He might not go down at all, Clay was thinking, when a rough snort behind him made him turn to see the world’s most obstinate minotaur attempting to rise.
“Oh, c’mon,” he moaned. “Stay down. Just … please, stay down.” He took an involuntary step toward it and the beast whirled on him, glowering with bulging, bloodshot eyes. It snorted again, louder this time, and distinctly more threatening. In another world Clay might have offered to buy it a beer and call it a draw, but it was stamping one cloven hoof and weaving its fire-scarred head from side to side, so instead he squared himself to it and sighed.
He thought briefly of Ganelon and what the warrior had done to those men in Mazala; of Larkspur’s revenge upon the children who’d made her childhood a living hell; of Lastleaf and his war against a Republic built on the blood of so-called monsters; and of himself, who would likely have died a monster if it wasn’t for one woman’s love.
Two women, actually.
“You know what?” Clay said. “Never mind. You are what you are. So come at me.”
Whether the minotaur understood him or not, it charged: broken horned and burnt, one-armed and weaponless; its hooves churned the bloody earth below as it bowed its head.
It would occur to Clay mere moments later that the fights that seemed to matter most weren’t always the ones that did, and that sometimes the fate of worlds was decided by something so arbitrary as sheer dumb luck.
He dropped as the minotaur rammed its hoary head into Blackheart, then rolled onto his back and let the beast’s own impetus propel it into the air, whereupon it, quite unintentionally, blindsided Lastleaf and sent them both pitching headlong into the magma pool.
Clay scrambled onto his stomach just as the druin began screaming, and an instant later the corpse of the wyvern matriarch slammed into the ground nearby like a giant’s hammer. A veil of dust roiled out from where the creature landed, forcing Clay to squint as he rose and shambled over to where Gabe and Ganelon were standing.
The southerner was craning his neck, peering through the gale of grit at the sky above, and Clay saw him grin as Larkspur, holding a bloodied Umbra in one hand and a harried-looking Matrick in the other, came gliding down on widespread wings.
Moog was there by the time she landed. The Twining Staff had gone dormant again, and the wizard fed it into the mouth of his sack as he beamed at the sickly-looking king. “That looked fun!”
Matrick smiled wanly in response, and Clay recognized a man doing his damnedest not to empty his guts on the ground.
“Well done,” Ganelon told the daeva, as Gabriel wandered off toward the glowing pool.
“You too,” she said, taking in the jumble of corpses—both mercenary and wyvern—littering the nearby vicinity.
Clay shifted his wounded arm in its sling. “If you’re looking for Lastleaf—”
“He’s gone.”
Of course he is, said the part of Clay’s mind that knew the druin’s death had come too easy.
Sure enough, when he joined Gabriel by the frothing edge of the pit and looked within, the only corpse Clay saw was the one belonging to the most stubborn, spirited, suitably bull-headed minotaur he had ever known.
Moog touched a bruise purpling around one of his eyes. “You didn’t happen to ask him what a cathiil was, did you? It’s been bugging me since the gorgon’s place.”
“He can’t have gotten far,” Gabe said, ignoring the wizard. “Let’s finish breaking this siege, shall we?”
Ganelon used his axe to point over the frontman’s shoulder. “I think it just broke.”
Clay looked beyond the seething limit of the Horde at the city of Castia, whose gates were grinding slowly open. A pair of druin skyships emerged from behind the walls, rising like bloated bees from the corpse of a flower.
The siege was indeed broken. Those who had lived without hope for so long were coming, at last, to claim it.
Chapter Fifty-three
One Last Time
“It’s Rose. It must be.”
Gabriel was gazing at distant Castia. There were mercenaries streaming from the open gate, remnants of the once-mighty army shattered by the Horde. There’d been more than four thousand of them once, but gauging their numbers Clay guessed less than half remained. Those who did were sick and weary, but they charged out from the city like madmen. Or heroes.
Clay had no doubt at all as to who was leading them. Neither did Gabriel. His friend took a breath with which to speak, but Larkspur cut him off.
“Go get her. We’re with you.”
Jaw clamped, nostrils flaring, red-rimmed eyes brimming over with love, with pride, and with a father’s fathomless gratitude, Gabriel nodded. “I know,” he said. “Thank you.”
He turned to face the city.
“With me, then. One last time.”
With the Heathen vanished and his matriarch dead, the Horde began rapidly losing cohesion.
The cyclopes were starting to fall. Layla Sweetpenny hurled a lance through the eye of one. The men of Giantsbane climbed another like ants swarming a spoiled picnic. A third cyclops, sitting and scooping the insides from the overturned war wagon, pulled an engineer from the wreckage and ate him. A moment later something detonated inside it, bursting its belly like a smashed pumpkin.
Gabe and Ganelon dashed between the legs of the last one standing. Vellichor clipped one heel, Syrinx the other. The monster collapsed, wailing in anguish, and Moog lobbed an alchemical grenade into its open mouth.
“Oopsie daisy!” he shouted. Its head went boom, and blood came spewing from its ruptured eye.
Gabriel pressed on, relentless. The rest of them followed, trailed by a dwindling number of young mercs: Courtney and the Sparks on the left, Jain and her girls the right. Clay saw the Stormriders as well, and Ben the Stalactian wading through the press with a gore-smeared axe in either hand. Merciless May Drummond, who Clay had seen die twice already, was holding her guts in with one hand and swinging a spiked flail in the other.
Something resembling a scarecrow with embers for eyes leapt into their path, but Barret came out of nowhere and smashed it to straw with his hammer. His boys were with him, blood and sweat matting white hair to their faces. Tiamax waved a few desultory arms, and Piglet tried on a disastrous smile. The boy had been crying, Clay noticed.
He glanced around as Vanguard and the Wight Nights fell in step beside them. “Ashe?”
“Gone,” said Barret.
Gone. Clay nearly stumbled over the word. “Barret, I’m—”
“Don’t be, Slowhand.” He said no more, and Clay let it lie.
The sky itself was coming down on them again. Harpies hit the ground in feathered heaps. Plague hawks fell shrieking from above. A listing skyship crashed onto the battlefield, killing scores.
Clay saw the refugees from Castia attack the Horde from the rear, and was reminded of the cold autumn morning (several lifetimes ago, it sometimes felt) on which his father had led him into the forest in search of a tree. He remembered Leif showing him how to cut a wedge in the opposite side before you set to work on the other. With any luck, Rose and her ragged company would be that wedge, and if they just kept hacking, and hacking, and hacking …
Clay spotted the Infernal again, a winter-cloaked titan stomping across the battlefield. Wherever it went the host around it seemed renewed, driven to mindless rage by the demon in its midst. If Lastleaf were seeking protection, or someplace from which to rally and reestablish his grip on his crumbling army, he would probably start there.
Either Gabriel had come to the same conclusion or he was simply plotting the most direct route to Rose, because he was leading them right toward it. Their line was stretched hopelessly thin by now, a bright thread woven through the midst of a vile tapestry.