She stumbles backwards off the wall, hands raised. She can feel the heat rising against her and the rage of the god inside him. This shouldn’t be possible. But he’s here, it’s happening and she’s going to die.
As he leaps for her, her heart is filled with a blind fury. How dare he? How dare he, when she’s so close? She bares her teeth in rage. A last defiant scream, as her skin starts to blister from golden fire, as a god who should be dead uses this man to reach out for her.
He never makes it. Instead, he finds hands at his ankle, pulling down hard. Crowkisser winces at the wet sound as his skull strikes stone.
Crabflick’s fingers are locked around his foot, straining backwards.
As the young fisherboy hauls with all his might, others crowd in to help. For a moment, the waves of golden heat are submerged beneath a grey-clad tide as her people pile on bodily, swarming to her defence. Axes and clubs rise and fall, as her army strives for their first real blood on this long march.
They’re not quite quick enough. As she struggles to her feet, Crowkisser watches the man rise with a ruined face, gold pouring out between the meat and bone, the crushed rasp of his breath strangely loud as he heaves himself upright. As he stands, a knife in his hand rises and falls, and Crabflick’s suddenly a slick of red below the chin.
Crowkisser feels a buzzing like a drowsy hive, a pressure in her skull she’s not felt in an age. The man shouts something to her,his teeth white, his fingers wet with gore. The words are lost in the light and the pressure, but still she sees the red threads on his knife arm as he charges, weaver’s threads. Her heart quails at the buzzing hum of a composite god being unleashed.
‘Back!’ She screams. ‘Back!’
It takes them a moment to react. A moment too long. The long men shouldering through the crowd pause uncertainly.
As they do, light blossoms and the god pushes its way out. The man’s eyes boil. His skin burns and runs, then splits at the seams, rays of gold driving his spine and legs into unholy angles.
Crowkisser looks at the low wall in front of her, and knows it’s not nearly strong enough.
She looks at the fleeing crowd and knows they’re not fast enough.
The grass vibrates under their feet. The pressure builds. The sky is alive with burning, boiling, golden heat.
She has a second to be heartbroken that it ends like this.
The detonation tears the sound from the air, lifting her up and slamming her down until her teeth rattle. She feels a rib snap, hears screams. It’s raining in the gold light, soft, drifting wet scraps.
Then a steadier fall. Larger chunks that might once have been fingers, or limbs, or an ear.
Somehow, she’s still here to see it all.
She staggers as strong hands help her to her feet. Waves of dizziness crash over her as the colour of the sky slides back from gold, through red to blue.
She spits, tastes honey, spice.
The whole world is ringing.
She slides up onto her knees, peering over what remains of the wall, its stones shattered and twisted into slag.
Beyond it she sees crumpled heaps, staggering, helping one another up. Her people. Her army piecing itself back together. Others bringing buckets of water to douse a circle of burning grass. Astic pragmatism even under a cindered sky.
There’s a lump in the middle of that circle, a mess of burningred and gold light, barely in the shape of a man, reeking of burnt sugar and cooked skin. Sandsinger stands at the circle’s edge, her arm outstretched.
It takes Crowkisser a moment to see what the old woman has clasped in her blistered hand. When she does, her stomach twists, and she retches the last of her breakfast into the smouldering grass.
Another arm, scorched, sundered at the elbow.
Slowly she sees a second shape atop the pile. Hunched protectively, its spine charred into an arc of bone.
She staggers forwards. The ground is wrong, and the sky is singing.
She falls to her knees beside the flames and sifts the ashes, heedless of the tugging at her shoulders, her arms. Eventually, she finds a few shreds of mussable hair, what might once have been a jaw that once made a smile with a crooked, chipped tooth.
She takes Crabflick’s jaw in her hands and turns it slowly, listening to the chimes it makes when it moves the air. After a moment, she looks at Sandsinger. The old woman watches her levelly, holding Crowkisser’s gaze as she sets the arm down.
The words don’t leave Sandsinger’s lips on the first try. Instead, she shoulders her club, runs a blackened hand through her hair, then looks to Crowkisser and tries again.
