Ecko Endgame

by Danie Ware

  “Six days.” Her words were soft as she untied another knot. “Maybe seven. And then we starve.”

  * * *

  Rhan stood in the entrance to the hospice. He was ashen, hollowed out, far beyond exhaustion. E Rhan Khavaghakke. A final stagger of confused patients limped past him, back out to their glinting campfires. They thanked him, some slightly awkwardly, others in tears. He nodded at them as they left, couldn’t manage anything more.

  As they faded into the darkness, they seemed to take the very last of his vitality with them.

  Ghar’s death still rode him like a figment, and he wondered what had happened to Amethea.

  * * *

  The night grew deeper, and the warriors’ party petered slowly out. The clouds bulged in ominous threat and the fires flickered low, forgotten. As it curved towards morning, it grew colder, and flakes of snow began to drift across the hillside.

  The world, what was left of it, lay sleeping.

  And then, in the stillness, there came music.

  It was a single voice, wordless. It brought an ache to the emptiness, to the dead plains and the ruin’s desolation. It turned the snow into something enchanted, something perfect and timeless.

  Those on watch felt chillflesh prickle their skin. The voice gained volume, now ranging to more than one note, its harmony perfect but faintly unsettling. The song lifted with the cold wind. Sleepers stirred and turned, then awoke wide-eyed and trembling in the dark.

  The walls themselves seemed to be listening.

  In the hospice doorway, Rhan raised his head.

  Over the great ruin, the heavy snowclouds were parting. As if somehow leashed, they rippled with force as they withdrew, their underbellies showing tumbling curves of moonlight. As Rhan watched, transfixed, a fissure began to show, an opening through which poured pure hope.

  Moonlight lit the campsite, spreading like a pool. It was warm, blissful and confident. The walls stood black in contrast. The clouds blazed.

  And the song rose still, a power and reach both almighty and inhuman.

  His skin tingling in response, Rhan stood, his eyes now closed, lost to the touch of the light. Calarinde was up there, his Goddess – she was in his face, in his hair, her fingers on his pale skin. He could almost hear her, her voice more warmth than sound. Oh, my lovely. I’m so sorry.

  The water on his face caught the light, and glittered.

  * * *

  Out on the steps, the spreading light had another effect entirely.

  Ecko said, “Oh, you whoreson motherfucker,” and he was on his feet, unbundling himself from layers of cloak.

  “What?” Triqueta huddled more fabric round the now-silent Amethea. “What bit you?”

  Ecko grinned like a fiend. The yellow light made his skin seethe, as if the moon were setting him afire. It turned Triqueta’s face and hair the colour of molten gold.

  “Oh c’mon,” he said. “Who the hell d’you think that is?”

  He didn’t wait for her answer. He was adrenals-boosted and away, back up the long steps, two at a time, and heading for the gap in the wall.

  Above him, the fissure was wider now – some Parting-of-the-Cloud-Sea trickery. He was impressed – okay, so he admitted it already – the cloudbreak was a helluva thing to pull. Now, it was showing the yellow moon, fat and full, lighting the snow-covered campsite to a piss-coloured glitter. And above it – looking almost like the very first time he’d seen it – the smaller white shine that resembled the moon of his home.

  “Golden showers,” he muttered. “Yeah, funny.”

  But the light made him happy, giddy, insanely so. The song lifted his heart and made him want to giggle like a kid. It filled him with wonder, and pride, and courage, and it flickered dreams of hope and future…

  You whoreson fuckin’ bastard!

  Ducking in through the gap, he flicked ocular modes, scanned the site. In a moment he found the upright figure of the Bard standing at the entrance to the tumbledown tower. He’d shed his cloak, and he sang at the sky in his London jeans and leather. And above him, like some fucking movie effect, the clouds parted further and the brilliant light made the old walls shine. It bathed the campsite in glory.

  Ecko appeared at his side like a daemon in miniature.

  “Cut it the fuck out, willya?”

