“There is no life,” said Freecloud, “without free will.”
For some reason, Tam’s thoughts strayed to the golem they’d come across earlier. Runebroken, Freecloud had called it. Masterless. Did that mean every other golem was a slave, with no more agency than one of Astra’s undead thralls?
“I don’t understand,” said Rose to the Winter Queen. “If you wanted the Horde to succeed, then why abandon them here? You had to know the courts would get their shit together eventually. Was the Simurg so important? You bartered one life in exchange for tens of thousands. You doomed them.”
Astra sneered. “What do I care? They were beasts. Monsters. Born to be slaves and bred to be weapons. Yet they rebelled against the Dominion, and betrayed my son when—”
“Oh, fuck off,” Rose swore.
“—when they abandoned him on the field at Castia.” Astra’s right hand strayed toward the hilt of her sword. Her voice was thick as ice over shallow water. A poison-black tear crawled like a fly down her porcelain cheek. “My poor child,” she whispered. “My sweet autumn son. He was trying to help them, you know. He meant to offer them sanctuary—a realm where the fell creatures of this world could live beyond the depredations of humankind—and he’d have succeeded if not for one man.”
Rose stiffened. “Don’t you dare say it.”
“Gabriel.”
“What the fuck did I just tell you?” Rose snarled.
“Then again,” Astra reasoned, “Gabriel would never have gone to Castia if it weren’t for you. Which is why it will please me to kill you here, to know your father will share my pain—if only until I kill him as well.”
“You’ll need more than the Dragoneater to do that,” Rose said, though even Tam could sense the insincerity in her words. Gabe might have been formidable once, but he was older now, and wasn’t what he used to be. He wasn’t even what he’d been at Castia, which (according to Rose) wasn’t very much at all. “You had a whole army at your disposal,” Rose said, gesturing at the corpse-littered plain around them. “Why let them die?”
Astra’s laugh was eerily grating, a sound like a raven’s beak scratching on a child’s skull. “Let them die? My dear, I killed them myself.”
Brune, blinking, dragged a hand over his mouth. “This is …”
“Mad,” Cura finished the thought for him.
“Mad,” the shaman agreed.
“They would have failed me,” said Astra, “as they failed the Dominion. They would have betrayed me, as they betrayed my son. Instead, they will serve me in death. As will you. And so, in time, will every creature in this world.”
“Well that’s … typical,” Rose said. She looked thoroughly unimpressed—or else was doing a magnificent job of pretending to be. “And then what? What’s the point? Let’s suppose you win—which you won’t. Let’s say you somehow manage to kill us all—which will never, ever happen, I assure you. Are you so desperate to rule the world that you don’t care if your subjects are dead?”
“You mistake me,” said Astra. “I have no intention of ruling the world. I am going to end it.”
It felt to Tam as if the ash in the air had become a swarm of buzzing insects, scrabbling against her skin, burrowing into her flesh. Her blood was cold as ice. A frantic, animal fear curled its claws around her heart, and squeezed.
Freecloud spoke, obviously shaken: “You will bind every life to yours …”
“And then free myself”—Astra sighed—“from this immortal coil.”
Tam couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She’s not that powerful. She can’t be. So far as Tam knew, all magic—from Cura’s summoning to Brune’s shamming—came at a cost. Power always had a price, and she imagined necromancy was no different.
But what if Astra had already paid that price? Or what if the purse belonged to someone … or something else entirely?
A word wriggled in her mind like a maggot: Tamarat.
Despite her rising panic, Tam was about to reach for an arrow and try (however futile the attempt might be) to kill this mad, sad woman before she could make good on that terrible promise.
But then Rose pointed toward the woman’s feet. “You dropped your ear,” she said.
And Astra—who’d been an empress, then a goddess, and whose dark sorcery now threatened to snuff out every soul in Grandual—looked down.
Like an idiot.
