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“It was his lung,” I say.
“My liege, are you prime?”
I only just realize my teeth are chattering. Needles of pain shoot up my left arm. Beneath the armor, the bones must be shattered from the force of the collision. But lying between the hooves of the Praetorians’ horses is a blood-smeared object. I pick it up with my good hand and hold it close to see it better as the street fills with my advancing army.
It is the hilt of Darrow’s slingBlade, and its killing edge lies in shattered pieces upon the stone.
I’M IN A NIGHTMARE.
Lysander’s riders hound me through the labyrinth of dark streets. Searing pain digs deep into my chest. I did not see the hidden blade until it was inside me. My teeth chatter together. Each breath froths with blood. I have no weapon. Only my right arm works. My left is shattered along with the slingBlade. The gift my wife gave me almost twelve years ago lies upon the ground to be a trophy for Lysander’s mantel. One day, he will tell his son how he took it, as I told Pax of how I took Octavia’s.
The city itself becomes a devil and the prisoners surge south. Lysander’s sunbloods have broken the other strongpoints. They trample men in the wide boulevards as his Golds flow across the roofs. Few escape the nocturnal predators. His infantry is comprised of all those prisoners we took in the Battle of the Ladon. Over a million join with Heliopolitan mobs to butcher survivors in sunless gardens, underneath the striped awnings of abandoned markets, and on the steps of old amphitheaters littered with refugee trash. The Heliopolitans seem to be killing Tychians as well.
I escape back to the Mound only by virtue of the chaos.
My horse’s hooves clomp over cobbles deep with blood. Ragged survivors from the other strongpoints pour across the mall toward the steps of our last refuge. There are so few. There is no way to tell if the sacrifice was worth it. If the quarter hour we bought saved any lives at all. The city is lost. Lights glimmer in orbit from Atalantia’s arriving ships. My men are fractured. Did Rhonna make it back to the Morning Star? It will be a tomb. Those at the ships will never reach the tunnels. And on foot, how far could they go? It’s up to Colloway to lead them. But lead them to what? It’s all ruins, and Atalantia will be coming with real weapons very soon.
Thraxa and Red Sniper wait for me at the bottom of the Mound steps. Thraxa looks nearly dead herself. “Did you get him?” she asks.
“No.”
The strength holding her up evaporates. She slumps in the saddle and barely manages to follow me up the Mound’s steps. I dismount inside the atrium, where Harnassus is organizing the survivors. Legionnaires rush to help Thraxa down from her horse. It takes four of them. Harnassus rushes to me, slowing when he sees the razor sticking through my chest.
“Are you—”
“Screwface,” I demand.
“He hasn’t returned.”
I say nothing.
“They broke through his lines. Only four men have come back. They say they saw him fall to a Gold.”
“They were going wild trying to get him,” a man adds. “They were Fulminata.”
Fulminata. The legion in which he embedded himself at my command.
I hang my head, dazed from my wounds and exhaustion. I don’t know if I can move another muscle. My hamstrings and lower back are cramping so bad I have to have men help me out of my armor. I almost pass out as they take the vambrace off my shattered arm. They leave the breastplate on, for fear of disturbing the razor in my chest.
There’s a commotion as they take off my dead boots. I stand barefoot in blood to see men stumbling in carrying Screwface. A shout goes up when the men see him pass. He’s missing his right leg from the knee down, and the skin above his hairline. He’s been scalped by a Fulminata Obsidian. As the medici tie off the wound, Screw stares at the murals on the ceiling of the antechamber and moans. His eyes are wild and distant. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “We tried to hold. We did. They had horses. It was a bloodydamn cavalry charge. Mowed us down like wheat. They’ll catch the support. Some of them. Horses! Horses!”
“He’s in shock,” one of the medici says and then sees the razor in my chest. “Sir…”
“No time. It’s just a lung.”
Screwface grabs my good arm. “Clown. Pebble. Are they safe?”
“Aye,” I say. “They’re safe. They’re with Sevro.”
“If anyone could make it out, it’s that ugly bastard.”
I whisper to the medicus, “Will he live?”
“Hopefully not,” Thraxa says. She’s slumped on the statue’s pedestal as Reds help her out of her armor. She’s bleeding badly from the hole Lysander and his men put in her belly. “It’s over. Here. Back home. No shame in it. We gave it a rugged shot.” Her hammer is gone. Her reserve razor sits in her lap. “But I won’t be tortured by that creature. Atalantia will vivisect us. There’s only one honorable end to this.”
I walk over and take her razor.
“It is not over,” I snap. Several hundred weary faces look at me. “It is not over!” I shout to them. “If you can fight, assemble at center.” The few able-bodied men assemble.
