"Has your day been any better than ours?"
"Started off pretty good," Dante said. "Since then, it's been thoroughly not-good."
"I've got a question for
you
, Chief," Blays said. "What the hell happened to holding the ramparts?"
Hopp's smile faded. "What can you do against so many? Their archers fired on the ramparts while the foot soldiers swept around to hit us from behind. They paid for that, but we had to withdraw to the city. One of our divisions got separated. Cavalry hit them. Cut them into strips of grass."
"Mourn was with them. Do you know if he got out?"
Hopp shook his head. "I haven't heard."
"So what's the plan from here?" Dante said.
"We've both lost a lot of people. I think the Gaskans are regrouping somewhere in the eastern part of town. The chiefs know to rally here. I think we'll have enough to make a second stand."
They took up place beside him on the barricade. Battered clans and individual warriors flowed in over the course of the next hour. Dante saw no sign of Mourn. He recognized one member of the Nine Pines, but the woman had been separated earlier in the day and knew nothing of the fate of her clan. He was deeply heartened, at least, to see the return of Nak and Ulev, along with most of the monks.
"What about Varla?" Dante said, picturing the graying councilwoman silently slinging nether from atop the rampart.
Ulev shook his head. "Some towheaded, blue-blooded son of a bitch struck her down with a smile. Varla was whippin' 'em into black pudding right up till then."
Dante nodded. He hadn't known the woman too well. She'd been so quiet he wondered whether anyone had truly gotten to know her. But with that silence had come a stolid rationality the Council would miss dearly. He thought about trying to reach Cally again, but the black news of her death could wait. He couldn't risk running Cally's loon dry before the day was done.
There were too many norren to guess their exact number. Fewer than the start of the day, that much was clear. By at least a quarter. Maybe as much as half. Dante hoped most of the missing were still making their way through the city. On their way to the hills, even. Better to run away than to be left dead in the streets of a foreign town.
The survivors dug in behind the blockades. Archers arranged themselves for clear firing lanes on the two roads into the north side of the plaza—the remaining streets had been choked with rubble and garbage. Scouts were sent out in pairs to catch any probes or sudden attacks.
It was an unnecessary gesture. For whatever fancy maneuvers the king's army had pulled off earlier in the day, their strategy now appeared to be one of blunt force. They marched down both northern streets at once. Just before bow range, they charged.
Norren arrows flew as thickly as locusts. Nether streaked between volleys, picking off the survivors. Five ranks flopped dead in the street, piling to the knees of the soldiers pouring in behind them. Ether crackled down the street in a bolt of white lightning, blasting apart the foremost barricade in a hurricane of splinters and blood. As if a dam had been broken, the red-garbed soldiers flooded through the gap.
The clan warriors roared and rushed to meet them. After years of fighting beside Blays, Dante found himself falling into a rhythm of battle that required no conscious thought. They fought like two arms of the same body. Except Lira was there, too, weaving in among the redshirts like a perfectly complementary third arm, stabbing in snake-fast thrusts, using her empty hand to disarm and grapple, sweeping soldier after soldier to the ground and Blays' waiting blades.
The norren themselves fought like angry spirits. Between the combined reach of their arms and their swords, they could strike a human soldier down before the enemy could touch them. Their swings fell with brutal strength, battering aside blocks as if the enemy swords weren't there at all. Chainmail was no defense; their blows simply broke the bones beneath. Two or more redshirts fell for every clansman.
But they were still too many. They must have picked up more conscripts on the final march to Dollendun. They poured through the streets, overrunning the plaza's barricades one by one. Gaskan ethermancers blew holes through the lines before the priests of Narashtovik engaged them with the nether. Pale sparks bloomed over the battlefield. Both sides exhausted themselves quickly, however, and the battle was soon reduced to swords and sweat and bloody fury.
Step by step, the norren were forced back. Dante caught a nick to his left arm. Blays took a slash across his thigh that bled freely but was too shallow to slow him down. Lira snagged the pinky of her free hand in a man's belt mid-throw; as he fell, her finger snapped audibly. She paled, retreating behind Blays as sweat washed down her face, but she lunged in moments later when a redshirt closed on Blays' flank.
