She points towards the battle again. ‘This is not what we camefor. We came to free them. To build a better world. This … this is slaughter.’
She lets that hang in the air between them, gives him a moment to listen to the screams and shouts from below. Watches him waver, before she stretches a hand towards him. ‘Let’s save our people. The old and the new.’
And before Slickwalker can think better of it, he turns and follows her into shadow.
79
Conventional wisdom was that certain elements of the world could not be broken. In the event of the south, we realised that we were wrong. Light can be shattered. The sky can burn.
—Notes on the Destruction, Wicktwister
After that, they navigate by the sounds of dying, in a blur of violence and brief, desperate struggle. Slickwalker’s gun unfurls, squalls, spits blackness into snarling, distorted faces. Thell’s soldiers fall one by one, before rising again, sharp-toothed, yowling, mad. The dead are bolder now, growing in number with every passing moment. Crowkisser’s army is driven back into corners and culverts, hauled bodily into the mob, torn limb from limb. Her long men do what they can, fighting the dead and the living, but still dwindling, retreating.
The dead of the Empire are an irresistible tide. Too many of them, too hungry and too fast, infesting the bodies of Thell’s injured and casting them back against the living.
Nothing should be able survive this. Nothing, and yet, here in the red belly of the mountain, Crowkisser sees the unity she’d hoped to forge. She sees her new people, Astic and Thell alike, rallying together against the dead, fighting for their lives.
There’s too much to take in. Too many souls struggling and snuffed out. Crowkisser thinks she has a handle on it, Slickwalker flowing in her wake like a half-born shadow, but she’s wrong. The battle fills the Stump. At every turn, the living clash with the dead, tooth and nail.
Three levels down, Sandsinger’s back-to-back with one of the Thell lads. The pair of them are hunkered down behind a broken table as the dead prowl beyond. He looks a little like her grandsonwho was lost at sea, and a lot like the only friendly face she’s seen in a stretch.
His hand finds her shoulder as she reties his shield, his voice low and soft. ‘If you get out of this will you tell my da that I tried my best?’
She cuffs him around the head. ‘You can bloody well tell him yourself.’ As she glowers at him, the howling of the dead swells. They share a glance, heft their weapons and charge.
A drop and a plunge, and deeper in the mountain, a long man faces down the horde. He sketches a thin line with his blade, a weary circle facing the ridden bodies of his brothers as they prepare for a final strike. Behind him, a line of shields and spears seals the passage. Thell’s sent fresh troops from below. The long man watches helplessly, they’ve no idea what they’re walking into. The dead go for them with the speed of wolves, and their line crumples. He contemplates using the space to run, to put distance between himself and their teeth, but there’s a mountain girl in Thell’s front line that looks a little too close to his own daughter, and before he knows it his aching legs are carrying him back to their buckling shield-wall, blade raised against the screaming dead. Minutes later, somehow, they’re all down, and he’s not the only one of the living left standing. Thell’s soldiers lean on their shields, eyeing him warily. He loops his knife into his belt with slick hands, tries not to think about the hair matted down the edge, and shoots them a wild smile.
There are too many lives in this mountain. Even if Crowkisser can’t see them all, she can sense them, and sense their potential, all their conflicting loyalties smelted together by necessity. Her beautiful new people. All she needs to do is make them hers. And to do that, she needs to keep them alive. She can’t just save them though, they need toseeher as their saviour.
She smiles in the darkness. That traitor Emperor has handed her all the leverage she could ever need, but she has to move fast if she’s going to pull it off. Her feet pick up speed from the shadow, their edges lit with half-formed feathers. They’re still sohigh in the mountain, and every nerve in her body is screaming at her that the magic driving this is down in its guts. If she wants to make a show of this, she needs to go where things are darkest. Nothing changes.
Two more breathless minutes fleeing through the black, down through tunnels swelling with the dead, glowing in the half-light from lamps, the mad look in her eyes bouncing back at her from crystal scars etched into the wet walls. The whole body of this mountain has been marked by the cicatrice of old wars. A few levels later, and they reach the shattered front gate, hasty barricades scattered in an arc around the smoking rock. A resistance has built itself before they even arrived. Atop a spire of crumbled stone, a helmetless red-haired woman shouts orders, her face twisted in pain, one hand clutched to a spreading wound on her side. Her soldiers move with studied precision; her eyes narrow as they approach.
Crowkisser skids to a stop, then cautiously steps closer. The young woman watches her steadily.
‘You’re her.’
Crowkisser nods. ‘I am.’ She surveys the blades around her. ‘But I’m not your enemy today.’ She waves back towards the depths of the mountain, aided by a well-timed scream of agony. ‘Do you know what’s happening?’ Holds her breath, praying for ignorance.
The woman nods. ‘The dead.’
Crowkisser exhales, ‘I need to get everyone out of here.’
‘We’re working on it.’
Crowkisser steels herself. ‘Can I send them to you? Can you hold the gate?’
The redhead rolls her shoulders. ‘For a time.’ She frowns. ‘I think I’m supposed to kill you, though. Capture you at least.’
Crowkisser gestures at the blood on her hands. ‘Haven’t you had enough dying for today?’
A murmur of agreement.
Crowkisser smiles softly. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Lightmender.’
‘Well, Lightmender, let’s be allies for now. If we make it through this, you can kill me tomorrow.’
