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“Teluman.” At my summons, the smith looms out of the night, a group of twenty men behind him.
“After you secure the drum towers,” I tell him, “get to the southeast barracks, in the Mercator Quarter. A good part of their army is there. Burn it down.”
“Consider it done, Shrike.” Teluman moves off, and I turn to Mettias.
I’m heartened to see that though the thud of Karkaun boots closes in on us, the young Pater is unfazed. He’d have made a good Mask.
“Make sure those weapons get to every Martial and Scholar willing to fight,” I say. “Get the word out to hold the attack until Teluman sounds the drums. Musa, send a wight to Quin. When he gets through, he needs to bring his forces to Cardium Rock.”
“Shrike,” Harper protests, for this is not part of the plan. “Grímarr is too well-protected. He’ll have the bulk of his men up there. He’s luring you to him.”
“You are a man of few words, Harper.” I signal to my men, and we move away from the walls. “So don’t waste the ones youdoutter on things I already know. He needs to die. And I’m the one who is going to kill him.”
Harper looks taken aback, and then laughs. “Sorry, Shrike.”
Musa, Harper, and my last thirty men are behind me as we weave through streets we know better than any Karkaun. We leave weaponsthroughout the city, passing through a prearranged system of alleys and courtyards and homes. Everywhere, the Martials and Scholars of Antium thump their fists to their hearts in salute.
Eleventh bell tolls. We approach the Hall of Records, a building as massive as Blackcliff’s amphitheater. The hall’s roof, carved with sculptures of Taius’s victories, is held up by stone columns as wide around as trees in the Waiting Place.
We enter, making our way across a thick layer of ash from the fire that burned here when the hall was hit by a Karkaun projectile. A stone statue of Taius lies on its side, the head broken off and half-buried beneath scattered scrolls and shattered masonry.
The Hall of Records takes up one entire side of Cartus Square. Palace outbuildings line another side, and shops and businesses the third. The last side is taken up by a jumble of rock that leads to a vast bone pit. A scarred granite cliff stretches above the pit and at its top—Cardium Rock, where a dozen massive bonfires light up the sky.
As I send men out into the square to kill off any guards, Musa comes to squat beside me.
“Spiro ran into trouble. He’s battling a Karkaun force at one of the drum towers.” Musa pauses. “Three hundred men.”
Bleeding, burning hells. At that moment, Harper, who slipped ahead to scout, returns.
“The palace entrance to the Rock is blocked by thousands of Karkauns,” he says. “They’re bringing prisoners out from the dungeons and—” Disgust ripples across Harper’s silver face. I move forward to get a better view of the Rock, only to see prisoners being shoved off the top and into the bone pit a hundred feet below.
“How fast can you get our men changed into the stinking furs the barbarians wear?” I ask Harper.
“Before you get up that cliff, Shrike.”
“Get to the top of the Rock, hide among the Karkauns, and wait for my signal. When the time is right, raise the hells. And—”
He meets my eyes, his own burning with battle rage. I want to tell him to be careful. To take no foolish risks. To survive. But such sentiment has no place in war.
“Don’t fail me,” I tell him, and turn away.
It is the work of a few moments to flit across the square. Once I reach the pit, I mutter a curse. I thought I could swing a grappling hook up from the furthermost edge of it, but it is too broad.
Which means I must cross it. I must make my way over the skulls and bones and bodies of the dead.
You are all that holds back the darkness. My father spoke so to me, more than a year ago now. I do not think any longer. I simply move, dropping down into the pit.
Bones crunch as I land, and soft flesh bursts. I retch from the stench, and the darkness is something out of a nightmare.
It lasts so long. The pit is a hundred yards wide, but it might as well be a continent. For as I make my way over the dead, I hear things.
Moans.
Ghosts!my mind screams. But it is not ghosts. It is something far worse. It is those men who survived the fall. I want to find them. To grant them mercy in this hellish place. But there are too many and I have no time. Teluman has not yet sounded the drums. For all I know, he and his men could be dead, our attack over before it even started.
Defeat in your mind is defeat on the battlefield!
A lifetime passes as I walk across the pit, over the rotting flesh of the dead. I know I will never speak of these moments to anyone. For they have changed something inside irrevocably. If I do not kill Grímarr at the end of this, this will be where I die too, and I will deserve it, because I did not avenge the injustice done to all those whom I tread upon now.
