Authors: Stephen Deas
Another thunderbolt. Lights danced in front of his eyes. His legs gave way. He stumbled and stretched out a hand to catch himself. Sparks arced from his gold-glass gauntlets to the floor.
‘Not at me, you shit-stained blankets!’ He twisted and rolled but the exalts were already done for, lightning-crisped, all of them. The short woman stooped beside him.
‘You all right, boss? Halfteeth caught you with his lightning.’
‘He did, did he?’ Tuuran picked himself up. His legs felt taut as though every muscle had clenched tight. More thunderbolts bellowed behind him. His men defending the stairs. He turned for Halfteeth, thought about punching him a few times and making him Noteeth, then thought better of it. ‘This witch-made gold-glass armour might mostly turn our lightning, but fucking ouch and be more fucking careful.’
The exalts had been guarding an ornate double door of mahogany with the seal of the sun set in gold right in the middle of it. Mahogany and gold. Meant something, that did. Crazy had told him so once. Something important. Couldn’t remember what, but sod it: guarded meant something behind that was valuable. Made it as good a way to go as any.
Cracks of lightning shook the walls. He had enough men at the stairs to hold them now, lined up behind their shields and with Chay-Liang’s wands to rain thunder-death down all day if they had to.
‘Hold your nerve, lads, that’s all you need to do.’ The last of his makeshift legion were arriving, stacking their sleds, slinking in slow and reluctant. The ones who didn’t want to be here, who didn’t know what to do. Tuuran turned back to the mahogany door. Couldn’t see how to open it, but a door was a door and he had an axe. The first blow hacked off the seal of the sun. The next splintered enough wood to show him the metal bars across the back of it.
‘Shit!’ He grabbed Halfteeth. ‘These doors open, you murder anyone who comes out. Got it?’ He ran the length of the gallery, back to the balcony, yelling at the soldiers still coming in to get out of the way until he found the men at the back who’d come with a crate of the enchantress’s bombs. Black powder. Would make life interesting, this would. All the way across the sea he’d drilled and drilled and drilled his tiny ragtag legion, even in the weeks before they left, between stockpiling food and water for the journey. Even the ones who were next to useless knew how to form a wall of shields and keep back dragon-fire. They knew how to protect one another and they knew how to throw lightning. A few knew how to fight with a sword or an axe or a mace, but they learned that on their own time, because when you had a lightning thrower on each arm, who gave a shit for swords and axes …?
Bombs were different. They hadn’t practised bombs. He picked up one in each hand and weighed them. Didn’t even know how hard he had to throw them or how far away he needed to be to be safe.
‘That’s one big pair of tits, boss.’
The lightning from the top of the stairs was getting fierce. Crossbow quarrels stuck out of the walls and pinged off glass shields. He saw more than one already cracked. Plenty of repair work to keep the witch busy after they were done. He shoved the bombs at whoever it was with the smart mouth. Didn’t know if dropping one was enough to make it explode. They were glass, so he reckoned maybe it was.
‘They’ll bring scorpions to the stairs before much longer. When they do, throw these at them. That’ll shut them up.’ Not that half these soldiers even knew what a scorpion was, but he figured they’d learn quick enough once they had one pointed at them. He grabbed the sled with the rest of the bombs, sprinted down the gallery, snatched hold of Halfteeth. ‘You two!’ He shoved the sled against the door, then pulled Halfteeth and the short woman back a good way because he had no idea how big these bombs really were.
‘We cover the men behind us.’ He pushed Halfteeth to one side of the gallery and pulled the woman beside him to the other. He pushed her against the wall and set his shield beside hers. They probably looked ridiculous, him and her together, him as big as he was and her small enough she was almost a child. ‘I’m sure you’ve got a name, but once you’re in the legion you get another. You can be Tiny.’ He turned his head and roared back down the gallery. ‘Everybody duck!’ Gave it a moment to sink in and then threw a bolt of lightning at the box of bombs on the sled beside the door. Cringed.
‘Tiny?’ said the woman beside him when nothing happened. ‘That’s shit.’
‘You’re in the legion. You take what you’re given.’
The woman propped her shield, kicked over a statue and smashed it with an ashgar as tall as she was. She picked up the statue’s head and offered it to Tuuran. ‘Last man who said that ended up with a trowel rammed through his eye,’ she said. ‘Halfteeth calls me Snacksize. Still a bit shit, but I’ve let him long enough that it’ll do. You want to throw this at those bombs of yours or shall I brain you with it?’
