It occurred to her suddenly that quite a lot of her reason for not opposing Ringil’s stand might lie in an unwillingness to abandon Idrashan, who still lay on his side in the garrison stable and could not get up.
“I saw men die that afternoon with a grin on their faces.” Egar shook his head, still lost in the memories of Gallows Gap. Sunlight gleamed on his face. “I saw men laughing as they went down. That was Gil, he made them like that. He was there at the heart of it, screaming abuse and bad jokes at the lizards, painted head-to-foot in their blood. I swear, Archeth, I think he was as happy then as any time I ever saw him, before or since.”
“Great.”
He looked around at her tone.
“We’re doing the right thing, Archeth,” he said gently. “Whatever happens here tonight, he called it right.”
She sighed hard, pressed hands flat to the tops of her thighs and rocked a little on the step.
“Let’s hope so, huh?”
Someone came out of the blockhouse door behind them. They both twisted about and saw Ringil standing there. He’d bagged a cuirass—from the militia store, by the slightly grubby look of it—along with a pair of battered greaves and a few other assorted chunks of plate. None of it matched, but it all seemed a reasonable fit. There was a Throne Eternal shield slung casually on his shoulder. He stood and looked at them in silence for a moment, and Archeth wondered if he’d heard what Egar was saying about him. Looked at his face and thought yes, he probably had.
“Shouldn’t be long now,” he said gruffly. “Listen, Archidi, I don’t suppose you’re still doing krinzanz these days, are you?”
She faced front so she could dig in a tight inner pocket, pulled out a cloth-wrapped slab she hadn’t started on yet, and handed it back to him over her shoulder. “All my old bad habits are intact, Gil. Disappoint you?”
“Far from it. I’d hate to think you’d changed along with everything else.” He took the slab and weighed it in the palm of his hand with a critical frown. “Like I told your men in there, these motherfuckers are fast. And I was never faster than when I was riding a quarter ounce of this stuff. You might want to check with Rakan, see if any of them want a dab or two as well.”
Archeth snorted. “No, I don’t think I’ll broach that one actually. Read your Revelation. It’s a first-order sin, pollution of the fleshly temple and estrangement of mind from the spiritual self. These guys are losing respect for me fast enough as it is. Trying to peddle them unlawful substances steeped in sin is going to just about finish it.”
“You want me to ask? Got to get a helmet from Rakan anyway, and I think my faggot’s reputation is in sufficient tatters by now it won’t matter one way or the other.”
“Do what you like. It won’t go down well, though, I’m telling you. These are pious, clean-living men, worshipping at the temple of their own bodies.”
“Hmm. Sounds distinctly erotic.”
“Pack that in, Gil.” She squinted around in the sun to see if anyone was listening to them. “You’re going to spoil the good impression you just made on the troops.”
“Yeah, all right. Fair point.” Ringil glanced at Egar. “What about you?”
The Majak skinned another grin. “Too late to make a good impression on me, Gil. I know you.”
“The krin. I’m talking about the krin.”
Egar shook his head. “Interferes with my breathing. I fucked up on that stuff back in the summer of ’49, made myself really sick. Couple of friends of Imrana’s had this high-quality supply through someone they knew at court, and I overdid the dose because I didn’t realize. Fucking nightmare. Can’t even stomach the taste anymore.”
“Okay.” Ringil turned to go back inside. “I’m still going to ask Rakan. Might save some lives if I can convince him.”
Archeth squinted up at him again. “Nice shield he gave you.”
“This? Yeah, it’s his spare, apparently.” The ghost of a smile touched Ringil’s mouth. “I think he liked the speech as well. Seems maybe I’m not such a total degenerate dead loss after all.”
“Well.” She tried to think of something to say, to stave off thought.
She was starting to feel slightly sick, even with the better weather. “It was a pretty good speech.”
Egar grunted. “Yeah, not bad for a fucking faggot.”
And they all laughed, long and hard in sunlight, while there was still time.
CHAPTER 32
The small cold hours before dawn.
Ringil was seated on a low wall down near the river, feeling the rush and scrape of the krin through the valves of his heart and barely aware of the outside world at all. He’d been waiting too long. The initial pounding anticipation in the first few hours of darkness had sagged and slumped sometime after midnight; for an experienced warrior, it wasn’t something you could sustain for long. The tension, the itching preparedness to fight, even the fear itself grew dull after a while. He rode the krin looser, let himself detach from what it was doing to his physical body, topped himself up every couple of hours with another pinched fragment from the slab rubbed into his gums. Began to wonder if he hadn’t made a mistake.
“Blue fire! Blue fire! They’re coming!”
He snapped back to awareness, swiveled off the wall—more effort than expected, he’d forgotten he was wearing the armor—and snatched up his shield. He slung it on his shoulder, grabbed his helmet from beside him on the wall and crammed it on as he ran, up toward the main street. Unsheathed the Ravensfriend with a chime as the scabbard lip parted and grinned at the sound. The night breeze off the river seemed to hurry him along. The alarm had come from the boathouse end.
“Blue fire! Blue fi—”
It ended on a gurgled scream. He cursed and sprinted flat-out, went around the boathouse corner, and ran straight into the first dwenda. They bounced off each other, staggered and nearly fell. The Throne Eternal who’d yelled the warning was on his knees in the street, head bowed, bleeding out between futilely clutching fingers and a neck wound. His companion, the other half of the patrol, lay beyond in a broad pool of his own blood. Blue light shone off everything, made the imperials into melancholy silhouettes and the puddle of blood a solid, polished plate. The same glow clung about the big, black-clad form that had killed them like some enchanted armor.
The Ravensfriend leapt to block and Ringil saw the sweeping blue glitter of the Aldrain blade a second after. Lock, scrape. The impact shivered through him. He whipped his sword back, changed stance. The dwenda attacked again, up out of a low guard. He chopped it down, backed up, let the krin take his senses and smear them thin. The dwenda nodded its smoothly helmeted head and said something incomprehensible. He had a moment to wonder if it knew him.
“Come on then, you fuck. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
He leapt in behind the snarl, swung the Ravensfriend high, and kicked out sharp and low at the same moment. The blade deflected with a clang, no surprise, the lack of balance had made it a slow, graceless move. But his boot got through, hard into either shin or knee. The dwenda staggered. Ringil followed up, swinging his shield in and out as required, looking for a gap. They traded blows back and forth. Ringil saw his chance, looped the Ravensfriend under the other blade and swept both weapons aside. He got in close enough to belt the dwenda back with his shield and tried a Yhelteth technique to trip the creature. It didn’t quite work; he was clumsy with the unaccustomed weight of the armor and the dwenda didn’t go down. But it was clearly still off balance. Ringil screamed in its blank-visored face and launched a rapid flurry of attacks. The other sword blurred in response. He felt a blow get through and bounce off his helmet, another screeched and slid off the cuirass. He rode it all and drove the dwenda back. The krin gave him an edge he hadn’t had with Seethlaw, and custom had robbed him of any fear the blue-glowing figure might once have inspired.