City of Blades (58 page)

She brings herself up into a kneel and draws a bead on the auto's passenger door. Someone inside fumbles with the handle, then shoves it open and crawls out. There's another blast from the coastal cannons, washing the cliffs with pale light, and she watches as a battered, furious Sergeant Major Pandey, his eyes red and his cheeks wet with tears, crawls out to stand on the cliffs.

He draws his sword and advances on her. “
You!
” he cries. “You!”

“Pandey?” Mulaghesh lowers the pistol. “What the hells are you
doing
?”

“
You're
the reason she died!” he screams at her. “
You're
the one who killed her!”

“What are you talking ab—”

Before she can finish speaking Pandey dives at her, thrusting his sword out in a quick, deadly jab. Mulaghesh rolls away, feeling the stones reverberate as the blade scours over them. She holsters her weapon, stands, and backs away, hands up to show she's no threat. “Pandey! Pandey, what do you think I did?”

“I saw her!” he screams at her. “I saw her on the table! I saw her down there in the dark!” As he screams her nostrils catch the sour tang of alcohol on his breath, and she realizes he's likely drunk. But if so it hasn't dampened his sword work any, for he sweeps his blade at her in a lightning-quick strike that nearly guts her.

Mulaghesh dives away again, but she's forced to use her false hand to help her land, so she falls badly. She can hear him coming at her, his footfalls light and quick, and she draws the sword she took from the guard just in time for its blade to meet his with a ringing
snap
.

“I didn't kill Signe,” says Mulaghesh furiously. “I didn't pull the trigger! I wasn't even there!”

“You're a liar!” He disengages, sweeps around, lunging at her exposed breast with a quick thrust. She bats his blade away, rolls backward, and stands, finally assuming a defensive stance.

“You got her mixed up in your conspiracy and then you killed her!” he screams.

“Pandey, damn you, there are more important things happening right now!”

“More important? More
important
?” He rushes at her, a furious blitz of brutally clever attacks that she only barely manages to defend. “She was the only important thing I ever had!”

Again he lunges at her, piling riposte upon riposte as she just barely manages to parry. She knew Pandey was brilliant with a blade, but she never sparred with him when she was stationed in Bulikov. As her forearm and tricep begin to ache, she begins to doubt if she could have managed to take Pandey even in her prime: he fights with liquid grace, his sword seeming to dance weightlessly through the air. Yet he also fights with the fury of the bereaved: as she sees more and more gaps in his defenses, she becomes aware that Pandey is focused wholly on attack, indifferent as to whether or not she can land a blow, indifferent to his own life. She ignores her instincts and refuses to strike.
I've killed enough,
she thinks desperately.
I've harmed enough. I won't do it to you, Pandey, I just won't.

She's saved only by the uneven ground, which she uses to her advantage, scrambling over the rocks as Pandey flies at her with the speed and poise of a much, much younger person.

“Do you even know what that's
like
?” he cries. “Have you ever had anything in your damnable life besides the service?”

Over Pandey's shoulder she glimpses Sigrud hauling himself out of the gully and limping at them, clutching his broken arm. “Don't, Sigrud!” she shouts. “He'll kill you! I mean it, he wi—”

He forces her into a bind, his blade striking hers with such force that it shakes her all the way up into her shoulder. Again she falls back, and again he pursues.

The cannons boom and shriek, illuminating Pandey from behind with a hellish glow. Behind her the glowing vessels from the City of Blades are less than a quarter mile from the shore, and closing fast. Sometimes the shells strike home and one of the ships explodes, a great fireball laced with black smoke unfurling into the sky, battering them even here with a blast of broiling heat. Yet still Pandey leads his assault, beating down her defenses with seemingly inexhaustible stamina.

She missteps over a slick stone. Pandey jabs at her and her left arm lights up with pain. She can't take the time to see, but she can tell from how much weaker her arm suddenly feels that he's likely slashed open her tricep.
Too slow,
she thinks.
Just too damned slow…

“Pandey, stop!” she shouts. “I didn't mean for this to happen, none of it! Bu—”

“But it happened!” he screams, his face still wet with tears. He slashes forward and she just barely manages to stop his blade.

