The Steel Remains

“Gil, I’ve got seventeen men, that’s including these three sitting here now. With you two and me, that’s twenty. The militia’s going to run at the first sign of trouble, you know that.”

“Like we’re planning to, you mean?” Egar said, grinning.

Darash bristled. “This is a tactical withdrawal we’re talking about, Dragonbane.”

“Is it?” Egar shook his head. “Well, you know, there’s a Skaranak saying for times like these: Running away just makes your arse a bigger target. If the dwenda can follow us downriver through the swamp the way they did last night, they can certainly track us across the uplands before we hit Khartaghnal. Three days means three nights, maybe four. You ready to stay awake that long, ready to fight worn out and maybe in motion on ground they’ll choose to suit themselves? Sounds like a fucking stupid idea to me.”

“Egar, it’s like I said to Gil.” Archeth spread her hands, gestured at the gathered company. “It’s twenty of us, against something we can’t quantify, something that scared my people four thousand years ago and still scares the Helmsmen now.”

The Majak shrugged. “Ghost stories. Come the crunch, it can’t be any scarier than a dragon, can it? Look, I killed two of these fucking dwenda things last night, and like I said they bleed and fall down just like men. And we all know how to kill men, don’t we?”

“Everyone’s afraid of what they don’t understand,” Ringil said quietly. “You want to remember that, Archidi. The dwenda are as uncertain of us as we are of them. They’ve got less reason, but they don’t know that, and anyway it’s not a rational thing. You know what Pelmarag said about your poor, scared shitless marine garrison at Khangset? Fucking humans everywhere, he said, 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 him.What does that sound like to you?”

The others looked at him in silence. No one offered an answer.

“And you, Archeth? Look at you, look at what you represent to them. They have legends about the Black Folk, the way we do about them. Horror stories about how you destroyed their cities and drove them out into the gray places. They talk about you as if you were demons, the same way we used to talk about the Scaled Folk until we understood them. The same way your fucking imperial history books probably still talk about them. Look, when Seethlaw and I arrived in the swamp, there was a minor panic on because one of the dwenda scouts had heard some artifact scavengers talking about a black-skinned warrior somewhere in the vicinity. Which I guess probably was you, now I come to think about it, but that’s not the point. Even that, even the rumor of you, was enough to worry them.”

He rested his arms on the table, and his gaze hooded for a moment.

When he looked up again, Archeth caught his stare and a chill slithered between her shoulders and up her neck. It was, for just a moment, as if a stranger had climbed into Ringil Eskiath’s skin and stolen his eyes.

“When I trained at the Academy,” he said tonelessly, “they told me there is nothing in this world to fear more than a man who wants to kill you and knows how to do it. We make a stand here, and we can teach that truth to the dwenda. We can stop them, we can send them back to the gray places to think again about taking this world.”

More silence.

The moment tipped, was falling away, when Rakan cleared his throat.

“Why do you care?” he asked. “Five minutes ago you’re telling us how you don’t give a shit about the Empire or the League. Now suddenly you want to take a stand, make a difference. What’s that about?”

Ringil looked coldly at him.

“What’s it about, Faileh Rakan? It’s about the fucking war, that’s what it’s about. You’re right, I don’t give a shit about your Emperor and I care even less about the scum that run Trelayne and the League. But I won’t watch them go to war again. I’ve been to war, you know, to save civilization from the reptile hordes. I bled for it, I saw friends and other men die for it. And then I watched men like you piss it away again, the civilization we’d saved, in squabbles over a few hundred square miles of territory and what language the people get to speak there, what color their skin and hair is and what kind of religious horseshit they get crammed down their throats. I saw men here, right fucking here in Ennishmin, who’d fought for the human alliance, some who’d lost limbs or eyes or their sanity, driven out of their homes with their families and herded onto the road to march or die, all to balance up some filthy fucking piece of political expedience Akal the so-called Great and his erstwhile allies could all save face on, shut your fucking mouth, Rakan, I’m not finished yet.”