The realisation triggered something hitherto forgotten. Nomoru. He reached for the signal rocket at his belt, but the instant he took his attention away from the battle he almost lost his hand to some whip-tailed creature and was saved only by the intervention of one of the men who fought alongside him.
'The bridge! The bridge!' someone was crying, and a great cheer went up. Then Yugi felt himself propelled from behind as the soldiers of the Empire surged forward.
'No! No! Hold here!' he managed to shout, but his voice was overwhelmed. A clot of Aberrants on the bridge collapsed under the force of the surge, pulling one another down as they fell. Yugi tried to resist, but it was too much. He could only ride the crest of the wave.
He beheaded a ghaureg with a two-handed swipe, then twisted to break a skrendel's jaw with the pommel of his blade. In the frenzy he lost what it was he was trying to remember: there was no time for anything but combat. Trapped in a seething, whirling world of chaos and madness, Yugi managed only swift episodes of sense in among the blur of constant movement, and at some point he realised that they had managed to make it a third of the way across the bridge, and that the Aberrants were being driven back by the soldiers of the Empire, who fought with a primal elation at their own heroism.
Where would it end? Would they push onward into the Aberrant horde, into certain death, driven by a false sense of invincibility? Yugi did not know, and he could not have resisted it even if that were the case. It had gone too far to stop now.
But there was another enemy here, one he had not accounted for. He only realised it when the man to his left suddenly keeled over, fitting and spewing blood from his mouth and nose. The man who tried to help him did the same.
Weavers.
He felt the wrench as his muscles clamped up on him. He had experienced that agony before, in the Fold when he was forced to watch powerlessly as his friend and leader, Zaelis, shot himself. Then it had unmanned him. Now it was worse. It was no mere paralysis, this; he felt himself juddering, in the preliminary throes of a seizure. Soon the contractions would intensify to a strength sufficient to break bones, to crush organs. He fell, cushioned by the rough hide of his dead enemies, his eyes rolling wildly.
And suddenly it was gone, the grip loosened. Stamping feet were all around him. Blood dripped from his lips. But he was not dead. Somehow, through some twist of battle in the invisible realm, the Weaver that had been about to kill him had been distracted, forced to divert its attention elsewhere. But he could hear the shrieks around him as other men died, saw someone collapse nearby, milky foam frothing from between clenched teeth.
He did not need to think. Anything, anything was better than the touch of a Weaver. He wrenched the signal rocket from his belt and tore off the cap of the cylinder. On its top was a strip of coarse paper, which could be struck against another strip on the bottom of the cylinder, lighting the fuse through friction. He struck it.
A rain of sparks spewed from the cylinder. Lying in an island of burning white light on a shallow heap of corpses, surrounded by the pounding feet of soldiers, he held the rocket out shakily.
The ignition powder caught, and it shot upwards into the night with a scream, crisping the flesh on his hand with the backwash of heat. Nomoru had observed the troops of the Empire as they battled their way onto the bridge. When she saw the rocket, she saw also that it had come from near the front of those troops, and knew that it had come from Yugi.
It did not give her an instant's pause. She fired four times in rapid succession, priming in between each shot: two at her secondary target as a decoy, and two at the largest package of explosives, the one which Yugi had intended to detonate in the first place.
The Sisters were true to their word, and were ready at the signal; but even with the Sister's best defence, the Weavers took out the first two rifle balls, stunning them in mid-air before they reached their target.
Two, however, was not good enough.
The Sakurika Bridge exploded, annihilated in a terrific bloom of flame and smoke all along its length. It blasted great tracks of white spume along the river, and sent wheeling planks of wood and lumps of stone high into the night, to splash into the water or to fall amongst the armies on the banks. Those men and Aberrants who were on the bridge when it was destroyed were obliterated instantly, and to either side dozens fell with burns or other injuries, or were thrown down by the concussion. The violence of the eruption rolled over the downs and echoed away into the night.
The author of that destruction put down her rifle, and looked at the pitiful shreds of wood that were left, their ends ablaze. She considered saying something, a few short words to herself in memory of the man she had just killed. But it would be pointless, and so she kept silent. She slipped up the bank and ducked under the riflemen, and was lost amid the ranks of the soldiers. Zahn had finished off the last of the nearby Aberrants when the river lit up in fire. He reined in his horse, panting and wet with sweat, and looked down the hillside. Behind him, the fire-cannons and mortars still boomed, and the trebuchets creaked, flinging missiles which tore ragged chunks out of the endless expanse of predators on the far shore. It was safe now; the bridge was down at last. The enemy was trapped on the north side of the Ko. They could only retreat out of range and try to find another way around – a journey of many hundred miles, for they faced the Forest of Xu to the west and Lake Azlea to the east – or wait to see how long the spirits of the river would hold against them.
Then he heard a cry from the men around him, and he saw that the Weavers had unleashed their greatest weapon at last.
They rose over the crests of the distant hill, shadows against the horizon, but their incandescent eyes could be seen even from miles away, and they shone in the dark. Slowly they lumbered closer, their silhouettes growing as they ascended the hill, towering to the height of great siege-towers.
Feya-kori. Six of them. Mishani and Lucia stood together on another hilltop. A light rain began to fall, chill droplets brushing against their skin and soaking into their clothes, blooms of darker colour spreading across the fibres.
'Yugi is dead,' said Lucia, her eyes still closed and her head bowed. Mishani looked questioningly at the Sister, who nodded in confirmation. The news glanced off her. It was mere fact, meaning nothing. She would find time to grieve when she could, but Yugi had never been a great friend of hers.
'The feya-kori are on their way,' said Mishani, her words caught up and lost in the wind. She looked at the sky, where the moons were drifting together. Clouds were boiling out of the air, sucking inward to the point where they would meet. Mishani felt her senses twining tighter and tighter; the storm was only moments from breaking.
'I know,' said Lucia.
The rain gathered in intensity; the wind picked up, keening across the battlefield. The feya-kori's moans drifted through the air as they approached.
'Lucia…' Mishani murmured.
'Not yet,' she replied.
'They are getting close, Lucia.'