The Steel Remains

CHAPTER 30

I had thought of Ennishmin, my lord.

Archeth mimicked herself savagely as she stared out of the window. The Beksanara garrison tower was a stubby affair, barely two stories higher than the rest of the blockhouse, and the view from the top room was the same as everywhere else in this bloody country. Swamp and bleak trees, under a sky the color of spilled brains. You couldn’t even see the river from this angle. You certainly couldn’t see any trace of the morning sun.

She’d had the whole fucking Empire to choose from.

She could have been on a beach somewhere in the Hanliahg Scatter right now, bare feet in the sand and a pitcher of coconut beer for company, watching morning flood the sky across the bay with light. She could have been on the balcony of an Uplands Watch garrison lodge beyond the Dhashara pass, hot coffee and lung-spiking mountain air to wake her up, and the swoop-and-squabble courtship of snow eagles like a duel overhead.

But no, no, you had to follow your fucking hunch to this shit-hole end of the realm. You had to drag Elith back into her past and all the memories too painful to face that she’d left behind. Just couldn’t resist it, could you? Archeth Indamaninarmal returns in triumph with the answer to the Empire’s mysterious woes.

She’d found nothing. Two weeks of crisscrossing the settlements on the fringes of the Ennishmin marshes, of quizzing bored and resentful imperial officials already out of sorts with their miserable luck at being posted here. Two weeks of barely concealed sneers and sullen reticence under questioning from the artifact scavenger trash whose patriotic help she’d tried—and failed—to enlist. Two fucking weeks of old wives’ tales and rumor, and trekking through swamp to look at a succession of curiously shaped boulders or rock outcrops with no significance whatsoever. The big triumph so far was unearthing another glirsht marker to match the one Elith had hauled to Khangset. They dug it out of soggy mud, six miles into the swamp from Yeshtak where it had fallen on its face and lain, apparently for centuries, undisturbed. It was moss-grown and pitted with age, and one of its beckoning arms was broken off. Sweat-stained and mud-streaked, they let it lie where it was and plodded back to Yeshtak.

She saw the way Faileh Rakan and his men looked at her when they thought she wouldn’t notice, and it was hard to blame them.

She was chasing phantoms, and it was turning out exactly as you’d expect.

And now this—sabotage or random viciousness, Idrashan fed something in the stables that brought him mysteriously to his knees and forced them to stay overnight while they waited to see if he would live or die. There was no veterinarian worthy of the name in Beksanara, and not much in the way of law enforcement, either. Rakan bullied the village administrator into rounding up a few likely suspects, and the Throne Eternal men took turns knocking them around in the blockhouse cells. Outside of the exercise, they got nothing remotely useful from it. Blame cycled back and forth as it tended to in these situations, backstabbing and local family feuds, petty criminal misdemeanors brought to light and frankly implausible confessions, all seeded with the usual marsh mist crap: a mysterious plague on the air that afflicted horses when the wind blew from the northeast; bandits, the feral remnants of families driven out in the occupation, hiding in the swamp and slowly turning into something less than human; a tall figure in brimmed leather hat and cloak, sighted recently prowling the streets at night as if surveying the village for some evil purpose; shadowy child-sized figures seen skittering about in the gloom and making eerie, whinnying sounds. After six hours of it, Archeth made Rakan let everybody go.

They were still waiting to see if Idrashan would pull through.

Her mouth clamped. By the Holy fucking Mother, if that horse dies . . .

Boots on the stair.

She turned from the window, crossed the small square room, and went out onto the staircase. Faileh Rakan came around the turn below and looked up at her, eyes a little smudged with being up all night, tiny scrape on his temple where one of the tougher suspects had inadvisedly put up a fight. He stopped in midstep when he saw her standing there.

“Milady,” he said, and inclined his head. It was an automatic deference but one, she thought, that was wearing rather thin.

“How’s my horse?”

