"Your horse is good," he said to Blays, who offered no reply. Down to a single opponent, Blays' swings had become less defensive, wider arcs meant to take advantage of the strength his arms had gained these last few months. "Hey. I said your horse is good."
"I heard," Blays said through his teeth. He countered a few blows then leaned into an offensive of his own. He struck successively higher, and on the fourth swing he twisted his wrist, giving it an upstroke, knocking his opponent's sword up over his head. The man regained enough balance to start a cut aimed at Blays' neck, but by then Blays' own blade had passed back down and opened his throat. The man dropped away. Blays spun in a quick circle and saw the only men near them were corpses. He ran past Dante to the horse and wriggled his way up into the saddle. Dante gazed dumbly at the blood that covered his hands and sword. He wiped his weapon on the coat of a dead man, then brushed his hands in the wet grass.
"Come on!" Blays shouted.
"What, both of us?" Dante said, wandering up beside the beast. It smelled like sweat and dust and hair.
"Now, you god damn dunce!"
"Right." Dante got a foot in the stirrup and swung himself up behind Blays. "Sorry. I'm a little—" He tapped the side of his head.
"What's new," he heard Blays mutter. Blays wheeled the horse around and spurred it north along the right-hand side of the road. A couple arrows whisked past their head. Dante twisted around and gave the forest the finger. They swung around the top edge of the battle, giving it wide berth, working their way toward the rear. After a few moments the cold air filling his lungs and rushing over his skin began to clear his head.
"You're pretty good," he said.
"Shut up," Blays said, glancing quickly between the ground ahead and the slaughter at the carriages. As they curved around the lines of combat Dante saw streaks of fire lancing out from the hands of council men who'd looked too old to walk without a staff. He laughed, then fell silent at the scent of scorched flesh. Samarand's men had repelled another surge and were slowly driving the rebels back. Blays cut across the road and through a makeshift camp of wounded men. As they approached the rear of the caravan two horsemen rode out and hailed them.
"It's Blays! I've got Dante Galand with me!"
"Alive?" one of them asked with professional interest. Blays reined in the horse and dropped down to the ground.
"Takes more than that rabble to kill me," Dante said. He hopped down and staggered to one side, arms wheeling. "I'm all right."
"What's been going on?" Blays said to one of the riders, a man whose thick black hair was clipped short.
"Looked bad until the priests come into it," the man said in halting Mallish.
"And now?"
"Not so bad."
"We need to go help them," Dante said. He took a step forward. Blays planted a hand on his chest, unbalancing him again.
"No we don't. Look at you, you're like a drunk two-year-old." He glanced over at the sounds of battle, then at the rider, then finally back to Dante. His mouth worked over itself. "What if..?"
Dante frowned, confused. Then he caught the glint in Blays' eyes and shook his head.
"Not until the Tree!" he whispered loudly.
"But it's so mixed up right now. No one could tell."
"I don't even know what's going on," Dante said. He walked around the caravan to get a view of the fight, letting his hand trail along the side of one of the wagons. Blays' feet crunched through leaves and dirt behind him. Dante turned a corner and gazed out at the swarms of men, swords and pikes flashing in the dim light. He wondered vaguely if Larrimore were still alive. He could make out Samarand, her thick black braid swinging behind her head as she called out orders and weaved her hands to form the nether before unleashing it in a booming flare amongst the enemy ranks, and after a moment he'd counted all six priests of the council on their feet and lobbing death before them, but he didn't see Samarand's Hand.
It wasn't long before the rebels began to retreat. Once it had begun, any meaningful points of battle were over in seconds. Men turned to see open gaps in their lines and the backs of the men who'd just been beside them. Before them, the priests blasted fire and chaos. They fell back swiftly, dropping weapons, stumbling over the wounded and the dead, a motion that began with a handful and ended in a total retreat. Samarand's forces gave chase for a few yards, hacking down anyone within range, then pulled up and cheered. The fighting on their southern flank followed suit within half a minute. The rebels disappeared into the lines of trees and the air stilled to the rustle of pines and the groans of the dying.
