The Steel Remains

CHAPTER 32

The small cold hours before dawn.

Ringil was seated on a low wall down near the river, feeling the rush and scrape of the krin through the valves of his heart and barely aware of the outside world at all. He’d been waiting too long. The initial pounding anticipation in the first few hours of darkness had sagged and slumped sometime after midnight; for an experienced warrior, it wasn’t something you could sustain for long. The tension, the itching preparedness to fight, even the fear itself grew dull after a while. He rode the krin looser, let himself detach from what it was doing to his physical body, topped himself up every couple of hours with another pinched fragment from the slab rubbed into his gums. Began to wonder if he hadn’t made a mistake.

“Blue fire! Blue fire! They’re coming!”

He snapped back to awareness, swiveled off the wall—more effort than expected, he’d forgotten he was wearing the armor—and snatched up his shield. He slung it on his shoulder, grabbed his helmet from beside him on the wall and crammed it on as he ran, up toward the main street. Unsheathed the Ravensfriend with a chime as the scabbard lip parted and grinned at the sound. The night breeze off the river seemed to hurry him along. The alarm had come from the boathouse end.

“Blue fire! Blue fi—”

It ended on a gurgled scream. He cursed and sprinted flat-out, went around the boathouse corner, and ran straight into the first dwenda. They bounced off each other, staggered and nearly fell. The Throne Eternal who’d yelled the warning was on his knees in the street, head bowed, bleeding out between futilely clutching fingers and a neck wound. His companion, the other half of the patrol, lay beyond in a broad pool of his own blood. Blue light shone off everything, made the imperials into melancholy silhouettes and the puddle of blood a solid, polished plate. The same glow clung about the big, black-clad form that had killed them like some enchanted armor.

The Ravensfriend leapt to block and Ringil saw the sweeping blue glitter of the Aldrain blade a second after. Lock, scrape. The impact shivered through him. He whipped his sword back, changed stance. The dwenda attacked again, up out of a low guard. He chopped it down, backed up, let the krin take his senses and smear them thin. The dwenda nodded its smoothly helmeted head and said something incomprehensible. He had a moment to wonder if it knew him.

“Come on then, you fuck. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He leapt in behind the snarl, swung the Ravensfriend high, and kicked out sharp and low at the same moment. The blade deflected with a clang, no surprise, the lack of balance had made it a slow, graceless move. But his boot got through, hard into either shin or knee. The dwenda staggered. Ringil followed up, swinging his shield in and out as required, looking for a gap. They traded blows back and forth. Ringil saw his chance, looped the Ravensfriend under the other blade and swept both weapons aside. He got in close enough to belt the dwenda back with his shield and tried a Yhelteth technique to trip the creature. It didn’t quite work; he was clumsy with the unaccustomed weight of the armor and the dwenda didn’t go down. But it was clearly still off balance. Ringil screamed in its blank-visored face and launched a rapid flurry of attacks. The other sword blurred in response. He felt a blow get through and bounce off his helmet, another screeched and slid off the cuirass. He rode it all and drove the dwenda back. The krin gave him an edge he hadn’t had with Seethlaw, and custom had robbed him of any fear the blue-glowing figure might once have inspired.

He killed the dwenda.

It came from nowhere, it was like a gift of dark powers. The black-clad form went almost back to the boards of the boathouse wall, then abruptly leapt out at him. Off the ground, not quite the floating grace Seethlaw had used to take him down in Terip Hale’s cellar, not quite as high or as fast, or maybe it was just the krin again that made it easier to beat. Ringil flinched aside, hewed in with the Ravensfriend, and the dwenda gave up a muffled scream inside the helmet. The blade had sliced deep into a thigh, right through the black skinmail-looking garb. He felt it hit the bone and twisted instinctively, pulled back to free it. The dwenda fell out of the air and hit the ground hard, tried to stand on its damaged leg and fell again. Ringil stalked in and hacked down, into the right shoulder. Another muffled shriek, the Kiriath blade had gone deep again. The dwenda floundered, thrashed about, long-sword dropped somewhere. Ringil kicked it flat, stood on its chest, and stabbed the Ravensfriend through his opponent’s throat. The dwenda shuddered like a pinned insect and made desperate choking sounds. Ringil kept his boot where it was, worked his blade back and forth to make sure, then yanked it back out. Blood spurted from under the lip of the strange smooth helmet and the dwenda shuddered once more and stopped moving.

