, lets it bear him up.
One day or another, Gil, it comes to us all. Dragonbane just beat you to it. Like the death blow on that dragon down in Demlarashan. He just got there first, is all.

He looks up at the Salt Lord. Meets the burning eyes and puts on a killing smile.

Hey, Dakovash—fuck you, too.

Oh, I’m sorry. Did I upset you? Guess you forgot, I’m not your fairy fucking godmother. I’m a demon god, a lord of the Dark Court.

Down at his side, Gil thinks he feels the Ravensfriend shiver impatiently. He glances at the glimmering blade and keeps his smile.

You think I’m upset, demon god. You got no idea. You just made this a whole lot easier for me. And you still owe me half a favor, so fuck off and get it done.

The god hesitates. Ringil can’t be sure, but the eyes beneath the hat brim seem to burn a little less bright.

Go on,
he barks.
Get back to where it’s safe, why don’t you? We’re done here.

Oh, you’re welcome. Think nothing of it. No, really.

Gil jerks his chin at him.
Yeah. Thanks. Been a pleasure.

Dakovash does not move. The light in his eyes is out. And for just a moment, out of nowhere, Ringil has a sudden flash of
ikinri ‘ska
vision. As if the sky splits open to spill fresh light in, and there’s the god, frozen in place like some storm-blasted tree on a heath, old and worn and hollowed out, nothing left living but the bark.

The eyes are dim, but a single bright glimmer tracks down one weathered cheek.

Ringil—

Gil shakes his head.
’Sokay. Thanks for the krin. Going to be a big help.

He slings the Ravensfriend up and over his shoulder, walks away from the god and down the slope toward the waiting dwenda.

After all,
he calls back,
worse fates than being forced into a place where your choice of acts is limited to those where your soul burns brightest.

Right?

If the god has an answer, he doesn’t hear it.

T
HE DWENDA COME TO MEET HIM.
C
RUMP-CRUMP OF THEIR BOOTS ACROSS
the ground as the ranks move up. Here and there, gray light gleams off the curve of a visor or the edge of a blade. Ringil nods to himself.

Do you know,
he calls down to them conversationally,
how I can tell you’re not demons or gods?

Glaring hatred and a taut, shrill cry as the dwenda commander rushes him. Ringil stands his ground, meets the chop of the Aldrain blade with Kiriath steel, loops it away. The swords lock up and they face each other, dwenda and human, teeth bared in mutual effort and hate. Ringil hisses over the straining steel.

You threaten the torture of children as a weapon, you call down fire and ruin on unarmed multitudes—

The dwenda commander snarls and shoves at the clinch. Ringil stands his ground, holds the lock. It feels like nothing, it feels effortless. The krin is a screaming exultant engine in his head. His voice rises over the dwenda’s growls.

—and you leave thousands weeping eternally in your wake. None of this shit is demonic,
none
of it. You don’t need demons for that.

The blades tilt over and down, up and back. Ringil leans in closer, almost whispering now.

Your acts—are the acts of
men.
Of lost apes, gibbering in the mist. That’s all you are, it’s all you ever were—

No! It is
not
so! We are the—

—and I’ve been killing men just like you, all my fucking life.

Face-to-face, inches off biting distance, he smooches his opponent a kiss. The dwenda snarls and tries to force the clinch again.

Ringil lets it slip, lets him think he’s won.

The blades slide, go shivering, grating. The two of them pivot on the lock, the dwenda advances with a shrill, triumphant cry. Gil steps in hard and fast, hooks an elbow up and into the commander’s face, tangles a leg around his opponent’s ankles, shoves. The dwenda staggers. The Ravensfriend comes scraping shrieking off the other blade, swings up and around.

Chops the dwenda’s head loose.

Blood geysers up, the head dangles over at the neck by fleshy shreds. The decapitated body stands for a long moment before it crumples bonelessly into the grass. Ringil lifts his head and lets the blood patter down on his face like rain. He howls, counterpoint to the keening wind, a lament for everything that never was and now has gone away. His bloodied gaze drops to the ranks of the dwenda facing him.

You are men—you are nothing more than men,
he yells at them.
You’re just like me.

And now it’s time to die.

He storms down in savage joy, to meet all the waiting blades and hate.

he so-called Imperial Road south out of Ishlin-ichan was an undramatic dun-colored streak across the steppe, little more than a drover’s track grown broad. At this end, it snaked up to the city’s southern gate through trampled surrounding grass and expired there in a patch of stony ground. There was barely enough space at the gates for a wagon to turn around in, let alone mustering room for two hundred and eleven Skaranak horsemen and their mounts. Thus Marnak’s solution—a select couple of dozen sat honor guard along the sides of the road with the marines and Throne Eternal, while Archeth made her farewells. The rest had to content themselves with gathering a watchful distance away in the grass beyond, or watering their horses down by the river until it was time to ride.

