Gabriel felt Desiderata’s response and he almost burst into tears, so great was the relief, the sheer joy.
And the overwhelming feel of triumph.
Under his fingers, the jewel moved.
With a click, the key turned.
By now, Bad Tom had a rough line across the gate: knights and squires, pages and archers, mostly casa; some company; and a handful of mamluks and Etruscan knights and a pair of Gallish knights. The collapse and defeat of the will on their side of the gate had led to some chaotic local fighting, and no group who had entered the fight had emerged unscathed.
“Tom!” Gabriel roared. “The second it’s open, we’ll be fighting the other half.”
“I am …” Mortirmir groaned. “Gabriel. I’m exhausted.”
Petrarcha appeared on a mule. “I am not. I am ready.”
The gate was opening.
“Woodstock,” Gabriel called. “Bring me Ariosto.”
Ash felt the movement of the gate, and knew in his black heart that victory was in his taloned grasp at last.
He was using his superior mobility and his new commanders to rebuild his line and prepare for the last act; the loss of two of his puppets had disinclined him to take a direct role in the end-of-day fighting, but even as the winter clouds rolled in, he used the last of the visibility to identify the pitiful weaknesses of the alliance lines; their grip on the ridge above the road was tight, but in the open ground between Penrith and the woods, their forces were spread so thinly that any attack would break them. To the east, his lieutenant threw assault after assault at the outwalls of Albinkirk. And Orley had pushed daemons right up the slope of the abbey, and now had cave trolls burrowing into the rubble of the collapsed north tower.
Ash’s eye swept the field; at Lissen Carak he saw Ser Ricar Orcsbane sword to stone club with a cave troll, and to the south and east, he saw the bears who had fought all day alongside the Duchess Mogon, now slipping away to the west. This confirmed Ash’s thought that his enemy’s army must break up now; their alliance must be tattered, the internal stresses too great to sustain losses.
Yet something in his head was not right; his connections to his out-consciousness seemed frayed, and full of disorder, and he kept thinking of Thorn …
Why had he discarded Thorn?
And then the gate began to move. There was a sort of choked scream in the aethereal and his ally began to shout, to give orders; there was a sudden frenzy of Odine chittering in the aethereal, near and far off to the north.
Now the gate would open, and his “allies” would come through, and it would be complete, and infinitely more powerful. He would be threatened. Or defeated. By the Odine.
But of course, he had planned for this, and the Odine had served their purpose.
Ash had known this moment would come. He had made his preparations; so much simpler, because war in the aethereal was in many ways more natural and cleaner than war in the real.
Ash leapt across the nonspace of the aethereal, and sank his hermetical fangs deep into the Odine’s aethereal throat.
His betrayal was immediate, the surprise complete. The Odine, the one holding the gate, seemed distracted, even as he sucked its life away; its distant sister, the will north of the Inland Sea, shrieked in rage and swore revenge.
Ash bore down, even as the Odine under his assault began to crumple. Its collapse was ridiculously quick, and he wondered if he had misjudged its power in the first days.
The gate swung fully open in the timeless time of the aethereal.