“It’s, uhm—there’s no change, milady. I’m very sorry. It’s not that. There has been a fresh development.”

“Ah. And what’s that?”

“Well, the village administrator tells me his militia have arrested some boat thieves. They found them asleep and run aground on the meander below the village. The boat is without oars, so it’s the usual thing.”

Archeth shifted impatiently. The village administrator, name of Yanshith, was a miserable tub of guts, the depths of his incompetence matched only by the size of his belly and his self-importance.

“Yes? And this concerns us because?”

Rakan cleared his throat. “Well, it also seems that these boat thieves claim to have been fleeing from uhm, magical beings that live in the swamp. And one of them carries a Kiriath blade.”

HORSESHIT.

She muttered it to herself a couple of times at least as they went down the stairs and out into the street, because there was an inexplicable pounding in her chest that she didn’t want to be there, and she didn’t know which scared her more—to be wrong and disappointed once again, or to be vindicated in her fears.

Horseshit, a fucking Kiriath blade. It’s going to be some half length of scavenged scaffolding iron, ground to a ragged edge and wrapped around at one end with cord to make a grip. Seen it enough times before.

But it wasn’t.

They reached the combined boathouse and storage shed at the other end of the village, where the thieves were apparently being held. On approach, she saw the confiscated weapons piled up between a pair of unkempt militiamen apparently detailed to keep the door. The thunder in her chest went up a notch at the sight: dirk, hand ax, a Majak staff lance and dragon-tooth ceremonial dagger, and there, dumped unceremoniously on top of everything else, the layered gleam of an An-Monal battle scabbard and the woven hilt of the broadsword it was clasped lovingly around.

She stopped dead and stared at the weapon. It gleamed back at her like an old and slightly smug friend, first meeting for years and suddenly made good beyond all expectation.

And then the drawling voice from within, faint through the door’s wood but unmistakable. The soft over hard, slightly absent tone and the outrageous disrespect it accorded the tightly bound syllables of the Tethanne it spoke.

“You know, Sergeant, you really must have better things to do with the next few hours of your life than trying to stare me out. Like get a shave, for instance? Or just write your last will and testament. You can write, I take it?”

She almost took the door off its hinges going in. It banged back against the wall with a flat crack, bounced back again, and she had to catch it on her forearm, which hurt.

“Ringil?”

“Well, now.” But behind the mannered monosyllables, she saw her shock mirrored back to her in his eyes. He leaned back a little on the upended rowing boat where he sat. Pause, recovery, all on the turn of a second. “Archeth Indamaninarmal. Enters dramatically, from center stage. The Powers really are getting their act together, it seems.”

“Told you,” grunted the man at Ringil’s side, and then she recognized him as well. “Didn’t want to believe me, did you?”

“Dragonbane? You here, too?”

“Hey, Archeth.” The Majak grinned at her. “Why so formal? No one calls me that anymore.”

“Well, now you know how I feel then,” muttered Ringil.

There were four halberd-equipped militiamen in the room, weapons now drooping, faces gaping at this incomprehensible exchange between visiting Kiriath nobility and the three boat thieves they’d herded into the corner. Faileh Rakan said it for all of them.

“You know these people, milady?”

“Yes, I do. Well, this young woman, no, but—”

“Sherin Herlirig Mernas,” supplied Ringil, with a courtly gesture, while the woman at his side stared in silence with hollow-eyed fatigue and wonder. “And this is Egar, son of Erkan, of the Majak clan Skaranak, known in your part of the world, perhaps rather grandiosely, as the Dragonbane.”

Archeth watched Rakan’s face change. In the whole Empire, there were perhaps twenty men honored with the title Dragonbane. Most had died earning it. The Throne Eternal captain took a short step forward, put fist to right shoulder, and bowed his head briefly at the Majak warrior.

“It is an honor,” he said. “I am Faileh Rakan, commander first class, the Throne Eternal.”

