The patchwork armoured warrior settled into a crouch and stretched its neck. It raised one hand to Regis to halt him, rolling its shoulders like an athlete limbering up. Its gaze was fixed on Thomas. When Regis gestured for it to go ahead, the thing jerked into movement, loping the dozen yards between them and the fallen man.
Regis heard a light, pattering step behind him, like a man sprinting over sand. He turned in time to raise the shield to block Gabriel’s blow and roared in triumph as the man was knocked through the air by his own attempt to cut him down from behind.
‘Hurts, does it?’ Regis said with savage glee. He had knocked the man into the ranks of De Guise soldiers. They had seen their own master killed just moments before and they fell on Gabriel with extraordinary savagery, battering at him with everything they had.
Regis turned from one side to the other, unsure where best to use the shield. As powerful as it was, it had its flaws in battle, which was why his family had formed such a close bond with the De Guise. The sword they carried was not his to use. It rested by the body of a young man who had been in the prime of his youth. There would be no new heir from that line, no more partners to stand with a Regis on the field. He picked up the sword for the first time in his life. For the first time in a hundred generations, a Regis held the De Guise sword. His shield seemed to ring with it and the dust of the ground trembled beneath his feet.
Thomas felt tears come into his eyes as he struggled to stand. Every man was confident before the fight began, when they were fit and whole and strong. It was only after injury that the struggle changed, when a torn gut or a broken bone made every movement agony. That was when courage mattered. All men believed themselves immortal as they took the field.
His leg did more than throb or ache: it screamed at him. The pain was so intense he wanted to cut it off his body as a traitor before it killed him. He remembered feeling the same once with a childhood abscess, when he’d pleaded with his mother and a dentist to just yank the foul thing out with pincers. The smashed leg brought insanity and weakness. It had betrayed him and he could not see to fight, when he needed every ounce of control.
The Sallet Green scrambled into an attack with greater grace than the ones before. Whoever the man was within, he seemed tireless, so that as Thomas waited for a breath, a respite, it did not come. Instead, blow after blow slammed down on him from all angles. He held a shield of air against them all, but the armoured monster threw its entire weight against it, so that he lay back and could not rise a second time.
Thomas cried out as the Sallet Green clambered right on top of him, for all the world as if it straddled a glass ball. He could see it there as the shield of air began to fail, thumping crazily at him with sword and armoured fist. As he stared, he saw the thing make a spear of its fingers and try to jam them through the barrier it could not see. The attempt reminded him there was a man inside the armour, an enemy, yes, but just a soldier, not some terrifying creature of legend. Thomas tried to restore the choke hold he’d had on it before, but the pain was too great and it was all he could do to prevent it collapsing onto him.
He saw his own death in that moment and, to his surprise, it gave him strength. He had died once, after all. He had no illusions about what it meant. Other men might have given up under such an onslaught, but Thomas knew where he’d wake if he did. He could not bear the thought of the grey land stretching around him once again. He would rise, he told himself. Somehow, he would stand. Gabriel or Sanjin would come and set him free.
Sanjin startled awake, gasping aloud. Something had struck him in the first volleys of gunfire, before grey smoke rolled across the yard. Thomas had failed to keep his shield ready, or more likely he’d looked after himself and Gabriel, leaving Sanjin to be shot. He felt anger bubble like acid in his gut. His foot was bleeding again, of course, so that he left red prints and the bandages were crusted with brown muck. Gabriel had promised, but Sanjin understood very well why he had not finished the healing. It gave Gabriel power over him, that was all it was. It kept a leash on Sanjin, just like the one they had used on the Fool. He would have done the same. Gabriel was afraid of him, which showed he had some sense.
Sanjin sat up on his elbows, understanding that he’d gone down so fast in the darkness that none of the attacking companies had seen where he lay. His head throbbed and seemed twice its normal size, but he was alive and there was no one coming at him in that moment.
