And then he staggered out of the last alleyway, and found himself in a dead-end square, and there was nowhere left to run. He bent over for a moment, lungs heaving for air, and leaned on his sword to steady himself. At least he didn’t have to run anymore. He straightened up slowly, and looked about him, and then he laughed, painfully, as he realized why the square looked so familiar. He’d been here before. This was the dead-end square where he’d fought a small army of Blood addicts with Hazel d‘Ark at his side. The place where he’d unwittingly crippled and then had to kill a young girl; perhaps the one thing he’d never forgiven himself for. For all his running, for all his long, eventful life, he’d finally come full circle.
They came spilling into the square, angry and vicious, even more than he remembered. The plasma babies saw him standing at bay, and hesitated for a moment, seeing the warrior in the way he stood, in the way he held his sword. But pain and need drove them on, and they threw themselves at him, howling wordlessly. The odds were appalling, but Owen went to meet them anyway, because he was a Deathstalker, and if he had to fall, at least he’d go down fighting.
He blew a hole in the crowd with his disrupter, the energy blast blowing away half a dozen ragged figures, and setting fire to the furs of as many more. Owen holst ered the gun, doubting he’d get a chance to use it again. One way or another, the fight would probably be over before the gun’s energy crystal could recharge for another shot. He should have invested in a projectile weapon, like Hazel’s. He reached for his powers, but they were still gone. So he went to meet the enemy with his sword, howling the old battle cry of his Clan.
“Shandrakor! Shandrakor!”
They surrounded him in a moment, knives rising and falling. He barely felt the blows. He cut about him with his sword, and blood spurted steaming on the cold air, and pooled in the slush about their stamping feet. Many fell beneath the Deathstalker’s blade and did not rise again, but the sheer force of numbers pushed Owen back and back. Eventually his back slammed up against a brick wall, and there was nowhere left to go. He cut down three figures with one sweep of his blade, but before he could bring the sword back, a dozen long knives stabbed into him, pinning him to the wall.
Owen cried out in pain and shock, and there was blood in his mouth. He cried out again as the knives were pulled back out of him, and then the knives were plunging into him again and again, the dark figures jostling each other in their eagerness to get at him. The strength went out of Owen’s legs, and he slid down the wall, leaving a thick bloody trail behind him. The knives jerked in and out. Owen sat down suddenly, in the dirty, bloody snow, his back still pressed against the wall. His chin fell forward onto his chest. Some of them were still stabbing him. He couldn’t feel it anymore, though his body shuddered under the impact. He watched almost disinterestedly as his arm slowly lowered, still holding his sword. His hand hit the snowy ground, bounced once, and then lay still. The numb fingers slowly opened, releasing the sword.
A fur-clad figure darted forward to grab it. Owen thought he saw a familiar face. His eyelids were slowly closing. He felt cold. He recognized the young girl’s face before him. It was the same girl he’d crippled and killed. In a past that was her future. He smiled at her, and thought she smiled at him.
Time. Full circle. And redemption, of a kind.
Hazel?
After he was dead, they stole his boots.
Orbiting above the Wolfing World, the battered remains of what had once been two fine ships: the
Dauntless
and the
Sunstrider.
Hazel on her bridge, Silence and Carrion on theirs, talking a little bemusedly via their viewscreens. Silence had just received a message from a relieved but startled Golgotha; the entire Recreated fleet had vanished, between one moment and the next, and showed no signs of reappearing.
“Did we beat them?” said Hazel. “I mean; it sure didn’t feel like were beating them.”
“Maybe they just got tired of kicking us around,” said Silence. “Stranger things have happened.”
“That’s for sure,” said Carrion.
It is over,
said a voice, thundering suddenly in their heads.
Owen Deathstalker has saved you all. He kept the Recreated occupied, till all could be put right again. And now it will be.
And everyone on the
Dauntless
and the
Sunstrider
cried out in wonder as the baby in the crystal concentrated his thoughts, and relit the thousand suns in the Darkvoid. Their lights blazed again, for the first time in over nine hundred years, and the Darkvoid was dark no longer. The baby concentrated, and revitalized the dead planets around those suns, and made them warm and intact and life-bearing again, just as they had been before. And then he reached out to the Recreated, still hanging lost and helpless in Time, and returned them to their old bodies, back on their own worlds, where they belonged. They would remember nothing of what they had been, and done. None of it had really been their fault.
