III

Aeglyss leaned heavily on Hothyn the White Owl as he advanced out into the street. His head—a simple skull, almost, in its gaunt and fleshless angles—lolled on a limp neck. The plain robe he wore was patterned with brown and red and black stains, the exudates of the wrecked and porous body beneath. At the sight of him, Kanin was instantly blind to all else, and he sprang forward. “Be still,” Aeglyss said, like a thunderclap on the damp air. Kanin staggered to a halt, dizzied. The world spun about him for a moment, a swirling vision of dirty grey stonework and mud and figures that flashed past too quickly to be recognised. He steadied himself. The na’kyrim was staring at him, and that gaze was all contempt, all confidence. Shraeve started to move. Long, languid strides, hands reaching slowly up for the hilts that framed her face. Her eyes were on Kanin, wholly committed to his death. And he could see it quite clearly for himself. He could envisage with the utmost clarity his own graceful execution. She would be like a hawk, composed entirely of speed and power, falling upon him. He would die now on Shraeve’s twin blades, and go into the darkness knowing he had failed. He would follow Wain, knowing there would never be an answer to her death. He knew all this, and the weight of it felt as though it would crush his heart, but still he hefted his sword in his hand and tightened his grip upon the straps of his shield until the leather creaked, and stepped forward to meet her. Perhaps… perhaps… “Wait,” said Aeglyss. Shraeve stopped. She passed from motion into perfect immobility in the blink of an eye. Her gaze remained locked onto Kanin. He found that he had come to a halt too. Two dozen paces separated Thane and raven. Kanin could feel his heart thumping, straining, in his chest. Its beat was the only sound in all the world. A silence descended upon them all, every warrior gathered there at Kan Avor’s centre. Then Aeglyss was edging sideways, his gown trailing through the mud. He moved like an ancient, all brittleness and fragility. But his voice… his voice was like the ocean. “You have done all that you could have done, Bloodheir,” the halfbreed rasped. “No. Thane. I forget. Or remember too much.” He coughed and shivered. Blood was trickling from his nose. Hothyn followed him, a watchful, silent attendant. “You never understood, though. Because there is something in you—this hatred—that deafens you, blinds you, you never grasped what has been happening all around you. You see only the surface of things. But you needed to feel, Thane, if you were to understand.” Aeglyss extended a bony arm, and pressed his hand against a wall. He leaned thus, letting the ruined city take his weight. “If you could have felt it, you would have understood that this is not something you can undo. Not with all your hatred, all your stubbornness. You are not equal to the task of opposing me, because I am become the world.” There were cracks in the skin of the halfbreed’s naked scalp, Kanin could see. Fissures in him. Failings of the body. But it was not his body that filled the street, coiled like fog around the buildings, streamed out from the stones. It was not in his limbs that his awful strength resided. “I am become the world,” Aeglyss repeated. His eyes were closed. His eyelids were seeping sores. “And it would be easy to let you die, for the world is finished with you. But that is not what I want. And the choice is mine to make.” “No,” said Kanin through gritted teeth. The denial cost him a great effort, for the halfbreed’s monumental will had hold of him. “Yes. You will be what I want you to be, Thane, because that is the nature of things now. Surely you do not imagine you could have come this far, had I not permitted it? I think a thing, and it becomes real. That is what… that is how… No, no. Things have happened… Did I dream them? Scavenge them from the memory of the world? Things I never wanted…” Then something darted from the ruins, some dark fleck of movement that leaped towards the na’kyrim. It was too fast to follow, too fleeting for any of them to react. Any of them save the one Kyrinin. In the time it took Kanin to turn his head, Hothyn managed a single surging stride, set his hands on the halfbreed’s shoulders, twisted and hauled him aside, and caught the crossbow bolt square in his own back. The White Owl fell against Aeglyss, and in the manner of that collapse Kanin could see at once that he was dead. Aeglyss swayed for a moment, reaching round to grasp the stub of the quarrel that had buried itself between ribs and deep into the heart beyond, then the Kyrinin’s weight was too much for him and he toppled backwards. The passage of time slowed. Shraeve was pointing. Inkallim were running, homing on the source of that fatal dart. Kanin blinked—it felt glacial and leaden—and looked back to Aeglyss. The na’kyrim was pinned beneath Hothyn’s corpse, struggling feebly to roll it away. And Kanin moved. One long stride, then another, giant paces that swept him over the silt-packed cobbles. There was nothing save the sight of the halfbreed, down and distracted, and the feel of his own body, the might that coursed through his legs and his shoulders and chest. The world, the future, fate: all of it yielding itself to him and opening itself. He had but to reach out and take hold of what was offered. He ran towards Aeglyss, and his sword was rising, attaining the height from which it would fall, and in falling salve all hurts. Shraeve hit him from the side, driving her shoulder into his armpit. It felt like