Her lips were dry, chapped. Her eyes were ringed in red, hollowed with exhaustion. ‘What of me?’ she asked in a whisper. ‘You will leave me … alone?’
‘Sand, there are no chains on that throne—’
‘
But there are!
’
‘No. And there’s no law says you got to sit there until the end. Why give them the glory of dragging you down from it, their delight at seeing fresh Andiian blood splashing the dais steps? Piss on them! Come with me. Die with the ones giving their lives to defend you.’
She looked away. ‘I do not know how to fight.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said, rising from where he’d been sitting on the stone steps at the base of the throne. He took up the heavy mace he’d found – along with this arcane armour – in a dust-thick crypt far below the palace. ‘Look at me. Too old for this by half.’ He picked up the shield, slipping his arm through the straps.
She did look at him then. ‘That’s not Andiian armour.’
‘Didn’t think it was,’ he replied, ‘else it would never have fitted me. Better yet, it’s not the kind that needs two people to put on. And the leather bindings – they don’t seem to have aged at all.’
‘How could I bear it, Withal? Seeing them die.’
‘You sit here fighting your own war, Sand. If their dying in your imagination is easier for you to bear, it’s because you don’t see the
blood. You don’t hear the cries. The price they’re paying you won’t even deign to witness.’
‘Did I make any bold claims to courage?’
‘You make plenty of claims,’ he said wearily, ‘but none of them come close to courage.’
‘Go then,’ she hissed. ‘I am done with you.’
He studied her, and then nodded.
Walked from the throne room.
Sandalath Drukorlat leaned back on the throne, closed her eyes. ‘Now,’ she muttered, ‘I have my very own ghost.’ The life that was, the one she had just killed. ‘There’s courage in doing that. And if it felt easy, well, we know that’s a lie. But a gentle one. Gentle as a kiss never taken, a moment … slipping past, not touched, not even once.’
The soldier who walked in then, why, she knew him well. She could see through his armour right through to his beating heart, and such a large, strong heart. She could see, too, all his bones, scarred with healed breaks, and beyond that the floor of the chamber. Because this soldier’s arrival had been a long, long time ago, and the one seated on this throne, before whom he now knelt, was not Sandalath Drukorlat.
The soldier was looking down, and then he was laughing. The sound was warm with love, softened by some unknown regret.
‘Gods below,’ said a voice from the throne, seeming to come from the dark wood behind her head. ‘How is it I cannot even remember your name?’
The soldier was grinning when he looked up. ‘Lord, when was the last time a Warden of the Outer Reach visited the throne room of Kharkanas? Even I cannot answer that.’
But Anomander was not yet prepared to excuse himself this failing. ‘Have I not seen you before? Did not your commander at the Reach speak to me of you?’
‘Perhaps, Lord, the praise was faint, if it existed at all. Shall I ease your dismay, Lord?’
Sandalath saw a hand rise from where one of her own rested on the arm of the chair.
His hand. Pointing – no, just a gesture, just that
. ‘No need. Warden Spinnock Durav.’
The soldier smiled and nodded. ‘Upon word of your summons, Lord, I have come, as at that time I was the ranking officer in the Reach.’
‘Where then is Calat Hustain?’
‘An event at the gate, Lord.’
‘Starvald Demelain? I have heard nothing of this.’
‘It has been only a week, Lord, since he set out for it.’
‘What manner of event was this – do you know?’
‘The word that came to us from the Watchers did not suggest urgency,
or dire threat, Lord. An awakening of foreign energies. Modest, but worth closer examination.’
‘Very well. Then, Spinnock Durav, it shall be you.’
‘I am ever at your call, Lord. What is it that you wish me to do?’
Anomander’s answer stole all humour from the soldier’s face. And, she recalled, it was never to return.
The peace of the forest belied the horror waiting ahead. Water dripped from moss, ran like tears down channels in the lichen covering the boles of the trees. Somewhere, above the canopy, heavy clouds had settled, leaking rain. Withal would have welcomed the cool drops, the sweet kisses from heaven. He needed to be reminded of things beyond all this – the throne room and the woman he had left behind, and before him the First Shore with its heaps of corpses and pools of thickening blood. But this forest was too narrow to hold all that he wanted, and to pass from one misery to the next took little effort, and it was not long before he could hear the battle ahead, and between the towering trunks of the ancient trees he now caught flashes of shimmering light –
where the world ends
.
For all of us
.
He was done with her haunting his dreams, done with all the demands that he make his love for Sandalath into some kind of weapon, a thing with which to threaten and cajole. And Sand had been right in rejecting him. No, she was Mother Dark’s problem now.
The chewed-up trail dipped before climbing to the ridge overlooking the First Shore, and as he scrabbled his way up the slope the sounds of fighting built into a roar. Two more steps, a thick root for a handhold, and then he was on the ridge, and before him was a scene that stole the strength from his legs, that closed a cold hand about his heart.
Who then has seen such a thing?
Before him, seven thousand bodies. Letherii. Shake. And there, along the base of Lightfall – to either side of that breach – how many dead and dying Liosan? Ten thousand? Fifteen? The numbers seemed incomprehensible. The numbers gave him nothing. In his mind he could repeat them, as if voicing a mantra, as his gaze moved from one horror to the next, and then down to where the knot of defenders fought at the very mouth of the wound – fought to deny the Liosan a single foothold upon the Shore – and still, none of it made sense. Even when it did.
It is the last stand. That is what this is. They keep coming. We keep falling. An entire people, face to face with annihilation
.
All at once he wanted to turn round, march back to Kharkanas, to the palace, into the throne room, and … and
what
?