“Rakan.” Egar frowned and scratched an ear. “You the Rakan who led that charge down the flank at Shenshenath fields back in ’47, that time they had to dig Akal out of the ditchwork?”

“It was my honor to command the action, yes.”

The Majak’s face split in a grin. He shook his head. “Then you’re a fucking madman, Faileh Rakan. That was the most insane thing I’ve ever seen. Not one soldier in a hundred I know would have run that risk.”

Rakan’s mouth twitched primly, but you could see he was pleased.

“Not one soldier in a thousand is chosen for the Emperor’s guard,” he stated, as if reciting it. “It was my duty, nothing more. The throne of Yhelteth is eternal, life in service to it must reflect that eternity in honor. Death is a price that must sometimes be paid, like any other honorable debt.”

“Glad to hear that,” said Ringil breezily. “Very uplifting. Hang on to that attitude, you’re going to need it.”

Rakan turned a frosty eye on him. “We have not had your name, sir.”

“Oh, I?” Ringil raised one hand to mask a sudden, jaw-creaking yawn. “I’m Ringil of the Glades house of Eskiath in Trelayne. You may have heard of me as well.”

Rakan’s face changed once more. It became abruptly impassive.

“Yes, I have heard of you,” he said shortly.

Ringil nodded. “Gallows Gap, no doubt.”

But the Throne Eternal captain shook his head. “No. That name is not familiar to me. What I have heard is that Ringil Eskiath was a traitor to the imperial peace in the northern provinces, a corruptor of youth, and a faggot.”

Egar bounced up off the curve of the upended boat back, face darkening. Archeth saw Ringil’s hand fall on his arm, and felt a pang of relief. The distribution of weapons in the room did not invite brawling.

“Fascinating, Eg,” Ringil’s tone was light and soft. Only someone who knew him well would have spotted the steel edge sheathed in it. “Don’t you think? What they must be teaching in history books down south these days. I’ll bet we find the Empire won the war against the Scaled Folk all by itself. And that the good people of Ennishmin and Naral were so grateful they spontaneously vacated their homes to allow imperial settlers to live in them.”

Rakan lifted a finger. “I will not hear you—”

“That’s enough, Rakan.” Archeth stepped between the Throne Eternal captain and the others. “Gil, Egar, you told the militia you were running from dwenda, is that right?”

Ringil and Egar exchanged a glance. Ringil looked grim.

“Actually, I wasn’t that specific,” he said quietly. “What do you know about the dwenda, Archidi?”

The pounding in her chest seemed to be subsiding, settling to something colder and more patient that she recognized from the war years.

“I know they’re here,” she said. “In Ennishmin, in the swamps.”

Ringil bent her a hard little smile.

“That’s not the half of it. By tonight, they’re going to be right here in Ibiksinri, walking the main street and knocking on doors.”

THEY HELD THE COUNCIL OF WAR IN THE GARRISON HOUSE, AWAY FROM prying eyes. No point in alarming the locals, Faileh Rakan said. No, Ringil agreed, they’d only gather up their children and flee for their lives. Can’t have that, can we? Not in a border province. The Throne Eternal captain fixed him with a baleful stare, but by this time Ringil had back the Ravensfriend and his dragon knife, had breakfasted heartily, and wore a faint, inviting smile on his face that Rakan knew well enough how to read.

Archeth put out the flames again, kept the two of them apart. They put Sherin with Elith in an unlocked cell downstairs, one of those the village administrator had been prevailed upon to equip with a few comforts when Archeth and her men were forced to stay the night before. They sent the administrator and his men away with some simple tasks to perform, told them there was nothing much to worry about, really, and locked themselves in the tower room. They got down to business, got up to date on the varied paths that had brought them to Ennishmin, which in itself was a lengthy business—and not without its awkward moments.

“Impossible! This is heresy.” Halgan, one of the two Throne Eternal lieutenants Faileh Rakan had detailed to sit in, was not dealing very well with Egar’s tale of his encounter with Takavach. “There is but One God and He has made himself known to us in the One True Revelation.”