a log of hardwood punching into his ribcage, and it knocked him from his feet. She somersaulted away from him and somehow twisted so that she came to rest facing him, crouched on one foot, one knee, hands already up and grasping the hilts of her swords. Kanin tried to get to his feet, but his shield hampered him. He was too slow, he knew. He had seen Shraeve fight; seen her speed. But the Inkallim was smiling, rising without urgency. Her two swords eased free of their scabbards and she held them out, one on either side, rolling her wrists so that the blades stirred the air in lazy circles. Kanin’s flank where she had hit him protested violently as he lifted himself off the cobblestones. He used sword and shield to lever himself up, and forced himself to straighten, ignoring the cramping pain from his ribs. He wanted to look for Aeglyss, but Shraeve was advancing slowly, that disdainful smile still upon her face. “Come, then,” Kanin murmured. He would welcome it now, to be freed from the chains of sorrow and failed hopes. “I killed your sister, Thane,” Shraeve said quietly. “Not Aeglyss. Me. It was necessary.” “Necessary. Necessary.” Kanin repeated the word in incomprehension. It had no meaning to him, his mind could not grasp its shape. It bore no relation he could conceive of to Wain. To her death. Yet it filled him with renewed fire. It burned away the dull fog of surrender. He threw himself at the Inkallim, and heard as he did so, as if from very far away, Aeglyss crying out, “Don’t kill him.” She was all that he had imagined she would be. A dark and dancing flame, always and inevitably just out of reach. He fought as he never had before, knowing that there was nothing to preserve his strength, or will, or passion. It all came to this. Shraeve’s swords wove fluid webs which he could not penetrate. They notched his shield and struck splinters from its face. Her body described patterns that he did not recognise, and could not follow or predict. His blunt attacks lagged always an instant behind, though he poured every last measure of his skill and effort into them. His boots scraped and slipped across the uneven surface of the street; hers flowed. She laid open his cheek. She dented the chain links on his breast. Kanin had never been so wholly present within the moments of a battle. He had never been so fast or so acutely conscious of each movement, each fractional instant. He had never been a better warrior than he was there, facing Shraeve in the decrepit streets of the shattered city, beneath broken towers. And it was not enough. From the first ringing touch of their contending blades, he had understood that it would not be enough. He cut at her hip. Shraeve blocked the blow. As he pulled his sword arm back to gather the distance for another attempt, he found the point of her second sword pursuing it, lancing diagonally between the two of them towards his elbow. He straightened that retreating arm out and twisted his shoulder back to let Shraeve’s lunge take her across him. She turned as she went, showing her back to him. He began to bring his shield sweeping up and around, aiming its rim at the side of her head. A sudden dip and surge and Shraeve was rising, still turning, in the air; moving no longer across him but towards him. Her trailing arm was snapping round. Kanin saw it, read its path, and could do nothing to prevent it. A dark blur, as of a rock rushing down at him, and the pommel of her sword hit his cheekbone, just in front of his ear. He felt his shield strike Shraeve, but she rolled over it, like an acrobat playing games at a feast. The impact had blinded him. Pain flashed through his skull, as bright and loud as summer lightning. There was a ringing whine in his ears. His legs softened, the knee joints quaking and yawing as he staggered, sinking towards the cobblestones. Another stunning blow, in the centre of his chest, deadening him. He plunged backwards, blind and deaf. His body was nothing but pain and crushing pressure. He hit a wall or perhaps the ground, the back of his head cracking against stone, and felt consciousness faltering. The beat of his heart slowed and slowed. “Don’t kill him,” he heard the na’kyrim saying again as he receded. As soon as the bolt had leaped from her crossbow, Eska was gone. She ducked and scrambled on all fours away from the waist-high stump of wall that had concealed her. Behind her, shouts, pursuit. She did not need to look. Shraeve’s ravens—perhaps even Shraeve herself—would be pouring through this labyrinthine rubble in moments. If she had permitted herself the luxury of such feelings, that might have given Eska a certain pleasure. She would, in many ways, welcome the testing of her skills against their cruder abilities. The Battle might benefit from a lesson in humility. Now, though, it was escape that dominated her thoughts. She had glimpsed, down the path her quarrel had carved through the air towards the na’kyrim’s chest, the wood-wight’s first reflexive movement. He had reacted with an immediacy she would not have thought possible. This was a lesson for her; one she would remember, should she ever be required to hunt his kind. She could not be certain, for certainty would have demanded hesitation, but she guessed that he might even have been sufficiently fast to save the halfbreed. Her sole concern now was to keep herself alive long enough to find out, and if necessary to rectify her failure. She hauled herself, snake-like, through a hole at the base of a wall. Frost or flood had broken out just enough stones to permit her