Ringil threw back his head and howled.

Faintly, down at the other end of the street, he heard it answered, he did not know by whom or what.

EGAR MET HIS FIRST ATTACKER IN TORCHLIGHT ON THE STEPS OF THE blockhouse. The blue fire threw him for a pair of seconds, but he’d listened to Ringil’s lecture just like everybody else. He stood firm, looked for the form at the center of the storm, and whipped the staff lance in at knee height. He hit something, but not with the solid chunking impact he was used to. It was more like swirling the lance through deep water. The dwenda moved at the heart of its radiance and seemed to chuckle.

A long, slim blade came leaping.

He blocked it, swung on the move, and shoved back hard with the lance. The dwenda retreated, seemed to wait for something.

Only the blue light from above warned him.

He caught it reflected in a puddle made in the angle of an unevenly laid flagstone at his feet, glimmering cold and separate from the glow of the blockhouse wall torches. He understood at some instantaneous, visceral level, and was swinging about as the second dwenda leapt from the roof of the blockhouse at him. He got the lance shaft up at chest height just in time, caught his attacker on it, and shunted him sideways onto the ground. The impact shocked him back a couple of steps, but he stayed on his feet, just. He saw the way the dwenda recovered, rolled upright again still indistinct in the blue glow of the storm, knew the other one was about to rush him from the left. Saw it happen out of the corner of his eye. No time for conscious thought—reflexively, he dropped his stance and slashed the lance back up to a braced horizontal.

The right-hand end sent the second dwenda stumbling, maybe wounded, maybe not; the left was a brutal skewer pointed back past Egar’s shoulder.

The first dwenda ran right onto it.

He felt the impact and knew without looking back. He grunted and twisted the shaft of the lance—the dwenda shrieked. Now he looked, saw the damage, grinned and jerked the lance blade free. The injured dwenda sagged backward, sword gone to the floor, both hands clutched over the wound the lance had made. Egar vented a berserker howl and swung back to where the second dwenda was squaring up to him with its sword in both hands. The last traces of the blue storm flickered around its limbs, inking out.

“Now you,” Egar said grimly, and hurled himself forward.

Inside the blockhouse, screams.

ARCHETH FOUGHT IN A BLUR OF KNIFE BLADES AND KRIN.

Wraithslayer was gone from her hand, buried up to the hilt in a dwenda’s back, and no time to withdraw it before she must move, dance on and duck and swing back in. Laughing Girl lay gleaming dully in a corner, thrown in error, wasted. She wielded Bandgleam and Falling Angel, right hand and left, and she still had Quarterless in the sheath at her back. There was blood on her face from a long-sword slash, a shrill Kiriath battle shriek in her throat, and bodies all around.

“Indamaninarmal!” The High Kir syllables poured from her mouth in venomous rolling torrent. “My father’s house! Indamaninarmal!”

The dwenda had welled up inside the blockhouse like burning blue ghosts, exactly the way Ringil had warned they might. She was in the tower room when it happened, heard panicked yelling downstairs and went down the steps at a run. On the first turn, she met a dwenda coming up, all blue fire and vague, darker motion at the core. She cannoned into the thing, passed through it, distinctly felt the tugging it made, but came out the other side unharmed. No time, no fucking time. She tumbled down the remaining stairs barely on her feet and erupted into the main room of the blockhouse. Chaos flapped across her vision; two of the Throne Eternal already down, dead or dying on the flagstones, a third with his back to the wall, defending himself just barely with a long-hafted ax. No helmet, he must have taken it off earlier in the night—his face was bloodied and grim with knowledge of his chances. There were three dwenda in the room, driving him along the wall, spreading to bracket him. In another second, the angle would be too wide and he’d be dead. Archeth yelled and sprang. Two of the figures whipped around to face the new sound, black-garbed bodies and blank oval heads swathed in flickering blue light, long-swords raised toward her as if in admonishment. But she thought—yeah, that’s right, the Black Folk are here after all, motherfuckers—they were taken aback.

