The southerner was craning his neck, peering through the gale of grit at the sky above, and Clay saw him grin as Larkspur, holding a bloodied Umbra in one hand and a harried-looking Matrick in the other, came gliding down on widespread wings.
Moog was there by the time she landed. The Twining Staff had gone dormant again, and the wizard fed it into the mouth of his sack as he beamed at the sickly-looking king. “That looked fun!”
Matrick smiled wanly in response, and Clay recognized a man doing his damnedest not to empty his guts on the ground.
“Well done,” Ganelon told the daeva, as Gabriel wandered off toward the glowing pool.
“You too,” she said, taking in the jumble of corpses—both mercenary and wyvern—littering the nearby vicinity.
Clay shifted his wounded arm in its sling. “If you’re looking for Lastleaf—”
“He’s gone.”
Of course he is, said the part of Clay’s mind that knew the druin’s death had come too easy.
Sure enough, when he joined Gabriel by the frothing edge of the pit and looked within, the only corpse Clay saw was the one belonging to the most stubborn, spirited, suitably bull-headed minotaur he had ever known.
Moog touched a bruise purpling around one of his eyes. “You didn’t happen to ask him what a cathiil was, did you? It’s been bugging me since the gorgon’s place.”
“He can’t have gotten far,” Gabe said, ignoring the wizard. “Let’s finish breaking this siege, shall we?”
Ganelon used his axe to point over the frontman’s shoulder. “I think it just broke.”
Clay looked beyond the seething limit of the Horde at the city of Castia, whose gates were grinding slowly open. A pair of druin skyships emerged from behind the walls, rising like bloated bees from the corpse of a flower.
The siege was indeed broken. Those who had lived without hope for so long were coming, at last, to claim it.
Chapter Fifty-three
One Last Time
“It’s Rose. It must be.”
Gabriel was gazing at distant Castia. There were mercenaries streaming from the open gate, remnants of the once-mighty army shattered by the Horde. There’d been more than four thousand of them once, but gauging their numbers Clay guessed less than half remained. Those who did were sick and weary, but they charged out from the city like madmen. Or heroes.
Clay had no doubt at all as to who was leading them. Neither did Gabriel. His friend took a breath with which to speak, but Larkspur cut him off.
“Go get her. We’re with you.”
Jaw clamped, nostrils flaring, red-rimmed eyes brimming over with love, with pride, and with a father’s fathomless gratitude, Gabriel nodded. “I know,” he said. “Thank you.”
He turned to face the city.
“With me, then. One last time.”
With the Heathen vanished and his matriarch dead, the Horde began rapidly losing cohesion.
The cyclopes were starting to fall. Layla Sweetpenny hurled a lance through the eye of one. The men of Giantsbane climbed another like ants swarming a spoiled picnic. A third cyclops, sitting and scooping the insides from the overturned war wagon, pulled an engineer from the wreckage and ate him. A moment later something detonated inside it, bursting its belly like a smashed pumpkin.
Gabe and Ganelon dashed between the legs of the last one standing. Vellichor clipped one heel, Syrinx the other. The monster collapsed, wailing in anguish, and Moog lobbed an alchemical grenade into its open mouth.
“Oopsie daisy!” he shouted. Its head went boom, and blood came spewing from its ruptured eye.
Gabriel pressed on, relentless. The rest of them followed, trailed by a dwindling number of young mercs: Courtney and the Sparks on the left, Jain and her girls the right. Clay saw the Stormriders as well, and Ben the Stalactian wading through the press with a gore-smeared axe in either hand. Merciless May Drummond, who Clay had seen die twice already, was holding her guts in with one hand and swinging a spiked flail in the other.
Something resembling a scarecrow with embers for eyes leapt into their path, but Barret came out of nowhere and smashed it to straw with his hammer. His boys were with him, blood and sweat matting white hair to their faces. Tiamax waved a few desultory arms, and Piglet tried on a disastrous smile. The boy had been crying, Clay noticed.
He glanced around as Vanguard and the Wight Nights fell in step beside them. “Ashe?”
“Gone,” said Barret.
