Legacy of Steel

by Matthew Ward

  “And that might cheer me,” said Izack, “if only we’d ten times the number. Get those fires out. Smother them. Flood them. Piss on them if you have to, but get them out.”

  The high proctor drew himself up, the light of his sun-staff lending shape to an offended frown. “Why? Where will you be?”

  “We’ll get you the time to do it.” Izack drew his sword and raised it to grey skies. “Essamere! Until Death!”

  “Until Death!”

  Joining his voice to the refrain, Zephan hoisted the eagle-banner high, its weight now borne aloft by something more than muscle. Izack galloped away, and the last of Essamere rode with him.

  Kai urged his steed to the trot, hand loose upon the hilt of the Goddess’ sword. The sword that had brought him victory after victory. The sword ushering him to a second death. Cataphracts kept pace, unflinching as the first ballista shots screamed from the distant galleon. Most went high, ploughing muddy furrows behind the advancing line. One swept a handful of Immortals from their horses, the first warriors of the morning to be spirited to Evermoon. Havildars bellowed and the lines closed up, emerald and gold implacable in advance.

  He spared a glance to left and right. To Kos Devren, a long-handled mace borne alongside his emerald shield; bear cloak and ridged armour bulking him out to twice the man. To Elspeth, unarmoured and slender to the point of fragility. His oldest living friend, and the divine child who named him father. Welcome companions for his final battle. Indeed, the very finest. Save one.

  Quarrels flickered out to the north. The leading ranks of the Britonisian cataphracts crumpled. Men and horses screamed as pavissionaires aboard the galleon joined their shots to those behind the makeshift barricades. A salvo of blazing stone cracked against the warship’s hull as the northmost of the twin catapult batteries found its range. Fire raced across volley-ports. Burning sailors flung themselves into the Silverway’s waters.

  A twitch of Kai’s heels quickened his horse to a canter. Arrows arced overhead, no longer a gesture of respect, but loosed to kill. Black rain shuddered against king’s blue shields and earthen banks.

  Far ahead, outriders wheeled away from the Tressian position, shooting backwards in the saddle as they retreated from the galloping column of knights arrayed in hunter’s green. More knights came from the southwest, scarlet against grey skies, their plumes streaming in the Ash Wind. Essamere and Prydonis. Sallying forth enough though they were outnumbered three, four times over by cataphracts and lunassera.

  Kai’s blood stirred to fear and anticipation. A warrior’s life, valour and horror balanced on the dagger’s edge. All he’d known since his twelfth year. One last battle. One last chance to secure beyond question a throne for an absent daughter. The daughter he’d driven away for fear of telling her the truth. And if Ashana begrudged him that? Then perhaps Elspeth was right, and she was owed no regard, and no loyalty.

  Glory in victory. Fortitude in defeat. Honour always. And family first of all.

  He gripped the Goddess’ sword and tore it free. Moonfire blazed beneath the miser’s sky.

  “Ashanael Brigantim!” he roared. “Saranal Amyradris!”

  The battle thus offered to goddess and daughter, he thrust back his heels.

  Prydonis struck with a crash to split the sky. The thunder of hooves yielded to the crunch of lances and the wet rip of flesh. Adulating cries became screams. Lance and spear cast riders from saddles to be trampled by those who came behind. Scarlet surcoats and gilt-edged plate blurred with emerald silk and golden scale. A moonfire sword blazed blinding at the very heart, the smell of seared flesh dancing on the wind. Torvan Mannor, red hair bright in the flame’s backwash, swept a shadowthorn from the saddle and spurred on.

  Then Essamere joined the unequal battle, and Zephan had no thought to spare to anything but survival. Shouting to drown his fear, he drove aside a shadowthorn spear and spurred into the gap. A clash of steel, a falling body, and Izack was at his side, howling like a starving prizrak.

  “Saran Amhyrador!”

  Fresh cataphracts crashed home. Spears bit deep. Sense drowned between the grunts and howls of vying warriors – the sour stench of sweat-mingled blood.

  Moonfire blazed. Mannor pitched backwards out of his saddle. The Prydonis banner fell, its wielder sagging in the embrace of a young woman with pale skin and a blood-soaked white dress. Battle’s timber shifted from defiance to reserve, and from reserve to panic. Prydonis knights shrank back from raging moonfire. Scarlet bled away, routed or dying, and the hunter’s green of Essamere stood alone.