Ringil rolled his eyes. But Darash, the other lieutenant, was nodding agreement, and even Rakan’s ordinarily impassive face was turned toward the Majak with a frown. Archeth couldn’t be bothered; she let them get on with it. She stared out of the window and wondered why the mention of Takavach’s leather hat and cloak seemed so familiar. Meanwhile, Egar grinned and poured himself more coffee. He was used to this sort of thing, had in fact always derived a rather childish satisfaction from scandalizing the imperials when he lived in Yhelteth. He lifted the callused blade of a hand at Halgan.

“Look, mate, I saw this Takavach take a crossbow bolt out of the air in midflight with his bare hand. Like that. He summoned an army of demons from the steppe grasses the way you’d call your children in from play, and he brought me the best part of seven hundred miles southwest to Ennishmin in the time it’d take you to snap your fucking fingers. Now—if that’s not a god, then it’s a pretty good imitation.”

“Yes, an imitation.” Darash insisted. “An evil spirit. A trick to steal your allegiance.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Egar slurped his coffee, put it down again and grinned. “Guys, you don’t get it, do you? Takavach saved my arse out on the steppe. He butchered my enemies for me and then made me a gate out of air and darkness and hung it from a branch of my father’s grave tree so I could escape. You know, for that—he’s pretty much got my allegiance.”

“But this is a demon, Dragonbane.” Halgan was aghast, almost pleading. “You must see that. This is a devil, trying to steal your soul.”

The Majak snorted. “My soul will walk the Sky Road anyway, whatever happens to me here on earth. It’s not something you can steal like some lady’s silk underwear. I killed a fucking dragon, man. My ancestors will have been polishing up my seat in the Sky Home ever since, grinning like idiots, probably. My father must be boring the Dwellers rigid with tales of my prowess.”

“This is superstition,” said Rakan dismissively. “This is not . . . truth.”

“You calling me a liar?”

Ringil rubbed hands down his face. “Maybe, Rakan, it’s your Revelation that’s the superstition. Ever think of that? Maybe the Majak have gotten hold of the right end of the arbalest after all. Has the One True God shown up to save any of your skins recently? Has He appeared to any of you?”

“You know God does not manifest Himself,” Halgan shouted. “That is also heresy. The Revelation is not corporeal. You know this. Why do you persist in this perverted speech?”

“I like perverted. Maybe you would, too, if you gave it a chance.”

“Leave my men alone,” Rakan said coldly. “Degenerate.”

Ringil smooched a kiss at him. Rakan, out of nowhere, spat a curse and was halfway to his feet before Archeth snapped out of her daydream. She grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back into his seat.

“That’s enough. You lot can sort out your religious differences someday when there isn’t anything more important to do. Right now, I want to know, Ringil, why you’re so sure they’ll come after you?”

Ringil exchanged a glance with Egar.

“You want to tell her?” he asked the Majak.

Egar shrugged. “We saw them on the bank. Twice during the night. Blue fire and a dark shape at its heart, watching us go past.”

“Could that not be something else?” Halgan asked. He didn’t want to believe in this any more than he had in Takavach. “Reflected light through mist around some scavenger taking a piss in the river? Or some effect from the marsh gases. The locals say—”

“The locals talk a load of shit, is what they do,” Egar said flatly. “I’ve been working the swamp for the best part of a month now, and I’ve never seen anything like what I saw last night. And anyway, Archeth, it fits with what you told us about Khangset. Blue flickering light, shadow figures.”

“It’s how they come through from the gray places, the Aldrain marches.” Ringil rubbed tiredly at an eye. Falling asleep in the drifting skiff had left him stiff and unrested. “As far as I can work out, there are places they don’t need this aspect storm to do it, but there don’t seem to be many of them. The heart of the swamp apparently, near where this Kiriath weapon is buried. Or maybe it’s got something to do with these glirsht carvings you’re talking about, I don’t know. All I can tell you for sure is that Seethlaw turned up in Terip Hale’s cellar as easily as if he’d just opened a door in the wall.”

