The first of the Battle Inkallim came running alone, quite suddenly, from beneath a cracked archway, a long thin axe held out to her side. Like a dark arrow. Kanin veered towards her, but two of his Shield were closer and faster. They stepped between Thane and raven. And the raven feinted and weaved her darting way inside a sword thrust, and split one of their skulls. The second shieldman cut her across the hamstring, and she staggered but did not lose her grip on the axe. It came free of bone, and swung low and hard into the man’s knee, taking his leg from under him, the joint flexing at an impossible angle.
The Inkallim limped another clumsy pace towards Kanin before she fell. He hammered his sword halfway through her neck. Her eyes turned white as they tipped back in their orbits.
“Sire,” Igris shouted.
Kanin turned. Seven more Inkallim, arrayed across the street. They were relaxed, their shoulders loose, their expressions full of calm confidence. Two leaned on spears; others cradled naked swords. Shraeve was there, arms folded across her chest, staring at Kanin.
“Have enough died yet, Thane, to assuage your anger?” she asked him levelly. “Have you amassed sufficient dead to convince you of your error?”
Igris and the last two of his Shield-one man, one woman-stood in front of Kanin.
Shraeve smiled as they formed that defiant barrier.
“Your forces are somewhat meagre, Thane. If fate’s favour is measured in numbers, I think you find yourself condemned.”
Kanin looked back over his shoulder. The way he had come was closed off: thirty or more men and women, warriors and commonfolk and Tarbains. All wild-eyed, half of them bloodied. The rain had stopped, he realised. Blood no longer ran freely, but thickened and crusted on skin.
His hopes became dust. What had seemed so possible now was plain folly. What madness had been upon him that he had thought himself capable of overcoming the fever of an entire world?
“You did not think we would leave him undefended, did you?” Shraeve said.
He stared back at her, and in that stare she evidently found the answer to any and all questions.
“Very well,” she said with a dead smile.
And even as she spoke, two spears were in the air, spinning along shallow arcs. Kanin started forward. So did Igris and the other two of his Shield. Only Kanin and Igris completed more than half a stride, as the spears hit home.
Shraeve did not even move. The six other ravens spread into a half-circle, sinking gently into fighting stances. Kanin and Igris found themselves back to back, as that half-circle slowly extended itself, reaching to enclose them.
“My feet are on the Road,” Kanin heard his shieldman murmuring. “My feet are on the Road.”
Kanin bit back his scorn for such futile fidelity. But what did it matter? Death came as it wished, and what rode in its wake only the dead could know. Let those entering its embrace believe what they wished. To die a fool was no worse than to die alone and faithless.
A flurry of blows. The scuffing of feet over the grimy cobbles. A hissing gasp. Kanin did not look round. He could not, for the three Inkallim facing him edged closer, eyeing him with all the focused intent of hounds stalking a stag at bay.
“Igris?” he muttered.
He heard metal on metal. Something-a shield, perhaps-striking the ground. Another muffled impact and then silence.
Igris slumped against Kanin’s back. The sudden weight almost made him lose his balance, but he leaned against it. Slowly, the burden slid down his spine into the small of his back, across his thighs. Then it was gone, and Kanin swayed for a moment. He spared only the briefest of instants to look down and see Igris lying there, face down, his head by Kanin’s feet. There was blood on his neck and scalp.
Kanin grinned at the nearest of the Inkallim.
“So be it,” he said.
But they backed away. They opened the circle that had held him and fell slowly back into rank across the street, aligning themselves with Shraeve once more. Past her shoulder, past the hilt of her sword, two dozen paces back, at the base of a tall column of curved stonework that could only encase a stairway, a door was opening. Kanin straightened, lowering his sword, letting his shield come back to his side.
And Aeglyss emerged.
III
Aeglyss leaned heavily on Hothyn the White Owl as he advanced out into the street. His head-a simple skull, almost, in its gaunt and fleshless angles-lolled on a limp neck. The plain robe he wore was patterned with brown and red and black stains, the exudates of the wrecked and porous body beneath.
At the sight of him, Kanin was instantly blind to all else, and he sprang forward.
“Be still,” Aeglyss said, like a thunderclap on the damp air.
Kanin staggered to a halt, dizzied. The world spun about him for a moment, a swirling vision of dirty grey stonework and mud and figures that flashed past too quickly to be recognised. He steadied himself. The na’kyrim was staring at him, and that gaze was all contempt, all confidence.
Shraeve started to move. Long, languid strides, hands reaching slowly up for the hilts that framed her face. Her eyes were on Kanin, wholly committed to his death. And he could see it quite clearly for himself. He could envisage with the utmost clarity his own graceful execution. She would be like a hawk, composed entirely of speed and power, falling upon him. He would die now on Shraeve’s twin blades, and go into the darkness knowing he had failed. He would follow Wain, knowing there would never be an answer to her death.
He knew all this, and the weight of it felt as though it would crush his heart, but still he hefted his sword in his hand and tightened his grip upon the straps of his shield until the leather creaked, and stepped forward to meet her. Perhaps… perhaps…
“Wait,” said Aeglyss.
Shraeve stopped. She passed from motion into perfect immobility in the blink of an eye. Her gaze remained locked onto Kanin. He found that he had come to a halt too. Two dozen paces separated Thane and raven. Kanin could feel his heart thumping, straining, in his chest. Its beat was the only sound in all the world. A silence descended upon them all, every warrior gathered there at Kan Avor’s centre.
Then Aeglyss was edging sideways, his gown trailing through the mud. He moved like an ancient, all brittleness and fragility. But his voice… his voice was like the ocean.
“You have done all that you could have done, Bloodheir,” the halfbreed rasped. “No. Thane. I forget. Or remember too much.”
He coughed and shivered. Blood was trickling from his nose. Hothyn followed him, a watchful, silent attendant.
“You never understood, though. Because there is something in you-this hatred-that deafens you, blinds you, you never grasped what has been happening all around you. You see only the surface of things. But you needed to feel, Thane, if you were to understand.”
Aeglyss extended a bony arm, and pressed his hand against a wall. He leaned thus, letting the ruined city take his weight.
“If you could have felt it, you would have understood that this is not something you can undo. Not with all your hatred, all your stubbornness. You are not equal to the task of opposing me, because I am become the world.”
There were cracks in the skin of the halfbreed’s naked scalp, Kanin could see. Fissures in him. Failings of the body. But it was not his body that filled the street, coiled like fog around the buildings, streamed out from the stones. It was not in his limbs that his awful strength resided.
“I am become the world,” Aeglyss repeated. His eyes were closed. His eyelids were seeping sores. “And it would be easy to let you die, for the world is finished with you. But that is not what I want. And the choice is mine to make.”
“No,” said Kanin through gritted teeth. The denial cost him a great effort, for the halfbreed’s monumental will had hold of him.