by Ben Peek
The man – the creature, Heast corrected – wore black leather wrapped around him, but it had been cut open, revealing a bright, almost burning, haunt in his chest. In contrast to the other twisted haunts that Heast had seen, the one inside the blond man was still, as if asleep. With each movement the blond man made, each block of a sword from a Refuge soldier, each cut and slash, the haunt’s limbs moved with him. It was not that the haunt aided the man, Heast knew that immediately, but rather that it was trapped in a complete state of subjugation, as if the soul of the man had been so subdued that it was now nothing more than a slave to the creature that wore its skin.
He did not fight like any of the other creatures Heast had seen. Where they had all fought with a savagery, a primal violence that was the dark cousin to the joy Kye Taaira showed when he fought, the blond man had an elegance, a deadly simplicity that had been created by years and years of practice. With the Leerans rallying behind him, he tore through the face of the first soldier who reached him, ducked under the swing of the next before he drove his knife into the inner thigh of the same soldier, and blocked the blow of Corporal Isaap. The latter managed to slow the charge of the blond man, but only for one parry, one attempt at a thrust, before the knives of the blond man cut across Isaap’s face and he pushed the Corporal back into the Leerans before he broke free of the battle.
On instinct, Heast jammed his free hand into Anemone’s back, pushing her to the ground the moment before the blond man’s dagger plunged into his arm.
With one knife in his left hand, the man was on the witch before she could recover her balance. He cracked his free hand into the side of her skull, but before his dagger could plunge forwards, Heast drove his steel leg into the blond man. His sword snaked out after him, but it found only air as his opponent rolled backwards.
Heast took a step in front of Anemone as she shook her head and struggled to rise, his sword held in front of him.
The blond man darted forward and Heast blocked his attack and pressed forwards. He could not hope to match the man in skill, nor in speed: he knew his worth as a swordsman, and knew that it had only decayed as he grew older. He knew that he was slower than the other man. No matter the blond man’s true age, his body was young, and his skill clear.
Heast heard shouts erupting around him. Over the blond man’s shoulders, he saw soldiers from Refuge trying to beat back the Leerans that had charged with the blond man, saw swamp crows falling from the sky to peck and harry. He saw Isaap, as well, suddenly clearly through all the fighting, his face bloody, his body making a slow crawl for the fallen sword of Kye Taaira. Heast wanted to shout a warning, but could not: the blond man snaked forwards again and he was forced to block the blow. He only had to hold out until Anemone was on her feet, until she could issue the command to her kin. He shifted his weight, parried, moved to his left, the blond man’s knife still in his arm. When his opponent darted forwards again, Heast swung his sword, blocked the knife, and then suddenly jammed the blade down, hoping to pierce the man’s foot.
He missed, but the main gambit was the knife lodged in his arm, the knife he dragged out to jam into the blond man’s chest.
For nothing.
Ignoring the injury, the man’s dagger came arcing up—
‘Stop, Zilt.’
—only to do just that.
The blond man’s eyes – Zilt’s eyes – were wide with shock.
Heast took a step back, out of his reach, leaving the blade that he had plunged into the man’s chest. Around him the Saan were swarming into the street as the swamp crows did, rushing over the Leerans.
‘You cannot imagine my delight.’ The old woman who led the Saan walked along the street towards Heast, Anemone and Zilt as if she had no concerns. On her shoulder sat a slim but very black swamp crow. ‘In this battle I have found soldier after soldier with his and her ears stuffed with wadding to dull my voice out. It does not matter how high or how low they are in the chain. They have all blocked the noise of battle and drunk heavily of blood to gorge themselves. But then I hear that you are here. You, the old, cruel general, given life with the most pitiless of his soldiers. You who don’t have one piece of wadding in his ears.’
With a bloody hand, The Captain of Refuge helped Anemone to her feet. The witch moved unsteadily and he asked quietly if she was all right. She nodded, but leant on him, and as she did, Heast searched for Isaap among those who had fallen, hoping, wishing, that the young man had not reached Taaira’s sword, that he had given up and lifted his own blade. Unfortunately, he found the Corporal near Kye Taaira’s body, his hand wrapped around the hilt of the old, brightly glowing blade. His body looked as if it had been dead for weeks: it would break, Heast knew, when he lifted the young man.
