In the Shadow of the Gods

by Rachel Dunne

  Since he’d burned the town, the mage had become unfailingly dutiful in taking his skura. His control was renewed, and his subservience, so Joros was pleased to see the mage already beginning to weave a spell. He recognized the cloaking first, that infinitely useful little spell. If anyone was persistent about looking, Anddyr had explained the first time he’d cast a cloaking, they’d be spotted in a second, but the Northerners fighting should prove a good enough distraction to keep persistent eyes away. When Rora’s surprised swearing told Joros the cloaking had settled over him and the mage, Anddyr began another spell, fingers moving too quick to follow, so much of a distraction that Joros was taken entirely by surprise when the mage pushed him over the edge of the cliff.

  Joros fell, the cold air whistling by fast enough to snatch the breath from his lungs, to keep him from getting out a good scream. The ground had seemed so far below from the top of the cliff, but now there was almost no space between it and Joros. He could pick out individual stones, guess which chunk of ice would crack his skull open. Screwing his eyes shut, he vowed to curse the mage with his dying thought. Yet it was that briefly glimpsed red hair that stuck in his mind.

  The impact knocked the breath from him. Despite himself, his eyes flew open, determined to witness each horrid moment of his death. The ground was there, looming close—but no closer. He was stopped perhaps two handspans above it, something stretched around him like an unseen hand holding him safe. He wasn’t dead, and he could move, and as Anddyr landed beside him, all of it made Joros irrationally angry. He scrambled to his knees—more difficult than it should have been, for the mage’s invisible barrier moved beneath him like a blanket thrown over water—and fought toward the mage, growling curses. He saw the panic in Anddyr’s eyes, but didn’t see the mage’s hands begin to move again. The barrier fell away beneath Joros, sending him sprawling to the cold ground. It was a gentler fall than it would have been from the cliff, but that did nothing to improve his mood.

  “It’s easier to fix the landing!” Anddyr squealed, scrabbling away as Joros rose. “The falling is the hard part. Please, cappo, I’m sorry . . .”

  Joros stood over the mage, glaring down at the pathetic creature. There was no room in him to hate the mage more than he already did. His last thought, when he’d been convinced of his death, had been of red hair. The mage’s punishment could wait.

  The sounds of fighting—sword clanging against sword, cheering and shouting—were louder inside the pit, echoing strangely off the cut walls. Joros himself had laid the groundwork for recruiting this Northern tribe, sending shadow after shadow into the wastes to find a tribe both vicious and motivated by hard Fiateran coin. Clearly, the work of those long years had been stolen from him, too, bent for the benefit of another. He was almost glad his idiot Northman had stirred them all into a useless frenzy. Joros turned from the noise and stepped over Anddyr, moved toward the far end of the pit, where shovel and pick against stone and ice were softer sounds, calling to him. He and the mage moved like shadows over the ice, unseen, silent. The three came into sight, black-robed like Joros, their backs to him, two bent over and working at the ice, the third watching with a waterfall of hair the color of fire.

  Joros was not a man given over to emotions. He was strong, stoic, staid. Anger, though, was not an emotion—it was a driving force, a thing to propel him forward in life, to make him great. The anger swelled in him now, always just below the surface, but this wasn’t a pure anger. It was touched with something he had no name for, and that alone gave more breath to the anger.

  His shortsword didn’t come quietly from its sheath, the sound of it making one of the preachers turn, enough that the sword biting into his neck turned his head obscenely around like an owl’s. The blade stuck in the suddenly limp body, and Joros had to fight to yank it free. It gave the other preacher time to lift his shovel as a weapon, but his darting eyes couldn’t see through the cloaking. His sword drawing a spray of blood as it finally let go the first man’s neck, Joros brought the blade beneath the raised shovel and into the man’s stomach, twisted, pulled it smoothly out. The man screamed, fell, clutching at the hole in his gut. Joros made a sign to Anddyr, who let the cloaking slip away.

