Wild and strange to see her here, now, as the world melts and implodes, a face from his childhood appearing above the fleeing, screaming ranks. Her broad cheekbones smudged with the light of a dying god, her hair almost haloed with gold, something unreal, almost inhuman in the shape of her. She’d snuck him apple juice from the kitchens, and raised him on broad shoulders to tap the beams of the towers; now she was a stark sketch of relentless fury, holding a burning woman on the edge of death.
She doesn’t see him. Her eyes are locked on Belltoller, on thehissing gap in her face that crawls with twitching shadow. She moves with furious speed, the crowd parting before her, reflexively, like starlings before a storm.
Somehow, Quickfish keeps pace, trying not to think about the death at his back, the smell of blood and burning rock wafting up from below. Shipwright has brought the Shroudweaver with her, and the abomination he just conjured has walked straight out of Quickfish’s nightmares to die in front of him. He can feel the fire of it washing over him as they run, a burning gloss clinging to his skin. He tries to tamp down the terror, but his body thrums with it, panic rising in his throat, hammering in his heart, holding his head in a vice that threatens to trip his stumbling legs. He slows his breathing into long, ragged gasps and watches Roofkeeper’s back as they jog in front of him, his strong hands tight around the axe. Belltoller’s body jostles again, wet against his fingers. Quickfish wipes her blood on his shirt, absently watching it eat gently into the threads. The world is unravelling.
They continue to plunge down into chaos. The Stump has been cracked open like an egg. Somewhere beneath them, Crowkisser’s army is flooding through the gates, and with them something Quickfish doesn’t have a name for. The fragments of that thing that exploded on the Barrowlands. Something Shroudweaver called up. Something Crowkisser tore apart. Swirling, screaming spirits of rage and light. He feels his mind slide loose at the thought, a hysterical laugh bubbling up in his chest. Clamps down on it, and runs. The remainder of Thell’s army runs with them and past them, faster than these foreigners by far. They know the mountain like a hound knows its course, speeding by each other, leaping down chutes and funnels in the rock, plummeting downwards to reinforce the gates. The honeycomb of the Stump spits steel. Somewhere, distantly the last dying thunder of Skinpainter’s awful storm rages and beyond that Kinghammer’s voice beats counterpoint. As they spiral deeper, Quickfish glances outwards, through the passing archways. The Barrowlands are filled with drifting golden scraps, tossed in the driving rain; shreds of the thing Crowkisser destroyed. Between the golden ash, yowlingspirits plunge downwards, wreathed in mad laughter. One pauses, meets his eyes for a moment, and Quickfish glimpses a broad, hollow head, hung with sharp teeth. Its mouth splits wide for a second, before it’s pulled away and down, following the howling throng towards the sundered gate.
Quickfish has never known anything like it. The madness is beyond anything he’s ever seen and they pause for none of it. Shipwright’s legs are like pistons, the Belltoller’s body rocking in her arms. She never once looks lost, but thunders downwards into the heart of the mountain, to the council chamber. They’re not the first there.
Civilians push forwards, filing into the echoing space, ringed by a smattering of scared young warriors, clutching shields and unsteady spears. Quickfish distantly recognises the tattooist, Steelfinder, by her dark hair and strong jaw. Behind her are the Deadsingers, raised above the chattering, panicked heads of the crowd on the first rung of carved stone seats, their hands interlocked and veins blue even against painted skin. Their weathered faces are steady and a soft song is on their lips. Around them the air is unnaturally still. They move slower within it, charms, bones and hair drifting gently as tranquillity radiates from them. Quickfish feels it against his skin like a cool breeze. His racing heart steadies. Around him, the effect is mirrored. The panic slows. The crowd calms.
Shipwright does not slow. She drives towards the Deadsingers, Belltoller’s body limp over her shoulder.
They watch her approach. Sway serpentine. ‘Leave her with us,’ they say, and the syllables fall in unison, hanging in the still air.
Shipwright shakes her head. ‘She needs help.’
The Deadsingers glance at each other, their faces shaded with sorrow. ‘She is gone. You may leave her with us, for her long walk onward.’ They gesture to the milling crowd, ‘For now, we tend the living. So should you.’
Another explosion sounds from the gate, dust sifting downwards. Distant cries of pain.
Shipwright doesn’t move a muscle. Her eyes are flat. ‘I know what you can do. Did you think Shroud wouldn’t tell me? Do it.’
The Deadsingers flow towards her, the crowd parting as they slide their mouths either side of her head. ‘She isgone. Contaminated. As’ – their dry hands pluck at her sleeves – ‘As are you. Now.Leave. Her. With. Us.’
Shipwright’s lips sketch a reply but it’s lost in the sound of sudden screams. Quickfish turns to see a handful of Thell’s soldiers pelting towards them, ragged and blood-smeared, a strange, unhinged light in their eyes. But, for all he knows, there’s a similar light in his own. This isn’t a day for the sane.
He moves to welcome them, until Roofkeeper steps in front of him, axe ready.
‘Easy, Roof,’ Quickfish says. ‘They’re on our side.’
Roof’s voice is low, frantic. ‘The tattoos, Fish.’