‘I don’t fear you, Tinh Tu.’ Zilt had not moved from his pose, his dagger still held high. ‘I know you for the impurity you are.’
‘You’re a fool.’ The old woman flicked a part of his leather armour aside and gazed at the haunt in his chest. ‘But in that way, you are no different to any other zealot. You believe there is perfection in the world and you pursue it with such single-mindedness that you cannot see the horror of your vision. Instead, you pick up a sword, or a knife, or a mace, and you try to beat and cut the world into your vision, while never once noticing that change is the world, that to be imperfect is to be whole.’ Her hand reached up to his eye and pulled the skin beneath it down. ‘Do you see how small a man you are, Zilt?’
‘You cannot threaten me,’ he hissed. ‘You can do nothing to me.’
‘Take out your eye.’
With a deliberate and unhesitating hand, Zilt pushed the fingers of his free hand into the eye she had just examined, and scooped it wetly and bloodily out.
Heast took a step, ready to tell the old woman to stop, but Anemone’s hand tightened on his arm. ‘Grandmother says that you must not interfere.’
‘You should listen to your witch, Captain.’ Tinh Tu did not turn to face him, but there was a strange quality in her voice, one both compelling and repellent. ‘Now,’ she said, her tone focused on the man before her. ‘You see the world with one eye. You see it like a true zealot, Zilt.’
‘You are a coward.’ His voice was rough with pain and rage. ‘Release me and face me like a real warrior.’
Tinh Tu’s laugh was caustic. ‘Like the children you killed when you conquered this land so long ago? Was that the work of a real warrior? Cut the hamstrings in both your legs. Cut them so you fall to the ground.’ Before Heast’s amazed gaze, the blond man cut deeply into his own body and slumped to the ground. ‘Years ago, I found a book that described all the horrific things you did,’ she said. ‘In it, the author detailed an event outside a conquered city, where you did this to one hundred and fifty-eight children. Do you remember? They prayed to the God of War to be rescued.’
‘You have people who pray to Se’Saera,’ he spat back. ‘Have you not heard that the Lord of the Saan prays to her?’
‘And receives no answer.’ On her shoulder, the swamp crow fluttered and took off. ‘I am not concerned about Miat Dvir.’
‘You cannot kill me,’ Zilt hissed in response. ‘None of you can.’
‘You met my brother Jae’le, did you not?’ Heast’s gaze followed the bird through the battle taking place around him, the battle that he felt strangely disconnected from, though he had known its beats and flow just moments before. ‘You chased him through that wreck of a cathedral,’ Tinh Tu continued, ‘and he threw you down here.’
‘I killed him!’
‘My brother?’ Heast watched as the swamp crow settled upon the shoulder of a dark-skinned man in a green cloak, a man who walked through the lines of battle as if he could not be touched. It was, the Captain of Refuge thought, as if the birds were clearing a path for him, that they swarmed the soldiers before him. ‘No, Zilt. Don’t speak. Listen to me. My brother tossed both you and your kin down here. He did so because he knew the Hollow and his sword were here.’ With a gentle d
ip, the man with the bird on his shoulder picked up the glowing sword of Kye Taaira, as if it were nothing, as if the white light that flowed from it and onto him was but an illusion. ‘You think you killed him because you stabbed him with a knife, but you think that only because you are a fool. My brother is the first of us. The first to be touched by a god’s power. Do you know what god his power came from?’
‘No,’ Zilt replied through gritted teeth, the answer torn from him. ‘No, I do not.’
‘Ain, the God of Life.’
Around his right hand, the hand that held the old two-handed sword Kye Taaira had been given to return his ancestors to the Plateau, Jae’le’s skin peeled and broke, but healed itself again. It happened so quickly that Heast’s first thought was that he had imagined it, that it was caused by the light against the other man’s skin, but he saw the skin peel and split and heal again, as if the power of the sword, and the power of the man were in conflict.
‘You will die,’ Tinh Tu said to Zilt. ‘You will die as if you were nothing. As if you were but a child outside a city gate, caught in the violence of your betters.’