She had Laughing Girl in her right hand.

She loosed the knife at the closest of the figures well ahead of conscious decision. The dwenda ducked and the knife spun off the gleaming curve of the helmet. She cursed, drew Wraithslayer on her way across the room, matched it with Falling Angel. A long-sword licked out, she was no longer there. Almost no longer there—she felt the heated wire of the stroke paint a line over one temple as she ducked. She let the shock drive her, whipped about behind the dwenda and drove Wraithslayer in hard at kidney height. The Kiriath steel went through whatever the dwenda was wearing; the creature shrilled and bucked, staggered away from her. She had to let go of the knife, leave it where it was. She filled her hand with Bandgleam.

The second dwenda rushed her, swinging his sword. She flinched aside, caught the weapon at its tip with Falling Angel’s blade, and looped it away from her. Bandgleam flashed and probed, but the dwenda was quicker and swayed back out of the way. In the corner, the last remaining Throne Eternal was nearly done, wounded in one leg and fighting to stay on his feet. Blood poured down his thigh from the join in his armor. His attacker pressed in, gave him no space or respite. She dare not risk another throw; it wasn’t clear the Kiriath blades would penetrate the dwenda’s garb without a hand on the hilt to drive them in.

“Hold on,” she screamed, and leapt back just in time to avoid another long-sword thrust from her opponent.

The move took her toward the door to the tower, and she knew it was an error as soon as she jumped. She knew—the krinzanz knew—the dwenda she’d met on the stairs was there, back down having found no one to slaughter up there, blade drawn and—

She dropped to the floor, heard the sword hiss past where she’d been, rolled desperately to get some space. A fallen chair blocked her, the dwenda from the tower came after her. Blank, smooth helmet inclined, long-sword held two-handed before him, poised and looking for the moment. It was like being stalked by something mechanical, as if there was nothing under the helm but air and a raw spirit of malice.

“Dwenda!”

It was almost a shout of joy.

It was Elith.

Up the stairs from the basement cells, half awake by the look of it, a tranced, wondering expression on her face, dressed only in a gray silk nightgown Archeth had given her. A few hours before, she’d been sleeping peacefully beneath a blanket beside Sherin, the two women huddled, perhaps unconsciously, together for warmth. Now she moved like a sleepwalker, and her voice had the tones of someone meeting her true love after years of absence.

“Dwenda!”

The armored form stopped. The featureless helmet lifted. Perhaps it expected sorcery; Elith was unarmed, but her hair was a wild, tangled halo of gray that seemed to catch the fading blue flickers from the dwenda, her face was a worn mask of age and suffering, and her arms were held up and out in mute echo of the glirsht markers. There was no fear on her face, her whole body denied the very concept that she could be afraid, and she moved forward as if she could not be harmed.

It was as good an impression of a witch as Archeth had ever seen.

“You come too late, dwenda,” she declaimed. “They are all gone, the land is stolen, the sentinels thrown down, the memory faded. I am the last.”

The dwenda shifted, made a decision any warrior could have read in its stance. Archeth opened her mouth to scream. Elith came on, arms outstretched. Smiling, it seemed.

“Take me ho—”

The dwenda chopped out. The sword sliced into Elith’s unprotected side, cut deep into her midriff and pulled clear again. Archeth thought she heard a contemptuous grunt from within the smooth helmet, or maybe it was just relief. Blood drenched the nightgown. Elith made a noise that seemed more gusty joy than pain, and would not fall down. Archeth felt tears sting in her eyes. The dwenda moved in, chopping again, impatiently. The chair back Archeth had fetched up against blocked clear vision of what happened next, but Elith hit the ground three feet away, eyes staring at nothing.

