Stands a Shadow (54 page)

Yet this was war, and she found that it was true what the soldiers said. War created exceptional circumstances. You felt a responsibility to live recklessly and fully, only too aware that you might never see another sunrise.

As though proof of this, her heart suddenly leapt when she glimpsed his face on the edge of the roof. Ché was being helped along by a female Volunteer.

‘Ché!’ she yelled as she ran to meet him. He was drenched in blood, and barely conscious. ‘Ché?’ He lifted his head and tried to focus on her.

Get me out of here
, his expression said.

Curl threw his free arm over her shoulder and helped the Volunteer drag him towards the ship.

One of the small scuds took off from the roof. Another fired its tubes, manoeuvring into the empty position. Men backed away to give it room.

‘Any sign of the old farlander?’ he croaked.

Curl shook her head. ‘He’d better hurry, wherever he is, if he wants to get off this island.’

The young man wheezed as though in laughter. ‘That old bastard? He’ll have a way out of this. He’s likely gone already.’

Ash charged the war-zel straight towards the front door of the house, slapping its rump hard with his sheathed sword.

He ducked low in the saddle as it burst through the door and clattered along the wooden floorboards of a hallway, hearing the shouts of pursuit behind him even as his mount bore him out through an open door at the back.

The animal snorted and took three great surges across an open yard. Ash kicked hard to urge it on, and it vaulted a fence with a leap and landed on the other side. The zel stumbled once, recovered its footing, then skirted a deserted plaza as crossbow bolts whined through the air from behind them.

Ash glanced back. Saw men pouring over the fence and riders emerging from the side streets around it.

The gunfire was closer now. He wasn’t far.

The animal’s flanks were bright with lather, its breath rasping in its throat. It felt good to be riding like this again, with the wind in his eyes and a recklessness in his blood like a reminiscence of youth.

‘Come on!’ he encouraged as the zel skipped over a mound of scattered baskets, took a street on the other side of the plaza with its hooves thundering along the boardwalk. He could see the marina at the end of the street now, its long quays supporting wooden poles with lit lanterns, entirely deserted of boats.

A cannon boomed, the sound of it rumbling along the street.

They emerged from the street right into a squad of imperial infantry. The zel burst through them without slowing. Ash spotted a warehouse to the right along the waterfront, with a skyship hovering over its broad roof lit by flashes of gunfire.

Men were sprinting over the roof towards the ship, climbing rope-ladders dangling from its hull. It looked familiar to him, that vessel. He squinted and saw the wooden figurehead on its prow. It was a falcon in flight.

I don’t believe it
.

He yanked the reins and aimed for the building as he kicked for speed. With the zel racing beneath him, he glanced at a scud to their left circling the marina, firing rounds of grape-shot. A smatter of plumes rose up from the nearby water, splashing down on the boardwalk as they charged along it. Ash shook his head dry and looked for a way onto the roof. He spotted a stairwell on the side of it, a few men still clambering upwards. He wondered if Ché and the girl had made it.

Suddenly the zel screamed and pitched forwards.

Ash spilled from the saddle and rolled on the hard boardwalk with his sword still in his grasp. He leapt to his feet and looked back at the animal as it reared on its side. Blood ran from a wound in its flank. He saw the Imperials racing towards him.

Ash turned and sprinted for his life.

The skyship was starting to move under its tremendous load of rescued men, the propulsion tubes burning ever louder along its hull. Below it, the warehouse roof was in the final stages of being overrun. Some Khosians hadn’t made it. They were making their last stands back to back.

Men still dangled from the rope-ladders of the rising ship. One fell off, landing amongst a group of Imperials, who stabbed and hacked at him in a frenzy. Soldiers shouted down at their comrades who clung desperately to the ropes with their legs kicking air, reaching their hands out to them.

Ché sat with his back to the starboard rail while a medico tended to his leg. Curl crouched next to him, not seeming to mind the odd bolt or shot that clattered against the hull. The girl had her arm around him. Her touch felt good to him; warm and vivid. He did not want to look at the rooftop below.

‘
Look!
’ Curl suddenly shouted, pointing down to the warehouse roof.

He turned his head to see what she was pointing at.

It was Ash, stopping short as the ship nosed away.

‘
Trench!
’ the old man bellowed.

Ché struggled to his feet. He pushed away the medico as the man cursed and tried to hold him down.

‘We can’t just leave him,’ Ché snapped frantically, and looked around for someone to shout at, to tell them to turn back. But he could barely see beyond the heads of the men pressing around him, and he knew in his sinking heart that it was useless.

In impotence, he turned back to watch.

They were high enough now for the entire warehouse roof to be framed in his vision. The streets around it were alive with Acolytes and soldiers, the rooftop itself an island awash with them.

In their midst, the lone farlander’s black skin was a stark contrast to their white robes.

Ché saw the old man’s blade glitter silver in the darkness, the R
ō
shun stepping into the spaces he was cutting through their masses.

‘Merciful Mother,’ Curl said, and she gripped the wooden pendant around her neck.

Ché barely heard her over the roar of the tubes. The ship banked sharply towards the far shore, and the lone figure of Ash grew smaller in size, a dot that vanished amongst them.

Ash’s instincts took over. For a time his attention was focused so intensely on what he did that no part of him was aware of his own self in the midst of the carnage. He knew no fear, nor conscience, nor even spite, as he moved freely without distinctions of mind and body and blade in a performance of one, weaving their patterns as he ducked and darted and killed in a gradual movement towards the very edge of the rooftop.

Around him his opponents fell shooting blood – without feet, hands, arms. They fell without heads. They fell with their stomachs unravelling into their cupped palms. They fell in silence as though asleep. They fell in shouted protest.

