Rennic returned from a further conference with the remaining guards and their captain, tightening the straps on his armour as he traversed the rubble-strewn courtyard. Chel picked at his own mail shirt, still hanging together despite its rough treatment, heavy and hot in the day’s thick heat.
‘They’re making preparations,’ the big man said, then stopped and looked Chel up and down. Something burned behind his eyes, something dark and driven, but it wasn’t aimed at Chel. ‘You got the strength for this, little man? You want to head back, sit this one out with Lemon and Foss, I’d get it. You need the rest.’
Chel shook his head. ‘I’m fine. Can’t leave you unsupervised, anyway. You’d only fuck something up.’ In truth, he was shattered, but as long as he kept moving he could push the exhaustion from his mind and his muscles. And Rennic’s look worried him. He’d made little acknowledgment of Foss’s mortal state, but after the violence of his reaction to Whisper’s loss, after what had happened with Grassi, Chel could not shake the notion that the big man was about to do something suicidally reckless. Loveless’s words echoed in his head. Watch him for me.
Rennic nodded, that snorted half-smile again. ‘No doubt, little man.’
Chel followed him toward the low, blocky form of the third gate.
‘What’s the plan? Let them come at the gate, hold the walls?’
‘Come at the gate? At this gate? Are you soft, little man? This is the last gate, the oldest, the weakest. This fucker hasn’t been closed in centuries. A stiff breeze could level it. No, we’re going out to face them.’
‘Leave the walls? But—’
‘Yes, yes.’ Rennic bent and hefted a spear from a rack, testing its edge and flex, whistling it around his head and body in a sudden display of martial prowess. ‘Hurkel will be leading them. No way they’d be coming otherwise. That arse-faced fuck has made this personal.’
‘And that means we should ride to meet him?’
‘He’s arrogant, selfish, self-important – he’ll want to be the one to break the last gate. Take him down, those red pricks will be dead in their tracks. Cut the head off the snake.’
‘Why not just shoot him? Kosh’s crossbow is fixed, right?’
He snorted, blew dust from the spear-tip. ‘Little man, this is something that needs to be seen to be done.’
‘And you think you can beat him, one-to-one? He’s smashed everyone he’s faced to mush, and he’s plated like an engine. It’s not like I can hit his knees again – tried that in Black Rock, and it damned near got us executed. It did for Dalim and Palo.’
‘But this time we’re not locked in a tower, and the terrain favours us. And old prune-face has a fatal weakness.’
‘What?’
‘You. He thirsts for you, little man. And that’s going to come in handy.’
The day darkened, thick clouds the colour of a coal-face sliding overhead. Somewhere over the plains, thunder rumbled, echoing from the mountains. Rennic’s manic smile widened.
‘I’d say there’s a storm coming, wouldn’t you?’
He flexed the spear and made for the gate.
***
He was at the front, of course, rolling on his chariot. His wolf head was lost or burned away, the skin beneath livid and scarred, and great black-scorched plates coated his form, but Brother Hurkel still moved with power and menace. He was coming for them, and behind him marched a legion of confessors. It baffled Chel that there could still seem so many of them, after the losses they’d suffered above and below ground. Corvel’s army was no longer immense, but it still overwhelmed the meagre defenders who remained.
Rennic stood on the bridge, a few paces from the lip of the long-wagon’s boards. Wreckage littered the bridge’s ruined stump, chunks of stone and wooden fragments, even a couple of near-whole kegs, blasted clear of the conflagration that had sundered the structure beneath. Rennic hooked one of the kegs with a foot, then rolled it beneath his boot as he waited for Hurkel to arrive. Chel wondered if it still contained black powder, and if Rennic was in danger of blowing his leg off before their enemy even reached them.
Hurkel reined in his chariot before the long-wagon, crimson face lit with delight at the sight of Rennic and Chel, alone before the ruins of the collapsed gatehouse. Somewhere behind them, Chel hoped, were the last of the Serican forces, dug in behind the stones, ready to spring to their aid. He watched Hurkel dismount, his eyes like black marbles in his beetroot face, his chuckles lost to the breeze. Chel’s grip tightened on his headless mace.
‘Sand-crab! Faithless one! Have you come to treat? The Shepherd is ready to hear your confession.’
He lumbered up onto the bridging wagon, stomping over the reinforced timbers, a heavy club in his remaining hand. Behind him, the confessors formed up behind the wagon, their front rank tucked behind what shields they had salvaged. Hurkel stopped before the giant wheels that marked the wagon’s extension, where its long platform projected across the span of shattered bridge. It seemed he was in no hurry to cross the void. He was still calling to them, arms wide and grinning.
Rennic stopped rolling the keg, flicked it on end. His eyes were black, his knuckles white around the spear’s haft.
‘Oh. Shut. Up, you metal meat-stick. You want the Andriz?’ He nodded at Chel, who tried to look imperious. ‘Come and get him, mangle-bollocks.’
Rennic took a step forward, and Chel went with him. Rennic paused, looked at him sidelong.
Chel pre-empted the admonition. ‘You’re not doing this alone. You can’t take him by yourself.’
