by Luke Scull
She could see her short sword lying on the trampled turf. She stretched for it, every muscle in her arm straining, but it was just out of reach. She tried to scream, but the crushing hands around her throat turned her cry into a pathetic squeak.
She stared up at the leering face above her. The man’s rancid breath filled her nostrils. Her vision began to blur. Her assailant’s cruel eyes seemed to fill her world, sweat glistening off a nose cratered with blackheads. ‘Die, bitch,’ he panted.
Her right hand closed around the shield fragment protruding from her waist. With a wild effort, she wrenched it free. The pain was excruciating, but she had no time to indulge it; her strength was almost spent. Slowly, almost dreamily, as if she were detached from everything going on around her, she raised her arm from the ground and drove the makeshift dagger through her would-be killer’s eye.
His scream was hideous. The pressure around her windpipe evaporated as her attacker flung his hands up to his face and reeled away from her. She choked in air, rolled over and pushed herself to her feet. Her legs almost gave away beneath her and she stumbled, but she did not fall. With deliberate care she picked her sword up off the ground.
Blood ran down her leg. She ignored it. The Watchman was still howling, his fingers plucking ineffectually at the wooden fragment extruding from his burst eyeball. She limped over to him, raised the sword, and thrust the blade straight through his face.
Sasha stood there for a time, staring at the dead man, then turned and retched. All around her the fighting continued. Thelassa’s mercenary army and the city’s defenders were locked in a vicious struggle. She wiped her mouth, retrieved her sword and limped over to the nearest pocket of fighting. A Sumnian almost fell into her, a pike quivering from his belly, and she pushed him away. The arrival of Salazar’s Augmentors had swung the battle and now they were being pushed back away from the gates.
The blond-haired warrior in the golden armour strode the field like death itself, his sword slaying at will. He was relentless, surgical in the way he stabbed, chopped and thrust his way through the dark-skinned Sumnians. He left a trail of corpses in his wake.
Elsewhere other Augmentors had brought their magic to bear to devastating effect. Nearer to the wall, the warrior in the bronze hauberk scattered enemies like leaves with his terrible hammer. The weapon had annihilated half a dozen mercenaries in a single swing and caused the explosion of splintering wood that had knocked her to the ground and pierced her side.
The pain was growing worse. Her neck throbbed. Through the haze of agony she wondered how the assault on the east side of the city was progressing. In response to the advance of the White Lady’s pale servants, the Watch had seemingly thrown the bulk of the city’s militia against the western gate. If General Zolta didn’t attack soon and draw some of the defenders away, two of the three companies that made up the White Lady’s army could soon be routed.
An explosion suddenly rocked the ground ahead of her. The stench of burning flesh would have made her puke if there had been anything left in her stomach.
She stared through the smoke. A group of Sumnians were engaged in a desperate struggle to fight their way past a similar number of Watchmen. Behind the red-cloaked soldiers lurked an Augmentor. In one hand the man carried a wicked-looking flail, but it was his other hand, the hand he was raising above his head, that caused her heart to skip a beat. There was an ominous glow around the glove covering his fist.
As Sasha watched, the Augmentor hurled a sphere of glowing energy straight at the mercenaries. It struck the earth and exploded, sending white-hot fire blossoming outwards. Once her eyes had cleared, she saw that half the Sumnians had been reduced to smoking corpses. The others immediately fell back, screaming in agony and nursing terrible burns.
She searched around the battlefield. She had discarded her own crossbow a while back. But there, ten feet to her left, she found what she was looking for.
Half staggering, she reached the fallen Watchman and prised the weapon from his dead hands. As luck would have it, it was already loaded. She edged forwards, trying to get close enough for a clear shot. She took another couple of steps and a gap opened up. She raised the crossbow.
At the last moment, one of the Watchmen noticed her. He yelled and pointed. The Augmentor turned and raised his gloved hand.
She pulled the trigger.
This time the explosion knocked her off her feet. There was a deafening roaring in her ears. She tasted blood in her mouth and realized her nose was bleeding. Something smelled of burning. It was her hair. She reached up to touch it. A clump came away in her hand, blackened and singed. But she was still alive.
