‘Nice pillow… but for the smell.’
‘You’re not going to die?’
‘It’s over now,’ she said, opening her eyes-but only for a moment as she gasped and shut them again. ‘Ow, that hurts.’
‘I can get some water-from the river here-’
‘Yes, do that.’
He shifted her from his lap and settled her down on the road. ‘Glad it’s over, Sand. Oh, by the way, what’s over?’
She sighed. ‘Mother Dark, she has returned to Kharkanas.’
‘Oh, that’s nice.’
As he made his way down the wreckage-cluttered bank, waterskins flopping over one shoulder, Withal allowed himself a savage grimace. ‘Oh, hello, Mother Dark, glad you showed up. You and all the rest of you gods and goddesses. Come back to fuck with a thousand million lives all over again, huh? Now, I got an idea for you all, aye, I do.
‘Get lost. It’s better, you see, when we ain’t got you to blame for our mess. Understand me, Mother Dark?’ He crouched at the edge of black water and pushed the first skin beneath the surface, listening to the gurgle. ‘And as for my wife, hasn’t she suffered enough?’
A voice filled his head. ‘Yes.’
The river swept past, the bubbles streamed from the submerged skin until no bubbles were left. Still, Withal held it down, as if drowning a maimed dog. He wasn’t sure he’d ever move again.
The descent of darkness broke frozen bone and flesh across the width of the valley, spilling out beyond the north ridge, devouring the last flickering flames from the burning heaps that had once been Barghast wagons.
The vast battlefield glistened and sparkled as corpses and carcasses shrivelled, losing their last remnants of moisture, and earth buckled, lurching upward in long wedges of stone-hard clay that jostled bodies. Iron steamed and glowed amongst the dead.
The sky above was devoid of all light, but the ashes drifting down were visible, as if each flake was lit from within. The pressure continued pushing everything closer to the ground, until horses and armoured men and women became flattened, rumpled forms. Weapons suddenly exploded, white-hot shards hissing.
The hillsides groaned, visibly contracted as something swirled in the very centre of the valley, a darkness so profound as to be a solid thing.
A hill cracked in half with a thunderous detonation. The air seemed to tear open.
From the swirling miasma a figure emerged, first one boot then the other crunching down on desiccated flesh, hide and bone, striding out from the rent, footfalls heavy as stone.
The darkness seethed, pulsed. The figure paused, held out a gauntleted left hand.
Lightning spanned the blackness, a thousand crashing drums. The air itself howled, and the darkness streamed down. Withered husks that had once been living things spun upright as if reborn, only to pull free of the ground and whirl skyward like rotted autumn leaves.
Shrieking wind, torn banners of darkness spiralling inward, wrapping, twisting, binding. Cold air rushed in like floodwaters through a crumbling dam, and all it swept through burst into dust that roiled wild in its wake.
Hammering concussions shook the hills, sheared away slopes leaving raw cliffs, boulders tumbling and pitching through the remnants of carnage. And still the darkness streamed down, converging, coalescing into an elongated sliver forming at the end of the figure’s outstretched hand.
A final report, loud as the snapping of a dragon’s spine, and then sudden silence.
A sword, bleeding darkness, dripping cold.
Overhead, late afternoon sunlight burned the sky.
He slowly scanned the ground, even as desiccated fragments of hide and flesh began raining from the heavens, and then he stepped forward, bending down to retrieve a battered scabbard. He slid the sword home.
A sultry wind swept down the length of the valley, gathering streamers of steam.
He stood for a time, studying the scene on all sides.
‘Ah, my love. Forgive me.’
He set out, boots crunching on the dead.
Returned to the world.
Draconus.
Book Four
The Path Forever Walked
When your penance is done
Come find me
When all the judges cloaked in stone
Have faced away
Seek the rill beneath the bowers and strings
Of fine pearls
Down in the fold of sacred hills
Among the elms
Where animals and birds find shelter
Come find me
I am nestled in grasses never trod
By heartbroken
Knights and brothers of kings
Not a single root torn
In the bard’s trembling grief