“Probably just as well,” Carden Han observed. “There haven’t been this many Skaranak outside the walls since the bandlight meander massacres three years back. Whole town’s pretty nervous about this lot; they’ll be glad when you take them away.”

At her back, her horse tossed its head and stamped. Clink and jingle of harness iron.

“Be glad to get moving myself,” she said.

His face fell a little. “Yes, if you could just … mention to the Emperor that this is, well, not the best of postings for a man of my years and experience. I’d be grateful.”

“Rest assured, I shall. Your assistance has been indispensable, my lord Han. Jhiral will hear of it, you have my word.”

“Yes.” He didn’t look as if he really believed her. He cleared his throat, hurried on. “Quite a handsome force there, anyway. No one could say you return to Yhelteth empty-handed.”

And another hundred join us downriver at Broken Arrow ford, if Marnak’s word is good.

In the wake of Poltar’s death and her own sudden fame as the spirit of Ulna Wolfbane returned—
or whatever
—there’d been a queue of young Skaranak men out the embassy door, eager to sign up in her service and ride south to see the Empire. Marnak weeded out the flaky ones for her and the hopelessly underaged, saw to it that the rest understood what they were embarking upon, and then swore loud blood allegiance with her himself, just to seal the agreement tight. They would now, he assured her, fight and, if necessary, die in her train as if she were Skaranak born.

Three hundred-odd steppe nomad freebooter cavalry.

It was hardly the riches and plunder the quest had promised, hardly a return in triumph. But in time of war and need, it was perhaps not an inconsiderable gift to bring home.

At any rate, it would have to do. Let Jhiral bitch and moan.

She made the clasp with Han once more, murmured formula farewells and good wishes. Then she swung up onto her horse and nudged it around to face south. Kanan Shent and the other Eternals formed up without word on her flanks. Somewhat less handily, the marines wheeled their mounts to follow. She nodded once more at the legate, leaned and clucked gently to her horse, trotted it steadily out along the road.

As she passed the lined ranks of Skaranak to left and right, each man thumped fist to chest and bowed his head.

And then followed on behind.

M
ARNAK AGREED TO RIDE WITH HER AS FAR AS THE FORD.
H
E’D SEE TO THE
new men when they arrived, ensure that they integrated smoothly into the existing ranks. It was a couple of days over easy ground, and he could do with the time away. Ershal and the shaman’s deaths were too recent, his own involvement too close. His friendship with Ulna Returned notwithstanding, things were a little tense around the encampment right now, and it wasn’t helped by the rumor that with Ershal gone, some of the herd-owners in council wanted to put him forward for the Mastery.

“Don’t fucking want it,” he rumbled. “And if I stay away, maybe they’ll take the hint.”

She grinned. “Or you’ll go back and find yourself already crowned. Leadership stalks you, Ironbrow. Told you, you ought to run south with me while you’ve got the chance.”

“And I told you I’m done fighting other men’s wars. That’s an idiot youngster’s game.”

He’d refused her offer of a new imperial commission and command, repeatedly, but you could tell more than half of him would have loved to go. He rode mostly in silence, peeling off now and then to see to some minor matter of discipline up and down the Skaranak ranks, but when he did speak to her, it was all reminiscence about his time in the south. Dissection of battles they’d both seen against the Scaled Folk, some kind words about her father, tales of adventure and near-death, much of it undertaken at the Dragonbane’s side.

She found talking about Egar and Flaradnam ached a lot less than she’d expected. The past was losing its power to hurt her. There was too much eagerness in her for the future.

Ishgrim—you are going to get such a fucking when I walk through that door.

A few hours into the journey, in one of Marnak’s disciplinary absences, Yilmar Kaptal rode level with her.

“My lady?”

She glanced sideways at him. The bandages were off his hands now, but his left eye and upper face were still swathed and hidden from view. She tried not to remember what he’d looked like when he first staggered upright on the steppe and called out to her. Flesh scorched and melted away at the wraith’s embrace, one cheekbone protruding like a beam end from some torched shack, the eye above gone to bloodied, sightless jelly. Ears eaten back to nubs, hands reduced to blackened, skeletal claws, patches of bluish pale bone showing through. One cheek had been eaten back to the jaw and the teeth grinned at her in the gap. His throat was melted open down to the rib cage, pipes and gore laid bare inside.

She saw furtive silver spidering down in that mess and looked hastily away. Saw the scorched raw corpse of the horse he’d been riding

You’re still alive?
she’d blurted at him.

