The Steel Remains (Gollancz)

by Richard Morgan

It’s like it’s all turning into a dream I had,’ he said numbly.

  The dwenda gave him a small, sad smile. He leaned forward a little. ‘I’ve heard it said that dreams are the only way your kind can find their way into the grey places. And that only the insane or the inhumanly strong of will can stay.’

  ‘I—’

  Someone bumped heavily into Ringil from behind, jolted loose what he wanted to say before he could frame it properly. The thought spilled away from him like coins across the street and down a grate, little glints of gleaming meaning, gone.

  He snapped around angrily on the bench.

  ‘Why the fuck don’t you watch where you’re going?’

  ‘Oops, sorry citizen, sorry. Look, I’ll gladly make good any spillage if you ... Gil? Fucking Ringil ?’

  Egar the Dragonbane.

  Out of the lamplight and tavern hubbub like a figure from legend emerging from battlefield mist. Broad and tall and tangled looking, hair a wild knotted mass with little iron talismanic ornaments hanging in it. One leather-sheathed blade of his staff lance jutted up over his shoulder, there was a short-handled axe matched with a broad-bladed dirk at his belt. He smelled of marsh and cold, and had obviously just come through the door. His scarred and bearded face split into a huge grin. He clapped hands on Ringil’s shoulders, dragged him up off the bench with no more effort than a father picking up his infant son.

  ‘Urann’s fucking balls, let me get a look at you,’ he bellowed. ‘What the fuck are you doing in this shit-pile dump? You’re the face from the past I’m supposed to recognise and save? You’re the one that cloaked fuck was on about?’

  And then everything came apart.

  For Ringil it was like stepping suddenly back into some aspect of the marches. Time stopped working, slowed to a pace that was like moving in mud. His perceptions stretched and smeared, he saw what was happening as if through some other, entirely more attenuated set of senses.

  Seethlaw, slamming to his feet, eyes wide.

  Egar, warrior’s senses suddenly awake to the tension, hand falling without fuss to the broad dirk at his hip.

  Heads turning at neighbouring tables.

  Ashgrin, seated at Seethlaw’s side, turning, reaching down for something.

  A faint shimmer on the air. A darkening.

  ‘I think you are mistaken, sir,’ Seethlaw said, and raised a hand a few inches off the table at his side, fingers spread loosely to make a spider. A ripple seemed to run through the fingers, as if they were suddenly boneless. ‘This is not your friend.’

  Egar snorted. ‘Listen, old man, I’d know this guy any ...’

  He frowned.

  ‘A mistake,’ repeated the dwenda caressingly. ‘Easily made.’

  ‘You must be very tired,’ agreed Ashgrin.

  Egar yawned cavernously. ‘Yeah, ain’t that the fucking truth. Funny, I could have sworn—’

  Ringil, for no clear reason he could later name, screamed and swept an arm savagely across the table. Tavern brawl tactics, tugged out from some dark pocket of response he rarely went to these days. The lamp in the centre went over, oil spilled out. Flame caught and sprinted a line among the platters and tumbled tankards. He came to his feet, heels of both palms under the trestle, upended it at Seethlaw.

  ‘It is me, Eg,’ he was yelling. It fucking is me. Get the girl.’

  Later, tears would squeeze into his eyes as he recalled the Majak’s reaction. Egar’s lips peeled off a snarl, he surged back in at Ringil’s side. The dirk came out, broad dark glint in the dancing light from the flames now loose in the straw on the floor. He brandished it at the stumbling dwenda.

  ‘Right you are, Gil,’ he roared. ‘Who wants this right up their fucking arse? Fucking magicking old cunts.’

  His other hand had already flashed out, seized Sherin by the arm and dragged her off the bench. As Pelmarag tried to stop him, the dirk flashed out. Pelmarag’s arm got in the way, the blade sliced and blood darkened the dwenda’s sleeve. Pelmarag made a wolfish snarling sound of his own and leapt at Egar. The steppe nomad’s eyes widened in shock. Whatever he’d seen in Pelmarag before, whatever glamour had sullied his perception, it was gone now.