Chapter Forty-two
The White-Feather Bolt
Rose lunged at the Winter Queen, arms outflung, summoning her swords to hand. They came spiralling from the muck—except Lucky Star knocked one aside with her shield, and the blue-striped mercenary stepped fearlessly in front of the other. Unexpectedly weaponless, Rose managed to stop short as the jawless woman swiped her spiked flail in an arc before her. The Prince of Ut darted forward, falchion in hand. Rose stumbled backward, twisting to get away.
Madrigal sang from its scabbard, carving smoke into shreds as it deflected the Narmeeri blade. Freecloud kicked the Prince in the chest and launched him backward.
Brune stepped up to cover Rose’s retreat. He wrenched Ktulu into halves, using one to foul the flail’s next strike and plunging the other through Half-jaw’s neck, effectively severing her head.
Tam moved without thinking. She shrugged Duchess free, tore an arrow from her quiver, and—
Astra drew her sword, and the sound it made—the piercing shriek of a madwoman howling beneath a torturer’s knife—startled Tam into fumbling her arrow. The druin plunged the sword’s point into the ground, and the bard could see … something … in the lurid green surface of the blade: hands scrabbling, a face twisted in anguish—but then Astra’s voice steamed from the earth all around them.
“Rise,” she commanded the corpses at their feet.
And they did.
All of them did.
Things that had been men and women; things that had been orcs, and urskin, and steel-masked gibberlings; things that wore the grey flesh of ogres, the long manes of ixil, the mangy fur of savage gnolls—everywhere Tam looked monsters and mercenaries were clambering to their feet, limbs askew, wounds weeping, crow-pecked eyes burning white.
The air thrummed with the flap of beating wings as the birds feasting on the dead took flight, a cloud as black as the smoke itself.
“We need to run,” warned Cura.
“I have to kill her,” Rose growled, gauntlets blazing. Thistle slammed into her open palm, but Thorn was hilt-deep in the blue-striped northerner. He was gripping the weapon with both hands, pitting his own strength against whatever ancient druin magic imbued the blade—which proved unwise, since ancient druin magic dragged his dead ass several feet through the air, put Thorn’s hilt into Rose’s hand, and left him at her mercy.
And so, mercifully, she cut his head off.
Rose hefted her scimitars. “If we kill her—”
“We can’t,” Cura shouted. “We’ll never reach her.”
Already the Winter Queen was screened behind dozens of shambling thralls. The Simurg raised its gore-smeared maw as the giant beneath it began to stir.
“I hate to say it,” Brune hollered, “but Cura’s right.”
Rose threw a pleading glance at Freecloud, who’d just hacked not-so-Lucky Star into several gory pieces. The druin looked from Rose to where Astra stood hidden behind a wall of walking dead. “We should go. Now.”
Rose cast a despairing glance behind her before closing ranks with her bandmates. “Brune and Freecloud have our flanks,” she yelled, leading them away at a jog. “I’ll take point. Tam, put an arrow in whatever comes at us from above.”
“Will do,” Tam said, without bothering to point out that she was only the bard.
“Cura?”
“Yo.”
“Think you can you keep them off our ass?”
“With pleasure.” Cura spun on her heel. The Prince of Ut had recovered and was leading a small host of mercs and monsters after them. The Inkwitch pushed up her sleeve, clenched her fist, a
nd shouted, “YOMINA!”
The cloaked figure came swirling from her arm, long neck bowed beneath his wide-brimmed hat. He drew two swords from his chest and turned to face their pursuers.
Cura stood and staggered after Tam, who kept her bow taut and her eyes up as they ran. The sky was deafening with the screech of birds, dark with roiling smoke, though she caught a glimpse here and there of twilight blue. Cinders from the burning forest blew past, stinging like mites wherever they touched. From somewhere—from everywhere—came the keening wail of Astra’s phantom sword.
Something resolved from the murk before them: large and lanky, with six arms, two jutting horns, and a mouth full of squirming tentacles. Rose’s swords were spinning in her hands; she reversed her grip and leapt without slowing, plunging both blades to the hilt in its chest and tumbling over its falling corpse. One of its squirming tongues reached for Tam’s ankle as she passed. She stamped down hard and it burst like a worm beneath her boot.
