by Ben Peek
‘That is the lie the gods created. There are no rewards. There are no punishments. There is only the life we make.’
‘Se’Saera would change that!’ Jix hurled Zaifyr into the dirt road and kicked him viciously. ‘She will give us order and purpose. Do you not see that? Think of how long we have lived. I have spent over ten thousand years waiting for you and your trial. That is what the Leviathan asked of me. I was faithful. I was patient. But my reward would have been an illusion. A lie! Se’Saera offered a chance to change that, not just for me, but for all of us.’
‘We should make that choice.’ His red hands could not push him up from the ground and he slumped backwards. ‘Tell me why we cannot?’ he asked, staring up at the man.
‘What choice would you make without a god?’ Lor Jix loomed over him dangerously. ‘How do we create our morals? From each other? What do we take as guidance? We need the divine for that. They are what binds us together as a society. They are what separates us from the animals. We need Se’Saera!’
‘Enough.’ A bright blade fell flat on Jix’s chest. It was held by Queila Meina, and behind her stood Steel, as strong as they had been when they walked into Heüala. ‘Not so long ago, you called her an abomination,’ she said, walking around him, to push him away from Zaifyr. ‘I don’t know what happened to change that in your mind, but to me, Se’Saera remains very much that. Her parents are the same to me.’
‘You did not live for more than three decades,’ he said, pushing the blade aside. ‘You are but a babe in existence.’
‘Is that why you are so quick to kneel?’
Jix roared in fury, but unlike Zaifyr, Meina was not racked with pain. When the ancient dead threw himself at her, she stepped to her left, and drove her sword through his chest. Zaifyr expected the colour to leave him, for him to be defined by the white lines of a haunt, just as the dead who were struck down by Se’Saera had been changed. But though a ripple ran over his body, it was no more than a blink. Jix’s hands curled around the mercenary’s neck and Meina, in response, disappeared.
She reappeared behind him and grabbed the back of his clothes. ‘You have the will to stay here, do you?’ she said, throwing him into her soldiers.
‘This is the domain of a god!’ he shouted with such anger, such intensity. ‘I will not leave Heüala to the likes of you!’
‘Take him,’ Meina commanded her soldiers. ‘Throw him out of the gates. Drive him out into the fields. Show him that there is no river any more, and no ship to sail upon it. Throw him into the new world and see what he makes of it.’
The Captain of Wayfair roared in defiance. Zaifyr heard him warn Meina, heard the threat he gave after, but each word rang with less and less conviction as the soldiers of Steel dragged him out of the gates of the City of the Dead and into a world he did not know.
4.
Se’Saera’s child watched Bueralan move around him with a curious tilt to his head. ‘Why would you do this?’ he asked. ‘You are not like the man I found earlier. He was afraid of me.’
‘I’m not afraid,’ the saboteur said, his sword before him. ‘But my friend, Zean. You were made from him.’
‘I am myself!’ The child bared his teeth. ‘That is not my name!’
‘Is he in there? Do you hear him?’
‘Stop!’
‘It’s a simple question.’
‘Only at the start,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘But Mother quietened him. He told us that we did not deserve to live.’
Bueralan stopped. ‘After that, you never heard him again?’
‘Mother said he was an enemy.’ The child was agitated, his wings fluttering, hisses escaping at the end of his voices. ‘She said I would have lots of enemies. She did not say you were one.’
‘I am not your enemy,’ the saboteur said, his sword pointed to the ground. ‘Your mother is my enemy. Se’Saera took the soul of Zean and made you. But I think you know that. I think you know you are him. I think you know she put you in Taela. Your mother knew that you would kill Taela when you born. She is the one who started this war. She has killed thousands of people just to make a faith. You’re simply part of the wreckage.’
