The Dark Defiles (64 page)

Gil nodded at the door, and it slammed shut. He clicked a crick out of his neck, took a turn around the chamber, drew the Ravensfriend almost casually from his back.

“Come on, then. Get up.”

It wallowed to its feet, some tangled mess of old Myrlic syllables dribbling from its lips. The eyes fixed on him, burning malice without recognition. He looked into them and forced down the faint chill that blew along his spine. Clan Illwrack’s champion, the Dark King returned. The sword wagged at the end of the thing’s right arm like some extended limb, broken at the joint. Findrich’s feet took hesitant steps on the stone floor. The mouth opened unnaturally wide, gaping at him. A thin, gull-plaintive shriek issued out.

Ringil rolled his eyes.

“Are you fucking serious? Come on!”

It came hissing at him and he let it come, blocked the clumsy sword blow it brought. Looped the strike aside and down on the Ravensfriend’s blade, swung neatly back in and chopped Findrich right through the midriff to the spine. For just one moment, he was eye to eye with the thing behind the slave merchant’s face, close enough for a kiss.

“Illwrack Changeling?” he sneered. “Thank you and good night.”

He tore the Ravensfriend sideways out of Findrich’s body, sliced the spine apart on the running edge of the Kiraith blade. Stepped away and spun with showy elegance. Findrich went down in a welter of blood—though not as much as you’d expect out of a still-living body—and collapsed in two halves across the flagstones.

Ringil stood for a careful moment, and yeah, sure enough, the head moved on the neck, the eyes were still alive, the lips still mouthing. Hissed arcane syllables, the Aldrain tongue this time, by the sound of it. He put the Ravensfriend’s point at the thing’s throat for a moment, then reconsidered. Skirted warily around the cloven body, stood on the sword arm at the wrist. He felt the weapon’s tang writhe under his boot like a chopped snake. Ignored it, put the Ravensfriend carefully in place, severed the arm from the body just below the elbow. It was a tricky stroke, took a couple of slicing blows with the limb pinned flat to the floor, but there wasn’t much to Findrich’s gaunt limbs these days, and the edge on the Kiriath steel got the job done well enough.

The head died. The mouth gaped mutely open, the eyes emptied of what had been there. Even the sword tang stopped flexing under his boot.

If Risgillen was somewhere watching, she gave no sign.

Ringil drew a deep breath, kicked the severed sword arm away across the floor. He went to the door and pulled it open, found himself facing a thicket of steel blades and the tense, taut faces of his men.

He found he could grin at them.

“We’re out of here,” he said. “Torch everything that’ll burn.”

T
HEY FELL BACK THROUGH THE ECHOING SPACES OF THE WAREHOUSE,
lighting curtains with their borrowed torches, smashing apart furniture or storage crates and barrels alike, heaping the splintered shards into impromptu bonfire piles in the center of each chamber they passed through. They saw no more sign of life than they had coming in, only the corpses of the slaughtered skirmish rangers and Kaad, father and son, like empty sacks discarded in the atrium rain.

B
Y THE TIME THEY MADE THE FRONT DOORS, YOU COULD HEAR THE HUN
gry, crackling roar of the flames, echoing down the corridors they’d come through, and long-tongued shadows danced on the roof over their heads. The mounting heat ushered them to the door like an impatient host.

They made their way out into the rain and down the steps outside to the street. Twitchy with unslaked rage and his failure to account for Risgillen at any point, Ringil stopped at the bottom step and looked back. Flames capered in the windows, as if gesturing him farewell. He’d never seen a building this grand sacked before; he wasn’t sure how much damage the fire would finally do with that much stone in the structure. Probably wouldn’t bring the whole thing down like Hinrik’s place, but given time, he supposed the roof must catch, at least in places, should end up falling in and adding to the blaze. With luck, there’d be enough structural beams in wood somewhere to char through and collapse, bringing down the upper levels. Even with the rain, he could hope for a gutted, smoldering shell by morning.

Honor pyre for the Throne Eternal captain.

He closed his eyes for a brief moment, brought back the supple ghost. Steel-thighed, taut-bellied, firm-handed, innocent-eyed Noyal Rakan. Rakan, who’d taken what brief stolen minutes and fragments of hours they could find for each other over the five months of the expedition, had given himself in grateful passion each time and never once grown maudlin or morose at the constraint. Rakan, who’d gone single-handed aboard
Mayne’s Moor Blooded
and set himself against an entire privateer ship’s crew to rescue Gil from harm. Rakan, who’d followed him without question into the citadel heart of his enemies, to rescue a woman he feared would threaten the core of what he’d stood by his whole young life.

