The Dark Defiles (44 page)

Klithren glanced sideways at him, maybe slightly surprised, but he offered the bottle. Ringil took it, wiped the neck with his sleeve—he’d left his goblet on the table, was fucked if he’d go back for it now—and drank deep. The mercenary looked on with what might have been approval. Gil lowered the bottle and wiped his mouth. Handed it back.

“You were saying?”

Still, it took awhile. Silence hung between them like a third unwelcome companion at the rail.

Finally, Klithren cleared his throat. “You know the first battle I ever saw? Back in thirty-nine, when Baldaran tried to take Hinerion over the transit taxes. I was just a kid in mortgaged mail back then, no idea what I was getting into. Threw up a half dozen times in the ranks, just waiting for it all to kick off.”

Ringil nodded, as if in recognition. Truth was, he’d never gotten sick in battle—those nerves, he’d beaten out long before, running in his teens with Harbor End gangs like the Brides of Silt and the Basement Boys, then later with Grace of Heaven’s more methodical thief squads and enforcers. What little sensitivity of stomach he had left after that lot was taken from him by Jelim Dasnal’s execution, and then the collegial brutality of the Trelayne military academy.

Actual war, when it came, seemed almost clean by comparison.

“Well.” Klithren drank from the bottle, goblet empty and apparently forgotten in his left hand. He came up for air, shivered a little. “When the fight with Baldaran was done, I knew well enough what I’d gotten into. We left four hundred of their levy, prisoners we’d taken, impaled on their own pike shafts in the Hin valley as warning to the rest. Most of them were still living when we marched out of there. We cut trophies off them before we went. I took this one guy’s ears, while he hung there, begging for water. Kid not much older than I was at the time. When I started cutting, he was screaming at me to just kill him. But I didn’t. Didn’t give him the water, didn’t kill him, either. Just cut off his ears one by one and left him there.” Klithren peered into the goblet of wine, as if the memory floated there. “Hard to remember now, but I think I was laughing at him when I did it.”

Ringil grunted.

“Point is, Eskiath, I’ve seen and done some pretty fucking grim things in the last twenty years. I’ve taken orders from commanders that if they cropped up in a tale, you’d say they were demons out of hell. What you showed me in that … place? Yeah, it’s some bad shit. But does it make these dwenda any worse than us? Any different, really?”

“That’s one way of living with it.”

He saw how the mercenary tried for a smile, but it was as if the evening breeze came and wiped it off his face before it could take hold. Klithren weighed the bottle in his hand. Poured his goblet full.

“I’m a blade for hire, man.” There’s something a little like desperation in his tone. “Doing rather well, too, in the current climate. You tell me—why would I care who the overlords are, as long as they pay?”

“You’d care,” Ringil said grimly. “You think a lost memory and some iffy dreams are as bad as it’s going to get? I’ve seen the
inside
of the glamours the dwenda cast. I know what it’s like when they come for you. It’s a fog you move in, where nothing makes sense, where your acts aren’t your own, where horrors come and go and you don’t question any of it, you just accept it all and do what you’re told.”

Klithren shrugged. “Sounds just like the war. Come to that, it sounds like a lot of my life, war or peace regardless. I think your noble upbringing has spoiled you for this world, my lord Eskiath. Most of us already live the way you describe.”

“Yeah. Spare me the professions of rank and file, knight commander. That kid in mortgaged mail, cutting off ears and laughing? He’s dead and gone now, whatever nightmares you might be having about him at the moment. It’s too late for him. Your acts of slaughter are all your own these days, Klithren of Hinerion, you’ve made your choices and you live by them. And if I’m not much mistaken, that’s exactly the way you like it.”

The mercenary said something inaudible. Buried his face in his drink. Ringil stared down at his own empty hands.

“If the dwenda make a comeback, you can kiss all that good-bye. Knowing, understanding, choosing. You aren’t going to recognize this world once they’ve turned it inside out to suit, and you won’t ever again know if your actions are your own.” Ringil jerked a thumb back at the pommel of the Ravensfriend where it rose over his shoulder. “This blade? The dwenda let me carry it on my back through the Grey Places just like this, and I never knew I had it on me the whole time. If I’d been attacked, I would have died with empty hands, like some bent-backed peasant, without even trying to draw steel, because
I did not know it was there for me to draw.
They stole that from me—the truth of my own capacity to resist. I think they may have stolen my will to it as well, for a while anyway. But the truth is I can’t be sure. Another time, they tied me to my own guilt and grief out there, and they let it eat me alive—literally, I’m talking about. Literally eaten alive, then brought back to life so it could happen all over again. I was torn apart a thousand fucking times on that plain I showed you, by a demon I’d hacked to death in this world. But it lived on out there because they gave it power.”