Rennic nodded. ‘You’re right. But remember—’
The fist caught him under the ribcage, driving upwards, bursting the air from his lungs. He reeled, wheezing, his diaphragm in spasm, as Rennic’s arms guided him down and backward.
‘Have a seat, little man. I’ll call for you.’
Then Rennic surged away, spear leading, leaving Chel propped on the upended keg, arms wrapped around his midriff, gasping for air.
Rennic charged toward Hurkel, pounding onto the long-wagon’s span. He was roaring. Hurkel mirrored his roar, giving a great bellow of ecstatic fury, then barrelled forward onto the wagon’s platform. It bowed but did not budge against the stones.
They met with a thunder of steel, Rennic leaping fully from the boards to drive the spear at Hurkel’s face. The armoured confessor twisted, shielding himself with one metal arm and threw out a shower of sparks as the spear-tip screeched over his metal covering. Then around came the club, whistling through the air as Rennic ducked.
The spear returned, jabbing, driving, smashing against Hurkel’s steel shell. He was too big to duck, too ponderous to dodge, and Rennic landed hammer-blow after hammer-blow against the confessor’s carapace, driving the bigger man back toward the bulk of the wagon. Great booms echoed over the gorge as each jab found its mark, drowning Hurkel’s snarls and curses as he gave ground under the assault. Behind him, the line of confessors shifted, their glances twitchy; a few were taking forward steps toward the wagon’s tail.
Rennic’s attacks were slowing, his onslaught ebbing as Hurkel shuffled back toward his lines. For all its savage fury, all Rennic had to show for the dozen hits he’d landed were as many nicks and scratches on Hurkel’s blackened plate. The metal beneath shone through the soot and tar-streaked surface and Rennic’s spear-tip was already notched and blackened from the contact. Rennic ducked left then snaked right, throwing out the spear again, at last catching Hurkel’s cheek above the metal wall. But the bigger man rode the hit, rolling around it and snagging the spear’s haft with his pronged half-hand.
Hurkel twisted, and Rennic stumbled. Around swung the club again, and Rennic released the spear and threw himself sideways to avoid its crushing blow. The club smashed through the spear in Hurkel’s fork-grip. Its shattered pieces dropped to the scarred wood beneath.
Rennic was back on his feet, a knife in his hand, but the mood on the ruined bridge had changed. Now Hurkel was ascendant, taking steady, heavy steps toward his adversary; Rennic matched his even pace in retreat, snatching swift glances to the sides where the gorge yawned beneath them.
Chel’s breath had still not returned. He tried to gulp in air, but his lungs were unresponsive, intransigent. His head rocked and bobbed, his knees weak, watching Rennic forced back onto the long, creaking platform with the grinning Hurkel in pursuit. The confessors on the bridge had begun to chant. Hurkel matched his steps to the rhythm of their words.
Rennic tried an attack, a feint then a slash with the knife toward Hurkel’s bloodied face. Too quick, the confessor’s arm was up, then Rennic was falling backward as the club hissed past his arm. He turned back toward Chel, meeting his eyes, opening his mouth to speak. This was the signal. Chel tried to stand, to be ready, but he could not force the air down inside him.
The club hit Rennic square in the back, and with a cry, he flew. His body lurched across the platform, crashing into the boards at its edge, slumping and sliding and slipping from sight. For a moment, he was there, then his legs were over the side and he vanished.
Chel stared, open-mouthed, his winding forgotten. He felt cold all over, frozen in space.
Hurkel took a step toward where Rennic had disappeared, then stopped, and brayed a honking laugh over the gorge. Behind him, at the wagon’s end, the confessors had paused their chant, but now it resumed with greater urgency. Hurkel swivelled his ponderous form toward Chel and began a slow stomp toward him. He was chuckling.
‘Sand-crab! At last we shall attend to your soul. Prepare to make your peace, and receive the Shepherd’s mercy!’
Chel forced himself to stand, sucking in thin breaths at last. The mace felt brittle in his hand. He wondered if the archers were still behind him in the rubble, whether one would be able to land a hit on Hurkel’s unarmoured parts. It seemed a faint hope. How strange, he thought, after everything he’d experienced, to be killed by Hurkel in the end. Had the Norts not arrived when they had, Hurkel could have resolved this in Denirnas lowport and saved everyone a lot of bother.
The sky had gone black, and the wind had dropped. He felt the first delicate patter of rain.
His eyes prickled with tears.
I was supposed to be lucky.
Something moved in the blurred corner of his vision, something at the platform’s edge. A dark-clad figure hauling itself back onto the timber, moving slowly, painfully. Bright hope bloomed in Chel’s chest. He tried not to alert Hurkel, but already the confessors were shouting, their chanting fallen away.
The Pentarch turned as Rennic pulled himself clear, then up onto one knee. He was breathing with great difficulty. Part of Chel smirked at the irony.
‘Didn’t I kill you once already?’ Hurkel bellowed, taking a step in Rennic’s direction.
Wincing, Rennic ignored him. ‘Little man,’ he called, his voice strained. ‘Keg.’
Chel looked down at the keg, his seat until a moment before.