Well,
he thought drably.
No need to worry on that score
now, Captain.

He looked once more into the flames, raised an arm in salute. There should have been a better farewell.
But in the end, there never is. And we take what meager scraps we can find. You should know that by now, Gil.

If the war had taught him nothing else, it had at least driven that steel-edged lesson home.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Out along the deserted streets of Etterkal, away from the gathering blaze, shrouding themselves in the surrounding damp and dark. Elsewhere against the sky, they saw the glow of other fires burning, heard faint yells and commotion over the rooftops. Barring some really piss-poor luck, they should have a clear run through the rest of the Salt Warren and then Tervinala all the way out to the eastern harbor. He had five men seriously injured, three of them too badly to walk, and then Mahmal Shanta on top—for these, Klithren had improvised sling stretchers out of looted curtain cloth and rope, two marines detailed to each. The other two injured men could limp along in the rear. It was all going to put a dent in their pace, but aside from that, Gil reckoned they were in pretty good shape.

O
FFERED A STRETCHER IN CONSIDERATION OF HIS INJURIES,
K
LARN
S
HEN
danak just spat on the floor and bristled like a roused hound.

If this slack motherfucker can keep up,
he snapped, jerking a thumb at Menith Tand,
then you’d better believe I can, too.

Tand just grinned.

Distracted as he was, Ringil still found himself mildly staggered at the camaraderie that seemed to have grown up between the two men. He dropped back to march alongside Mahmal Shanta’s stretcher for a spell.

“What the fuck have they been feeding those two?”

Shanta smiled wanly. “Captivity is an interesting catalyst, is it not?”

“If you say so. Personally, I would have thought it’d have them at each other’s throats twice as fast.”

“Ah, well.” Shanta’s weak and reedy voice came jolted by his stretcher bearers’ steps, overlaid with the splash of their boots in puddles. But he seemed in good spirits. “These are fluid times. We are at war, after all, and such a crisis can concentrate the mind wonderfully well. Certain truths become more readily apparent, certain … necessary adjustments may suggest themselves. Opportunities, even, for men with the right bent of mind. And in the face of opportunity and necessity, fresh allegiance emerges easily enough.”

“Yeah. You want to drop the diplomatic flannel and tell me what the fuck the three of you are cooking up?” Though in truth he already had a pretty shrewd idea. “If it’s a peace plan, riding on Tand’s influence up here, I’d say you’re fucked. The Chancellery won’t forgive this mess in a hurry.”

“No, nor forget it. You have struck a quite remarkable blow for the Empire, Ringil. Shown the League a vulnerability they might not previously have believed they suffered from. We did not expect this, nor anything remotely like it, but now it is achieved, well …”

“You’re forgetting who started this war.”

“No.” Shanta’s aged eyes were suddenly cold and hard, contemplating something Ringil could not see. “We have not forgotten that at all.”

So. Helmsman called it right after all.

Halfway right.
Archeth stood in his mind’s eye, scowling, uncooperative. Lost.

Lost like the Dragonbane, lost like Rakan. For one sagging moment, he was waterlogged with the piling up of loss.

“You want to tell me what all that means?” he asked Shanta thinly.

The naval engineer looked elaborately around at the men who carried him, the others who marched in step with them. Grim-faced Throne Eternals, a few paces back.

“This is neither the time nor the place,” he said delicately. “And matters are, in any case, not yet at a suitable head. A fluid situation, as I said. But rest assured, my lord Ringil, when the time is right, you will be among the very first to know.”

“Might I inquire how far along you are?” Anasharal asked testily.

“We’re on our way.” Nodding at Shanta. “If you’ll excuse me, my lord. The Helmsman speaks. Matters I must attend to.”

“Are you at least out of Etterkal and into the diplomatic district yet?”

Ringil stiffened his pace, heading back to the vanguard and Klithren, who he’d left to lead the march. “No, not yet. But it won’t be long.”

“Nyanar insists that the commotion in the harbor is beginning to damp down. He is concerned that order may be restored before much longer, and we’ll find ourselves facing some organized opposition. If you don’t get out soon, you may have to fight your way to the boats.”

“That was always a possibility.”

“Yes. Perhaps if you stopped hobnobbing with my chess pieces, though, and set a decent pace, you could achieve an earlier arrival.”

“Your chess pieces are redundant, Helmsman. Remember? Archeth’s fucking dead.”

The Helmsman hesitated. “Yes. I am sorry about that. I know you were friends.”

“Good,” he said flatly. “Then fuck off out of my head and leave me alone. I’ll tell you when we cross into Tervinala, and you can have Nyanar send the boats.”

