The shot catches her shield on the crown and ricochets off, thundering into the mountain side, exploding rock and ice in hissing swirls. Icecaller bites down a scream. Her arm aches like a dropped anvil but amazingly, it’s still there. She mutters a quick blessing to Thell’s steelmakers, and smiles at the thought of Steelfinder’s smug face. She stretches that smile out to encompass Shroudweaver’s terrified eyes under her, shoots him a wink, and leaps off. Shipwright can take care of him. She seems used to it.
The marksman must have a perch up high. She skims the mountain’s ridges in panic. It’s hard to see against the light being thrown off the creature growing down on the Barrowland. Still, she sights something on the western ledge, among the eagle nests, shadow against the black rock, fluid and strange and racing towards the gate.
She tries to follow it but her gaze is taken by the sky. A storm of crows peeling out of it, spiralling down to the ground, forming into a slight girl at the feet of the creature. Crowkisser. It can’t be anyone but Crowkisser. And above her, in front of her, all aroundher, the glowing, living song of glory Shroudweaver has brought forth. A god. It must be a god. This must be what her father meant when he talked about them. He hadn’t done it justice. Nothing could do it justice.
As Icecaller looks at it again, it feels like falling in love, like her first kiss with Steelfinder, quick and brave. Like holding Nigh for the first time, as she moved softly against her chest. Like falling into her father’s arms.
The Astic army staggers before the god. A few still list forwards, but wending, drunken, as if lost in a harsh storm. Only Crowkisser stands tall before it, her skin still crawling with feathers as the remnants of crows press themselves down into the bone.
At Icecaller’s back, she hears her people crying, singing. She’s humming something under her breath herself. A song her mother used to know.
Days of fear and panic, all that dying and killing – none of it matters now. They’ve won. For all his strangeness, Shroudweaver’s lived up to his reputation. Crowkisser’s finished. Icecaller allows herself a little smile at that.
Below, the composite turns towards the slight girl, and she steps backwards. For a moment, it looks like she might run, but then Icecaller realises she’s reaching for something. A scrap too small to make out, hurled overarm into the body of the god, arcing against the seared sky.
A moment later, the world detonates. Icecaller screws her eyes shut against a wash of light. Screams at her back. Wailing. She forces herself to count to five, marking the beats of her hammering heart, despite the feeling that something is very wrong. When she opens them, her vision dances purple. Loss howls in her veins. Something beautiful is gone, the icy calm of Shroudweaver’s magic vanished. Below her, the god he made is dead, scattered.
The people of Astic shaking off its spell, swarm forwards. And then, as if in counterpoint, the mountain underneath her shakes, shuddering like a wounded thing. Some kind of detonation from the gate, now weeping black smoke, rock. And betweenthe smoke, in breaths and blood and raindrops, come the dead, blossoming from the corpse of the god, tearing themselves free from its ruined scraps and rushing towards the mountain. They’re joined by something older; spirits pulling themselves from the deep barrows, spectral hands breaking the split earth of the mounds. Ephemeral mouths howl in rage and hunger. Ghostly forms move in strands of gossamer light to join the throng flying towards Thell. All her childhood nightmares finally become real.
For a minute she’s five again, wide-eyed on her father’s knee, listening to his tales of the dead, to his stern warning never to dig on green mounds, never to drink ice water, never to let her tattoos be broken. Or maybe she’s nine, sparring with Skinpainter, watching their hands as they spin histories of the Empire, of bones, and of slavery only barely escaped.
A cold sweat rides her skin, and her stomach twists with fear. Her eyes linger on the bright lines of the dead arcing towards the smoking ruin of the gate. Beneath them, Astic’s army harries the last few soldiers retreating towards the mountain. She shakes herself. She’s needed. She’s grown and she’s needed.
At her back, Shipwright and Fallon’s pup disappear into the depths with Belltoller’s ragged remains flopping between their panicked hands. Icecaller lets them go, looking for Shroudweaver. The sight of his shocked face and his pale fingers lights a fire of anger in her that burns out the fear. In seconds, her fingers are around his throat, her breath hot and wet against his cheek. His pulse is thready. His skin slick beneath her hands. A stink of saltpetre and sulphur.
She slams him against the rock until his teeth rattle. ‘What did youdo?’
He struggles for breath, kicks.
She slams again, enjoying the wet sound his skull makes. ‘What?’
He winces, then his hands are a blur, tapping on her ribs, her arms. She feels herself go weak, something in those strikes turning her grip to water. He’s quicker than she realised. Colder. She staggers back, and he looks at her with twisted lips. ‘Not me. Her.’
He starts to refasten the red bindings around his wrists as he talks. Runs fingers over the sticky patch on his skull, grimaces. Soldiers rush by. He sways like a reed. Distantly, there are more explosions, the roar of the storm, screams.
