Ian Esslemont - Assail

He turned to the Reddin brothers. The wetness at his cheeks was now frozen ice as well. He felt oddly numb. All sounds seemed muted. He examined his hands — bloodied. I have blood upon my hands. I am kinslayer now in truth. Uncles from both sides of my line have I slain.

He did not know how much of these thoughts showed upon his face, but the brothers knelt on one knee before him, bowing their heads, just as a hearthguard may to his lord.

If anyone is to be damned, it will be me. I have spared them that. He turned to the south.

Now let us see what we Icebloods have wrought upon the land.

* * *

Bodies, old and new, dotted the mud flats along the shores of the Sea of Gold. They lay amid the remains of broken rickety docks. Silverfox numbly observed to herself: these nuggets are hardly gold. This sea should change its name to something more … appropriate.

She stood on the grassed lip of the shore cliff, peering south to the slate-hued water beneath the overcast sky. She wondered whether she faced this way because she dared not glance east.

What she might see there would make all this appear pleasant.

She felt, rather than heard, Pran Chole take his place at her side. ‘Almost all human, Summoner. I sense no recent fallen who carry the Jaghut taint.’

‘This is supposed to cheer me?’

‘There are … many,’ the Imass allowed. ‘These invaders do not appear to be handling themselves well.’

She stole a glance at the ancient being. She had ordered him to remain behind but he had simply refused to obey. The nearest thing she might claim as a father — and he millennia old. We are a strange family, she mused. He, I, and — she cast a quick look about for Kilava, found her standing far off staring north — and the disappointed aunt.

‘So they fled,’ she sighed, more relieved than she dared con-template. Yet her aged and crooked hands still shook and even she sensed it: fragility. That she was composed of four souls, four awarenesses, made her particularly susceptible to … shattering.

‘They are close. A day’s journey. Gathered together.’

‘Yes, I sense them. A last stand, perhaps.’

Pran Chole added nothing to this, as there was no more to say. The mummified sinew of his joints clung to his bones as if he were strapped together, all animated by the eldritch ritual of Tellann. Most of the dried leather flesh of his face remained, though patches of it had fallen or been worn away. Mostly along the ridges of bone: the sharp edges of the cheekbones, the upper orbits of his empty sockets, or where the flesh had been thinnest, such as across his forehead where the skull peeked through, smooth and polished like old seasoned wood. The skullcap of the ancient deer he wore as a helmet had fared far worse. Grey with age it was, and utterly dried. It would probably weigh next to nothing in her hands. Its muzzle where it rode high above Pran’s head was longish and narrow.

She knew she was drifting … delaying.

‘Summoner,’ Pran began, and he always used this form of address when he wished to be stern with her. She could almost hear him clearing his throat, had he breath to do so. ‘We cannot delay any longer. We must confront them.’

No. We mustn’t. She had made her decision. ‘This time you must remain behind.’

If a desiccated mien of bared grinning teeth could express surprise and dismay, Pran’s features came closest. ‘Summoner …’ his breathless voice whispered. ‘Do not cast us off.’

‘I alone must speak to them. You have brought me this far and for that I thank you. Now you must remain. I’ll won’t-’ She stopped herself. ‘That is, I cannot risk losing any of you.’

‘And what of you?’

‘You know I will be safe. Fetch my horse.’

He inclined his head until the empty sockets of the beast skull seemed to stare at her in direct remonstration. ‘As you order, Summoner,’ he murmured in his sad dry voice.

He shuffled off and she went to talk to Kilava. A cold wind buffeted them all, slicing down out of the mountain heights. The beaded laces of her shirt rattled and her long tangled grey hair tossed about her face. She drew it aside. She sensed something, far in the heights behind the dense cloud cover. But just what it was she couldn’t be certain. Oddly enough, she had no interest in the Jaghut themselves, or their sorcery. Her purpose was not to prosecute the Jaghut; her purpose was to bring an end to the ritual of Tellann. No doubt, however, it was this stirring that had so distracted Kilava these last two days.

She stopped next to the squat muscular woman whose midnight black hair, being even longer than hers, lashed violently in the gusting wind as if reflecting her angry thoughts. She stared north for a time, trying to see what this elder Imass Bonecaster might be seeing.

‘You have not seen a Jaghut refugium before, have you?’ Kilava asked.

She shook her head. ‘I am a child of the warm prairie.’ She might not have seen one, but in response to the Bonecaster’s question there came a cascade of images provided by the three awarenesses that shared her being: Nightchill, crossing one such windswept waste beneath hanging curtains of flickering lights tinged pink at their frills; Tattersail, sailing past gleaming cerulean cliffs of ice far taller than those they glimpsed just to the south; even Bellurdan, sharing a fire with a Jaghut elder within one of these remaining enclaves.

‘I see them through other eyes,’ she said.

Kilava nodded her understanding. ‘What I see troubles me. It has been a long time …’ she glanced to her, ‘an unimaginably long time — but what I sense hidden there reminds me …’ She frowned then, losing whatever memory it was she hunted. ‘Well, perhaps we will have to chase the Kerluhm even there.’

‘I hope it will not come to that.’

The Bonecaster turned to Pran, Tolb, and the waiting T’lan. Silverfox looked as well. How painfully few this remaining handful, some thirty only. Yet incalculably precious to her.

‘You have hurt Pran’s feelings,’ Kilava observed.

‘They have no feelings.’

Kilava raised one silken black brow. ‘You know that is not so.’

‘Yes,’ she sighed, exhausted. She was just so tired of their company. Their rigidity. Their silence. Their unrelenting … alienness. ‘Yes,’ she sighed again. ‘They feel twice with their spirits what they can no longer feel with their flesh. I know this.’

‘Do not forget it. It is too easy to forget.’

Pran arrived, leading the watered and rested mount. Tolb followed, his withered hands clasped at his ragged belt. ‘We are to remain behind,’ Pran told Kilava.

The Bonecaster eyed him. ‘I see. Yet why should the Kerluhm listen to her now?’

Silverfox stroked the bay’s neck, avoiding her gaze. ‘I’m not going to ask this time.’

‘Then perhaps I should follow at a distance,’ Kilava offered.

Silverfox felt her brows rising. This was a day of days. The legendary Kilava being obliging. ‘There is no need.’ She added, mounting: ‘You would be too far away to intercede in any case.’

But the three Bonecasters were paying her no attention. All three had turned to the north, as had the faces of the rest of the Imass. She glanced that way, shading her eyes. What was it? She sensed there, behind the bunched soot-black clouds, the stirring of Omtose — was that it?

Then she saw it. Through her own Bonecaster’s vision she glimpsed a kind of wave descending the upper slopes. Invisible, yet visible by the disturbance it evoked as it came, like a wave through water. It came on, descending the slopes at astounding speed.

Kilava spun to her. ‘Protect yourself!’ she ordered.

She could only gape. What was this thing?