Darksoul

‘Mace? Mace, love, easy now. Breathe, that’s it, just breathe.’ Dalli’s voice was firm and strong and he clung to it as though he was drowning again.

He came back to the sunlight and the warmth and the wide-open skies, his palms clammy and his chest heaving for air. Dalli’s normally short hair was growing out, he suddenly noticed, beginning to curl down on to her forehead. He focused on those curls and focused on breathing, and after a long minute she put her hand over his and prised his fingers out of the flesh of her elbow.

‘Ouch.’ She smiled. ‘Better?’ He nodded and straightened as the panic receded, made himself look at the river again. Think. Function.

‘Good.’ She pressed a kiss to his cheek. ‘I’m looking forward to taking those bastards by surprise; no doubt they think we’re all dead. Can’t wait to ram my spear up a few arses and prove them wrong.’

Mace snorted, thankful she didn’t acknowledge his moment of panic. Of weakness. ‘It’s your way with words I love the most about you,’ he said as a surge of anger filled his chest. Dalli wasn’t the only one with a score to settle.

‘There’re a lot of things you love about me, General Koridam.’ She laughed, sticking out her almost flat chest and squeezing her elbows together to give the cleavage some help. Mace stuck his face in her shirt and she laughed again, batting him away. ‘I’m going to check on Rillirin and Seth; don’t leave without us, all right?’

‘Believe it,’ Mace said and meant it. ‘Send Lim to me, would you? And insist this time. We can’t – mustn’t – have a repeat of what happened back at the Cove.’

Dalli’s face twisted and she nodded, getting to her feet with a wince. ‘I’ll try.’ She patted his shoulder and limped away and Mace couldn’t help but watch her arse until his view was blocked by a decidedly less attractive form.

‘Colonel Dorcas, how fares the eye?’ he asked, and then forced himself to listen as Dorcas related, for what was possibly the tenth time that day, the story of how, while heroically defending his men in a side tunnel, a Mireces had skewered Dorcas in the face and taken his eye as a trophy.

Mace was a little hazy on the practicalities of trophy eyes. Ears, fingers, teeth, hands he could understand, but not eyes. Just squishy balls, weren’t they? Couldn’t string them around your neck without them bursting, couldn’t dry them into leathery sticks to keep in a jar to frighten children, couldn’t …

‘Astonishing,’ he murmured when the flow of words ceased. ‘And yet you march on without complaint.’ Dorcas preened, oblivious of the irony. ‘Oh, but if you would excuse me, Chief Lim approaches. I need to speak with him in private.’ Dorcas saluted and wandered off to find someone else to regale. ‘If you could ensure as many boats as possible are ready to set out tomorrow, Colonel,’ Mace called after him. ‘Every able-bodied soldier to be put to work.’

Mace eased himself to his feet and waited for the Wolf chief to reach him. Lim’s face was closed, locked tight on emotions Mace couldn’t begin to comprehend. His right hand rested on his knife hilt; his left carried a charm. Mace forced himself not to look at it.

‘Lim, my friend. Thank you for coming.’

‘What do you want, General?’ Lim’s voice was as closed as his face.

‘How are your people, Chief?’ Mace asked, switching to the formal title Lim seemed to prefer. Putting as much distance between us as he can. Telling me we’re allies, not friends. Not any more. Not after everything that’s happened.

‘As expected. The strength they’d begun to recover is being wasted. Wounds are reopening, stitches ripping under the rigours of the march. And you’re forcing them back towards danger.’

‘With respect, they made that decision for themselves. As did you … Chief, what happened in Yew Cove, afterwards, that can never happen again. Never. Every one of us is here because we swore an oath to protect the citizens of Rilpor from her enemies. The slaughter of innocents cannot be countenanced. And I will not allow it to be repeated.’

Lim’s eyes blazed challenge. ‘I saw a few of your own wielding blades, General. You’re not so fucking pure, and neither are your men. And we’re not under your godsdamn command.’

Mace bit back an unwise retort and took a breath. ‘Lim, I know you’re hurting—’

‘Don’t,’ Lim interrupted, his eyes brown granite. ‘Don’t say we’ve all lost people, don’t mention her name. Not to me, not to anyone.’ He stepped so close Mace could feel the tickle of his breath on his cheek. ‘Not ever. Or I take my people and leave. Clear?’

‘Clear,’ Mace said. ‘But if you’re staying, I need to know you can control your people. And yourself.’

The punch nearly took his jaw from his face and Mace was flat in the grass, his ears ringing and white lights sparking in his head. Lim straddled him and sat on his stomach, knees in Mace’s shoulders, fist in his shirt and jerking him up off the ground. ‘You don’t,’ punch, ‘give me,’ punch, ‘orders,’ punch, ‘General.’