  Dirrakara’s face was a mixture of horror and shock, eyes huge in her head. “Hello, love,” Joros said levelly, the cold of his anger driving him forward. He took a step toward her, around the half-dug hole where the dead man and the dying man sprawled. She scrabbled at her hip, pulled out a knife to hold before her with both hands. Joros’s sword was barely longer than his forearm, but that knife looked sad, pathetically ineffective. The thing that wasn’t anger gave a twinge, and Joros shoved it down viciously, refusing to acknowledge it. There was only the anger, and his goals, and nothing would stand between them. The world would burn in the fire of his anger, if it came to it. There was no room for mercy. He took another step forward, Dirrakara stumbling back. “What have you found, hmm?”

  “How . . .” She couldn’t seem to compose more than the one word, her lips parted as she stared at him. There was always so much emotion in her.

  “You’ve been busy, I see.” She must have traveled hard to have gotten here so soon, and to coordinate with the Northman tribe so quickly, but she could never be faulted for being inefficient. “Thank you, for doing my work for me.”

  “How . . .” The knife shook in her hands. She’d never looked at him with such fear before. He knew his face was still a mess, littered with the fading folds and ridges of burn-scars, but he didn’t think that was what put the fear in her eyes.

  “You think you know me.” He didn’t know where those words came from or how they snuck out past his lips, but they spewed forth, propelled by the anger and the thing that wasn’t. “You never knew me.” She would have feared him long ago, if she had. He stepped forward again and she jabbed the knife toward him, more a spasm than anything. “We could have been great.” Joros caught it easily, the fingers of his left hand wrapping around the blade. He felt the bite of it, but dimly, the anger running hot through his veins and pushing the pain aside. “You should have trusted me.” Disjointed words, boiling up with the thing that danced with his anger. One hand still around her knife, his blood leaking warm down his wrist, Joros brought his other hand up, raising his sword so that its tip rested beneath Dirrakara’s chin. “You should never have left me.” The anger screamed for her blood, but he pressed gently, lifting her chin with the point of his sword so that her fear-wide eyes met his, and there was nothing else in the world. “You should never have loved me.”

  Finally, she found her words. They came out a whisper, her throat careful against the bare blade so close. “I wasn’t wrong,” she said, “not in any of it.”

  A twist of his hand pulled the knife from her fingers, flung it aside. Dripping his own blood that steamed in the cold air, Joros raised his hand to wrap it around her throat.

  “Cappo!” Anddyr’s voice rang out high, startling Joros so badly his sword nearly pierced through Dirrakara’s skin. He had forgotten about the mage, forgotten the search, forgotten everything but her. He held her by the throat still, not hard enough to crush, as he turned to face the mage.

  “What has our friend found in the ice?” His voice was rougher than he would have liked, and he let that feed his anger. Anddyr made an inarticulate little noise, and Joros walked to his side, pulling Dirrakara after him.

  Anddyr had dragged the bodies of the two preachers from the hole and cleared away the loose snow and debris. The hole that the preachers had dug was smeared with their blood now, a red sheen already freezing over, but it was still possible to see, so very clearly, what they had been chipping carefully around.

  There were two faces there, swallowed by the ice, skin desiccated and dry and flaking. Two heads, pressed together, one with long brittle hair, each face bigger than a man’s could possibly be. All the old stories said the Twins had been giants among men.

  And thus did Fratarro shatter upon the bones of the
earth . . .

  Joros’s heart thumped in his breast, slow, steady. This was it. Finally. “Anddyr . . .”

  The mage was already moving, fingers weaving so that heat radiated from his hands. His face was strained, he was likely close to the end of his power, but he wouldn’t stop so long as he could keep doing something. He knew better.

  The ice faded slowly, clinging to the dry flesh it had held for so long. A neck, and then another. More of the long hair, splayed out in a halo. A shoulder, an arm. Another arm, holding. A chest, a third arm, a hip. Legs, three, four. Two bodies, ancient, wrapped one around the other, larger than Joros, larger than men could be.