The dwenda turned about and found Archeth on her feet, eight inches away, face bloodied and contorted into a snarl.

She shrilled and stabbed, both knives at once, Bandgleam in under the helmet lip, Falling Angel into the belly. She twisted the blades with every ounce of krin-fed rage she could summon. The dwenda screamed back at her, tried to batter her with the guard and pommel of the long-sword, but she was in far too close for it to be effective. She rode the blows and backed her opponent up on the knives, jerking upward, twisting savagely. The dwenda shrieked again, dropped its sword, and shoved her bodily away with both hands. She grunted, held on to the knives this time. She shook her head and grinned. The blades stayed where they were, the dwenda would have had to levitate eight inches off the floor to get unhooked. She knew it was insane, that the other two Aldrain would be finishing off the Throne Eternal soldier and turning to take her, but she could not let go.

“Indamaninarmal!” she snarled through gritted teeth. “My father’s house! Indamaninarmal!”

It seemed to unlock something inside her. She put her shoulder into the dwenda’s chest, shoved him away, and tugged the knives free. Came about to see the Throne Eternal down on the floor in the puddling crimson of his own blood, gasping and dying, ax fallen from his nerveless fingers, and the two remaining dwenda coming at her, kicking the tumbled furniture aside as they advanced, splattered with human blood but neither of them harmed as far as she could see.

She mustered a deep breath, squared herself, and lifted the knives.

“All right then,” she said.

RINGIL RAN UP THE DARKENED, SCREAMING STREET.

He passed bodies here and there, villagers and Throne Eternal both. Doors in some of the houses were thrown open, and he saw a woman’s corpse sprawled over the threshold of one. The dwenda had come, it seemed, into the homes and open spaces of Ibiksinri with random disregard, and were killing whatever they ran into. As he watched, another front door burst open and a young boy of about eight fled screaming toward him. Behind, in the interior gloom, he saw the blue flicker under the lintel and then the old familiar form, ducking to step through and out. The boy cannoned into him at hip height and he put out a hand, almost absently, to steady him.

“They, my mother, it—” the boy gabbled through streaming tears.

The dwenda came out into the street. It had a peculiar-looking ax in one hand and a short-sword in the other. Ringil tilted his head a little, heard his neck click.

“You’d better stand behind me,” he said, and pushed the boy gently around his hip and backward. “There’s no point in running from these things.”

He let the dwenda come to him. He lifted one hand and pointed to his own face. He’d dipped fingers into the blood of the last dwenda he’d killed and liberally daubed his features until the bittersweet reek of the stuff was thick in his nostrils and throat. He didn’t know if the dwenda had much of a sense of smell, especially from inside their smooth, blank helmets, but it was worth a try.

“See that?” he called out in slow, drawling Naomic. “That’s from one of your friends. But it’s drying up, I need fresh. C’mere, you fuck.”

He closed the last two yards of space himself, sprang in and swung the Ravensfriend like a scythe. He never knew if the blood ploy worked or not, the dwenda blocked him with the haft of the ax, danced out to the side, and stabbed in with the short-sword. Ringil took it on the shield, grunted with the impact, went to one knee to get his sword free of the ax lock and swung back again, savagely, at shin height. He hit something; the dwenda stumbled, but the blade didn’t seem to have cut through.

Shit.

The ax whistled down. He flung himself inelegantly aside, tumbled on the street and rolled. Lost the Ravensfriend in the mud. The dwenda came at him, making some high-pitched barking sound he didn’t like at all. At the last moment, he swung one booted leg up and unleashed a kick as his opponent rushed in. The dwenda yelped and staggered. The ax wavered, the sword drooped. Ringil got his feet under him, dropped his shield and launched himself, bellowing, crooked hands spread and grasping for the dwenda’s weapons. He got a grip on the ax haft and the sword-hand wrist, and he thrust himself chest-to-chest with the creature and unleashed a savage head-butt full into the blank helmet.