He pressed a hand to his forehead and felt the groove in the bone that had put him down. He blinked at the sight of bright blood on his hand, feeling suddenly ill, so that he turned to vomit into the bricks and twisted iron around him. That made his headache even worse and he found his anger growing. A great ocean rose within him, but he could not heal a graze, nor make a breeze blow.
He had seen Gabriel use fire. The man had been drunk on all he’d drawn from the Bracken Stone and he’d sent a torrent of flame, spending power as if it would never run dry. Sanjin frowned. They had come back together from the grey land, but it had been Gabriel who sat on a throne, Gabriel who took a young woman as his queen. Gabriel who led them to Darien for more stones.
There were dead men lying all around that yard, Sanjin realised. In the darkness, he would be invisible amongst them. Perhaps he could just walk away. He could leave Gabriel and Thomas to whatever fate they had brought down on themselves and just disappear into the city. His foot throbbed, reminding him. Half a foot. The cauterised spots had not held for long. He knew he could have it removed and sealed by a decent surgeon, but Gabriel could bring it back.
With a growl of frustration, Sanjin stood up. He was sick of this city. All he and the others wanted was the stones! Why did the people have to keep fighting them? It was a kind of collective madness, perhaps.
He saw Marias walk from the dark street into the flame-lit yard, the Fool trailing her like a faithful dog. Sanjin showed his teeth at the sight of them. Marias was Gabriel’s weakness. The man made no formal claim of his own on her, but it seemed she was still too good to be given to a man like Sanjin, too fragile to endure his rough touch. He looked around him, taking in the ebb and flow of the battles going on across the yard. He saw Thomas struggling with one of the armoured green warriors and Gabriel lit by a bloom of flame further over.
They were surrounded; Sanjin understood that much. Perhaps there was a way out around the back of the Bracken estate. Or perhaps he would find more soldiers waiting for him there if he tried to creep away. He flexed his hands. The moment he moved, he would be back in. That was clear enough. He’d been granted a chance to just walk into the night and never be seen again. Perhaps the stones would cease their pulsing call to him if he stayed in Darien.
The thought was dizzying. A normal life. Not stolen thrones, or facing armies in battle, but eating lunch and walking in a park. Working for a wage and even finding himself a wife and a little place above a shop. Near a tavern, obviously. Perhaps that was all he had wanted.
Marias had not seen him, Sanjin thought. He crouched amongst the shadows and the dead, but she would pass just a few paces from where he was. He relished the fear and shock he could cause. He could come out of that black stillness and snatch her. Gabriel would never even know she had been there.
Only the presence of the Fool made him hesitate. That poor, ruined man stumbling along with her seemed to understand nothing. They had never even learned his name. Yet it was all too easy to imagine him pointing and hissing and weeping that Sanjin had hurt Marias, making a mush of the words.
Sanjin slowly raised his head. For a few moments, he’d dreamed a different life, something ordinary. That was not truly what he wanted. He had been given the power within him to use. He had not come back just to live like some farmer or tradesman. He had despised such people in his first life. No, that was not for him. He had come back to rule.
Marias was walking closer, beautiful in the gleam of flame. The whore had struggled when he’d taken her by the arm, as if his touch appalled her. So he
would allow himself one moment of spite in the midst of battle, and then he would fight alongside Gabriel and Thomas – his brothers in arms – to wherever their fates took them.
He opened his hands like a flower and flame bloomed between them. He saw her turn to the light and then he flung a rope of it, a stream of gold and white that struck Marias and enveloped her.
Sanjin poured it out, then breathed more gently, the ground around him steaming with heat. As his eyes adjusted, his smile died as quickly as it had come. The Fool stood with his hand resting on her shoulder. Marias was untouched, unburned. The Fool beamed and cackled and Sanjin’s temper surged. He advanced out of the darkness, but a crackle of gunfire held him back. His flame had alerted every soldier with a pistol. He shrank down and Marias and the Fool passed by, untouched by the violence whining in the air about them. Sanjin saw one or two orange trails as bullets slowed and he heard the Fool hissing laughter. The little bastard had been learning the whole time, Sanjin realised. He cursed to himself and made a decision. It was time to enter the fray. He would burn the air itself if he had to. He took a single, deep breath and began to walk across the yard. Apart, they were too weak to stand; together, Darien would fall.