Gone. Clay nearly stumbled over the word. “Barret, I’m—”
“Don’t be, Slowhand.” He said no more, and Clay let it lie.
The sky itself was coming down on them again. Harpies hit the ground in feathered heaps. Plague hawks fell shrieking from above. A listing skyship crashed onto the battlefield, killing scores.
Clay saw the refugees from Castia attack the Horde from the rear, and was reminded of the cold autumn morning (several lifetimes ago, it sometimes felt) on which his father had led him into the forest in search of a tree. He remembered Leif showing him how to cut a wedge in the opposite side before you set to work on the other. With any luck, Rose and her ragged company would be that wedge, and if they just kept hacking, and hacking, and hacking …
Clay spotted the Infernal again, a winter-cloaked titan stomping across the battlefield. Wherever it went the host around it seemed renewed, driven to mindless rage by the demon in its midst. If Lastleaf were seeking protection, or someplace from which to rally and reestablish his grip on his crumbling army, he would probably start there.
Either Gabriel had come to the same conclusion or he was simply plotting the most direct route to Rose, because he was leading them right toward it. Their line was stretched hopelessly thin by now, a bright thread woven through the midst of a vile tapestry.
The Wight Nights got held up fighting giant spiders, while Courtney and the Sparks broke off to fight a bear the size of a Narmeeri elephant. Ben the Stalactian got the business end of a centaur’s lance in his throat, and the Stormriders disappeared amidst a crowd of clambering goblins.
A wave of kobolds rushed in from the left, yipping like a hundred pint-sized dogs. Jain gave Clay a prod with her bow. “Get on, Slowhand. We’ve got this.”
He lingered long enough to see the first dozen critters get a faceful of arrows before taking off after Gabe. He passed Barret on the way—the old merc and his two remaining bandmates were facing down a snarling, snub-nosed warg.
Once, Clay thought he saw the glint of Lastleaf’s scale slipping through the throng, but when he looked again the druin was nowhere in sight.
“Rose!” Gabriel shouted, but his daughter was too far away to hear. Her refugees were set upon by a mob of screeching white imps that reminded Clay of the rasks on the Cold Road, only smaller.
Clay could see Gabe’s daughter clearly now, distinguished from those around her by two things: her hair, which was dyed a bloody red, and the fact that she fought like a Kaskar berserker who’d walked in on her husband in bed with her sister. She held a glowing scimitar in either hand and was whirling, twirling, eviscerating everything within reach.
Or not quite everything, Clay saw, though he could scarcely believe his eyes. There was a druin by her side, lean and lithe, wielding a longsword he employed almost exclusively in her defence. His hair was the washed-out green of a shallow summer sea, swept back behind tufted silver ears. He was taller and broader than Lastleaf, and he moved with strange, strategic economy, as though the battlefield were some vast Tetrea board and he’d anticipated every move.
The two of them—Rose and, Clay presumed, Freecloud—seemed invincible. The imps hit them like surf against a high bluff and broke almost instantly.
The Infernal glared down at the creatures scurrying into the safety of his shadow, then turned its bottomless black gaze upon Castia’s refugees and the pair leading them.
“Fuck!” Gabe swore.
“I’ve got him,” said Larkspur. She launched herself skyward, leaving Ganelon frowning ami
dst a flurry of black feathers.
Clay glanced over. “She’ll be fine,” he said, and found himself believing it.
“I know,” said Ganelon, but his frown deepened anyway.
Gabriel urged them on. Clay took position on his right, Ganelon the left. Moog moved in their midst, while Matrick brought up the rear. They were alone now, the five of them battling through a maelstrom of claw and tooth. Arrows buzzed overhead like midges in marshland. Clay was roared at, screamed at, spat upon; he was jostled, kicked, pummelled, shoved—all the while doing his best to cover Gabriel’s flank as his friend carved a path through whatever lay ahead.
Moog had a wand in either hand, both of which launched bolts of violet light that took erratic routes to their targets but never, ever missed. Matrick plied his knives like a parade drummer, his rhythm so fast his enemies didn’t know he’d murdered them until their god asked them if they took milk in their tea. Ganelon killed with a brutal efficiency that humbled even Gabriel, because Gabriel left wounded in his wake, while Ganelon left the dead in pieces.