Before Se’Saera’s child could respond, Bueralan’s sword slashed forwards. The child swayed backwards, caught slightly off-guard, but not enough. Bueralan returned with a backhanded slash that pushed the other further back, into the watery edge of Leviathan’s Blood, but again, he did so without injury. He cut a horizontal line to his left, forcing the child to the right, pushing him deeper into the rolling surf. He wanted to cut his movement down, to give himself higher ground when the sand suddenly dropped away, and to let the poisoned ocean do what it could to break the child’s concentration. But Se’Saera’s child understood that and, as Bueralan slashed towards him, his left arm rose and blocked the blade against his inky-black skin, causing a shudder to run along the blade and into Bueralan’s arm.
The child leapt forwards and Bueralan turned his shoulder into him to absorb the blow. The force of it surprised him, and pain spiked through him so sharply that it knocked the wind from him. For a brief second, he thought his shoulder had broken, or at least been dislocated. The child thrust forwards, throwing Bueralan to the ground, and he lost his grip on his sword. But his shoulder moved – painfully, but it moved – and he jammed the palm of his hand into the child’s hard head hard enough to roll the child off him and scamper away, scooping up his sword as he came to his feet.
He blocked a raking slash of the child’s talons, back-pedalled to get his balance, and turned away another slash, followed by another, before a sudden and wild return cut glanced off the child’s head and stopped his advance. Bueralan could not see any open wound, but he wasn’t surprised: he had hit the child’s arm with enough force to cut deep into the bone – maybe through – on a human. A glancing blow would do little to his head. But Bueralan did not panic. Instead, he lowered the tip of his blade and led with his injured shoulder a charge into the child. At the last moment, he stiff-armed the child instead and hit him hard enough to put him off balance. Bueralan’s left leg hooked on the child’s right and swept him onto the wings on his back, even as the child’s talons raked hard and deep along Bueralan’s right side.
That stopped him.
He had expected the wound, but he had expected it to be like wounds he had had before, where his body reacted and minimized the damage before it healed.
Instead, the sharp ends of the child’s talons cut deep, sliced into skin, muscle, and ran jaggedly along his ribs with such a force that Bueralan’s plan to spear his sword down into the mouth of the child broke apart in the pain. He felt the child’s foot slam into his right knee, once, twice, enough to bring him down to where the child could reach out with his talons.
Only to find him gone.
‘I know you said you wanted to do this yourself,’ Aelyn Meah said as she stepped in front of Bueralan. ‘But I’d rather you not die.’
You are god-touched and you cannot die, Aela Ren had said to him, months ago. Not until a god allows you.
‘Aelyn,’ Bueralan began.
‘I spent some time with your mother,’ she said to the child, ignoring him. She stopped before the winged figure, seemingly unarmed. ‘Both of them. Did your second mother teach you the word rape, or did she blur that as well?’
‘You were supposed to help me,’ Se’Saera’s child hissed. ‘Mother promised.’
‘It could have gone that way.’ Around her feet, sand began to stir. ‘I could almost see it. But in the end, you must be responsible for what you have done, and I have not done enough.’
The sand erupted suddenly and violently around the child as if it were a pair of hands, but his wings flexed—
‘Aelyn,’ Bueralan said again.
—and Se’Saera’s child leapt into the air out of the sand.
In a blink, Bueralan’s sword tore itself from his grasp and flew through the air. It appeared in Aelyn’s hand in time for her to sweep the blad
e upwards, using it deflect the child’s dive towards her.
She followed the deflection with a thrust, the steel blade matched by another, a blade in her left hand that appeared to be a mix of dark storm clouds and lightning. With a speed that startled the saboteur, she pressed the child, her swords cutting high, then low, then high, a whirlwind of steel and power that saw the child’s arms rise and fall to block them. Blood began to seep from his hard skin, but as if the realization of that inspired a fury in him, the child hurled himself forwards. His move caught Aelyn by surprise and her left arm, the arm holding the storm-formed blade, fell across her chest, only to bear the brunt of the child’s charge.
She stumbled, her concentration broken, the weapon disappearing. With a swift backhand, the child sent Aelyn sprawling backwards, knocking the steel blade from her grasp. The child reached for it, but was forced to leap back as sand burst from the ground around the Breath of Yeflam. With a roar, Se’Saera’s child landed on the ground away from her, his wings folded around him in poor protection.