  “Saran!” roared Izack. “No more hiding! Fight like a—”

  A shining arc. The dull clang of metal on metal. Izack’s saddle was empty, a bear-cloaked brute drawing back his mace for a second blow.

  “Master!”

  Zephan hauled on his reins. His destrier bucked beneath a new burden. A slender hand wended about his waist.

  “Hush,” breathed the pale woman. “Dream now.”

  Her other hand slipped beneath Zephan’s open helm. The world blurred black. The banner dipped. Clinging to consciousness, he drove back his elbow. The woman yelped. Her fingers slipped away. Colour and sensation flooded back. The brute’s mace chimed against Zephan’s helmet. Pulsing red overwhelmed parting black. The strike of the ground drove all breath from his lungs. Thoughts and fears scattered into the grey.

  When Zephan came to, the battle had moved west along the road, a trail of corpses to mark its passage. All around, dismounted knights and cataphracts hacked and tore at one another. Essamere’s eagle-banner he found pinned beneath him, bloodied and torn in the fall. A shaking hand seized its stave; the other a discarded sword. Head shrieking protest, Zephan clambered up among the dead, and beheld a battle sliding to disaster.

  Essamere and Prydonis fought on, a running battle of survivors scattered by the Emperor’s onslaught. Reawoken kraikons succumbed again to sleep with the approach of pale-witches riding close behind. Further west, mist thickened about extinguished thornmaiden fires. The ballistae of the Dauntless fell sporadic as crew fought to contain the flames. And in the east, the great Hadari lines came forward across drywalled fields, the sonorous pulse of drums driving them on. Shambling, disjointed figures of strawjacks lurched alongside.

  “Help… Help me up, lad.”

  Zephan blinked. Izack lay among the dead barely three paces away. He’d one eye purpled and swollen shut; his right arm was twisted beneath him. “Master?”

  “Bastard got lucky. Then I snapped arm and ankle on the way down.”

  Zephan laid aside his sword and helped the other stand. A little to the north, a dismounted cataphract stabbed a sword in their direction and bellowed a warning.

  Izack clung to Zephan’s shoulder. “Let’s hope we bought Elzar enough time, eh?”

  Zephan cast an eye towards Govanna, and the courtyard of the Traitor’s Pyre. Dark patches in the returning mist betrayed the presence of revenants. Their numbers were slim. Not enough to contest the columns marching from the east.

  Practically hopping, Izack retrieved a sword from the carnage, sneered at the notched blade and cast it away. “What now, lad?”

  A stray steed, and they might have made it to safety, but all the horses were long fled. And besides, it wasn’t them alone. Others fought on amid the carnage.

  “Essamere stands.” Zephan swallowed hard, willed conviction to a shaking voice and hoisted the banner high. “Essamere stands!”

  He thrust the banner’s foot-spike into the mud and wrestled a shield from a dead Prydonis. Izack, who’d at last found a sword worthy of his time, braced a free hand against the pole.

  “Damn me if that wasn’t the right answer.”

  They came, in ones and twos. Essamere. Prydonis. Crawling. Limping. Drawn to the banner. Drawn to the promise of vows fulfilled and death in good company.

  As a loose ring of battered surcoats formed around the banner, Izack stared at the nearest column. Black trees on a dark blue field, the
Corvanti ranks swollen as dismounted cataphracts joined the line. And further south, the white stags of Silsaria proud against rust fields.

  Izack offered a pained grin. “Reckon you can keep up?”

  Zephan regarded his master’s battered body. By any reckoning, Izack was half a man at that moment. But some things you just knew. “No.”

  He grinned. “You are learning. All right, you worthless lot. One last brawl, and we’re all owed a damn fine reward. I just hope Lumestra’s watching, that’s all.”

  His only reply was the grim silence of men and women who knew their race had been run.

  At bellowed command, Corvanti spears lowered. Drums hurled them on.

  A new note cut through cacophony. Not the clarion of Hadari trumpets or the deeper boom of Tressian buccinas, but the shrill of reeds, a drone roaring beneath. A sound Zephan had heard at concert, but never on a battlefield.

  “There!”

  A Prydonis’ outstretched sword pointed to where the southern extent of the Silsarian wall folded back, desperate men scrambling away as new shields emerged from Selnweald’s trees and shook themselves to order.

