Kaith heard someone shouting his name, but it was too far away to mean anything. The great golden-brown beast had broken their line—had, in fact, laid waste to that line—and spelled the end for them despite his best efforts.
He tried to move, though he wasn’t sure what had prompted the action. It was over, after all. Wasn’t it?
His legs seemed as if they’d fallen asleep. He felt his muscles move, felt his feet scrabbling for purchase, but they kept sliding on various pieces of debris.
He had done all he could. He’d made a plan that had been tested in the crucible of Westsong. Had organized Ricgerd’s defense. He’d even snapped Gordan out of his spiraling, death-seeking state in time for the man to make a real and true difference. And in the end? What had it all come to?
There was no time to set fire to cover our flight. The best part of Ricgerd’s defenders lay dead or dying at the hands of that… that thing. Raegus crushed. Huron, Terrek, Ricgerd, Gordan, and the rest… He realized he had no idea where any of them were. Falxes fall… Let them have made it to safety. Let all of this death and misery have accomplished … something.
And still, someone was calling his name. He knew the voice, didn’t he? It was growing closer, but it sounded ever more desperate.
He tried again to move his legs, to find his feet, but it was no good. He couldn’t see much—just a pale portion of sky spread above him. It looked like a tear in the surrounding, formless black.
I’m under something, I think. He turned his head, hearing the world as if through a distant, opened window. His vision swam. He caught a nose full of what almost had to be a fresh application of oil.
“Sir Kaith! Kaith! Where in all the hells is he?” Was that … Ricgerd’s voice?
His head was beginning to clear … and throb. He tried to move his bright arm, but it was pinned by something. His dim-side shoulder was trapped as well, though he could feel the familiar presence of his heater still strapped to that arm.
“Sir Kaith!” Huron’s voice. He was quite sure of it.
“Ea’ have no time, Lord. Ee’ve got folk—loyal folk waitin’ for ee in th’ braided tower!”
That’s Alec-Aleks, I think.
Ricgerd did his best to ignore him. It worked for a few beats, but it wasn’t long before Alec-Aleks tried again.
“Ricgerd, ee’re wastin’ time. Leave the worthless wandought to ’is fate! Tavin an’ the lads’re waitin’ tae give ee proper council! “
Kaith felt his face twist into a smirk at the venom in the man’s voice. A wandought was a drunkard’s insult. In his father’s day, it had meant a useless or weak man. In inns and taverns all over Thorion, it had changed its meaning to a man unable to make iron for the forge. A man either too old or too young to make love … or at least to father children.
“Sir Kaith put his life on the very line, Aleks Silverson. The goblins won’t stare up at that light-leaching thing for long. Now help me! That, or leave me! Just… Havoc’s Horn, shut up!”
But Aleks wasn’t finished. He sounded both angry and sulky. “I was in the press as well! He weren’t the only one. N’all he did was flutter his stewhole and try ’n steal eer glory!”
They were getting closer. Better still, his throbbing head was beginning to fade.
Bright-arm’s pinned. He tried to suck in air, but coughed it out at once. The oil fumes and the stench of the goblins were too much. Out of reflex, he tried to bring his dim arm to his face as he coughed. When the world stopped spinning, he realized something else. My bright arm’s pinned, but my dim’s only pinned at the shoulder. Shield’s still strapped to my arm. Well then? Let’s see if…
He curled the shield in toward his body, then slammed it against the cobbles. Thwack!
Then again. Thwack!
“Kaith! Kaith!” Huron’s voice, and with such obvious relief that Kaith felt his eyes overspill in gratitude. “I have heem! Here! He’s just here!”
Kaith felt the pressure he hadn’t fully registered lift from his body. It had come from a combination of the overturned handcart he’d used to gather fire supplies and an armored body flung atop it.
Ricgerd embraced him, nearly breaking his ribs. “I knew you lived!”
Kaith grinned, then shook his head … and wished he hadn’t. The pain was instant.
“Sir Kaith?” Huron’s voice, full of concern.
“It’s nothing.” He looked around, trying to gauge the battlefield. He’d been thrown almost to the postern gate. At first he saw only the dead laying broken all around. Then he saw the press of the living as they screamed at and trampled one another in an effort to get through.
Kaith pushed himself away from Ricgerd and the others. He walked toward them, hoping he had the endurance to shout without falling over.
“Sir Kaith? What are you—”
“Wiiiiiiiick!” He was surprised at how long he was able to keep the word hung in the air. For a wonder, his head seemed to clear rather than darken with pain.
The thirty or so folk trying to injure their neighbors stopped to look at him. They’d been shocked by the noise. Their faces screamed the truth. They’d only turned out of fear of what else might be about to happen to them.
“We will keep them off you while you head outside. If we have to—”
But it was no good. They turned at once, ignoring him and returning to their panicked exodus.
Ricgerd put a hand on his shoulder, smirking. “Brave, sensible, and useless. They’re dead, just as we are.” His face made it clear he believed that, but it didn’t seem to worry him much.
As Kaith met his eyes, Ricgerd nodded over his shoulder. Kaith looked … and gaped. Where the devil with the morning star had last stood, there now appeared to be a yawning rip in the very air. It seemed to devour the light around it, save at its edges. These were painted in that same blinding white that had surrounded the creature when it had undergone its change. As he watched, the light from the edges began to stretch in toward the rift’s center.
Then his eyes fell on Gordan, or at least what was left of him. He’d been driven into the cobbles. So much of him had been rendered into blood and gore, but there could be no doubt.
“Gordan…”
Kaith could still feel Ricgerd’s hand on one of his shoulders. Huron moved to stand at the other. Both men kept their silence for as long as they dared.
When he found his voice again, Kaith asked what he felt to be the obvious, but far more pressing question. “And what in all the hells that ever were is … that?”
He realized how useless and unanswerable that question was. He was, therefore, taken aback when someone did, in fact, provide an answer.
“The beginning,” said Huron. “The beginning of the end … of all endings.”