The Cold Commands

CHAPTER 46

It took him a while to find his way out. The temple was big and poorly lit, and some of the architecture was confusing, especially the massive chunks of it that had fallen in. He thought, from the quality of the light seeping through holes in the roof, that dawn must not be too far off. But down at floor level, it was still mostly dark. Seeing was work; trying to think was worse. His head was a torn-up mess, a match for the rubble he walked through—

Did I do all this?

He kept moving—dogged instinctive motion and honed years of skirmisher caution, tangled up with flash-lit memories he would mostly rather not look at.

The temple’s structure creaked ominously about him.

Vague recollection of the story Egar had told him gave things an eerie familiarity, but it provided no useful guidance. He’d worked out he must be at Afa’marag from the glirsht figures and the gallery in the main altar hall, but he was still slightly shaken when he passed a huge statue holding up the roof, a southern representation of Hoiran with horse tackle slung across one shoulder, and realized it was where the Dragonbane had faced the dwenda before. He stopped and looked up at the looming, bearded face under the ceiling, the raised right arm, now missing its hand. It was not quite the harsh tusked and fanged majesty of Hoiran as the north knew him, but you could see the similarities.

The shattered fragments of the hand lay not far off. He remembered Egar telling him how it fell and stopped the fight in its tracks. He peered at the masonry and caught the dark gleam of something atop one massive chunk of pointing index finger.

A Kiriath flare.

It stood upright, as if just that moment placed there, curved metal casing of the flask picking up the thin light in the place and throwing it back. There was even a leather loop for tying it onto your belt, already attached. If it wasn’t the flare he’d lost to Risgillen in the Citadel, it was a pretty perfect copy.

He stared at it for a while, then lifted his eyes to the huge, bearded face looming overhead. A shiver ran through him. He grimaced and set down Menkarak’s head for a moment. Swiped up the flare, tied it onto his belt where there had been one before.

“Don’t suppose you’ve got my dragon knife, too?” he asked the empty gloom.

There was no reply.

He wasn’t very sure he wanted one.

FARTHER ON THROUGH THE DARKENED CHAMBERS OF THE TEMPLE, HE ran into a panicked-looking pair of men-at-arms sharing a single torch. They fetched up short, gaping at him.

“So how do I get out of this place?” he asked them.

Their gazes sidled down to the head he carried in his left hand, now dust-caked around the chopped neck wound and the mouth.

“Don’t look at him,” Ringil barked. “Just tell me how the fuck I get out of here.”

“But, you, that’s Pash—” The more talkative of the two swallowed, hard. Pointed with the torch he held. “Back that way. Through the arch and take the staircase on the left, then the corridor with the bas-relief walls. Main atrium, and out. But, there’s uh, the Blessed Watch are at the doors.”

“I’ll talk to them.”

The other man shook his head dazedly. “We heard, uh, there was… What happened in there?”

“Black powers,” said Ringil briskly. “Demonic forces. The old gods have broken through, and the ceiling’s coming down. If I were you, I wouldn’t hang around too long.”

“But what about the slaves?” blurted the man.

“The slaves, yes.” He remembered more fragments of the Dragonbane’s tale. Cursed under his breath. “Well you’d better go and let them all out, hadn’t you?”

The man who’d spoken first wrinkled his nose. “Fuck that shit. They’re all northerners anyway. Let the fucking roof come down on them for all I care.”

Ringil lifted the Ravensfriend from his shoulder and pointed it at the man. It felt oddly effortless—the Ravensfriend was light, but not that light. He emptied his face of all expression, poured the command into his voice.

“You’ll both go and let the slaves out of here before you do anything else. Right now. I’m going to be standing outside at the front door and if I see either of your faces come through it before those slaves, then you’ll be joining my friend Pashla here in a bounty bag. Got it?”

From their faces, he judged that they did.

He watched them scurry away into the gloom, waited until the glow of the torch disappeared, then pressed onward. The directions they’d given him were accurate. He found the main doors cracked open a cautious couple of yards and letting in the dawn. The Blessed Watchmen clustered about the sides, weapons drawn, peering nervously into the gloom. They jumped when he appeared, and there were some halfhearted challenges, but in the end they gave him no more trouble than their colleagues inside. He told them the same story he’d told before and advised them to stay clear. They let him through. If any of them recognized Menkarak’s face swinging at his knee, none of them wanted to get into it with him.

True to his word, he stood at the doors in the crisp morning air until the slaves started to dribble out in ones and twos. Young men and women wrapped hastily in blankets and thin clothes, feet mostly bare, faces numbed beyond any expression you could read. Northern faces, every one. He watched them emerge, blinking and shivering in the early light, and he tried experimentally to feel some kind of kinship for them.

Felt nothing at all that he could name.

You have not passed through the Dark Gate.

Have I not?