“That was at night, though.”

“Yes. And I’d say the legends are right as far as that goes, too. The dwenda don’t seem to like sunlight very much. Most of the time I was in the Aldrain marches, it was dark or dim, like twilight. One place we went, there was something like a sun in the sky, but it was almost burned out. Like a hollow shell of itself. If that’s where the dwenda are from originally, it might explain why they can’t tolerate bright light. And this pirate raid on Khangset you were talking about, I think I met one of the dwenda who went on it, name of Pelmarag. He told me they pulled out well before dawn because the sun was going to be too strong for comfort. With that kind of sun coming up in a couple of hours’ time, he said.”

“Ennishmin must suit them down to the fucking ground then,” Egar grumbled. “I don’t think I’ve seen the sun more than twice since I got here.”

It provoked an unlooked-for burst of laughter from the imperials. The cranked tension around the table eased. A couple of despairing comments about rain and fog went back and forth. Darash grinned, made a loose vertical fist, and dropped it into his other hand a couple of times, Yhelteth symbol among the urbane for a good joke, a sense of humor well tickled. Egar made modest noises back.

“Can we stop them?” Archeth asked quietly, and the hilarity disappeared as fast as it had come. The gazes around the table tightened back to her. “At Khangset, they said they fired arrows that passed right through the blue fire and left the dwenda themselves unharmed.”

Ringil nodded soberly. “Yeah. Eril told me the same thing happened to Girsh’s crossbow bolt when he tried to stop Seethlaw. I think maybe when the aspect storm first comes through, it’s like the dwenda’s not completely there, like he’s a ghost of some sort. But your guys at Khangset weren’t as ineffective as they thought. Pelmarag said the expeditionary force he was in lost men. Six or seven of them on the beach alone. Now, that’s got to be before any close-quarters fighting, we’re talking about the moment the Khangset garrison realizes they’ve got company. So some of those arrows must have hit home. If I had to guess, I’d say this ghost aspect is short-lived. The dwenda has to let go at some point, has to become solid and grounded in this world. When they do.” He smacked fist into palm. “You’ve got them. Pelmarag told me they lost another half a dozen warriors in the fight across town. Your marines did get to them, they were just too scared and demoralized to realize it. That’s not a mistake we have to make. I crossed blades with Seethlaw, I felt the contact, even when the aspect storm was still around him. It can be done.”

“Yeah, they kill easily enough,” Egar rumbled. “I took two last night. Knife in the throat for one, fists and an ax haft for the other. They go down no different from a man.”

“And the damage we saw at Khangset?” Archeth asked. “The Kiriath defenses were melted right through. It looked like the sort of thing dragonfire would do.”

Ringil frowned and fumbled though memories already grown unreal and confused. He pressed his hands together, steepled the fingers, and pressed them to his mouth in thought. The small, carved figure in the swamp, the conversation with Pelmarag. Tell you a funny story.

“He said something about the talons of the sun. Something they unleashed through the aspect storm, before they went through themselves. Like an arrow flight before an advance or something.”

“These were not arrow marks,” said Rakan ironically.

“I don’t think they have these talons of the sun here in the swamp.” Ringil stared emptily off into dim recall. There was an odd ache in there with the memories, and he didn’t like it. “They were different tactics. It was some dwenda commander who didn’t agree with Seethlaw’s approach. He wanted a frontal assault. That’s not what Seethlaw’s trying to achieve here.”

“You know that for certain?” Archeth’s tone was skeptical. “The dwenda are committed to a stealth campaign?”