The Augmentor and those surrounding him were not so fortunate. Struck by her quarrel, the man had misdirected his fireball and launched it at the ground just in front of him. Chunks of flesh and scraps of red cloth sizzled and steamed where the Watchmen had been standing. Nothing remained of the Augmentor but a pair of smoking boots and a puddle some six feet wide.
Sasha stared numbly at the carnage. Then she released her grip on the crossbow and rolled over onto her back to stare up at the clouds overhead. She could hear the sounds of fighting nearby, but she was past caring.
Let them come. She was done.
No one would care if she lived or died. No one apart from Cole and possibly Garrett. And if they knew the truth, they wouldn’t want anything to do with her either. She was a hateful, drug-addled piece of shit. She had deceived Garrett, tricking him into spending more and more of his own coin on narcotics which she had kept to fund her habit. And then she had attached herself to Vicard and used him, too.
She remembered raiding the physician’s home in Farrowgate. She was a common thief as well as a manipulative, deceitful little fuck-up.
Warm blood still trickled down her leg. Just as it had all those years ago. The gang should have killed her as they had killed her father and sister. It would have been better for everyone.
There was movement ahead of her, the sound of a booted foot scuffing against the dirt. Hardly caring, she twisted her neck to see who approached. It was Jerek.
The Highlander was covered in small cuts, his hide shirt torn in multiple places. Red smears and ash covered his bald head. The axes he held at his sides dripped with the blood of countless enemies.
And his eyes were staring in her direction, burning with a hatred that promised brutal death.
The blackness inside her head receded, replaced by sudden terror. She scrabbled to her feet as the grim warrior stalked towards her. He was on her before she could think to run, his axes raised, preparing to end her miserable life. She stared dully at the strapping around his shoulder. The strapping that covered the wound she had accidentally given him. What was it Brodar Kayne had said? The Wolf doesn’t forget a debt.
‘Wait, you know I didn’t mean—’
An axe came down.
And Jerek pushed her gently away from him with his forearm. He didn’t take his eyes off whatever it was he was staring at. ‘Get out of here,’ he growled.
Sasha turned.
The hulking figure seemed to blot out the sun. It was a giant, a towering monstrosity of black metal wearing the face of a demon. ‘I’m Garmond the Black,’ he rumbled. ‘She’s mine. Once I’m done with you.’
Jerek’s face twitched. ‘Reckon so? I’ve killed bigger men than you.’ He leaned over and spat. ‘Ain’t never seen a bigger cunt, though.’
Garmond brought his gauntleted fists together with a thud, sending splatters of gore flying in all directions. ‘You’re dead.’
‘Get out of here,’ Jerek rasped again, and this time Sasha heeded his words. She ran, half stumbling, until she had put a good distance between her and the two men. Then, unable to stop herself, she turned and watched.
The combatants circled one another warily. Jerek, himself a big man, looked shockingly small opposite the Augmentor.
The Highlander feinted and then sprinted forwards, his axes whirring. He hit the giant
on the thigh, the shoulder, and then across the chest. The sounds of steel clashing against steel rang out across the battlefield – but when the Wolf ceased his flurry, Garmond’s armour displayed not a single dent.
The Augmentor lunged at the smaller man, but Jerek was already out of range. The Highlander spat and then began stalking a circle around the behemoth, keeping him at a distance.
Garmond turned on the spot, maintaining the angle between them. Suddenly Jerek dropped his shoulder and dashed at the Augmentor. He was halfway to him when he hurled one of his axes at the giant’s head. It whirled through the air, end over end, clashing into the demon helm with a gigantic clang and jerking Garmond’s head back. At the same time Jerek launched himself at the Augmentor’s armoured legs, tackling him shoulder-first with the full force of his body weight. The massive warrior stumbled and then toppled backwards, crashing to the ground.
The Wolf was back on his feet in the blink of an eye. He grabbed Garmond’s head and tugged, his jaw clenching from the effort of trying to prise the great helm lose. Eventually it came free. The Highlander tossed it away and raised his remaining axe. With a grunt, he brought it whistling down.
