Its blade caught the sunlight and left a great white, fizzing smear, hacked into a man's arm sending black streaks flying. Cloth flapping. Flesh torn. Bone splintered. Metal bent and twisted. A spear squealed across Shivers' shield and he could taste the roar in his mouth, sweet as he swung the axe again. It crashed into a breastplate and left a huge dent, sent a body flailing into a pitted urn, burst it apart, writhing on the floor in a mass of shattered pottery.
The world was turned inside out, like the glistening innards of the officer he'd gutted a few moments before. He used to get tired when he fought. Now he got stronger. The rage boiled up in him, leaked out of him, set his skin on fire. With every blow he struck it got worse, better, muscles burning until he had to scream it out, laugh it out, weep, sing, thrash, dance, shriek.
He smashed a sword away with his shield, tore it from a hand, was on the soldier behind it, arms around him, kissing his face, licking at him. He roared as he ran, ran, legs pounding, rammed him into one of the statues, sent it over, crashing into another, and another beyond that, tipping, smashing on the floor, breaking apart into chunks in a cloud of dust.
The guard groaned, sprawling in the ruins, tried to roll over. Shivers' axe stoved the top of his helmet in deep with a hollow clonk, drove the metal rim right down over his eyes and squashed his nose flat, blood running out from underneath.
"Fucking die!" Shivers bashed in the side of the helmet and sent his head one way. "Die!" Swung back and crumpled the other side, neck crunching like a sock full of gravel. "Die! Die!" Bonk, bonk, like pots and pans clattering in the river after mealtime. A statue looked on, disapproving.
"Look at me?" Shivers smashed its head off with his axe. Then he was on top of someone, not knowing how he got there, ramming the edge of his shield into a face until it was nothing but a shapeless mess of red. He could hear someone whispering, whispering in his ear. Mad, hissing, croaking voice.
"I am made of death. I am the Great Leveller. I am the storm in the High Places." The Bloody-Nine's voice, but it came from his own throat. The hall was strewn with fallen men and fallen statues, scattered with bits of both. "You." Shivers pointed his bloody axe at the last of them, cringing at the far end of the dusty hallway. "I see you there, fucker. No one gets away." He realised he was talking in Northern. The man couldn't understand a word he said. Hardly mattered, though.
He reckoned he got the gist.
Monza forced herself on down the arcade, wringing the last strength from her aching legs, snarling as she lunged, jabbed, cut clumsily, not letting up for a moment. Ganmark was on the retreat, dropping back through sunlight, then shadow, then sunlight again, frowning with furious concentration. His eyes flickered from side to side, parrying her blade and Cosca's as it jabbed at him from between the pillars on her right, their hard breathing, their shuffling footsteps, the quick scraping of steel echoing from the vaulted ceiling.
She cut at him, then back the other way, ignoring the burning pain in her fist as she tore the short steel from his hand and sent it clattering into the shadows. Ganmark lurched away, only just turned one of Cosca's thrusts wide with his long steel, left his unguarded side facing her. She grinned, was pulling her arm back to lunge when something crashed into the window on her left, sent splinters of glass flying into her face. She thought she heard Shivers' voice, roaring in Northern from the other side. Ganmark slipped between two pillars as Cosca slashed at him and away across the lawn, backing off into the centre of the garden.
"Could you get on and kill this bastard?" wheezed Cosca.
"Doing my best. You go left."
"Left it is." They moved apart, herding Ganmark towards the statue. He looked spent now, blowing hard, soft cheeks turned blotchy pink and shining with sweat. She smiled as she feinted at him, sensing victory, felt her smile slip as he suddenly sprang to meet her. She dodged his first thrust, slashed at his neck, but he caught it and pushed her away. He was a lot less spent than she'd thought, and she was a lot more. Her foot came down badly and she tottered sideways. Ganmark darted past and his sword left a burning cut across her thigh. She tried to turn, screeched as her leg crumpled, fell and rolled, the Calvez tumbling from her limp fingers and bouncing away.
Cosca sprang past with a hoarse cry, swinging wildly. Ganmark dropped under his cut, lunged from the ground and ran him neatly through the stomach. Cosca's sword clanged hard into The Warrior's shin and flew from his hand, stone chips spinning. The general whipped his blade free and Cosca dropped to his knees, sagged sideways with a long groan.
"And that's that." Ganmark turned towards her, Bonatine's greatest work looming up behind him. A few flakes of marble trickled from the statue's ankle, already cracked where Monza's sword had chopped into it. "You've given me some exercise, I'll grant you that. You are a woman—or have been a woman—of remarkable determination." Cosca dragged himself across the cobbles, leaving spotty smears of blood behind him. "But in keeping your eyes always ahead, you blinded yourself to everything around you. To the nature of the great war you fight in. To the natures of the people closest to you." Ganmark flicked out his handkerchief again, dabbed sweat from his forehead, carefully wiped blood from his steel. "If Duke Orso and his state of Talins are no more than a sword in the hand of Valint and Balk, then you were never more than that sword's ruthless point." He flicked the shining point of his own sword with his forefinger. "Always stabbing, always killing, but never considering why." There was a gentle creaking, and over his shoulder The Warrior's own great sword wobbled ever so slightly. "Still. It hardly matters now. For you the fight is over." Ganmark still wore his sad smile as he came to a stop a stride from her. "Any pithy last words?"
"Behind you," growled Monza through gritted teeth, as The Warrior rocked ever so gently forwards.
"You must take me for—" There was a loud bang. The statue's leg split in half and the whole vast weight of stone toppled inexorably forwards.
Ganmark was just beginning to turn as the point of Stolicus' giant sword pinned him between the shoulder blades, drove him onto his knees, burst out through his stomach and crashed into the cobbles, spraying blood and rock chips in Monza's stinging face. The statue's legs broke apart as they hit the ground, noble feet left on the pedestal, the rest cracking into muscular chunks and rolling around in a cloud of white marble dust. From the hips up, the proud image of the greatest soldier of history stayed in one magnificent piece, staring sternly down at Orso's general, impaled on his monstrous sword beneath him.
Ganmark made a sucking sound like water draining from a broken bath, and coughed blood down the front of his uniform. His head fell forwards, steel clattering from his dangling hand.
There was a moment of stillness.
"Now that," croaked Cosca, "is what I call a happy accident."
Four dead, three left. Monza saw someone creep out from one of the colonnades, grimaced as she shuffled to her sword and dragged it up for the third time, hardly sure which ruined hand to hold it in. It was Day, loaded flatbow levelled. Friendly trudged along behind her, knife and cleaver hanging from his fists.
"You got him?" asked the girl.
Monza looked at Ganmark's corpse, kneeling spitted on the great length of bronze. "Stolicus did."
Cosca had kicked his way as far as one of the cherry trees and sat with his back against the trunk. He looked just like a man relaxing on a summer's day. Apart from the bloody hand pressed to his stomach. She limped up to him, stuck the Calvez point-first into the turf and knelt down.