The Steel Remains

CHAPTER 31

The dwenda came, finally, with blue fire and terrible, unhuman force, in the small, cold hours before dawn.

AMONG THOSE WHO SURVIVED THE ENCOUNTER, THERE WOULD BE A lot of speculation over whether it was planned that way. Whether the dwenda knew enough about humans to understand that this was the best time to take their prey, the lowest ebb of the human spirit. Or whether perhaps they simply knew that a long, wakeful, but uneventful night of waiting would wear any enemy down.

Or perhaps they were waiting themselves. Gathering themselves for the assault in the safety of the gray places, or attending to some millennia-old ritual that must be observed there before battle was joined. Seethlaw certainly implied—according to Ringil’s rather overwrought and patchy testimony, anyway—that ritual was a matter of huge cultural significance among the Aldrain. Blood sacrifice was apparently required before the invasion of Ennishmin could be launched. Perhaps then, in this smaller matter also, there were solemn specifics to be honored before the slaughter could begin.

The speculation would go back and forth without end, turn and turn again, snapping at its own tail for lack of solid evidence one way or the other. Perhaps this, perhaps that. Humans, short-lived and locked out of the gray places for life, do not do well with uncertainty. If they cannot have what might, what could, what should, and perhaps most awful of all what should have been, then they will dream it up instead, imagine it into being in whatever twisted or beautiful form suits, and then drive their fellows to their knees in chains by the thousand and million to pretend in chorus that it is so. The Kiriath might have saved them from this, eventually, with time, had perhaps even tried to do so once or twice already, but they came too subtly, terribly damaged into this world to begin with, and in the end they were driven away again. And so men went on hammering with their bloodied foreheads at the limits of their certainties, like insane prisoners condemned to a lifetime in a cell whose door they have locked themselves.

You’ve got to laugh, Ringil would probably have said.

No, you’ve got to unlock the fucking door, Archeth might have replied. But of course, by then the key was long lost.

Perhaps, though—look at it this way, makes a lot of sense if you think about it, man—the dwenda were delayed by simple necessity. Perhaps navigation in the gray places was not the easy matter Seethlaw had made it appear. Perhaps, once in the Aldrain marches, the dwenda must cast about like wolves for spoor of Ringil and his sudden, murderous new friend from the steppes. Perhaps they must find the thin cool scent of the river with painstaking care, and sift it for the place where their prey disembarked. And perhaps even then, with their targets found, the dwenda storm-callers must struggle for position the way a swimmer struggles to hold station against a current.

Could be. Those who managed to live through the battle would nod and shrug, touch old wounds and shiver. Who the fuck knows. Yeah, could be.

Or could be—Ringil would have liked this one—it was politics that held them up, the disorderly individual dissent that he’d seen playing out among the dwenda. Perhaps it took Seethlaw awhile to convince his fellow Aldrain that this was something that needed to be done.

Or perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps it was Seethlaw who had to be convinced, or at least to convince himself.

And so it went pointlessly on, the theorizing and head shaking and wonder among survivors of the dwenda encounter at Beksanara—or Ibiksinri, to give it the name those who built it would recognize, those who, for political convenience and a treaty not one in a hundred would have been educated well enough to read, were driven away in cold and hunger or simply butchered there in the street.

Ibiksinri, then. Site once again for blades unleashed and blood spilled and screaming across the murderous night. Funny, Ringil might have said, how nothing ever fucking changes.

The dwenda came in the small, cold hours before dawn.

But before that:

NOT LONG AFTER MIDDAY, THE SUN CAME OUT.

The villagers, who knew the value of such moments, got out and about in its warmth immediately. Bedclothes were brought out and hung up to air, lunch tables were set up in the street and in the small gardens of those homes that had them. Down at the river, while Rakan and some of his men watched in bemusement, the villagers stripped down to underwear and flung themselves into what was still very cold water, and splashed about like children. If the presence of the intensely black Kiriath woman and her soldiers put any kind of damper on the proceedings, it was hard to notice.

The imperials themselves weren’t immune to the change. They muttered among themselves that it might be a good omen, and they took the opportunity to bask a little. But having come from the dusty heat of the capital only weeks before, they were neither overjoyed nor impressed, just faintly grateful.

Basking, and reflecting on omens—my brother, my uncle, a friend of mine once saw . . . and so forth—also seemed to help the time pass faster, which was something of a blessing, because there wasn’t much else to do. Preparations for the battle were minimal, and largely symbolic. You can’t build barricades against an enemy that pops into existence wherever it wills, and dwenda tactics were in any case a mystery yet to be revealed. Plans of a sort were laid, but of necessity they had to remain flexible; in the end they amounted to not much more than keeping the locals in their homes under curfew once night fell, and scheduling regular patrols around the village.

Archeth prevailed upon Ringil to give Rakan’s men a brief lecture on what he knew about the dwenda, which he did with a surprisingly deft touch that made her blink. The mannered Glades aristo irony she knew so well peeled and flaked away like scabbing from a healed wound, leaving a dry warrior humor and easy, natural camaraderie in its place. She could see the men taking to him by the second as he spoke. He made none of the threats he’d used earlier, though his overall prognosis for the situation was no more optimistic, and he offered no better hopes for the outcome.

In the end, she realized, he had successfully invited them all to die simply by promising to do it with them.

It was all they would ask of any commander.