Tuuran shrugged. ‘
You
throw it. Bombs go bang, you can be called whatever you like; bombs do nothing and you put up with what I choose.’
The woman snorted, gave him a look and threw. The explosion hit like a wall, hard enough it tossed him off his feet. Pieces of glass faster than arrows shattered on his shield, a cascade of noise, or maybe that was his ears ringing from the explosion. Choking sulphurous smoke filled the gallery, making him weep. He trotted forward, spluttering and waving at the air as if that would make the stench go away. Pieces of twisted metal hung from the stonework, but the doors were gone. Not so much staved in as disintegrated. A good chunk of floor had gone the same way.
No time for thinking, not now. He ran and jumped the gap. The room beyond – what was left of it – was square and as tall as the gallery. Richer than Tuuran had ever imagined possible, or at least it had been before some vandalous bugger had let off a bomb right beside it. Rugs ran from wall to wall; they looked so thick and soft that they might have made him want to take off his boots and walk barefoot if they hadn’t been on fire in a few places and smouldering in a good few more. A tapestry covered the far wall and told, in embroidered reds and golds and bronzes and every colour between, the story that everyone in the Dominion knew, of the creation of the first men by the holy sun. There were paintings on the other walls, all portraits, a good few of them slightly shredded now, bookcases that had toppled in the shudder of the blast, a credenza, tables with bottles and glasses scattered and smashed. A pair of swords hung drooping from the far wall, one with a hilt of pure gold …
‘Come on! Come on!’
Shallow spiral steps rose curling through the middle of the room. Tuuran bounded up them, Halfteeth and Snacksize and another man right behind him. Speed was all that mattered, times like this. Shock. Wouldn’t be long before the exalts brought priests with their sunfire. Maybe those rockets from the harbour, if they still had any left. When that happened, even the witch’s lightning wouldn’t be enough …
The stairs ran through a library. Books and what looked like an alchemist’s workbench. No people. Running footsteps from above. Tuuran raised his shield as two soldiers head to toe in gold plate came clattering down at him. He let lightning fly and then threw himself out of the way as the two exalts tumbled past down the stair, arms and legs twisted and flailing and with a smell of burned skin lingering behind them. He clutched his ears, ringing from the explosion and never mind all these fucking thunderbolts. Took a moment trying to shake the noise out of his head. Halfteeth and his other friend pushed past; Tuuran chased on, still shaking himself. Rattled his bones, all that thunder …
The steps spat them into a square room. First thing Tuuran saw was a man in a yellow robe. Second thing was Halfteeth’s friend bursting into flames, screaming, haloed in golden fire and burned to ash. Halfteeth fired both his lightning wands. Yellow robe flew off his feet, up into the air and smashed into a wall. Snacksize caught him in the face with another bolt. He fell like a sack of dead meat. Twitched a few times, skin black and flaking. A surge of movement came at Halfteeth from behind, a fat man wearing the clothes of a king and wielding a hatchet, about to bring it down on Halfteeth’s head. Tuuran swung his axe and took hand and hatchet together, and then something hit him from behind, staggering him. He whirled. A man with a sword who’d been stupid enough to swing it like a club and not take a hopeful stab for the gaps in the gold-glass. Tuuran roared. The swordsman jumped away, but that only landed him right next to Snacksize, who punched him in the face with an armoured gauntlet. Down he went.
Took a few more minutes of kicking in doors and throwing lightning before Tuuran realised he’d lopped a hand off the arch-solar of Merizikat himself, and the buffoon with the sword was his son and heir. He dragged them back to the gallery and the stairs and held them there, one each side, and let them scream at the soldiers in the hall below until everyone got the message that it was all over, and could they please stop shooting crossbows at their king. The Black Moon, last Tuuran had seen, was enjoying himself with the half-god sport of disintegrating priests, and her Holiness and her dragon were out over the estuary explaining with judicious fire why none of the ships anchored there should think about sailing away just now, and so it all got a bit awkward when the arch-solar started blubbering questions like ‘What do you want?’ and ‘Why are you here?’ Mostly they seemed to think it was him who ought to have the answers, which was a bugger, because Tuuran hadn’t the first idea why they’d come to Merizikat at all, never mind started on sacking the place. Didn’t help that he was in a shitty mood that had been getting steadily worse ever since they’d left the islands. Zafir. Dragons. Half-gods. Fuck the lot of them.