‘You move well.’ Aelyn rose, her hand held against her chest. Sand moved around her feet in a small, isolated storm. ‘Where did you learn to fight?’
‘I fight!’ the child hissed through the gap between his wings. ‘I was made to fight.’
Bueralan moved next to her, the wound along the side of his chest still bleeding. ‘Zean,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen Zean fight like that.’
‘Stop saying his name!’ Se’Saera’s child shouted. ‘He is dead. He was weak. You are like him! You will die like him soon! Look at yourselves! You are dying before me already!’
‘This isn’t death,’ she said. ‘This is just pain.’
5.
‘Wait.’ Jae’le’s hand fell on Ayae’s arm. ‘Not yet.’
Her hand had just wrapped itself tightly around her reins. ‘The bridges are laid,’ she said, her mount shifting, ready to ride. ‘Eidan is in Ranan. Tinh Tu is crossing. Both need us there.’
‘Soon.’ He released her arm. ‘But first, there is another group of soldiers approaching the battle. Refuge and the Brotherhood. They are led by the former Captain of the Spine.’
‘I don’t see any crows whispering in your ear,’ Ayae said.
‘Tonight I have a thousand eyes to see with.’
Before Ayae could ask what he meant, a new force emerged from the treeline to her right. At the head rode soldiers in black-and-red armour. In their hands, they held long spears unlike any Ayae had seen before. Behind them, the armour of the men and women with whom they rode was different. The plate and chain that the first wore became leather, chain, and occasional pieces of plate, the last dull glints. The strange lances were among them too, but more and more of these soldiers were armed with shields and swords, bows and crossbows. They did not ride under a flag and offered nothing to suggest that they were a unified force but for their discipline, and the lines that they rode in. For a brief moment, Ayae thought the mercenaries were going to ride down into the roads that ran beneath the city, but as the first reached that point, they turned and began to loop towards where she and Jae’le sat before turning towards the three bridges that led into the city.
From her vantage point, Ayae could not glimpse Captain Heast, but she could see the night sky break apart, the wings of a dozen swamp crows above the mercenaries.
Eyes indeed, she thought.
‘Refuge and the Brotherhood plan to attack the cathedral,’ Jae’le said. He did not tell her that the birds flew into Ranan, did not have to, now that she could identify their shadows. ‘Captain Heast believes that it is the heart of the battle, rightly so. We will follow in their wake and when he attacks Ren and his soldiers, we will slip past them and inside.’
Ayae followed the path of the mercenaries and swamp crows as they rode and flew over the bridges into Ranan.
Into a city lit with battle.
The three stone giants loomed above it all, violent creatures summoned to make Ranan shudder and break. Already, they were riddled with bolts from ballistas, cracked by heavy stones from catapults. One of them, the one who had emerged with a tree on its back, was on fire. Like a flag, the flames followed it around as it tore the flat roofs off buildings and hurled them onto the soldiers beneath.
It was clear to Ayae that the three giants had drawn the fire of the siege weaponry, and it was from here, in the heart of the violence, that the battle spread.
Further out at the edges of Ranan, the Faaishans’ siege engines laid down a cover for their own soldiers in a mixture of burning pitch, rocks and arrows. A din of noise – of shouts, commands and screams – bled the voices of the Leerans, Faaishans, Yeflamese, Saan and Mireean together. It left Ayae with the impression that a part of the world had just woken and its thousands of eyes and mouths had begun to reject what it saw taking place upon it.
‘Do you have a path through that?’ she asked Jae’le.
‘One with a few detours.’ He patted his horse’s neck. ‘Are you ready?’
She turned to him, held his dark gaze. ‘Detours?’
His smile was one of filed teeth. ‘Trust in your elders.’
Then he rode.
Ayae felt her heart skip, felt her skin prickle with warmth, but her calmness settled back over her as she rode after him.
At the bridges, the noise of the battle seemed to be amplified. Ayae could make out a few words – ‘Giant—’ ‘Sergeant!’ ‘Hold the—’ ‘Incoming!’ – but it was so scattered she could not make sense of it. Ahead of her, burning pitch came down on the broken roof of a building, near the muddy giant. A heavy stone followed it, smashing into the ground, a second and third using the pitch to target the giant.
