TARA
Third moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Yew Cove tunnels, River Gil, Western Plain
They’d run until the tunnel widened and split, then split again and they were cut off from each other. Tara sprinted around a corner and into a mob of yelling men; they were in a storeroom, no way out except the way they’d just come in.
‘Form up, prepare to defend,’ she shouted, dragging three or four of them into a line with her. Dalli was there, Rillirin too, a weird mix of Wolf and Ranker that didn’t move together the way she wanted.
The Mireces didn’t allow them much time to organise. They took the corner at a run and barrelled straight into the front line and Tara’s ranks buckled, threatening to dissolve. ‘Hold,’ she screamed, ‘hold, you fuckers.’
A Raider lunged at her with a sword, and Tara parried, riposted, and they fenced for a few seconds in the flickering, confusing torchlight. She thought she saw an opening, a split second when the man’s arm came away from his side and exposed his flank. Tara pressed hard, attacking the same spot, waiting for the same mistake, and when it came she slid forward, sword tip ripping through his sleeve it was so close and finding a home in the man’s liver.
He screamed and dropped his sword to clutch at hers and Tara obliged him by twisting and withdrawing the blade, slicing into his fingers as she did. He dropped to one knee and she kicked him in the chest, sending him over on to his back, skull bouncing from stone and interrupting his second, bubbling scream. Another Raider swung his sword down and cleaved the man’s skull, shutting him up, and Tara gaped and then hacked him in the neck as he tried to free his blade from imprisoning bone. No point letting an opening like that go to waste.
She heard Dalli scream her name but was pressed, harried from two sides until another of her men slid into a gap and took one of them for his own. Tara chanced a glance and saw Crys charging out of the tunnel the Mireces had come out of, hacking into them from behind, fighting his way to Dalli’s side. He killed like a crazy man, his eyes glowing in the firelight.
Their line pressed forward, found a little more space and more men slid into the front rank, engaging the Mireces, separating them from the others and cutting them down. They swept past Dalli and Crys, leaving them to end the wounded they left behind, and drove the Mireces back into the tunnel until they broke and fled back the way they’d come.
Her men set off after them and Tara ordered them back. ‘Don’t. Could be an ambush. Keep going forward: we need to find the others.’ She beckoned to Crys. ‘Where did you come from?’
He gestured vaguely. ‘Heard the shouting, came looking,’ he said, showing his teeth in a grin. ‘Come on, we don’t want to get left behind.’
RILLIRIN
Third moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Yew Cove tunnels, River Gil, Western Plain
‘They’re coming again!’
Rillirin lunged in the near darkness. The Raider brought his sword up to meet her spear and there was the thunk of metal kissing wood. Before he had a chance to force her spear up, she swung around and thrust at the second man, trying to catch him off guard.
He forced her back easily – too easily. Already she was against the tunnel wall. She threw herself towards him with a howl, aiming for his throat, snarling as she spun and hacked, feet skittering over the hard-packed earth, breath whistling in her throat, arms burning.
But Rillirin was no warrior and they all knew it, most of all her. Spots of fizzing colour danced before her eyes and her aching lungs couldn’t drag in enough air. She staggered sideways out of range, tripping over someone else and catching an elbow in the ribs.
‘Fucking move,’ Crys snarled and shoved her away to gut a howling Mireces. He glanced at her, then reached out and yanked her arm so hard her shoulder popped. An axe slammed into the ground where she’d stood and Crys swung her into the wall and leapt past, stabbing the man in the shoulder. He squealed and dropped his axe and Rillirin choked on the stink of guts as Crys opened him from cock to throat.
‘You fighting or falling asleep?’ Crys growled and Rillirin sucked in a breath and darted up to his side, spear flailing. This tunnel was deeper than the others, leading steeply downwards, and it was dank, slime coating the walls, puddles forming on the ground, filling with blood and piss.
Mireces, Wolf and Ranker strained and hacked at each other, screams and curses echoing and bouncing until everything was noise, flickering orange and black shadows and confusion.