Clay was amazed at how little his back hurt, or his arm, or the ribs he’d broken fighting Larkspur’s thralls. His face wasn’t throbbing as it had been earlier. He was weary, of course: Every breath was bought with a gasp, and his heart hammered like a blacksmith late for supper, but he felt … good. Really bloody good, all things considered.
Strangest of all was the utter absence of fear. He’d been very afraid this morning. Afraid the wizard’s plan wouldn’t work, that the dragon would kill them. Afraid of going through the Threshold and coming back empty-handed. The Heartwyld Horde, in all its abominable might, had been the scariest thing he’d ever seen—aside, perhaps, from the look on Ginny’s face when she hit her head on a cupboard door he’d left open by accident.
But now … all Clay felt was a sense of profound certainty, as if things—dire though they seemed—were exactly as they should be. He was among friends, shoulder to shoulder with his bandmates, who just so happened to be the four best men he’d ever had the privilege of knowing.
As individuals they were each of them fallible, discordant as notes without harmony. But as a band they were something more, something perfect in its own intangible way.
So no—he wasn’t afraid. He was, in fact, grinning from ear to ear, basking in the music of the men around him, listening with bittersweet sorrow as the end drew near.
Clay saw Larkspur close with the Infernal. She banked wide as its whip thrashed droplets of frost from the air, then dipped below a swipe of its massive sword. Her scythe came spinning round, but the demon was armoured in hoarfrost so thick that Umbra did little more than strike icy sparks from its carapace.
The titan’s minions were scattering in every direction. A torrent of imps crashed into Saga, and Moog went down, disappearing beneath the press of pale bodies. Matrick lagged, shouting the wizard’s name and wading through imps like a man who’d lost his dog to a river’s swift current.
Clay stepped in front of Gabriel, planting his feet and squaring his shield against the impish tide. The creatures were hardly bigger than children, stooped and scrawny, with horns curling back from pinched faces. They bore no weapons but sharp teeth and wicked claws, and while most were too fearful to harass Clay and the others, those that got close attacked them savagely.
Peering over the rim of his shield, he watched as Larkspur dove again. The Infernal’s mouth yawned like a portal into the Frost Mother’s hell, unleashing a freezing gale that blew the daeva backward. She spun out of control, wings pumping madly as she fought to right herself. Clay could see frost coating her armour, crusting her wings. She faltered in flight, but managed to shake the rime from her feathers and—
The whip hit her.
Larkspur’s scream was cut short as she froze solid, plunging earthward like an icicle struck loose from an eave.
Clay looked immediately to Ganelon. Distress was plain on the warrior’s face, but he clenched his jaw, said nothing.
“Go get her,” Gabe told him.
Ganelon glanced over, incredulous. “You can’t—”
“I can,” said Gabriel, grinning. “Of course I can.”
Ganelon appeared as though he would object, but instead he nodded, turned, and began hewing a path toward the fallen daeva.
The Infernal was advancing on Castia’s refugees. Already its whip was falling among them, entombing every victim in an icy crypt.
“Rose!” Gabriel hollered, and this time his daughter looked up.
“Dad!?”
“Rose!” Gabe tried to step around Clay and was nearly swept away by rushing imps. He growled a curse and fell back behind.
Clay tried to push forward, but the enemy were too many, too deep to give way. It was all he could do to stand his ground.
“Dad!” He heard two voices call out. The first was Rose, desperate and disbelieving, but below that, faint as a whisper, was another.
Tally.
In his head Clay heard his daughter murmur sleepily: You would come if it was me, right, Daddy?
If it was you …
His knuckles went white on Blackheart’s grip. His jaw clamped down on a scream until the scream pried his teeth apart and came out roaring. He set his broken arm inside the bowl of his shield and heaved against the current with the stubborn resolve of a plough ox yoked to the moon.
If it was you, Clay had told her, as the glimmer of candlelight constellations moved across her face, then nothing in the world could stop me.
