Darksoul

‘On my way,’ Durdil bellowed and bolted for the door, ignoring the shouted questions from the councillors and Hardoc’s tentative offer of aid, made quietly enough that it was unlikely Durdil would hear it and accept. Even the thought of a breach wasn’t enough to dampen his enthusiasm at being out of that room.

He found a little spike of fresh energy from somewhere and hurried for the assembly place and his waiting horse, flung it into a gallop down the King’s Way, racing towards war and away from the much messier, harder to understand, knife-in-the-back infighting that was politics.

CORVUS (#ulink_0aa88918-6524-54f9-84b7-fbc44f3dc375)

Fourth moon, evening, day thirty of the siege

Mireces encampment, outside Rilporin, Wheat Lands

Corvus watched through narrowed eyes as the East Rank established a new bridgehead on the wall and the Mireces did their best to emulate them on their section. His men were slower and clumsy compared with the Easterners, but lethal if they reached the top. If they reached the top. Even as he watched, small figures fell, arms and legs flailing against the air until they disappeared into the shadows at the base of the wall.

A fucking month we’ve been here and still we’re no better on the ladders. Still there is no progress.

There had been only minimal defenders on the wall when the attack began, but that’d changed soon enough and now the battle was hand-to-hand and fierce all along the northern end, what Rivil and Skerris referred to as Second Last. His men had Double First, and while they didn’t have the same skill on the ladders, they’d established a fragile bridgehead around the siege tower.

The Blessed One had vanished hours before to pray for their victory, and Corvus paced the grass out of catapult range, chewing a fingernail and flicking his gaze between his men and Rivil’s. It didn’t matter who established the first serious breach, didn’t matter who took their section of wall first. What mattered was victory. Corvus told himself he believed that.

‘What?’ he snarled, rounding on whoever was tugging at his sleeve.

His eyes widened and he fumbled for a knife as Valan yelled in shock and barrelled past him. The stranger was thin and ragged, his cheeks straggly with black beard, but his eyes were those of a man touched by madness or the sun.

‘The fuck are you?’ Corvus demanded as Valan wrestled the stranger away. ‘I said, who the fuck are you?’ he asked again, his heart hammering. He glared at his guards. ‘Why didn’t you see him, stop him? Man gets close enough to put a knife in my ribs and you stand there stroking your cocks? I should load you into the trebs and send you face first into the fucking wall.’

The men shook their heads, unable to answer, knives and spears pointing at the figure now kneeling patiently in the grass. Valan retreated to Corvus’s side, his sword drawn. The stranger watched Corvus with dull brown eyes, blank with indifference, burning with madness. It was as though he’d simply appeared in their midst. More wraith than man. Corvus fought a shiver.

‘Who am I?’ the man said at last and giggled, clapping his hands. ‘Don’t you recognise me, war chief? I am your Godblind, and I laid out my dead and then killed some others and I walked away from Watchtown’s ruins and then I walked the long road here, Madoc of Dancer’s Lake, Corvus, King of the Mireces, chosen of death. I walk with gods, while you walk with fear. And my feet are on the Path.’

He raised a finger as Corvus bristled and opened his mouth to order the fucker’s death. Corvus found himself silenced. He called me Madoc. Only Rillirin and Gilda know that used to be my name. Has he met my sister?

Hope flooded through him, and then another thought struck him to the core and his breath tangled in his throat until he coughed. He named himself Godblind, as the Blessed One foretold. Gosfath’s balls, could this really be him, the calestar of the Wolves?

‘The Blessed One wants me, but she can’t have me, oh no.’ The Godblind giggled again at the shock on Corvus’s face, so closely did the words mirror his thoughts. ‘You and I have a path to tread, Madoc. A bloody one with no clear end in sight. Will you walk it with me, the bloody path and the Dark Path both? Walk with me as far as we can go?’

‘Who are you?’ Corvus asked again, kneeling in the grass opposite the man and uncaring of the bemused expressions on the faces of his guards. ‘Tell me your name.’

The man put his head on one side and winked. ‘My name is Godblind. I have others, but they’re not yours to call me, oh no. What name should I give you? Corvus? Madoc? King? Slave?’

He cackled as Corvus backhanded him and he fell into the grass, laughing as though the blow had merely tickled. He pushed himself back to his knees, making no move for the weapons he carried and that Valan had somehow neglected to take from him. It was as though he’d cast a spell over them all, but Corvus knew the man wouldn’t use them, not even now, when they were close enough to touch. To stab.

Maybe the spell was on him too, to take such a risk.

‘Corvus then, to save my teeth from your knuckles. Sire, even,’ he added as Corvus narrowed his eyes. ‘Though there is only so much reverence I can give to one who walks this earth on mortal feet. Our Lady and Her Bloody Brother require my attention, my … devotion. You can have what is left, if you want.’

‘You say you walk the Dark Path?’ Corvus asked. The Godblind shoved his bloody, mangled arm in Corvus’s face and he recoiled, grimacing. The man prodded at something with his other hand, and reluctantly Corvus leant closer. Then he saw it, mostly obliterated now but still standing proud in his flesh, unmistakable. His eyes widened. ‘Scars of a blood oath? You are bound?’

The Godblind pulled his arm back and clutched it to his chest. ‘Bound,’ he whispered, rocking on his knees as Valan, standing above him with a knife, gaped. ‘Bound to serve. Bound to kill. Bound to die. Anything She asks. My feet are on the Path.’

