The Gauntlet and the Broken Chain, page 25
I can never go home again.
‘That’s the plan, Tomas,’ she said at last, lowering her hands and blinking away tears. ‘You knew that coming in. It’s not a good plan, but it’s all I have.’
Tomas just nodded and ran his hands through his hair.
‘I’m sorry to question,’ he said eventually. ‘You are right. As long as Tullen One-Eye walks this earth, none of us are safe.’
Tomas patted Floré on the shoulder and then smiled at Cuss. ‘Your teeth aren’t sharp enough to be an Orubor, so don’t grin too much,’ he said, and then stood and left the room. Cuss frowned at him as he left, and Floré tried to stop her fingers shaking. Desperate for something to occupy her hands she tried to clean the blood from her gauntlets and sword. The rag she was using was clotted, utterly black in the faint light of the candles, and she scrubbed but the blood wouldn’t wash free. Dawn was coming, and with it the rust-folk. They come seeking peace, she thought, and I’m bringing a blade.
‘I’ll find Starbeck and get the canvas squared. You should get some rest.’
Cuss’s voice startled her, and she looked at him.
‘We have a few hours, Commander,’ he said, and passed her a clean rag. ‘I doubt we’ll get another chance to rest. Get some sleep. I’ll wake you well before dawn.’
Floré let her gauntlets rest on the table, and the sword next to her. The blood had pooled in the rune engravings.
‘It has to be this way, Cuss. He won’t stop. Nobody should have this power. Janos had it, and it almost broke him. It’s too much, for one person.’
Cuss sat silent and still with her, and then laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.
‘He could do anything, and he chose this,’ Cuss said. ‘We’ll stop him.’
From a pouch at his belt he produced a handful of silver coins, and counted out four, placing them down by her gauntlets. Four more he clicked into the metal slots of his own gauntlets, the little metal ridges that looked ornamental flexing and then settling back in place over the coin edges with a click. The edges of the thick coins jutted out past the knuckle ridge of the gauntlets.
‘Silver and fire for demons, Boss,’ he said, and with a tight smile left her alone in the dark. Floré stared at the pile of coins, and then snuffed out the candle.
~
‘Walk me through it,’ Benazir said, and Nintur ran an armoured thumb across the table top.
‘Three dozen in this tower, at least,’ he said, and sniffed. His eyes kept glancing back to Marta, still asleep. ‘This group have been left to guard the redoubt while the rest have retreated below – some internal machinations, something about a threat from below is all we’ve managed to gather. Refugees who’ve arrived since the Claw Winter started have all been taken here. There are more than three hundred – this is only one of six rooms, Commander. We’ve requested to speak to their council, but this Pekka from Holt Varsi just keeps us here. They’ve made no move against us, and provided us with fare and shelter. Obeying the armistices in word, if not in spirit. I’ve not pressed matters – we’ve shelter and warmth and food, and it’s hell out there. And when we left Undal City, it was half on fire and besieged by wyrms. I’m glad they left, at least.’
Benazir closed her eyes and bit her lip.
‘Berren’s black blood,’ she said. ‘We got some whitestaffs back to Undal City, but we need to get Marta there soon. She’s wasting away. How often does she wake?’
She did not mention the other part of her mission. Is she strong enough for that? Floré had been resolute, but Benazir had seen the fear in her eyes. Peace at any cost, sister, Benazir thought, but a wordless doubt hung heavy in her chest.
‘This morning she woke for a little while. She was weak, but we managed to feed her some porridge. Commander, if I may… I know Starbeck said the girl is important. But there are three hundred people here. The Antian have not given us free rein, but they have given us shelter. Is violence the answer?’
‘It’s an answer,’ Benazir said, but then she rubbed at her eye. Three hundred refugees. ‘We have a captured orb, Nintur. Atop the tower. The Antian on guard from Holt Varsi want it, accords be damned, and they’ve taken my adviser against his will. This girl has a role to play.’
Benazir lowered her voice and leaned in close to the hulking captain.
