23. A Storm of Wings
“Little Adis began to dream nightly about a flock of martlets that flew around his head. The little birds told him they could not land because the ground was too cold. They were doomed forever to remain in the air…”
The names and the visions crowded in on Barrick like beggars—the moment just before the charge, repeated over and over again throughout the People’s history like a nightmarish ritual…
The Ghostwood, where the Dreamless waited in their shrouds, invisible in the twilight, all their handpicked stratimancers whispering death-songs at the same moment so that the whole forest rustled, though no wind was blowing…
… Shivering Plain, where Yasammez fought her enemies in armor that glowed scarlet like sword-iron in a forge…
… the screams around Giant’s Cairn and the horrors that had waited for the first riders to top Blue Wolf Ridge…
All those terrible moments crowded in on him, or at least the Fireflower’s memories of those moments, all the times the People had fought with their very survival at stake, all those dull, painful martyrdoms that together were called the Long Defeat. Even with his eyes closed, the phantoms still surrounded Barrick, a thousand different voices from a hundred different ages, all that the Fireflower had seen and heard and thought now swept through him like crackling sparks.
We have always fought and we have always lost—even when we won… Winding through it all came a faint, dry thought he could scarcely pick out from the cloud of memory and lamentation—a whiff of humor dry as dust. Perhaps someday we should try to win by losing…
Ynnir, my lord! Will you stay with me?
But that intimate stranger’s voice had already trailed away into silence.
Barrick’s Qar armor felt no heavier than another layer of skin and the laurel helm fit him just as comfortably. But the thing he wore most lightly was his own self, which seemed no more substantial—a fraction of the weighty whole, a flame to its candle. Barrick felt utterly careless, even fearless: to die would only be to lose his body and float away as all the thoughts and memories that had been Barrick Eddon scattered like dandelion fluff. And the Qar memories inside me, the Fireflower kings… they would be scattered, too… ?
Saqri came toward him in her white-and-blue war armor. She looked Barrick up and down and did not say anything, but he knew her well enough to see the single mote of disquiet—the subtle, tiny trace which was recognizable to the Fireflower only because of generations of experience with the women of Crooked’s descent. “The last of the Xixian column has just passed on their way down from the surface,” she announced quietly. “Be ready.” She turned and walked away.
“She is not like Yasammez,” said a deep, rumbling voice beside him. “She does not like killing, even when she must.”
Barrick turned to discover massive Lord Hammerfoot standing near him—and not just Hammerfoot, but a spectral blur of all the Ettins that the custodians of the Fireflower had ever known, so many memories that, if Barrick did not concentrate, they fogged his mind like winter glass. The master of the Ettins stared back at him, the burning coals of his eyes barely visible beneath the helmet that further shadowed his great, ugly face. “I will watch out for you, Barrick of the Eddons, fear not.” The creature’s voice was so deep that Barrick could scarcely understand him. Hammerfoot slapped at his ax, a monstrous thing with a blade half the size of a small table. “Give me a lot of room when I start swinging Chastiser here. He’s a big lad, needs a lot of room when he gets playful.” He patted the massive ax. “You may soon notice, Barrick Eddon, that unlike Saqri, I enjoy killing men. Do not take it amiss.”
“You… you speak my tongue… our—what do you call us, sunlanders?” Barrick asked. “You speak our sunlander tongue very well.”
“Used to hunt your folk and eat them, to tell it square,” Hammerfoot admitted. “Means I had to live close enough to get to know them.” The Ettin didn’t seem to be joking now. He shook his broad head. “Who would ever have thought… ?”
Barrick could not easily of summon anything to say to that.
A silent signal from Saqri sent the drows forward at last, scuttling down the uneven passage in almost complete silence. Hammerfoot stepped out after them, his footfalls so heavy Barrick could feel them through his own bones. “Stay with me, human,” Hammerfoot growled. “Even better, stay behind me. And do everything I tell you.”
The Fireflower specters were singing excitedly in Barrick’s head and the drows were running, and a few moments later they all burst out of the passageway and into the wider corridor known as the Great Delve, which led ultimately under the bay and up to the Xixian camp on the far side of the water—Saqri’s goal. The troops who had marched past on their way to join the autarch below had already vanished.
The drows and Hammerfoot did not hesitate, turning in the opposite direction and hurrying up the wide track toward the world above. Barrick sped to a trot, grateful for the solid but featherweight Qar armor. He had just looked back to see Saqri and the others pouring out of the branch-tunnel behind him when a roar from Hammerfoot made him stumble and almost fall.
Just ahead, a Xixian platoon had appeared around a bend of the passage. They shouted in alarm at the sight of the approaching Qar and quickly ranged themselves across the road, raising their shields to head height and leveling their spears in bristling formation, but even in the dim light of the tunnel’s torches Barrick could see the southerners’ eyes widen in terror as Hammerfoot bellowed even louder and thundered toward them, Chastiser spinning above his head. Every single one of the Xixians lifted their shields, but that did those who were in front of Hammerfoot no good: the gigantic ax fell with a swift, savage crunch. The shrieking of those crushed beneath the weapon and their own crumpled shields was horrible to hear.
The Xixians a little farther back escaped the giant’s first onslaught but were caught with their shields up as the drows running behind Hammerfoot quickly reached them and began ripping at the soldiers’ legs and feet with the hooks on the base of their short spears, tumbling dozens of the dark, bearded men to the gravel track.
Then the Ettin bellowed a word the drows seemed to recognize. The little men dropped to the stone; Hammerfoot snatched up Barrick, then turned and threw himself to the floor as well. A moment later a swarm of arrows snapped out of the Qar ranks and feathered the first row of Xixian soldiers. The wounded and dying sagged back and tangled the men behind them.
Barrick dimly heard Saqri’s voice, although he could not say whether in his ears or in his head, since the battle was already casting a thousand shadows in his mind, and it was all he could do simply to understand what he saw before him.
Saqri’s deadliest hand-to-hand fighters, Tricksters and Changing People, now leaped out. Within moments they were in among the Xixians and drawing blood with blade and talon so quickly that armored, bearded men appeared to fall untouched to their red-soaked knees, worshiping swift shadows. But the autarch’s soldiers were no cowards—these men had fought many enemies, if not any stranger ones—and within moments had begun to recover from the initial surprise and retaliate. A few clashing, shouting knots began to form in the chaos, and in places the Qar were being pushed back. When somebody fell against a wall and knocked down a torch, it was quickly stamped into sparks and the hallway became even darker.