The Dark Defiles (35 page)

own at street level, the wind was less of a presence, but it still moaned in the tangled wreckage over their heads, as if in long mourning for the city it blew through. They wandered in awe along vast boulevards, past rearing, palace-sized piles of rubble, and the wind was their constant, softly keening companion. It funneled up certain thoroughfares, ambushed them around corners in the thickening light, flung sudden fistfuls of grit in their eyes when least expected. It was the single audible intrusion into the silent evening gloom, if you skipped the crunch of their own boots on the detritus-laden streets and the hushed groundswell of muttering between the men.

“Pipe down back there, keep your eyes peeled,” Egar found himself finally driven to bark. “Just ’cause we’re fed and armed don’t make us fucking blade proof.”

He heard a defiant mention of ghosts. Swung about.

“Yeah, ghosts. Ghosts, I’m not fucking worried about. They’re dead already. You see one, wave and smile. Anything else, you kill. Now shut the fuck up and watch your quarters.”

Truth was, he couldn’t really blame them. He could feel the cold, abandoned weight of the city himself, pressing down like something palpable between his shoulder blades and at the nape of his neck. If An-Kirilnar had seemed—and after a fashion, he supposed,
was
—haunted, this place made it look positively welcoming by comparison. There was a desolation here that beat out anything the Kiriath fortress had to offer. Even the lifeless wasteland they’d just crossed had not seemed so emptied and abandoned. Wind or no wind, he was increasingly sorry that he’d persuaded Archeth not to camp back up on the overlooking ridge.

In the middle of one broad boulevard, they came upon a chunk of fallen rubble, itself almost the size of an Ornley croft house. There was carving on one side, letters nearly as tall as a man in what looked to Egar like Naom script, though he couldn’t make head or tail of what it actually said. He brushed his fingers over the stonework, curious. It was faintly warm to the touch.

He whistled for attention, beckoned to the nearest of the privateers.

“You. You recognize this?”

The man shook his head. “Don’t read, my lord. You want to ask Tidnir, he’s got letters. Went to school and everything, before his old man got wrecked off the cape.”

“Tidnir. Which one’s—”

The privateer nodded obligingly, turned and pointed at someone farther back in the loose group they’d all bunched up into.

“Hoy, Tid,” he barked. “Get over here. Dragonbane wants this shit read.”

Another privateer, younger, but with a shrewd intelligence around the eyes, came warily up to the front. He stood beside Egar and stared up at the march of huge characters carved into the stonework. His lips moved silently.

“So?”

“It’s myrlic, my lord. The ancestor tongue.”

“Well, what does it say?”

“Dunno.” Tidnir scratched his head. “It’s … I think it’s a prayer or s—”

Something tore him down.

It happened faster than you could blink. One moment the young privateer was standing there talking, the next he was gone, and Egar’s face was painted with the sudden hot spray of his blood. The Dragonbane had a flash glimpse of something pallid and fanged as it bore Tidnir to the ground, heard a noise out of battles a decade gone, knew—

Screams from the rear.

“Lizards! ’ware lizards!”

As if the present caved in under him like rotten flooring, dropped him through into the dim nightmare sludge of a past he’d thought buried long ago.

The all-alloy staff lance the Warhelm had made for him—trussed to the pack on his back, blades at either end still clad in their soft Kiriath fabric sheaths—
no time, no fucking time, Eg. Forget it.
He shed the weapon with his pack, the shrugging work of an instant. But the chain was slung loosely around his neck, halfway ironic ornament of rank, some faint, inexplicable urge had made him keep and wear it that way, and now … 

Rip it free sideways in one fist, whip and heft, the harsh pain as the iron links wrapped hard around his tightened knuckles and a barely felt gouge where one of the bolt ends caught as it dragged off his neck. The reptile peon that had torn down Tidnir swung up at him. Only the size of a small, malnourished man but all fangs, all reaching claws, all
snarl,
and in that fresh nightmare sludge of time slowed down, Egar yelled and swung the chain full force.

