Fourth moon, morning, day forty-one of the siege
South Gate, southern wall, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
He was too busy trying to stay alive to pay much attention to the screaming, roiling, grating of stone breaking, but he knew what it had to mean. The fuckers had finally made it through the western wall.
If there’s no one there to stop them, they’ll be running up our arses in minutes. We’ll be caught between two forces, like the fucking Blood Pass Valley all over again. Need to shut this gate.
The Mireces were piling through the breach, driven by the scent of victory and outnumbering the Rankers and Wolves opposing them. Crys ducked an axe and chopped his sword into the man’s ankle. He went down howling and Crys finished him with a hurried, graceless stab and rip to the belly.
A soldier went down to his left, screaming, pleading, ‘No, don’t, don’t!’ but the Raider’s spear tip took him under the chin, nailing his tongue to the roof of his mouth and punching through into his brain. Quick death, anyway. He didn’t see his killer killed, or Roger Weaverson, for all his youth and spots and inability to grow a beard, performing a lethal dance in between three attackers and ending them all.
‘We can’t hold, sir,’ Captain Lark gasped, grabbing Crys’s shoulder. ‘For every one we kill, three more pour through the gate. We can’t hold.’
‘Course we can,’ he said, tone cheerful despite the situation and the hot swelling of anxiety for Ash and the breach at their backs. ‘We’re going to drive these bastards back into the Gil and drown them. That’s what we’re going to do, because we don’t have any other choice.’
‘A controlled retreat—’ Lark began, breaking off to sidestep a spear thrust and punch the man wielding it in the face. Crys followed the punch with a lunge, sheathing his sword in the man’s groin and twisting as he ripped it back out.
‘You ever heard of a controlled retreat being a success, man?’ he snapped, eyes roving the battlefield. ‘Get in line. We hold.’
A howl rose up behind them and the attacking Mireces faltered. Somehow the Wolves had extricated themselves from the fight and formed up into two columns blocking the roads to either side of the square. Mireces weren’t getting any deeper into the city, at least. They had a chance now.
‘To the gate,’ Crys roared. ‘Palace Rank, wedge formation.’ The surviving Rankers, their number dwindling every minute, fought their way into a wedge aimed at the gate. Crys was the point, head down, scavenged shield on his arm. ‘On the double, ad-vance!’ he screamed and set off, driving through the Mireces. Right now it didn’t matter if they sealed a hundred Raiders in here with them, as long as they sealed the gate.
The Mireces understood what they were about and charged, the men on the outside of the wedge flinging up shields and poking out swords, anything to hold them off long enough to reach the opening.
‘Drive,’ Crys yelled, putting his shoulder into the shield, ‘drive on, bastards, or we all die.’ They responded, locking shields on the outside, the inner ranks linking arms to stiffen the spine of the wedge. They slowed but they didn’t stop, blows raining on shields and helmets, wounded men held up by their mates and still pushing, those on the outside falling and being replaced by the next man in. The Wolves split in two again, leaving only a thin line cutting off access to the city while others flanked the Mireces, distracting them from the wedge, giving the Rankers time and space.
They reached the gate and threw themselves at it. It shifted in a few feet and they yelled, straining, pushing harder. It closed a little more and then there were dozens of Wolves surrounding them, hacking down the Mireces with a savagery Crys had rarely seen.
There were more Rankers, more Wolves, falling to the blue-clad fuckers. They were all slowing, the days of attrition, the nights of fighting, combining so that the battle was more a lurching melee with edged weapons.
The gate slammed and was immediately jolted as those outside threw themselves against it. Bolts were hammered across and the wedge sagged for a few seconds, just breathing, but then the Mireces trapped inside lunged for them, knowing they’d never get out alive and determined to take as many defenders with them as they could.
Crys got into step with the soldiers to either side and set out to stop them.
There was still a score of Mireces fighting back to back to the death when another force came charging around the corner and Crys thought they were all dead. Then he recognised Major Carter through the smoke and soot and tears streaking her face.
She slowed out of her laboured, wheezing run and lowered her shield. ‘Heard there was a breach,’ she croaked.
