The Steel Remains

The hand squeezed tighter still. Poltar felt skin split, and then the sudden wetness of blood.

“Yes,” he shrieked. “Yes, chaste.”

“You will not spill your seed in this fashion again without my permission. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, yes, yes . . .” Now he was weeping from the pain. The hand released as abruptly as it had clenched, and the shaman reeled backward, stumbling and collapsing to the floor.

“Then abase yourself,” said the voice, still sweetly reasonable. “Abase yourself and, uhm, rejoice, that the gods have returned to you.”

The shaman flung himself flat before the staked body on the frame. Contact with the rough floor stung his mutilated prick, but he stayed immobile, quivering and gibbering and praying, until voices and an urgent hammering on the door of the little room brought him to his senses.

He looked up, wild-eyed and shaking, and saw that Kelgris had gone, leaving nothing but stillness in her wake. The room was dark, the candles snuffed out. Light from the window made a gaunt silhouette of the Y-frame, where the body of the girl was still tied, neck lolling broken and stretched and twisted to one side, eyes wide open in mute accusation.

Kelgris’s smile was still pressed on her dead mouth.

CHAPTER 11

It took the best part of an hour to fix everything up. As with any aftermath, the trick was in the momentum.

You keep everyone moving, Flaradnam had told him that day, from his stretcher in the surgeon’s tent. Hoarse breath, face knotted with the pain he was swamped in. Summer rain hissed down on the other side of the canvas. Outside, the slanted ground would be turning muddy and treacherous underfoot. Don’t give them time to think, don’t give them time to bitch and moan. They want orders and certainty from you, nothing more. You find that certainty, Gil, fake it if you have to. But you get them out of here. You get them moving.

He did not survive the surgeon’s table.

And out across the mountain’s flank, the broken remnants of the expeditionary force huddled miserably against the rain, mail and once gaily colored uniforms like a variegated mold on the landscape. Framed in the tent flap, listening to the gritted shrieks and grating kitchen sounds of surgery at his back, Ringil stared out through the downpour with no earthly clue how to get done what Flaradnam wanted. The Kiriath war machines were lost, abandoned in the rout. The injured and dying numbered in the hundreds, the lizards were coming.

Gallows Water was two days’ hard march, south and east over steep, exposed mountain terrain.

You keep everyone moving.

So. Nothing ever changes, huh ’Nam?

Get the injured watchmen back to their senses and their feet, downplay the obviously quite serious harm Darby’s assault had done them. Cold water from Shalak’s yard pump, and some judicious slaps. Ferry the whole squad—amid a sudden crowd of well-wishers, backslappers, and general hangers-on—across into the tavern. Get the wine flowing and paid for in quantity enough to keep everyone clustered there. Call for music. Sip at the god-awful vintages the tavern had to offer, keep the smile pinned on your face. Watch the whores move sinuously in on the company, like cats after scraps. Play the role of gracious-noble-with-the-common-touch until memory and rancor for the fight fogged out and faded in the general merriment.

Leave.

Ringil slipped away as the singing took hold, got out to where a soft blue dusk was stealing up the street from the river. Overhead, the band was out in all its shimmering glory. The thoroughfare had more or less emptied now, only a handful of people hurrying home and the lantern-jacks with their ladders to disturb the evening. Compared with the raucous heat of the tavern, it was very cool and quiet. Ringil crossed the street back to Shalak’s shop, saw that Darby was sitting huddled on the doorstep. On the way across to the veteran, he scooped up an abandoned day-club from the cobbles and twirled it through the air with absentminded dexterity.

“Souvenir?” he asked, holding out the club.

Darby shook his head, patted the cudgel that was propped between his knees and cuddled into his shoulder like a sleeping child. “I’ll stick with Old Lurlin here. She’s seen me right enough times.”

“Fair enough.”

“I’m much obliged to your worthiness. For the intervention, I mean. I think they had the best of me there.” A hand rose to touch his bruised and bloodied face. The fingers came away clotted with gore. Darby grimaced. “Yep. Caught me a good one here, and I’d say the ribs are cracked again.”

“Can you walk?”

“Oh yes, Darby can always move on, sir. Be out of your sight directly. Only stayed to thank you.”