Dead Man's Steel

by Luke Scull

  Better to be a tool than an insect crushed under the heels of Magelords or worse.

  Lost in his thoughts, he rested a hand against a wall while he opened his trousers to relieve himself. Something clicked beneath his fingers and an instant later he was plunging through a gap that had just opened in the wall, cock flapping wildly, flailing to stay on his feet. He stumbled into what looked like an amphitheatre and almost fell down a flight of stairs, catching himself at the last moment on a rusty railing just to his left.

  ‘Shit,’ he breathed. He shoved his manhood back in his trousers and looked around, then stopped and stared in amazement when he saw what waited at the bottom of the stairs.

  Rows of rotten benches ran the width of the great chamber, at least a hundred seats facing the wondrous Fade relic covering the entirety of the south wall. It was like staring into another reality – a window into a different time and place. The moving image on the wall was utterly lifelike in every detail.

  As Cole stared, transfixed, tall figures with eyes like obsidian and wielding crystal swords clashed with what at first glance appeared to be men, except they were unusually slight and their ears narrowed to points. One of the first group – a white-haired officer of formidable bearing – raised an object that looked somewhat like a miniature cannon and pointed it towards the second group. The end of the strange object seemed to burst into flame and immediately wreaked devastation on the pointy-eared men. They jerked and juddered and dropped like flies, their bows slipping from their dead fingers, dozens of them mown down in seconds. A moment later the image faded, leaving only darkness.

  Cole descended the steps, glancing curiously at the skeletons seated on the benches as he passed. They were ancient, half of them already collapsed to dust, the rest likely to do the same in a faint breeze. On a whim he tried to animate one – to order it to rise as he had the dead crew member back on the Caress, or the frozen corpse atop the Tower of Stars. Whatever lingering memory of life that was necessary for his power to work had departed the remains long ago, however, and he quickly gave up.

  He reached the wall and ran a hand along it, marvelling at how realistic the image had been. The events depicted must have been real at one time. He couldn’t imagine how those memories, or whatever they were, could be captured and displayed on a wall. There was nothing except dust when he examined his fingers. He began to turn away when without warning the living memories sprang back to life.

  Cole leaped back, yelping in surprise. A great reptilian head appeared, bright red scales glistening like armour. Cat-eyes narrowed with baleful fury and the creature opened its maw, revealing teeth like rows of longswords. Flame suddenly burst from the monster’s mouth, turning the wall orange. The fire was so lifelike Cole had to pat himself just to make sure he wasn’t somehow being roasted alive without his knowledge. To all appearances the wall was a raging inferno, but there was no heat, no smoke, no sound.

  The living memory adjusted itself and the massive reptilian creature spread its huge wings, soaring above buildings very much like the one Cole had found himself in before it had fallen to ruin.

  The image seemed to jump, showing the monster from a different angle, except now one of the onyx-eyed humanoids straddled the back of the beast. Cole saw that it was the white-haired commander from the first living memory. As he watched, the commander raised his crystal longsword and stabbed down through the monster’s sinuous neck, burying it to the hilt. The beast roared a silent death cry and plummeted from the sky. At the last possible moment the humanoid leaped off the back of the dying beast, somersaulting to catch hold of the ledge of an adjacent building and haul itself to safety as it crashed to the earth.

  The image jumped again, and this time the foreboding commander was staring up at a star-filled sky. There was something up there in the darkness, something impossibly huge, dwarfing the reptilian monster from the previous living memory, but it confounded Cole’s efforts to discern exactly what it was. In the distance, profane shapes were crawling and slithering across the landscape towards the commander. He raised a hand, and hundreds of his tall, obsidian-eyed kinsmen charged past him towards the approaching horde. Just before the armies clashed, the living memory died. The wall went black again.

  Cole blinked a few times and gave a rueful shake of his head. Whatever magic this was, it was certainly captivating. It was also certainly a waste of his time. He ought to be searching for traces of hidden knowledge that might help humanity fight against, or at least understand, the Fade.

