The Steel Remains

“Had to fight our way up off that beach,” he said softly. “We lost six or seven dwenda doing it. Across town and up the hill, fucking humans everywhere, running around screaming and jabbering in the dark like the lost souls of apes, you know, cut one down and there’s another right fucking behind it. We took another five casualties, and Tarnval himself down by then with a chest wound, searched that fucking town, tore it apart till we finally found our beacon. And when we finally did, we found they’d moved the fucking thing and we were nowhere close to where we were supposed to be. No Hannais M’hen, cursed or otherwise. We were south, way south. And with that kind of sun coming up in a couple of hours’ time, well . . . nothing to do but collect the dead and injured, let the storm-callers take us back out of there. Tarnval died from the storm-stress on the way out, so did a couple of others. After that?” Pelmarag shrugged. “We all went back to listening to Seethlaw.”

“Talking about me again?”

Seethlaw had come up behind them. His expression as he looked at Pelmarag was unreadable.

“Just a little reflection on strategy.”

“Yeah?” Seethlaw put a hand on Ringil’s shoulder. Something chilly poured into the air between the two dwenda. “Gil here isn’t a part of our strategy, Pel. He doesn’t need to know anything about it.”

Pelmarag held the other dwenda’s gaze. He said something short and bitten-sounding in the language they used when Ringil was not included in the conversation, then turned away and went to join the others. Seethlaw grunted and nodded after him, a quick, chin-jutting gesture that had nothing friendly in it.

“So what’s that all about?” Ringil asked.

“Nothing that concerns you.” Seethlaw’s grip on his shoulder tightened slightly. “Come on. We’re not there yet.”

THROUGH THE WINTER TREES, ALONG PATHS THROUGH THE SWAMP THAT the dwenda either knew by heart or could sense without much effort. Ringil took an experimental detour at one point, around the other side of a rotting tree stump, and found himself abruptly up to his shins in yielding black morass. Gray, soupy water pooled rapidly in the holes he’d made and brought with it a stench like death. He floundered back out, boots liberally streaked and plastered with mud. No one said anything, but he thought he caught Risgillen sneering. He stayed carefully in file after that.

There was no sound other than the squelch of their steps.

In the end, it was this that told him where he was. He knew something about marshland expanse from growing up in a city surrounded by one, and he was beginning to miss the signs of life he should have heard. There were no birdcalls, recognizable or otherwise, and no sudden rustling movements from amid the ground-level vegetation as they passed. Here and there, they saw pools and angled stretches of stagnant water bridged with moss-grown fallen tree trunks and stepped in by small mangroves, but nothing living stirred there, not even insects hovering above the leaden surface.

He’d heard of only one swamp this dead. Had even seen the place, once, from a safe distance to the west.

Hannais M’hen the Cursed, Pelmarag had called it.

Hannais M’hen.

Ennishmin.

Cursed was right, then. Forget the peasant-level legends and ghost stories they liked to weave about this place. He’d lost what little faith in things remained to him at Ennishmin, and for the most prosaic of reasons. Had nearly lost his life as well. Probably would have lost it but for Archeth’s prompt medical attention and—he suspected—her intercession with the powers-that-be at camp. Never tangle with an imperial commander at knifepoint if you plan to let him live, he’d begun one of the chapters in that treatise on skirmish warfare that never saw print, the chapter headed “Diplomacy.”

“Hss-sst!”

Ahead of him, Seethlaw had locked to a halt. He held up one rigid hand and hinged it downward, then sank smoothly into a crouch. The other dwenda froze and followed suit, and Ringil did his human best to copy them. Seethlaw raised a hand and pointed silently through the trees ahead. A broad gunmetal creek opened out there. They had walked almost onto its bank—and something made soft splashing sounds as it moved through the water toward them.

Seethlaw’s hand moved again.

It was, Ringil thought later, exactly the way to describe what happened. The dwenda’s hand moved, but not in any way that suggested its owner had any control over it. It was as if fingers and palm had each acquired a malicious but not quite coordinated will of their own. The wrist flexed at what looked like an impossible angle, the hand made an odd, repeated clawing gesture with three fingers, and Seethlaw hissed out words under his breath. Ringil caught only a half syllable or two, but his skin goose-fleshed with the sound.