  These were not the colours of a single regiment or warband, nor a single nation. The numerals of the 14th flew proud alongside battle-stained colours of the 1st, the 7th and the 10th. A spread-winged phoenix soared alongside the Prydonis drakon and the bull of Fellnore. At the fore, yellow and sea green pennants snapped and fluttered as the scream of pipes drove Thrakkian horsemen on, leaving the infantry far behind.

  But it wasn’t a Thrakkian who led the charge. Though he wore Thrakkian armour, there was no missing the sable surcoat and silver swan, no more than Zephan mistook the woman riding at his side, her Essamere garb frayed and filthy. Viktor Akadra and Roslava Orova. The Phoenix-Slayer and the Reaper of the Ravonn. A man who didn’t lose, and a woman who could not die.

  The pipes wailed to crescendo. Axes gleamed.

  “Væga af væga!”

  The bellow rolled across the valley like thunder. Horses quickened to the gallop.

  And above it all, the sound of Izack’s grim laughter. “About bloody time!”

  Fifty-Nine

  The mists pulled back onto a sunlit forest lost in the majesty of Fade. Of rust-coloured leaves curled tight on branch and crunching underfoot. Of that peculiar dry scent of seasonal decline, the rich verdance of Sommertide yielding to renewal’s promise.

  It reminded Melanna of that small, wild corner of the palace grounds where the gardeners seldom trod, but others trespassed to leave offerings of woven corn dolls. A place where brambles thrived and trees grew as they wished. She’d played there as a girl, dreaming of fetch and wisp dancing upon dark mushrooms or rustling ivy. For all that the palace had been where she’d lived, that unkempt patch of garden had been her home. Her first taste of life beyond the shelter of roof or canvas, a fascination that had survived dull lessons of deportment and protocol that had moulded the carefree girl to a princessa. She felt it again now. The desire to wander winding paths and learn their secrets.

  But even without pressing need, she’d have held back. In the birdsong-haunted quiet, she felt a presence. No, not even a presence, for that implied intent. The sensation that prickled across neck and shoulder felt more like potential. The taste of the wind in the moments before deluge, or summer skies beneath gathering storm. Something wondrous and beautiful and dangerous beyond measure.

  Even with its master away, Fellhallow remained aware.

  A crunch of bracken snapped Melanna back to her senses. Apara strode past. Hard to believe the other woman had been all but dead just hours before. Now her vigour put Melanna’s own to shame every bit as much as her manner irritated. Stolen glances. A tongue that moved little if not to question. The pervading sense that to not keep eyes on her was to invite misfortune. Too much like Haldrane, and without the comfort of known loyalties.

  Regarding the tangle of ferns and brambles without enthusiasm, Apara spread her arms in frustration. “How are we to find anything in this?”

  “Follow the paths.” Ashana drifted across the mist gate’s threshold, her skirts rustling fallen leaves. “In Fellhallow, all come eventually to Glandotha.”

  “You’ve spoken of nothing but urgency and waning time,” said Apara. “Now you’re content for us to wander?”

  Ashana shrugged. “Then do as you would in Dregmeet.”

  “What does that even mean?” Apara stared up the boughs. “I’m no use to you here. When you said you needed a thief, I thought you’d a house in mind, maybe a palace. Walls to climb, locks to tip and the like. Not… Not this.”

  Her tone wavered. Melanna was struck by how adrift she seemed. As lost as a fish in the desert. And perhaps that was true. What little Melanna had seen of Tressia before the mists had spirited her away had left an impression of a cold, austere place, with sparse trees and gardens that grew only tombstones. Had Apara even seen a forest before?

  Ashana smiled. “Though Fellhallow and Otherworld are opposites, they’re both places where the ephemeral touches the divine. Where reality buckles to match what lies beyond. It’s true in Dregmeet, and it’s true here.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Melanna.

  “She means we head downwards,” Apara replied. “No matter which way the paths turn, we head downhill.”

  “You see?” said Ashana. “Your instincts do have value, even here.”

  Apara scowled. “A goddess’ aid would be worth more.”

  Ashana plucked a leaf from an overhead branch and turned it over and over. “If my brothers sense I’m meddling they’ll put aside their differences and vent their ire on me.” The leaf crumpled beneath pale fingers. “Then I’ll be forced to destroy one of them, and all will be lost.”