Because you gave it power, too, Gil. Let’s not forget that.

A stir of curious voices down on the main deck. He became aware he’d been shouting. He drew a harsh breath and nailed down his rage. Compressed his mouth to a thin line.

“That’s what they did to me,” he said quietly. “For my sins. You? Well, they sent you north to bring me in dead or broken and bound, and instead you end up helping me to disarm your own men. You hand over your ships and your command, and now you stand at my side as an ally. What do you think they’ll do to you for that, my sellsword friend?”

“I could always change sides again.”

“Yeah, you could do that.” Ringil put out his hand for the bottle. “Question is—are you going to?”

They watched the sunset in silence. It seemed like quite a while before the mercenary handed over the wine. Gil tilted the bottle and looked at the level. Not a lot left in there anymore, and the color was darkening slowly from blood red to black as evening came on. He shrugged, drained it to the dregs, tossed the emptied bottle down into the ocean’s rise and fall. He wiped his mouth.

“So?”

“So. For all I know, everything you showed me could be a glamour.” But there was no real accusation in the other man’s voice anymore. Klithren just sounded tired. “This dwenda invasion shit—all I have is your word.”

“That’s right.”

“And last time I trusted you, you murdered my friend, waited until my back was turned, and then took me from behind.”

Ringil’s lips twitched. “So to speak.”

“That’s not what I meant. Are you fucking
laughing
about this?”

“No …”

“Because it’s
not fucking funny.
All right?” Klithren went to straighten up off the rail and his elbow slipped. He lurched. Ringil bit his lip.

“I
said—
”

“Not funny.” Gil shook his head with emphatic, slightly drunken solemnity. “Absolutely. No, it’s not.”

“That’s right,” the mercenary said, in tones that would have been severe if they hadn’t come out so slurred. “It isn’t. Wouldn’t let you near my fucking arse with a barge pole.”

There was a brief, perplexed silence.

“What would I want a barge p—”

“I didn’t mean … I meant.” Klithren glowered at him. “Look, will you
stop fucking—
”

“I’m
not
… ”

A stifled snort got out through someone’s lips—later, neither would remember which one of them it was. They traded an ill-advised glance. Ringil clung to what he hoped was an expression midway between polite and serious … 

And then, out of nowhere, both men were cackling helplessly.

Helplessly. Out loud, at nothing at all.

Like some pair of maniacs abruptly loosed from the chains that had until now stopped them doing harm to themselves, each other, and the rest of the sane, waking world.

e woke from a dream of winter sunset out on the steppe, long, low spearing rays of reddish light that spilled and dazzled across his eyes as he rode, but failed to warm him at all. He was riding somewhere important, he knew, had something to deliver he thought, but there was a faint terror rising in him that whatever it was, he’d lost it or left it behind somewhere on this long, cold ride, and now the remainder of his journey was a hollow act. He should have been able to see the Skaranak encampment by now, the thin rise of campfire smoke on the horizon, or the dark, nudging mass of grazing buffalo herds at least. He raised up in the saddle, twisted about, scanning ahead and side to side, but there was nothing, nothing out here at all. He was riding alone, into a rising chill and a dwindling red orange glow … 

Egar blinked and found the fire sprite hovering in his face.

He flailed at its red orange radiance with a stifled yelp. One blank moment of panic. Then full wakefulness caught up.

He sat up in his blankets and stared around. A pallid dawn held the eastern sky, pouring dull gray light across the sleep-curled forms in their bedrolls around him, the scattered packs and the blue radiant bowls now gone opaque and glassy, like so many big stones gathered from a river’s bed. Across at the stairway entrance they’d come in, Alwar Nash waved casually from where he sat huddled at last watch. Everyone else was still out cold.

“Early yet,” the Throne Eternal commented when Egar had stumbled to his feet and wandered over to join him. “Another hour to full light at least. But our friend there seems pretty agitated about something.”

He gestured and the Dragonbane saw how the sprite was now floating directly above Archeth’s sleeping form, flickering rapid shades of orange in her face.

“It tried her first,” Nash said. “Guess she’s too wrung out to notice.”

Egar shook his head. “Always been that way. When she sleeps, she really sleeps. Seen her snore right through a siege assault at Shenshenath once.”

“Must be that Black Folk blood.”

“Must be. Had the lizards a hundred deep at the walls that time, couple of blunderers smashing their heads in against the stonework because they were too stupid to find the gates …” Lost in the skeins of memory for a moment, and then understanding hit him in the head like a bucket of cold water. “Shit! Nash—start kicking them awake. We got to move.”

“Move? But—”

“Scaled Folk.” He was already on his way to Archeth, calling back over his shoulder. “Lizards don’t get up early. Something to do with their blood; their heritage or … Look, just get everyone moving.”

