“ ‘My sword is my soul,’ ” Croy said. The creed of the Ancient Blades. “You don’t have a soul, do you, Mountainslayer?” he asked. “You defile Dawnbringer by touching it.”
“A soul?” Morget asked. He looked as if he would be happy to discuss fine points of philosophy rather than continue the fight. As if his wound didn’t pain him at all. Perhaps Morget had learned something about dismissing pain while he had been a berserker. “Perhaps I do not. But I am possessed by a wyrd.”
Croy had no idea what that meant. He did know he was fighting one-armed against a giant of a man who could fight with two weapons at once. “Have you any honor?” he asked. “Face me, blade-to-blade. Like a knight. Prove to me you have the right to carry Dawnbringer. Or die, and let me take it from you. That’s one of the vows we take as Ancient Blades. If we fail to live up to the sword’s worth, it will be taken from us. Given to someone more virtuous.”
“Come and get it, then. For I have no virtue at all,” Morget said. “I’m too honest for such lies as honor and valor. All I know is strength and glory.”
Croy tried to laugh. All that came out of his mouth was a dry rasping rattle. “To the end you are a barbarian. Uncultured, and unknowing of the ways of true honor. You never deserved to hold Dawnbringer. Look, even now you hold it the same way you hold your axe. Like a laborer holding a tool. A true warrior fights with sword alone.”
Morget smiled, showing enormous teeth like the pegs on the neck of a lute. He bowed, slightly. Then he made a great show of dropping his axe.
Croy spared a quick look around him. Reavers surrounded him on all sides, but they were holding back-either because they knew Morget would want to fight Croy alone, or because the Skilfinger knights were constantly harrying them to keep them away from the regent of Skrae.
Fate had conspired to bring the two of them together like this. At long last. From the moment Croy had realized Morget still lived-when he struck down Sir Orne and broke Bloodquaffer, while Croy carried the sleeping king away from Helstrow-he had known this moment would come.
Justice, honor, and the Lady were all on his side.
Against them Morget had an enormous reserve of strength and a shocking brutality of nature. This wasn’t going to be easy.
“I called you brother, once,” Croy said, taking a step sideways, toward Morget’s less defensible left. “That was a mistake.”
“I took your hand in friendship, once,” Morget replied, not bothering to follow Croy’s footwork. “It was the smartest thing I ever did. Look where it got me!”
“It’s about to get you killed,” Croy said.
Morget looked as if he was framing a reply.
Croy didn’t wait to hear it. He leapt inward, striking low at Morget’s thigh. Ghostcutter rang like a bell when Dawnbringer came down to block its cut. Light flashed up from Morget’s blade.
“Fie!” Croy cursed, blinking furiously. The light had dazzled him momentarily-but even in that split second Morget had plenty of time to counterattack.
Yet the barbarian did not take the advantage. “You could be the enemy I’ve sought,” Morget said. “The man my wyrd has been chasing all this time. Yet I see you’ve been wounded, and have not yet had time to heal. Should we postpone this fight for another day?”
Croy spun around, Ghostcutter whistling over his head. Dawnbringer came up and batted it away with little effort. At least this time Croy kept enough of his wits about him not to look into the blade as it flared with light.
He tried to follow through with a slash down the center of Morget’s chest, but Dawnbringer moved so quickly he couldn’t follow it and parried the strike. Croy took a half step backward, then spun Ghostcutter around and around in a series of quick, shallow cuts that would never kill Morget but might make him bleed.
Dawnbringer rang and flared, rang and flared, rang and flared once more. Not once did Ghostcutter break through that flurry of iron.
Staggering backward, Croy sucked wildly for breath. He didn’t have the stamina for this. It was possible-just possible-that a man with boundless energy could wear Morget down, given enough time. Croy’s limbs, though, were already gripped by fatigue and his armor had never felt heavier.
