PITHY STAGGERED CLEAR, SHEATHED IN BLOOD. THE BLISTERING WHITE of the strand shocked her, tilting and rocking before her eyes. She fell to her knees, and then on to her side. She let go of her sword but the grip clung to her hand a moment longer, before sobbing loose. With her other hand she tugged off her helm. The blade cut was a slit scoring right through the dented iron. Strands of bloody hair and the tufted padding of her under-helm filled the gap.
She let her head drop back, the terrible sounds of battle fading. Overhead the sky spun. Torn fragments of light drifted in the gloom. Ah, Brev. He warned us. In that way of his, he warned us. Back and forth he walked, drawing and sheathing and drawing that damned sword. Over and over again.
You can think about what’s to come. You can try and picture it in your mind. What warriors did. What soldiers walked into. But none of it readies you. None of it.
The screaming seemed far away now. The surge and terrible clatter, the maw of the breach a mass of blades, spear and sword, knife and axe, and all that mouth did was chew people to bloody bits, those iron fangs clashing and grinding – there was no end to its appetite.
So long as there’re more people to shove into it.
Her body felt hot, the sweaty gambeson chafing under her arms. She could smell her own reek.
So we called ourselves captains, did we, Brev? Good at giving orders. Good at standing around looking important. There with the prince. With his knot of elite soldiers he now calls his Watch. Me and you, Brevity, we were officers.
In an army of fools.
Blood ran warm to pool in her ears, first the one on the left, then the one on the right. Other sounds were drowned in the deluge. Is that the ocean I’m hearing? An ocean of blood? Is this, I wonder, the last thing we ever hear? Dear ocean, then, call my soul. I would swim the waters again. Let me swim the waters again.
Something trembled the sands beneath her. No, they won’t quit. They want through. Just like he said.
She was no captain. She knew nothing about what being a real captain meant. From that first moment, when the breach opened, when light flared out like a tongue of fire, and all those voices from beyond the barrier ripped through …
She saw Yedan Derryg marching down to the breach. His Watch had been arrayed, positioned as squad leaders in the forward line of Letherii volunteers. And there was Withal, moving quickly back up the ravaged slope, into the forest. Word to the queen of Kharkanas: the battle begins.
Pithy’s attention returned to the breach. Stick the mercenaries to the front, in a place where there’s no retreat except through your more loyal soldiers. They’re there for the loot to come. But loot never held any man or woman, not for long, not when it all rips open. These Letherii islanders – they’re my people. Mine.
She took up her sword as she ran down to that first high berm. The weapon in her hand never felt right. It frightened her, in fact. She dreaded spitting herself as much as she did some snarling enemy’s spear thrust. Where was Brevity? Somewhere in the rush – we’re like a kicked-over nest of termites.
Someone was wailing – a mother whose child has just pulled loose from her embrace, has just vanished into the press with a sword and shield, a spear or a pike. It’s a scene of the world. Every world. On the other side of the barrier, some mother screams her fear, loses sight of her cherished one. She stumbled, dropped to one knee, vomited into the crushed bones of the beach. Coughing, spitting, feeling a strange hollowness inside, blossoming outward, until it felt as if her brain was attached to nothing, floating free of her body.
She could hear a roar. The sound of battle – no, she’d never heard it before, not like this. The flight from the coast back in Lether had been nothing like this. Back then, the voices and the will had come from pain and fear, from broken needs. It had possessed a plaintive timbre. Against the discipline of Yedan Derryg and his elites, those wretched foes had not stood a chance.
This was different. The sound that erupted from the breach was by itself enough to drive the defenders back a step. Triumph and rage – they were through! At last, through! And the hated enemy would not stop them, would not even slow them. With the mass of their comrades driving them from behind, with the slashing spear points dropping horizontal before them, the Tiste Liosan poured from the wound.
Pithy forced herself back on to her feet, forced herself forward. She was still floating free, but her vision seemed impossibly sharp. She saw the front line of Letherii lifting bizarrely into the air, saw their heads tilting back, their mouths wide open. Lifted on the spears of the enemy.
The sword slipped from her hand. Numbed, confused, she spun to retrieve it. Someone collided with her, knocked her down. She coughed on a lungful of dusty sand. Where was her sword? There. She crawled over to it. The grip was gritty, biting into her palm. Pithy wiped at her hand. Looked over at the breach.
Somehow, the Letherii line was still there. They were fighting back. They were holding the Liosan on the berm’s slope. The press from their own side was vicious, pushing to hold and then pushing to advance. Gaps opened here and there and torn bodies were carried back out, limbs dragging.
The two witches were now among the wounded. Each held a dagger in one hand. Pithy watched Skwish kneel beside an injured woman, leaning close to examine a wound. With a shake of her head she slid the knife into the Letherii’s chest, straight into her heart, then moved on to the next casualty.
You fucking murderers.
Pully was stuffing bandages into a hole in a man’s side, shouting for stretcher-bearers. A second station for the wounded was forming higher up the strand, where cutters worked to staunch bleeding, stitch gashes and saw off ruined limbs. Nearby was a pit dug into the sand, for those severed limbs and for those wounded no one could save.
It’s … organized. They planned for this. Yes, I remember now. We all planned for this. For what’s happening right now.
Pithy scrambled forward again. ‘They’re holding,’ she gasped. ‘They’re holding!’
‘Captain!’
A boy ran up to her. She’d never seen him before. He was frighteningly thin, with sores crusting his mouth. A Letherii. ‘Who sent you?’ she demanded.
‘Corporal Nithe of the Watch, right anchor, has been wounded and pulled from the line, sir. The prince needs you to immediately take up command of those flank squads, sir.’
Errant’s push. She licked her lips. Her bladder was stinging as if everything it held had turned into acid. She looked down at her sword.
‘Sir?’
The damned boy was staring at her. Those weeping sores around his mouth, the smears on his face. She could see that he was terrified. An orphan whose new family was being killed before his very eyes. He had carried the prince’s words. He had found her, done what Yedan had asked of him. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing. Following orders. Holding on to duty, as desperate as the rest of us. Stop looking at me like that. ‘Lead me through,’ she said.
And like a boy eager for the beach, he took her hand and led her forward.
The smell of the heaving press made her choke. The sweat and spewed vomit, the fear and the shit and the piss. How could anyone fight in this? Pithy almost pulled herself loose from the boy’s cold grip. But now hands were pushing at her from behind. Faces lunged close, shouting things. Eyes met her own, filled with pleading. Panic roiled in like a grey, grainy cloud.