Mace bucked his hips and twisted to the side, just enough to throw Lim off balance. He wriggled his arm free and shoved Lim off him. They both came up on to their feet, fists raised. ‘I said control,’ Mace spat and saw renewed fury in Lim’s face.

‘Fuck you,’ Lim screamed and swung.

‘She’s dead,’ Mace shouted as he spat blood and ducked. Lim roared. ‘Sarilla’s dead, my friend, and this won’t bring her back.’

He parried a flurry of blows, skipping sideways, slipping the straights, blocking the hooks, not fighting back. ‘You dishonour her!’ he bellowed when Lim showed no signs of stopping.

The Wolf froze mid-swing. ‘What?’

‘Sarilla Archer, finest shot I ever saw, scariest woman I ever met. What do you think she’d say if she could see us scrapping like a pair of boys because you’re hurting?’ Lim’s fists slowly came down. ‘That wasn’t rhetorical, Lim,’ Mace said, spitting another mouthful of blood and a fragment of tooth. He blinked away the lights in his head and his own anger, yammering on the end of a fraying rope. ‘What would she say?’

Lim’s left fist unclenched and the charm was still in it – a thick plait of long ginger hair, bound with a bowstring. He stared at it without moving. ‘She’d tell me to put the hurt away until I had time for it,’ he whispered. ‘Until I could use it.’

‘Well, it’s certainly fuelling your punches, but is now that time?’ Mace’s voice was soft, with steel beneath. ‘Is it?’

Mute, Lim shook his head, and then his shoulders shook and he dropped to both knees in the grass. Behind him Major Tara Carter and a couple of Wolves looked on, wary, hands on weapons. Mace waved them away and knelt opposite, put his arms around Lim and drew him close as he sobbed.

‘Scariest woman?’ Lim croaked after a while.

‘Gods, yes,’ Mace murmured and Lim hiccupped, managed a chuckle. ‘And the best.’

‘And the best,’ Lim echoed. ‘I miss her, Mace. In here.’ He rubbed his chest. ‘It hurts.’

‘I know, my friend,’ Mace said, his voice rough. ‘I know.’

Lim jerked away so hard Mace thought he was going to get punched again. ‘You have my apologies, General. Mace. The Wolves are yours, as always, and we hunt at your command,’ he said, and for now at least, the pain had scabbed over, leaving cold rage burning in its place. ‘Your father better have left us some Mireces to kill.’

Mace hoisted him to his feet; the Wolf Ash slung an arm around him and led him away and he watched them go, regrets thick as shadows in his heart.

War makes savages of us all, and none of us will ever be the same.

I hope it’ll be worth it.

DURDIL (#ulink_6fa45a1f-1dcd-5f36-aa28-ce2fa8091805)

Fourth moon, dawn, day thirty-one of the siege

Gatehouse, western wall, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

The sky was bruised with the coming of day, the defenders bruised from the previous night. The assaults had continued well after the sun had set, wave after wave, allowing those on the allure no respite. The bridgehead had formed, broken, been washed away, formed again further along, broken there, formed again, a bloody river carving its own path through the landscape.

Durdil had spent the night on the wall, lit garish red and yellow with a myriad torches, as men fought and killed and died in the guttering light, the uniforms hard to tell apart in the gloom, men killing friends and comrades by mistake. The worst fucking sort of fighting, but eventually they’d pushed them back and secured the allure in the darkest part of the night.

Hallos had, hours before, given up waiting for the wounded to be brought to the hospitals in Second Circle and climbed up on to the wallwalk with a dozen other healers, moving from First to Last Bastion and treating everyone he could, using his scalpel on those of the enemy who came too close.

As the sky finally lightened, Durdil could hear the shouts and screams of the day’s first assault echoing brassy and blood-red across the city. The three trebuchets loosed, one each at the north and south stump walls, the third still – always – at the weak spot between Second Tower and Last Bastion. So far the stump walls were holding, but as they were more a deterrent to easy access than a formal defence, Durdil knew they’d be down soon enough. After that the enemy would be knocking at the harbour gates and things would be even more interesting.

‘They’re early,’ he muttered as the clamour rose louder and Hallos grunted, mired in blood from his boots to the crown of his shaven head, like something out of nightmare. Durdil didn’t think he looked much better.

‘Take a few hours off,’ Durdil said, ‘and preferably take a bath. You look worse than my soldiers.’

‘I’ll rest soon enough,’ Hallos grated and tipped a ladle of water from the butt over his head, gasping at the chill. He scrubbed his face and head. ‘Better?’

‘Not really, no,’ Durdil said. ‘Possibly worse.’