It was pure krinzanz, the black, cackling will to do harm unleashed and squirming up out of the deepest recesses of his heart with no thought for consequence. He staggered back and sideways from the blow, helmet knocked aslant, head ringing, but his hand was locked around the ax haft and it came with him. The dwenda shook its head dizzily, seemed not to know where he was. He hefted the ax in both hands and swung, a deep, wide-stance blow the Dragonbane would have cheered. The ax bit deep into the dwenda’s chest and it screamed. He tugged it loose, hewed again, as if into a tree. Aldrain blood flew in the dark, he caught the fresh scent of it. He brought the ax up over his head with a wild yell and slammed it down on the dwenda’s head.

The helmet split, the ax jammed in the fissure, buried a handbreadth deep. Ringil let go and watched as the dwenda took three tottering sideways steps, lifted one hand to touch its head as if in wonder, and collapsed with a long, grinding moan. Ringil looked to see if it would move again, panting and swaying a little himself, then when it didn’t, he cast about, found the Ravensfriend and his shield lying in the mud, and picked them up. His head was beginning to hurt as the initial numbness of the butt wore off. He tried to resettle the helmet a little more evenly on his head, found that the nose guard had slipped and gouged into the lower half of his cheek.

He saw the boy—he’d utterly forgotten him in the fight—watching him, frozen where he stood about ten feet away, wide-eyed with not much less terror than he’d had of the dwenda. Ringil shook his head and found himself laughing, an insane, dribbling little chuckle.

“Dragonbane’s right,” he said vaguely. “They fall down just like men.”

The boy’s eyes shifted, left over Ringil’s shoulder, and he darted away like a spooked deer. Ringil swung about and found himself facing one of Rakan’s soldiers. Relief stabbed through him.

“Ah. How you doing?”

The man made a noise. He was wounded all over, but none of it looked too bad. He still had his shield, but it was buckled and split, and he was down to a long knife for a weapon. Ringil turned and pointed, still breathing heavily.

“See that ax? If you can get it out of that motherfucker’s head, it’s yours. Then we’ll go see what’s going on at the blockhouse. Okay?”

The Throne Eternal stared at him. “They, they . . .” He gestured wildly over his shoulder. “They’re fucking everywhere, man.”

“I know. And they glow in the dark, too.” Ringil clapped him on the shoulder. “Should make it easy, huh?”

EGAR CAME THROUGH THE BLOCKHOUSE DOOR WITH BITS OF DWENDA intestine on both blades of the staff lance, just in time to see Archeth stabbed to the floor. Fury detonated through him like an instant high fever. He yelled, berserker shrill and full, and leapt in on the two dwenda without thought. The first turned just in time to get the lance blade through the belly. The second stumbled back a step, as if from an actual blow, then came in swinging its sword. Remorseless, Egar drove the impaled dwenda back until it tripped over Archeth’s body. He caught the swing of the other’s blade on the lance shaft and kicked its legs summarily out from under it. He leaned hard on the embedded end of the lance, twisted the shaft back and forth, and the wounded dwenda screamed in his helmet and thrashed. Egar judged the damage well enough done, jerked the lance free, crouched and swung about to face the other dwenda just as it climbed back to its feet.

“You want to die, too? Come on then, motherfucker.”

The dwenda was very fast. It whooped and leapt high over the lance thrust, cleared it entirely, lashed out with one foot and kicked Egar in the face. He staggered, didn’t quite go down. Blood in his mouth, felt like a broken tooth, but—

The dwenda had landed only a couple of feet away, was twisting about to bring its long-sword to bear. Egar rushed it, slammed the lance shaft up and into the creature’s chest, and bore it backward across the room until they both fell among the bodies and broken chairs. The dwenda dropped its sword. Egar rammed the lance shaft desperately up under the jut of the helmet. He got to his knees. The dwenda had a long slim knife from somewhere; it slashed at him but the lance shaft had its arms pinned and ineffectual. Egar got on his knees, rammed the shaft up again, and bore down with all his weight. The dwenda made an awful gurgling sound. The slim knife slashed again, gouged into his side, slid off a rib. Egar snarled and let go of the lance, grabbed the featureless helmet, and smashed it against the flagstone floor. The knife stabbed him again, felt like it got through this time. He gasped, struggled for purchase on the helmet’s smooth sides, felt another fiery lash of pain along his ribs, stabbed out with a knee to hold the arm off. He gripped the helm’s surface, squeezed and twisted with everything he had left. The dwenda thrashed and squawked. Egar bared his teeth in an awful grin, and kept on twisting. His voice grated from his throat.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Nearly—done—just a—”