Quickfish looks harder. This troop are a mess, their bodies wet with fresh-cut wounds, torn geometrics crossing their arms. Blood on their teeth. Something is terribly wrong with these soldiers. They shouldn’t be walking, much less hurtling towards him at speed.
His mind makes the connection a moment before a spear punches through the woman next to him, a moment before the charging men and women pour into a barely formed defensive line, on all fours, on broken limbs, their teeth red and ravenous. He shouts a warning, and hears it echoed by Steelfinder, high and panicked.
Then all is blades and breaking. Screams rising up the cold walls of the council chamber, as the civilians in the hall realise what’s happening.
The people of Thell are met by half-remembered faces, half-familiar voices stretched and torn into something ragged and murderous. The returning soldiers jerk as if filled with fever, twitching and febrile. Their bodies grimed with blood, skin pulsing. The first charge hits the civilians like a punch. Half of them flee up the raked rise of the council chamber, their arms stretching desperately. Others are pulled down by grasping hands,or trampled underfoot. Panic thick as sweat in the air. In response, the Deadsingers’ song swells. The charging horde slows, and the fleeing civilians keep their pace, sliding through spaces in the air created by their harmony.
A moment or two for Steelfinder to find herself at the front of a ragged shield-wall, before she’s sent reeling backwards under the weight of bodies that throw themselves on her spear arm. Shipwright lurches to her rescue, but picks up another madman on her back. She spins furiously, desperately, hammering a clenched fist into the side of his skull. The brass thing clutched between her fingers buzzes and yowls with every impact. Roofkeeper swings towards the beleaguered women, using the haft of his axe, for now. Quickfish tries to stick close as he forges through the press, but the charging mob are relentless, their voices low and guttural. He staggers under a weight of arms and thighs. Fingers scrabble at his panicking body. He pushes back, feels his knuckles slide off jabbering teeth. A woman that once served him spiced bread, who pulled her child aside shyly when they first met, screams into his face. Her voice is doubled, twisted, wrapped in other whispers that writhe on her tongue like maggots. The strands between her teeth might be the colour of her child’s hair.
Quickfish falls hard onto the stone, feels the air rush out of his lungs. Distantly, he watches Steelfinder drive a wedge of soldiers forwards, her fingers hard on the haft of her spear, punching in slow, economical movements, drifting in the spaces opened by the Deadsingers’ songs. Quickfish wriggles desperately, pushing upwards with his knees. Another body throws itself atop the first, hot breath that smells of beer and butcher’s blocks. Too fucking heavy. He kicks hopelessly, twisting his head to avoid teeth which snap at his throat, his heart a lurching lump of terror.
Steelfinder’s soldiers are making space. He can see their feet picking their way through the chaos. Not fast enough for him. The woman’s teeth come down again, skittering off his raised forearm. A spike of hot pain flares in his right hand and his palm itches so much he screams. He has a brief memory of a fountain, of sharp little teeth. Part of him wonders if these are the thingsthat a dying person feels. A bigger part of him misses his dad.
Quickfish feels nails dig into his stomach, teeth snapping at his fingers. He lashes out again, watches the frenzied woman catch his wrist in scabbed fingers and raise his veins to her chattering mouth. Something flares in his hand again, hot and furious, a blaze of gold, and a flicker of honey on his tongue. The woman drops his arm with a yelp. Her pupils widen as something shakes loose, beneath the fever. Quickfish pushes away, his eyes locked onto hers. The beer-breathed man scrabbles back to join her. They watch him in unison, mouths open. Slowly, they stretch their arms out towards him. Palms up. Open, hopeful.
The haft of an axe cracks the woman’s skull and she drops like a stone, even as a spear swims through the air and pins the wide-eyed man through the shoulder. For a second, Quickfish is furious. Then the noise and the murder floods back in. Roofkeeper leaps forwards and grabs Quickfish’s arm, as Steelfinder takes the other. They drag him backwards towards the line of warriors, the screaming civilians huddling behind. He doesn’t protest. Just marks the two slumped bodies, and feels his hand burn like a brand.
The infected fall back briefly, the Deadsingers’ song sweeping the field like evening shadow. Steelfinder and the remaining few soldiers fan out, forming a thin line of metal against the dark. The chastened, bloody mob skirt their lowered spear-tips, wary of drawing nearer, for now. Shipwright watches them hollow-eyed, massaging her buzzing wrist. In the space, the Deadsingers ghost forwards, falling on the injured, striking them with open palms. They sing to them in thick harmonies that blend and build. Quickfish watches them in confusion, glancing at Roofkeeper who shakes his head wearily, unknowing. The remainder of Thell’s soldiers hang back, fearful. Steelfinder scans them with tired, lidded eyes, taking stock.
As he’s lowered gently to the ground, Quickfish sees something rise from the bodies the Deadsingers are attending. A drifting haze of red; glimpses of teeth, tongues, eyes. The twins raise the pitch of their song, put it to a glass edge and string it with blades.The red clouds shudder, burst, disappear. The mob behind the shields bays in response.
The Deadsingers ignore them. Under their hands some of the injured rise, slow and weeping. Cautious comrades help steady them, wiping the worst of the gore from their hair, shepherd them into secluded crevices at the back of the hall.
They don’t all get up.
