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CHAPTER 31
The dwenda came, finally, with blue fire and terrible, unhuman force, in the small, cold hours before dawn.
AMONG THOSE WHO SURVIVED THE ENCOUNTER, THERE WOULD BE A lot of speculation over whether it was pla
Or perhaps they were waiting themselves. Gathering themselves for the assault in the safety of the gray places, or attending to some mille
The speculation would go back and forth without end, turn and turn again, snapping at its own tail for lack of solid evidence one way or the other. Perhaps this, perhaps that. Humans, short-lived and locked out of the gray places for life, do not do well with uncertainty. If they ca
You’ve got to laugh, Ringil would probably have said.
No, you’ve got to unlock the fucking door, Archeth might have replied. But of course, by then the key was long lost.
Perhaps, though—look at it this way, makes a lot of sense if you think about it, man—the dwenda were delayed by simple necessity. Perhaps navigation in the gray places was not the easy matter Seethlaw had made it appear. Perhaps, once in the Aldrain marches, the dwenda must cast about like wolves for spoor of Ringil and his sudden, murderous new friend from the steppes. Perhaps they must find the thin cool scent of the river with painstaking care, and sift it for the place where their prey disembarked. And perhaps even then, with their targets found, the dwenda storm-callers must struggle for position the way a swimmer struggles to hold station against a current.
Could be. Those who managed to live through the battle would nod and shrug, touch old wounds and shiver. Who the fuck knows. Yeah, could be.
Or could be—Ringil would have liked this one—it was politics that held them up, the disorderly individual dissent that he’d seen playing out among the dwenda. Perhaps it took Seethlaw awhile to convince his fellow Aldrain that this was something that needed to be done.
Or perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps it was Seethlaw who had to be convinced, or at least to convince himself.
And so it went pointlessly on, the theorizing and head shaking and wonder among survivors of the dwenda encounter at Beksanara—or Ibiksinri, to give it the name those who built it would recognize, those who, for political convenience and a treaty not one in a hundred would have been educated well enough to read, were driven away in cold and hunger or simply butchered there in the street.
Ibiksinri, then. Site once again for blades unleashed and blood spilled and screaming across the murderous night. Fu
The dwenda came in the small, cold hours before dawn.
But before that:
NOT LONG AFTER MIDDAY, THE SUN CAME OUT.
The villagers, who knew the value of such moments, got out and about in its warmth immediately. Bedclothes were brought out and hung up to air, lunch tables were set up in the street and in the small gardens of those homes that had them. Down at the river, while Rakan and some of his men watched in bemusement, the villagers stripped down to underwear and flung themselves into what was still very cold water, and splashed about like children. If the presence of the intensely black Kiriath woman and her soldiers put any kind of damper on the proceedings, it was hard to notice.
The imperials themselves weren’t immune to the change. They muttered among themselves that it might be a good omen, and they took the opportunity to bask a little. But having come from the dusty heat of the capital only weeks before, they were neither overjoyed nor impressed, just faintly grateful.
Basking, and reflecting on omens—my brother, my uncle, a friend of mine once saw . . . and so forth—also seemed to help the time pass faster, which was something of a blessing, because there wasn’t much else to do. Preparations for the battle were minimal, and largely symbolic. You can’t build barricades against an enemy that pops into existence wherever it wills, and dwenda tactics were in any case a mystery yet to be revealed. Plans of a sort were laid, but of necessity they had to remain flexible; in the end they amounted to not much more than keeping the locals in their homes under curfew once night fell, and scheduling regular patrols around the village.
Archeth prevailed upon Ringil to give Rakan’s men a brief lecture on what he knew about the dwenda, which he did with a surprisingly deft touch that made her blink. The ma
In the end, she realized, he had successfully invited them all to die simply by promising to do it with them.
It was all they would ask of any commander.
“Yeah, he was like that at Gallows Gap,” Egar told her as they sprawled on the front steps of the garrison house in the sun, trying to avoid wondering how much longer they might have to live. “Similar situation, I guess. We all knew if we couldn’t hold the pass, the lizards were going to sweep down and obliterate everything in their path, kill us whether we stood or ran. It took Gil to show them that was a strength we had, not a weakness. That it just made everything simple. The choice wasn’t living or dying, ru
“I guess.”
She thought about the people and the things she still cared about—it wasn’t a long list—and wondered how truthful she was being, how honest with herself, let alone with the Majak at her side. She missed her home, with an abrupt, almost painful pang, now that she thought she might never see it again. She missed the brutal sun and the hard blue skies over Yhelteth, the bustle and dust of the streets; the cool gray cobbles of her courtyard at first light, the first seep of cooking smells from the kitchen side; Kefanin’s somber reliability and reserve, Angfal’s drily erudite, half-sane ramblings in the cluttered study. The long, majestic sweep of the staircase, the spectacular cityscape views from the upper rooms. The big canopied bed and the sunlight that splashed across it in the morning, and maybe someday Ishgrim’s supple, curving pale flanks under—stop that, you slut. Well, then, Idrashan’s warm, powerful girth under her at the gallop. The gusty two-day ride out to An-Monal, and the melancholy emptiness of the deserted buildings there, the soft, comforting murmur of the tamed volcano through the surrounding stonework. Feeding Idrashan an apple from the tree under Grashgal’s old study windows, murmuring to the warhorse as she clucked him homeward again.