Humanity’s long nightmare was finally over.
The baby reached out further, and Unseeli blossomed again, the metallic forests reaching once again from pole to pole. And then he sent the reborn Ashrai home again, to tend their forests as they always had. Silence and Carrion watched all this, and both of them had tears in their eyes.
And having done all that, the baby decided that enough was enough, and any more would be interfering. He had put right all the things that he had unwittingly destroyed or created, all those years ago, and that would do, for now. He sighed once, put his thumb back in his mouth, and went back to sleep again. To dream, and learn from the Maze, and grow slowly in peace. While he waited for Humanity to catch up with him.
He was looking forward to that.
On board the
Dauntless,
Silence and Carrion looked at each other in amazement. On the
Sunstrider,
Hazel was slowly shaking her head.
“What about Owen?” she said. “Where’s Owen?”
I’m sorry,
said the voice.
Owen is dead. I’ve left a record of all we said in your computers, and in Silence’s. It explains everything. Be proud of Owen. He made all this possible. But remember my warning. Humanity must prepare. The Terror are coming.
“He died alone,” said Hazel. “I wasn’t with him.”
He died well, a warrior to the end.
“The last Deathstalker,” Silence said.
No. That would be the baby. Or perhaps he’s a new beginning. All will become clear, in Time.
Hazel let out a howl of grief and rage that almost tore her throat apart. She powered up the
Sunstrider’s
engines, and sped away from the Wolfing World, and all that had happened there.
“Owen; you lied to me. You promised me we’d always be together. Forever and ever. Oh, Owen; I never told you I loved you ...”
Tears ran down her cheeks. The
Sunstrider
dropped into hyperspace, and disappeared.
Captain Silence and Carrion returned home, to the Empire and Golgotha, to glory and honor. None of them ever saw Hazel d‘Ark again.
And deep in the heart of the newborn planet that had been the Wolfing World, and lost Haden, the Madness Maze waited for all Humanity.
About the Author
Simon R. Green
is a
New York Times
bestselling author. He lives in England.
The Bestselling DEATHSTALKER Saga
by Simon
R
Green
Owen Deathstalker, a reluctant hero destined for
greatness, guards the secret of his identity from the
corrupt powers that run the Empire—an Empire he
hopes to protect by leading a rebellion against it!
Praise for the DEATHSTALKER Saga: “[Simon R.] Green invokes some powerful mythologies.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A huge novel of sweeping scope, told with a strong sense of legend.”
—Locus
DEATHSTALKER
DEATHSTALKER REBELLION
DEATHSTALKER WAR
DEATHSTALKER HONOR
DEATHSTALKER DESTINY
DEATHSTALKER RETURN
DEATHSTALKER LEGACY
DEATHSTALKER CODA
AVAILABLE IN HARDCOVER FROM SIMON R. GREEN
DAEMONS ARE FOREVER
The next book in the trilogy following
The Man with the Golden Torc.
Eddie Drood’s clan has been watching mankind’s back
for ages. And now he’s in charge of the whole kit and
caboodle. But it’s not going to be an easy gig...
During World War II, the Droods made a pact with some
nasty buggers from another dimension known as the
Loathly Ones, who they needed to fight the Nazis. But
once the war was over; the Loathly Ones decided that they
liked this world too much to leave. Now it’s up to Eddie to
make things very uncomfortable for them—or watch
everything humanity holds dear go up in smoke.
ALSO AVAILABLE
SWORDS OF HAVEN
The Adventures of Hawk & Fisher
by Simon R. Green
Hawk & Fisher • Winner Take All
•
The God Killer
Now in one volume, three action-packed
adventures of Hawk & Fisher.
They’re lovers. They’re partners. They’re cops.
They’re the battle-scarred crime-busters of a never
ending urban war. Hawk rules the streets by battle-axe.
Fisher cracks down on outlaws with sword and dagger.
Their merciless beat is the sinister city misnamed
Haven—a dark and violent town overrun with spell
casters, demons, and thieves. A place where money will buy
anything...except justice.