Thomas felt his will crumble. The horrible figure of the armoured warrior was still gripping his sphere of air as if trying to lift it, hammering all the time with ceaseless energy. Thomas knew he was seeping blood, and no matter how he told himself to rally and stand, he could feel himself getting weaker. Sanjin had run off somewhere like the coward he was, but Thomas expected to see Gabriel still.
Gabriel would never run. Whatever some men had that made others want to follow them, he had. Part of it was that private oath, that bond. I will not run, when I see you fall. Gabriel had called him brother and Thomas had heard the promise in the word. Yet he was failing, and the spidery monster of green and grey was getting closer as the sphere shrank. Thomas could look into his own reflection on the helmet and see he was filthy with dirt, blood and fear. He bared his teeth at that green version of himself – and pushed back, trying to roll the monster off him.
Thomas almost sobbed when Gabriel appeared, standing to one side. The man took hold of the armoured green warrior by neck and leg and just threw him across the yard. Thomas felt his shield collapse and he lay there, breathing in relief, tears slicing through the dust on his face. He sensed Gabriel kneel. The first touch and the sudden cutting off of pain sent a shiver through him.
‘My leg …’ he murmured. ‘Do what you can, brother …’
Gabriel began to reply, but the patchwork green warrior belted into him, snatching him from sight as it hit him at full speed. Thomas was left looking up at stars and floating embers. He found the strength to stand, though the bones of his leg broke again the moment he put weight on them, making him shout long and loud in his frustration.
To one side, Gabriel rolled with Bosin, punching and striking with appalling speed. Thomas thought he could not take a single step to help them, not and remain on his feet. All his promises were drawn apart, ruined by loss of blood, by too much pain. He wanted to sit down, to sleep. He could not fight any more.
He turned to see a man as marked in soot and filth as he was. Lord Regis hit him with the De Guise sword, knocking him onto his back. Without hesitating, the man leaped on top and brought the shield down. Thomas raised one hand to fend him off, but the impact was like being hit by a falling wall. It drove the air right out of him so that he could not take a breath. He was too weak to save himself and Regis gave him no time to harden the air, no time to breathe. He punched the shield down over and over, each blow doubled in its impact, until Thomas did not twitch and just stared, unmoving. Even then, Regis kept up the assault, grunting with each blow. He had never been afraid in his entire life until air had been made into glass in his mouth. That fear played itself out as he crashed the Regis shield down with all his strength, until the man beneath was bone and blood and cloth and Regis could barely raise his arms. He sat astride the body of the dead mage, panting so hard he thought his heart would burst in his chest.
‘Majesty, please! Listen to me,’ Taeshin said. ‘I was not sent here. A man named Gabriel left your ranks with three others. Thomas and Sanjin – and one more whose name I never learned.’
The king used an old style of attack, Taeshin saw in relief. The man was tireless and strong, but he telegraphed his blows so that Taeshin could bat them aside or duck under them.
‘Gabriel stands in my ranks,’ the king growled at him. ‘With better men than you, boy. Should I listen to a traitor? Who sent you?’
‘I am not part of this battle, this grey place!’ Taeshin yelled at him. ‘Point Gabriel out, if you can, Your Majesty. He went back and dragged me here in his place.’
‘No one goes back,’ the king said with a sneer.
He turned to the ranks making ready to march that day. Taeshin held his breath as the king peered up and down the lines, a frown appearing.
‘You see?’ Taeshin pressed him. ‘Gabriel has gone, with three others. Can you call him back to his place?’
‘No one leaves this field,’ the king said, though with less force. He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘If there was a way home, don’t you think I would go through it myself? It would take the power of a stone to open a door.’