“Yeah, he was like that at Gallows Gap,” Egar told her as they sprawled on the front steps of the garrison house in the sun, trying to avoid wondering how much longer they might have to live. “Similar situation, I guess. We all knew if we couldn’t hold the pass, the lizards were going to sweep down and obliterate everything in their path, kill us whether we stood or ran. It took Gil to show them that was a strength we had, not a weakness. That it just made everything simple. The choice wasn’t living or dying, running or fighting, it was facing death as an equal, or hearing it come up on you from behind like a hound, grab you by the scruff of the neck, and shake you apart.” He grinned in his beard. “Pretty easy choice to make, right?”

“I guess.”

She thought about the people and the things she still cared about—it wasn’t a long list—and wondered how truthful she was being, how honest with herself, let alone with the Majak at her side. She missed her home, with an abrupt, almost painful pang, now that she thought she might never see it again. She missed the brutal sun and the hard blue skies over Yhelteth, the bustle and dust of the streets; the cool gray cobbles of her courtyard at first light, the first seep of cooking smells from the kitchen side; Kefanin’s somber reliability and reserve, Angfal’s drily erudite, half-sane ramblings in the cluttered study. The long, majestic sweep of the staircase, the spectacular cityscape views from the upper rooms. The big canopied bed and the sunlight that splashed across it in the morning, and maybe someday Ishgrim’s supple, curving pale flanks under—stop that, you slut. Well, then, Idrashan’s warm, powerful girth under her at the gallop. The gusty two-day ride out to An-Monal, and the melancholy emptiness of the deserted buildings there, the soft, comforting murmur of the tamed volcano through the surrounding stonework. Feeding Idrashan an apple from the tree under Grashgal’s old study windows, murmuring to the warhorse as she clucked him homeward again.

It occurred to her suddenly that quite a lot of her reason for not opposing Ringil’s stand might lie in an unwillingness to abandon Idrashan, who still lay on his side in the garrison stable and could not get up.

“I saw men die that afternoon with a grin on their faces.” Egar shook his head, still lost in the memories of Gallows Gap. Sunlight gleamed on his face. “I saw men laughing as they went down. That was Gil, he made them like that. He was there at the heart of it, screaming abuse and bad jokes at the lizards, painted head-to-foot in their blood. I swear, Archeth, I think he was as happy then as any time I ever saw him, before or since.”

“Great.”

He looked around at her tone.

“We’re doing the right thing, Archeth,” he said gently. “Whatever happens here tonight, he called it right.”

She sighed hard, pressed hands flat to the tops of her thighs and rocked a little on the step.

“Let’s hope so, huh?”

Someone came out of the blockhouse door behind them. They both twisted about and saw Ringil standing there. He’d bagged a cuirass—from the militia store, by the slightly grubby look of it—along with a pair of battered greaves and a few other assorted chunks of plate. None of it matched, but it all seemed a reasonable fit. There was a Throne Eternal shield slung casually on his shoulder. He stood and looked at them in silence for a moment, and Archeth wondered if he’d heard what Egar was saying about him. Looked at his face and thought yes, he probably had.

“Shouldn’t be long now,” he said gruffly. “Listen, Archidi, I don’t suppose you’re still doing krinzanz these days, are you?”

She faced front so she could dig in a tight inner pocket, pulled out a cloth-wrapped slab she hadn’t started on yet, and handed it back to him over her shoulder. “All my old bad habits are intact, Gil. Disappoint you?”

“Far from it. I’d hate to think you’d changed along with everything else.” He took the slab and weighed it in the palm of his hand with a critical frown. “Like I told your men in there, these motherfuckers are fast. And I was never faster than when I was riding a quarter ounce of this stuff. You might want to check with Rakan, see if any of them want a dab or two as well.”

Archeth snorted. “No, I don’t think I’ll broach that one actually. Read your Revelation. It’s a first-order sin, pollution of the fleshly temple and estrangement of mind from the spiritual self. These guys are losing respect for me fast enough as it is. Trying to peddle them unlawful substances steeped in sin is going to just about finish it.”

“You want me to ask? Got to get a helmet from Rakan anyway, and I think my faggot’s reputation is in sufficient tatters by now it won’t matter one way or the other.”

“Do what you like. It won’t go down well, though, I’m telling you. These are pious, clean-living men, worshipping at the temple of their own bodies.”

“Hmm. Sounds distinctly erotic.”

“Pack that in, Gil.” She squinted around in the sun to see if anyone was listening to them. “You’re going to spoil the good impression you just made on the troops.”

“Yeah, all right. Fair point.” Ringil glanced at Egar. “What about you?”

The Majak skinned another grin. “Too late to make a good impression on me, Gil. I know you.”

“The krin. I’m talking about the krin.”

Egar shook his head. “Interferes with my breathing. I fucked up on that stuff back in the summer of ’49, made myself really sick. Couple of friends of Imrana’s had this high-quality supply through someone they knew at court, and I overdid the dose because I didn’t realize. Fucking nightmare. Can’t even stomach the taste anymore.”

“Okay.” Ringil turned to go back inside. “I’m still going to ask Rakan. Might save some lives if I can convince him.”

Archeth squinted up at him again. “Nice shield he gave you.”

“This? Yeah, it’s his spare, apparently.” The ghost of a smile touched Ringil’s mouth. “I think he liked the speech as well. Seems maybe I’m not such a total degenerate dead loss after all.”

“Well.” She tried to think of something to say, to stave off thought.

She was starting to feel slightly sick, even with the better weather. “It was a pretty good speech.”

Egar grunted. “Yeah, not bad for a fucking faggot.”

And they all laughed, long and hard in sunlight, while there was still time.