Dante sighed and as he felt the air streaming through his nostrils he realized he hadn't been thinking clearly since he'd last drawn the nether. His senses crept back to him like dogs frightened off by the shouts of their master. He saw soldiers put away blades and sink to their knees, huffing for breath, faces spattered with mud and blood, eyes shadowed in the twilight. Others prodded among the prone bodies, hauling off the conscious ones to the carriages, where the priests did what they could to stabilize their wounds. The stink of spilled stomachs clung to the air. The wounded rolled in the grass, sobbing, voices choked with snot. Bodies carpeted the field between the road and the forest. He'd never seen so many. All the men he'd killed along the way to Narashtovik suddenly swum before his eyes: the two at the temple, the neeling, the three in the alley in Bressel, the tracker by the river, the two in Whetton, the uncounted watchmen at the hanging, Will Palomar and his men in the woods, Hansteen and his rebels at Gabe's monastery in Shay, the assassin in his cell in the Citadel. A few dozen—and every one after his own life, he reminded himself—but a fraction of those dead and dying in this place. A drop in an ocean to all who must fall in the real wars. However high his count might be, it wouldn't fill a single row in any of the endless cemeteries of Narashtovik. Dante shuddered, not for what he looked upon so much as how he'd come to see it. He tried to rise and didn't trust his knees to hold him up. He lowered himself back to the dirt and for a long time felt nothing but the hollow ringing of his body.
Larrimore appeared after a few minutes, blood running freely down his face from a wound on his scalp, but Dante knew head wounds always looked worse than they were. He touched the scrapes on his own face, the nick in his ear, the cuts to his shoulder and ribs. The shoulder was tender to the touch, still leaking blood. He shook his head, gazing out at the triage.
"Hard to tell who won," he said to no one in particular. He cleared his throat against the catch he'd felt. Scores of bodies tamped down the grass every way he looked. A full third of their force was dead or would die from their injuries, he'd bet; others would be left without arms or legs or would spool out the rest of their days hobbling, unable to move any faster than a jerky walk.
"Do you feel that?" Blays said.
"What?" Dante perked up his ears, strained for whatever Blays was lifting his head toward. Out on the fields, men with naked blades stalked among the bodies, pausing here and there to hack once or twice at the fallen. Not all of their targets wore the irregular clothes of the rebels.
"The clarity. Like my dad said." Blays held his hand before his face and stretched out his fingers as if to touch something only he could see. "Everything is closer. Don't you feel it?"
"I feel tired," Dante said. "Is that a revelation?"
Blays gave him a sharp look. "I'm not kidding."
Neither am I, Dante didn't say. He drew a deep breath and tried to ignore the throbs of pain throughout his body. After a moment he understood the pain was a part of whatever Blays was talking about and he stopped trying anything at all, letting his eyes see the men gathering bodies, his ears hear the murmur of their low voices and the weeping of the dying, letting his nerves feel the shell of his body telling him the pulse of its pain. Everything about the battle had been so fast. Where was the glory? Before, at the end of things, he'd often felt a thrill so deep it was like being touched by the hand of the god. It was as if something had been proven. If a god touched him now, he thought his bones would crumble. The wind picked up, hissing through the pines, tousling the grasses. In fifty years, no one would remember this. The earth had forgotten it already.
"Your father was right," he said.
"He died, you know. A few years ago. Hired for border work in one of the baronies. He just didn't come back."
"I didn't know that," Dante said.
Blays nodded. He unsheathed his sword and planted it point-first in the ground. He leaned on it, watching the men stack the bodies.
"It was odd, with all the fights he'd been in, he'd die in one of those jokes they called a war."
"Someone shot my horse from under me today. I should have died."
"Why do you think you didn't?" Blays smiled with half his mouth. "Fate?" He glanced to where Samarand was ordering men around. "Destiny?"
"I taught myself to do things other men can't," Dante said. Blays' smile faded and Dante reached into his pocket and touched the torchstone he'd had since he was a kid. "My dad died when I was young, too."
"That's too bad. He must have been something."
Larrimore bounded up to them out of the gloom. He had a handkerchief pressed against the still-leaking wound on his forehead, but he smiled at them through the blood drying on his face.
"Oh good," he said. "I'd heard you were dead."