Can’t believe you forgot that, Eg. Not like the war was that long ago, is it?

Is it?

And he had a couple of seconds to feel suddenly very old, as he realized that Nash, in common with most of the others, had not only not fought in the war, he had in all probability never even seen a living lizard before yesterday’s fight.

T
HEY GOT EVERYONE AWAKE INSIDE A COUPLE OF MINUTES, GAVE SOFT IN
structions to load up and be ready to move out. When Archeth blinked initial sleepy incomprehension at him, Egar gestured at the fire sprite’s agitated bobbing and flickering.

“Someone’s in a hurry here. My guess? It wants to get us someplace before the lizard hour.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, shit. Got to be, yeah.”

She flung off her blankets. Flinched as the movement caught the wound he’d stitched for her the night before. Impatient grunt of pain held down and the flare of anger in her eyes at her own unwelcome weakness. She settled her harness and knives about her with a blunt lack of care that looked to the Dragonbane like punishment. She must have tugged on the wound more than a few times in the process, but to watch her, you’d never have known.

“All right, then,” she said tightly when she was done. “Let’s go.”

They filed rapidly down the staircase behind the sprite and let it lead them out into the street. Any actual sunrise was still a good way off, and down at ground level there was a lot of gloom. The jut and slump of broken architecture around them worried at the Dragonbane’s attention, sketched hints of a thousand phantom enemies, crouched to pounce every few yards. Every darkened gap in the rubble they passed seemed to promise an ambush, every glint of something shiny in the low light was a reptile peon’s eye. Egar, yawning despite the heightened tension, marched with a prickling at the nape of his neck and tried to recall useful detail from the tactical lectures given by Kiriath commanders during the war.

Like any reptiles, the Scaled Folk like heat better than cold, but they seem to have adapted beyond this in ways their smaller cousins on this continent have not. They do not depend on warmth to the same extent, and can function quite sufficiently well in cooler conditions. Yet their ancestry tells upon them in a number of ways that may be helpful to us. They are drawn instinctively to warmer climes and to discrete heat sources; they appear to accord some sacred significance to the roasting pits they build and ignite; and they do not stir early in the day if they can avoid it.

Sounds like me,
muttered Ringil to him in the back rank where they stood, and Egar tried to stifle an explosive snigger.

They’d both been a lot younger back then.

You have something to contribute?
Flaradnam, seamed black features glaring into the ranks. He waited a beat, got no response.
Then shut the fuck up and listen, all of you. What we tell you here today could save your life.

Across the shattered predawn city, then, threading through empty streets and plazas, picking their way up and over mounds of rubble bigger than any intact building he’d ever seen, even in Yhelteth. Once again, the fire sprite led them a crooked, seemingly senseless path through the ruins. They backed up and twisted and turned. They followed thoroughfares straight as arrows for miles, then turned abruptly off them into tangled, broken ground, worked difficult, meandering routes, only to spill out onto what Egar would have sworn was the same thoroughfare an hour later and head onward as if they’d never left it. Once, some way along a broad boulevard similar to the one they’d been attacked on the night before, the sprite led them directly off the street and up a punishingly steep rubble slope, then along a windy, exposed cliff face of ruined façades that ran for at least half a mile and tracked the boulevard directly. It was tricky work, and in some places involved clinging and edging their way forward with the risk of a lethal fall, while all the time below them, the boulevard stretched on, devoid of apparent obstacles and utterly deserted.

“You think,” he asked Archeth, breathing hard, as they rested at one of the infrequent safe sections, “that this thing has a sense of humor?”

She looked out to where the sprite hung blithely suspended a couple of yards away in empty space and a hundred feet off the ground.

“Either that, or it thought we’d like the view.”

“Yeah. Well worth the climb.” Egar glowered out across the fractured landscape, and the pale gray wash of another cloud-shrouded morning. “Like Gil would say if he was here,
I’m particularly enamored of the
… ”

She glanced around curiously as he trailed off. He squinted, wanting to be sure, then pointed outward, what he estimated had to be northeast from their position and a dozen miles off or less.

“You see that? Past that torn-up pyramid thing? Where the three boulevards cross, then back a little and left. See the … what
is
that? Looks like …”

Talons.

As if a broad expanse of the city’s structure had broken like pond ice under the weight of some vast, lumbering black iron creature, which now clung to the ragged edges of the hole it had fallen through with huge claws sunk in, struggling not to go down into an abyss below. As if several gargantuan black spiders out of one of his father’s tales hung suspended in a shared, irregularly shaped ambush burrow, only their limbs extending up and out to grip the edges of the gap on all sides, poised to spring. As if dragon’s venom had splattered on the city’s flesh in overlapping oval pools, had eaten its way in and left splayed black burn marks all around, or … 

It dawned on him then, full force.