His determination bought him a single step, a second. He surged ahead, yelling himself hoarse, and the sea of scampering imps broke around his shield like ice beneath a ship’s prow. Suddenly he was stumbling clear, looking up to see the Infernal looming overhead.
Breath like a blizzard engulfed him. Clay closed his eyes for fear they would freeze in their sockets. Snow and chips of ice blasted his face. Frost formed on his beard, caked his eyelashes, and set his body trembling. His shield was suddenly too heavy to lift with one hand. It dragged him off balance, and Clay watched hopelessly as the Infernal’s whip curled against the grey sky above …
Gabriel shouldered him aside; Clay hit the ground as the whip thrashed the air above his head. Before it could recoil Gabe slashed it, severing it, and then squinted down at Clay.
“You good?” he asked.
“G-good,” Clay managed through chattering teeth.
The demon straightened, a sound like an iced-over lake groaning beneath the weight of something titanic. Its eyes, deep and dark as winter wells, looked on as Gabriel approached, unhurried, Vellichor dragging a furrow in the black earth behind him.
Its sword came chopping down so fast Clay barely saw it. Faster still was Gabe, who stepped aside so casually he might have been sliding past someone in a crowded room. The Infernal grinned, clearly amused. A flurry of snow gusted between teeth like shattered tombstones.
The grin fell away as Gabriel began running.
The demon’s growl was the rumble of a distant avalanche. It took a backward step, startled, shifting the grip on its sword so the flared tip would be too wide for Gabe to dodge as it came thrusting toward him.
Gabriel jumped. It wasn’t graceful, and if he hadn’t timed it right the sword would have sheared him clean in half. Instead it ploughed into the ground beneath him, and Gabe landed on all fours on the broad, frosted flat of the blade. He sprang to his feet, sprinting up the sword’s length as the Infernal tried to wrench it free. By the time it did Gabriel was almost to the hilt, leaping as the weapon’s momentum sent him soaring.
For Clay, the next half second spanned the lifetime of a glacier. Gabriel hung suspended in air, both hands on Vellichor’s grip, the blade rising behind him, bright with the bloodred sun of another sky.
Swung with every ounce of strength Gabe could summon, Vellichor split the ice at the Infernal’s throat and cleaved deep into its neck. Snow and sleet erupted from the wound like a storm gusting through an open door. The demon sta
ggered, swayed, and crashed in a disastrous heap.
Gabriel hit the ground running. He’d left his sword lodged in the Infernal, but it hardly mattered now.
Rose came rushing out to meet him, and once again it seemed to Clay as if the world itself ceased turning as the distance between father and daughter fell away. Only the two of them remained in motion, scrambling like swimmers in mirrored oceans, drawn inexorably toward the surface of each other by the very breath in their lungs.
Rose staggered, overcome by exhaustion. As she pitched forward Gabe went to his knees on the mud-slick earth, sliding beneath her as she fell into his arms.
And now it was they who huddled, frozen together in that single, singular moment, as the world around them went on spinning.
And spinning.
And spinning.
Clay found Lastleaf in the corpse-littered stretch between Gabriel’s mercenaries and Castia’s refugees. The druin had suffered horrible burns along one half of his body, where the scale of his armour became fused with the charred flesh underneath. Part of his jaw was missing, and his eyes—one gold-bright, the other scar-ravaged—gazed sightlessly at the cloud-torn sky.
He’d been trampled by his own Horde as they’d scattered in the wake of the Infernal’s fall, and for a moment, despite all he had done to deserve an end such as this, Clay felt a pang of sympathy for the druin. We are each what the past has made of us, he had said on the Isle at Lindmoor, and Lastleaf’s past had made of him a bitter, broken, terrible thing.
The Heathen was lying on top of his sword, which Clay figured he had better take before someone else did. He slung Blackheart over his shoulder and knelt, gingerly turning the body over so as not to—
No.
Clay’s heart froze.
Please, no …
His mouth went dry. There was a sound in his ears like a deep drum booming. Clay felt his hand begin to tremble violently as his fingers closed around Tamarat’s bloody hilt.
“Oh, Lastleaf,” he whispered, as he pulled the void-black blade from the awful sheath it had made of the Heathen’s heart. “What have you done?”
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