The axe bounced off Garmond’s vambraced forearm. The massive Augmentor threw his other arm back, elbowing Jerek in the stomach. He doubled up for an instant, just long enough for Garmond to get hold of him and lift him bodily off the ground. He plucked the Highlander’s axe from his hand and tossed it aside, and then brought him down over his knee, once, twice, each impact striking with a sickening thud. Finally, Garmond lifted Jerek high above his head. Sasha was shocked to see the man beneath the helmet was fairly young, utterly unremarkable in appearance. With a snarl, the Augmentor hurled Jerek to the ground. He landed hard and lay still.
Sasha looked away. She hadn’t liked Jerek and he hadn’t liked her, but that didn’t change the fact he had saved her life on more than one occasion. She thought he was done for – but then, remarkably, he began to stir.
Despite the broken ribs and worse he must have suffered, the Highlander was trying to struggle upright.
The Augmentor reached down and pulled Jerek up to his knees; the Wolf swayed as if he might topple over at any moment. Garmond drove a steel gauntlet into his face. Sasha winced at the sickening noise of the impact. He punched Jerek again. This time Sasha heard the crack of a cheekbone shattering.
She searched desperately for a weapon of some sort. There was nothing. Not unless she wanted to charge at the giant with a sword. Hating herself, she readied herself to flee as soon as the Augmentor had finished his gruesome work.
Garmond drew his arm back again, this time as far as it would go. ‘You’re dead,’ he grunted. Then he threw his gauntleted fist forwards with incredible force, the momentum like that of the battering ram that had sundered Dorminia’s gates.
And somehow the Wolf caught the punch. Incredibly, like a dead man rising from the grave, he began to climb to his feet. Garmond growled and swung with his other fist – only to see that gauntlet, too, caught in Jerek’s vice-like grip.
Like a river exploding from a fractured dam, the Wolf sprung forwards and drove his forehead into his opponent’s nose, splattering it like a spoiled fruit. Garmond staggered back. Jerek headbutted him again, and again, until both men wore masks of crimson. Still Jerek would not relent. He bent down to retrieve one of his axes and swung it two-handed at Garmond’s leg, a blow so powerful it sheared through the greaves, the axe lodging in his shin.
Garmond howled and collapsed onto one knee. Jerek kicked him in the face and Sasha heard the sound of the big man’s jaw breaking.
Grabbing hold of the Augmentor’s curly black hair, Jerek drove his own knee repeatedly into his opponent’s exposed head. Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack. The savagery went on and on. By the time he was finished, Garmond’s head was barely recognisable as anything human.
Jerek let Garmond’s corpse fall to the ground and stood there panting. He met Sasha’s eyes, his face a bruised, swollen mess covered in blood. Then, very slowly, he limped over to reclaim his axes.
Sasha stared at him as he turned away from her. Strange emotions whirred inside her head.
Astonished as she was, she was even more surprised when she looked to the hills to the north and saw the bestial army rushing towards Dorminia.
Ghosts
Kayne sucked in great gasps of air. Sweat stung his eyes, making it harder to track that deadly blade flickering at him from all angles. His arms were stinging with the small nicks and cuts his opponent’s sword had inflicted. They were scratches, nothing that would slow the Sword of the North. No, exhaustion would take care of that.
This blond-haired bastard was one of the best he had ever faced. Maybe the best. Even so, he was managing to hang in there – except that the man didn’t seem to tire. He grimaced as his opponent’s longsword scored a shallow wound across his chest and redoubled his efforts, although his heart was hammering so hard he thought it might burst.
They’d been fighting for he didn’t know how long. Bodies littered the ground all around them, not only red-cloaked Watchmen and dark-skinned Sumnians but all those poor sods who’d been handed a rusty blade and shoved out here to die: young and old, farmers and craftsmen and common labourers lying dead or groaning and weeping for their wives and mothers. He’d cut down no small number of them himself. When a man comes at you with murder in his eyes the tragedy of it all makes no difference. You kill or you get killed.