‘There was one. I saw it. There was a white stone,’ Taeshin said. He was desperate. He had not spoken to anyone since arriving in that place an age before. He was close to weeping just to have the king hear him. ‘Please. You are a king. Can you at least call them back?’
The man sheathed his sword, while his army looked on and another gathered on the fields beyond. He tapped a horn that rested on a thong around his neck, but there was only sadness in his expression.
‘I can call them, boy. And they must come. That is my part to play – and theirs.’
Taeshin stood with his mouth open and wide eyes.
‘Then … that is all I want! Please. Send me back. I am not meant to be here.’
‘Oh son, I am sorry. I can call them, as I said. But do you see a morning stone, here? I can’t send you home. Take up a sword and join the ranks. There is still time to fight today.’
Taeshin felt hope shrivel and die, so that he looked with new eyes around him.
‘Call them, even so,’ he said.
The king nodded.
‘If you wish.’ he said, his eyes shadowed. ‘Where did you find the door?’
He looked to where Taeshin pointed and the king began to walk with him, climbing the slope away from the battlefield.
‘What about your horse?’ Taeshin said.
‘The horse is what holds me, son. As when the new souls take up a sword or a shield. You pulled me from the saddle and so I was free, for the first time in …’ He shook his head. ‘I do not know.’
‘Will you go back to the battle, after?’ Taeshin asked him. ‘When you call Gabriel and the others?’
‘Where else would I go?’ the king said, sadly.
24
Grey Land
The hill was gentle in its rise, though the effect was deceptive. Whenever Taeshin paused to look back at the plain, he was astonished how far they had come. The king too seemed awed at what he could see.
‘I thought, so many times, that I would like to walk up this slope to the top, just for the view. Yet somehow …’ His expression became darker. ‘Somehow there was never enough time. There was always a new battle to fight, or I had to rest and prepare for the start of another day. And I never came, though the view is worth the climb.’
Taeshin wanted to keep the man on his side, his one chance to put right what had gone wrong – in a grey land that stole all hope. He feared asking the wrong question and seeing the blank expression return to the king’s face. So he spoke carefully, trying hard not to give offence.
‘I have been here for months …’ he said. ‘I’ve watched you fight more times than I can recall. Do you know you fight each day? That those who
have been killed rise up once more and take up arms? Do you remember the battles?’
‘Some. Those I win, more than those I lose,’ the king replied. ‘When I was … before I died, I loved to fight. Can you believe that? I felt I was never truly, completely in the world unless I could smell iron and oil, unless there was a sword in my hand, with regiments marching across the hills around me. You move like a fighter, son. Do you understand what I am saying?’
Taeshin nodded, feeling the man’s gaze. The grey land was not a place of life or light, but the lies men told themselves had no place there.
‘I understand. I have … felt the same at times. All I ever wanted was to test myself, my courage, my skill. I trained every day, looking for …’ He trailed off. ‘Honestly, I don’t know what I was looking for. Fame? Admiration? It doesn’t seem to matter as much now.’
‘We all die,’ the king said. ‘In the end, regardless of whether we spent our lives selling fish or fighting and laughing.’
‘Selling fish?’ Taeshin asked.
The king shrugged.
‘My people were fishermen, long before we were kings. Perhaps this is meant to be heaven, for soldiers and generals, I don’t know. I am sure a heaven for fishermen would have boats.’
‘I was not meant to be here,’ Taeshin said softly.
They had climbed as they talked and the crest of the low hill was not far off. Taeshin saw a shadow move and he reached for a sword he did not have. The king looked up and they both saw a dark figure appear. At first, it raged and spun on the spot, then as they drew close, it crumpled and began to keen softly to itself.
‘Thomas,’ the king said. He went to the man and rested his hand on his shoulder. ‘Go down, son. Take your place in the line. I’ll need you to watch my back today.’
Thomas stood and nodded, wiping at tears no longer there as he broke into a run down the hill. Taeshin and the king watched him go.
‘He was one of them,’ Taeshin said.
SHIANG Page 28