—the knife again, he barely noticed through the rising red mist, his voice came out small and tight with the effort—

“—little more—”

—the thing was screaming now, battering at him with the knife and a clenched fist, kicking, didn’t matter, didn’t matter, ignore that shit—

“—little more—”

Crack.

And the dwenda’s head was suddenly loose and lolling in his hands. The creature’s arms dropped to its sides. He heard the knife clink free on the stonework.

“That’s it,” he hissed. “Quiet down now.”

He drew a hard, panting breath, yelped immediately at the flare of pain as his ribs moved. His eyes teared up. He blew breath through pursed lips as if he’d just swallowed something that was too hot.

“Ah fuck, that hurts.”

“Tell me about it.”

He turned about and there was Archeth, on her feet, limping toward him clutching one shoulder. But there was a bloodied knife in her hand on the injured side, and she seemed to be hanging on to it okay. He coughed a laugh, then wished he hadn’t.

“Hey, you’re alive.”

“For the moment.” She nodded behind her. “Finished your other pal for you.”

He heaved himself up off the dwenda’s body, looked under his left arm at the blood and grimaced.

“That was nice of you. I thought he was pretty much done. Saw his guts come out, that’s for sure.”

“Well.” She shrugged and winced. “Aldrain magic, you know. Best to make sure. What’s it like out there?”

Egar took a couple of careful, testing breaths. He ground his teeth and snarled in frustration. Bent to pick up his lance.

“Don’t know, these motherfuckers are coming out of the dark everywhere you look. Saw at least five of your Throne Eternal boys down in the street, no idea if they took any bad guys with them. It’s not good.”

Archeth peered about on the floor for her other knives. She spotted Wraithslayer, crouched awkwardly, and picked it up.

“We’d better get out there, then,” she said.

“Yeah, I was afraid you were going to say—”

And then they heard it, and at the sound the Majak’s face lit up as if someone had magically wiped away all his pain.

Ringil’s voice, bawling hoarse but crystal clear in Tethanne, out in the street.

“Stand! Stand your fucking ground! They fall down just like men! Stand with me! STAND!”

FAILEH RAKAN LAY DEAD IN THE STREET, HEAD SPLIT BY AN ALDRAIN AX. He’d accounted for a brace of dwenda—they lay about his feet—but the third was too fast. Ringil, jogging rapidly up the street toward the blockhouse with a mauled squad of survivors, saw it happen but got there too late to do anything about it.

The dwenda who’d finished Rakan spun about at the sound of his footfalls. Ringil rushed in. Shield up to block the ax, heave and shove it aside. The Ravensfriend chopped in for the thigh. He’d learned, in the past frantic quarter hour, that the Aldrain armor was strong below the knee, like some kind of incorporated greave under the material, rising to knee height. Above the knee, strength gave way to flexibility; the black leg garb was thinner. Human steel might not get through easily, but the Kiriath blade chewed it apart like rotten sailcloth. He hacked the width of a hand into the dwenda’s leg, withdrew, and stepped back. Watched the creature fall to its knees and then skewered it under the helmet.

It was beginning to feel practiced.

He looked wildly about. What was left of Rakan’s patrols had pulled back to the blockhouse as planned, but hard-pressed on every side by the encroaching dwenda. He counted four men—no three, there went another, spun about and down into the mud off a dwenda blade, spurting blood from a half-severed neck—and he had four more at his back, one of those in none-too-good shape.

And from all angles, still shedding tiny blue flickering flames as they moved, the rest of the dwenda came on. The krin hammered through his head, wrote the answer in fire behind his eyes.

