The Steel Remains

“I—”

Someone bumped heavily into Ringil from behind, jolted loose what he wanted say before he could frame it properly. The thought spilled away from him like coins across the street and down a grate, little glints of gleaming meaning, gone.

He snapped around angrily on the bench.

“Why the fuck don’t you watch where you’re going?”

“Oops, sorry, citizen, sorry. Look, I’ll gladly make good any spillage if you . . . Gil? Fucking Ringil?”

Egar the Dragonbane.

Out of the lamplight and tavern hubbub like a figure from legend emerging from battlefield mist. Broad and tall and tangled looking, hair a wild knotted mass with little iron talismanic ornaments hanging in it. One leather-sheathed blade of his staff lance jutted up over his shoulder; there was a short-handled ax matched with a broad-bladed dirk at his belt. He smelled of marsh and cold, and had obviously just come through the door. His scarred and bearded face split into a huge grin. He clapped hands on Ringil’s shoulders, dragged him up off the bench with no more effort than a father picking up his infant son.

“Ura

And then everything came apart.

For Ringil it was like stepping suddenly back into some aspect of the marches. Time stopped working, slowed to a pace that was like moving in mud. His perceptions stretched and smeared; he saw what was happening as if through some other, entirely more attenuated set of senses.

Seethlaw, slamming to his feet, eyes wide.

Egar, warrior’s senses suddenly awake to the tension, hand falling without fuss to the broad dirk at his hip.

Heads turning at neighboring tables.

Ashgrin, seated at Seethlaw’s side, turning, reaching down for something.

A faint shimmer on the air. A darkening.

“I think you are mistaken, sir,” Seethlaw said, and raised a hand a few inches off the table at his side, fingers spread loosely to make a spider. A ripple seemed to run through the fingers, as if they were suddenly boneless. “This is not your friend.”

Egar snorted. “Listen, old man, I’d know this guy any . . .”

He frowned.

“A mistake,” repeated the dwenda caressingly. “Easily made.”

“You must be very tired,” agreed Ashgrin.

Egar yawned cavernously. “Yeah, ain’t that the fucking truth. Fu

Ringil, for no clear reason he could later name, screamed and swept an arm savagely across the table. Tavern-brawl tactics, tugged out from some dark pocket of response he rarely went to these days. The lamp in the center went over, oil spilled out. Flame caught and sprinted a line among the platters and tumbled tankards. He came to his feet, heels of both palms under the trestle, upended it at Seethlaw.

“It is me, Eg,” he was yelling. “It fucking is me. Get the girl.”

Later, tears would squeeze into his eyes as he recalled the Majak’s reaction. Egar’s lips peeled off a snarl, he surged back in at Ringil’s side. The dirk came out, broad dark glint in the dancing light from the flames now loose in the straw on the floor. He brandished it at the stumbling dwenda.

“Right you are, Gil,” he roared. “Who wants this right up their fucking arse? Fucking magicking old cunts.”

His other hand had already flashed out, seized Sherin by the arm, and dragged her off the bench. As Pelmarag tried to stop him, the dirk flashed out. Pelmarag’s arm got in the way, the blade sliced, and blood darkened the dwenda’s sleeve. Pelmarag made a wolfish snarling sound of his own and leapt at Egar. The steppe nomad’s eyes widened in shock. Whatever he’d seen in Pelmarag before, whatever glamour had sullied his perception, it was gone now.

“Wraith!” he bellowed. “’Ware spirits! Swamp wraith!”

Then he went over on the floor with Pelmarag on top of him.

Weapon, weapon. It gibbered through Ringil’s head. Sell my fucking soul to Hoiran for a weapon.

He spun and dropped on Pelmarag’s back instead. Knew it was a matter of seconds before the other dwenda at the table had him. Did it anyway. Egar was locked up in the knife fighter’s clinch, arms braced and straining to bring his blade to bear against Pelmarag’s grip. The legs of dwenda and man thrashed about on the earthen floor, looking for purchase. Ringil hooked the fingers of his right hand into the dwenda’s eyes and hauled back. Pelmarag howled and flailed. Egar broke the dwenda’s grip and shoved the dirk through his throat from the side. Blood gouted everywhere. It smelled, Ringil would later realize, bittersweet and strong, quite unlike anything out of human veins.

For now he was already spi

“Swamp wraith! Swamp wraith! Get the motherfuckers!”

Out of nowhere, Ashgrin had a terrible blue long-sword blade flashing in his hands. The first humans to reach him went down in butchered pieces. The surge turned chaotic and shrill, some scrambling backward away from the sudden steel, others who had weapons bawling for space and struggling to get to the front.

“Ringil!” Egar, yelling in his ear. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

He gulped air. “Gladly. Get the—”

“Got her! Just fucking go!”

The Majak’s hand was firmly around Sherin’s arm again, engulfing it just above the elbow. She’d have bruises tomorrow, Ringil knew.

If we live that long.

They made the door somehow, elbowing and tripping others who’d had the same idea. Ringil kicked it open and tumbled out into the cold and dark. The i

Shattering of glass. A dwenda came leaping, shrieking through the window like a lost soul, landed like a cat, and stalked toward them, blade in hand, gri

Egar let go of Sherin’s arm.

“Get behind me, girl,” he grunted.

He freed his small ax, hefted it left-handed, kept the dirk in his right. No time to unship the lance, much though he’d have loved the extra reach. He eyed the creature’s sword with professional calm. The empty inhuman eyes had been a shock with the first one, but now his blood was up, he wasn’t fussed. No worse than a steppe ghoul, he supposed. A fighting grin licked around his lips.

“Fuck you looking at?” he barked.

The creature ran in, shrilling. Terrifying speed, but Egar had seen that a few times before as well. He hurled his dirk upward, underhand at its face. The long-sword flashed out, deflecting, but it was an awkward block, anyone could see that. Egar was in behind, now with the ax in both hands, hacking sideways under the twisted sword. The swamp wraith yowled and leapt out of the way. Egar pressed in, got the hook-backed edge of the ax on the blade and yanked it out of the way, left-handed. His right hand curled to a fist, smashed his opponent in the face. The swamp wraith reeled. Egar followed through. Another punch, into the face again—leave the body alone, assume armor of some sort under that weird black leatherish gear—and he felt the nose break with a solid crunch. The wraith screamed and tried to slash back at him with its blocked blade. Speed it had, but not the brute strength it needed. Egar gri