The redshirts pushed halfway through the plaza. The norren's right flank fell back across the lines. As if there were ropes tied among the warriors' waists, the center and the left followed. So did Dante. Without being ordered, they found themselves in wholesale retreat from the plaza, running south along the shore of the river as the redshirts trampled behind them.
"That was nuts," Blays panted, swords in hand. "How is anyone alive right now? Like, in the world?"
Dante shook his head. How many had died over the last few minutes? Five hundred on their side alone? A thousand? Whatever the figure, two or three times as many redshirts had fallen in the square. By the time they'd retreated, blood streamed along the cracks in the cobbles. It had stunk like hot metal and fresh guts.
"I don't know," he said. His arms hung loose, muscles burning. He couldn't find his breath. "I don't know."
The forest of pines swallowed them whole. Behind them, the diffusing Gaskan lines halted and turned around for the city. The chiefs called a halt a mile later. Warriors collapsed in the carpet of pine needles, chests heaving.
Blays thumped down beside a fir. "It's not happening. We can't wade back into that. Not with what little we've got left."
Dante nodded, numb. He glanced up sharply. "Cally sent more men. It's not much, but if we can meet up with them, maybe we can draw the redshirts out. They suffered worse than us."
He pulsed his loon. Cally responded at once. "You're alive! Unless you are a looting killer. In which case, be forewarned: I am a vengeful spirit! Woe to whomever takes this relic from its rightful owner!"
"Of course it's me," Dante said. "This loon's tied to my blood."
"Yes, but there's nothing to prevent a cunning usurper from using your freshly spilled blood to forge a new link. Anyway, this is beside the point: you're alive!"
"And lucky to be so. We lost. We're sitting in a forest two miles from the city and there's no way we can take it back."
Cally's sigh crackled across the loon. "I'm sorry. This must break your heart. But remember: you just fought off the heart of the Gaskan empire's power—and you lived. This war isn't over."
Dante wiped sweat from his forehead. Salt flaked from his hair. "How far off are those troops you sent? Can Olivander muster any more?"
"I'm sure he can scare up a couple hundred by tomorrow, but will that be enough? Perhaps we should fall back to lick our wounds, rest up, and return from hibernation with an army even larger than before."
"All right, but in the interests of not dying in the meantime, where are the men you already sent?"
"Hang on, I just updated the maps this morning. Where did I..." Papers shuffled. Cally cursed softly. A door creaked. Cally's voice became distant; he'd turned away from the loon. "Closed and private doors should be knocked upon first. Who are you?"
Three quick steps thumped across the floor. Cally shouted, a single note of alarm. Boots scuffled over the floor. Cally cried out again. Something heavy struck the floor. Footsteps hurried away. The door creaked and clicked shut.
"Dark hair," Cally gurgled. "Skunk." Liquid drummed the wooden floor.
"Cally?" Dante said.
"Listen! Skunk! Short. Quiet—a whisper."
Muffled chokes filtered through the loon. A long and liquid breath. And then a surge of nether so strong Dante somehow felt its darkness through the line of the loon. It engulfed him, cool, pacific, as yawning as the night sky—just as terrifying, just as welcoming.
The nether withdrew as swiftly as a wave. Dante heard no words, no more gasping. Just the drumming of fluid against the floor.
"Cally?" he said. "
Cally
?"
25
He listened, helpless. Liquid tapped upon the floor. If he closed his eyes, he could see it, bright red droplets gleaming on the hardwood as Cally's eyes took on the shine of glass. Nether buzzing like flies around the puddle and the wound in the old man's neck that had spilled it. Nether rejoining the planks of the floor, the air, the world it had long ago left to become a part of Cally's body. The cycle of Arawn cranking through one more turn.
"Cally's dead."
Blays glanced up. "Huh?"
"I said Cally's dead."
"Did you take a whack to the skull back there? Cally wasn't at the battle."
"In his room in Narashtovik," Dante said. "Someone attacked him. I heard it through the loon. I think they cut his—"
He doubled over, retching. Blays jumped away, then moved back in, reaching for Dante's shoulder. "Are you all right? What's going on?"
