Peter Brett - The Daylight War

Jardir pulled up his white charger, and the others stopped with him. ‘Who are those men?’

‘ Chin who have tried to flee the call to alagai’sharak , or dishonoured themselves in the night,’ Jayan said. ‘They are to be tethered like nie’Sharum , the chains staked in position. If they will not fight for honour, let them fight for their own lives.’

‘Halt!’ Jardir cried to the Sharum driving the line, and the men immediately stopped. All eyes turned to Jardir as he sprang lightly to his feet upon his horse’s back for all to see. He looked to the condemned men.

‘Your Tenders have lied to you!’ he shouted, drawing on the power of his crown to spread his voice far into the gloaming. ‘Since you were infants at your mother’s breasts, they have told you the alagai are a Plague sent by the Creator to punish the sins of man. They have told you that you deserve this, that you have no choice but to cower and hide and await forgiveness and redemption.’

He scanned the men, letting them see his eyes. ‘But Everam loves His children, and would not curse us so. The alagai are a Plague, but it is one sent by Nie, the Enemy, and redemption does not come to men who cower and skulk! It comes to those who take up the fight, struggling against the children of Nie on His Ala even as Everam struggles with Her in the heavens.’

A month ago, he might have thought the words pointless with such men, but now he could see into their hearts, and knew they were tired of blaming themselves for the alagai , tired of being told that the homes and loved ones they lost were punishments they had brought upon themselves. They wanted to believe, but his people had broken them as badly as the demons, leaving them dispirited. They would give anything to be as men once more.

‘You have seen my people fight the alagai ,’ Jardir said. ‘You know it can be done. They have training, it is true, but more than that, they have courage. Courage coming not from their spears, but from the knowledge that they fight for more than themselves. They fight for their wives and mothers, their sisters and daughters and infant sons. Their old and infirm.’

He swept his spear over the line of greenlanders. ‘You wear chains because my warriors do not believe you care. They believe you will not even fight to save yourselves, so they mean to stake you in the path of the alagai .’ He pointed back to the wall of the inner city. ‘But it is not just our women and children behind those walls! I have offered my protection to all who cannot fight, even your greenland women and children. They are crowded and cramped, but so long as we hold the walls, they are safe.’

He could sense a change in the men’s hearts, and grasped for it, holding aloft his spear and drawing on its power to make it shine bright with magic. ‘I will go into the night to fight for your people! I ask the same of you, but if you do not have the heart, you are no use to me this night.’

He pointed the spear at the centre of the line, its light flaring even brighter, and men pressed to either side in fear, opening a length of chain between them. Jardir drew a ward with the spear’s tip, and a bolt of white energy leapt from the weapon, shattering the chain.

‘Stand or flee,’ he shouted, ‘but remember you are men, and not dogs!’

The fear and doubt in the hearts of the men turned to awe, and many of them fell to their knees. Shanjat, astride his black charger next to Jardir, thrust his spear into the air. ‘Deliverer!’

The other Sharum took up the chant, followed by the kneeling chin , and then, a moment later, the rest of them. They thrust their spears skyward with every call, and their voices carried far into the night.

‘Those are the voices of men!’ Jardir boomed. ‘The servants of Nie will hear you, and quail in fear!’ He dropped back into his saddle, kicking off for the wall, followed by the Spears of the Deliverer and hundreds of roaring chin .

‘Everam curse me,’ Qeran muttered from atop the compound wall as he watched the Sharum march. ‘Waning is upon us, and here I stand, useless.’

‘Nonsense,’ Abban said. ‘The Deliverer needs his forges and glasseries guarded, that he may continue to arm his men after Waning. There may yet be fighting here.’

Qeran shook his head. ‘You have done well in hiding yourself, khaffit . There is no tactical advantage to this place, no reason for the alagai to test your walls. And the walls,’ he stamped his spear on the rampart, ‘are stronger than those of the inner city. The Deliverer’s … craftsmen are safe.’ He made the title seem a foul taste he could not scrape from his tongue.

‘You said yourself the men are not ready,’ Abban said, ‘nor yourself. You have barely had your new leg a fortnight.’

‘I said the men were not yet at their full strength,’ Qeran said, ‘nor me. But my hundred and I are still more fit than nine-tenths of the warriors out there.’

‘ Your hundred?’ Abban asked.

Qeran looked at him, and Abban remembered how brutally the man had treated him in sharaj . He waited patiently, and savoured the slight nod Qeran gave him. ‘Abban’s hundred.’

Abban nodded, turning his gaze back to look out from the walls one last time before leaving the drillmaster to command as he limped back to the safety of the underpalace growing beneath the squat building in the centre of his compound.

Inevera found Asome and Asukaji in their private chambers in Ahmann’s underpalace. The two were playing with Asome’s infant son, Kaji.

‘What is it now, Mother?’ Asome glared at her as she entered, Ashia at her back. ‘Has not humiliation enough been heaped upon me?’

Inevera looked sadly at her son.

— The only thing that exceeds his potential is his ambition — the dice had said when she cast them eighteen years ago, bathed in his birthing blood. It told her he would be powerful, but spoke a warning as well.

‘Your wife and I will walk the walls during the battle, my son,’ she said. ‘I invite you to come with us.’

Asome looked at her as if sensing a trap. ‘Hasn’t Father ordered his wives and the dama’ting into the underpalace as well?’

Inevera shrugged. ‘Perhaps, but who will dare stop us?’

‘I might,’ Asome said.

Inevera nodded. ‘Or you might follow me … for my own safety. Surely your father would forgive you that.’

Asome turned to Asukaji. ‘Just you, my son,’ Inevera said.

The two men looked back at her, mistrust in their eyes once more.

‘Ahmann has not dissolved your marriage, Asome. At least, not yet. I would walk with my son and daughter-in-law at my side as Alagai Ka walks the night.’ She looked to Asukaji and infant Kaji. ‘Surely while we are gone, my nephew will protect my grandson as if he were his own.’

Asome darkened a bit at that, but Asukaji laid a hand on his arm. ‘It is all right, cousin. Go.’ His voice dropped to a whisper, but Inevera, her senses sharpened by magic, heard him. ‘I will keep our son until your return.’ He kissed Asome with such tenderness that Inevera’s heart ached for them both, but Ashia’s shifting behind her was a reminder that there was a third side in the triangle.

She looked to her grandson. And poor Kaji in the middle.

They walked in silence to the wall of the inner city. Inevera wore opaque robes of white silk, looking much like her dama’ting robes of old, but she wore her hood back, and her veil was gossamer. The warded gold coins were warm at her forehead, and she wore considerable jewellery, not all of it decorative. Her robes shimmered with wards of unsight stitched in electrum thread. The wards were Mistress Leesha’s, stolen from Ahmann’s Cloak of Unsight, but even knowing the Skull Throne would hold the alagai from the wall, she could not deny the comfort they gave her in the naked night.