‘She is a skein-wreck, Nintur,’ she said, and the man went rigid. It spoke volumes of his loyalty that he had taken his men north through the hell of a Claw Winter for spans and spans on Starbeck’s order without knowing even that. ‘She is the daughter of the Salt-Man. She is a hammer that can change the world, if she lives. Lothal the wolf is out there in the snow and storm, and the Ferron have taken the Northern Marches. For a skein-wreck, or even the chance of one in a few years, it is worth any risk. I need to get her to the orb, and back to the whitestaffs.’
They both stood in silence and watched the lancers gearing up, buckling on armour. They had no weapons. Refugees were lingering on the periphery, quiet but watching. We need to keep control of this situation.
‘The way up will be bloody,’ Nintur said, and Benazir realised the solution and smiled at him. She waved to the lancers to gather around and cast a glance at Yselda. The girl was sat with Marta, holding her hand, speaking to her quietly even as the younger girl slept.
‘I need to see the Antian council. We swarm the door guards, and then hold the doorway – you need to bar it from the inside until we come back. Three of you with Marta at any time – kill any who try to harm her. No hesitation at that. Arm yourselves as best you can.’
The lancers shifted their feet, and a young woman with a flame of red hair and a burst of freckles raised a hand.
‘Sir, we can’t make the top of the tower without killing, if we can make it at all.’
Benazir nodded and grinned. The girl looked like Guil, a little. The same hair, the same freckles. But the nose is wrong, and the eyes are wrong, and the mouth is wrong. Nobody else would ever look like Guil. You’d like this, Legs, she thought. Guil always appreciated a plan that wasn’t just blood and violence.
‘We aren’t going up,’ she said. ‘Holt Varsi guard the redoubt, and Pekka Secondclaw commands, correct? I’ve no time for their politics, his deep gods. Couldn’t give a shit. The council probably don’t even know we’re here. I’m going down, to talk to whoever the hell is in charge.’
They gathered by the door, and Nintur’s lancers herded the refugees back. Some called advice and criticism, but Benazir didn’t engage.
‘Best fist?’ she asked, and Nintur pointed to a hulking man with curling ginger hair, skin ruddy.
‘Rollo.’
Rollo grinned at her. The hulking man was wearing a heavy chain shirt under his blue tabard, and when Nintur pointed to him he pulled on a steel plate helm with cheek and nose guard, and then cinched the ties on his gauntlets tight.
‘Can’t promise they won’t die if I hit them,’ he said, stepping to the door, and Benazir shrugged.
‘We all make our choices, Rollo. They’ve made theirs. I’d appreciate it if you break a limb rather than a skull, but don’t risk your life on it.’
Benazir turned a final glance back to doorway leading to Marta, and closed her eyes for a long moment before giving Rollo the nod.
The man marched forward, frowning, and pounded on the door, heavy hits. His gauntlets smashed against the wood of the door, over and over, and Antian voices began to yell questions but Benazir couldn’t hear them over the pounding of steel on wood. The door opened a crack and she saw a flash of obsidian, and another – at least three Antian, spears drawn, faces worried.
Rollo hauled at the door and threw himself through, onto the spears of the Antian. He had at least two feet of height on the biggest of them, and must have weighed double what they did. By the time Benazir had stepped through the door with Nintur, two of them were already on the ground, dead or unconscious. The third was scrabbling away on the floor – Rollo had toppled into all of them, sending them into a writhing mass on the floor. He grabbed the fleeing Antian’s leg and hauled him back across the smooth stone floor, and slammed his fist down on the top of its head. The Antian went limp.
In the dark of the corridor, Benazir held out a hand and a lancer passed her a torch from the refugees’ hall. The three Antian were not moving. She listened hard, but she could not hear more coming down the stairs. Rollo pulled himself to his feet and flexed his right arm – there was a slowly spreading pool of blood at his bicep at a tear in the chainmail, and flecks of obsidian fell from the mail shirt down to the floor as he brushed at the wound. He nodded to her, and Benazir gestured back at the room and the lancers began to drag the Antian and their weapons inside, closing the door behind them. Benazir had a glimpse of Yselda’s terrified face and mouthed at her: Stay with Marta. The girl nodded, and in her hand clutched at the locket of charred wood tied at her neck. Benazir smiled at her, and then the door was closed.