It’s not her fault. There’s nothing here she ever wanted. Gods below, Sand, I begin to understand your madness. No one here will accept surrender, no
matter what you say. You could open your own throat there on that throne, and it wouldn’t matter. These people will die defending a corpse. A corpse on a throne, in a corpse of a city. The cause stopped meaning anything some time ago
.
I should have seen that
.
Two girls were among the dead and dying, stumbling from body to body. They were painted head to toe in crimson. One of them was shrieking, as if seeking to tear her own voice to pieces, to destroy it for all time. The other careered among the corpses, hands over her ears.
There were no reserves. All who remained standing were at the breach, where Yedan Derryg still stood, still fought. But what of Yan Tovis? What of the queen of the Shake? If she was in that dreadful press, Withal could not see her. If she had died, she was buried beneath her fallen subjects.
He found that he was breathing hard, his heart pounding. The grip of the mace was slick in his hand. He set it down, reached for the ornate, full-visored helm slung from his knife belt. Fumbled to loosen the clasp – as if his fingers had forgotten how to work. Finally tugging it free, he worked the helm on to his head, felt its weight settle. He closed the clasp under his chin, the iron hoop tearing at the beard on his throat.
The sounds of the battle dulled then, faint as distant breakers on some unseen strand. A louder squeal when he set the visor and locked it in place, and the scene before him was suddenly split, broken up by the chaotically angled bars. His breaths now filled the confined space.
Withal collected the mace, straightened. Brought the shield round to guard his left side, and lurched into motion.
Someone else had wrested control of his body – his legs, now carrying him down on to the strand; his eyes, searching for a path through the pale, motionless bodies; the hand holding his weapon and the forearm bearing the weight of the shield – they no longer belonged to him, no longer answered to his will.
You do not willingly walk into a battle like this. How can you? No, some other force takes you there, moves you like a pawn, a puppet. And you watch yourself going ever forward, and you are baffled, disbelieving. And all that fear, it’s hollowed out – just an empty place now. And the roar outside is lost to the roar inside – your own blood, your breaths – and now your mouth is parched and you would kill your own mother for a drink of water. But of course you won’t, because that would be wrong – and that thought makes you want to laugh. But if you do, you know that you will lose it, you know that if that laughter starts it won’t stop
.
Was this how it was in my first battle? Was this why I could remember so little – only frozen moments, those moments that reach up and
take you by the throat? That make you see all that you don’t want to see, remember all that you pray to forget?
Is this how it was?
He was clambering over the heaped bodies now, the flesh beneath him cold, taking the imprints of his feet and knees like damp clay – he looked back at the dents and wondered at their wrongness. And then he was moving on, and before him was a ragged wall, Letherii and Shake on their knees, or bent over, or trying to drag themselves out from a forest of legs, shielding wounds – he thought he would see weeping faces, bawling despair, but the pain-twisted faces were dry, and every cry that clawed past his own roaring self was one of raw pain.
Just that. Nothing more. A sound without complications, can you hear it?
If there could be one god, with one voice, this is the sound it would make – to stop us in our endless madness
.
But look on, Withal. See the truth. We do not listen
.
He made his way past these exhausted and wounded comrades, pushed his way into the heaving mass. The stench rocked him. Abattoir, sewer, cutter’s floor. Thick enough to choke him. He struggled against vomiting – here inside this helm – no, he would not do that. Could not.
Faces now, on all sides. None speaking, and the look in their eyes was flat, flatter than anything he’d ever seen. And they were all straining towards the front line, moving up to take their places, to fill the gaps, the unending gaps, as if to say
If you will kill us all, kill me next. But do not think it will be easy
.
Suddenly, he felt ready for this.
Walk until something bars your path. Then stand, until you fall. Whoever said life was complicated?
The channels and currents had carried him to the left flank, well away from that immovable knot at the centre, where a sword’s laughter had taken for itself all the Shore’s madness, every last scrap of it.
He saw Brevity, though at first he did not recognize her – that solid, handsome face, the wry look in her eyes, all gone. In their place a mask of wet blood over dried blood, over blood that had turned into black tar. A slash had opened one cheek, revealing two rows of red molars. There was nothing sardonic left, but she commanded that front line, her will clenched like a fist.
Off her shield side, two Shake fell and three Liosan pushed in to widen the gap.
Eyes widening at the perfect, breathtaking simplicity of what was needed of him, Withal surged to meet them.
This was something new. Yan Tovis could feel it. Yedan Derryg had advanced the line to the very edge of the breach, and there they had
held against the Liosan. This time there was to be no foothold. He would refuse them a single step upon the strand.
He had explained nothing, and as she fought, crowded hard against that wound – from which Liosan poured like blood – she began to realize that, this time, there would be no respite, not until one side or the other fell, to the very last soldier. What had begun would not end until the last sword swung down, or sank deep in writhing flesh.
How had he known? What had he done on the other side of the gate? What had he seen?
She caught glimpses of her brother, there, where the terrifying pealing laughter went on and on, where blood fountained, where Liosan bodies piled ever higher and they stood on them, fighting for balance, face to face, weapons flashing. Glimpses. A face she barely knew, so twisted was it, the Hust sword dragging him past exhaustion, past all reason of what the human body could withstand. Of his face, she could see the white bones beneath translucent flesh, could see all the veins and arteries and the root-mat of vessels, could see the bloody tears that streamed down from his eyes.
Night had come to the Shake. The sand had measured the time, in a kind of stillness, a kind of silence that was beneath all this, and the grains slipped down, and now had come the eternity just before dawn, the time of the Watch. He stood. He fought, his stance wide to find purchase on a hill of bodies.
See him. In the eternity before dawn. When among mortals courage is at its weakest, when fear sinks talons on the threshold and will not let go. When one awakens to such loneliness as to twist a moan from the chest. But then … you feel it, breath catching. You feel it. You are not alone
.