  He turned and climbed back up the stairs, exiting the amphitheatre through the hidden entrance he had somehow activated. He could hear the drumming of rain outside and realized to his shame that a considerable amount of time must have passed while he was preoccupied with the living memories. Was it noon yet? He thought it best to return to their meeting spot and wait for the others.

  He emerged outside to dark clouds and darker spirits. The hunger within him had returned again. The relentless voice urging him to kill them all had quietened after feasting so heavily back in Tarbonne, but nothing could diminish it for long.

  He took a deep breath. He needed to talk to Sasha about what he had become. He couldn’t put it off any longer.

  He pulled up his hood and splashed his way back to the entrance of the ruins, his boots sinking into puddles that soaked him up to the ankles. It was impossible to hear anything above the roar of the downpour. The sun was hidden behind clouds as dark as sin but he was reasonably certain that noon had come and gone. The absence of Sasha and the others did little to improve his mood. He waited around in the pouring rain, his anger at the world in general growing by the minute. He ought to be lauded as a hero after killing Salazar. All he’d ever wanted was fame, glory and, most of all, the girl.

  Instead it’s heartbreak, buggery and betrayal. All because of Magebane.

  All because of some dead man’s steel.

  He drew his enchanted dagger and glared at it. He itched to toss it in a puddle and walk away, but he knew that he could not. He was as much a slave to the weapon as his Augmentor father had been.

  Like father, like son.

  The bitterness in his mouth was too much and he spat. He turned and was about to go and search the west building for Sasha when the tall figure of Fergus suddenly appeared, trudging through the rain. The senior member of the Consult wasn’t wearing his customary small smile. Instead, the man had a concerned expression on his thin face. ‘You had better follow me,’ he said, dabbing rain off his reading lenses with a sleeve. ‘I am sorry to say there’s been an incident.’

  *

  ‘We found him here, fresh from operating on your friend. I dare say the things he did to her would have been even more horrific had we not managed to overcome him.’

  Cole knelt over Sasha, cradling her body in his arms, too numb to do anything but stare at the girl he had loved more than anything in the world. The corpse of the Fade was sprawled nearby, his head smashed in by a blunt object. Cole could hardly bear to look at the dead Ancient. He could hardly bear to look at Sasha, but he forced himself.

  Her beautiful brown hair had been shorn, leaving her scalp bare. A three-inch incision in the back of her head had been stitched back together in rushed fashion. Sasha’s clothing had been removed and there were tiny holes on her arms and legs, as though someone had inserted various needles into her. Her skin was grey and threaded by visible blue veins. Her lips, so beautiful in life, had turned purple. But it was her eyes that distressed Cole most of all. They were red, filled with blood. The unwelcome reminder of Zatore – the parallel between the only girl he had ever loved and the monster who had recently tried to kill him – was too much. He lowered Sasha’s body to the table and then sank to the floor. He curled up into a ball, deep sobs racking his body.

  ‘Why?’ he tried to ask. His world was in ruins; everything turned to ash.

  ‘We must assume this creature recently returned here,’ said Fergus. ‘In retrospect, it is no surprise
that the Fade would send one of their own to survey a place they once called home. I fear Sasha was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘At least we managed to kill it,’ said the woman beside Fergus. ‘Some small measure of revenge for your friend.’

  Cole stared through blurred eyes at the corpse of the Fade. ‘Revenge?’ he spat. ‘I’ll have revenge on them all. Every one of those bastards. Every single fucking one of them! What kind of creature would do this to her?’

  ‘A monster,’ Fergus said gently. ‘That is what we are fighting, Davarus Cole. Monsters. It is time for you to embrace your destiny. Submit to the hunger within you and unleash it upon those deserving of your fury.’

  Cole took a deep breath. Fergus was right. He wiped away his tears with the back of one hand and climbed to his feet, jaw set in determination. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not holding back any longer.’ He stared at Sasha and felt the world rock around him. ‘We’ll take her back with us,’ he said, voice shaking with grief.