They found the nearest stairwell and moved down, and down, and down again. After a minute there was a noise from below and a querulous bark, and Rollo moved forward again, forward past the torchlight. A strangled scream and a brutal slam of flesh on stone, and by the time Benazir’s torch illuminated Rollo again there were two Antian on the ground and Rollo was adjusting his helm. The big man carried himself as if every step was an effort, the weight of muscle and sheer mass above, a constant burden.
Benazir kept her breathing steady. She could have gone up, brought blood and the blade to Pekka Secondclaw and his scant troop. I could have chosen violence. A part of her wanted to. Why not, after all? They had chosen their path. When she had looked at Marta’s sleeping face she had known she would do any violence to keep her safe. But what else could I do?
They carried on like that for what felt like an hour, but Benazir knew it was really a matter of minutes. When stairwells ended they moved horizontally until they could move downward again, ever downward. The passages were smooth, flat worked stone below what seemed to be naturally worn walls and roof, white porous stone that was dry and cool. The passageways and rooms were abandoned. Finally they found a sloping hall bigger than the others and emerged onto it. Benazir could see that a dozen stairs opened onto this one. This is where the towers and holts meet. She thought they must be at the base of the redoubt, down where the fortress above met the stone below.
At the lower end of the sloping hall was a great arch carved in stone, a huge fresco of carved Antian figures, each thrice life-size. There were dozens of them, some depicting scenes from what must be their mythology. Their pantheon? Benazir frowned at her own ignorance. She had treated Voltos like a person, always, but realised she had treated him as if he just came from another country – a land a few miles away, where customs might be strange and gods might be different to her own. But people are people. Now that she was standing in their halls, she could see in the stonework something inhuman – the imagery in their carvings was abstract and she could follow no narrative, no meaning. It was utterly different, and as Benazir’s gaze lowered from the arching fresco to the great gates below, she shivered.
How similar are we? How similar can we be? She considered Voltos, all his long years of service. How much of his manner is affectation to fit in with us, rather than truly who he is? She was not sure what that difference could be, or if it even mattered.
‘Halt!’ came the call. At the great gates below the fresco, four Antian were standing guard. They had been sat on a low bench to the side, but seeing Rollo, Nintur, and Benazir, they scrambled to their feet and drew spears. Benazir strode forward and did not slow. They had gathered no weapons from the Antian they had subdued in their descent – she wanted to give no prompt for violence.
‘I am Bolt-Commander Benazir Arfallow,’ she said, and put steel in her voice. ‘What holt are you? I need to speak to the Hidden Council at once.’
‘Pekka said—’ one of them started to say, and another shushed him.
‘You are not permitted access to the city. You are to return under guard to the refugee quarters. Comply at once!’
Benazir sighed. She rubbed the flat side of her hook across her brow, feeling the release that pressure brought her. Sometimes when she woke she could feel her right fist clenching, but when she looked down there was only scar tissue and empty air. The weight of the hook was good – it brought her into balance. Benazir stared at the spear points and did not flinch. Why does it always have to be violence?
She could feel Rollo next to her rocking on his feet, ready to beat these four into a pulp if none of them got a lucky strike in. Nintur had his armoured hands balled in fists, looming and still. She had no doubt he would kill them all if she waved her hand. At her belt and at the top of her boots she felt an absence – the familiar weight of her daggers was not there, only leather and empty space. She flexed her left fist and took a step forward, forward, and forward until she was an inch from the points of their obsidian spears.
‘Listen to me,’ she said, and raised her hook to her rank badge and tapped it. ‘I am Bolt-Commander Benazir Arfallow of the Stormguard commandos, Commander of Stormcastle XII. I am here on direct orders from Knight-Commander Salem Starbeck, Leader of the Grand Council of the Undal Protectorate. I come as an emissary to our noble and valued allies, the Antian. You will open this gate and take me to the Hidden Council, and then you will go back upstairs and find your man Pekka Secondclaw, place him in irons, and get him ready to face the consequences of his actions.’
She did not say, The alternative is I will have these men beat you to death, and when I reach someone from a holt that actually matters I’ll apologise briefly, and then do what I was going to do anyway. She wanted to. She felt the words on the tip of her tongue, could see Floré smiling at that, Guil frowning in despair. She held her tongue. Better they fill in those blanks themselves.