passage. In the unroofed chamber beyond, the mud was deep. It coated her face and stomach as she slithered into it and sprang upright. There were three corpses here, lying as if asleep against piles of fallen building blocks, wrapped in blankets. They had been alive when she first came this way. Sick, probably dying, but alive. She had seen many such pathetic groupings as she picked her way through Kan Avor’s dismal maze. Half the people of the city seemed to be in the grip of one affliction or another. The febrile suffering of these three in particular, she had chosen to end. It would have been intolerable to her to leave them there alive—even if only barely—across her chosen escape route. She paused only long enough to sling her crossbow across her back, roll one of the bodies aside and retrieve her spear from where she had left it, hidden beneath that dead flesh. She vaulted through what had once been a window, and splashed into the puddle of filthy water beyond. The ruins stretched out before her, the leaning, slumping carcasses of countless houses. She ran into that thicket of stone, more concerned with speed now than concealment. The Battle would come quickly, as was their wont. They seldom submitted themselves to the restraint of subtlety. It would have been easier had she not been left alone by the unpredictable tumult of Kan Avor. One of her fellow Inkallim she had heard die, overrun by the raving mob that he led away from her. The other had simply disappeared as if the city had opened and folded itself about him. Even now, the sounds of war hung over Kan Avor like a fell miasma. The fire Kanin oc Horin-Gyre had lit had taken on a life of its own, and Eska could feel for herself the creeping, persuasive seductions of its sole imperative. Its hunger for death and violence gnawed at the edges of her mind, trying to make her its own. There would be few save the dead left here by nightfall. Against the background murmur of slaughter, she caught a nearer sound: splashing footfalls behind her, the rattle of scabbards on belts. Too close to be ignored. It was not, then, to be easy. Still, she had one ally left to her. She turned in a narrow passageway floored with great square paving stones. The remnant walls that bounded it were high enough and narrow enough to make it ill-suited to swordplay; a spear, though, would work well. As she stood there, settling into a ready stance, she whistled: a long, keening note. The first of the ravens appeared at the end of the passage, shouted at the sight of her, and came straight at her. He was a big man, and broad. Behind him, she glimpsed one, two more, but his dark mass blocked her sight of them as he closed on her. She read his intent in his eyes and his pace: he would impale himself upon her spear, and keep it there, in his body, while his companions rushed over him to cut her down. Typical of the Battle. And likely to undo her, Eska judged. She whistled again, still louder. The Battle Inkallim was almost on her. She dipped into a crouch, bracing herself. The force of his charge onto her spear shook down through its shaft into her hands. She resisted only enough to be certain that mortal damage was done, and to hear the roaring, gasping bursting of the air out from his lungs, and then she dropped the spear, turned and ran. She could hear them coming after her, stamping over their dying fellow. But she could hear something else now, ahead of her rather than behind, and it was a sound that might yet save her. The hound came into the narrow gullet of constricting rubble at a pounding gallop, teeth already bared in a spittle-ornamented snarl, its massive shoulders pumping, its back flexing as it strained for every fragment of speed its frame could give. It came with fury, for that was what her call had demanded of it. This was the last of them—the others had died clearing her path in through the outskirts—and it was the best, for she had chosen to preserve it for just such a moment as this. She hurdled the beast as it bounded towards her, and it flowed beneath her without faltering. It had eyes only for those following in her wake. She landed and spun on her heels, already shrugging the crossbow free from her back. She watched the great dog fling itself up at the throat of the leading Inkallim, even as her hands dragged back the bow’s string, as her fingers went to the quiver of bolts at her belt and plucked one out. Dog and raven went down, thrashing in a confusion of limbs. They battered themselves, both of them, against the stonework, against the ground. The kicking of the Inkallim’s legs, and the thick, desperate cries, told her the hound’s teeth had found a grip. The second of the ravens could not pass the flailing combatants. He hacked at them instead, raining ferocious indiscriminate blows down. His blade opened the dog’s haunch, broke its hip, skinned its shoulder, and still it fought and shook its massive head, tearing at flesh. The woman beneath it had stopped struggling. The last of the Inkallim set both hands on the hilt of his sword and raised it before him, point down. He plunged it into the hound’s body, just behind its neck, and the animal gave a gurgling whimper and went limp. The man looked up then, sword still buried deep in the dog, and his eyes met Eska’s. She was sighting down the line of the quarrel. She saw his recognition of his fate. He tensed to withdraw his blade. She freed the bolt, and it was in his chest, and he fell silently back. His sword stood there, erect. It had gone through the dog and into the dead woman beneath.