  ‘Of course we will,’ Fergus replied. He placed a thin hand on Cole’s arm. ‘Let us leave here. It has brought you enough pain already.’

  Cole stared at the man’s sleeve as his fingers gave him a comforting squeeze. There was a speck of blood there. Sasha’s words from earlier that day suddenly stirred in Cole’s brain. He is not a nice man.

  Cole focused on Fergus. There was a strand of long brown hair clinging to the bottom of his white coat.

  How did that get there?

  He looked around the room. The Consult were busying themselves packing away various items to take to Thelassa for study. One of them, the woman who had spoken a moment ago, had an anxious look on her face and refused to meet his eyes.

  Cole’s gaze settled on the corpse of the Fade, and narrowed. The Ancient’s skin was greyer than those in the living memories he had witnessed in the ruins to the north. The golden hair was limp and dry and the obsidian eyes were dull and lifeless. He summoned the Reaver and reached out, searching for a spark, that tiny thread of life that had still been present even in the frozen corpse on top of the Tower of Stars. There was nothing at all. The body before him was utterly empty, a husk.

  ‘How long has he been dead?’ Cole asked quietly, nudging the corpse with a foot. Something felt wrong.

  Fergus looked up from unpacking a large bag. A bag just the right size for Sasha’s body. ‘We stumbled across him a couple of hours ago. My colleague caught him by surprise and broke his skull before he could commit further crimes against humanity. Come, Davarus Cole. Waste no more time on the dead. Focus now on the living; those Ancients you will shortly send to their graves.’

  Cole stared at the Fade’s head wound. It didn’t look right. There wasn’t enough blood, for one thing. It was almost as though the damage had been inflicted some time after the creature’s death...

  ‘You’re lying,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Lying?’ Fergus echoed. ‘I’m afraid I do not follow.’

  Cole concentrated and heard the heartbeats of the Consult suddenly quicken. He narrowed his eyes and looked at the woman, whose heart was racing faster than the others. There was a fresh sheen of sweat on her face. He caught the glitter of metal among the objects she was packing.

  A scalpel. Needles.

  Finally, he understood.

  ‘You killed her,’ Cole said, rising slowly from his examination of the Ancient’s broken skull. Rising, like an angel of death. ‘You found this corpse somewhere and thought you could use it to cover up the truth. You experimented on my Sasha. You murdered her.’

  ‘Now, young man, that is quite absurd—’

  He heard movement behind him and whirled, Magebane already in his palm. One of Fergus’s assistants was lunging at him, a needle held between his thumb and forefinger. Cole punched out and opened the man’s throat, shoved him aside as blood fountained out and lunged forward, stabbing another of the Consult in the stomach and giving his dagger a cruel twist. The vitality of the dying man filled him; made him stronger. Turned him into something else.

  Kill them. Kill them all, child.

  The Reaver’s voice boomed in his ears and he gave himself to it, slaying one after another of Fergus’s assistants as they fought feebly to escape. They were wicked creatures, no more human than the Unborn. Their heartbeats thundered in his ears and he used the incessant roar to hunt them down, killing without mercy, bloodlust turning the world red. He moved like quicksilver, untouchable, an assassin of supernatural lethality.

  Until only Fergus remained. The man’s pulse was only slightly raised and his voice was steady – even a little curious – as he raised his long-fingered hands in a placating gesture. ‘Remarkable! Your efficacy is encouraging. But you must understand I am not your enemy. All this was done in pursuit of a greater goal. You see, one cannot make progress without sacrificing—’

  His words became a scream as the Reaver plucked the needle from his hand and plunged it into his left eye. Then Magebane was opening the man’s body, crimson droplets raining everywhere. Fergus was dead before he hit the floor.