  ‘Wraith!’ he bellowed. ‘’Ware spirits! Swamp wraith!’

  Then he went over on the floor with Pelmarag on top of him.

  Weapon, weapon. It gibbered through Ringil’s head. Sell my fucking soul to Hoiran for a weapon.

  He spun and dropped on Pelmarag’s back instead. Knew it was a matter of seconds before the other dwenda at the table had him. Did it anyway. Egar was locked up in the knife-fighter’s clinch, arms braced and straining to bring his blade to bear against Pelmarag’s grip. The legs of dwenda and man thrashed about on the earthen floor, looking for purchase. Ringil hooked the fingers of his right hand into the dwenda’s eyes and hauled back. Pelmarag howled and flailed. Egar broke the dwenda’s grip and shoved the dirk through his throat from the side. Blood gouted everywhere. It smelled, Ringil would later realise, bittersweet and strong, quite unlike anything out of human veins.

  For now, he was already spinning about, crouched and yelling, looking for the others in the rising smoke. He had one moment to lock gazes with Seethlaw, who was poised to leap the upended trestle, features an awful mask of blank-eyed, snarling rage. Then a surging mass of humanity swept in between them.

  ‘Swamp wraith! Swamp wraith! Get the motherfuckers!’

  Out of nowhere, Ashgrin had a terrible blue long-sword blade flashing in his hands. The first humans to reach him went down in butchered pieces. The surge turned chaotic and shrill, some scrambling backwards away from the sudden steel, others who had weapons bawling for space and struggling to get to the front.

  ‘Ringil !’ Egar, yelling in his ear. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here!’

  He gulped air. ‘Gladly. Get the—’

  ‘Got her! Just fucking go!’

  The Majak’s hand was firmly around Sherin’s arm again, engulfing it just above the elbow. She’d have bruises tomorrow, Ringil knew.

  If we live that long.

  They made the door somehow, elbowing and tripping others who’d had the same idea. Ringil kicked it open and tumbled out into the cold and dark. The inn was built on a slight rise and he fell over with his own momentum, landed in a winded heap.

  Shattering of glass. A dwenda came leaping, shrieking through the window like a lost soul, landed like a cat, and stalked towards them, blade in hand, grinning.

  Egar let go of Sherin’s arm.

  ‘Get behind me, girl,’ he grunted.

  He freed his small axe, hefted it left-handed, kept the dirk in his right. No time to unship the lance, much though he’d have loved the extra reach. He eyed the creature’s sword with professional calm. The empty inhuman eyes had been a shock with the first one, but now his blood was up, he wasn’t fussed. No worse than a steppe ghoul, he supposed. A fighting grin licked around his lips.

  ‘Fuck you looking at?’ he barked.

  The creature ran in, shrilling. Terrifying speed, but Egar had seen that a few times before as well. He hurled his dirk upward, underhand at its face. The long-sword flashed out, deflecting, but it was an awkward block, anyone could see that. Egar was in behind, now with the axe in both hands, hacking sideways under the twisted sword. The swamp wraith yowled and leapt out of the way. Egar pressed in, got the hook-backed edge of the axe on the blade and yanked it out of the way, left-handed. His right hand curled to a fist, smashed his opponent in the face. The swamp wraith reeled. Egar followed through. Another punch, into the face again - leave the body alone, assume armour of some sort under that weird black leatherish gear - and he felt the nose break with a solid crunch. The wraith screamed and tried to slash back at him with its blocked blade. Speed it had, but not the brute strength it needed. Egar grinned and reached down, hooked an arm under a thigh and heaved. The creature went over on its back. Egar dropped on its chest with a knee and his full weight. Something creaked and cracked. The swamp wrai
th screamed again, weakly. Egar got his axe free, no time to reverse it, and smashed the iron-shod haft down into the empty-eyed face. He put out an eye, shattered a cheekbone. Smashed the mouth and the already broken nose.

  Movement behind him.