“I don’t . . .” Ringil sighed. “It isn’t as simple as that, Archidi. This isn’t like the Scaled Folk over again. It’s not some massive migration across an ocean to escape a dying land, a whole race on the move, an invading people who have to either conquer or die. The dwenda aren’t unified, they aren’t anything like unified. There are factions, disagreements over strategy, constant individual disputes. There don’t even seem to be that many of them at the moment, and even those, the handful I got to meet were squabbling with each other half the time.”

“The Helmsmen say they are impulsive and disordered,” Archeth said slowly. “Perhaps not even sane. Would that fit?”

Ringil thought again about the Aldrain marches. He shivered.

“Yes, it would,” he said. “It would make a lot of sense. Seethlaw was . . .”

He stopped.

“Was what?” asked Rakan.

Ringil shook his head. “Skip it. Doesn’t matter.”

“Maybe not to you, degenerate,” said Halgan angrily. “But to my men and I, it matters a great deal. You are asking us to stand and fight, maybe to die, on your word. Under the circumstances, I think you owe us the highest degree of clarity and confessed truthfulness.”

“That’s true,” said Rakan. “Like an explanation for how exactly you came to be so closely taken into this creature’s confidence in the first place. How it is that you traveled freely with him in these infernal realms, how it is that he allowed you to bring out your slave cousin.”

Ringil smiled thinly. “You’d like that explained with the highest degree of clarity, would you?”

“Yes. We all would.”

“Oh, well, it’s easy enough.” Ringil leaned across the table toward the Throne Eternal captain. “I was fucking him. In the arse, in the mouth. A lot.”

Quiet slammed onto the table like a pallet of bricks dropped from above. The two Throne Eternal lieutenants looked at each other, and Halgan made a tiny but distinct spitting noise.

“You are an abomination, Eskiath,” said Rakan softly.

“Well.” Ringil gave the Throne Eternal captain another brittle little smile. “You know, the thing about fucking is, it’s a lot less wear and tear than trying to kill each other with bits of steel. And it’s the sort of thing that does tend to lead to confidences and favors if you play it right. Ask any woman, she’ll tell you that. Unless of course your experiences in that direction are limited, as, come to think of it, yours probably are, to whores and rape.”

This time it was Halgan who surged to his feet with an oath on his lips and a hand on the hilt of the sword he wore. Ringil sat back a little where he was, met the other man’s gaze and held it.

“You clear that blade, and I’ll kill you with it.”

The moment held, seemed to creak.

“He means it,” Archeth said quietly. “I’d sit down if I were you, Halgan.”

Faileh Rakan made a short gesture, and his lieutenant sank back into his seat by inches. Archeth sighed and rubbed at her eyes.

“You’re saying you insinuated yourself into this Seethlaw’s affections in order to get your cousin back?”

“Yes, I am.” The tiny, fading ache of memory, like a small, blunt knife turning inside his rib cage. He didn’t know how much truth there was in the words. He couldn’t remember anymore. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“And you think Seethlaw’s coming to get you because, what, he feels betrayed? Pissed off that you let him down?”

“No.” Ringil drew a deep breath. “Seethlaw is coming to get me—and you, and you, Rakan, and you two, and everyone else in this fucking village—because he can’t afford to have his plans brought to light. There’s too much in play, too much he can’t predict. You’ve got to understand, Archidi, you’ve got to see it from the dwenda’s point of view. It’s thousands of years since they had dealings with us. They’re rusty, they don’t know how to gauge us anymore. Seethlaw’s had three years to learn contemporary politics in Trelayne, and that’s it. Three miserable fucking years. He’s hasn’t done badly, he’s built a covert power base, but by its very nature it’s got to be limited. And elsewhere he’s working nearly blind. He doesn’t know the Empire at all, except through the lens of northern opinion, and he’s smart enough to know you can’t trust opinion any farther than a whore with your house keys. He has no way of knowing how Yhelteth will respond if it knows the attack on Ennishmin is a ploy. Worse than that, he probably can’t tell what the parts of the Trelayne Chancellery he hasn’t managed to corrupt will do, or any of the other cities in the League come to that. For all Seethlaw knows, the League and the Empire will unite the way they did against the Scaled Folk. He can’t take the chance. Anybody human who knows about this, outside of his little cabal, has to die.”