Crys was gone, chasing three Mireces down a side tunnel and howling like the damned, and Rillirin leant on her spear, panting and spitting out a mouthful of hair. A grunt as a Raider hefted his sword and she whooped in a breath and brought the spear up in both hands, caught his blade high above her head and started to parry when she felt a hand grab her shoulder from behind and a tearing pain through her lower back. A soft jingling as the Raider behind her pulled the knife out of her chainmail and her flesh, and a rush of heat down her back and leg.
Rillirin’s knees slammed into the ground. The dots were joining up in her eyes, her back hot and wet and sloughing life. She was staring along the tunnel where Crys had vanished but he wasn’t coming back. No one was coming to save her.
She looked up without much interest at the Raider before her. Her left hand was pressed to her back but the blood kept coming, hot and thick between her fingers. And something else, something hard sticking up from her belt. Her fingers closed around it and as the Raider readied the death stroke, she drew her knife and shoved it up under his chin, through his tongue and palate, wrenched it back out as he stumbled, and into the side of his neck, knife awkward in her left hand and the grip slippery with blood.
He dropped to all fours in front of her and Rillirin stabbed him in the back so he slammed face down into a puddle. She heard the wet crunch of his nose hitting the ground and then someone fell over her in the dark. The Raider who’d stabbed her. He thrashed on top of her, trying to get the knife. She had nothing left now. She felt him peel back her fingers and rip the handle from her grip, then he stiffened, rocked, and slumped against her back, bathing her in blood.
Dalli, her spear red along a third of its length. She lunged over Rillirin and drove the spear’s blade into a Mireces’ chest. It skittered over a rib before biting deep and lodging. Dalli tugged, the man stumbled forward, tugged again and then ran him back into the wall, waggled the spear and finally freed it.
She left him gurgling in a heap and dragged Rillirin to her feet, over a second body and back along the tunnel into a storeroom to huddle against the back wall. Rillirin had lost her knife, somehow still had her spear.
‘Where are you hurt? Rillirin, where are you hurt?’ Dalli hissed.
‘Where’ve you been? Where’d Crys go? I was alone.’
‘Shit. Rillirin? Focus on my voice. Where are you hurt?’
‘Everywhere. I’m dying.’ Light exploded in her head and she focused on Dalli in shocked outrage. ‘You hit me.’ She started to cry. ‘You bitch, you slapped me.’
‘Stop whining, it’s just a scratch. I’m going to rip off the bottom of your shirt and use it to wad the wound, all right? Hold up your mail, come on.’
‘Scratch?’ Rillirin whispered and Dalli grunted and nodded, tearing at the bottom of her shirt.
‘Deep breath now.’ A hiss, a hiccup and a strangled groan. ‘Good girl,’ Dalli said and wrapped the bandage tightly around Rillirin’s waist, dragged her mail shirt back down and tightened her belt across the wound.
‘Ah!’
‘Hush, it’s done. You can sit still for a minute.’ Dalli’s head came up and she cocked it, listening, bloody fingers over Rillirin’s lips. She dragged herself to her feet. ‘I’ll take rearguard. You just get moving.’ She put a hand in Rillirin’s armpit and hauled her up.
She couldn’t leave Dalli to face them on her own, but she was so dizzy she couldn’t see straight. Just a scratch. It’s just a scratch. ‘D
on’t lose touch with us,’ she mumbled. She pointed a shaking finger. ‘This tunnel. Sure they went this way.’
Dalli nodded and turned away into the dark.
MACE
Third moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Yew Cove tunnels, River Gil, Western Plain
Mace couldn’t wait to get out of the tunnels and find that little piss-weasel boy who’d sent them down here. Never mind that he’d probably been coerced into doing it, didn’t matter that the Mireces had undoubtedly threatened his family, Mace was going to take great pleasure in finding him and popping his head off his shoulders.
The Mireces hacked at him with a double-headed axe bigger than Mace’s head and he took it on his shield, grunted and twisted his arm so the axe fell away. Took a man’s hand off at the wrist, blocked a sword, came back for the axeman and opened his scalp, severed an ear and thunked into a shoulder. Shield up to block number four’s sword, backplate grating against the wood as his shoulder blades tried to dig their way through the wall.
