Conveying messages was surprisingly annoying. Either her nerves were going to pieces or she’d gotten spoiled talking with Amris.
“How are the commanders holding up?” she asked, hoping to sound professional and impartial.
Olvir allowed her the luxury of thinking so, whether she managed it or not, answering gravely. “The strain is great, but they’re strong men, and brave ones. They endure well enough. Better than I could, I think.”
Neither of them talking about it, Darya not even thinking about it in advance and suspecting the same was true of Olvir, they each drifted to a Sentinel post on the wall, close enough to talk but spaced to cover a decent range if they need to. “You haven’t led armies, then?”
“No,” he said. “A squadron once or twice, at need, but that’s five or six at most.”
“More than me. I never really thought about what it took until now.”
I didn’t know the whole of it, by a long shot,said Gerant,and I lived with Amris for years.
“Must have been good for him,” Darya said quietly, as Olvir tactfully didn’t ask questions, “to have you. Even if you weren’t always around, it seems like a person you love,” the word came oddly to her lips, “could be a method of keeping you together in those situations.”
Thank you,said Gerant.It went both ways, of course. He listened to me when I was tearing my hair out about theory, and put me to bed a few times when I’d overstretched my abilities and collapsed. But I’m glad to think I helped.
“I think you still do,” said Darya. “I don’t like thinking of how this would weigh on him if you weren’t around.”
You care about him too.
There was no accusation in what Gerant said. Darya was too exhausted to deny it. “Very much.”
“The Golden Lady wove well when she sent the two of you to Klaishil,” said Olvir. “Or it seems that way to me, from the outside.”
“Fate’s odd.” That was part of theory that neither she nor Gerant had dwelled on. Sitha’s most senior priests, or the spiders they bred, could tell vague bits of the future if conditions were right. Some people said the Golden Lady herself could see more, or that the Golden Web was not just civilization and craft but fate itself. “But it’s a comforting thought. Thanks.”
People nearby shifted their weight, murmured to their neighbors, sharpened weapons. Darya looked out again, from the walls to the forest beyond.
Among the fires of the twistedmen, there was motion—and a seething orange glow.
* * *
Amris knew that light of old. Orange though it was, none could have mistaken it for fire. There was a sickly hue about it, as though the person who viewed it did so through a film of dust. No fire moved the way the light did, either, for it swarmed and squirmed as no flame ever had. To either side of him, soldiers turned greenish and swallowed, or looked away.
“What is it?” one of them choked out.
“Gizath’s power,” Amris replied. He squinted against the light, wanting badly to give the order to shoot, but knew it would be a waste of needed arrows. The one they needed to kill would be out of range even for the Sentinels. “Rouse the Mourner, please, and have Sitha’s priest standing by as well—and all of our mages. Send them to Hallis. I know not what this will do, but it’s likely we’ll need them for it.”
They took off down the ladders. Out on the plain, the light kept twisting, looping over and over on itself, and gradually the lower part of it began to darken. Huge legs formed, then a massive block of a trunk.
Amris heard prayers along the wall, quick, garbled, and desperate. He added his own, but silently—those in command had to stay in control. The hilt of his sword dug into his palm, cutting the skin.
Arms came next, each the size of three men. The figure bent, not picking up two human-sized forms from the ground but lowering a hand for them to step on, and then raised that hand to the flat top of its torso, onto which the two walked. A head, it seemed, was not necessary.
“Archers ready!” Hallis called, and Amris repeated it down the wall. He wasn’t certain what good it would do—he suspected the humans on top of the figure had their own protections, or they’d not expose themselves as targets—but it was worth finding out. Perhaps the priests or the mages had been able to enchant some arrows, at that.
The figure started to lumber forward. As it came close enough to see, lit by the fires without and Gizath’s decaying radiance within, the prayers along the wall turned to screams.
It was the dead.
The corpses hadn’t risen as they’d done in Klaishil, as individuals. Twistedmen didn’t seem to. Instead, Thyran and his mages had built the figure out of them, lashing corpses and body parts together into a blocky giant of rotting flesh and broken bones. They’d cared not about specifics, so the arms, each as thick as three men, were made of legs and ribs as well as hands, and splintered faces stared from the legs and the center of the torso. Power had merged them in parts, but it still flickered at the edges, and individual…bits…moved slightly out of sync with the others at times.
Yet they moved, and they moved forward, as one. The figure wasn’t heavy enough to make the earth shake, but Amris nonetheless felt his footing tremble beneath him.
* * *
Darya shot and shot again, but the arrows skidded away when they got close to the figures on top of the corpse-thing, and when they stuck into it, they did as much good as sticking pins into a wall. At last she dropped the bow and drew her sword, waiting.
