Darksoul

‘My feet are on the Path. I do as my Lady commands.’ Another bloom of shock, swiftly hidden.

There was another interminable silence as they all waited for Lanta’s verdict. It didn’t come.

‘He’s right,’ Corvus said eventually. She twitched. ‘About the stump walls and the gates. The more we can engage at multiple sites, the quicker we can force an end to this siege. We mustn’t forget the six soldiers we caught yesterday escaping the city to try and find aid. For all we know, more may have slipped past us. They could be raising a mercenary army in Listre within a week.’

‘Reinforcements, yes. Almost three thousand of them,’ the Godblind muttered, nodding. ‘Not mercenaries though.’

Corvus stilled, his eyes locked on Valan, and together they swivelled to face the kneeling man. A guard was fixing the slave collar on him and he blanched when their twin gazes settled on him. He locked the collar and stepped back, not wanting to be under those eyes.

‘How many did you say?’ Corvus asked, dropping to one knee in the grass. The others crowded forward. ‘Who?’

‘Just under three thousand. The survivors of the West Rank and the Wolves. Your ploy in the tunnels didn’t kill them, not all of them anyway. Not enough of them. They’re about three days away. The North isn’t coming, of course,’ he added and pointed at Skerris, ‘because he killed them all, didn’t you, Skerris? Poisoned blankets. Clever, but unkind. Men should be given the chance to die fighting.’

Valan was crouching beside him, and Corvus realised he was gripping his second’s forearm hard. Lanta knelt on his other side, blue eyes like chips of ice nailed to the Godblind’s face.

‘How do you know this?’ she asked, her voice hoarse.

The Godblind frowned and looked up from the ruin of his arm. He tapped his temple with a finger. ‘The gods, of course. That’s who I am, remember, the vessel? You may style yourself Voice of the Gods, but I’m Their mouthpiece. Where you interpret images, I hear the actual words of our Bloody Mother. The Dark Lady sees the armies moving; She sees what’s coming. She tells me; I tell you.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not complicated.’

The Blessed One flushed pink and Corvus saw her hand go to her belt and the knife and hammer it carried. Her fingertips flirted with the weapons, and then fell away.

‘You have yet to learn humility, Godblind,’ she said in a soft tone. ‘The Dark Lady may be pleased to teach you before too long.’

‘Forgive me, Blessed One,’ he said, looking anything but chastened. ‘You and I should be allies. We both serve a greater purpose than ourselves.’

The air seemed to ignite as their stares met and Corvus found he was holding his breath. Though, of course, you could always count on a Rilporian to break the tension.

Rivil spat on the grass. ‘Five thousand in the city and nearly three thousand on their way. We still outnumber them.’ He shrugged even as the Godblind blinked and used the interruption to look away. Corvus wasn’t sure if that meant the Blessed One had won. Or what the stakes might be. ‘Why not send a force to kill them before they make Rilporin’s harbour?’

‘And so finally, Sire, you will get to face your ancient enemy,’ the Godblind said, staring into Corvus’s eyes, ‘and on a field of your choosing.’

‘You offer up your own people to us?’ the Blessed One demanded again. ‘Why?’

The Godblind’s lips curved in a gentle smile that sent shivers worming down Corvus’s spine. ‘What are they to me now, when I have the gods in my heart and my head and my eyes?’

His serenity, the unshakeable faith that armoured him so effectively, was to Lanta a slap in the face, an insult she could not tolerate.

‘Yes, and isn’t it convenient,’ she snapped. There was a shrill tone to her voice now. ‘You appear out of nowhere to tell us everything we need to know. And yet we have no way of verifying your words. What’s to stop you lying? What’s to say this isn’t some last desperate ploy by our enemies?’

‘I am Dom Templeson, Calestar of the Wolves and chosen of the Dark Lady. Called Godblind by Her and by you. You foretold my coming to these very men on this very field on the first day of the siege. I felt you tell them. Felt your power,’ he added with a diplomacy Corvus thought he’d had to force. ‘Ask and know the truth of my answer. Ask anything.’

Lanta pressed her lips together and put her head on one side. ‘A children’s game,’ she said dismissively, as though it was of little matter. ‘The time will come when your truth or lies are laid bare.’

‘That time will come to us all,’ the Godblind agreed. ‘As for me, believe me, I have no wish to incur the Dark Lady’s wrath or punishments again. I will not – I cannot – lie. My feet are on the Path.’

‘So you say,’ Lanta hissed, jerking the chain attached to the collar so the Godblind lurched closer, ‘and I say we will find out soon enough.’

The Godblind pushed back up on to his knees and wagged his finger in her face. ‘You doubt the gods?’