“He was going to let you live before,” Darash pointed out. “He was going to let you go home. You sure this isn’t just a lovers’ tiff we’re dealing with here? A falling-out between faggots, maybe?”

Ringil spared him a weary look. “Oh, you’re a real fucking comedian, Darash. Yeah, Seethlaw was going to let me go home. He was going to let me go because he thought he could control me, and he thought I didn’t give a shit about any of this, about the Empire or the League. And you know what, he was right, I don’t.” The violence jumped out in his voice, sudden and glad. “I think your beloved Jhiral Khimran is a jumped-up little turd masquerading as a leader of men, and I think his beloved father wasn’t very much better. And I think the men who control Trelayne are carved from the very same richly stinking shit, they just haven’t been as successful up north at feeding it to the rest of us, that’s all.”

“You’ll answer for that, Eskiath.” Rakan made no dramatic moves, but his face was a mask of cold intent. “No man, imperial citizen or not, speaks of my Emperor that way and lives. The sworn law of Yhelteth forbids it, and I’m sworn to uphold that same law.”

“Oi, Rakan.” Egar jerked his chin at the Throne Eternal captain. “You’ll have to come through me first. Bear that in mind, won’t you.”

“He’ll have to live through the night first, as well,” said Ringil somberly. “None of us is going to have recourse to law, imperial or otherwise, unless we stop Seethlaw in his tracks.”

“Or we fall back,” said Archeth. “We take what we know and we run south. We can make Khartaghnal in three days if we push it. There’s a levy garrison there, four hundred men under arms at least, and they have King’s Reach messenger relay facilities on to the plains cities. We can get a message through to a heartland military governor inside another two days.”

“Makes sense,” agreed Halgan.

“No,” said Ringil.

Archeth sighed. “It does make sense, Gil. Look—”

“I said no. We aren’t going to do that.” Ringil stared around the table, met their eyes one at a time the way he had the captains at Gallows Gap. “We are going to stop them here.”

“Gil, I’ve got seventeen men, that’s including these three sitting here now. With you two and me, that’s twenty. The militia’s going to run at the first sign of trouble, you know that.”

“Like we’re planning to, you mean?” Egar said, grinning.

Darash bristled. “This is a tactical withdrawal we’re talking about, Dragonbane.”

“Is it?” Egar shook his head. “Well, you know, there’s a Skaranak saying for times like these: Running away just makes your arse a bigger target. If the dwenda can follow us downriver through the swamp the way they did last night, they can certainly track us across the uplands before we hit Khartaghnal. Three days means three nights, maybe four. You ready to stay awake that long, ready to fight worn out and maybe in motion on ground they’ll choose to suit themselves? Sounds like a fucking stupid idea to me.”

“Egar, it’s like I said to Gil.” Archeth spread her hands, gestured at the gathered company. “It’s twenty of us, against something we can’t quantify, something that scared my people four thousand years ago and still scares the Helmsmen now.”

The Majak shrugged. “Ghost stories. Come the crunch, it can’t be any scarier than a dragon, can it? Look, I killed two of these fucking dwenda things last night, and like I said they bleed and fall down just like men. And we all know how to kill men, don’t we?”

“Everyone’s afraid of what they don’t understand,” Ringil said quietly. “You want to remember that, Archidi. The dwenda are as uncertain of us as we are of them. They’ve got less reason, but they don’t know that, and anyway it’s not a rational thing. You know what Pelmarag said about your poor, scared shitless marine garrison at Khangset? Fucking humans everywhere, he said, running around screaming and jabbering in the dark like the lost souls of apes, you know, cut one down and there’s another right fucking behind him. What does that sound like to you?”

The others looked at him in silence. No one offered an answer.

