The East Watch redoubt, now a pile of rubble, barely rose above the carpet of bodies. Smoke drifted from it as if from a dying pyre.
Itkovian had watched the Barghast clans push into the city, had seen the Pannion retreat become a rout in the streets below. The fighting had swiftly swept past the palace. A Seerdomin officer had managed to rally a rearguard in Jelarkan's Concourse, and that battle still raged on. But for the Pannions it was a withdrawing engagement. They were buying time for the exodus through what was left of the south and west gates.
A few White Face scouts had ventured into the palace grounds, close enough to discern that defenders remained, but no official contact had been established.
The recruit, Velbara, stood at Itkovian's side, a recruit no longer. Her training in weapons had been one of desperation. She'd not missed the foremost lesson — that of staying alive — that was the guiding force behind every skill she thereafter acquired in the heat of battle. As with all the other Capan newcomers to the company — who now made up most of the survivors under the Shield Anvil's command — she had earned her place as a soldier of the Grey Swords.
Itkovian broke a long silence. 'We yield the Great Hall, now.'
'Yes, sir.'
'The honour of the prince has been reasserted. We must needs depart — there is unfinished business at the Thrall.'
'Can we even yet reach it, sir? We shall need to find a Barghast warchief.'
'We shall not be mistaken for the enemy, sir. Enough of our brothers and sisters lie dead in the city to make our colours well known. Also, given the pursuit has, apart from the concourse, driven the Pannions west onto the plain, we shall likely find our path unopposed.'
'Yes, sir.'
Itkovian fixed his attention one last time on the destroyed redoubt in the killing field to the east. Two Gidrath soldiers in the Great Hall below were from that foolhardy but noble defence, and one of them bore recent wounds that would most likely prove fatal. The other, a bull of a man who had knelt before Rath'Hood, seemed no longer able to sleep. In the four days and nights since retaking the Great Hall, he had but paced during his rest periods, oblivious of his surroundings. Pacing, muttering under his breath, his eyes darkly feverish in their intensity. He and his dying companion were, Itkovian suspected, the last Gidrath still alive outside the Thrall itself.
A Gidrath sworn to Hood, yet he follows my command without hesitation. Simple expedience, one might reasonably conclude. Notions of rivalry dispensed with in the face of the present extremity. Yet. I find myself mistrusting my own explanations.
Despite his exhaustion, the Shield Anvil had sensed a growing perturbation. Something had happened. Somewhere. And as if in response he'd felt his blood seem to drain from him, emptying his veins, hollowing his heart, vanishing through a wound he'd yet to find. Leaving him to feel. incomplete.
As if I had surrendered my faith. But I have not. 'The void of lost faith is filled with your swollen self.' Words from a long-dead Destriant. One does not yield, one replaces. Faith with doubt, scepticism, denial. I have yielded nothing. I have no horde of words crowding my inner defences. Indeed, I am diminished into silence. Emptied … as if awaiting renewal.
He shook himself. 'This wind screams too loud in my ears,' he said, eyes still on the East Watch redoubt. 'Come, sir, we go below.'
One hundred and twelve soldiers remained in fighting condition, though not one was free of wounds. Seventeen Grey Swords lay dead or slowly dying along one wall. The air reeked of sweat, urine and rotting meat. The Great Hall's entranceways were framed in blackening blood, scraped clean on the tiles for firm footing. The long-gone architect who had given shape to the chamber would have been appalled at what it had become. Its noble beauty now housed a nightmare scene.
On the throne, his skin roughly sewn back onto his half-devoured form, sat Prince Jelarkan, eyeless, teeth exposed in a grin that grew wider as the lips lost their moisture and shrank away on all sides. Death's broadening smile, a precise, poetic horror. Worthy to hold court in what the Great Hall had become. A young prince who had loved his people, now joined to their fate.
It was time to leave. Itkovian stood near the main entrance, studying what was left of his Grey Swords. They in turn faced him, motionless, stone-eyed. To the left, two Capan recruits held the reins of the two remaining warhorses. The lone Gidrath — his companion had died moments earlier — paced with head sunk low, shoulders hunched, back and forth along the wall behind the ranked mercenaries. A battered longsword was held in each hand, the one on the left bent by a wild swing that had struck a marble column two nights past.