His opponent wasn’t even breathing hard. The man’s jaw was set in a grim line, brow furrowed in concentration. Kayne parried a thrust and then tried to take a step back; he cursed as he almost tripped over the body of a mercenary. The golden virtuoso was on him in an instant.
Concentration. That was the key. You had to note how your opponent moved, every detail, every expression. Every man had a pattern, an angle that showed in his eyes, the way his muscles twitched.
The dancing longsword missed his neck by a fraction. Kayne watched it closely, waiting for that one opening. He saw it then, the barest hint. His opponent had overreached by maybe half an inch. The old Highlander turned the greatsword around in his hands and then spun the blade in a full circle, felt it cut deep into his opponent’s arm where the interlocking plates of his armour met.
This time it was the blond-haired warrior who fell back. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. Blood welled up from the deep cut in his arm.
‘Just a man doing a job,’ Kayne replied. He seized on the opportunity – any opportunity – to catch his breath.
The answer didn’t seem to please his opponent. ‘You’re a mercenary like the rest of them? I’m disappointed.’
The barbarian shrugged. ‘When it comes right down to it, gold’s as good a reason to fight as any. And more honest than most.’
There was anger in those blue eyes now. ‘Is gold all that matters to you? What about loyalty? Honour? Duty?’
Brodar Kayne stared right back into that scornful gaze. ‘Loyalty, honour and duty, eh? I reckon I know a bit about them. Great things, to be sure, as long as you’re on the right side of ’em. They can make a man feel right good about himself, even as he’s doing the most terrible things. The weak, now, they can’t afford such lofty ideals. Too busy bangin’ on the door while men like you sit at your high table and admire your honour and reflect on how much worthier it makes you.’
Much to his surprise, his words seemed to cut the swordsman as deeply as his blade had. There was doubt on that chiselled face, sadness in those blue eyes. ‘And what about love?’ he asked quietly. The fighting continued on around them, but out of sheer happenstance or just unthinking deference to the skill of these two men facing off against each other, they found themselves alone on the battlefield.
Brodar Kayne blinked sweat from his eyes. ‘Love? Well now, there ain’t no shame in a man fighting for that.’ He stared across at the troubled face. ‘And I reckon if that’s the case, you’re a better sort than I gave you credit for.’
The golden-armoured warrior nodded slowly. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and he sounded as if he meant it.
Kayne glanced up at the sky. The sun was starting to go down. It would be evening soon. He sighed heavily. ‘Getting late,’ he said.
‘Then I suppose we had better hurry up and finish this.’
It was his turn to nod. As his opponent closed, though, Kayne noticed with growing alarm that the man’s wound had already stopped leaking. It had been a nasty one, ought to have worked in his favour the longer the fight wore on – but it seemed that not only did this Augmentor not tire, he didn’t bleed either.
The old barbarian uttered a silent curse. He had the feeling this wasn’t going to end well.
He held his own for a good few minutes longer before his body started to betray him. He wasn’t a young man, that was the truth of it, and he couldn’t keep this up. The greatsword started to feel like a lead weight in his hands. He twisted, dodged, parried, and with every second that passed he came a fraction closer to being just that little bit too slow.
And then it happened. He stumbled and his attacker was on him, and this time he knew he couldn’t react fast enough.
This is it, he thought, watching the blade descend. You had a good run, all things considered. He braced himself for the inevitable.
The swordsman wavered. A confused expression spread across his face. Not about to question his good fortune, Kayne tensed, preparing to press home the advantage. Suddenly, far in the distance, the very top of the Obelisk exploded in golden light. He shielded his eyes and watched in amazement as brilliant rays the colour of dawn suddenly streamed up towards the heavens.
A choking sound snapped his attention back to his opponent. He was clutching at his chest, his eyes wide in shock. The longsword tumbled from his grasping fingers and he fell to his knees, rocking back and forth, gulping desperately as if unable to swallow enough air.
Kayne hesitated and then lowered his greatsword. All around the battlefield men had ceased fighting and were staring up beyond the city walls in astonishment. Could it be the lad actually succeeded? he wondered.
