—are the direct targets.
What of wide-ranged attacks, Amris wondered to himself. Would a stone from a catapult, or a firestorm if a mage could call one, get around that defense, or expand the return stroke to the entire army? He made a note to himself to speak with Tebengri about that, when he saw the mage and when he could talk.
Gerant continued,Repeated attacks might wear down whatever the protection is, just as enough strain would break through my spells, but that’s only a theory.
“And no real way to find out,” Darya added. “Counting the one I took, I think maybe half a dozen of us have had clear shots at the squirming-faces, and nobody’s taken one since we passed the word.”
Amris nodded his approval. If the spell, unshielded, was as bad as Gerant said, there was no point taking risks to find out.
“Katrine says she’ll talk to the Mourner, when he’s got a free minute. If this is Gizath’s work, Letar’s power might fuck it up,” Darya added.
“Good thinking,” Amris said. “Good work, everyone.” Then he fell silent again. His throat was feeling better, but he had no desire to push his luck.
Eat, you fool, said Gerant.
He did. The bread and cheese tasted of blood, whether because of the smell in the air, the damage to his throat, or both. Darya, Isen, and the other soldiers spoke around him.
“No sign of Thyran, huh?” Isen asked.
Darya shook her head. “Biding his time, likely. We don’t have a Blade, and even they probably aren’t good enough assassins to get to him through a couple thousand of his creatures.”
“Where’d they allcomefrom?” asked a young man.
“This lot?” Isen shrugged. “North, or so I hear.” He glanced at Darya and Amris, and when neither of them corrected him, went on. “Originally? Thyran made ’em out of the people who followed him. I don’t know how.”
There are creatures outside the world, Gerant said, and Darya repeated him, with a gesture to indicate the real speaker—though the choice of words would likely have given that away.Parasites, like ticks on the body of a hound. Thyran, and his god, called them up. His most dedicated followers walked into their embrace and came out changed.
A woman sitting nearby coughed on her water. “Allof those went over willingly?”
“No,” said Darya, still speaking for Gerant, though she started to use her own words. “The first lot, the strongest, could…split themselves after a certain point. Stick a tooth or a finger or whatever into a human corpse and five or six twistedmen come up the next day, all with the same grudges as their…sire?” She grimaced at the word. “It lessens the big ones to do it, and nobody knows if the parts that split off them grow back, but Thyran and his top creatures made them.”
Amris nodded again. He’d seen such a parody of birth once. It was among the memories he most hoped death would blot out. He had to force himself to swallow his food, and washed it down quickly with the water and wine.
“Well, then,” Isen said, thin-lipped and pale, “we don’t let them get their hands on our dead, no matter what.”
“Another thing to watch out for,” said Darya.
We never knew if the transformation would work on the living,Gerant added,nor what the results would be if it did. It remains, I fear, an unknown and a possibility.
Darya didn’t repeat that, only glanced down at her sword with a sigh. Amris didn’t feel any need to state those facts either. There were plenty of obvious reasons not to let the living fall into the hands of Thyran’s army, not least because the path from hands to mouths was likely to be a short one and might not involve death first.
Where bad ends were concerned, Thyran and his forces provided no shortage of choices.
* * *
“Sleep would be wisest, now,” said Amris. “Until we’re needed in our turn.”
He was lowering himself to the ground as he spoke, though he didn’t start to take off his armor—likely for the same reason none of them had gone into the buildings. When they had to go up on the walls again, every second would count. They had to stay easily found and ready to fight.
Darya understood that, and gods knew she’d slept rougher. It was the thought of sleeping with live enemies so close at hand that made her stare at Amris.
She didn’t ask, though. The man looked ten years older than when he’d left her side and pulled his tunic back on, and he’d spoken through a throat of broken glass, from the sound. If he could manage rest, Darya wasn’t going to bother him with questions.
The soldiers were following his example. A few had gotten there before and were already breathing steadily, either asleep or close to.
“Might as well try,” Darya muttered, and lay back as well.
I’ll wake you if matters grow dire,Gerant promised,but he knows his business.