Taaira’s sword went through the blond man’s back without resistance.
The body fell apart in rot and Jae’le released the sword. The only sign that holding it had bothered him was the way he rubbed the hand that had gripped the hilt. As he did so, he turned, not to the battle taking place behind him, but to the cathedral. There, a thin line of fire could be seen, the arc of a light that had been trying to flare after the siege fire opened the crown. ‘The stairs are broken. I couldn’t get up there,’ he said, not to Heast, but to Tinh Tu. ‘Ayae is up there alone. Alone with Aela Ren.’ A sigh escaped him. ‘I fear that he will kill her before we can stop him, sister.’
5.
The empty sky around the cathedral waited for Ayae, but she refused to take the last two steps into it. Her burning sword turned away the Innocent’s attacks again and again in a desperate attempt to starve his momentum. Yet, as her blade met his again and again, she became aware of a growing realization within her that it was only a matter of time before one of the Innocent’s thrusts worked through her defences.
It should be Jae’le here. The fight was his, not hers. The Innocent was the nightmare of her childhood, her parents’ killer, the bane of an entire nation, but for all the power within her, Ayae did not believe that she could match Aela Ren. At best, she could test him, and she had done that. But she would not be able to test him for long. Her sword, catching and turning, desperately looking for a moment to slip through his guard, would falter before he did. The pain in her arm would soon run through her. The images bubbled to the surface of Ayae’s mind with sudden clarity and she could do nothing to stop them. She could not harden her skin, she could not use the currents of air around her. She had even lost the flame on her sword.
The only thing that kept her alive was Aela Ren’s rage. It had consumed him and, in doing so, his skill had been overcome by his raw anger, by his desire to beat her into submission.
He was the figure of Ayae’s childhood, now. She could see him approach the scarred walls of the camp she had grown up in. Behind him was his army, dark shadows that she could not properly identify. But she did not need to: on Ren was the fury that Ayae had seen on the faces of the god-touched when they charged from the cathedral.
That anger had not been within the Innocent when she first saw him. It had not been evident, either, after the catapults broke open the crown of the cathedral. Until she had cut him, there had been an almost civil sense to Aela Ren. She had the impression that if she had dropped her sword, or if it had broken, he would have let her pick it up, or gather a new one. He would have done that only because he didn’t fear her, she knew that, but it did not change the fact that in those moments, he was not the man who had terrorized a nation.
The man could only be seen in his anger.
His anger that destroyed a nation.
That killed men and women.
Boys and girls.
Mothers.
Fathers.
Ayae yelled suddenly, the sound torn from within her, years of fury and fear rising from a part of her that had been taken away.
She blocked Aela Ren’s slash, shouldered forwards, bullied herself and her sword away from the edge. Caught off-guard, the Innocent gave ground and Ayae, seeing that, pressed him as hard as she could, slashing left and right, attacking him with all the angry speed she could find. She felt the steel of his weapon chip with every block and deflection he gave.
Then he caught her blade on his, wedged the cold steel in a crack in the steel of his weapon, twisted and sent her blade skidding across the floor.
Ayae didn’t pause. She dropped low, put her weight onto her wounded hip, let the pain fuel her anger, and swept her leg under his. The move was slow and unbalanced and Ren leapt. His sword came crashing down but Ayae had rolled away. The leather across her back split under his second blow, but it was mistimed and did little more. She came to her feet quickly, stepped back for a slash, dodged a left thrust, then she jammed her hand into his wrist to break his grip and grabbed hold of his old armour.
It burst into flames.
Ren slammed both his hands into the sides of Ayae’s head. She yelled in response, seeing the scarred walls and the cloudless sky of her childhood. He hit her again, grabbed her hair, pulled at it, wrenching her head back as fire rushed up his armour, over him, over her. She saw the old, barely seaworthy ship that took her from Sooia. Took her to Mireea. Took her to the orphanage. To Faise. She saw Faise, and Ren punched her at the base of the throat, the blow choking off her wordless yell at him, almost choking her.
It allowed the Innocent to hurl her across the floor.
She landed near her sword.
Her burning hand scooped it up and fire burst along it.
Unarmed, Ren ran at her. His clothes burning, his skin burning too, but Ayae met him.