Corvus went cold. She’ll kill him for that. She’s killed men for far less than doubting her faith. For laughing at her. He knew he couldn’t let her, and he knew he couldn’t stop her either, not unless he was prepared to lay a hand on her. The King of the Mireces found that he was not.

‘I doubt you,’ Lanta hissed. They were nose to nose, will to will, and although Corvus would have wagered everything he owned that the Godblind would back down, the opposite happened. Lanta let the links of the chain slide through her fingers one by one, releasing the tension so the Godblind could sit back. She waved a hand in dismissal, as though nothing of much importance had occurred.

‘I will commune with the gods.’ She rose to her feet and stared down at the men kneeling around her. ‘Do what you must to win this war. I will seek knowledge of our enemies. Remember whose voice it is that has guided you thus far.’ She stalked away through the grass, and the guards scattered from her path like sparrows from a cat.

‘Fuck me,’ Valan breathed once she was out of earshot. The Godblind cackled, and then they were all grinning foolishly at one another.

‘I’ll get the trebuchets moved,’ Skerris grunted, hauling himself to his feet.

Corvus nodded. ‘Agreed. Let’s get those stump walls down and that weak spot exploited in the time we have before the fucking West Rank arrives. I want those inside the city too busy to sally in support when they arrive. We fight on as many fronts as necessary.’

Corvus stood and held his hand out to Rivil, who clasped his wrist. ‘We know the timeframe, if this one is to be trusted,’ he added, though there was no doubt in his mind. Not even a shred. The Blessed One’s communion would confirm it. ‘What say you we get busy taking the city?’

‘Agreed,’ Rivil said. ‘And there’s to be no let-up, day or night, until it’s ours.’

Corvus glanced at his guards. ‘Bathe the Godblind and find him some fresh clothes. Put him in something blue. I think the colour will suit him.’

MACE (#ulink_f0f94f38-b269-5189-9036-d65f75954bb2)

Fourth moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth

South Rank harbour, River Gil, Western Plain

‘You’ve got that look again.’

Mace started and focused on Dalli. ‘What? What look?’

‘Like someone just kicked your puppy,’ she said, and then put a conciliatory hand on his thigh. ‘At the risk of repeating myself – because I am repeating myself – it wasn’t your fault and we’ll get there in time. We were out of choices at Yew Cove and it’s not like you ordered us into those tunnels. You didn’t do this, Mace. Look, your Da knows how to defend a city. Gods, he’ll probably have won it single-handed before we arrive. And wouldn’t that be bloody nice?’ she added under her breath.

Mace’s smile felt false even to himself, and judging from Dalli’s expression it looked even worse, but it was still the best he could do. ‘We lost days in those bastard tunnels and recovering afterwards. The city might have fallen by now.’

Dalli puffed out her cheeks. ‘We couldn’t have moved any faster than we did. Not with our numbers of wounded. If we hadn’t rested, there’d just be corpses crewing these ships down to Rilporin. You know that.’

He stared back out across the harbour at the approaching dusk. When they’d come up out of those tunnels in the aftermath, the pitiful, shattered remains of his proud Rank, there’d been no thought of continuing the march. Too heartsore at the scale of their losses, at the sheer callous deliberation on the part of the Mireces to drown them, in the tight, choking black beneath the ground.

Easy to blame the villagers who’d been forced into the deception. Easier to blame himself. The semblance of order he’d managed had lasted until Lim Broadsword, chief of the decimated Wolves, had climbed out of the tunnels with his wife’s corpse in his arms. A hundred folk of Yew Cove had died under Wolf blades – Wolf and Rank blades – before Mace and Dalli had been able to calm them.

We turned on our own to try and stop the hurting. Took innocent lives.

What is this war turning us into?

Mace didn’t have an answer. Mace had just one overriding imperative now – to reach Rilporin, aid his father and the defence, and take his vengeance on the Mireces. Justice, his mind insisted. Vengeance, his gut replied.

Whichever one his Rank was after, once they’d rested – the first genuine rest since the battle of the Blood Pass Valley – they’d marched with him, and the Wolves too. None of them had anything to go home to, after all. They’d all given everything for their country, and it had chewed them up and spat them out. They were the broken remnants of war’s ravenous appetite, and they were going back for more.

The South Rank’s fleet had been mostly destroyed, no doubt Corvus’s work, but it looked as though there were enough ships, just, for his troops and the Wolves to set sail for Rilporin and the siege.

There was splashing as someone waded into the river towards a drifting bow line and Mace shuddered and looked away. He remembered the water taking his legs from under him as he and his Rank charged through the smugglers’ tunnels towards the surface. Too slow, too far to run, the water a screaming animal behind, around, above and then in front of them and no air left, no air to breathe, water battering them against tunnel floor and roof and walls, smashing them into each other, men in plate armour tossed like straw dolls to twist and flail and sink and die.