The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (75 page)

The captain wobbled.

*****

She saw it penetrate.  A perfect shot between the gorget and the chin, eight inches of steel brought to a stop by the rear edge of his helmet.  His shield-hand fluttered upward; his sword sagged.  He clutched the shaft.

Yanked at it.

Something like knowledge curdled in her stomach.  She had already slipped another bolt into the notch.  Now she raised the crossbow, thinking to plant it in his eye.  His sharp grey eye.

She saw it go blank.  Not dead but
erased
.

Her hand jittered.  The bolt skipped off the brow of his helm.  He reeled back, the embedded shaft pointing at the sky, and he was still gripping it—pulling on it.  His whole face was grey.

His horse, ears flattened, tucked its head down suddenly and snapped its heels out, bucking and thrashing like it had not done even when the Dark bit away the ground beneath it.  The captain bobbed like a ragdoll, tethered momentarily by the stirrups, then flew from his seat.  The crash of armor on brick should have been a death-knell.

He sat up.

A brilliant light flared just under the edge of his breastplate.

“Festering Dark,” she hissed, and reloaded.

*****

Sarovy thought:

Ground.  I'm on the ground.  I—

—white walls, white floor, white ceiling, and the Throne before him—

Fell.

—two eyes like stars, the Emperor gazing down from an unknowable height—

Why can't I see?  The cultists, my men...

—that sense of being known, from the most superficial layer to that deep, dark knot of fear and anger, doubt and defiance—

Why?

His eyes flickered open.  White sky, so like that ceiling.  Red gauntlet.

Something in his hand.

He tugged but it wouldn't move.  Tried to look down.

Crossbow bolt?

What...

—knife in the side, then his hand fell to the old woman's and wrenched it away, her wrist crunching against the door-frame—

What?

—neat slice in the fabric, thread and needle ready to make it go away despite the lieutenant's concerned face—

I don't...

—white bird circling in a white sky—

I don't understand!

A cultist approached, crossbow in hand.  Strange expression.  The bolt wouldn't come out.  No pain, no sensation at all.  Shield still attached to his arm, sword in the other hand, but nothing moving right.  Obstructions.  Havoc looking down from above, big old sad-eyed horse.

What do they know that I don't?

As if in answer, a tremor.  White ceiling, white floor.  Blue gauntlet, lacquered with the Sapphire Eye on the back of the hand.  Kneeling, making the phoenix sign, and the lights kindling below, the ground unfurling, reaching with ephemeral strands to take them all into its binding embrace: all the officers waiting here, the finest in this generation of the Eye.  Above them, that fatherly glow.  The gaze of the Emperor chasing them below...

It won't come out.  It won't come out!

Eyes opened.  Her shadow fell near.

Why does she look at me like that?  Am I so terrible?

A thousand faces, all screaming up at him.  Fighting, thrashing, dying, eyes rolled back in their skulls, the grey wrapped around their throats and swaddling their faces, nostrils, smothering—collecting, cataloging—

—faces sketched in frenzy, ink spattering: different people, strangers, unknowns—

—white threads separating from the floor, each bearing a glow like a filament of light, and the sting of sinking into them as they slipped under every protection—

—under water made of celestial flame and coiled with agony, crowned with excruciating change, every fiber unwoven and forced to knit into new shape, and the light—

—the light above—

—the light below—

—calling with a voice never heard before, something purer and sharper like a breath of cold air, and suddenly the awareness of choking, drowning, of things Not Right perhaps for the first time ever—of things having been Always-Not-Right but never known before—

Fight.  Fight back to the surface.  Fight!

Eyes open.  Bolt in fist.  A yank, clanging the helm against the back of his head.  Another, harder.

Why can't I feel it?

Break it.  Break it off.

A wrench, a twist.  Something snapping, loosening, then gone.

A light from below...

Fumbling fingers, then the pendant of the winged light, aflame in his palm.

*****

His face stilled as he looked down at that glowing thing.  A necklace charm of some sort.  Ardent leveled her crossbow at the eye-slit of his helm.

His eyes snapped up.  They were clear again, and the most frightening things she had ever seen.

Pike this for a bag of crap
, she thought.

Still, she shot.  It went through at a bad angle but should have sent up a gush of blood.  Instead, he yanked it out and rose to meet her, clean-faced, a pinhole showing for barely a moment beneath his left eye.

The first sword-thrust creased a line across her belly even through her hardened leather.  She stumbled backward, caught a flash and hit the ground just below a mage-bolt, which blasted a hole in the mosaic wall behind her.  A glance showed her the higher officer and his entourage, the white-robes arrayed for attack or defense but the officer staring at the captain.

No surprise on his face.

The captain cut for her again.  He seemed hampered somehow, his armor disordered.  She avoided that attack and then just broke and ran, mind whirling too badly to handle this.

The Hammer was in town, with the Mother Matriarch.

He would know what to do.

*****

As much as Linciard had wanted to intervene, the cultists had not given him the chance.  There were too many men down—too many
parts
, too many
pieces
—and he had already puked once after hauling poor Lancer Larein out only to find him cut off at the hips.  He'd wiped his mouth, used his mercy-blade, and moved on to join the others being peppered by crossbow-fire.

Somehow he'd found a shield.  Held it now between the enemy and Lancer Sorretis, who was trying to tourniquet Vyslin's missing leg with his belt.  Linciard could not look, could not listen to the slurred voice urging them to go; he had to keep sharp for alerts from his allies, and shout his own orders back.  He was the sergeant, and Benson wasn't here.

