In the faded light of the vanishing sun, the monochrome blade flew glittering through the air to Morlock's outstretched hand.
Wurnafenglu gaped for a moment, then realized what had happened. He charged up the stairway to the execution scaffold.
Morlock shattered the shackles on his right ankle and then Wurnafenglu was upon him. Morlock swiftly brought Tyrfing up to parry Wurnafenglu's spear.
Tyrfing's edge sheared away a strip of black-and-green pigment from the spear's shaft. Underneath, the spear gleamed like glass.
"Your own work," Wurnafenglu whispered. "Think of that when I stab you through the heart with it."
Morlock didn't answer. With their weapons bound together, Wurnafenglu was clawing at his face. Morlock reached out with his ghostly hand and inserted empty fingers into Wurnafenglu's right eye socket.
The gnyrrand screamed and the day went dark. The disc of the sun had completely disappeared, and the three moons stood forth in the suddenly dark sky like unequal glaring eyes.
Werewolves rippled and howled in the cascade of sudden moonlight, assuming the cloak of their animal forms.
Wurnafenglu did not have the discipline to resist the night shape. His wolf's shadow rose over him and recast him in its image.
In the moment of transition, Morlock's ghostly hand tore a deep furrow through Wurnafenglu's being, doing fearful damage to both his shadows.
Wurnafenglu fell heavily on the stairs. His head was half wolf, half man; his legs were crooked and lupine; he lifted clawed but human hands at the uncaring sky.
In horror at himself, at what he had become, Wurnafenglu lay aghast in the brief night.
Morlock shattered the manacle on his left ankle. He stepped forward and struck down with Tyrfing as if it were an executioner's sword.
Wurnafenglu's monstrous head fell from his bristling severed neck.
To inflict death with Tyrfing was always nightmarish, but Wurnafenglu's death in the terror of his distortion was a kind of damnation. It nearly carried Morlock's spirit with it into the darkness, and Morlock fought for long moments to keep his life in his ailing body.
In this trancelike state he seemed to see the Strange Gods gathering in the sudden night by the Well of Shadows. They got on their hands and knees and drank from it like dogs.
Then the moment passed and he was wholly himself again, Wurnafenglu's death dismissed, the Strange Gods no longer visible.
He unbent himself and looked out at the crowd.
The Alliance had planned his execution to coincide with the eclipse, so that the terror and ecstasy of transition would be yoked in the minds of the citizens with the Alliance's victory. The result had been somewhat different.
Morlock held his bloody sword toward the sky and shouted, "Citizens of Wuruyaaria! I await your next champion."
The gnyrrands, reeves, and cantors still on the scaffold scampered or rolled down the stairs to the ground, hampered by their clothing in their night shapes.
Dim misty bars of sunlight fell from the sky, breaking the darkness. The eclipse was ending. Another cascade of transitions spread through the crowd, howls becoming screams as their human shadows fell on them and forced them to resume their day shapes.
The monuments of the necropolis also seemed to be changing shape, moving up the long slope. Morlock stared at them, bemused, until he understood what he was seeing. It wasn't the monuments. It was an army of werewolves who had been hiding among them, waiting for this moment of confusion to strike their enemies.
They came in every shape: men and women trailed by wolvish shadows, wolves paired with crouching human shadows, and every grade of semiwolf in-between. But they had clearly resisted both transitions, hiding from the sky among the mausoleums, and they came with clear minds, bared teeth, and drawn blades. They wore the red and blue of the Goweiteiuun and the green and gold of the outliers, and they fell on their enemies of the Alliance.
Rokhlenu, wearing the day shape, ran in the vanguard. Beside him, bearing a green-and-gold banner in one hand and a glass sword in the other, was Wuinlendhono.
Morlock charged down the stairs of the scaffold, kicking and stabbing at stray werewolves as he went. Shouted chants were rising on the edge of the crowd toward the funicular station-perhaps a rally of the Alliance. He could do the most good (or the most harm, depending on how one looked at it) if he joined with the outliers.
The green-and-gold wave was sweeping toward him also, Rokhlenu and Wuinlendhono at its crest. They met, laughing, by the Well of Shadows.
"You are in good time, my friends," Morlock said.
Rokhlenu stared at him with haunted blue eyes. "We couldn't attack before," he began to explain. "The-"
"I meant what I said," Morlock said firmly. "No banter."
"Ghost no," gasped Wuinlendhono. "No banter. I hate banter."
They turned and led the Union werewolves in a charge straight through the chaotic clusters of the Alliance volunteers. Many died; many fled; the spectators to the rally had long since run off to a safe distance.
Long before they reached the funicular, they heard chanting. It was in neither Moonspeech nor Sunspeech nor any language that they spoke, but Morlock at least recognized it: "Kree-laow! Kree-laow! Kree-laow!" The slaves of the funicular station had risen in rebellion. They were attacking the spectators and Alliance werewolves from behind with their chains as weapons. Many of the slaves had already died, their bodies scattered about the plain of Wuruklendon, but others were still streaming out of their subterranean tower, eager to take up the fight.
"Rokhlenu!" shouted Morlock, when he saw this through the dust and blood of the election rally. "I need to take the funicular slaves out of here. Will that hurt your Union?"
"Take them," Rokhlenu said instantly. "Get as many as you can clear. We'll meet you back in Outlier Town."
"We may meet there," said Morlock. He was thinking about Mount Dhaarnaiarnon, and were-rats, and Ulugarriu.
"Oh?" said Rokhlenu, obviously surprised, but there was no time to talk the matter over. "In any case, good luck to you, my friend."
"And to you, and all of yours," said Morlock, and they parted there in the midst of battle, much as they had met.
Morlock ran straight at the ragged line of slaves and shouted in Sunspeech, "Do you understand me? Do you know me?"
"Kree-laow!" they shouted, saluting him with their bloody chains. "Kreelaow!"
"Do you understand me?"
"We understand you, Khretvarrgliu," said one in Sunspeech. "This is the hour of vengeance and atonement. Where do you wish us to die?"
"This is the hour of escape. We will make our way down the face of the city and free as many of our people as we can. If we die, we die, but if we escape we may live-for a little while," he added, thinking of his own illness.
"That may not be, Khretvarrgliu, for armed werewolves guard the downward ways."
"Let me through!"
They parted and Morlock dashed to the edge of Wuruklendon.
A band of dark-coated City Watchers stood blocking the stairways down to Iuiunioklendon.
"Citizens," said Morlock, "give way or die. I will not tell you twice."
Some of the watchers did in fact flee down the stairs at his approach. But others stayed, led by a white-haired werewolf and one with a scarred face.
Morlock beat the spear blade of the scar-faced guard aside and passed Tyrfing through his heart. The death-shock was grievous, causing Morlock's knees to buckle, and the white-haired guard cried out with rage and made as if to stab him. But then the guard went down before a tide of chain-swinging slaves; his cries of anger changed to fear and then fell silent forever.
Morlock straightened himself and looked about. The guards who had not fled were dead or dying.
"We go down and out," he said, as clearly as he could. "Mesa by mesa, tower by tower. We rescue our people as we go. If we get separated, fight your way out and flee south; all will head that way who can."
"But what of atonement, Khretvarrgliu?" said one.