  The song fell from the air. The wind was cold, crying like a lost thing.

  The Bard was trembling, his chin raised and his throat fully stretched. It glistened in the new moonlight, coiling through and under itself in a way that made Ecko’s skin fucking crawl.

  “Ecko!” he said. It was a whisper, but metals slid with the power it held. “We can do this. We can win!”

  “Mom musta turned you inside out, you’re mad as a box of frogs.”

  “Trust me.” His grin was unholy. “I can lift every heart, every man, every woman, every warrior. Every name is known to me, and every one of them matters. As the confrontation comes, every voice and blade will be raised. And we will tear down everything that comes at us. We are the grass, and the light, and the world’s strength and soul. Not even the Kas can stop us. Now…” he held up one long hand. “…listen!”

  Across the silent ruin there came the sharp, clear screech of an instrument – a horn, high and grating. It wasn’t a musical noise: it was a warning, a wake-up call. A noise to bring warriors to their feet.

  A moment later, there came the sound of echoing drums.

  The Bard laughed, the noise layered and reverberating as if the walls themselves would come down. “Let them come,” he said. “We are standing ready. This is it, Ecko. This is endgame.”

  * * *

  And so came the final morning.

  The sun rose from the sea, streaking the parted clouds with yellow and pink. It burned the dusted snow away, almost as if Samiel had decided to give his children’s toy one final polish before the end.

  At the top of the hill, the defenders waited. Commanded by Mostak’s single focus and unbending courage, by Triqueta, upright and on horseback, they had formed up in their tan, and stood tall against the threat. Flags of three cities flew proud, colours bright.

  At the bottom of the hill, a seethe of nightmare lurked beyond the curtain-wall. If ever there had been human faces among that mass, they’d been lost in the writhe of the monsters, in the daemon-driven run across the dead Varchinde. Lines and tans and flags no longer defined them; they were obsessed beyond reason, beyond sanity. They were demented, unarmoured, and clamouring. In among them were the last of the Fhaveon heavy cavalry, and men and women who had never been warriors – those who’d followed Phylos’s politicking and had been caught up in the madness.

  About the force’s edges paced the horned and tattooed vialer, watching the fervent mass, keeping it in check; watching the sky as if for some unknown signal.

  Of Selana herself, there was no sign.

  Triqueta watched them, gauging numbers, routes, counterattacks.

  Mounted on a Roviarath mustang, she’d taken command of the two hundred Fhaveon skirmishers as well as her own force. With her, too, was the centaur herd. Her gauntleted hands itched, and she watched the swarm below her, waiting for their attack.

  Told herself, I can do this.

  At the front of the ruin, facing down the hill, the shieldwall had formed anew. It was noticeably smaller than before. The freemen and women of Amos and Roviarath were skirmishers rather than infantry, and they’d been divided to the flanks. On their outsides, Triqueta had formed the cavalry on the extremes of either edge – fast retaliation and response.

  The catapults were loaded. Archers from all three cities lined every wall.

  On the top of the tower, the Bard stood alone, like an icon.

  Somewhere behind Triqueta, Mostak bounced on his toes, agitated. Still heavy with exhaustion, Rhan commanded the reserve, saving his energy.

  The clouds were almost gone now, the early winter sun surprisingly warm. The force at the base of the hill was all but throw
ing itself against the curtain-wall, eager for release. They were hungry. She could feel it.

  But there was one more thing.

  She’d noticed it only as the sun rose – it had been hidden, perhaps, because so many of the hilltop weeds had been ground under foot and hoof – but now she could see it was everywhere.

  The moss, the grass, the rust-coloured creeper that grew upon the walls – they were fading to the grey of everything else, to dust and emptiness.

  As if Amethea had been its herald, the blight had come to the ruins of Tusien.

  * * *

  The attack came as the sunlight reached the base of the walls.

  As the long shadows retreated, so the force surged up to meet them, released at last.

  It came in a rush, figures striving to reach the front, pulling one another down into the dirt, trampling and savage and oblivious.