  Over the ice, drifting with the sounds of fighting, a shouting began, voices raised in unfamiliar words.

  There were two bodies, with four arms and four legs.

  . . . his limbs flung to the far horizons.

  In the silence above the hole, above the two bodies that could not be the Bound Gods, the distant screaming gave voice to the fury within Joros.

  Anddyr made a choked sound. “It’s not them,” he whispered, and then flinched away, though Joros stood still as ice.

  It was the mage who had led him here, led all of them here; it was Anddyr who had been wrong. Yet he was only a tool, and a broken one at that. It was no real surprise that a broken tool should prove false. He could turn his anger on a person who had performed only according to his own nature . . . or he could turn it to one truly deserving. There was a deeper hurt, here, than being wrong about the Twins.

  Joros tightened his hand around Dirrakara’s throat, his own blood dripping down her neck, and when he looked at her there was only the anger, burning pure like a furnace-flame, consuming the thing that wasn’t anger. The anger would lead him, guide him, if he was strong enough to grab it with both hands and hold on to the bright flame of it.

  CHAPTER 29

  It was the dumbest thing she’d ever seen, two men trying to kill each other while everyone else just stood there watching. The merra was cursing steadily under her breath—with phrases even Rora was impressed to hear—as she watched the fighting, her hands clenching around each other.

  It’d only been a few minutes since Anddyr and Joros had disappeared into the air, but time felt like it was crawling by. It always felt that way when things were going on around you that you weren’t doing anything about. It was one of the feelings Rora hated most. It wasn’t helplessness, it was uselessness, and that was the worst.

  Not that Scal wasn’t handling himself well. He was bigger than the man he was fighting, but slower, too. It’d twisted her head, at first, to see the other man wearing a furry white cloak—she’d thought Scal’d shrunk, until she remembered his cloak was over her shoulders. Must be a Northern thing, those white cloaks. She didn’t know how long they’d been fighting before she and the others had come up to watch, but she could tell they were both getting tired. They were a good match, that much was clear. She knew how it’d go. One of them would slip soon enough. It was what always happened in a fight like this, one of you got tired first. And because they were so matched, the other one wouldn’t hesitate. Rora didn’t much like the thought of sitting around and just watching Scal die, but there wasn’t much she could do. It’d be stupid, risking her own neck for someone she barely even liked. You took care of yourself, that was the first rule in the Canals, the most important rule no matter what the packheads might say.

  She looked over to see how Vatri was handling it all, since she seemed to have a liking for Scal, but the merra was gone.

  There was a choking noise next to her, and Rora looked over to see Aro white-faced and pointing. Down. She craned her neck over the edge of the ridge and saw a yellow point skittering among the ice of the cliff.

  If they were a pack, this little group Joros’d assembled, Rora knew that the merra was the expendable one. Joros didn’t even want her along, he wouldn’t care if she died. And to a point, Scal was expendable enough. He was a fist, a bruiser, and there were always more of those to find. A fist was only useful so long as he could keep fighting, and after that point he was less than useless. Joros’d left Scal to whatever stupid trouble he’d got himself into, so he didn’t much seem to care what happened to the Northman neither. You did what your packhead thought was best, that was the second rule in the Canals, and even if Rora didn’t know why, Joros seemed to need her and Aro for something. They weren’t so expendable.

  Down among the Northmen, she could see all the swords and knives and axes. Not new weapons, not by a long ways, but she knew they’d be plenty sharp. Men like them, trained fighters, they always kept an edge on their weapons. And the merra, halfway down the cliff now, it wouldn’t take more’n one good swing to cut her in half.

  In the Canals, you took care of yourself first, and did what you were told second. But there was another rule in the Canals that came in between the first and second ones, a rule that didn’t ever get talked about. Between taking care of yourself and listening to the packhead, whenever you could, you took care of the rest of the pack. There were people the packhead could stand to lose, but that didn’t mean you had to sit by and let it happen.