"Wouldn't want to trouble your sleep," Dante said.
"Why so glum? Did you have to kill someone?"
"I lost count."
Larrimore chuckled, then stepped closer and bent to examine Dante's face.
"You're all torn up! Go and see a priest, will you?"
Dante waved a hand. "They've got bigger problems."
"I don't want your humors all corrupted by some little stab. You already seem to have a preponderance of bile."
"I can take care of myself," Dante said. Larrimore looked skeptical. "How'd the battle go?"
"They had numbers and terrain, so I'd call it a success," he said, shrugging at the bodies being dragged into piles. He considered Blays. "Rettinger says you did all right."
"All right? I saved your pet's life here," Blays said, tipping his head at Dante.
"We'll get you a medal."
"I'd prefer some whiskey."
"Whiskey's fleeting. Badges of honor last until you have to pawn them." Larrimore removed the handkerchief from his wound and turned a critical eye on whatever it had sopped up. "What am I talking to you two for? I've got things to do. If you're not too busy sitting on your asses, you could lend a hand out there."
"Sorry," Dante said, stretching out his legs. "Single-handedly winning the battle is exhausting work."
Larrimore snorted and left them to go confer with Samarand over in the road. They spoke and nodded at each other for a minute and a minute after that a rider trotted south back toward the dead city. An hour later the troops had finished gathering the corpses. The field stunk with the dizzying smell of oil. They laid a torch to the bodies and the smell got much worse. Samarand marched them a couple miles north, just enough to get upwind and find a decent hill to camp on if the rebels surprised them with another attack. Behind them, the fires kept burning, spitting greasy smoke into the night, clogging the skies between them and the lights of Narashtovik. Like that they were gone, the ashes of their bodies mingled with the ashes of the earth. Were their spirits with Arawn? Dante stretched out beneath his cloak, watched the columns of smoke cast a haze over the stars, dulling their bright points to dying embers. How old was the world? How many men had fed it with their bones in hopes their children wouldn't have to do the same? He meant to stay up till the fires burnt themselves to darkness, but sleep slapped him down like a rogue wave. For the first night since he'd killed the assassin, he didn't wake once before it was time to move on.
17
The northern road stretched on. Mounted scouts came and went and exchanged words with Samarand and Larrimore and Rettinger. They'd scared up a new horse for Dante and he and Blays rode a few yards off the road on the right edge of the column. Other than a sporadic breeze, the woods were silent. The surviving soldiers joked in low tones, but the proud sense of purpose that had filled their spirits the day they'd left the city had been replaced by something more somber, a humorless wariness. Dante's entire body ached like he'd been sewn in a bag and rolled down a mountain. He checked the cuts on his shoulder and ribs for excessive redness, but other than some dried blood and angry bruising they looked all right. He touched the nether, meaning to soothe his wounds, but the powers felt stirred-up, fickle, and he let them be. Best to be rested, if another attack came.
It started to snow late that morning, at first with a few small flakes no more likely to accumulate than the ash drifting around a campfire. Within minutes fat, amorphous bits were dashing against Dante's face. He pulled up his hood. It was a wonder (or maybe just a tendency of coasts, for Bressel's weather was just as weird) it had held off that long. By the afternoon two inches coated the ground. He heard a scout tell Larrimore they'd found a few tracks a couple miles east, but nothing indicative of the remaining rebel troops, and when they encamped on a small hill that night they slept without interruption.
The land swelled and dipped in old, gentle hills, masking the riders that trailed them until the foreign troops crested a ridge less than a mile behind Samarand's force. Dante freed his blade. Larrimore rode up and down the column, loosing orders like arrows; the pikemen dropped to the rear, but the procession marched on. The riders advanced with no apparent haste and it was the better part of an hour until Dante could make out the white icons of Barden stitched into their cloaks. He let his horse plod on while he counted men. Forty more riders, hoods raised against the snow that continued to spit from the low clouds. The foot soldiers saw their colors and smiled, some for the first time since the battle. The riders caught up before noon and Rettinger dropped back to exchange greetings and news. Not many men at all, in the scheme of things, but enough, Dante would wager, to hush the schemes of any enemy scouts.