“You’ve made your choice, then,” Morget said. “I’ll give you time to pray, if you like. Before I cut you in half. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps yours is not the strength my father spoke of either. Perhaps-”
With everything he had left, Croy brought Ghostcutter around in one unstoppable cut, the kind of furious strike that could carve a man like a goose. It was the most deadly attack he knew how to make, and desperation pushed it harder than any blow he’d ever swung before.
Dawnbringer came down hard and the two blades met with a sickening crunch.
Burning light erupted all along the length of Dawnbringer’s forte. Ghostcutter grew hot in Croy’s hands as the cold iron of its blade took the energy of the blow and lost its near-magical temper. Silver flaked away from the sword’s trailing edge.
Neither man could move. The swords had cut into each other, locking together as if they had fused into one piece of iron. For a moment everything was frozen, time itself having stopped to wait and see what happened next.
Then Morget wrapped both hands around the hilt of Dawnbringer. He twisted from the hip, his massive arms flexing until the veins popped out on his forearms and Croy could see his pulse beating.
There was a noise like great mill wheels grinding against one another, and then a soul-sickening snap. Dawnbringer gave out one last feeble burst of light.
Both swords exploded into shards that spun and hung in the air and flashed with reflected sunlight when they hit the snow. Both men stood where they’d been, holding only the hilts of now useless weapons.
“My soul,” Croy whispered. “My sword-”
“I see now,” Morget said. He raised his free hand high as if beseeching the heavens. His eyes weren’t looking at Croy but at a dead man. “I see it, Father. This is my wyrd. My destiny. To destroy not men, but their swords. To be the last of the Ancient Blades, and their ending. This is what drove me, and now-”
Croy threw himself forward. The hilt in his hand ended in a good inch and a half of broken metal, jagged and sharp. Ghostcutter would perform one last service in the name of Skrae.
He punched the inch and a half in through Morget’s left eye. He ground it in until he felt bone split.
Morget dropped the ruin of Dawnbringer and squealed in fury and pain. Then he brought up one massive fist and slammed Croy away from him, smashing the knight along the jaw so that Croy’s head spun around and up and white light burst in his head, white light that faded to black.
The blow laid Croy out on the iron-flecked snow, unable to stand, unable to focus his eyes. Skilfinger knights came and dragged him away, slapped his face and shouted his name until he could see again, see and hear the sounds of the battle. It raged still all around him.
“Morget,” he said. “Morget-does he still live? Did you see his body?”
But the Skilfingers didn’t know his language, and none of his translators were nearby.
Chapter One Hundred Nineteen
Smoke from the explosion of Slag’s weapon hung in the air, great choking clouds of it. Malden hurried forward into the gap in the city wall, his ankles twisting this way and that as he clambered over piles of broken stone and the bodies of dead berserkers. He heard movement up ahead of him and he drew Acidtongue from its sheath. There was no telling what lay out there, beyond the wall.
Behind him a mob of armed citizens had formed. They muttered and moaned among themselves, as terrified as he was, as desperate to learn how things stood beyond the wall. Ready for whatever came through, or as ready as they could be.
At least this time they weren’t calling for his blood. They weren’t demanding he sacrifice himself at the Godstone for the good of the city.
Malden trod on the shield of a dead berserker and it crackled under his foot. It had been so peppered
with flying debris that the wood fell apart like hard cheese. Up ahead, in the dim smoke, something moved fast across his field of vision.
He lowered himself to a defensive crouch. He remembered the ill-fitting suit of armor he’d worn when he spoke to Morg from atop the wall. As painful as it had been to wear, he would have been glad of its protection now.
Moving forward, he lifted his free hand and waved it behind him, ushering the mob forward, after him. He didn’t bother to look back to see if they complied. Another step, into the smoke. Another, Acidtongue’s point bobbing in the air as Malden sought for something to strike.
When the reaver came for him, he still wasn’t ready. The man was huge, a wall of muscle, his face red with blood, his axe raised high. He looked even more terrified than Malden felt, but the thief knew that fear could make a man more dangerous than a lion.