  The Reaver stood there, rasping and covered in crimson. The roar of beating hearts was silenced but the bloodlust remained, driving him, urging him to kill. There was nothing left alive. Nothing left to feed the hunger, except—

  There was something. It was tiny and fragile, like a newborn chick taking its first tottering steps from a nest a hundred feet above the ground. The Reaver listened and followed the sound until he was standing over the body of a girl. There was hardly any life there – the barest speck. But his appetite was ravenous and even as a flicker of consciousness began to stir, the Reaver exalted in another soul to be consumed...

  Kill them. Kill them all.

  Magebane plunged down, its point aiming at the spot right above the heart.

  At the last possible moment Davarus Cole twisted the blade, slamming into the table upon which Sasha rested. He gathered her in his arms and hugged her close. ‘Hang on, Sash,’ he whispered.

  He sought desperately to remember how he’d healed Derkin’s mother back in Newharvest. Somehow he had channelled the stolen vitality of the man he had killed into the dying woman, closing her wound and bringing her back from the brink of death. Sasha was even further gone, so close to death’s door half of her was already through. But he had to try. He had to try with every shred of willpower he possessed.

  He felt his strength departing his own body and flowing into Sasha. It was a horrendous sensation but he gritted his teeth and willed more of the stolen life force of Fergus and his assistants into the body of the girl he loved, giving it all, giving everything he had. Still she didn’t respond. He redoubled his efforts. Seconds turned into minutes.

  He was close to spent now, weaker even than he’d been before his ill-fated journey to Tarbonne, but he wouldn’t give up. He would give it all if he had to.

  Even himself.

  He felt her twitch beneath him. He refused to relent. He ignored the agony spreading through his own body, fought against the light-headedness threatening unconsciousness at any moment—

  Until suddenly Sasha gasped, a sound that could be either the most terrifying or the most beautiful in the world. Cole felt Sasha’s chest begin to rise and fall, the breath finally entering her lungs.

  He tried to stand and almost fell, his legs as weak as water, dizziness and nausea almost overwhelming him.

  He took a deep breath and steadied himself. Now began the hardest part of all.

  Davarus Cole bent down and gathered up Sasha in his arms. ‘Stay with me,’ he whispered. ‘I’m getting you out of here.’

  Reunions

  ✥

  ‘YOU AWAKE, SON?’

  Brodar Kayne waited hesitantly by the tent flap, suddenly uncertain of what to say to the boy he had raised to be a man, the boy he had raised to become king of the High Fangs. There were a lot of things he wanted to say. Some things he had to say. Three years was a long time, and the news he had brought wi
th him to the tent upon learning Magnar was finally conscious was the kind of news no father wanted to give his child.

  ‘Yes.’ His son’s voice was as weak as parchment. As weak as parchment, but nonetheless as familiar to him as his own scarred hands. Hands he’d used to lift him from the cradle as a babe. To feed him as a child. To teach him how to wield a sword as a man.

  Kayne closed his eyes for a moment and steeled himself for what had to be done. ‘Mind if we talk?’

  There was a brief moment of silence, and then, ‘Come in, Father.’

  He entered the tent and came to stand beside Magnar. His son was still desperately weak, half the weight a man ought to be and so badly maimed it broke Kayne’s heart to look upon him. ‘Does it hurt?’ he asked, trying to keep the pain out of his own voice.

  Magnar raised a mangled hand. He’d lost two fingers on his left hand and one on his right, and ugly scars disfigured his chest where Krazka had mutilated him. Kayne had an inkling the butcher had done worse things, but he didn’t want to ask. Some things were better left unknown. ‘Not as much as before,’ Magnar said. ‘But it hurts.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kayne said, feeling utterly helpless. ‘The healers say you’ll get stronger with time.’

  Magnar nodded, a distracted look in his grey eyes. He’d grown a beard since his imprisonment. It only served to highlight the scars around his jaw where no hair could grow and likely never would. ‘Stronger,’ he repeated, sounding bitter. ‘I’m broken. The broken king.’

  Kayne stiffened, feeling as though ghostly fingers had just raked him down the back. Like wildfire, the Seer’s words ignited in his brain.