“And you, Archeth? Look at you, look at what you represent to them. They have legends about the Black Folk, the way we do about them. Horror stories about how you destroyed their cities and drove them out into the gray places. They talk about you as if you were demons, the same way we used to talk about the Scaled Folk until we understood them. The same way your fucking imperial history books probably still talk about them. Look, when Seethlaw and I arrived in the swamp, there was a minor panic on because one of the dwenda scouts had heard some artifact scavengers talking about a black-skinned warrior somewhere in the vicinity. Which I guess probably was you, now I come to think about it, but that’s not the point. Even that, even the rumor of you, was enough to worry them.”

He rested his arms on the table, and his gaze hooded for a moment.

When he looked up again, Archeth caught his stare and a chill slithered between her shoulders and up her neck. It was, for just a moment, as if a stranger had climbed into Ringil Eskiath’s skin and stolen his eyes.

“When I trained at the Academy,” he said tonelessly, “they told me there is nothing in this world to fear more than a man who wants to kill you and knows how to do it. We make a stand here, and we can teach that truth to the dwenda. We can stop them, we can send them back to the gray places to think again about taking this world.”

More silence.

The moment tipped, was falling away, when Rakan cleared his throat.

“Why do you care?” he asked. “Five minutes ago you’re telling us how you don’t give a shit about the Empire or the League. Now suddenly you want to take a stand, make a difference. What’s that about?”

Ringil looked coldly at him.

“What’s it about, Faileh Rakan? It’s about the fucking war, that’s what it’s about. You’re right, I don’t give a shit about your Emperor and I care even less about the scum that run Trelayne and the League. But I won’t watch them go to war again. I’ve been to war, you know, to save civilization from the reptile hordes. I bled for it, I saw friends and other men die for it. And then I watched men like you piss it away again, the civilization we’d saved, in squabbles over a few hundred square miles of territory and what language the people get to speak there, what color their skin and hair is and what kind of religious horseshit they get crammed down their throats. I saw men here, right fucking here in Ennishmin, who’d fought for the human alliance, some who’d lost limbs or eyes or their sanity, driven out of their homes with their families and herded onto the road to march or die, all to balance up some filthy fucking piece of political expedience Akal the so-called Great and his erstwhile allies could all save face on, shut your fucking mouth, Rakan, I’m not finished yet.”

Ringil’s eyes glittered as he stared the Throne Eternal captain down.

“I watched men who’d given everything come back home to Trelayne and see their women and children sold into slavery to pay debts they didn’t know they’d incurred because they’d been away fighting at the time. I saw those slaves shipped south to feed your fucking Empire’s brothels and factories and noble homes, and I saw other men who’d given nothing in the war get rich off that trade and the sacrifice of those men and women and children. And I will not watch it happen again.”

Abruptly, he was on his feet. He drew a deep, shuddering breath. His voice grew low and grating, almost another man’s altogether.

“Seethlaw doesn’t know the Empire, but I do. If we run south, and if we make it, then Jhiral will send his massed levies, and Seethlaw will bring on the dwenda, and behind him will come whatever cobbled-together private armies this fuckwit cabal has managed to assemble in the north, and it will start all over again. And I will not fucking permit that, not again. We stop them here. It ends here, and if we die here, ending it, I for one won’t be too fucking bothered. You will either stand with me, or all your talk of honor and duty and necessary death is a posturing courtier’s lie. We stop them here, together. If I see anyone try to leave between now and tonight, I will hamstring their horse and break their fucking legs and I will leave them out in the street for the dwenda. There will be no more fucking discussion, there will be no more talk of tactical withdrawal. We stop them here!”

He drew another hard breath. He stared around at them all. His voice dropped, grew suddenly quiet again, and matter-of-fact.

“We stop them here.”

He walked out. Slammed the door open, left it gaping on their silence. They heard his boots clatter down the stairs, sound fading.

Egar looked around the faces at the table and shrugged.

“I’m with the faggot,” he said.