Breath rasping in his chest and number four came back at him again but he was limping and Mace hammered into him so he had to step back on his damaged leg. The step was short and wobbly and Mace punched his shield boss into the man’s face, slammed the bottom rim down on to his knee and shoved him away. He went down choking on his teeth and Mace screamed his defiance, but he was away from the wall now and there were still two more, and the shouts of others coming from the bend in the tunnel.
‘Come on, cock bastards,’ he yelled, hacking at the fifth man as the sixth circled, trying to get behind him. Blow to the back of his knee, buckling his leg, and he blinked in pain as his knee slammed into the stone. He swung behind him with his shield, wanting only to find some space, pushed back up to standing as the fucker in front of him ran his sword into his belly.
Screech of metal as his breastplate held and the sword careered off, slicing into the underside of his upper arm as it passed. Mace hissed – no armour there and he could feel the hot rush of blood already. Twat was off balance now though, not prepared for his strike to miss and Mace punched him in the face with his sword hand, headbutted him for good measure and got air between them, pushed him back with his shield and hacked into his waist with his sword. This one didn’t have plate, not even chainmail, and the boiled leather parted like silk under his blade.
Not sure how many were dead, how many might get back up, and still one more circling, circling. The torch was guttering and shadows were leaping, making the corpses at his feet seem to move. His arms were shaking, hot nausea in his throat, knee throbbing.
‘Motherfucker,’ the last Raider snarled, spit flickering across Mace’s cheek. ‘Motherfucking fuck.’ Mace set his feet, sucked in a whistling breath, and then blinked when the man’s head vanished.
Tara’s face appeared through the fountain of blood, grinning. ‘Close call?’ she asked, the sibilants hissing like snakes around the wall. ‘Nice job,’ she added when she counted the bodies. ‘I’m glad you’re not dead. But time to go.’
‘Take their torch,’ Mace said, hands on his knees as he panted, ‘and next time I call, hurry the fuck up, would you?’
‘I’ll do my best, sir.’ She slipped her free hand under Mace’s uninjured arm and hurried him along as the shouts of Mireces grew louder behind them. They slithered into the group of Rankers and the men set their shields and blocked the tunnel, buying them time.
Mace unbuckled his pauldron with stiff fingers and wrapped a bandage awkwardly around his arm, tying it with his teeth. Tara rebuckled the shoulder plate as violence erupted in the tunnel behind them.
‘Pass word forward and back. Keep the column tight, look for any exit to the surface and take it. We need to get in the open and fight the way we know best. We don’t get out, we all die down here.’
DOM
Third moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Watchtown, Western Plain
‘Rillirin!’ Dom was on his feet by the time his eyes opened, his lungs tight from the shout. The moon peeked from behind wisps of cloud, the landscape bone-white and eerie, the shadows soft charcoal. Disoriented he knelt, one hand pressed just above his jutting left hip against the shadow of pain.
‘Stay out of the darkness,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s coming.’ He rocked on his knees. Was it a dream or a knowing? Everything hurt so much he couldn’t tell any more.
Movement, a woman threading between the fallen timbers across the square. He lurched back to his feet, hope making him dizzy. ‘Watcher?’ Then, thready on an exhalation: ‘Rillirin?’
‘Not quite, my love,’ She said and Dom groaned. He rubbed his eyes hard, but She was still there. ‘What are you doing, little calestar?’ She asked.
What I have to. ‘Don’t know. Doesn’t matter.’
The Dark Lady tutted. ‘Sounds like you’ve given up, sweet one. Why?’
‘Nothing I can do.’ Dom sighed. ‘No way to help.’
‘So sad, to be so useless. Come to me and you can help. Just step forward, embrace me and I can take all this away from you.’ She came closer, feet whispering through ash, naked and glowing in the light of the shrouded moon.
Somewhere east of him, Rillirin was bleeding in the dark, his family were fighting and maybe dying and he was here, in the ruins of Watchtown, dealing with this.
‘Haven’t you had your fun yet?’ he muttered as he fought not to back away. He had a dagger in his boot, a sword on the ground beside his feet. They were both useless against Her, but he felt a distant pleasure that he’d even thought about them.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d be able after the Dancer threw you out of the world,’ he added. ‘I bet that was unpleasant.’