Icecaller shakes the numbness out of her arms, levels her spear shakily. ‘You’re not going anywhere until I get some answers.’
Shroudweaver gazes down the shaft, and his face softens a little. ‘My daughter’s done something terrible. I think I can fix this, but I can’t do it if you won’t let me.’ His fingers linger on the engraved tip. Push it gently aside. She lets him. He offers her a small nod, readjusting pouches and belt, as he reapplies black powder to his temples. As he starts towards the tunnels down, he stops and turns. His face is old, and uncertain. ‘If I can’t fix it, get them out. As many as you can.’ He seems about to add something else, but turns and joins the mass of bodies piling into the broken heart of the mountain.
For a heartbeat, Icecaller doesn’t know what to do. Then she sees her father, broad shouldered in the storm, slick with the driving rain, barking orders. He smiles at her, backlit by thunder. Even here, amid the rain, the smoke and the dying, he smiles at her.
He’s at her side in seconds. One massive arm around her shoulders, his fingers mussing her hair. ‘Not quite to plan, little eagle.’
She watches his face and feels five years old again. ‘What now, Dad?’
He straightens her spear, kisses her forehead. ‘Now we go get your sister, we bottle up the dead and we throw these whelk-fuckers out our mountain.’
She wants to believe him. No, she wants to curl into the crook of his arm and smell the sweat and warmth of him. She wants to fall asleep to his shit jokes and his boozy breath. But before that, she wants to believe him. She has to ask though, and hates herself for asking, ‘What about the dead, Dad?’
Kinghammer grins. ‘They never got me the first time.’ He squeezes her tight. ‘And that was before I had you. Now, let’s go get your sister, and then we’ll be unstoppable.’ He turns, bellowsover his shoulder. ‘Painter, hold the wall as long as you can, then take the rest to the council chamber. We’ll make a stand there.’
Skinpainter’s hands wave broadly, reassuringly.
Icecaller follows her father and the army into the heart of the mountain in a cacophony of hammering feet, shouted orders, dust and blood. The first clashes with Astic come near the gate, a few hundred of them clambering over the smoking ruins, piling out of the burning haze, tongues alight with curses. In response, Thell spits warriors out of stone sluices, culverts, quick-cut passageways. This isn’t the first time the Stump’s weathered a war. The city’s spears work well down here, filling every corner with blades, taking out eyes, kidneys, throats with snake-quick strikes. It’s bloody work, slick with torn guts and stopped breaths, but it seems to be blunting Astic’s advance. Icecaller leaves them to it, heading for the sleeping chambers, for Steelfinder and Nigh. They’ve talked this over. If anything ever happened, that’s where they’re supposed to go. And things have definitely happened. The chambers are the safest place in the mountain, down in the guts. Big old doors and all the guards already down there on off-shift. Getting there’s a challenge, though. Astic’s little cutters don’t make it easy. One of the grey-clad fucks staggers into her path and swipes, wide-eyed. She ducks, rips him up the middle, doesn’t stop to see whether he still looks shocked.
On her left, her father barrels into a clot of scared looking fishermen, his hammer crushing shields, arms, driving rims and shards into shuddering ribcages. Crowkisser’s army fold back from their advance. They don’t give up though. As they push downwards, lanky men emerge from the press, circling like sharks, their faces grim, large blades loose in their hands. Icecaller catches their thrusts on the haft of her spear, twists the butt to break ribs and knees, stomping down on weakened joints and wrenching the spear-tip deep into startled hearts. Her father doesn’t bother with even these small ceremonies. The first few knives simply graze his thick hide as he grabs over-extended wrists, pulls them close, and snaps. Broken bodies are cast into the next charging wave, which crumples under the unexpected weight, before thehammer swings down, to make space and silence amid the blood and chaos.
It gets trickier as they go. There’s a lot of Crowkisser’s brood, mad for blood. Amateurs, the lot of them, but all they need is luck. Icecaller can sense something worse in the offing too. The dead are thick in the air, calling to her blood. She can feel their pulse in her ears, whispering thinly, touching her neck, her back, her thighs. Her tattoos itch. Whenever it gets too much, her father reaches a thick-fingered hand back for her, guiding her past broken bodies, through whirling knots of violence. The hammer swings in low, brutal arcs and the corridors empty before them. Icecaller follows behind, shield held high, spear darting in fast, economical movements. Her feet move in dancer’s patterns, her mind loose. Most of her thoughts are with her sister … her sister, who’ll be somewhere below, scared, pretending to be brave. Her fierce-faced, fuzz-haired little shit of a sister. Icecaller smiles at the thought even as a gangly ship-boy charges, yelling. She punches a neat hole in his throat, sidesteps, pushes his falling body aside with her shield. Icecaller wonders if Crowkisser’s inside yet, if she’s here to see her precious army die.