The axe came down before Malden could even react, its wicked pointed blade slicing through the air. Malden tried to dodge to the side but the blow was just too fast, just too brutal. Malden winced, expecting to be cut in two.
Instead the axe struck a stone near Malden’s feet, smashing it to powder.
“Where are you, you western bastard?” the reaver demanded. “I can smell you! I can taste your blood already!”
It was only then that Malden realized the reaver was blind. A sword stroke had cut across his face, ruining his eyes. Other wounds marred his arms and chest. The man must have been wounded in the fighting outside, then wandered in through the gap in the wall without even realizing where he was.
Malden felt pity well up in his chest for the barbarian, despite the fact the man had just tried to kill him. It was no kind of world for a blind man. “Surrender,” he said, almost pleading with the reaver. “Give in, and you’ll be spared, I promise-”
“Die, you fucker!” someone shouted from behind Malden and high over his head.
One after another five arrows pierced the reaver’s body. The barbarian winced and staggered backward under the blows, then sank to his knees and gasped out his last.
Malden turned and looked up at his archers atop the wall. They waved cheerily down at him, and he raised Acidtongue in a halfhearted salute. A bead of vitriol rolled down the blade and stung his fingers, but he made a point of not flinching.
He turned back to the gap and moved forward into the smoke, as carefully as he could. Soon he was as blind as the man he’d just watched die. His throat burned with the stink of brimstone and he would not have been surprised if he walked out of the cloud straight into the pit itself.
When he did emerge it was to find a scene not wholly dissimilar. Bodies littered the ground before him, bodies torn to rags of flesh and dropped without ceremony. Directly ahead an army of men-Free Men, but also knights on horseback-pressed an attack, driving home lances and pike heads as barbarians screamed and died. The horde was pushed up against the city wall with nowhere to run, hemmed in on two sides by advancing troops.
“In Sadu’s name,” Malden said. “Are we winning?”
He could scarcely believe it. Yet he had the evidence of his own eyes to prove it.
Barbarians were cut down in waves. Some tried throwing away their weapons and shields, but the Free Men ran them through anyway. The pikemen had to stop from time to time to shove the amassed bodies out of their path just so they could continue their advance.
“They’re giving way,” someone said from behind Malden’s shoulder. He turned and saw a hundred citizens of Ness-his own paltry troops-gathering to watch. “Ness is saved!” He could see the bloodthirst on their faces. The joy they took in this spectacle. He couldn’t blame them, in all fairness. How long had they lived in terror of the barbarian throng? How long had they been expecting that horde to come sweeping through their houses, murdering and savaging? Now they had their revenge. “This is your victory, Lord Mayor! Sadu be praised!”
But for Malden, the vision was utterly sickening. Barbarians were being put to death out there by the hundreds. The soldiers were executing them. They weren’t even trying to fight back. Where was Morget to rally them? Where was Morgain? The mounted knights cried out and drove a wedge between two masses of pikemen, as if they were afraid the footmen would have all the fun without them.
“Look! There!” someone called. “It’s Sir Croy!”
Malden felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. Or perhaps like he was seeing a ghost. But there, yes-right there-was the knight errant, limping along in his armor, clutching his side. His colors, black and silver, were instantly recognizable, but even at a distance Malden knew that face. An empty scabbard bounced against his thigh. Where was Ghostcutter? Malden couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Croy without it.
More to the point-Croy was here? Croy had come to Ness?
At least, Malden thought, Croy would put an end to this slaughter. He would drag his men back from the brink of madness and keep them from butchering every single barbarian on the field. Any minute now, Malden was certain, Croy would raise his voice and call out to give quarter, to end the bloodshed. Surely honor demanded it.
Someone brought Croy a horse. Someone else helped him climb up into its saddle. It seemed to take forever, and all the while the wholesale murder continued. The barbarians tried to surrender en masse, lifting their arms high, their weapons piled in glittering heaps at their feet. It made no difference. The knights and pikemen might have been slaughtering wild animals out there.