  The calm certainty sent a chill racing along Melanna’s spine. Even now, the Goddess looked more absent than present, a willowy figure scarcely clinging to the world. “Could you really do that?”

  “Oh yes.” Ashana glanced at the mist gate, where the Huntsman stood silent vigil. “Everyone thinks I’m the nice one. I’m not. The part of me that is divine will see this world destroyed rather than allow my siblings to reshape it. But the part of me that remains ephemeral knows greatness cannot be built on selfishness and spite. I indulge her when I can, but if it’s war, it’s war. Find me another way. Find Jack’s heart.”

  Melanna drew close to the Goddess, her voice soft. “I don’t trust her.”

  “Then it’s as well you’re here too, isn’t it?” Ashana embraced her. “Don’t sleep here. Don’t eat anything. Don’t get caught. I’ll be waiting. Look for the moonlight.”

  The deeper the paths wended, the closer the trees clung, and the thicker the canopy wove overhead. Sunlight became a distant gleam, blotted out by fading leaves and great lattices of plump, black vines, until only the strange luminescence of white flowers held darkness at bay.

  Even clinging to the downhill paths, progress slowed. Less because the undergrowth offered hindrance – though briar and branch tore at Melanna’s emerald silks even when she thought herself beyond reach – and more out of growing dread. Kin to sensation felt during that haunted night at Vrasdavora, the more Melanna denied it, the stronger it grew.

  Worse was the thready, breathy pulse oozing beneath the trees like the snore of some vast, malcontent beast. She marked how leaves twitched in sympathy and told herself it was the wind. Still, the vision of the beast remained, the leaves rippling like fur as it slumbered.

  Apara appeared to notice none of this, but strode on through the labyrinthine pathways. Her grey, city-dweller’s garb made her seem a ghost, poorly tethered to the glory of the Fade-claimed forest. She remained watchful, at times halting to peer deeper into the trees, or to stand, head cocked, listening to some rustle of undergrowth or crackle of branch.

  Even so, Melanna constantly fell behind. Each sound – each glimpse of shifting shadow – evoked half-forgotten stories. Children lured from desperate parents. Swains seduce
d by a gasp of thornmaiden pollen. Ancient trees mulched on travellers’ bones. Unable to put such thoughts wholly from her mind, she too often found Apara waiting impatiently at a fork in the path, a sneer on her lips.

  On the fourth occasion, the sneer found voice. “Is it easier to dawdle when it’s not your people on the dagger’s edge?”

  “We’re all on the dagger’s edge,” snapped Melanna. Her more than most, if Jack had his way. She kept one eye on a semi-distant strand of trees. Sunlight’s shadow, or something moving beneath the leaves? “I thought you’d foresworn your kind?”

  Grey eyes narrowed in pain. “Only the Crowmarket. I still have family. Friends.”

  The Crowmarket. The vranakin. Whose kernclaw had nearly killed her father with talons akin to Apara’s. Melanna set the memory aside. “Haste serves no one if it gets us killed.”

  “There’s nothing here. Just branches in the wind.”

  “And you know this for certain? The woman who recoils at the sight of trees?”

  “I survived Dregmeet for thirty years. I know danger when it draws close.” She sighed. “You won’t listen. Your kind never do.”

  Melanna’s cheeks warmed. “My kind? You know nothing of me.”

  “I may not have met you, but I know you. All airs and graces until you’re hammering at the doors of me and mine, looking for someone who’ll do what you can’t… or won’t.” She paused. “Like you are now.”

  “Ashana came to you for help, not me.”

  “She’s not here. And I’m on unfamiliar territory, looking to steal something that probably doesn’t exist from a god who most certainly does, and with only a cosseted shadowthorn for company.”

  “I’m a princessa of the Golden Court,” Melanna replied icily. “Not some cloistered lordling dwelling on inherited glories. I’m nothing like your dusty nobility.”

  “You don’t get a crown without trampling on others.” Apara shrugged. “All shadows look the same when you’re trapped beneath them.”

  Melanna glared, her annoyance sharpened not only by the fact that Apara’s accusation wasn’t so very different from Naradna’s, but also by the suspicion that the other woman was right – that fear was holding her back. What was beyond question, was that argument only cost them time. Apara had reasons to disdain her – even to hate her. And the kernclaw’s failed assassination gave Melanna all the reason she needed to distrust Apara in return. But necessity made strange alliances.