"They killed him." Dante hocked and spat, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "He's dead. We have to get back."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I heard him get attacked and bleed to death! He tried to heal himself, but he just..." Tears stung his eyes. He wiped them away, careless who saw. "We have to go. In five seconds I'm going to start running and I won't stop until I'm in Narashtovik."
Blays glanced at the warriors slumped throughout the glen. "What about that whole war thing?"
"They don't need us now. Cally does."
"He does? Not to be cruel, but just what do you think—?"
Dante shoved him in the chest, staggering him through the fallen needles. "We honor his life and finish what he started! There's no clear mechanism for who takes over now. If Kav grabs the reins, maybe he starts whispering to his noble buddies back in Setteven and next thing you know we're back where we started—the norren as slaves, Narashtovik as the king's property. We have to stop that." He took a swift and shuddering breath. "And find and kill whoever did this."
Blays nodded, somber. "I'll gather up my stuff. Oh wait, I don't have anything."
Lira frowned faintly. "We should ask Hopp. We're a part of his clan, too."
"We'll ask," Dante said. "But I'll only hear one answer."
Hopp rested beneath a tree a short ways off, chewing leaves plucked from the shrub beside him. He gave Dante a rueful smile. "That didn't go as we'd hoped, did it?"
"Callimandicus has been killed," Dante said. "My chieftain in Narashtovik."
Hopp raised an eyebrow. "Are you patronizing me? I know who Cally is and his place on your Council."
"Then you know I have to return."
"What would you do if I forbade you?"
"Leave in the night. And if you tied me down, I would break the bonds and then your legs."
"Would you show the same ferocity for my sake if someone came for me?"
"No," Dante said. "But I'd bare one fang, at least. Maybe two."
Hopp laughed. "Should I have made you renounce your kinship to Narashtovik before accepting you as one of my own? I won't stop you from leaving, but I won't release you from your responsibility to your clan, either."
"We're all part of the same clan now. I won't forget this." Dante glanced northeast toward Narashtovik. "Cally's loon is still open. If it runs out of nether before someone shuts it off, it'll quit working, along with all the loons linked through it."
"So I won't be hearing from you for a while?"
Dante shook his head. "Or from the other chiefs, either. You'll be back to the old ways."
"What will you guys do?" Blays said.
"What we always do," Hopp shrugged. "Return to the hills."
A frown crept over Blays' face. "They'll keep coming."
"Then they'll discover that fighting the clans in their own hills and woods is not the same as fighting them in nice open streets with all the room in the world for their horses to run."
Dante smiled grimly. "We'll be back as soon as we can."
"See to it," Hopp said. "Otherwise, when someone asks me where my humans went, I'll tell them you're a disgrace to your species and your former family of the Broken Herons."
For all his other concerns, that still meant something to Dante. As they headed out of the makeshift camp in the vague direction of Narashtovik—without pausing to gather up Wint and Ulev and the monks; they would only slow him down—he vowed silently to return and do honor to his adopted clan. He knew, too, the chances that might never happen. He could be killed yet. Be driven from all Gask by the conquering redshirts. Become so enmeshed in the scrambling of the beheaded Council that his three months of fighting and fishing and sleeping alongside the Herons could retreat like last week's dreams. Life moved too quickly. Too cruelly. Isolated from all other matters, he could have spent happy years wandering the Territories alongside his clan brothers and sisters. A few months with them wasn't enough. Probably, that would be all the time he ever got.
He ran as much as he could. Neither Blays nor Lira complained. The road from Dollendun would take them to Narashtovik, but he wanted to avoid that for several miles beyond the city. There would be scouts. Even if they dressed as refugees, dozens of men had witnessed them killing Cassinder. Someone would want them dead for that.
At a farmhouse where winter wheat stirred in the summer breeze, heavy-headed and golden, Dante gave the farmer everything in his pockets for three workhorses. It was a fair price. Even so, the farmer didn't want to make the deal, but Dante didn't give him a choice.
The workhorses weren't bred for distance running. Dante didn't care. He took to the road and spurred home toward the Dead City, sweating atop the galloping beast. Four days later, it died within sight of Narashtovik. He left it in the woods by the road and ran the rest of the way.