Instead the axe struck a stone near Malden’s feet, smashing it to powder.
“Where are you, you western bastard?” the reaver demanded. “I can smell you! I can taste your blood already!”
It was only then that Malden realized the reaver was blind. A sword stroke had cut across his face, ruining his eyes. Other wounds marred his arms and chest. The man must have been wounded in the fighting outside, then wandered in through the gap in the wall without even realizing where he was.
Malden felt pity well up in his chest for the barbarian, despite the fact the man had just tried to kill him. It was no kind of world for a blind man. “Surrender,” he said, almost pleading with the reaver. “Give in, and you’ll be spared, I promise-”
“Die, you fucker!” someone shouted from behind Malden and high over his head.
One after another five arrows pierced the reaver’s body. The barbarian winced and staggered backward under the blows, then sank to his knees and gasped out his last.
Malden turned and looked up at his archers atop the wall. They waved cheerily down at him, and he raised Acidtongue in a halfhearted salute. A bead of vitriol rolled down the blade and stung his fingers, but he made a point of not flinching.
He turned back to the gap and moved forward into the smoke, as carefully as he could. Soon he was as blind as the man he’d just watched die. His throat burned with the stink of brimstone and he would not have been surprised if he walked out of the cloud straight into the pit itself.
When he did emerge it was to find a scene not wholly dissimilar. Bodies littered the ground before him, bodies torn to rags of flesh and dropped without ceremony. Directly ahead an army of men-Free Men, but also knights on horseback-pressed an attack, driving home lances and pike heads as barbarians screamed and died. The horde was pushed up against the city wall with nowhere to run, hemmed in on two sides by advancing troops.
“In Sadu’s name,” Malden said. “Are we winning?”
He could scarcely believe it. Yet he had the evidence of his own eyes to prove it.
Barbarians were cut down in waves. Some tried throwing away their weapons and shields, but the Free Men ran them through anyway. The pikemen had to stop from time to time to shove the amassed bodies out of their path just so they could continue their advance.
“They’re giving way,” someone said from behind Malden’s shoulder. He turned and saw a hundred citizens of Ness-his own paltry troops-gathering to watch. “Ness is saved!” He could see the bloodthirst on their faces. The joy they took in this spectacle. He couldn’t blame them, in all fairness. How long had they lived in terror of the barbarian throng? How long had they been expecting that horde to come sweeping through their houses, murdering and savaging? Now they had their revenge. “This is your victory, Lord Mayor! Sadu be praised!”
But for Malden, the vision was utterly sickening. Barbarians were being put to death out there by the hundreds. The soldiers were executing them. They weren’t even trying to fight back. Where was Morget to rally them? Where was Morgain? The mounted knights cried out and drove a wedge between two masses of pikemen, as if they were afraid the footmen would have all the fun without them.
“Look! There!” someone called. “It’s Sir Croy!”
Malden felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. Or perhaps like he was seeing a ghost. But there, yes-right there-was the knight errant, limping along in his armor, clutching his side. His colors, black and silver, were instantly recognizable, but even at a distance Malden knew that face. An empty scabbard bounced against his thigh. Where was Ghostcutter? Malden couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Croy without it.
More to the point-Croy was here? Croy had come to Ness?
At least, Malden thought, Croy would put an end to this slaughter. He would drag his men back from the brink of madness and keep them from butchering every single barbarian on the field. Any minute now, Malden was certain, Croy would raise his voice and call out to give quarter, to end the bloodshed. Surely honor demanded it.
Someone brought Croy a horse. Someone else helped him climb up into its saddle. It seemed to take forever, and all the while the wholesale murder continued. The barbarians tried to surrender en masse, lifting their arms high, their weapons piled in glittering heaps at their feet. It made no difference. The knights and pikemen might have been slaughtering wild animals out there.
“Come now, Croy,” Malden whispered. “For honor’s sake.”
Croy stood up in his saddle. His hand reached for a sword that wasn’t there. Instead he lifted one armored fist.
“No quarter!” he shouted.
The civilized armies took that as a sign to cheer and redouble their attacks, even as the barbarians howled for peace, for mercy, for justice.
Malden staggered back to the gap in the wall. Alone he slunk back inside the comforting embrace of his city. Slag came running up through the smoke and grabbed at the hem of his tunic with his one remaining hand.
“What is it, lad? What did you see?”
“We won,” Malden told him. He very much wanted to go sit down somewhere.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty
The Lemon Garden was far enough from Ryewall that Malden could not hear the sounds of the work crews busily repairing the fallen wall. Nor could he smell the bodies that lay beyond it, all that remained of the barbarian horde, unburied save by snow. In his private room upstairs he had a cheerful fire going, and while there was nothing to eat, there was plenty of wine to be had, or ale if his guests preferred it.
He made no apologies for asking them to attend upon him in a bawdy house. Nor did they express offense, at least not openly. Elody led them to Malden’s door and curtsied deeply, as if she was unsure what the proper show of honor would be for three such distinguished guests. None of their station had ever visited her humble place of business before-typically, had they required the services she provided, they would have gone instead to Herwig’s House of Sighs.
The soldiers who accompanied these three were of a different lot in life, and were happy enough to be entertained in the courtyard.
For a while none of the four men spoke or even looked each other in the eye. Sir Croy wouldn’t even sit down. He stood by the door as if guarding it. Such duty was, of course, far beneath him now-Malden had heard of Croy’s elevation. Somewhere he had found a circlet of silver that he wore upon his brow to indicate that he had become the regent of Skrae. Ostentation had never been Croy’s style, but he had to ensure that he looked at least the equal to Ommen Tarness, the Burgrave, who wore his own coronet everywhere.
Sir Hew, Captain of the Queen’s Guard, wore only the colors of his sovereign. His left arm was in a sling tied around his waist, but still he seemed the best pleased of the three to be there. While Tarness and Croy stared daggers at each other, he gladly took a cup of hot mulled wine.
“Just what these aching bones need,” he said, and drained the cup in a single draught. Malden poured him another.
“I understand you were wounded by Morget in the battle,” Malden said. “Few men can make that claim. Few living men, anyway.”
Hew favored him with a warm smile. “I’ll heal. I dare say none of us came out of this unscathed. Though some certainly profited. Didn’t they, my Lord Mayor?”
Malden returned his smile, but said nothing.
The three visitors intended to strip him of that title, one way or another. The Burgrave wanted his city back. Having ruled it for eight hundred years, he seemed to think it belonged to him. Croy and Hew wanted Ness as a staging ground-a fortress they could hold through the winter, until spring cleared the roads and they could mount an attack on Helstrow and take it back from Morgain.
So far Malden had managed to keep them all out. He had refused to unseal the gates until he was given guarantees of safety for himself and his people-as well as certain other considerations. Chief among them, the right to worship whichever god they pleased, a right to be added to the city’s charter in perpetuity. For himself and his thieves he’d asked immunity from prosecution for the murder of Pritchard Hood, the burglary of the entire Golden Slope, the seizure of the arsenal, and so many more crimes.