It looks like Kaldan Cross.

As if the Kiriath had labored here as they had at Kaldan in Yhelteth, delving down into the bedrock for their own obscure purposes, reinforcing the sides of their pit with outward clamping iron struts, but on a massively larger scale.

“Look familiar?” he asked.

“Well, it’s Kiriath built, that’s for sure.” Archeth, shading her eyes against the glare the rising sun had put into the clouds. “And whatever it is, it goes down. Aerial conveyance
pits,
right?”

“You reckon?”

“I reckon it’d be a pretty huge coincidence otherwise.” She propped herself carefully upright against the façade at their backs. “Come on, let’s see if our flickery friend there feels the same.”

T
HEY FOLLOWED THE FAÇADE ALMOST TO ITS END BEFORE THE SPRITE
dived into a gap in the stonework and led them down through a series of collapsed and angled spaces that might once have been rooms. They crowded in behind, relieved to get away from the sheer drop, but none too happy with the confined quarters and gloom.

Our scaly pals show up now
,
they’ll have us quicker than a shaman’s shag.
Egar’s gaze flickered about, making the odds.
Barely enough room in here to swing a fucking long knife, let alone a sword or ax. And gaps on every side—floors, walls, ceilings, it’s all up for grabs.

Still, he slapped down any comments in that direction from the men at his back, told them to shut the fuck up and watch where they stepped. While ahead and below him, Archeth’s lithe form braced its way downward with boots and elbows and arse, backlit into silhouette by the sprite’s onward beckoning fire.

Not bad, Archidi, for someone with a sewn gash across the ribs big enough to stick your whole hand in. And not a grain of krinzanz to sweeten the ride.

He didn’t know if she’d used any of the powders they were gifted with at An-Kirilnar, but somehow he doubted it. There was a gritted edge on Archeth right now—if anything, she seemed to be
using
her pain for something, maybe as a substitute for the fire the krin habitually lent.

“You all right?” he asked her when they finally spilled out into the light at street level and he stood close at her shoulder.

She didn’t look at him, took no break from scanning the street ahead, for all that the sprite was already drifting steadily along it. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Stitches holding up?”

“Well, you should know—you put them in.” She glanced around at him, face tightening up into a grimace as her body twisted. “Stings worse than getting head from a cactus, if you really want to know. But it’s some beautiful fucking work, Eg. I don’t reckon Kefanin stitches my riding leathers this well.”

He shrugged, mask for the enduring bitter taste the skirmish the night before had left. “All part of the service. If I can’t keep you from getting hurt, at least I can patch up the damage afterward.”

“Works for me.”

The last of the men dropped out of the gap in the masonry behind them and straightened up with vocal curses of relief. Egar shut them up, got them formed into a loose wedge, and led them out once more behind Archeth and the sprite.

The rest was hard marching but uneventful. They cut across the mounded rubble a few times more, leaving one boulevard in favor of another, trading plazas for streets and vice versa, but it was all open ground, ruined masonry packed solid underfoot or sections of stairway and raised platforms that had taken no more than superficial damage in whatever cataclysm had snuffed the city out. Clear views on all sides now, no real risk of ambush, and their pace picked up accordingly. Egar began to catch traces of a familiar reek on the wind.

He jogged forward, caught up to Archeth who was striding a few yards ahead.

“You smell that?”

“Yeah. Like the stacks at Monal. Must be getting close.”

Sometimes at An-Monal, the winds blew in from the south, and then you caught an acrid whiff of the chemicals at play in the Kiriath brewing stacks on the plain below. The Dragonbane had never been very sure what it was Archeth’s people made in those towers, he’d only understood that they preferred to make it at some considerable distance from where they lived. Watching at night as huge, unnaturally colored flames leapt and gouted atop the miles-distant darkened towers, he didn’t much blame them. Whatever they had trapped in there, you wouldn’t want to be standing very close if it ever got loose.

He remembered asking Flaradnam about it once, one banquet night out on the balcony shortly before they all headed out for Trelayne and then the Wastes. He might as well not have bothered—as was so often the case with the Kiriath, any reply you got left you with more questions than you’d started with, and this time was no exception to the rule. ’Nam glanced around the table at the various commanders’ faces in the bandlight, then dropped some cryptic comment to the effect that most of the Kiriath’s more useful alloys had to be
grown to full complexity
or some such shit. That it was in fact a process less like smelting and smithing, and more akin to raising crops or, in its finest expressions, breeding warhorses or—a fond side-smirk at an embarrassed Archeth—children. What all that actually meant, Egar had no fucking clue and was too half-cut at the time to pursue any further. And later there was no time, they were all too busy, and a couple of months after that, Flaradnam was beyond all asking.