‘We are not your enemy,’ she said, and one of them began to mutter in Antian to another, while a third held his spear straighter. ‘The orb atop this redoubt is ours. Holt Varsi will not have it, Pekka Secondclaw will not have it for whatever cult he follows. This farce has gone far enough, but as of right now it has not gone too far. Do you understand? Now open the doors.’
Slowly, the spears lowered save one, and the Antian hung their heads. The Antian with spear still raised slowly circled them until he was behind, Rollo turning to face him with every step, and then he yelled something in Antian and began to run, back up to the tower of Holt Varsi and the endless stairs upward.
One of the Antian, red-furred with a scar at his brow and a wide muzzle, held a fist over his heart and bowed his head. The others went to the grand gates where a heavy steel portcullis was blocking their entrance. There was a sally port with a dozen heavy locks on it, and one of them worked at unlocking them with a huge loop of ornate keys as the other pounded on a metal slot until it opened, an Antian face behind. They spoke in hurried tones and, finally, the door opened.
‘We follow the orders we are given,’ the red-furred Antian said quietly, and Benazir nodded.
‘None are dead,’ she said quietly. ‘Tensions are high. We must work together.’
The Antian nodded and bowed, and led them through the door. Stepping through, Benazir stopped suddenly, and felt Nintur and Rollo at her shoulders. They stood on an outcrop at the edge of a huge cavern of white stone, almost level with the ceiling. Every wall, the ceiling itself, was covered in intricately carved stone buildings, hangings, decoration. Below them, a city spread out – towers and forts, mansions and gardens and squares, a lake. The cavern was at least a mile wide, and everywhere there was dim light, a pallid green glowing from mushrooms that trailed along every pathway. Bridges of swaying rope or chain connected towers to caves and tunnels in the walls, and a dozen towers spanned the whole height of the huge space, great towers as grand as the shaman temple in Undal City, but never petering out – only rising and rising until the ceiling greeted them, the ceiling that was covered in hanging ropes and platforms – homes. Benazir watched, mouth agape, as a flock of bats flitted in front of them and then down, down deep into the city below.
The city was quiet, the streets near empty, but she could see the distant motes of Antian walking, climbing, working, living. In front of her, four Antian armed with obsidian-bladed axes and dressed in ornate silk robes were standing, watching nervously. Their leader stepped forward and eyed the red-furred Antian next to Benazir warily, and then turned to her and bowed deeply.
‘Welcome to Tuonela.’
~
Ashbringer clutched tight to Tullen. When he flew, he did not make her fly. Rather, he let her clutch to him in fear and desperation as gravity let him go, and every force that would normally hold a man to the ground changed. There was no thrust, no propulsion like the beating of a great wings. Rather Tullen changed the world around him so the sky itself pulled him through it. It was not the wind he changed, but something more primordial – the laws of physics bending to allow him to move as he willed, as he reached for their pattern and asked and tweaked, all with a smile. There was no change for her. The earth pulled her towards it, and the higher they flew the greater her fear. Fear of falling, a long fall to a short death. Fear of wanting to fall, she knew. Of wanting it to be over.
In the courtyard in Dun Fen he had thrown her a heavy cloak, and she had not hesitated to put it on. He could warm her, of course – could warm the air around them, could probably bring out the sun to warm the world if he chose to bend his will that way. But he is a narcissist, she thought, and he doesn’t want to be fussing with my pattern as we fly. He just wants me there to witness whatever end he has in mind.
‘Where are we going?’ she said, and he had smiled.
‘It was your idea. The reeve and his attack dog are off to negotiate, and then they will join us. Time for you and I to have some impact.’
The negotiations? She felt a heaving in the pit of her stomach as she stepped to him and gripped her arms around his back. She watched the sky for those first brief moments, but then closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, her memory of the wood, of Highmother Ash showing her how to hunt, how to kill, how to read every broken leaf and every tuft of fur in the forest. There is always a trail, the old Orubor had said. Ashbringer knew now that the Highmother had not been old, not when she taught Ashbringer as a child. But to a child, everyone not a child is ancient.