Into territory now that he knew only too well. From the district boundary with Tervinala at Blacksail boulevard to the slave-house heart of Etterkal, these were the streets that had played host to his war of attrition against Findrich, Snarl and the rest a year ago. Break in, brutalize, interrogate, burn. Random acts of terror at first, narrowing slowly to a savage search.
Who enslaved my cousin? Who raped her, branded her, broke her soul? Who gave the orders, who paid the crew? Whose purse was enriched? Who benefits, who holds sway, who runs this fucking brave new world?
And as he walked away from the rising smoke and flames each time, an endless, swelling list of fresh targets for his rage. He knew the street names intimately, the names of the slum taverns and converted warehouse homes he’d torched, the names of the owners and district benefactors whose charred remains he’d left within.

He could walk this path in his sleep.

They passed the rubbled remains of Elim Hinrik’s emporium, still not rebuilt or even cleaned up by the look of it. For all he knew, the bodies were still buried within. Memory flared, lantern bright. Mostly wooden beamed and floored, Hinrik’s place had gone up like autumn scrub. Nothing inside the waist-high outer walls now but mounded rubble and the odd jagged jut of a charred beam poking through, all of it glistening wet and dark in the rain. Gil led them past it without comment, took a narrow cross-street alley he knew at the corner, angled them a little more directly north.

Might clip some time off the journey, shut that fucking Helmsman up.

Out into a muddy, poorly cobbled plaza—huddled figures under eaves in the corners stirred and watched, but offered them no greeting or resistance. By their bony lack of bulk, most looked to be urchins, though he thought he saw one or two hugging infant bundles to their breasts. The first living souls he’d seen on the streets of the Warren since they got out of Findrich’s place, and they turned out to be the last as well.

Two more narrow, winding streets later, they spilled abruptly out onto Blacksail boulevard, almost before he’d noticed they were there.

t is time, my friend.

He blinks back to awareness, wipes moisture from his face, and stares around in the rain-lashed murk. The others give no sign of having spoken—they’re huddled like him under the makeshift shelter of a sailcloth tarp, rigged across the main deck to keep the worst of the downpour off. One or two of them meet his eye as he moves, but aside from a comradely grimace, they show no interest in conversation. Besides, it was not a human voice and he knows it.

It’s the Helmsman.

He shivers, maybe from the damp, and steps out into the full force of the storm. Goes to the rail as if to peer out at the lights of Trelayne harbor in the murk beyond. He mutters under his breath against the roar of the rain.

Time for what?

Time for the final unmasking. He’d swear there’s a trace of regret in the iron demon’s tone. Time for you to finally understand the purpose marked out for you.

You said you couldn’t see my purpose clearly.

Yes, I’m afraid I lied about that. What you are and why has in fact been fairly clear to me since we first met. But the field of play was too tangled for me to map a certain use for that knowledge at the time. I have improvised along the way, but I think we’re beyond that now.

I don’t … understand what you’re saying.

I told you that you had a great destiny, and it was tied to the lady
kir
-Archeth. Well, that wasn’t quite accurate. You were tied to
kir
-Archeth for rather more mundane reasons of infiltration. The Citadel had long been taking an interest in her, you see, and that combined with … other interests gave birth to a rather remarkable kind of spy. A spy with no knowledge of what he actually was, a spy who could observe without understanding, but later recall everything in perfect detail. A spy who could, if necessary, be awakened to step in and take the lady
kir
-Archeth’s life. That’s really why I needed to keep you asleep.

He shivers in the rain. What are you talking about? I would never … I’ve sworn … 

No, that wasn’t you. The man you think you are took that oath. But he is not among us. You usurped his place that drunken night when assignments were confirmed. Woke hungover in his place at barracks.

He stares down at his hands on the rain-soaked rail, the hands that so often didn’t seem to be his. Watches them twist and grip at each other of their own accord. He feels himself shaking his head in denial.

Nightmare, creeping back in.

It really is for the best, I assure you. The Helmsman’s voice, indistinct through the rising whine in his head, the choir of shrieking and sobbing behind. The field of play is changed, you see, and it turns out there is useful work for you after all.

For one desolate moment, he’s back on that marsh plain with the others, the thousands of severed living heads, fed by the roots of the stumps they’re cemented atop. And he’s looking at himself, at his own severed head, mouth wrenched open on endless screams. He puts up both hands in horror, presses fingertips to his face, and his face is no longer his own.

He backs away, shaking his head numbly. Sanity hemorrhaging out of wounds he can feel but cannot locate … 

The Helmsman’s voice cuts across it all, like an arm thrust down into the deep for a drowning man to grasp.

Time to wake up, Anasharal says crisply. And remember who you really are.