Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

If Ringil noticed any of it, he gave her no sign. He came to meet her, grinning, out of the gathered glirsht statues and the storm he’d somehow conjured at their center, measured pace and vacant eyes and the empty will to harm.

She snarled and hurled a melting across the space between them.

Something she could barely see, something that wrapped around him like a loose gray shawl reached out and slapped the melting away. She was not even sure if he was aware it happened. But she heard the low moaning it made.

The Cold Commands .

Her hate stumbled, stubbed senses on what she’d just seen. Shocked disbelief dizzied through her. No mortal since Ilwrack could…

She crushed out the tremor. No time for further attempts at sorcery, but Atalmire’s men were at her back, armored and grim. And she had her hatred, she hugged it close. Howled out Seethlaw’s name, once, for family and for honor.

Rushed in, swinging the blue-fire arc of her blade.

RINGIL MET HER IN A SPLINTERING CLASH OF STEEL AND BLUE SPARKS. The Ravensfriend turned the dwenda’s stroke, sent Risgillen staggering aside. He grunted with the effort it took. Risgillen spun back in, snake-swift, hissing. Kiriath steel blocked her again—it felt less like his handiwork than the sword’s. Risgillen snarled and fell back. Something tugged his attention around; he swung, met the helmeted dwenda warrior on his flank, and chopped down the attacking blade so it rang off the stone floor. The dwenda, committed, lurched forward and Ringil kicked it savagely in the knee. It tumbled, threw out a guarding arm…

The Ravensfriend glittered down.

The arm went, like wheat under the scythe, chopped through just behind the wrist. Dwenda blood splattered everywhere, spiced alien reek of it like a spike through the chilly temple air—

“No!”

Risgillen, screaming it. Ringil had no time to look at her, combat senses told him the third dwenda was closer, no time to finish the one he’d maimed. He whipped about, stumbled unaccountably, put up his blade and met his attacker head-on. Swipe and slam of blades, he got in close, swung a shoulder into his opponent and sent him staggering. Risgillen rushed him from the side, swung low and chopped at his legs. He went a foot into the air above the blade, came down behind the stroke and sliced at her unprotected back. The Ravensfriend chopped a gash into her shoulder. She shrieked and reeled away, fell over from the shock. He went after her, but the third dwenda leapt in and blocked him, jabbed out and tagged him across the ribs. He stumbled again, leaned back, got the dwenda’s blade out of the way.

The ground was—

The dwenda came in swinging. He met and parried, both blades locked up and straining against each other. Risgillen crawled to her feet, circled round to bracket him.

—shaking.

His eyes darted to the support pillars under the gallery. Something gray crawled there, something writhed and lashed and—

He shook off the dwenda, fell back, blocked Risgillen’s limping attack from the side. Energy coursed through him, it felt like an eighth of purest krinzanz chewed down, swallowed, residue rubbed into his gums. It numbed him and fired him in equal measure, it came screaming up from inside, this thing he’d dredged with him from the fields of the weeping sacrificed out on the cold marsh plain…

I see what the akyia saw, Gil. I see what you could become if you’d only let yourself .

Up on the altar, the boy had gotten himself to a sitting position, held out his blood-slick, slashed-open arms in mute entreaty. He met Ringil’s eyes for a split second. Then he collapsed sideways as another tremor shook the building. He rolled off the altar, he fell on his face in the dust.

Something jagged and black split Ringil’s skull apart from within.

Fuck, them, all .

He tipped back his head and howled.

He felt the cold legion sweep up and through him and out—it was like sinking at the heart of a roaring maelstrom. He reached out without knowing how, laid hands that were not his own on the temple around him. He cracked stone and mortar apart, splintered and levered, breathed in destruction like the fumes of fine wine. He tore out the pillars from under Atalmire and Menkarak’s feet on the gallery, dropped them yelling to the floor below. He catapulted the blood-drenched altar up and back with enough force to shatter it against the rear wall. He tore dressed-stone blocks from the ceiling like a dentist pulling rotten teeth—let them fall, shattering, to the temple floor. He—

The third dwenda swung at him again in the chaos.

He screamed in its face, tore its blade from its hand, hurled the weapon gleaming end over end across the hall. The Ravensfriend came up, leapt in from the side. Ringil hacked through the dwenda’s flailing, fending hand as if it were not there, took head from shoulders in a single bellowing stroke. Blood gouted from the severed neck—he raised his head in the brief fountain it made, he raised his arms, as the temple tore itself apart around him.

Blood rained down.

Blood splattered his face. Blood trickled in the gritted teeth of his grin. He howled at the shattering ceiling, worse than any sound Seethlaw had ever made.

He lowered his head and looked for Risgillen.

Found her struggling to stay on her feet, sword held sagging in both hands before her. There was blood on her bone-white Aldrain face, a jagged gash in her brow he didn’t remember putting there. Behind her, Atalmire crawled from where he’d fallen, dragging a leg snapped the wrong way at the knee. Menkarak lay beyond, half trapped under rubble. Ringil raised the Ravensfriend. He screamed at them, over the sound of cracking, crumbling stone.

The two dwenda stared at him from where they lay on the floor, like small children facing a drunken father’s fury.

“This city,” he raged, scarcely aware of what he was saying, “is mine. I stand watch here. I am the gate. To take this city you will have to come through me. ”

“You cannot !” Risgillen screamed back at him. “This is not your right ! You have not passed through the Dark Gate!”

“Have I not?” He tilted his head, felt something in his neck click. He leaned in and looked at her. Saw her shudder away. “Have I not, Risgillen?”

And suddenly he felt something slip away inside him. Suddenly he was emptied out.

The hands he had laid on the temple stones loosened their grip, folded away, began to fade. The cold legion collapsed inward again, wrapped around him like an icy wind, high whistling, weeping note of loss, and then even that was gone.

A single block of masonry dropped out of the ceiling and shattered apart on his left. Stone shards stung his cheek.

He lowered the Ravensfriend.

“Get out of here,” he said tiredly. “Go on, fuck off, both of you. Before the whole place comes down.”

Somewhere, masonry groaned and powder spilled down in the gloom. The dwenda gaped at him, unmoving. He felt his temper spark and sputter like a damp taper.

“I said go !” No triumph in his tone, only a dead and grinding rage. “Go back to the Gray Places and mourn your brother, Risgillen. I won’t tell you again. You are not wanted in this world. You are not missed. Spread the fucking word. The next time I see a dwenda, I rip its motherfucking heart out and eat it still beating. ”

The echoes of his voice fell away. He walked past the dwenda to where Menkarak lay trapped. Risgillen made no move to stop him. Atalmire looked to be in shock from his shattered leg. The invigilator’s eyes widened as he saw Ringil’s figure loom over him. He shoved weakly at the block of stone across his chest, coughed up a lot of blood.