They did not stop falling.

‘Back!’ Ash snarled as he spun from the edge of the roof, his feet tottering dangerously over the side.

‘Back!’ he spat again with a shake of his blade, gore sheeting off it.

They listened, at least enough to hesitate, to pull up short. Ash gulped down air as men joined them with crossbows, a few pistols. He wiped the blood from his face, spat it from his mouth. Every part of him drenched in it.

They panted and eyed the crimson-soaked vision with something approaching awe.

A soldier pushed quickly to the front, an officer by the tattoos on his face. ‘Who are you?’ the man enquired.

He sounded genuinely curious.

Ash took in the ragged assembly around him, the crossbows and guns aimed at his body. They looked scared, most of them. Scared and tired.

‘Drop your weapon,’ ordered the officer. ‘Do it now, or die.’

Ash thought it over for a moment, then straightened from his fighting stance and lowered his sword. A flight of geese were crying somewhere in the night sky. He looked up, but couldn’t see them for all the clouds. He felt the breeze run across his face like a breath from the World Mother. His expression softened.

‘You should know,’ he said, looking up at the officer as he sheathed his sword. ‘That I would take my own life first.’ And with the guns and crossbows aimed squarely at his chest, he did the only thing left to do.

Ash jumped.

CHAPTER FORTY

Lonely Ends

It was the water that saved him, not only in breaking his fall but in helping him escape.

Flush with the success of his supreme dive from the warehouse roof, Ash swam beneath the surface until his lungs were burning from lack of air. When he resurfaced the Imperials took some pot shots at him, but he ignored them, and submerged again, kicking hard.

He swam in that way until he was clear of the marina, and continued to swim along the littoral of lakeweed until the sights and sounds of their searching faded away behind him. It grew darker as the clouds massed even thicker overhead. For a time he lay on his back and floated there as the sickness of exhaustion slowly diminished.

Out over the lake the flares continued to rise and fall. It would be risky, trying for the far shore; snipers were no doubt watching the surface for signs of escaping Khosians.

What are you worried about
? he asked himself.
In your condition you’ll most likely drown first
.

Ash trod water and breathed calm breaths until he felt ready. He looked back at the island city. He looked at the far southern shore.

The old farlander began to swim for it.

It was raining now, and the fat drops were bursting against the surface all around him, the chorus of it deafening his ears to all else. The water seemed aglow wherever the drops collided with it.

Ash spat and chanced a look ahead. His last strokes had brought him past the dark mouth of the Chilos while the current had tried to sweep him into it. He could see fires on both sides of the river mouth, and lanterns strung along its banks, throwing their light across it. Men hunkered down next to upright rifles, gazing out at the passing flow.

He kicked and swam on, long past the limits of his endurance. Only his will kept him going now.

The shore here was a flat and treeless floodplain. Ash squinted through the falling rain, saw a glimmer of flames surrounded by the glowing canvas of a tent. Other tents too were clustered across the floodplain. Riders ambled back and forth in the darkness, huddled in their cloaks as they watched the water’s edge.

His limbs were starting to cramp badly now. He could hardly breathe for the fire in his lungs. Ash knew he was going to drown if he stayed in the water any longer. He turned for the shore, paddling like a dog now, his body numb and almost useless. The fall of rain masked any sounds that he made. He felt mud beneath his hands and he scrabbled at it desperately, relief flooding him for a moment. On all fours he crawled out of the water onto a beach of silty mud, and lay for a long time catching his breath.

When he at last rose to his knees he looked left and right along the shore. He was facing a vertical bank of earth topped with straggly grasses, and the beach of mud ran up into deep runnels carved through the bank, water running out of them.

He heard something jingle in the darkness, and lay flat against the mud as he stifled a cough.

A soldier stood on the bank staring outwards. Ash pressed himself deeper into the mud, waited until the man turned away and disappeared in the darkness, calling out to someone beyond.

Quickly, Ash scrabbled up to one of the runnels in the bank. He looked into it, seeing nothing but blackness. Felt the chill of the water running out over his hands.

As he began to slither along the chute, mud splashed into his mouth and his nostrils and his eyes. It covered him and it filled him, until he became one with it, a creature of dirt, a thing still living, still fighting, because it did not know any other way.

She was dying, and the reek of her poisoned body was enough to make the eyes water.

Even with his mask on, it filled Sparus’s mouth with saliva and made him want to spit. He looked down at the panting form of Sasheen, her swollen features, her blue lips. He looked at the head of Lucian sitting silently on the table, and its jar now empty of Royal Milk.

‘Matriarch,’ he said, quietly.

Sasheen stirred, fluttered her eyes open. A wheeze escaped her parted lips. He waited a few moments for her to focus on him.

‘We have trouble,’ he told her plainly.

‘Romano,’ Sasheen replied with a sigh.

‘He’s making his move. His people have been approaching the lower officers of the army with offers of promotion if they will support his claim for Patriarch.’

Her eyes blazed with sudden anger. ‘I’m not even dead yet.’

Nor was Anslan
, he recalled,
when you slit the Patriarch’s throat in his bed chamber
.

She fluttered her hand, beckoning him closer. Her anger was robbing the breath from her, and she spoke in a whisper.

‘And you, Sparus. Has he approached you yet?’

The Archgeneral faltered, taken aback by her bluntness. He supposed she had little time now for subtleties.

‘Yes,’ he confessed, his head low. ‘He has asked for my support.’

Sasheen glanced at the head of Lucian. His eyes were closed, but Sparus had the sense that the man was listening to everything they said.