On they ran. Brune, wielding one half of Ktulu in either hand, smashed his way through a pair of grasping skeletons. Madrigal hummed like a harp-string as Freecloud cut the legs from a warg with an axe wedged into its head. Rose fought like a berserker up front, her blades a blur of blue and green as she dismembered a pair of spear-wielding lizardmen.
All around them was chaos. Living mercenaries grappled with dead mercenaries, claw-brokers ran for their lives, corpse-pickers became corpses themselves as their prey lurched awake beneath them.
Tam could feel the ground quaking, and a hurried glance over one shoulder confirmed the worst of her fears: The Simurg was on the prowl. It slunk across the smoke-screened battlefield like a hunting cat, devouring the Winter Queen’s enemies wherever it found them.
Now and again Tam caught sight of Yomina stalking through the gloom nearby, hewing and hacking through clots of Astra’s thralls.
Cura plucked at her sleeve. “Tam! Heads-up!”
The bard aimed her bow at the sky and found a harpy bearing down on them. The bird-woman’s body was riddled with arrows, so Tam tried putting one through her face instead. That did the trick; she dropped like a stone and landed in a heap behind them.
“Good girl,” said Cura, and something in Tam’s belly blazed like a windblown ember at the summoner’s praise.
Before long they had outrun the rising dead. Tam didn’t know if there were limits to Astra’s power, but apparently she wasn’t capable of raising the entire Horde at once. Or else we’d be dead, she thought. Well, maybe not dead … but definitely not alive.
Rose stopped so suddenly the rest of them nearly bowled her over. “Fuck,” she swore.
Brune swiped hair from his eyes. “Fuck what?”
“Fuck me,” Cura hissed.
Gabe and Moog were just ahead. The wizard was tending to Roderick, who was using a white silk scarf to stanch a wound on his head. One of his curling horns had snapped off in the middle.
And the Old Glory was gone.
“Doshi stole our ship,” said Gabriel.
“The salt-spawned shit-eater kicked me overboard!” Rod exclaimed. “I’ll kill him! I’ll wring his thieving neck!”
Brune pointed at the booker’s head. “You’re down a horn there, brother.”
“What?” Roderick fumbled at his missing horn and his jaw dropped almost to his knees. “Vail’s Bloody Cock, I am!”
Freecloud went to kneel beside Roderick, while Gabriel rushed to his daughter’s side, scanning her for any sign of injury. “Rose, are you—”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“What’s happening here?” Gabriel asked her. “Did you find Astra?”
“We did,” Rose told him. “I’ll explain later. We need to get out of here right now.”
Gabriel chewed his lip. He glanced worriedly at Moog, who was panting heavily, clearly exhausted. “Clay’s place is halfway to Conthas. We should try—” He broke off suddenly as something split the air between him and Rose.
Tam turned, aghast, to see Hawkshaw striding toward them. The smoke fled his approach like shadows from a burning brand. The Warden tripped the firing mechanism on his crossbow and levelled it once again at Rose.
The sound of that bolt releasing was the loudest thing Tam had ever heard. Every one of Rose’s bandmates moved to put themselves in its path, though none of them—not even Freecloud—was near enough to do so.
Only Gabriel was, and a heartbeat later he sagged to the mud with a white-feathered bolt buried to the fletching in his chest. His daughter went to her knees beside him, her swords falling from senseless hands.
Freecloud was on his feet, sprinting toward Hawkshaw. Madrigal’s music split the air behind him.
The Warden pushed aside his black straw cape. He drew the crude bone sword from the loop at his waist and gripped it with both hands as the druin came on. “I’m … sorry,” he croaked. “I can’t …”
“Shut up and die,” Cloud snarled.
So charged was the moment, so fraught with dread and dire malice, that no one (not Freecloud, and certainly not Hawkshaw) saw the claw-broker’s wagon come barrelling into their midst until it ran the Warden down. His body tumbled like a scarecrow beneath the threshing hooves and heavy wooden wheels.