  Triqueta watched them, heard the drums, heard the Bard cry courage and victory, echoes of his song from the previous evening. She knew the drum sounds were orders – she also knew the opposing force would understand those orders. When she’d challenged Mostak on this, the commander had given her a grin to rival one of Ecko’s.

  “I’m counting on it,” he’d said.

  Now, though, the drums sounded the order to hold, to interlock shields and to defend the top of the wall.

  The catapults cranked and threw, the crews showing a sense of humour as they pelted the incoming force with the debris of the previous night’s party. By the rhez, if they were going to die, they were going to do it in style.

  Their flash of humour made Triqueta chuckle, and she raised her voice in the Banned’s war cry. She didn’t need the Bard’s damned trickeries to find her courage for her.

  The command came from the walltop, and the archers started shooting. They weren’t volley-shooting now, arcing their arrows over and down, they were picking their targets and shooting flat, sniping, and their skill and numbers were counting. The first wave of incoming skidded and cried out and hit the floor. It was surged over and ground down by its fellows.

  Triqueta swallowed bile as she realised that the first wave had been almost all non-combatants, unarmed but for belt-blades. The lost and displaced people of Fhaveon, the people to whom Vahl had promised a new life, an answer.

  Dear Gods.

  But the archers shot again, merciless. The catapults reloaded. This time, their load was broken stone and the centre of the advance crashed to a bloody halt under falling masonry. The vialer didn’t care, they laughed at the blood and chaos. The creatures bore decorated spears and some of them wore skins – of what, she dreaded to imagine. The image of them killing Redlock had been burned into her like a brand – and she used it to source her rage and her courage. The vialer churned the ground and the fallen to a mass of gore as they came.

  The force grew close, and the drums changed note – the archers stopped shooting. She could see faces – ordinary men and women, driven beyond hope, beyond fanaticism. They had teeth bared, many of them bloody where they’d raked nails down their faces or bitten through their lips or cheeks. Their lack of humanity was terrifying, and their age—

  Their age!

  It hit her out of nowhere – how they’d come so far, so fast, what the Kas were doing to the people they now threw at the hilltop. She would have gambled everything she still owned that these fighters had not been in their fortieth and fiftieth return when they’d left Fhaveon.

  She swallowed hard and gripped her blades. These people had been drained, just like she had been, used as fuel. Who knew how many of them the Kas had already killed?

  Or was the right word, eaten?

  The insight made her shudder – yet it made no sense. The Kas were draining their own force, damaging their warriors in order to gain time, to reach the ruin swiftly. And likewise, they’d deliberately broken their assault into separate pieces – sent one force into Fhaveon, sent the centaurs after Roviarath…

  Initially, she’d just thought them full of themselves – they were daemons, for Gods’ sakes, better at flinging power than military tactics. But now she wondered: what if their choices were calculated?

  Triqueta had faced Amal, witnessed his games – by the rhez, she knew enough of Vahl to trust nothing… so, if this was deliberate, then what was he doing?

  She didn’t get time to follow the thought through.

  The first wave of incoming hit the shieldwall with a crash of wood and flesh and shouting.

  The warriors’ response was well-drilled, commanded clearly by the drums. The attackers were all over them, hands like claws and teeth bared and bloody. They were sweating and age-lined and seething and angry, scratching and fighting weaponless, or struggling to bring their blades to bear, and cutting at each other in the process.

  Facing them, the defending wall hit back, and hard. And then it parted, very briefly, letting just a few of the attackers through and cutting them off. Behind the wall, the skirmishers made short work of them, grinding them into the blighted cobbles. They did this time and time again. If the attackers faltered or fell back for long enough, Triqueta would despatch the cavalry and counterattack, hammering out from the flanks and into their lines, then racing back before they had time to fully react.

  Sometimes, a voice would cry out in the heave of the melee – a name, a plea, a call to someone they had known from their youth, or from the street where they had lived.

