Salute the Dark

‘But you were speaking of the Monarch, not of myself.’ Salma kept his voice steady, hoping that Malkan was painting the situation darker than it really was. ‘The protection of the Lowlands from imperial aggression is not a task to be entrusted to only one man.’

Malkan stopped, again just for a moment, but Salma noticed it. The thought of a dozen, a score, a hundred Mercers, infiltrating the Lowlands, raising scrap-armies as Salma had done – the tactical implications unfolded in Malkan’s mind.

If I can achieve nothing else now, let me crack his confidence. Words were all Salma had left in the way of weapons. He would not spare them.

‘Well, we shall question you at leisure about whatever comrades you have,’ Malkan decided. ‘Being a Commonwealer, you will be unfamiliar with our methods of questioning, so I shall have my artificers introduce you.’

Beneath Salma’s feet, the earth shifted slightly, very slightly. He had only soft shoes on, and most likely Malkan would have felt nothing through the soles of his armoured boots. Behind his back, Salma flexed his fingers. ‘General?’

‘You have some other vague threat for me?’ Malkan asked him.

Salma’s thumb-claws flicked out, digging into the ropes about his wrists. The angle was awkward, but he drove them in as hard as he could. ‘You forget two things.’

‘Do I, now?’ Malkan asked, irritated, but paused for just a moment more. ‘And what would they be?’

‘You will have to discover that for yourself,’ Salma said, every bit the picture of the mysterious Commonwealer, and when Malkan signalled for the two guards to take him, he concentrated all his strength into his arms, his hands and his thumbs, and flexed them.

The rope sheared and his hands sprang free, just as the whole of the earth floor within the tent bucked once and then burst open.

General Malkan was thrown off-balance, but already grabbing for his sword’s hilt as the ground split. A monstrous form hauled its broad-shouldered bulk out of the ground, and for a moment, in the explosion of dust, it was impossible to see just what it was. The two guards that Malkan had kept to hand did not need to know precisely what was attacking their general, though. One was already raising a hand towards Salma even as the ropes gave way. The other drew his sword and threw himself forwards with a kind of blind courage, not risking a sting-shot with Malkan so close.

It was Morleyr, of course. Morleyr the Auxillian deserter whose squad Salma had talked into defecting. Morleyr the Mole Cricket-kinden giant who could dig through the earth with his bare hands.

His hands were not bare now, though. The soldier that rushed at him, into the cloud of dust, met the upswing of a mace-blow intended for Malkan. Salma heard bones snap as its heavy iron head struck the man through the ribs. Salma was already moving, casting himself to the left as the crackling bolt of energy seared past, and then jabbing with his thumbs, going for the throat but tearing a bloody line across the soldier’s face instead as he reeled back.

Malkan’s sword was now clear but there were others emerging after Morleyr, coughing and choking but armed with shortswords and daggers. They were a handful of Salma’s people dragging themselves out of the darkness…

No, not dark, for there was light down there. Salma’s chest contracted at even the brief glimpse he had of it.

No! Not here! He lunged forwards, got a hand about the soldier’s sword-wrist, trying to prise the weapon free. The man backed out of the tent into the night, stumbling through the flap, colliding with another man who rushed in and just managed to say, ‘General Malkan-’ before he was bowled over. The soldier Salma was grappling with tripped, and the contested sword was driven deep into his chest as Salma fell on top of him.

There was no time to waste. Salma got his hands around the hilt of the stunned new arrival’s blade and drew it clear; easier to pluck a sword from a scabbard than from a man’s ribs. The messenger goggled at him and Salma gritted his teeth and drove the sword into the man’s throat. Honour was like a coat: sometimes one did not have time to put it on.