Her sword ploughed into Aela Ren’s stomach, up to the hilt. As if it meant nothing, his burning hands closed around her neck, to choke her, to tear at her.
His dark eyes were windows to a life of anger and pain. She saw it through the fire that had wrapped around his head, that was melting his skin. They were the same fires that ran over her, that came from her, that would not end, not until she did. Ren’s burning fingers dug into Ayae’s neck and she wrenched her sword up into his chest. He did not flinch so she did it again. He tore into her skin as if he was searching for her spine, and she slammed the hilt of the sword up, hearing his skin part, his bones break. ‘You don’t know what this means,’ he whispered harshly as the strength in his fingers failed. ‘You don’t know.’
Completely covered in fire, Ayae took a step back. In doing so, she dragged her sword out of his stomach and, swinging it back behind her shoulder, hammered it with all the force that she had into the side of his head.
He dropped to the floor.
Ayae took a step backwards, and almost fell. The fire on her sword faded, just as the fire that ran over her did. She dropped the sword as the pain in her leg and in her arm returned with a sudden clarity. Exhausted, she spat blood from her mouth and turned.
The broken floor of the cathedral lay in darkness to Ayae’s left, but she circled it, even as the pain in her hip began to intensify and she started to limp. On the back wall, the dark shapes of a pair of crows shifted and moved. At Se’Saera’s still form Ayae pulled her arm against her stomach. The sharp sensation, like teeth trying to devour her, spiked as she stood before the god and gazed into her broken face. Se’Saera’s lips were moving and there was, Ayae believed, movement behind the fractured skin. But no matter what it was, or what it symbolized, it did not draw Ayae’s gaze into it as it had done before.
Beyond the god a charm-laced man lay against a back wall. His green eyes were open and his smile had the same cynical one she had seen a year ago.
‘Look at you,’ Zaifyr whispered as she drew closer. ‘You look like you hurt.
’
‘You have nothing nice to say.’ She sank down next to him. With her warm hand, she reached out for his. ‘Your family said you’d be in a bad way. That you’d be not you.’
‘I can barely move.’ His hand took hers weakly. ‘You wouldn’t believe the things I have seen. The places I went. I wouldn’t believe me.’
‘I just killed—’ Her voice caught and she swallowed. ‘I should be dead.’
‘We should all be dead.’
Silence stretched between the two of them and Ayae closed her eyes. Outside, she could hear the battle, the violence defined by shouts, screams and the crash of weapons. For a brief moment, it sounded as if the world was ending.
‘Ayae,’ Zaifyr said, his hand still in hers. ‘Is Se’Saera still alive?’
She opened her eyes and saw the concern on his face. ‘No,’ she said.
6.
Bueralan arrived in Ranan cradled in the belly of a giant bird. Aelyn Meah had constructed it in the night sky, above the watchful gazes of swamp crows. The bird – a much larger version of the crows – was bound together from currents of wind twisted into hard, pale lines around him, Aelyn and the two horses.
The two greys had reacted to the construction surprisingly well. In fact, they had shown more calm than Bueralan, as if, somehow, they had known that they would not plummet to the ground. After the bird had been completed and the four of them were lifted into the depths of the night sky by its pale wings Bueralan thought he saw the tall grey give him a disgusted look as he clung onto the reins. He wondered if the grey showed the same amount of wearied cynicism about the world when he saw the state of Ranan, hours later.
The outer parts of the city were marked by spot fires, broken buildings and small pockets of fighting, but it was the centre that drew his attention. The ground beneath the cathedral had risen, as if a buried giant had tried to rise from where it had lain. From a distance, it looked to be no more than a hill of dirt, one large enough to lift the centre of Ranan above the rest of city. But as Bueralan drew closer, he saw that it was not a hill, but a head: a great, three-faced head made from dirt and stone. Its eyes watched their approach on the bird made from wind and, though its mouths did not open, Bueralan thought that in the head’s expression was a sense of familiarity and pleasure. He did not ask Aelyn if he was right. She had warned him, as the bird had first begun to take shape, that she would need to concentrate to keep it in flight. Images of himself plummeting through the sky were clear in his mind then and now, and he did not ask.