He put a boot on the dead dwenda’s helmet, tipped it back, and hacked down with the Ravensfriend. It took three desperate, brutal strokes, but the head came off. He bent—felt an odd, crooked smile slip onto his mouth—and plunged his left hand into the gory mess at the helmet’s opening. Meat and pipes and there, the rough central gnarl of the severed spine. He grasped at the ragged bone end, picked up head and helmet, and strode to the blockhouse step.

Held it aloft in the light from the torches. Filled his lungs, and screamed.

“Stand! Stand your fucking ground! They fall down just like men! Stand with me! STAND!”

For a moment, everything seemed to stop. Even the dwenda appeared to pause in their onslaught. The torchlight gleamed hot yellow off the black curve of the Aldrain helmet. Blood ran down his hand and wrist.

Somewhere, someone human cheered long and low, and the others took it up.

It became a roar.

A dwenda came howling across the street at him, blade raised. Ringil swung the helmet and hurled it at his attacker, ran in behind.

Somehow, as he leapt in to meet the dwenda, he already knew it was Seethlaw.

The rest was a nightmare blur of blood and steel and speed. Seethlaw was fast, as fast as Ringil remembered from Terip Hale’s courtyard, maybe faster, and now he was no longer constrained by whatever had stopped him from killing Ringil the first time around. He whirled and leapt, slashed in and out as if the long-sword were no weightier than some courtier’s blade-for-show. He had no shield to slow him down, and he was clearly—Ringil could feel it coming off the black-clad figure in waves—raving with hate.

A dark lord will rise.

Ringil gave himself over to the krinzanz, and the memory of a young woman’s living head, mounted on a tree stump, weeping silent, swamp-water tears.

It was really all he had left.

“Come on motherfucker,” he heard himself screaming, almost continuously. “Come on.”

Seethlaw ripped open his face along the jaw, the gouging point of a thrust Ringil couldn’t get his head away from fast enough. Seethlaw stabbed him through a gap in the ill-assorted pieces of plate on his right arm. Seethlaw slashed him across the top of one thigh. Scorched his neck where it emerged from the cuirass, smashed apart an already damaged section of armor on his right shoulder and ripped the flesh beneath. Seethlaw—

To Ringil, it felt like nothing. Like nothing at all.

He waded through the pain. He grinned.

And later, much later, one of the surviving Throne Eternal men would swear he saw a flickering blue light spark along Ringil’s limbs in the dark.

Seethlaw struck down at his wavering shield. The blow ran a long split into the battered metal and the wooden backing, ruined it for the next blow.

But the blade stuck.

Ringil let go the straps. Seethlaw tried to withdraw, the weight of the shield dragged his sword down. Ringil leapt in, swung, yelled, hacked savagely down.

The Ravensfriend found the dwenda’s shoulder, and bit deep.

Seethlaw howled. Still could not free his sword. Ringil sobbed, drew breath, hacked down again with both hands. The arm went dead, hung half severed. Seethlaw fell to his knees with the shock.

Once again, everything seemed to stop.

The dwenda reached up, let go his useless sword, and tugged at the helmet. Ringil, in sudden, numb suspension, let him do it. The helmet came off, gave him Seethlaw’s beautiful dwenda face for the last time, contorted with pain and rage. He glared up at Ringil. His teeth gritted.

“What,” he spat, in panting Naomic, “have you done? Gil, we—we had—”

Ringil stared bleakly down at him.

“I’ve had better than you drunk in a Yhelteth back alley,” he said coldly, and chopped Seethlaw’s head and face open with the Ravensfriend.

Withdrew the blade, brandished it high and screamed.

A dark lord will rise.

Yeah, right.

Then he set his boot on the dying dwenda’s chest and shoved him aside. He took two suddenly shaky steps down into the street and what remained of the battle. The roar of the remaining men went on, the dwenda looked to be falling back. Ringil blinked to clear vision which had suddenly, unaccountably gone blurred. He stared around him.

“Who’s fucking next?” he screamed.

And crumpled bleeding into the mud.