  And if this group was her pack now, pretty soon she’d be watching about half her pack die and doing nothing about it.

  She swore, using some of the words Vatri’d been using because they were so nicely descriptive, and swung to Aro. “You stay put, y’hear? Move one fecking hair and I take your whole head off.” He nodded, wide-eyed, and stayed put as Rora swung over the edge of the cliff.

  It wasn’t much different from climbing down into the Canals, when it came down to it. The hand- and footholds weren’t as clean cut, the ice was slipperier than bricks even after a good storm, and it was a longer climb, sure, but Rora’d had years of climbing down into the Canals fast as she could. Vatri’d got a good start on her, but the merra wasn’t much of a climber, that was clear. Kept slipping or stopping, holding on tight to the ice like she was afraid of falling. Rora could just about see her regretting her choice, and every other choice that had led up to her clinging to an ice wall high above the ground. It didn’t take too long for Rora to near catch up to her, just a few lengths above the ground, but that was when the cheering started.

  Rora twisted around, saw all the Northmen waving their arms and weapons. From as high up as she still was, she could see down into the middle of the ring. Scal was on his back, tripped, scrabbling backward toward his sword. He wouldn’t be fast enough. The other Northman had his sword lifted up in both hands, point aimed down right at Scal’s heart, his face twisted up. Vatri screamed—Scal’s name, just once, loud enough to ring off the ice louder’n all the cheering.

  It distracted the smaller Northman for just a second, but that was all it took. Scal’s hand moved, and then there was suddenly a little knife in his opponent’s throat, blood spouting. The man’s sword clattered onto the ice as he scrabbled at his neck. Faintly, Rora could hear his gurgling. Then it was drowned out by more screaming, raw fury, as all the Northmen surged in toward Scal.

  He was already on his feet, holding a sword—his, or the other Northman’s, it didn’t matter, it was a blade. And then there wasn’t any more standing and watching. There was just fighting, and Scal was going to die.

  Rora pushed herself off the ice, dropped for a bit, rolled over her shoulder as she landed. There was a twinge in one leg as she sprang up to her feet, and she knew there’d be a big bruise on her shoulder in no time, but she didn’t let those slow her down. She pulled her knives out, the long one with the broken blue stone and a plainer, shorter one Tare’d given her after her first contract. She started forward, toward all the huge, hulking Northmen who had their backs to her, and used a small person’s best defense against a tall one: started slashing at the backs of legs, knees and ankles when she could get them, anything to slow or immobilize. Tare’d always told her to avoid fights like this, where bodies were pressed so close together you could hardly get any room to move an arm. Tare
’d taught her how to fight a few people at a time—hells, once she’d had to fight off five Rats in an alley—but she wasn’t used to this sort of fighting. It helped, though, being short. She’d never’ve thought she’d be thankful for it. She slipped in between the big bodies, hamstringing as she went, carving her way toward the center of the ring.

  The first body she tripped over was the Northman Scal’d been fighting, dressed all in white with a little bone knife in his throat. Rora didn’t give the body more’n a glance before righting herself and pushing forward again. There were more bodies littered on the ground here. Scal’d been busy. She still couldn’t see him around all the big Northmen, but she had to think they wouldn’t still be fighting forward if he was down and dead. It was hopeful, in a way.

  And then someone crashed into her from behind, sending her toppling over. She landed half over a dead Northman, her face pressed into his spilled guts, and a weight lying across her back. She started struggling, kicking out with her legs, swinging her knives backward, anything to get free. Yellow cloth covered her head, and Vatri hissed in her ear, “Stay down!” Then there was an inhuman roaring, and the merra’s scream ringing in her ear as she pressed Rora down into the dead man.

  It got real quiet, after, or maybe all the sound was just drowned out by the echoes in Rora’s ears. The merra was dead weight on top of her, not moving. Rora rolled and pushed up, shoving the merra off her back, and then paused on her hands and knees, gaping.