“I don't want to hurt you, Pandey!”

“Hurt me?” he cries. “
Hurt
me?” He slashes down, and she reacts just in time to deflect his blade. “Am I not hurt!” he roars. “Am I not wounded!”

He thrusts forward again, and she bats the point of his sword away. But it's getting harder and harder each time.

She thinks rapidly. She's seen enough of his technique that she knows what to expect now: another thrust, turning into her and pushing forward and down with his right shoulder. She has an idea, though it's a dangerous one: if she's even slightly wrong about this odds are she'll take his sword right in the gut. But if it works there's a chance she can disable his right arm, putting him out of the fight.

“I loved her more than anything in this world!” he says, still weeping. “I loved her!”

“I know,” she says.

“You don't!” he snarls. “You
don't
!”

He attacks, and he does it exactly as she expected: a powerful, deadly thrust down toward her belly.

She uses her own blade to force his sword down to where she's just placed her metal false hand. The point of his sword sinks an inch or two into the hinge at her false hand's wrist, but goes no farther—Signe's metalwork holds fast.

At the same time, Mulaghesh thrusts her own sword up, aiming for Pandey's armpit….

But then Pandey screams in rage, raises himself up, and tries in futility to force his blade down through her hand; yet as he does he lifts himself up and onto the point of her sword.

The blade smoothly enters his rib cage and sinks a half a foot into his chest, up toward his heart.

Pandey freezes with a choke.

Mulaghesh blinks, staring at what she's done.

“No,” she whispers.

He coughs faintly. He tugs his sword free of her false hand and steps back, her blade sliding out of him.

Blood spatters onto the stones. His sword clatters to the ground.

“P-Pandey?” says Mulaghesh.

He looks down at himself. Another cannon fires behind them and his features glow with bright white light. All the rage and fury is gone from his face, and instead he looks confused and shocked but also strangely disappointed, as if he'd thought the whole time that this might happen but never quite believed it. He looks at his hand, which is coated in blood as if he'd dipped his fingers in a bucket of it. Then he looks at his side and sees the waterfall of red dribbling out from between his ribs to tumble down his waist to his boots.

His legs go out from under him and he falls to the ground.

“Pandey!” she screams. She throws her sword away and kneels beside him.

Blood is pouring out of his right side. He coughs, and she knows she's badly punctured a lung. He coughs again, more violently, and blood sprays from his mouth and dribbles down his chin.

He's drowning in his own blood. She knows he is, but she has no idea what to do.

“Pandey, no,” she says. “No! Keep breathing, Pandey, keep breathing!”

He tries to speak then: he snorts strangely, trying to draw air into himself to form the words, but he only coughs more. Then he mouths six words to her, his eyes shameful and desperate and terrified:
I messed up, ma'am. I'm sorry
.

Mulaghesh realizes she's weeping. “Dammit, Pandey. Oh, damn it, I…I didn't mean to, I
didn't.
”

He coughs again. The lower half of his face is slick with blood now, and there's a shallow pool of it on his side. He tries to speak again, but the effort is agonizing.

She places her hand on his cheek and says, “No. No, don't talk. Don't. You don't need to. It'll make it worse.”

His eyes are red and watery. He stares at her, afraid, his handsome, boyish face marred by the spray of blood from his mouth. She smooths down his hair and whispers, “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. We owed you so much more than you were given. I'm so sorry.”

He seems to lie back a little, to stop struggling to force his lungs clear. He steels himself and shuts his eyes as if preparing for some horrible blow. But then he relaxes, his brow growing smooth, his eyes calm, and Sergeant Major Pandey slowly gains the look of someone who's just fallen into slightly uncomfortable sleep.

The cannons rage behind her. Just ahead, the ships threaten to land. She can see their decks brimming with Voortyashtani sentinels, ancient warriors eager to leap into the fray.