The cart skidded to a halt and its driver stood to survey the ruin he’d left behind. Hawkshaw’s body was reduced to a sodden heap of broken bones, bloodied flesh, and blackened straw. His bone sword was snapped in half. The black leather snowmask he’d worn to disguise his face had peeled off to reveal the blood-slick skull beneath.
The driver was horrified. “Gods, I’m so sorry! There’s something … I don’t know … something big back there. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
Tam blinked. “Bran?”
The man stared at her blankly.
Can it be? she wondered. His hair was longer, his beard unkempt, and his face so filthy as to be almost unrecognizable, but Tam was sure of it now. It was her uncle Branigan. He was alive.
“Listen,” he said, “if I owe you money we can discuss it later. We don’t—”
“Uncle Bran, it’s me.”
“Tam?” Her uncle leapt from his perch, floundered through the mud, and pulled Tam into a hug that left her gasping for breath. Afterward, he gripped her shoulders and studied her face as though it were a map of everything she’d seen and done since he’d seen her last. A slow smile crept across his lips. “Maiden’s Mercy, girl, what are you doing here?” His eyes flitted toward the mess he’d made of Hawkshaw. “Was he …?”
“Our enemy,” Tam assured him. “I’ll tell you later. Gabe is—”
“Alive!” Moog shouted. The wizard was cradling Gabriel’s head on his knees. “Well, he’s breathing, anyway.”
Branigan groaned when he recognized the man in Moog’s lap. “Is that really …?”
“It is, yeah.”
Rose reached with trembling fingers to brush sweat-matted hair from her father’s face. His eyelids fluttered weakly at her touch. “Can you help him?” she asked Moog.
Tears flooded the old man’s eyes. “I’m not a healer, dear. And I fear he needs one.” The wizard eyed the bolt in Gabriel’s chest as though it were a serpent rising from his stewpot. “I think it may have pierced his heart.”
“The heart is on this side,” Rose pointed out.
“Is it?” The wizard frowned and placed a hand on his own breast. “Gods, you might be right.”
Freecloud spoke up. “Rose—”
“Help me get him in the cart,” she ordered.
“Rose.” The druin put a hand on her shoulder and nodded gravely at the white-feathered bolt. “Look at the wound. It’s putrid, already. I think …”
“What?” she asked.
“I think the arrow was poisoned,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
Anger chased the hope from Rose’s eyes, followed by a sorrow that threatened to crumple her face like parchment fed to a flame. “We’ll take him to Coverdale,” she mumbled.
Freecloud pushed his hair between his ears. “Coverdale isn’t safe,” he said, gazing north across the plain.
Grey Vale was still burning. The forest was an orange smear on the horizon, a glowing band against which the shape of uncountable horrors could be seen shambling across the darkening plain.
Bran coughed. “Conthas is too far …”
Gabriel stirred in Moog’s arms, muttering words Tam couldn’t make out. The wizard leaned in, listening, but it was Rose who deciphered her father’s words.
“We’re taking him to Clay Cooper,” she said.
Chapter Forty-three
Slowhand
They bypassed Coverdale, which was swarming like a hive on fire as the townsfolk rushed to evacuate, and followed the rutted track that passed for a road through a forest of stark white birch. There were no stars, no moon by which to see, and so Branigan could only trust the horses to remain on course. No one slept; there wasn’t room to do so anyway. Rose hovered over her father and mopped sweat from his brow while Moog offered soothing words, snatches of quiet song, and an hourlong joke that turned out not to have a punch line.
Gabriel died at dawn the next morning.
He didn’t shudder, or scream, or utter any poignant last words, the way heroes were supposed to do. He only closed his eyes and squeezed his daughter’s hand as hard as his fading strength allowed, until, at last, his grip went slack and he released a breath without bothering to take another.
“Stop”—the word fell like a stone from Rose’s mouth. When Bran drew the cart to a halt she hopped over the side and disappeared into trees beside the road.
It was snowing lightly. Tam craned her neck and squinted against the skirling flakes. One caught in her eyelash, and when she blinked it stuck to her cheek, melting swiftly, and trickled to her chin.
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