Evidently.
Though he didn’t sound too sure. His voice hissed and bubbled in his ruined throat, and the look in his one intact eye was desperate.
You must cover my wounds. They must not see me like this. Please.

She did her best. Cut lengths of cloth, the softest she could find, from Ershal’s shirt and breeches, in the end had to use the sleeves from her own blouse, too. Wrapped his hands, thinking sickly of the times she’d seen digits scorched by dragon venom that had healed together into fused, crippled paws from such hopeless treatment. She bound up his head, covered it all but a single diagonal slit so he could see from the remaining eye.

You saved my life,
she kept saying numbly as she worked.
Salgra Keth. It’s, I know now, I see it. But if you hadn’t come
… 

He said nothing at all in response. Appeared to have no idea what she was talking about.

By the time Marnak and the others found them, the gurgling in his voice had begun to ebb and he seemed capable of getting on a horse and staying there. And when Han’s surgeon back in Ishlin-ichan stripped the makeshift bandaging off the wounds, they had already shrunk to damage a strong man might survive.

Now, less than a fortnight later, it was as if he’d had no worse than a rookie’s run-in with the desert sun in Demlarashan. Some peeled pink flesh, some ugly spotting.

“Feeling better?” she asked him tonelessly.

“Much. But I really must question your wisdom, my lady, in bringing along
that
variegated sellsword rabble.”

He gestured back over his shoulder with one pinkly peeling hand. She turned in the saddle, looked back at the men he was talking about.

“There’s a war on, my lord … Kaptal.”
Or whoever you really are.
“They have all proven themselves capable, they’ve fought and died alongside our own men. Should I turn them away then, on the last leg of our journey home?”

Kaptal sniffed. “It is a matter of trust. They are not imperials. Tand’s men have no loyalty to anything other than coin, and the rest are drawn from the ranks of our present enemy.”

“They’re pretty solidly outnumbered,” she pointed out.

Perhaps impressed by all the talk of tribal blood allegiances and fighting loyalty from the Skaranak, fully half of Tand’s former mercenaries had undertaken to swear similar oaths in Archeth’s service, too. So, curiously, did a handful of the surviving privateers, when they understood what was going on. Wary at first, she eventually agreed. Sat solemnly through their—rather clunky compared to the Skaranak—oath giving and had the legate outfit them with horses. The unsworn remainder she cut loose to seek their fortune in Ishlin-ichan or find their own way home. Carden Han made some noises about extracting parole from the privateers, but, well—good luck with that. She found she no longer cared. So a handful of grubby, penniless pirates dribble back into League lands and choose to rejoin the fray on the side of their homeland.

Had they not earned the right?

Have we not all earned the right, the simple right to go home?

Those of us who still can.

Kaptal hung stubbornly at her side, spoiling her mood. “It is not what they will do now that I fear, my lady. It is the risk their future implies.”

“There’s a risk in everyone’s future, Kaptal. Yours and mine as well.”

“True indeed, my lady.” The undead pimp-made-good lowered his voice, leaned closer across the space between them. “And that is something else that I would like to discuss with you, perhaps when we make camp tonight. Our Empire is adrift in uncertain times, and with this new force you have at you personal command—”

“Enough!”

Whiplash swift, she had him by the arm. She yanked him closer still, almost out of his saddle. Looked hard into his healing face, put on a smile for any audience they might have, kept her voice to a corrosive hiss. “I don’t know who’s really in there, you or Tharalanangharst, but this is for both of you. We have already had our one and only chat about insurrection. I will not jeopardize what my people spent centuries building, out of some misguided belief in a glorious new era of leadership. We are going home to help our Emperor end this war as swiftly and cleanly as possible, and when that is done, I will resume my role as imperial adviser at court. And that is all I will do.
Is that fucking clear?
”

Kaptal looked impassively back at her out of his single eye.

“Quite clear, my lady,” he said.

She let him go. “Good. Now fuck off back down the line and leave me alone.”

He fell back, and presently Marnak rode up to replace him.

“Trouble?” the Majak asked.

She shook her head. “Bit of a disagreement over court etiquette. No big deal. My lord Kaptal and I have different ideas about how to proceed when we get back home.”

The Ironbrow wrinkled his nose. “The imperial court for a workplace. I don’t envy you that.”

“Yeah, well. There’s a good chance you’re going back to be clanmaster, so don’t look so fucking smug.”

“I told you, I have no interest in that. There are more worthwhile pursuits.” He grinned in his beard. “Do you have someone waiting for you at home?”

“Yeah.” Ishgrim’s face came to her, brought with it the quick, hot twinge in her belly and an answering smile. “I do, actually.”

He saw the smile. “Then you, too, know what is truly worthwhile.”

“Yes, I do.”

And she urged her horse into a faster trot, along the road southward and home.