Ричард Морган - The Dark Defiles

“Very nice,” she said carefully.

From the Dragonbane and then Marnak Ironbrow, she’d formed an impression of Poltar that painted him both dangerous and deluded. But it hadn’t ever occurred to her that he might be stark raving mad.

“She chose me,” the shaman ranted at her, “to lead the Skaranak, to keep them pure. You will not corrupt them with your alien ways.”

She coiled for the leap to her feet. “You got any more, uhm, marks of the Goddess you want to show me?”

The tortured arm whipped away, back beneath the cloak. Poltar grinned craftily at her.

“You think you’ll trick me? I know you, demon, I know your schemes. You think I did not come here prepared? I am wrapped against your weapons, as against the cold.”

I’ve seen good steel swung at the shaman and somehow not bite, Marnak told her in the brothel. Blades turned by nothing but that filthy cloak he wears. Arrows that fail to find their mark, punches that never land. You wouldn’t be the first to try. But you’d be the first for a good long while. No one else is that stupid anymore.

You’re that stupid, Archidi.

Now move!

“You do not belong here, burned black witch, and it falls to me to drive you—”

She moved.

Up and away, ignore— fuck, that hurts !—the clutch of agony down through ribs and side. Get some distance from this rambling cloaked asshole, try to work out what to do. She opened her hand to the side and Falling Angel came to the call. Grunt of satisfaction, heft and aim. From five yards out, she hurled the knife at Poltar’s eye.

And this time, she saw.

Blurring in the air around him, like sudden heat-haze, but… shaped. As if some invisible tentacle lashed out to knock the knife away, and must somehow become apparent with the motion. Her hands swept back at her hips—jagged pain on the right with the move—Quarterless and Laughing Girl leapt from the sheaths in the small of her back and fell to her grip. She circled warily, arms out like a courtesan dancing, weight of the knives in each hand like balance. Eyes fixed on the shaman and the space he occupied.

Their gazes met.

“Well then,” he called. “So it ends. Go back to the shadows you came from, demon. Here is your doom!”

He lifted his naked arm out of the cloak again, held it forward at a low angle. She saw the same wavering through the air around the limb and then, abruptly, the most recent of the puncture marks were leaking thick, dark blood. As if something unseen were sucking it out.

Something was.

The air around the shaman began to stain an oily black. At first, it was only hints, like some assemblage of restless curving shadows in the sunlight, but as she watched, it took nearly solid form. It coiled and undulated around Poltar, almost like a thick, second cloak except it had a form all its own and…

Once, more than a century ago in Trelayne, she’d watched fascinated as some ignorant fuck claiming to be a doctor placed leeches on a fevered man’s flesh. More than anything, the thing twined around the shaman reminded her of one of those creatures grown vast. But it had wings, too, like an ocean ray, and it raised itself up like a cobra poised to strike. It looked altogether too lithe and poised for something that must crawl along the ground. And as it darkened into full visibility, it tipped back its headlike appendage and uttered a dull, droning cry.

Poltar’s voice rose exultantly to match the sound.

“It was not a god’s sword that fell to earth on the plain a hundred thousand years ago, it was a vessel, a ship made to carry back allies from a place beyond this world. And the ghosts of its crew endure. Behold, the wraith that heralds your end!”

The thing, whatever it was, had unwrapped fully from the shaman now. It flapped heavily up into the bright morning light, turned languidly over on its back, and seemed to swell to twice its size with the motion. The sun gleamed on its flanks, made them seem wet. It writhed about a little, as if to get its bearings, and then, with abrupt, gut-swooping speed, it came slithering through the air at her.

She ducked left, favoring her injured side. Stabbed upward with Laughing Girl, but the wraith flapped its whole body like a wing on that side and lifted clear. Her ribs screamed, she stumbled on the missed stroke. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the wraith snap about like a shark in a feeding circle, come back at her again. She threw herself sideways and this time she fell headlong. The wraith gusted past like a slick black cloud, tilted one effortless wing upward and banked about. She thrashed backward as it sank down toward her, heard it make a noise like a pan filled with seething water, hurled Quarterless and Laughing Girl in sheer, panicked revulsion.

The knives hit; she saw how the flapping wraith clenched around the wounds—and then spat them back out, apparently not much harmed. She bounced to her feet, pain buried now under the avalanche of combat need and fear. Hands out and reaching—Quarterless and Laughing Girl flew up out of the grass like startled birds, were in her hands again. But how the fuck—

“My lady Archeth!”

She swung at the shout, saw a tottering, wounded horse, arrow shafts still spiking from its neck and rump, ridden near to collapse. Astride it, an awkward-looking Yilmar Kaptal, brandishing a commandeered short sword he pretty clearly didn’t know how to use. He was twenty yards off and waving frantically at her. Under different circumstances, it would have been comical.

Archeth gaped. “Kaptal?”

But if the portly ex-pimp cut no lethal figure in her eyes, Poltar the shaman thought otherwise. Perhaps he saw only a mounted warrior and jumped with Skaranak tribal instinct to an immediate conclusion. Perhaps he saw through Kaptal’s flesh to what lay beneath. Or perhaps he just didn’t like surprises. A string of harsh syllables coughed from his mouth, he gestured with one lean arm. The flapping wraith flexed upward, rippled away over Archeth’s head, gibbering and hissing to itself as it dived at Kaptal and his mount.

“Salgra Keth, my lady,” he bellowed desperately. “ Salgra Keth!”

The horse saw it coming. It screamed and reared, tried to throw Kaptal—who was showing some uncanny horsemanship, all things considered—then stumbled and went to its knees at the fore. There was no time for more. Blur of glistening black, like a drenched washcloth hurled across a kitchen—the wraith fell on horse and rider like some huge tarpaulin, wrapped them both wetly in its folds, settled to the ground.

Horror held Archeth unstirring, as the vague shapes of Kaptal and his mount rose and wallowed beneath the shrouding black. It was like watching a horse and rider with pitch poured over them, struggling to get out of a bog.

Salgra Keth.

The shout rang in her ears. The art of fucking juggling, what the—

She stared down at the knives in her hands.

That’s very impressive. The words of an irritable god, in the wind that blew across the steppe. Can you do it with all of them at once yet?

All of them at once.

The art of—

Under the billowing drape of the wraith, she saw the injured horse’s neck arch. Its head rose and lunged valiantly against the monster that had it wrapped. The wraith made a hissing, clucking sound and convulsed tighter…

The rage erupted behind her eyes. She hurled both knives. Had Wraithslayer and Bandgleam in her grip a split second after, and hurled them, too. Some barely aware portion of her mind registered that she was staring blindly at the wraith and its victims, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt instead as if she floated, loose and free above the steppe, saw only a constantly shifting tracery of molten wire, saw she stood at its heart, saw at last she was its heart.