He nodded, and then faced the fighters. ‘They will clear the gate and re-form. Captains! Draw your units back and reassemble to the rear. Sound the call to the Letherii. Shake – you have now stood the Shore, and you stood it well.’ He sheathed his weapon, silencing its chilling chuckle. ‘This is how we shall measure our last days. Here, on this border drawn with the bones of our ancestors. And none shall move us.
‘Shake! Tell me when you have come home – tell me when that truth finally comes to you. You are home .’
The words horrified her, but more horrifying still was the answering roar from her people.
Yedan seemed surprised, and he turned to her then, and she saw the truth in his eyes.
Brother, you do not feel it. You do not feel that you have come home. You do not feel as they do!
A flash of something in his gaze, something private between them that shook her as had nothing else. Longing, fear, and despair.
Oh, Yedan. I did not know. I did not know .
Kadagar Fant, Lord of Light, stood trembling before the corpse of Iparth Erule. This was his third visit to the marshalling area before the gate, his third time down from the high wall to stand before the headless dragon lying on its side at the end of a curling swathe of broken black shards. The golden scales had dulled, the belly was bloating with gases, and capemoths clustered in the gaping mouth of the severed neck, a mass of fluttering white wings – as if flowers had burst from the corpse in some manic celebration.
Aparal Forge looked away from his lord, not ready for him yet. He had sent legion after legion through the breach, and with growing despair watched each one retreat, torn and bloody. Hundreds of his soldiers were lying on dripping cots beneath canopies – he could hear their cries amidst the clatter of weapons being readied for the next assault – and thrice their number rested for ever silent in neat rows beyond the cutter trenches. He had no idea how many were lost beyond the breach – a thousand? More? The enemy had no interest in treating Liosan wounded, and why would they? We would kill their wounded just as quickly, and call it mercy. These are the mechanics of war. It’s where logic takes us, every time .
Overhead sailed three dragons. Like birds startled into the sky, they refused to come down, and had been up there since Iparth’s death. Aparal could feel their rage, and something like hunger – as if some part of them, something reptilian and soulless, wanted to descend and feed on that rank carcass. The remaining seven, sembled since the morning, had established discrete encampments on the barrows to either side of the Great Avenue, with their bespoke legions settled around them. The elites, the true Liosan warriors, yet to draw weapons, yet to advance upon the gate, awaiting only Kadagar’s command.
When would it come? When would their lord decide that he’d seen enough of his citizens die? Common dwellers of the city, commanded by nobles trapped below the select ranks of the Soletaken, soldiers only in name, and oh how they died!
Fury seethed in him at the thought. But I will not look to my lord. I will not beseech him yet again. Will he only relent when they’re all dead? For whom, then, this victory? But he knew the answer to that question.
If Kadagar Fant stood alone at the end of all this; if he sat in the gloom of an empty throne room in an empty palace, in an empty city, he would still count it a triumph. Winning Kharkanas was meaningless; what mattered to the Lord of Light was the absolute annihilation of those who opposed him. On both sides of the breach .
Do you remember, Kadagar, the day the stranger came to Saranas? We were still children then, still friends, still open to possibilities. But even we shared our shock at his nerve. A human, almost as tall as a Liosan, wearing beneath a tattered woollen cloak a coat of mail that reached down to his ankles, a bastard sword slung under his left arm. Long grey hair, snarled with indifference, a beard stained the hue of rust beneath the thin lips. He had been smiling – they all agreed on that, from the scouts beyond the walls to the guards at the South Gate, to those in the streets who halted to watch him stride towards the citadel at the heart of Saranas .
And he was still smiling when he stepped into the throne room, and your father leaned forward on the High Throne, making the bonewood creak .
It was Haradegar – your uncle – who growled and reached for his sword. Too much arrogance in this stranger. Too much contempt in that smile .
But your father lifted a hand, staying his Weaponmaster, and he spoke to the stranger in a tone we’d not heard before .
‘ Kallor, High King, welcome to Saranas, last city of Tiste Liosan. I am Krin Ne Fant, Champion of High House Light —’