At the edge of the bridge were four of the men whom Tinh Tu had ordered to carry the bridge. They lay near a broken ballista, the siege weapon torn out of its fitting and surrounded by a series of broken buildings. The roofs had been caved in by the stone fists of giants, and bodies mingled with the debris. It was a destruction of blood and mud that continued up the main road, the ground broken apart, buildings crumbled, a wake behind the three stone giants and the soldiers that weaved through the streets behind them.
Jae’le did not ride in the wake of the destruction, however. As soon as he came off the bridge he drove his horse to the left, up and over the debris of one of the houses, down the other side, into a broken street. It was the opposite direction to the one Refuge and the Brotherhood had taken. They, Ayae saw, had used the path of the giants as a shield, and diversion, something that she had hoped that Jae’le would also do. But he was riding away from the ruined, but protected rear that the giants had given. Without pause, he turned down a narrow lane and burst out into a street that ran parallel to the giants’ path.
There a small group of Leerans were trying to prop up a fallen ballista.
Before Ayae could call to him, Jae’le was upon them, his sword a blur, the Leerans shouting, falling, and unaware of Ayae until she rode in behind him.
Her sword caught one man in the back of the head, a woman in the face, and then she found herself face-to-face with Jae’le.
‘Set this alight.’ He pointed to the ballista. Around it lay six soldiers, all of them dead. ‘There is a big push coming. We need to make sure that they cannot circle from behind.’
‘This is your detour? We’re supposed to ride to the cathedral.’ Her horse shied as the wood caught fire. ‘Jae’le, what have you seen?’
‘Our new god knows this battle.’ He slipped off his saddle and turned over one of the dead. ‘She knows we would come this way. She knows we would lead with Eidan. She knows that Tinh Tu is heading our force.’ With his back to her, he sank down on his haunches and began to examine the soldier’s face. ‘She has organized her response, Ayae, and we dare not leave these stragglers behind when it comes.’ Jae’le rose and held out his hand, revealing what he had pulled out of the dead soldier. ‘This is not a simple battle. It has been seen and planned for. We must do our best to respond to it
in that fashion.’
6.
Heast turned the body before him over: a young white woman, a crossbow bolt buried in her chest, a look of surprise on her face, and dirty wadding in her ears.
Corporal Isaap approached him. ‘All of them had their ears blocked,’ he said, his face streaked with dirt and sweat. ‘I doubt they even heard us attack them.’
There had been a score. As Heast and his soldiers moved through the streets, leaving their horses a few blocks behind as the battle of Ranan turned into a slow grind or inches and position, they had been surprised by the sudden arrival of the Leerans. They had been running, dressed in light armour, carrying swords and knives. ‘They weren’t looking for us,’ Heast said. ‘They weren’t expecting us, either.’
‘At least here they weren’t.’
The Captain of Refuge rose stiffly, the ruin of a building protection for him and a dozen of his soldiers, a pause before another push up the damaged street. Ahead, Refuge spread out in small units, securing their advance to the bridges that led to the cathedral. Around them, the dark sky trailed the smoke and light from burning pitch, most of it concentrated in the paths of the three giants that Heast shadowed. The huge silhouettes still led the attack, but they had begun to stumble and break beneath the barrage of siege weapons, and Heast did not think that they would last much longer. Moments before, the one with a burning back had fallen to its knees, its chest split open, the fire a new beacon for the catapults.
Heast believed that the Leerans had known about the giants well before they had risen from the ground. They had been prepared for them, just as they had been for mounted soldiers. The roads had been filled with enough deliberate debris that, after Refuge and the Brotherhood crossed the bridges into Ranan, they had been forced to dismount. For the last half-hour, Heast had watched saddled, but riderless horses canter down the streets and out to safety.
‘Sir,’ Isaap said, ‘why would they fill their ears?’
‘I don’t know.’ He placed a hand on the Corporal’s shoulder. ‘Sergeant Qiyala has moved up. Our turn.’
