That sizzling sound was loud, though...his ears were working...were they?
Or, is the sound stuck in my ears forever?
No...it was a loud sound. Something big, cooling.
Humid, too...like the swamp had been.
But I'm in the desert, still, right?
His skin burned and itched and felt cold, almost freezing, where his armour touched it. Burned badly, he figured, and so thinking remembered Perr.
Perr...my gods...man was covered head to toe in steel...
Poor bastard.
Got to be dead...but if he's not...he's hurting. Hurting hell of lot worse than me...
Gurt tried again to move, even if only a little, but found he was either paralysed or his old body was just so damn hurt it refused to listen to the fool who'd messed it up any longer.
He tried to call out to Perr, but his voice wouldn't work. Dry. Teeth broken and his mouth full of blood. He worked his jaw around, something grinding in there, too, and managed to turn his head slightly to the side to spit out tooth and blood.
A little better.
'Perr...?'
His voice was lost in that strange hissing sound. Like water, hitting something hot?
'Perr?' This time he managed to speak louder, and was rewarded by a groan. Only then did Gurt recall where they were...
We're in the middle of a battle. Hurt, both of us...and I'm helpless... I really hope that is Perr...
Those warriors, in the armour...might be that they were waiting right beside them, waiting to cut them up and down.
No.
Of course they weren't. That blast? Nothing could have survived that.
You did.
Did I? Gurt wondered. He wasn't entirely sold on the idea that he was still the right side of the gates.
'Perr, is that you?'
'Hurt,' said the man, and his characteristic understatement almost made Gurt smile, but was hurt too badly himself to try.
'Can you move? See?'
Perr was silent for a time, like he was weighing up whether the effort was worth the pain. Then he grunted, and Gurt heard him shifting, metal grinding. His armour, either bent or burned out of shape.
'You burned?'
'Holy...' said Perr, and suddenly Gurt was curious enough to try moving again, and maybe even try opening his eyes. Instinctively, he tried to sit. Something gave out in his back and he shouted in pain, but then he was half up, on an elbow, and his left eye at least was half open. Muddy sight, maybe ruined, maybe just sandy. Sharp pain made the eye water, but if he was going to see, the watering would help, right?
He could see Perr, just a hazy, silvery shape, to his right. And ahead, where the battle had been, where the red light in the sky had...come down?
A vast sea, far as he could tell, sitting where once there was sand. Jutting from it, near to them, pieces of a torn animal that Gurt knew was his or Perr's horse. He hoped Wey hadn't died slow...old horse had served well.
Rain splashed from its still surface and filled the air with a haze was both cool and welcome. Further in the distance, on the surface of the sea, were legions of dead Protocrats. In some places, a single hand reached out, in others, mounds of broken bodies, white bone or black, severed or burned.
'Is that a sea?'
Perr shook his head, his fingers fumbling at the catches on his dented helm. 'Glass,' said the man.
Gurt saw that he spoke true. Miles of desert battlefield had turned forever to a sea of glass. The entirety of the Protectorate army, swallowed within, while those warriors with the awful armour were simply gone.
*
Something walked through the rain toward them, not across the glass, but around the edge of it. At first, it looked like a large man, maybe, but then Gurt couldn't see too well, and the rahken was drenched, so its fur stuck close to its body. As it came closer, there was no mistaking the creature. Small, for one of its kin, but well-muscled, and thick around the neck and head, leading toward a snout that might have been grinning.
'I am gladdened to see you living, Gurt and Perr. Brave fools are a rarity these days. Enjoying the rain?'
The rahken knelt beside Gurt and held out one strong, clawed hand. Thick skin. Smelled a little like wet dog.
I probably smell like a well-done steak.
'Thank you - you brought the rain?'
The rahken nodded, pleased. 'My kind are good with weather. You and Perr were...quite hot.'
'Burned...Perr...'
'I'll live,' said Perr, pushing himself up, throwing his battered helm into the sand that now served as a kind of shore. His hair was long, intact, and his face didn't seem badly burned at all.
