‘Well now, that makes me feel better.’
‘I can’t do the rousing speeches, Captain.’
‘I noticed.’
‘Those words sound hollow, all of them. In fact, I do not believe that I have ever heard a commander or ruler say anything to straighten me up. Or make me want to do for them what they wanted done. So,’ he said amiably, ‘if I won’t die for someone else, how can I ask anyone else to do so?’
‘Then what’re we gonna die for here?’
‘For yourselves, Captain. Each and every one of you. What could be more honest than that?’
After a time, she grunted. ‘I thought it was all about fighting for the soldier beside you. And all that. Not wanting to let them down, I mean.’
‘What you seek not to let down, Captain, is your sense of yourself. How you see yourself, even when you see yourself through the eyes of the people around you.’ He shook his head. ‘I won’t argue against that. So much comes down to pride, after all.’
‘So, we’re to hold against the Liosan – we’re to hold the First Shore – out of some kind of feeling of pride?’
‘I would like to hear a truly rousing speech, one day,’ Yedan mused. ‘Just once.’ Then he sighed. ‘No matter. One can’t have everything, can one?’
‘I see ’em – coming through!’
Yedan started walking down the slope. ‘Hold back the Letherii until I need them, Captain.’
‘Yes sir!’
The Liosan vanguard burst through the breach with a roar.
Seeing the shadows wheeling above the Liosan, Brevity flinched. Dragons. That ain’t fair. Just ain’t. She turned and made her way down to the Letherii legion.
They were like Pithy now. They had that thing in their eyes – Brevity could not find words to describe it. They’d fought for their lives, but not in that daily struggle to put food on the table, not in those quiet moments when the body surrendered to some illness. This was a sudden thing, a savage thing. That look she saw now, she didn’t know what it was.
But she wanted some of it.
Errant’s nudge, I must be mad.
Sharl had always been the older sister, the capable one. When her mother had wandered off in the way drunks did, leaving them on their own, Sharl had reached out to take in her two younger brothers.
The Shake understood the two sides of the Shore. The drawing close, the falling apart. Those sides lived in their blood, and in all the ghettos where dwelt the remnants of her people the fates washed back and forth, and sometimes it was all one could do to simply hang on.
She had led them out of childhood. But more than that, she had tried to lead them away from something else, something far crueller. The sense of failure that hung thick in the neighbourhood, the kind of failure that slunk through alleys with drawn knives, that stepped over bodies lying in the rubbish. The kind of failure that unleashed hatred upon those who would seek a better life, those who would dare rise above their wretched station.
She had seen a clever boy beaten to death outside her shelter. By his cousins.
Letherii missions sent people into the communities. Building roads out, roads to take the Shake away from their misery. It was pointless. Sharl had seen as much, again and again. Outsiders never understood how a people could eat themselves from the inside out.
She was thinking about that as she set her boots in the sand and adjusted the heavy pike in her hands. Flanked by her brothers, with all of the Shake formed up to face this enemy of strangers. They stood on the First Shore, bathed in the eerie rain of Lightfall, and she wondered if this was to be the last moment for her and the boys. How quickly would her family vanish from the world of the living? Which of them would be the first to fall? Which the last?
I’m scared. By the deeps, I am scared.
Capable Sharl, oh, see how that lie shines on this day. I will try to keep them alive. I will do all I can.
Mother, they said they found your body in a ditch outside the town. Where were you going? What road were you building?
‘Casel, Oruth, I love you both.’
She felt their eyes as they looked upon her, but she held her gaze fixed on the breach.
Someone shouted, ‘Here they come!’ But the cry was unnecessary, as the wound split to the first spear points, and the Liosan surged out with terrifying howls. A tall warrior was in the lead. His face twisted, his eyes lit like fire, his mouth stretched open as he brought up his spear.
He was staring at Sharl, who stood opposite as he lunged forward.
She would have run if a path were open to her. She would have fallen to her knees if mercy were possible. She would have shouted, pleaded for an end to this terrible need to fight, to kill. She would have done anything to end this.
Her brothers screamed, and those cries were so raw with terror that Sharl felt buffeted, battered by this instant of utter, horrifying vulnerability—
Mother, weaving, stumbling down the road. Her clothes reeking, her breaths a wet rattle.
The Shake cannot run from themselves.
‘Sharl!’
She lifted the pike at the last moment. The warrior had not even noticed the weapon, or its deadly length. Even as he lifted his spear, the broad iron head took him just beneath his sternum.
The impact rocked her back, thundered through her bones.
The surprise in his face made her want to weep, so childlike, so helpless.
His sagging weight pulled the pike down. She tore it free, her breaths coming so fast the world was spinning. He didn’t see it. How could he not have seen it?
All at once there was fighting along the line, spreading out from the centre. The Liosan were trying to push them back. Their fury deafened her. They fought like rabid dogs. She stabbed out again and again with the pike. The point scored off shields, was batted aside by bronze-sheathed shafts. Liosan ducked past it, only to be met by the hacking swords of her brothers.
Piss drenched the inside of her left thigh – shame, oh, shame!
They yielded a step – the entire line – as if by command. But she heard nothing beyond the roar engulfing her, the clash of weapons, the grunts and gasps. This was a tide, driving them back, and like the sand beneath them the Shake were crumbling.
The pike’s long shaft was slick with blood. The point was wrapped in gore.
The muscles of her forearms and shoulders burning, she raised the weapon once more, saw a face, and stabbed into it. Edge grating past teeth, biting into the back of a mouth, the flaring flanges slicing through cheeks. Blood poured from the Liosan’s nose, misted up into his eyes. He snapped his head back, choking, dropping his weapons as he fell to his knees. His hands went to his shattered mouth, seeking to hold in place the dangling lower jaw, the flaps of tongue.
Casel lunged low and pushed his sword’s point into the Liosan’s neck.
And then her brother was falling. An animal cry came from his throat and he twisted as a Liosan advanced to stand over him, grinding her spear point down through Casel, who writhed like a pinned eel.
Sharl swung the pike, and she screamed as the point slashed the Liosan just under her chin, opening her windpipe.
Hands took Casel’s ankles and dragged him back. A stranger came up to take her brother’s place.
No – not a stranger—
A marled sword blade swung past her, caught a Liosan closing on her. Sliced through him from shoulder to hip. The backswing sent the top half of a head and helm spinning away. A third swing severed two hands gripping a spear. Three fallen Liosan, opening a gap.
‘Follow me,’ Yedan Derryg said, stepping forward.