Well, that and an exceptionally durable suit of armour.
Clay lost count of the times he hit the mountain on the way down, though to be fair he stopped counting after being rendered unconscious. The first impact, which came long seconds after he fell from the bridge, broke his left arm—which might have bothered him more were there a functioning hand at the end of it, but there wasn’t. The second time he landed hard, but the Warskin was famed for being impenetrable, and so Clay hit the mountainside like an egg in an iron shell. He half-slid, half-tumbled down a long slope and then, after spilling over another sheer drop, cracked his head against stone and slipped into blackness.
Despite this, his prejudice against helmets remained unchanged. You had your pride, Ganelon had told him once, or you had nothing.
He awoke buried in a tomb of snow and wriggled free, since his right arm was strapped to Blackheart and the stump of his left wrist was shit for digging. The cold, at least, helped to slow the loss of blood to a survivable trickle, like sap oozing from an elm in winter. When he was free of the snow, Clay slung his shield over one shoulder and tore a strip from his bearskin cloak. Between his chattering teeth and a near-frozen right hand it took him forever to tie off the wound.
Afterward he spent a few minutes staring at his mutilated wrist, repulsed because it looked so grotesquely surreal, fascinated because how had he not known there were two bones in his forearm? He was pondering this when the faint sound of singing pricked his ears.
It’s the concussion, he told himself. You’re delirious, Cooper.
But then the singer coughed, fell silent, and started up again. And what was more: Clay didn’t know the song.
He stood, fell sideways, and stood again. He tried to swipe the hair from his eyes but only clubbed himself with the stump of his severed hand. It was extremely painful and only slightly less embarrassing because no one was around to see.
Clay began walking toward the sound. After five or six steps he stopped, fumbled right-handed into his breeches, and relieved himself into the snow. No blood, he noted, admiring the stream. That was good.
His gaze scaled the wall of the Defile before him, the top half of which was stained red by the setting sun. Or the rising sun. Clay honestly had no idea how long he’d been out, but judging by how full his bladder was it had been several thousand years, at least. When he finished he ambled on, following the drift of song down the shadowed corridor.
He found the ettin lying among a heap of rubble. Its limbs were askew, Gregor’s head was wrenched to a crazed angle. The wound in his throat had torn during the fall; his chest was stained by blood.
Dane, miraculously, was still alive. He’d been singing softly to himself, and when he heard the scuff of Clay’s approach he raised his head wearily. “Hello?”
“Hi, Dane.”
“Clay? Did you fly here, too?”
Clay might have laughed if his ribs didn’t hurt so bad. “I did,” he answered finally. “Bit of a rough landing, though.”
Dane giggled at that, but then raised a finger to his lips. “Gregor’s asleep,” he said. “I was singing him a lullaby, like our mother did when we were little. I don’t remember her, but Gregor says she was very pretty.”
Clay had never seen a pretty ettin. He honestly doubted there were any. Even so, he decided to believe it anyway.
Gregor had been born a monster in a monstrous world, and had managed to find beauty in it nonetheless. He’d squeezed sweet juice from a rotten orange. He’d painted an old house pink. And what was more: He had given all this to his brother, as a gift.
“He’s dreaming,” Dane whispered.
Clay spared a glance for Gregor’s gaping throat. They share dreams, he remembered. “You can see it?”
Dane nodded. “It’s a pretty dream. A peaceful dream. I can see it in my head, like I’m there beside him.”
You would have to be, thought Clay. Unless ettins weren’t ettins in their dreams. Dane closed his rheumy eyes, and was silent for so long Clay thought he might have succumbed to his wounds, but then he smiled, teeth like broken columns gleaming in the twilight. “It’s so beautiful, Clay. I wish you could see.”
Clay was cold. He was tired and hungry and hurt. He’d been betrayed—they all had—by Larkspur, and Matrick was very probably doomed. She would take him east, and Gabriel would carry on to Castia; he was too close to turn back now. Ganelon would follow him. Moog would wring his hands and tug his beard, but he would go on as well, because what else could he do? The path behind would be swarming with rasks.
The band was broken. What little hope they’d had was lost. Rose, by her own admission, was damned, and the dark days to come would claim them each, one by one. Except, perhaps, for me, thought Clay. He alone was trapped in limbo, stranded between life and death, standing at heaven’s door without a hand to knock.
He knelt, settling himself on his haunches, and crossed his arms against the cold. “Will you tell me,” Clay asked, “about the dream?”
When Clay awoke it was morning. He’d fallen asleep on his knees, chin nestled against the cold chain links of his armour. A light snow was coming down, settling soft as benediction upon his shoulders. The ettin was dead.
Dane, he saw through bleary eyes, had died as he’d lived: with a great big ugly smile on his face.
It took an effort to rise. His back groaned, his ribs whimpered, his knees howled in protest, but he managed to stand, and stay standing, as he looked left and right down the Defile. No giants. Nothing but stillness and snow falling. For a moment Clay wished he’d insisted they come this way instead of taking the Cold Road. But no, he had long since learned that harbouring regrets was akin to stashing embers in your pockets: it was pointless and bound to hurt. Probably Ginny had told him that.
His gaze snagged on something to the east: a pall of smoke against the blue-white sky. A signal, he knew immediately.
My men will find me, Larkspur had promised him on the bridge. I’ll make sure of that.
Clay chewed his lip, looking east. How long before the Dark Star passed near enough to see the smoke? A day or so if I’m lucky, Clay figured. A few hours if I’m not.
Hey, Cooper, another part of his mind chimed in, you just lost your hand, fell down a mountain, and watched a friend die in the cold. How lucky are you feeling right now?
“Fair point,” he muttered, to no one at all.
Whatever happened in Castia, Clay’s part in it was finished. The daeva had seen to that. He would never reach the city in time to help Gabriel. There was, however, a chance he could rescue Matrick before Larkspur’s thralls arrived, assuming he could do anything at all with cracked ribs and a missing hand against the deadly hunter and her fabulous new scythe.
He started running anyway.
Chapter Forty-six
Deliverance
Clay’s determined run had long since become a jog, which in turn degraded into a forward-leaning shamble barely faster (but somehow more exhausting) than a walk. When the rumbling stride of giants shook the ground Clay was grateful for the opportunity to collapse behind a boulder and catch his breath as they passed by.
The drum-deep voice of one drifted down to him from above. “I don’t get it. So if I literally froze my balls off—”
“Then it would mean that your balls had actually frozen and fallen off,” boomed a second voice. “What you really mean to say is that you figuratively froze your balls off.”
“So I’ve been using it wrong all this time?” asked the first.
“Literally!” his companion groaned, and both giants fell to laughter.