That blow should have snapped him like a reed, Clay knew, and he once again offered silent praise for the durability of Jack the Reaver’s impenetrable armour. He tried getting to his feet, but his legs had other ideas. A glance told him that Ganelon was on his feet, pressing the attack, sweeping left and right with Syrinx while his adversary leapt back and sought an opening.
The Ferals he’d crashed into were recovering as well, and they had no intention of letting him reenter the fray. One of them drove a spear into his stomach, and Clay returned the favour by smashing Wraith up into his groin.
“Not even sorry,” he muttered, rolling sideways as another Feral aimed an arrow point-blank at his face. The shot missed and struck the ground just inches away—the arrow’s shaft broke and a shard of spinning wood opened a gash beneath his left eye. The man cast his bow aside and dived toward Clay, who managed to put a fair bit of strength into a backhanded swing with Wraith that did terrible things to the bones in the cannibal’s neck.
The last of the three he’d landed on grabbed at Clay’s shield arm, and as they both finally rose, the straps binding Blackheart to his wrist tugged loose and the unthinkable happened.
The Feral took his shield.
Forgetting the fact that Ganelon and Dook were fighting nearby on his left, and doing his best to ignore how suddenly light his right arm felt, Clay locked eyes with the man holding Blackheart and said, as calmly as he could, “Give it back.”
The Feral looked down at his prize and then back to Clay. He wavered. Clay could see him wavering.
“Now.” The word seethed through Clay’s teeth, sizzled in the air between them.
Slowly, slowly, the man lifted the shield and offered it to Clay, whose trembling hands reached for that slab of mottled wood like a mother for her newborn child. The moment Clay took hold of it, the Feral turned and bolted into the forest.
“DOOOOOOOOOK!”
Clay wheeled, wriggling his arm back into Blackheart’s straps and cinching them tight as he assessed how Ganelon was doing.
The Feral champion had landed another blow, it seemed, and Ganelon was slumped against the same tree as before, which was now pitched to a dangerous angle. Dook was tiring, at least, and advanced on the warrior much slower than before.
Clay took three running steps before his legs turned back to jelly and he staggered to a knee. Desperate to at least prove a distraction, he lobbed his hammer overhand. It sailed through the air and, miraculously, struck the lanky cannibal in the back of the skull. Unfortunately, Dook’s round little skull was exactly as hard as it looked, and any elation Clay felt at having landed his throw evaporated as Dook turned, took him in with those beady, close-set eyes, and laughed.
Clay saw Ganelon rise. And Dook, though not especially bright, saw Clay see Ganelon rise, and so turned in time to see Ganelon swing his lethal, legendary axe—not at Dook, since he was too far away for that, but at the tree against which he’d been lying.
Syrinx sheared right through the half-shattered trunk, and the tree came down like a ten-ton drunk, crushing Dook (and several other tribesman standing farther behind him) to pulp beneath it.
“ … Dook, Dook …” a single Feral’s voice trailed into stunned silence, in which Clay picked out a low hum growing steadily louder, until it became a roar that rattled the trees and shook dead leaves from dying branches.
The Dark Star cruised overhead, so low Clay could feel the mist of its tidal engines filtering through the canopy above. The tribesmen, fearful of the lumbering dreadnought, scattered like mice beneath a falcon’s shadow.
The ground began to shudder, rocked by a succession of rumbling quakes, one after another. Clay and Ganelon shared an uneasy glance, and once Clay had retrieved his hammer the two of them shambled along in the direction the others had fled.
“That was awesome, by the way,” Clay rasped as they went.
Something like mirth tugged at the corner of Ganelon’s lips. “I know.”
They emerged behind Gabriel and the others into the wide, rock-strewn ravine in which they’d landed their skyship the day before. The ground beneath their feet was scorched black, littered by small fires and shards of broken wood. Clay was wondering how that had happened when he saw half a dozen pitch-smeared barrels come spilling over the Dark Star’s rail.
Oh, he thought. Oh, no.
He watched with a rapidly sinking heart as they tumbled down onto The Carnal Court, bursting in a spray of liquid fire that ate the sails like parchment and burned the hull to slag in a matter of minutes.
Against the glare of alchemical flame Clay saw Gabriel stagger, using Vellichor like a crutch to keep despair from driving him to his knees. Matrick crouched to one side, stoop shouldered, while Moog removed his hat and bowed the bald crown of his head. Clay and Ganelon staggered to where Larkspur stood, neck craned, watching as the Dark Star vanished over the forest to the west.
Clay stole a glimpse at her face, fearing to see the spark of recognition in her eyes. But there was only confusion, and a trace of sorrow in her voice when she spoke at last. “I assume that was my ship?” she asked, nodding toward the burning wreck of The Carnal Court.
Clay sighed. Don’t think about it, he urged himself. Don’t think about the fact that your fastest way to Castia and back again is gone, burned, destroyed. Don’t think about how much longer it will be before you see your wife, or hear your daughter’s laughter, because then you’ll start crying and nobody wants to see that.
“It was,” he said.
The daeva’s dark eyes flitted back to the sky. “Who are they?”
Besides being a bunch of fucking assholes? “They’re bounty hunters,” he said, deciding to risk some part of the truth.
Larkspur’s arched brows furrowed. “Why are they after you? Are you criminals?”
That depends on who you ask. “They’re after Matrick,” Clay told her. “His wife is the queen of Agria. He left her, so now she wants him dead.”
“Dead? Why?”
“Because she and Matrick had five kids and none of them are his. I think she’s afraid he’ll put the only legitimate heir of Agria into the belly of whichever woman takes pity on him first.”
She snorted her amusement, and Gabriel wheeled at the sound.
“Is something funny?” he asked. There was raw fury in his face, and it occurred to Clay that Gabe very probably blamed Larkspur for the destruction of The Carnal Court. And of course Larkspur was to blame, but the woman who’d emerged in the wake of her fall seemed a different person altogether.
“I … no.” The daeva looked abashed. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Gabriel’s gaze darkened. He took a step toward them, and Clay’s eyes were drawn to the sword he dragged behind him. He saw rushing water through the window of Vellichor’s blade, and a writhing fish so real he thought for a moment it might come splashing out into a world in which it didn’t belong.
Gabriel’s eyes had moved past her now, and his expression hardened.
Ganelon nudged Clay’s shoulder and they both turned slowly around.
There was a small host of cannibals arrayed along the forest’s edge. They stood with spears ready and bows drawn, bolas whistling and blowguns raised to puckered lips. They didn’t attack, though, and two of them broke from the others, coming tentatively nearer to the band and its crippled daeva.
One of them was Jeremy, who slowly and loudly introduced his father, Teresa.
“Teresa?” Even mumbling, Larkspur sounded dubious.
“The Ferals remain nameless until after their first kill,” Moog explained hurriedly. “They must consume the entire body themselves, after which they adopt that person’s name, regardless of gender. It’s not unusual to meet women with names like William or Todd. A man with a woman’s name is quite rare, actually. Probably because women are rarely stupid enough to get killed by cannibals in the first place.”
“ME TERESA,” Jeremy’s father announced redundantly. Clay wondered if Ferals ever spoke in tones quieter than a shout. “BONEFACE ELDER. WANT FOR PEACE.” He made a placating gesture with empty hands. His eyes lingered on Ganelon—or more aptly, on the bloodied axe in the southerner’s grip. “NO MORE KILLING, YES?”