  But Ythalla’s forces were beyond human and there was no recognition.

  Nothing left.

  They were like Maugrim’s stone creatures, they just came onwards, relentless, pushed blindly by those behind. Injuries seemed not to slow them – to put each one down, they had to be hacked to pieces, their legs kicked or cut from under them, their eyes removed, their hands severed at the wrists. Even then they came on; the heat that burned from them was that of the rhez itself.

  Triqueta saw more than one defender quail and try to fall back, only to be caught between the press behind them, and the press in front. The wounded and the terrified had no way to leave the crush – they simply fell where they stood and were trampled.

  She thought: I can still do this.

  She lifted her chin.

  Oh, she could still do this, all right. For Redlock. For Amethea. For Roviarath. For the wound in the world. Triq was furious and fearless; she shouted defiance back at the incoming force.

  Sunlight slid down the hillside.

  The line was too spread, not tight enough, and there were too many of them coming. For every attack she anticipated and countered, another would come, further away, eager and unstoppable. And the shieldwall itself, already devastated by Ythalla’s cavalry, was heavily outnumbered, outflanked at both edges.

  Their discipline was good – they were striving to hold. Archers still shot from the walltops, carefully picking their targets. Many of them shot at the vialer, and the tattooed creatures yowled and laughed and snapped the shafts as they struck.

  But there were just too many of them.

  And the arrows were running out.

  The shieldwall held, but it was being pushed back, and back, and back towards the rear wall of the ruin – warriors’ boots could get no traction on the cobbles as the press of bodies in front of them forced their way forwards. From somewhere, Triq could hear a strong and even rhythm, a stamp-stamp-stamp that was making all the attackers stamp in time, a heavy pressure of ruthless forward motion.

  Triqueta held the cavalry back, waiting for the chance to get in behind the push of the attackers… if it came…

  Then she heard the drums. Somewhere she could hear the Bard’s voice, a jarring arrhythmic disruption that was hard on her ears, but was making the stamping slacken, confused. The drummers hammered out a loud and obvious tattoo, a second.

  She remembered what Mostak had said about the drumming, just as the pressure of the attackers slowed. Whatever the order had been, the enemy had understood and anticipated it.

  And then the
big kettledrum hit a single bass note. It echoed from the walls as if Tusien would ripple and fall. And the shieldwall abruptly shifted formation – from the long flat line of the wall itself into an arrowhead, the strongest warrior at the point and every shield locked behind his, slanting backwards towards the flanks.

  At the edges of the formation, the shieldmen had suddenly pulled back and the attackers staggered, bereft of resistance. At the formation’s point, the warriors leaned hard into the heavy man at the very front and they pushed forwards, aggressive and shouting, moving faster and faster as they gained ground.

  Behind them, the skirmishers came to clean up the edges.

  Belatedly realising their mistake, the attackers faltered, tried to react but they were confused and too slow – their line was cut clean in half and each half spun sideways, its back to the incoming skirmishers.

  Triq wasted no time. Her war cry loud in her throat and ears, she slung her bow, drew her blades and hit them clean in the back, riding them down – warrior and monster and non-combatant alike.

  By the Gods, she was beginning to believe that they might even win this…

  And then she saw what was coming.

  * * *

  Watching from the hilltop, Rhan knew it the moment it manifested.

  It shivered his skin and his soul. Its presence was in the Powerflux itself, in the light and the air. Even as it sparked into being, it was lust and energy and rage. It was growing by the moment, and by every God it was moving.

  No one on the hilltop had a hope in the rhez of facing this thing. It would char them all to a smoking pile of ash and hopelessness.

  Samiel’s bollocks.

  Scared and angry, Rhan pushed past his drummer, his message-bearer. He shouted for Mostak, abandoning his post to shove his way through to the command tent. They could discipline him later, if anyone lived that long.

  Around him, warriors were craning to see.

  “What the rhez is that?”

  “Do you see it?”

  “Too much of the good stuff last night, mate.”