  He whipped around, saw Ringil standing there swaying in the feeble light. Blew out a sigh of relief and eased his grip on the axe.

  ‘Get up,’ the Trelayne knight said hoarsely. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. Before the others get outside.’

  Egar glanced towards the inn. The sounds of violence raged from the broken window and the doorway, where a mob of men were gathering, torn between the fascination of spectators and the terror of what they’d seen. There was smoke and the jumping light of flames. No one seemed to have noticed the three of them yet, down here in the gloom. All attention was on the building.

  ‘There’s got to be better than sixty men in there,’ he told Ringil. He was breathing hard from the fight. ‘Even if only two thirds of them want to mix it up, they’ll finish these fuckers, easy.’

  ‘No, they won’t.’ An awful urgency split Ringil’s voice open. ‘Believe me, we’ve got minutes at most.’

  You don’t follow a man to almost certain death in the baking heat of a mountain pass without learning his measure first. Without learning to trust what he says in a coin-spin instant, even if he is a fucking faggot. Egar got up and stared around.

  ‘Right. We take the ferry.’

  ‘What?’ Ringil frowned. ‘Don’t these bumpkins lock up their oars?’

  ‘Yeah, who gives a shit about oars, time like this. The Idrikarn flows hard this far out of the swamp; it’ll carry us south faster than you can fucking run, mate.’

  The thing at Egar’s feet stirred and moaned. The Majak looked down in surprise.

  ‘Tough motherfucker, huh?’ he said, almost admiring.

  Then he reversed the axe in his hands, shifted stance and chopped down with the bladed end. The swamp wraith’s head rolled free in a messy burst of blood. He wiped some of it off his face, sniffed it curiously and shrugged. He cast about and found his dirk, gathered it up and clapped Ringil on the shoulder.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘Arse in the saddle.’

  ‘Wait, give me his sword.’

  ‘What do you want his fucking sword for? What’s wrong with the one on your back?’

  Ringil stared at him as if he’d suddenly started gibbering like a Demlarashan mystic. Egar stopped in mid-turn, spread his bloodied hands.

  ‘What?’

  Ringil lifted his right hand as if it pained him, put it slowly and wonderingly up to his shoulder and touched the pommel of his sword like, well, like he was caressing someone’s prick, to be honest. Egar shifted uncomfortably, fiddled with his axe.

  ‘You’re a fucking weirdo, Gil. Same as it ever was. Come on.’

  Down to the darkened landing stage at a sprint, Sherin stumbling between them, and Ringil saw it was true: even at the bent edge of the river there was current running. Tiny leaves and other specks of river detritus drifted by at ambling pace. In the centre of the stream, a taut swirl showed on the fitfully band-lit water. The ferry, a fat little demasted fishing skiff barely four yards long, wagged at the end of its moorings as if in a hurry to be off.

  ‘Hoy! You!’ They’d been spotted. ‘Wait, there - thieves - look. Hoy, stop them, that’s my fucking boat—’

  They leapt aboard. Egar hacked the ropes apart and gave the landing stage pilings a punt with one boot. Behind them, a spill of dark figures came pelting down towards the landing stage, yelling, gesticulating, brandishing weapons and fists. The skiff drifted away from the shore, agonisingly slow at first and then, as the current caught, she swung briskly out into flow. Balanced amidships, crouched over the collapsed and sobbing form of Sherin, Egar grinned at Ringil.

  ‘Haven’t done this in a while.’

  ‘You’d better get down,’ Ringil advised him. ‘They’re going to start shooting in a minute.’

  ‘Nah. Too much else going on, they won’t have a strung bow between them. They’re not soldiers, Gil.’ But he bent and hand-braced himself to a seat on one of the skiff’s cross-strut benches anyway. He craned sideways and peered. ‘That’s just Radresh, pissed off ’cause we’ve nicked his ferry.’

  ‘You can see his point.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Never did like his fucking prices.’