Crys waved behind them. ‘Sealed, just finishing these last.’
Tara nodded approval.
‘Look, have you seen Ash? No one’s seen him for hours and—’ But Tara wasn’t looking at him, too busy staring past his shoulder away from the trapped Mireces’ last stand. Crys felt awareness crawl up his spine, the back of his neck and across his scalp. He turned, slow as sunset. Someone stood in a shadowed doorway and Dalli was leaning against the wall next to it, puking.
The awareness crawled on, down his face so that his eyes stung and his lips pulled away from his teeth in a feral snarl. The shield fell from his hand and he walked across the square, ignoring the fighting only strides away. Tara yelled something; he ignored her.
Dalli put her hand on his arm and tried to stop him. He pushed her gently away and stepped up to the door. It was Ash, as he’d known it would be.
Ash, whose face was a mangled ruin.
Ash, who’d been nailed to the door with a spear through his chest.
Ash.
The blood was rust-brown, puddled and smeared below him and streaked across the cobblestones of the square; he’d been dragged here, put up on display for Crys to find him. Part of him knew who must have done this, but the knowledge was distant, unimportant.
‘No.’ His voice was a whisper.
The curly hair was matted with blood, plastered to the skull.
‘No!’ Crys threw himself at the figure, wrestling with the spear. Ash’s face was gone, teeth visible through the flap of flesh hanging from his cheek and jaw. His eyes were open, staring up at the sky just past the lintel, unblinking.
‘No!’ Crys screamed, every muscle rigid with grief. Something shifted inside him. In his mind, in his body. Silence fell across the square behind him as he wrenched the spear free and pulled Ash into his arms, lowering him on to the stone, hands finding a second wound, deep and ragged, in his back, a third inside his left elbow.
Crys rocked back on to his heels and roared at the sky and the thing inside him roared as well, fury and pain and loss and a terrifying triumph that made no sense.
The scream shattered every window in the merchants’ district.
Glass blew out and fell, razor sharp, winking as the early sun caught it spinning in the air so that it fell like a splintered rainbow. Crys got his arm beneath Ash’s knees and rose to his feet, legs trembling. Clouds boiled overhead and the thing inside shifted again, flowing into every limb until Ash’s limp weight was easy to hold and Crys stood straight as an arrow and just as deadly.
He walked away from the shade of the building into the centre of the square, to the small patch of sun just peeking over the rim of the wall. Rankers melted from his path, hauling their injured and the Mireces dead out of his way; Crys had no eyes for them.
‘Don’t you fucking dare!’ he screamed at the sky when the sunlight was on them both, its rays too weak to warm the pale dough of dead flesh. ‘Dancer! Help him!’
Crys sucked in air and sobbed it out, his heart on fire, sucked in another breath and pressed his mouth to Ash’s slack, mangled lips, and exhaled into him. ‘Come back to us, love. Come back, heart-bound. We’ve got you; we’re here. Come back.’
Nothing.
A hand touched his back and then fled when Crys roared again and cracks zigzagged across the square from beneath his feet, the thing within shifting, growing until it pressed against his skin from the inside. He let it come, embraced it, pulled it close.
‘Save him. Save him and I’m yours. The godlight will lead them, to death and beyond. I swear I’ll do it, I’ll be it, whatever it is. Please. Just save him.’
Crys bent his head, tears falling on to dead flesh and gaping ruin, and he kissed Ash again. Kissed him and felt something, a stir, a movement, the bird-fragile beat of a heart, delicate as a wren’s wing. He slumped to his knees amid the cracking flagstones, right hand on the devastation of Ash’s face, left pressed to the hole in his back. Silver light flared around them, so bright against his eyelids as he breathed into Ash’s mouth.
A twitch.
A ripple.
Breath.
All around them in a wave of movement, men and women fell to their knees, wondering. Some touched fingertips to hearts, others made the sign against evil, but all watched, all bore witness.
Ash opened his eyes, blinked.
‘Welcome back,’ said the Fox God. He smiled, and His eyes flared yellow.