Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

The cold legions wrap around you…

The sky is changing overhead, boiling something up—it looks like a storm, but is ominously silent. The rowers ignore it, and their captain makes no comment—Ringil held on for one final moment to the cold, hard certainty he’d had on waking and then he let go and it’s gone, like a fish in the water. He looks up and there’s the sensation of tilting.

The cold legions…

On the jetty, as if at a signal, the three restless, gray-candle-flame figures break suddenly loose and streak out across the water, like the shadows of cloud blowing by overhead. Ringil watches numbly as they chase the boat, as they close on the stern, as they slip aboard and wrap tight around him with a shock like a cold-water bath.

And are gone.

The black-rigged caravel looms; a rope boarding ladder is hanging over the side. There’s a shiver to the whole vessel, as if it, too, has been wrapped tightly in something that’s now fraying and fluttering in the rising wind.

Ringil stands, takes one last look back at the empty jetty. Then he grabs hold of the ladder, and hauls himself up the sagging, damp-rope rungs to see what’s waiting at the top.

Oddly, the only thing Egar felt now was an icy calm.

As if everything around him—the cracked and decaying frame of the temple by night, the desolate, dust-crunch emptiness of the place—had only ever been a mask, and now its nocturnal wearer cupped hand to visage, doffed the disguise, and stood grinning feral in the gloom.

As if he’d been expecting it all along, this dwenda.

It came slowly down the stairs above them, coruscating blue fire moving behind the balustrade, the hinted dimensions of a dark figure at its heart. It seemed to be singing.

At his back, a choked curse from Harath.

Egar’s eyes never left the blue light. He let go of the girl’s hand, shook it loose with a single sharp motion. Measured the angles.

Get this right, Dragonbane .

“Harath, these things are fast,” he called in Majak. “Get yourself a lance off that wall, and get ready. Go! ”

He whirled and sprang, to the wall and the two staff lances still leaned there where Harath’s former comrades had never had the chance to grab them. Soft rush of cloth at his side as Harath moved with him—and suddenly he was glad, so very glad of the younger man’s speed. He snatched one of the lances. Smooth wood grain across his palm and the rolling weight of the thing—he felt his lips split in a snarl of joy at the feeling. Heft and spin, one-handed, two-handed and round and—

The dwenda stood before him.

—block!

Like a shriek through him as he saw the shadow blade come leaping. The creature had to have vaulted right over the balustrade, hit the ground soft and silent, and straightened up barely a yard away. The impact of sword against staff shivered through him, stung his grasp. He grunted with it, tilted down, levered the blow away.

Harath swung in, yelling, from the right.

The dwenda caught it, swung about, snake-swift. The dark blade dripped an arc of blue fire through the air. Smashed the Ishlinak’s attack away.

“Mother fucker! ”

Harath’s yell of surprise—he’d not been expecting the strength. Egar had scant time for sympathy. He bellowed and thrust, pike style, low, at the dwenda’s knees. The blue fire was down to tracery now, they were facing a figure made of dark, etched with the flicker of lightnings, but for all that shaped like a man.

And a man, well—you can always kill a man.

The dwenda shrieked at him and leapt the thrust, put its sword blade through the air in a sweeping slice at head height. Egar swayed back, felt the whicker of air past his cheek. He circled out, away from Harath, try to bracket this fucker , and the dwenda came down cat-like, soft crunch as it hit the dusty floor. It wore the same smooth, featureless helmet he’d seen at Ennishmin, now swinging back and forth, questing, like some blunt slug’s head detecting a threat. The same one-piece suit of what looked like shining leather but—Egar knew from bloody experience—resisted edged weaponry like mail.

“Bracket the fucker!” bellowed Harath, like he’d just thought of the tactic himself. And launched himself forward.

The dwenda twisted to meet the attack. Clang as the shadow sword met the blade on the end of the staff lance, grunt from the Ishlinak as he felt the impact. Still, he looped back, trapped the sword point high. Egar saw the moment, fell off it like a cliff, and rushed in screaming. He didn’t bother with blades, rammed the staff before him at chest height instead. The dwenda must have sensed the attack, but Harath had it overextended. A desperate side-kick flung out to hold Egar back, but he’d put everything he had into the rush, and the dwenda’s aim was off. He took the glancing kick in the belly, nearly puked from the force of it, did not let it stop him. He collided with the dwenda and they both went sprawling. A slim black-clad arm whipped out for his throat—he battered it aside with a lucky swipe of the staff lance. The dwenda shrilled. It was a cry he knew, it was distress, and his heart went black with joy at the sound. He smothered with his weight. A sword pommel hammered him in the kidneys—the world went stumbling around him, little points of light in the gloom, he drew ragged breath and shrieked down at the blunt head under him.

“Oh, you cunt !”

Cocked a fist, but as he did Harath stepped in and drove his staff lance down into the thing’s throat. Full-throated berserker bellow behind the stroke, he twisted the blade and leaned his full weight on it. The dwenda shrilled again, shuddered and thrashed like a gaffed fish…

Lay still.

Blood pooled out from under the neck. Egar smelled the spiced alien reek of it as he reeled upright from the corpse.

“Nice one,” he rasped, and nearly fell over again. Harath stuck out an arm to steady him.

“Easy, old man.” Sucking breath. “What the fuck was that?”

Egar shook himself, wet-dog-like. “Tell you later. C’mon, there’ll be more of them. Let’s get out of here.”

He cast about for the girl, who had pressed herself up against the wall, the back of one hand jammed to her mouth to stop a scream. To her credit, he reckoned she hadn’t made a sound. It figured, he supposed. You were a slave, you learned fast enough not to raise your voice or voice what you felt. You learned how little it mattered, how little it would get you outside of pain.

He gathered up the staff lance in one hand, grabbed her by the wrist with the other. Grinning a little crazily, blood still up. She stared back at him above her hand, wide-eyed with a fear too general for him to feel good about. For a sliced moment, he saw himself through her eyes—hulking, grim, the talisman-tangled hair, the bared teeth, the sprawled corpse at his feet.

“Go down just like men, these angels,” he told her briskly, unable to put the grin away. “Nothing to it. Let’s go.”

They went.

But at the second turn of the stairway, a long, low wolf-howl seeped across the air, somewhere away in the heart of the building. It froze them, midstep.

And a second cry, answering.

“Hunt’s on,” Egar snapped. “Back to the rope. Harath, come on!”

But Harath was staring downward, not toward the sound.

“Egar. Look, man! Look! ”

On the floor at the bottom of the stairs, the felled Ishlinak were twitching and stirring.

Not Elkret. Alnarh, and the other one.

The dead men. Waking up.

Egar took it in with a bleak lack of surprise.

“Run,” he recommended.