‘As are mine,’ Corvus found himself saying, and frowned at the tendril of pity that curled through his gut as he studied the maddened, dying idiot before him. There was little doubt he was not long for this world. All he knew of becoming godblind was that it was a temporary and very terminal condition, and this Wolf, this calestar Lanta had told him of, had obviously been suffering for some time.

‘Your place is here, isn’t it? Here with us?’

‘Yes, Sire,’ the Godblind said. His shoulders slumped and tears trickled from the corners of his eyes. He raised a weary hand to his face. ‘Here where I shouldn’t be is exactly where I belong. She said so.’ Then he brightened and sat up like a child with a secret. ‘But She took away the itching. In here, the itching in here. She took it away.’

‘Sire,’ Valan muttered, ‘Prince Rivil and Skerris approach.’ Corvus ignored him and the Rilporians, intent on the ravaged face, the eyes that met his own for just a second before drifting to something only he could see. Corvus couldn’t find a shred of doubt inside himself – this was the Godblind. Soul in torment, mind shattered by the blessed visits of the Dark Lady, the man was incapable of falsehood, unable to dissemble. Everything he said would be true. He saw more even than the Blessed One.

‘That’s the Godblind?’ Rivil asked when Valan had outlined what was happening. ‘A filthy, stinking Wolf?’

‘Skerris, will you fetch the Blessed One for me?’ Corvus said. ‘She must meet this man and verify what he says before we do anything else. Hurry.’

Skerris glanced at Rivil and then nodded. ‘As you wish,’ he said.

The Godblind laughed again and his eyes were clear and lucid, dancing with amusement. ‘Lanta Costinioff, Blessed One and Voice of the Gods. She won’t like me being here, no matter what tales she spins you. And she will, she’ll pretend my presence brings her joy.’ He coughed, harsh as a raven calling. ‘She’ll lie, and you have to decide what to do about that. She may well try and kill me, and you’ll have to decide what to do about that, too. My death will secure her power over you and your people, over Rilpor. She’ll want that. But then, we don’t get everything we want in life, do we, Sire?’

Corvus and Rivil exchanged glances. Rivil shrugged, still clearly amused – or at least, trying hard to pretend that he was amused, that all this was beneath him and their victory beyond doubt. An act that was wearing fucking thin these days.

You still think your desires and expectations carry weight in this war, don’t you, Prince? Corvus thought sourly. The Godblind is the blade that tore the Dancer’s veil and let the Red Gods return, not you. You know this, but still you don’t understand it. I think now that you can’t.

And yet Rivil had brought an army bigger than Corvus’s. An army better equipped and better suited to this tedious sort of warfare. They needed each other; Corvus just hoped Rivil hated it as much as he did.

He rose to his feet and turned his back on the Godblind. Rivil’s eyes sharpened, perhaps hoping the man would lunge for him, but of course the Godblind did nothing. ‘Strip his weapons and put a slave collar and chain on him. I want him close and under control at all times. Even when he’s quiet, even when he’s broken, I want him collared and chained. And bring a scribe: whatever he says, no matter how insane it sounds, I want it written down. Everything.’

‘Your will, Sire,’ a guard said and snapped his fingers. Two men ran for their supply cache as Valan stripped the Godblind’s weapons from him, muttering in disgust at the grime coating him, his emaciation, his smell.

‘And give him a bath and some food,’ Corvus added, scratching unconsciously at his scalp. ‘Bastard’s probably got lice.’

Corvus stared hard at the city, his eyes roaming the length of grey stone, forcing himself to focus on the recurrent problem of accessing it rather than the tantalising puzzle of the godblind Wolf.

The problem is I have too many problems.

What were the chances of them taking the wall and finding an empty city behind it, the citizens all fled through the so-called King Gate hidden from view at the rear? What would happen then? We’ll be fighting pockets of resistance for years, or skirmishes, or full-scale battles. We need to take this city and crush its defenders at the same time.

But the Godblind. And Lanta. And Rivil. He slapped his thigh irritably; there were too many things happening at once.

The Godblind looked up with a ghastly smile. ‘If you had more siege weapons you could bring down those stump walls leading to the rivers and shatter the bridges behind them. Well, the two closest, anyway. You’d never get an engine over the river to take out the eastern bridge from the King Gate, but if you’ve demolished the other two then you just need to station men at the end of the eastern bridge and they’d be trapped inside.’

Corvus staggered back a step, his sword in his hand. Valan reacted to Corvus’s movement, grabbing the Godblind by the hair and placing his blade against the skinny throat.

‘You read minds?’ Corvus croaked. ‘You see my very fucking thoughts?’

The man wheezed another laugh. ‘You were staring from the trebuchets to the city. It wasn’t hard to guess. And no, I don’t read minds. I speak the words of the Dark Lady.’ He laughed again. ‘But those ones before, they were mine, not Hers.’

‘What is happening here?’

Lanta’s face was hard with interrogation as she strode into their midst, her eyes fixing on the kneeling man, judging, weighing. She stared for so long that even Corvus squirmed. The Godblind knelt in the grass, looking up with the patience of a blind man, seeming unaffected by her gaze.

‘This man claims to be the Godblind you told us of. He has just been suggesting a way we could more quickly gain entry to the city.’

Lanta’s eyebrows rose and her lips parted, an expression of genuine surprise quickly masked. ‘You betray your country? Your people?’ she demanded.