When they halted in the foremost trench, which was half again as deep as Carsek was tall, he could see the black walls of the fortress looming above. This was what nearly a month and two thousand or more sacrifices had gained them—a hole at the foot of the fortress.
“Now it’s just a brisk walk to the wall that can’t be broken and the gate that can’t be breached,” Thaniel said. “The bat-tle’s nearly won!”
“Now who’s the skeptic? Here’s a chance for glory, and to die on my feet,” Carsek said. “It’s all I ask.”
“Hah,” Thaniel said. “Myself, I intend not only to cover myself in glory, but to have a drink when it’s all done.” He held out his palm. “Take my hand, Carsek. Let’s agree—we’ll meet for a drink when it’s over. Overlooking the arena where once you fought. And there we shall account who has more glory. And it shall be me!”
Carsek took his hand. “In the very seat of the master.” The two men clenched a mutual fist.
“It’s done, then,” Thaniel said. “You won’t break a promise, and I won’t, so surely we’ll both live.”
“Surely,” Carsek said.
Planks were brought and laid so they might scale their own trench. Then Genia Dare, the queen, gave them all a fierce smile.
“When this sun sets we shall all be free or all dead,” she said. “I do not intend to die.” With that, she drew her fey-sword and turned to Carsek. “I must reach the gate. Do you understand? Until the gate falls, five thousand is no better than fifty, for I can protect no greater number than two score and ten from Skasloi slaughter-spelling if they have us ’neath their fatal eyes, and if we can do naught but stand in their gaze. Once the gate is sundered, we can sweep through too quickly for them to strike down. This will be a hard charge, my heroes—but no spell will touch you, that I swear. It’s only sword and shaft, flesh and bone you must fight.”
“Flesh and bone are grass, and I am a sickle,” Carsek said. “I will get you to the gate, Majesty.”
“Then go and do it.”
Carsek hardly felt his wounds anymore. His belly was light and his head full of fire. He was the first up the plank, first to set his feet on the black soil.
Lightning wrenched at him, and slitwinds, but this time they parted, passed to left and right of him, Thaniel, and all his men. He heard Thaniel hoot with joy as the deadly magicks passed them by, impotent as a eunuch’s ghost.
They charged across the smoking earth, howling, and Carsek saw, through rage-reddened vision, that he at last had a real enemy in front of his spear.
“It’s Vhomar, lads!” he shouted. “Nothing but Vhomar!”
Thaniel laughed. “And just a few of them!” he added.
A few, indeed. A few hundred, ranged six ranks deep before the gate. Each stood head and shoulders taller than the tallest man in Carsek’s band. Carsek had fought many a Vhomar in the arena, and respected them there, as much as any worthy foe deserved. Now he hated them as he hated nothing mortal. Of all of the slaves of the Skasloi, only the Vhomar had chosen to remain slaves, to fight those who rose against the masters.
A hundred Vhomar bows thrummed together, and black-winged shafts hummed and thudded amongst his men, so that every third one of them fell.
A second flight melted in the rain and did not touch them at all, and then Carsek was at the front rank of the enemy, facing a wall of giants in iron cuirasses, shouting up at their brutish, unhuman faces.
The moment stretched out, slow and silent in Carsek’s mind. Plenty of time to notice details, the spears and shields bossed with spikes, the very grain of the wood, black rain dripping from the brows of the creature looming in front of him, the scar on its cheek, its one blue eye and one black eye, the mole above the black one …
Then sound came back, a hammer strike as Carsek feinted. He made as if to thrust his spear into the giant’s face but dropped instead, coming up beneath the huge shield as it lifted, driving his manslayer under the overlapping plates of the armor, skirling at the top of his lungs as leather and fabric and flesh parted. He wrenched at his weapon as the warrior toppled, but the haft snapped.
Carsek drew his ax. The press of bodies closed as the Vhomar surged forward, and Carsek’s own men, eager for killing, slammed into him from behind. He found himself suffocating in the sweaty stench, caught between shield and armored belly, and no room to swing his ax. Something hit his helm so hard it rang, and then the steel cap was torn from his head. Thick fingers knotted in Carsek’s hair, and suddenly his feet were no longer on the ground.
He kicked in the air as the monster drew him up by the scalp, dangled him so it was staring into his eyes. The Vhomar drew back the massive sword it gripped in its other hand, bent on decapitating him.
“You damned fool!” Carsek shouted at it, shattering the gi-ant’s teeth with the edge of his ax, then savaged its neck with his second blow. Bellowing, the Vhomar dropped him, trying to staunch its lifeblood with its own hands. Carsek hamstrung it and went on.
The work stayed close and bloody, he knew not for how long. For each Vhomar Carsek killed, there was always another, if not two or three. He had actually forgotten his goal was the gate, when there it was before him. Through the press he saw feyswords glittering, glimpsed auburn hair and sparks of pale viridian. Then he was pushed back, until the gate receded from view and thought.
The rain stopped, but the sky grew darker. All Carsek could hear was his own wheezing breath; all he could see was blood and the rise and fall of iron, like the lips of sea waves breaking above him. His arm could hardly hold itself up for more killing, and of his fifty men he now stood in a circle with the eight who remained, Thaniel among them. And still the giants came on, wave on wave of them.
But then there was a sound like all the gods screaming. A new tide swept up from behind him, a wall of shouting men, hundreds pouring out of the trenches, crushing into the ranks of their enemies, and for the first time Carsek looked up from death and witnessed the impossible.
The massive steel portals of the citadel hung from their hinges, twisted almost beyond recognizing, and below them, white light blazed.
The battle swept past them, and as Carsek’s legs gave way, Thaniel caught him.
“She’s done it,” Carsek said. “Your Born Witch has done it!”
“I told you she would,” Thaniel said. “I told you.”
Carsek wasn’t there when the inner keep fell. His wounds had reopened and had to be bound again. But as the clouds broke, and the dying sun hemorrhaged across the horizon, Thaniel came for him.
“She wants you there,” Thaniel said. “You deserve it.”
“We all do,” Carsek managed.
With Thaniel under one shoulder, he climbed the bloody steps of the massive central tower, remembering when he trod it last, in chains, on his way to fight in the arena, how the gilded balustrades and strange statues had glimmered in Skasloi witch-light. It had been beautiful and terrible.
Even now, shattered, blackened, it still brought fear. Fear from childhood and beyond, of the master’s power, of the lash that could not be seen but that burned to the soul.
Even now it seemed it must all be a trick, another elaborate game, another way for the masters to extract pleasure from the pain and hopelessness of their slaves.
But when they came to the great hall, and Carsek saw Genia Dare standing with her boot on the master’s throat, he knew in his heart they had won.
The Skasloi lord still wore shadow. Carsek had never seen his face, and did not now. But he knew the sound of the mas-ter’s laughter as it rose up from beneath the queen’s heel. For as long as he lived, Carsek would not forget that mocking, spectral, dying laugh.
Genia Dare’s voice rang above that laughter. “We have torn open your keep, scattered your powers and armies, and now you will die,” she said. “If this amuses you, you could have obtained your amusement much more easily. We would have been happy to kill you long ago.”