‘I must admit it’s taken me a while to come back, my love,’ the Dark Lady said with a dismissive wave of Her hand. She stopped so close to him Her breasts brushed his chest. Dom rocked back on to his heels and She shifted forward on Her toes, maintaining the contact. Her pupils dilated and Dom’s lip curled with disgust.
‘Your prancing girl is quite the weaver of shields. Do you want to know how I did it?’
‘Through the last knowing, the one when the Fox God was here, I could feel you scritching around in my head like a flea-ridden rat.’
‘Yes, through the knowing,’ She said, amused. ‘Your mind and your soul are directly connected to the worlds of the gods. That’s how your Dancer controls you.’
‘That’s how you control me, you mean.’
The Dark Lady laughed and cupped his chin, kissing him. ‘I’m not controlling you, my love,’ She whispered against his lips, ‘She is. She’s the one putting you through all this, giving you the ability to see me. If She cared, She could take it all away, take away your gift so that I am hidden to you – me and all the others. Gosfath, the Fox God, the Dancer Herself. But She doesn’t. And so I but do what it is in my nature to do.’
She kissed him again, Her tongue whispering against his, and Dom felt the heat stir in his belly. His hands were pressed to Her shoulder blades, pulling Her closer. Her skin was as smooth as butter, as silk, hot and yielding, the muscles in Her back tensing as he stroked them. Her kiss sent pulses of warmth through his body, washed away his weariness and replaced it with hunger.
He didn’t think about what She’d said. He concentrated on the kiss, losing himself. She was a good kisser. Nearly as good as Rillirin.
He twisted away. ‘What do you want?’ he asked, his voice a growl; She pouted and nibbled his jaw. He jerked his head back but didn’t step away, didn’t let go. Her skin touched his despite the barrier of his clothes, and he felt himself harden against her thigh. It would be so easy just to give in. She traced a finger along his cheek, into the hollow beneath the bone. If he let go She’d catch him, hold him, take away his pain and replace it with pleasure such as he’d never known.
He kissed her again and She responded, arms around his neck, left leg hooking behind his calf. She bucked Her hips and Dom moaned,
inhaling the scents of moonlight and musk and blood, one hand on the curved muscle of Her arse. A sharp sting in his lip and he winced, pushed Her away, spitting in the grass. Blood.
The Dark Lady’s lips peeled back to reveal curved fangs. A forked tongue licked out and was gone. ‘Still you deny me?’ She hissed. ‘Still you haven’t understood the price? You belong to me. She’s given you to me. And I will have you, body and mind and soul.’ She grabbed his arm and spun him so that She stood pressed against his back, tall suddenly, taller than him and cocooning him in Her arms. She pointed. ‘Look out there. Look at the world, at the beauty of it. We can rule it, me, my brother, and you. You would be our voice in this land and all would kneel to you.’
‘I don’t want people kneeling to me,’ Dom forced himself to say. It was like leaning back into the embrace of a great, muscled mountain cat. Soft, with coiled power lurking beneath its skin. And so very wild.
‘Don’t lie,’ She murmured into his ear. ‘Not to me.’
‘I don’t want people kneeling to me when the price is so high,’ he amended, watching the silver moonlight bathe the plain. Something was moving out there. Stalking.
She kissed the side of his neck. ‘And now, at last, after all of this time, we come to it,’ She said. ‘It always comes down to the bargain, to what you’re willing to pretend you didn’t do in return for power.’ She kissed the other side of his neck, below the ear, and Dom shivered. ‘Name your price.’ Her hand trailed down his chest. ‘Tell me what you want.’ Her voice was husky, needful.
Dom collected his thoughts and marshalled his courage. ‘You and your Brother dead in a ditch for crows to feast on?’
She tutted and turned him about to face Her again, and now She was small and delicate, Her eyes vulnerable. ‘You wound me.’
‘If only that were possible, Lady, you would learn exactly what I want.’ Her hands were busy at his belt and he took them, held them still, and then stepped back, every muscle in his body screaming at him to step forward instead.
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