Dragonbane!

The lizard leapt, the bolt ends of the chain came flailing in from the side, took it in the skull and knocked it over in a thrashing, hissing mess. Egar used the backswing and hit it again,
keep this fucker down,
stepped in and lifted the chain high with another yell. Into the skull again, with the savage force of revulsion. The peon’s blood came out, dark in the evening light, almost a human hue. The creature thrashed and tried to roll away. The Dragonbane stamped a boot on it, flailed down again with the chain. He was shouting now, wordless affirmation of his savagery, building to the berserker rage. Twice more and the reptile peon’s thrashing died. It was still twitching, but he knew from hard-won experience that it was done.

Whirl about, check the men.

Their attackers seemed to have come out of the ground, or dropped from the sky. They were on all sides and the company had pulled instinctively into a circle, Throne Eternal shoulder to shoulder with Majak with privateer with Menith Tand’s mercenaries. Most had managed to shed their baggage, a few had shields to hand, but two men were out of the protective formation and down. One still lived, ax haft braced up against the snapping jaws of the lizard that had him pinned … 

Egar strode in yelling, long scooping blow with the chain, caught the reptile peon around the head and jaw, the bolt ends snagged and the chain wrapped up. He bellowed and yanked hard, tore the lizard off the man like a herdsmen roping away a buffalo calf. The thing came snapping and snarling and thrashing, on its back but trying to right itself.
Keep dragging back, Dragonbane, keep the tension on.
He drew a knife left-handed, blade down. Spotted an eye amid the thrashing, coiling fury. Flexed his right arm as if for an uppercut and hauled on the chain, dragged the lizard up close, stabbed down hard into the eye socket. The creature went into spasms, he jerked the knife free and blood gouted thickly from the eye. He stood on the dying reptile and tore the chain loose from its mangled jaws.

The downed man—one of Tand’s mercenaries—rolling shakily to his feet, nodding thanks. Egar bared teeth at him, nodded back, made a sound in his throat that was barely human and swung away.

“Dragonbane!”

He was bellowing it now, gone into the killing rage, bloodied knife in one hand, chain in the other, striding amid the fray, flailing and stabbing, taking down the reptile peons like the incarnation of his own legend, pulling them off his men, putting them away. It felt almost easy, like something he was born for, it felt like release

“Dragonbane!
Dragonbane!
”

And a cry that seemed to answer from the other side of the boulevard’s expanse.

“Indamaninarmal! Indamaninarmal! My father’s house!”

He swung about at the call, grinning fiercely.

Found Archeth across the street, about to go under.

S
HE’D THOUGHT IT WAS THE FIRE SPRITE—FLICKER OF MOTION AT THE
corner of her eye, somewhere up amid the piles of rubble on her right. She drifted out across the desolate space of the boulevard, staring upward, scanning the tumbled, tangled mess of broken architecture for another glimpse. Though what the sprite was doing all the way up there … 

Vague, unwinding tendril of unease in her chest.

And the first reptile peon jumped her.

Came leaping fanged and snarling down out of some darkened juncture of tumbled masonry above head height, like the screaming wartime past returned.

Knocked her to the stony floor.

She hit and scrabbled back, frantic. Her pack jammed against the ground, the lizard loomed over her, jaws agape. Reflexive combat memories from the war sparking down her nerves, become their own survival imperative, and a million miles from conscious thought, her body followed the command. She lashed out with one booted foot, smashed hard into the snout with her heel. Her right hand clapped to the inverted grip of Wraithslayer, there on her chest. The reptile peon shook itself, came snarling at her again. She rolled up into a crouch, left arm raised to an instinctive guard across her throat and face. She snatched the knife clear of its sheath. The lizard hit and bowled her back over, she slammed her guarding arm forward, drove the snapping, slavering jaws aside and up, away from her face for the time she would need. The reptile peon grabbed at her wrist with a taloned forelimb, would either bite her arm down to the bone or twist and drag it out of the way and take her face instead. But Wraithslayer was loose in her hand now, and there was a noise rising in her throat to match the lizard’s snarl.