‘Throw me the fucking keg!’
He dropped his mace and grabbed the keg. With a grunt, he set it rolling, bouncing along the platform toward where Rennic knelt. Hurkel watched it roll, crimson face scrunched in deep suspicion. He quickened his stomping pace. Bobbling, the keg began to bounce wide, drifting off toward the edge. Lunging, Rennic grasped it as Hurkel closed.
‘Let damnation claim you!’ the confessor bellowed.
In one sharp movement, Rennic snatched up the keg and lifted it, both-handed, over his head.
‘You first, fuck-stick.’
He hurled the keg at Hurkel’s head. Instinctively, the confessor threw up his fork-arm, driving the points of his trident into the oncoming object. The battered wood of the keg split around his blow, flooding black powder down his metal-clad arm and coating him with choking dust. The shattered keg disgorged its contents over the confessor’s body, piling around his steel-shod feet, clinging to the tarred and bloodied plates in clumps and runnels.
Hurkel staggered backward, coughing, shaking the impaled keg free, dropping his club to paw at his face with his remaining hand. He was a long way onto the platform, too far for any confessor from the bridge to reach him.
Rennic was standing now, poised at the fringe of Hurkel’s powder-splash.
‘Brother Hurkel.’
In one hand was another knife.
‘Hurkel.’
In the other was his flint.
Chel’s still-uneven breath caught. He wanted to swallow but could not. He wanted to shut his eyes but could not.
Hurkel cleared dust from his eye and looked at Rennic, looked at the blackened boards beneath him, the powder that coated his scorched plate.
Chel waited for the moment, transfixed. He didn’t want to watch Hurkel die. He didn’t want to see him live.
‘Do you yield, Brother Hurkel?’
Chel blinked. Rennic met his gaze for the merest instant, his shoulders twitching in a micro-shrug.
‘Yield, and leave this bridge. Take your red friends back to your pretend emperor. Tell him you lost.’
Hurkel’s reply was a wordless howl, and he surged forward.
Rennic’s hand moved very fast.
Snap. Snap. Whoosh.
The air around Hurkel went first, as the spark ignited the finest particles. Immediately the armoured confessor was surrounded by a blazing halo of light, then the powder on his plating caught, followed by his tuft of hair. Still he charged, as the flames spread down his body and lit the boards of the platform beneath him, surrounding him in an ocean of fire. Rennic was already stumbling backward, faltering for the platform’s end where Chel stood motionless. Hurkel pursued, a black metal demon at the heart of a pillar of flame.
I dreamt this, Chel thought, as Rennic scrambled toward him and the screaming, burning beast came after him. Or something like it.
Rennic was shouting. Rennic was shouting at Chel.
‘—back before he sets you off too!’
The platform was burning, the flames hissing steam as the rain thickened. Hurkel was burning, his heavy steps unsteady, lurching and lunging toward the bridge’s broken end. His face was lost within the flames, just a blistered, screaming husk at the heart of the firestorm. He seemed to be heading for Chel.
‘Little man!’ Rennic was calling, patting out one smouldering sleeve as he made for the rubble. ‘Little man!’
There seemed nothing human left in Hurkel’s searing armour, but still it moved, staggering onwards as if by demonic will, step after halting step. In its wake it left a blazing trail, and already the platform was sagging as its timbers blackened and burned. The handful of confessors who’d started forward in Hurkel’s pursuit fell swiftly back.
‘I should …’ Chel said, staring into the sizzling mass where Hurkel’s face had been. The pain had to be indescribable.
Hurkel lurched, reaching the platform’s end, only paces from where Chel stood. Already Chel could feel the incredible heat that boiled off the armoured form, seeing the plates blister and bubble within the tower of flame.
Make your choice, then make your peace.
The mace was back in his hand. ‘I should … show him mercy.’ He tensed to swing.
Hurkel swayed, stepped, and dropped from the edge. A puddle of flame marked his exit, along with a billow of choking black smoke. The world seemed suddenly darker. The rain was getting thicker.
Rennic called again, and Chel turned toward the city. He was thinking of Heali, the avuncular guardsman in the winter palace of Denirnas Port. The man who’d betrayed him, tried to stab him on the battlements, who’d fallen in flames to his doom below. The first man Chel had seen die.
‘Told you …’ Rennic wheezed, doubled over, ‘I’d call … for you.’
In the distance, thunder grumbled, then the lightning hit.
Chel saw the flash, then his eyes had only the after-image of the thunderbolt, a pulsing line of purple-black from churning cloud to darkened city, sending a cascade of sparks into the lightless sky. For a heartbeat silence reigned, then the thunder rolled over them, a terrifying crack as if the earth had torn. The rain began to hammer down, a gathering rush of water borne on the wind’s fury. In moments Chel was drenched.
Then he saw the bright burr of flames, carving outwards through the driving rain from the site of the lightning’s discharge. The workshop tower was aflame.
Rennic was still bent double, trying to draw air into his battered ribcage. He waved an encouraging hand toward the gate.
‘This has been a shitty day,’ Chel said, pushing his aching legs back toward the city.