Gurt had the worst of it.
The rahken closed his eyes (green, Gurt noted) for a moment, holding Gurt's hand, then, without any kind of warning, wrenched Gurt's arm up and out. He screamed, thought the creature had torn his arm off.
'Oh,' he said, after a moment. The pain in his back was lessened, and he found he could stand.
'Thank you...'
The rahken nodded. 'I'm a healer. Rare thing, these days. Come with me, Gurt and Perr. I will see to your burns and pains best I can. There is work to be done yet, I think.'
'It's over, isn't it?'
The rahken shrugged. 'Who knows? They're here. The Elethyn returned, no doubt. Where are they now? I don't know. Should we fight? Of course!'
'There were things in some strange armour...invincible...'
'Sentinel armour. The Hierarchy wake, it seems. The Seer saw this, no doubt. Perhaps it was meant to be. I am a healer. I do not know the future.'
'Your name, friend? We are in your debt, it seems.'
'Essgren,' said the rahken. 'That's me. Essgren. There is no debt, though. Now? In the end of our times? What use debts?'
'Thank you,' said Gurt.
'My thanks, too,' said Perr.
He made a sentence, thought Gurt, with a simple kind of awe.
Essgren shrugged. 'Pleasure. Let's go.'
'Where?'
Essgren shrugged again. 'Underground. Where the rahken live. Perhaps safe there, for a time.'
*
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Selana's speech, it seemed, was over. It was a speech. Renir had no doubt. His befuddlement at her aching beauty was passing, somehow, and he was beginning to think again. Thinking that neither the bald thief Farinder, nor his Queen, were doing much but killing time and...listening.
They're listening to something I cannot hear.
He glanced at the woman to his left, and she, it seemed, could not hear whatever had made this pair of oddities go silent.
They had ceased talking, Selana mid-sentence, too.
Tirielle looked at Renir, he shrugged. She returned the gesture. For a maybe five or ten seconds, both these remarkable and no doubt dangerous creatures said nothing at all.
The thief seemed garrulous, and the self-proclaimed Witch Queen, too, seem happy enough to hear herself talking. Then, such thoughts passed from Renir's mind, as though bad weather was done for the day and the suns had come out. Selana turned her gaze on him once again. She smiled, glorious as Carious and Dow together in the spring after a hard winter.
Renir smiled back, unsure what he was smiling about, but now part of him was held back. That part of Renir that understood the little things, without his seeming to give those things much thought. Things he noted, maybe, but did not say. Like how Shorn was angry, how Drun was sickly, how the lady beside him was broken of heart. Maybe these things were yet another strange gift from the ghost of his wife, hiding out some place within his thoughts and dreams. Maybe they were part of him, all along.
'Times runs down, even on such as I,' said the Queen. She nodded to Roskel. 'Take him. The time of kings comes again.'
'You're just going to give me a crown? A crown's all it takes? Then, I become a king?' Renir was unsure about the wisdom of wearing such a thing. He didn't want it, nor did he need it. Everyone, it seemed, wanted him to be some k
ind of king. Everyone but him. Surely anyone, with a bit of metal and a few friends with big swords, maybe, could be king.
Like him? He wondered at the wisdom. Blood of kings or not, what did he know about...well...anything?
'Your birthright, Renir Esyn,' said Roskel, seeming to see more in Renir than the man who'd once been a simple, lazy fisherman wanted seen. 'This is a long time in the making. The country, Rythe, even...the people need a focus, something to rally around. This land cries out for a king.'
'King. Great. The thing is,' said Renir, carefully, 'I don't actually want to be a king.'
Selana laughed, a sweet sound that made Renir want more. But he wasn't being funny, was he?
'My birthright?' he strove on, against the tide. 'What, so I'm born, have some blood, suddenly I'm a king? That's nonsense, my lady. I'm sorry but...'