He went looking. Wasn’t supposed to take long. Five minutes on a sled to the basilica to find the Black Moon, but no such luck. He saw her Holiness on the back of her dragon snatch up a little skiff from the river and use it to scoop water and dump it on the burning city somewhere. Flame knew who that left in charge in the palace. Halfteeth, probably, which wasn’t likely to end well. He supposed he ought to care, but then her Holiness headed off up that way, and that was good enough.
He found Berren wandering the city. Wasn’t hard to spot the flashes of silver light now and then. Clouds of dirty smoke drifted through the docks, and parts of the riverside slums were on fire. Berren was meandering about the little squares and squashed alleys behind the basilica. He had a sword in one hand and a shield in the other, yelling and shouting challenges at anyone who would listen. Judging by the trail of dead he’d already got himself into a fight or two. Tuuran watched him walk up to a gang of looters, out making the most of the chaos, and pick a fight with far too many to have a chance of walking away. He watched Berren take one of them down before someone caught his legs with a spear. Over he went, and the rest were on him, knives and fists raised, a bloody and brutal murder, except that as the first blade fell there was a flash of silver light and half of them exploded into greasy black ash. The rest had the sense to run. Berren staggered back to his feet, howling at them how they were cowards. He might have gone after them too, until Tuuran came and stood in his way. There was a madness in Berren’s face. The old madness that had once got him the name Crazy Mad, but Tuuran couldn’t call him that any more. Crazy had been the name of his friend.
‘He won’t let you,’ said Tuuran curtly. He felt the Crowntaker’s hurt, felt it deep. Poor bastard was trying to get himself killed, but they both knew it wasn’t going to work, and surely he’d tried enough times now to give up. ‘He won’t. He just won’t. You know that.’ He put a hand on Berren’s shoulder and then glanced at the basilica. The great doors hung open and the insides were a black-scorched ruin. Wafts of a fine dark ash breezed out in gasps, as if the basilica itself was wheezing a last few dying breaths. ‘What—’ But no. He didn’t want to know what had happened in there. Really, really didn’t.
Berren closed his eyes and collapsed into Tuuran as though he was some grief-stricken lover. ‘Why, Tuuran? Why don’t I just die?’
Tuuran shook him. Made Berren meet his eye. Peered closely. ‘Is he in there, Crazy?’
‘Always.’
‘Is he listening?’
‘Always that too, big man.’ The Crowntaker pulled away. Turned his back. ‘He’s missing a piece, just like me. Just like Skyrie was before me. It burns him up, doing the things he does. He’s weak from the fight now.’ Berren shrugged. ‘Thought that might be enough to make it end, but no. Nothing ever is. But yes, he’s here. He hears you.’
Tuuran gripped Berren and spun him round so they were face to face. ‘I don’t know what any of this is any more,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why we came here. I don’t know what he wants. I killed a round dozen men today and I haven’t the faintest idea why.’ He snarled and spat. ‘I don’t know shit about anything – never did – and death comes when death comes, but a man should surely know the why of it when he takes another’s life. I meant what I said. If there’s a way to take this half-god out of you, Silver King or not, I’ll find it. My life. You hear me? And when I find that way, I’ll stop at nothing to see it through.’
Berren nodded, though not like he really believed it. He was staring at something on Tuuran’s neck. ‘What’s that?’
‘What’s what?’ Tuuran ran a finger over his skin. Yes, a roughness. A patch of it. Had those starting up all over the place these last few weeks. Bloody nuisance. ‘Chafing.’ Or that’s what he told himself. Or maybe some sort of stupid rash. Had to be. Too much other shit to worry about for it to be anything else.
Berren gave him a hard look, long and steady. ‘Chafing, big man? Really?’
‘You think you know better?’
‘I think you need to go see your alchemist, that’s what I think.’ Eventually Berren turned away, the light of the Black Moon gone from his eyes. ‘Never mind. Ah shit, big man, do what you want. Let’s get drunk.’
A preposterously dumb idea with the Black Moon about, a city in flames and barely fallen before a tiny conquering army that he was supposed to be leading, but Tuuran had been past caring for weeks now. And yes, if he was honest for a moment, he knew damn well what that patch of rough skin was, and all its little friends he kept hidden out of sight. Fucking dragons. Fucking Hatchling Disease from the fucking hatchling back from that night on the islands; and so yes, all things considered he reckoned that maybe everyone else could manage without him for a while, whether they liked it or not.