  The two of them looked back in silence as the crowd on the landing stage boiled about in its own impotence. Something heavy splashed in their wake, but too far aft to be a cause for concern. No one was getting in the water, that was for sure. A couple of pursuers with some presence of mind ran along the bank, trying to keep pace. Ringil watched narrowly for a few seconds, saw them run into thickening undergrowth at the edge of the camp and clog to a halt. The pursuit died in curses and bawled abuse, growing ever fainter. He felt his heart starting to ease.

  Until—

  Up on the rise, flames burnt merrily in the windows and the opened door of the inn. It was hard to tell at the growing distance, but he thought a single, tall, dark figure loomed in the doorway, unmoved by the fire at its back, staring after them with lightless eyes.

  Run if you like, whispered a voice in his head. I’ll count to a hundred.

  He shivered.

  The boat tugged onward, downriver on the water’s dark swirl.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I had thought of Ennishmin, my lord.

  Archeth mimicked herself savagely as she stared out of the window. The Beksanara garrison tower was a stubby affair, barely two storeys higher than the rest of the blockhouse, and the view from the top room was the same as everywhere else in this bloody country. Swamp and bleak trees, under a sky the colour of spilled brains. You couldn’t even see the river from this angle. You certainly couldn’t see any trace of the morning sun.

  She’d had the whole fucking Empire to choose from.

  She could have been on a beach somewhere in the Hanliahg Scatter right now, bare feet in the sand and a pitcher of coconut beer for company, watching the morning flood the sky across the bay with light. She could have been on the balcony of an Uplands Watch garrison lodge beyond the Dhashara pass, hot coffee and lung-spiking mountain air to wake her up, and the swoop-and-squabble courtship of snow eagles like a duel overhead.

  But no, no, you had follow your fucking hunch to this shit-hole end of the realm. You had to drag Elith back into her past and all the memories too painful to face that she’d left behind. Just couldn’t resist it, could you? Archeth Indamaninarmal returns in triumph with the answer to the Empire’s mysterious woes.

  She’d found nothing. Two weeks of criss-crossing the settlements on the fringes of the Ennishmin marshes, of quizzing bored and resentful imperial officials already out of sorts with their miserable luck at being posted here. Two weeks of barely concealed sneers and sullen reticence under questioning from the artefact scavenger trash whose patriotic help she’d tried - and failed - to enlist. Two fucking weeks of old wives’ tales and rumour, and trekking through swamp to look at a succession of curiously shaped boulders or rock outcrops with no significance whatsoever. The big triumph so far was unearthing another glirsht marker to match the one Elith had hauled to Khangset. They dug it out of soggy mud, six miles into the swamp from Yeshtak where it had fallen on its face and lain, apparently for centuries, undisturbed. It was moss grown and pitted with age, and one of its beckoning arms was broken off. Sweat-stained and mud-streaked, they let it lie where it was and plodded back to Yeshtak.

  She saw the way Faileh Rakan and his men looked at her when they thought she wouldn’t notice, and it was hard to blame them.

  She was chasing phantoms, and it was turning out exactly as you’d expect.

  And now this - sabotage or random viciousness, Idrashan fed something in the stables that brought him mysteriously to his knees and forced them to stay overnight while they waited to see if he would live or die. There was no veterinarian worthy of the name
in Beksanara, and not much in the way of law enforcement either. Rakan bullied the village administrator into rounding up a few likely suspects and the Throne Eternal men took turns knocking them around in the blockhouse cells. Outside of the exercise, they got nothing remotely useful from it. Blame cycled back and forth as it tended to in these situations, back-stabbing and local family feuds, petty criminal misdemeanours brought to light and frankly implausible confessions, all seeded with the usual marsh-mist crap: a mysterious plague on the air that afflicted horses when the wind blew from the north-east; bandits, the feral remnants of families driven out in the occupation, hiding in the swamp and slowly turning into something less than human; a tall figure in brimmed leather hat and cloak, sighted recently prowling the streets at night as if surveying the village for some evil purpose; shadowy child-sized figures seen skittering about in the gloom and making eerie, whinnying sounds. After six hours of it, Archeth made Rakan let everybody go.