'Your arms and legs are your birthright, too, your Grace...would you like to give those back?' Roskel smiled as he spoke, but something in that smile made Renir wonder if the man was being serious. Made him wonder if a man who made no sound, could walk for hours carrying a grown man and not tire in the slightest...made him wonder, a little, whether he might not be better served just doing as he was told. Like he had all along, he realised.
Hertha, chiding, telling him what to do, in life and death. Shorn, Bourninund. Fight like this, hit this, don't hit this. Drun, telling him his fate. He'd been pushed and pulled ever since the priest Drun had appeared in his dream...longer, still?
Am I even being pushed by my own bloody blood?
He was about to say as much when Tirielle, almost forgotten by his side, laid one hand upon his forearm.
'I never wanted to be who I am, Renir,' she said. 'But you can't change who you are. What you do, what you say...yes. Who you are?' She shook her head. 'Do what is needed. Not because you are a king. Because you're a good soul, and the world needs those now. Always did...but now...'
'You hardly know me...' he said, but even as he said it his voice felt weak. Like everyone was telling him what to do and he just didn't have the fight in him to go against the world.
Tirielle smiled, gently, with no guile or glamour (unlike Selana, Renir was able to think now that he was looking away from the Queen and at Tirielle). 'I know enough. I will help you. Me? I was born to power and lost it. You? You had no power and you earned it. I think your road, perhaps, the more valuable. But I will help. If you let me.'
A tiny, snide part of Renir thought, wonderful, another witch. But he looked into Tirielle's face and saw only honest concern.
He sighed. Why fight it? It'd been a long time coming.
'Fine,' he said, as ungraciously as he could. 'Let's go get the bloody crown.'
Roskel Farinder nodded at Renir and Tirielle, then leaned down and placed a soft kiss on the Queen's cheek. The Queen still lounged upon her bed.
'Follow,' he said.
'We will meet again,' the Queen told them as they turned from the room. Renir said nothing, though silently he hoped that it was not true.
Somehow, though, he knew that his business with the witch was not done. Far from it.
We will meet again, he thought. I am sure of it.
Outside the room, Roskel took a torch from the wall and lit it with some minor magic that Renir had never seen. The corridor was windowless, of course, so far beneath the city. The stone was pure, dull, black, and seemed endless.
'I remember being happier in the light,' said the thief, for no reason that Renir could discern. Then he led them down the black halls, deeper and deeper still.
*
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Fighting men, at least the ones who live a while, tend to be good at two things above all others; not dying, and waiting.
Old mercenaries, on the other hand, are by their very nature good at three things; not dying, waiting, and above all, spending money. Bourninund was a very old mercenary. He was excellent at doing all of these, and spending money was the best way, in his experience, to make waiting more palatable.
'Ungrateful bastard,' he muttered as he stumbled and staggered around the warrens that made the very outskirts of the city of Naeth. Ordinarily, a drunkard bouncing from one wall to another wall would be fair game for cutthroats, even in the daylight. It was early morning, still, and the suns' first light had only just lightened the sky, but the cutthroats weren't entirely daft. Drunk old man, two short swords on his hip, angry?
More trouble that most thieves were looking for on their way to bed after a night's work. One thief even crossed the street to avoid the old man. He hefty a small sack of gold in his palm, turned a corner, and walked sharply toward his home and his fat wife. He liked a fat woman, and fat happy women even more. He smiled, thinking about his wife, happy. Forgot about the old drunk man.
The old drunk man, Bourninund, slumped against the gate to the low wall that surrounded the outer city. A high wall for the property and people closer to the castle, a low wall for the likes of him.
He hawked and spat over the wall, missed, and the wind blew his snot and phlegm right back into his lank grey hair.
A guard, probably on his way home, thought about saying something to the old man. Like bugger off.
But as he took one reluctant step toward the unruly drunk, he saw a broad black man was following behind. The black man - bald and massive, bearing a great sword over his shoulder, simply shook his head.
The guard didn't acknowledge the man or the nod, but turned on his heel, strode the other way, and decided he'd done enough for one night. The city was safe enough.