But she has no attention for any of it. She feels the scream begin to build in her.

Again, a child of her nation she was responsible for. Again, someone who once trusted her with all of their heart. Again, blood on her blade and a body cooling underneath foreign skies.

Again, again, again.

The world is afire. The night is filled with the screams of soldiers and civilians, scrambling and scrabbling in the face of incomprehensible war.

She can see Sigrud watching her, bent double, uncertain what to do.

She wishes to scream to him. Perhaps not just to him, but to the fortress, to the ships, to the terrified people at the base of these cliffs, to the night skies and the pale face of the moon turned a muddy brown behind a veil of smoke.

But then there's a voice—a voice in her head that is not her own.

The voice whispers to her, very definitely asking her a question, soft and quiet yet filling the whole of her mind:

Are you a part of me? Am I a part of you?

Something nuzzles at her thoughts, something curious and yet welcoming. It is perhaps the strangest sensation she's ever felt, but she can tell there is some mind or entity reaching out to her—and she has the unshakable feeling that this entity is speaking from her right pocket.

She reaches in and pulls out the sword of Voortya.

The atmosphere in the westernmost watchtower grows grim and desperate as the technicians rattle off positions and coordinates to the coastal cannons, though the ships are now so close and so thick that it would be difficult to miss them. Captain Sakthi watches, gripping his spyglass so hard he's vaguely concerned it may shatter, as the bay of Voortyashtan lights up again and again as shells strike their targets. The bay now appears to be littered with giant prayer lanterns, the seas dotted with flaming, burning wrecks. Ordinarily this would be enough to stave off any coastal attack, but the other Voortyashtani ships simply shove them aside as they plow toward the coast, limitless and indomitable.

The city of Voortyashtan itself is in a complete uproar as citizens stampede up the cliff roads, led by SDC workers. Major Hukkeri's battered, exhausted battalion is taking up positions on the southern cliffs, desperately trying to prepare for the impending invasion, but the flood of citizens out of the city has turned her work into utter chaos.

In his head, Sakthi rifles through all the scenarios that were taught to him during training, all the strategies and cunning feints and clever tactics he might employ in the battlefield to turn situations to his favor.

He considers his options, and realizes with a sinking heart that he has none.

Then one of the technicians says, “Who the hells is that on the western cliffs?”

Captain Sakthi wheels around, frowning. He glasses the cliffs and sees two figures just to the northwest of them, on the very point of the rock. It's hard to make anything out, but one of them has a hand that shines very curiously, as if made of metal.

His mouth opens, surprised. “General Mulaghesh?”

Mulaghesh listens to the sword.

It begins to show her things: sensations, concepts, avenues of reality and emotion that were never accessible to her before, aspects of existence hidden to the mortal mind.

The world flickers around her: for one instant she is back in the City of Blades; in another she is on the cold, damp mountains along the Solda; and in yet another she stands at the bottom of a mass grave, watching as a never-ending cascade of bones pours over the lip, indescribable casualties from an endless war.

Not one war, she realizes—
every
war, all wars ever fought by humanity. Never one side prevailing over the other, never separate and disparate groups, but a blazing, monstrous act of self-mutilation, as if humanity itself was cutting open its own belly to send its intestines spilling into its lap.

The sword speaks to her:
Are you these things? Is this you?

It shows her an image then: a solitary silhouette of a person standing on a hilltop, looking out upon a burning countryside.

She knows, in some wordless, instantaneous fashion, that this figure has not struck every blow in the war it watches, yet it is still responsible for all of them: this person, this entity, has created every battle of this war, caused every scream and every drop of blood. And in its hand the figure holds…

A sword. Not a sword,
the
sword: bound up in that blade is the soul of every sword and every weapon that has ever been, every bullet and every bolt and every arrow and every knife. When the first human raised a stone and used it to strike down its kin this sword was there, waiting to be born: not a weapon, but the spirit of all weaponry, harm and cruelty both endless and everlasting.