“Come now, Croy,” Malden whispered. “For honor’s sake.”
Croy stood up in his saddle. His hand reached for a sword that wasn’t there. Instead he lifted one armored fist.
“No quarter!” he shouted.
The civilized armies took that as a sign to cheer and redouble their attacks, even as the barbarians howled for peace, for mercy, for justice.
Malden staggered back to the gap in the wall. Alone he slunk back inside the comforting embrace of his city. Slag came running up through the smoke and grabbed at the hem of his tunic with his one remaining hand.
“What is it, lad? What did you see?”
“We won,” Malden told him. He very much wanted to go sit down somewhere.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty
The Lemon Garden was far enough from Ryewall that Malden could not hear the sounds of the work crews busily repairing the fallen wall. Nor could he smell the bodies that lay beyond it, all that remained of the barbarian horde, unburied save by snow. In his private room upstairs he had a cheerful fire going, and while there was nothing to eat, there was plenty of wine to be had, or ale if his guests preferred it.
He made no apologies for asking them to attend upon him in a bawdy house. Nor did they express offense, at least not openly. Elody led them to Malden’s door and curtsied deeply, as if she was unsure what the proper show of honor would be for three such distinguished guests. None of their station had ever visited her humble place of business before-typically, had they required the services she provided, they would have gone instead to Herwig’s House of Sighs.
The soldiers who accompanied these three were of a different lot in life, and were happy enough to be entertained in the courtyard.
For a while none of the four men spoke or even looked each other in the eye. Sir Croy wouldn’t even sit down. He stood by the door as if guarding it. Such duty was, of course, far beneath him now-Malden had heard of Croy’s elevation. Somewhere he had found a circlet of silver that he wore upon his brow to indicate that he had become the regent of Skrae. Ostentation had never been Croy’s style, but he had to ensure that he looked at least the equal to Ommen Tarness, the Burgrave, who wore his own coronet everywhere.
Sir Hew, Captain of the Queen’s Guard, wore only the colors of his sovereign. His left arm was in a sling tied around his waist, but still he seemed the best pleased of the three to be there. While Tarness and Croy stared daggers at each other, he gladly took a cup of hot mulled wine.
“Just what these aching bones need,” he said, and drained
the cup in a single draught. Malden poured him another.
“I understand you were wounded by Morget in the battle,” Malden said. “Few men can make that claim. Few living men, anyway.”
Hew favored him with a warm smile. “I’ll heal. I dare say none of us came out of this unscathed. Though some certainly profited. Didn’t they, my Lord Mayor?”
Malden returned his smile, but said nothing.
The three visitors intended to strip him of that title, one way or another. The Burgrave wanted his city back. Having ruled it for eight hundred years, he seemed to think it belonged to him. Croy and Hew wanted Ness as a staging ground-a fortress they could hold through the winter, until spring cleared the roads and they could mount an attack on Helstrow and take it back from Morgain.
So far Malden had managed to keep them all out. He had refused to unseal the gates until he was given guarantees of safety for himself and his people-as well as certain other considerations. Chief among them, the right to worship whichever god they pleased, a right to be added to the city’s charter in perpetuity. For himself and his thieves he’d asked immunity from prosecution for the murder of Pritchard Hood, the burglary of the entire Golden Slope, the seizure of the arsenal, and so many more crimes.
Hew and Tarness had been happy to accept these terms, and each had sent messengers indicating that anything else Malden desired would be made his. In response, Malden allowed the three and a small number of bodyguards inside the wall so they could discuss terms.
Of course, all this politesse was just for show. The gates might be sealed, but until the gap in the Ryewall was repaired it would be simple enough for either army to storm the city. Malden had forestalled that kind of drastic measure in a way that should make Cutbill proud. Rather than threaten two armies he could not beat, he had held out the promise of a reward they both desperately wanted.
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