“You lie down, motherfucker!”
she screamed, and plunged the knife in.

Kiriath steel.

In under the jaws and up—Wraithslayer ripped the lizard’s throat out with no more effort than opening a sealed letter. The reptile peon’s blood gushed out over Archeth’s hand and forearm, exploded out between the snapping fangs, and the creature went down on its side, thrashing a cloud of detritus and dust from the ancient paving as it died. Archeth staggered to her feet coughing, sweeping her surroundings, saw the company beset on all sides and more skulking figures moving in the rubble her attacker had come from.

“Lizards! ’ware lizards!” someone was howling, a bit superfluously.

Bandgleam was in her left hand—she had no memory of unsheathing it—she shrugged clear of her pack, lifted both blades and her chin in invitation to the figures that lurked above her.

“Come on, then!”

They came bounding down the ledges and slopes of the collapsed ruins like scree panthers on the hunt—two lean, armored forms, spined and crested and almost twice the size of the reptile peon she’d just killed. She drew a hard breath in over her teeth. Warrior caste. Sooted, grayish-dark scaled hides, shifted to match the hue of the environment around them—she’d forgotten they could do that. In Demlarashan, they’d been sandstone yellow, in Gergis a piney green. Reared up on their hind legs, they’d tower a full foot or more over her head. They had prehensile tails three yards long that ended as often as not in a savagely barbed spike they knew only too well how to use, and they were smart in a way the reptile peons were not. Warrior caste Scaled Folk had been known to pick up and use discarded human weapons on the battlefield, or to fight with long thorny staffs of bone that appeared to grow out of the same webbed material they were hatched from themselves. But mostly they favored their own heavily armored forelimbs, tipped as they were with taloned claws and razor-sharp elbow spurs. In battle, she’d seen one of those limbs take a blow from a two-handed imperial war ax and not break. Seen the lizard dip and swing, clout the ax owner to the ground with a tail lash, then pounce and plunge an elbow spur down through the soldier’s helmet visor with pinpoint accuracy.

She brandished her knives again. “You want a piece of me? Come
on
!”

They dropped lithely to the boulevard paving not ten yards from where she was, reared a little on their hind limbs and then circled out, moving to bracket her. Talons scraped on the stonework as they prowled. Eyes gleamed iridescent in the gloom, watched her with a narrow intelligence, better protected than those of the peons, recessed into bony, slanting sockets behind rows of spines—a tough throw for Bandgleam, and not one she wanted to risk just y—

Hurried rattle of talons on paving to her left—the shrill, attacking shriek.

She felt the nape of her neck chill to the sound—old, partly healed memories from the war, reopened like wounds—spin to face it, see the scribble of motion as the lizard came at her, and her flesh cringed.

But corpse-cold recall mapped the creature’s weak points for her—
get this right, Archidi
—the way she’d have to move. Up on the balls of her feet, swiveling, already in motion as the reptile pounced the last three yards, she was not there, she was
here,
motherfucker,
right
here,
spinning in from the side and
strike
with Wraithslayer, hard into the soft, unarmored flesh behind the lizard’s reaching forelimb. The attack shriek scaled to an abrupt peak, dropped off a cliff into a furious hiss as the lizard coiled round with whiplash speed, jaws snapping and seeking.

But Archeth knew better than to stay still behind the blow.

She left Wraithslayer buried to the hilt where it was; Quarterless was already drawn to replace it. Didn’t feel like she’d actually reached for the knife at all—as if Quarterless had leapt eagerly from the sheath in the small of her back as her fingertips trailed past, as if it had flown to the warm calloused wrap of her palm like Ishgrim into her embrace at day’s end. The blade was reversed and she had time to carve a long gouge in the lizard’s haunch and tail root as she spun away. She already
knew
the other lizard was there at her back. Bandgleam was tugging her around, insisting,
yearning
toward the fresh target and—