Wen Gossar was older than Bourninund. He wasn't a mercenary, and he wasn't anywhere near drunk enough to spit on himself. He shook his head. Bourninund was a slob, but he liked him, far as a man like Wen took to anyone.
'Bourninund,' he said, wisely staying out of harm's way. He didn't want to have to hurt the man. 'Time for a little nap, is it not?'
'Wen? You following me?'
'No. Just walking behind you in the same direction. Without bumping into walls. Roughly the same direction.'
'Thought...' Bourninund burped. Sounded to Wen as though there might be a little more solidity to the burp than was strictly good for the old man. 'Thought Shorn was...'
'A friend? He is. Sure he's got a good reason for going, wherever it is. You going to be sick?'
'No,' said Bourninund. 'Been drinking a lot longer than...'
He lied. Noisily, Bourninund sprayed most of the night's ale over the wall, the dirt around it, himself.
Wen thought about picking him up and dragging him off to their rooms all the way across the city at the Fat Monk. But Bourninund saved him the trouble and passed out right there, with a soft groan.
'Good enough,' said Wen, then frowned at the familiar peal of a scream in the dim early light. But not from behind, where the people were.
Out there. Beyond the walls, somewhere well away, toward a farm or a field or some stream he didn't know.
The scream came again, but not just one, this time. No small thing, either. Not a person's scream. No one screamed that loud, and he'd heard plenty of agony and fear in his life.
The scream was huge thing, now. A great wailing, more powerful that the wind in a storm. He squinted, his eyes past their best, and tried to see out into the wide, flat lands that spread from the west and north of Naeth. Somewhere out there, he knew, maybe a hundred miles or more, the plains ended abruptly with the Culthorn mountains.
He carried right on straining. The screams, terrible enough to turn even Wen's blood cold, grew louder. Carious finally broke the horizon behind him, and suddenly, he could see.
Maybe a mile distant, maybe two, with the light still hazy enough so he couldn't judge, there was a patch of...nothing.
Pure blackness. A hole. Big, for sure. Big enough for his old eyes to see.
And growing.
*
Wen decided maybe he'd pick Bourninund up after all. Then figured the poison was mostly out, and whatever that
great black rent in the landscape was, Bourninund would rather be awake than asleep. He slapped him about the face for a while, until the old man's eyes focused.
'Bourninund, best get this rabble organised. You awake?'
'What? What are you talking about?'
'War. Smell it. Hear that?'
Wen could see from Bourninund's eyes, widening, that the old mercenary did. You'd have to be utterly deaf to miss it. The screams were awful, and all across the city, Wen could feel, at first, mere curiosity rising. Incredulous faces peering toward the outer wall, as though the wall itself were wailing. Muttering men and women and children, not long from their beds, woken by the sound, began to drift toward the outer wall, until there was a fair crowd.
Panic was under their wonder, though. Right on the heels would be fear.
'Get them organised, Bourninund. Hold what you can. I'll be back.'
'What?'
'Going up to the castle. Those shining bastards probably know already, but if they don't...'
'What?'
Wen sighed. There were certain things an old mercenary had to be good at, he recalled...and the first on that list? Not dying.
Bourninund and Wen might not be the same, but they were born to war.
'Battle, Bear. Battle. Now get up and get straight, there's a fight coming and it won't be long.'
Bourninund nodded, wide awake at last. No fear, not worried about his pounding head or the stench of vomit.
He'll be fine, Wen thought, and turned and began to shoulder his way through the growing crowds toward the castle, towering over the city, right there in the centre.
*
Chapter Thirty
Wen Gossar was a big man, and people moved aside easily enough for his strong arms and his scowling face, but even so the walk to the castle took far longer than it should. People in a panic are tough to wade through. Not like in a battle, when you can hack your way clear. Here, people jostled and trampled and he was already the outsider. Wouldn't do to start swinging, not when the people were just about ready to swing back.
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