Still, he broke up a couple of attempts by the watchmen to manhandle some of the more comely females, the more delicate among the boys, and told everybody they were now wards of the palace, someone would be along shortly to take charge, so leave them the fuck alone. The watchmen looked at him blankly. The phrase wards of the palace clearly didn’t mean anything to them, but they weren’t going to argue with this gaunt, blood-spattered mercenary with the obvious command manners and the bloody great Kiriath blade naked in his hand. Not getting paid half enough for that shit…

He saw the two men-at-arms he’d sent in emerge, and nodded at them. They winced from his eyes and slunk away.

Sunrise crept along the river behind him, spilled over the dark bulk of the lock gates and stained the sky above in streaks of pale pink and gray. The air started to gather heat. He waited out the brief exodus, then put the temple at his back and wandered down to the water’s edge to fire the Kiriath flare.

Miraculously enough, it worked the first time.

The flask kicked in his hand, raged glaring white fire that soaked slowly out to deeper colors and left dancing blotches across his vision. Smoke traced a perfect rising arc from the flare’s kick, upward through the warming air, then broke and hung, and drifted eastward on the wind. Over Ringil’s head, a chemical green light hung in the sky, staining the morning uncanny.

Out in the river, farther down, something big flopped and splashed and sank again.

ARCHETH FOUND HIM SITTING ON THE RIVERBANK, STARING OUT OVER the water as if wondering how he might get across. The Ravensfriend lay across his lap; Pashla Menkarak’s severed head was bedded down in the dirt at his side, dead eyes gazing emptily at the same far shore.

Under the inch-deep wavelets the water made at its edge, Ringil’s dragon-tooth dagger stuck up out of the sandy mud, buried there to the hilt.

She stopped a couple of yards behind him, quelling the ache of relief in her throat. She swallowed. Put hands on hips.

“Gil? You mind telling me just what the fuck wards of the palace is supposed to mean?”

He glanced up. “There you are.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. Can’t move a fucking horse faster than a walk this time of the morning. Got here fast as we could.” She looked at Menkarak’s head, prodded it with a toe so it fell over on its face in the riverbank dirt. “We’d better get that out of sight before someone sees it.”

“They’ve already seen it, Archidi.” He set the Ravensfriend aside and levered himself to his feet. Grinned at her—she held down a flinch. “No one’s given me any trouble.”

She nodded down at the dragon-tooth dagger. “What’s that doing there?”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “Long story. Washed up there, I think.”

“Washed up?” She stared at the neatly pegged blade, the hilt jutting out of the wavelets, then back at his blood-painted face and the haggard eyes that stared out of it. “Gil, are you feeling okay? You’re not hurt?”

He gave her the grin again. “Couple of scratches. Nothing that won’t heal behind a bath and some sleep. You get the Dragonbane out yet?”

“Yeah. Bit of a story to that, actually.”

Behind them, something rumbled. Birds startled out of reeds all along the river. Ringil and Archeth both looked around in time to see a section of the temple’s front façade belly inward and collapse. Dust boiled outward from the impact. Excited yelling. Uniforms ran about, keeping people back.

“Been doing that all morning,” Ringil said inconsequentially. He bent and retrieved the dragon knife, wiped it carefully on his bloodied and mud-clogged breeches. He held it up to the light, as if to be sure of some aspect in its carving.

“It’s a good knife, that,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to lose it.”

Noyal Rakan came hurrying down the bank toward them. His face was suffused with joy, but it faded a little when he saw Gil’s face.

“My lord Ringil.” He stopped short. “Are you… hale?”

Gil nodded and stowed the knife. “Hale enough.”

“Well, then.” The Throne Eternal captain looked at Archeth. “We must get him up to the palace at once. The, uh, the Emperor requests your immediate presence.”

“Really?”

“Really,” said Archeth drily.

More of the temple fell in behind them. Ringil gazed at it for a long moment, then looked back to his companions.

“Right, then. I’d better get cleaned up. Either of you got any idea what His Imperial Radiance wants so urgently?”

Archeth and Rakan exchanged glances. Archeth shrugged. Gestured with an open palm.

“I think he’s going to give you a medal,” she said.

RINGIL LAUGHED ALL THE WAY TO THE HORSES. IT WASN’T AN ENTIRELY pleasant sound.

He was still making the same harsh, mirthless noise to himself, quietly, on and off, as the three of them rode westward along the river with the rising sun at their backs and their faces cast in shadow. His companions stole uneasy glances at him, but could think of nothing to say. They clucked to the horses instead, and their mounts picked up a little speed. Their shadows leaned on ahead of them, as if anxious to leave something behind.

Later, they would say only that he rode wordless and corpse-stiff in the saddle, that tear tracks from the laughter cut down his blood-caked face like the mark of claws, and that he never wiped them away.