Sarovy was down.

He was the leader now.

The horses were a frenzied mess.  A quarter were dead, many others bloodied in weird patterns.  The cultists did not target them—not that they had
piking spared them
—which made them something of a shield as they ran in circles or stumbled across the Dark-bitten potholes.  Stormfollower and Tasarune were both sheltering behind their steeds, having pulled them in to block for the group.

Linciard wanted to laugh.  It was ridiculous, half a platoon of lancers being cornered in a daylit street by a pack of Shadow Cult.  But it was real.  He had to remind himself of that.  It was real, and the colonel and his mages were sitting back.

He raised his shield against a new barrage.  Heard someone curse.  Felt an itch in his head, and realized he had been feeling it for some time—had been hearing a voice in the back of his mind but not registering it.

'Flaming fuck, Linciard, respond!'

Scryer Mako.

Not on the earhook.  Maybe she had tried, but switched to direct mental when she could not raise him. 
Under attack
, he thought.

'No shit!  What just happened to the captain?'

He's...  He was shot.  I think he's...

'He's having a massive mindquake.  Do they have a piking mentalist?'

No, he was shot.  He—

Linciard glanced quickly toward where the captain had gone down, and saw him up again, stumbling after a fleeing cultist.  His heart jumped into his throat.

'He's not all right.  You have to get him back here immediately,'
sent the Scryer.

I need to get us all back there immediately.

'Specialists are coming.  Hold tight.'

Looking back, he saw more cultists retreating into the shadows from whence they had come.  He didn't trust it, but once he could no longer see them, he dispatched able-bodied men to check on the fallen—see if any could be salvaged.  The street looked like a giant had taken a tenderizing mallet to it.

When no one shot at the salvagers, he did a quick head-count.  Three corporals—if Vyslin survived.  Ten others in various states of mangled and stunned.  That made seven dead or disappeared.

From one instant of the Dark.

Shit.  Fiery festering shit.

Now I know how Savaad felt, down in that basement.

“Grab any horse you can,” he shouted to the mobile men.  “Haul the injured on.  We need to get them back.  And 'ware the slick piking tiles, we don't need to break any more necks today!”

Some moved quickly, some sluggish.  Linciard took a leaf from Sarovy's practices and slapped the laggards on the back of the helm, pushing them into motion.  It seemed to help.  It was more difficult to shake the fog in his own head, like his old conditioning was trying but failing to take hold.  Like his mind wanted to jettison all of this, but could not.

He had no horse.  She was dead, his beautiful Vada.  Horribly, messily dead.

How could this happen?  How could they do this?

Did they ask the same thing when they saw the crush?

“Sergeant.  Sergeant!”  He looked up into a shadow and flinched, then realized it was one of his men ahorse.  The lancer held out a hand, beckoned, and after a moment of blank idiocy, Linciard forced his sword into its sheath and clasped the man's arm.  The lancer hauled, and Linciard heaved up behind him on the saddle, only realizing when he swung a leg over that he was missing a chunk of his left boot.

He tried to curl his toes, and the nerves, as if just remembering they had been cut, set fire to his whole leg.  With a curse, he clamped an arm around the lancer and gestured forward.

The captain was leaning against his horse, forehead to the shoulder-strap, one hand clutching the pendant at his neck.  As they picked their way past, Linciard said, “Sir?”

Sarovy looked up slightly.  His face was pallid, almost grey, his eyes too wide.  “Coming, I'm coming,” he rasped, and waved them away.  The horse gave them a weird look.

“Go,” Linciard told the lancer, though he wanted the opposite.  Even as they left the fancy tiles behind and passed through the wave of specialists heading up the hill, he could not turn his gaze from the captain and the colonel, unmoving.

*****

“So.  Do you remember, captain?”

Sarovy stayed silent.  His thoughts were a whirl of nonsense.

“Have you broken your psychic seal?”

So many pictures, faces, few with any meaning to him.  The Cray crone?  Sapphire armor?  Had it been some sort of waking nightmare, pulling pieces of his past together along with nonsensical illusions?

He felt at his throat.  No wound.

Of course there was no wound.  He had not been shot.

He was lucky.  Skilled.  He had never taken an injury on the field.  Never been sick.

Did not sleep much.  Only ate when he was reminded.  Alcohol had no effect.

He was special.

No, no.  Nothing happened.  Nothing is wrong.

He could feel the pressure behind his eyes trying to erase what he had seen, but new pieces kept bubbling up.  The names and ranks of the soldiers with him in the Palace.  The Emperor's sandals.  The honeycomb heart, buzzing with trapped life.  The light below...

Thinking about it made his face ache, as if he had strained all its muscles in a deep grimace.  But it was smooth under his fingertips.  Soft...

Featureless.

In fear, he clenched his hand on the winged-light pendant and the pressure washed away, defeated like the dementing properties of Vrallek's stare.  He breathed deeply through a thin mouth, out a narrow hooked nose.  Pulled his helm off to run a hand over his short black hair.

Saw the broken tip of the crossbow bolt still embedded inside it, where the base of his skull would be.

Nausea squeezed him tight.

“There is no point in denying it.  Not after that.”  Wreth's voice was dry, amused, as if Sarovy had merely embarrassed himself here.  “Or will you push it down like the rest with the sheer strength of your denial?”

“The rest.”  To his ear, he sounded like he had been swallowing sand.