They are beaten, and they know it.
Bleda saw something pass across his face, a shouted word to the Kadoshim, who leaped into the air, powerful wings taking it higher. The acolyte swept up the black sword in both hands and raised it high. Brought it down onto Asroth’s arm.
There was a moment when all sound seemed to be sucked from the room, like an indrawn breath, and then a huge noise, like a tree splintering, followed immediately by a detonation of air that exploded outwards from the dais in an ever-expanding ring, knocking all in its way flat. Bleda had a half-moment to feel fear, and then the wall of air was crashing into him, hurling him from his feet, his back slamming into stone. He saw Jin thrown to the floor as the explosion hit her, heard Alcyon grunt somewhere further up the stairs.
He scrambled to his knees, just staring at the dais.
A cloud of dust slowly settled, revealing the two black-iron statues still there, though something had changed. Red veins now ran through the iron, like seams of gold, and for a heartbeat the iron casing seemed to ripple and swell. Bleda thought he saw Asroth move. A twitch of his head, a flare of light at his eyes. Then the red veins faded, retracting through the figures, drawing in to a focal point. Asroth’s right fist. Or, to be exact, where his right fist had been. Now there was a stump, a bright forge glow about it, quickly fading.
The shaven-haired warrior with the black sword was on his feet again, the snapped shaft of Bleda’s arrow still protruding from his back. He bent and picked something up, black and heavy, put it inside a leather bag.
Others were climbing to their feet, giants and White-Wings, half-breeds, Ferals and Dark-Cloaks. A Kadoshim screeched and swept down from high in the chamber’s roof, swooping low, skimming heads. The man on the dais lifted an arm and the Kadoshim grabbed hold of him, swinging him around so that he straddled its back between its wings, and then it was banking left, turning a tight circle, wings beating and it powered for the chamber doors, other Kadoshim and half-breeds falling in about it, others snatching up surviving Dark-Cloaks and Ferals, and then they were flying out of the chamber doors like the north wind. Ethlinn threw her spear at one, skewered it through the chest, hurling it against one of the chamber doors, the blade driving deep into wood, thrumming, the Kadoshim slumped, pinned. Ben-Elim swept after the disappearing Kadoshim, a storm of wings.
Bleda looked back to the statues, the chamber floor littered and strewn with the dead and dying, screams, groans echoing, survivors climbing slowly to their feet.
Asroth and Meical were in the same positions they had ever been, Meical on his knees, grasping at Asroth, whose wings were spread, trying to lift free, one hand around Meical’s throat, the other drawn back into a fist.
Except that the fist was gone.
There was no fire glow now, just a stump at the wrist, the black iron back to the matt-dull that it had always been. No hint of life in Asroth’s eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
DREM
Drem strode to the centre of his yard and drew his da’s sword.
My sword, he reminded himself. Da gave it to me, before he died.
He raised it over his head, gripping it two-handed.
Stooping falcon, he recited to himself, holding the pose, counting his heartbeats, feeling the slow burn beginning in his wrists, in his part-bent thighs.
Ninety-nine, one hundred, and then he was chopping down, right to left in one smooth, fluid movement, a hiss of air as the blade passed through it. ‘Lightning strike,’ he murmured, holding that for another count of a hundred, then a powerful stab up with boar’s tusk, into his imaginary foe’s belly, holding that, then slowly, methodically moving through the forms of the sword dance that his da had taught him, muscles and tendons shifting gradually from burning to trembling to exhaustion, sweat beading his brow amidst the snow and ice, his breath a mist about him.
When he’d finished, he practised sheathing his sword in one move, so far proving harder to master than most forms in the dance. He swore as he cut his thumb, again, and looked around to see not only the two goats but also the chickens standing around the yard, staring at him.
‘Not funny,’ he muttered at them, then, at the rumble of hooves, shifted his gaze to look out of his hold’s gates, seeing riders approaching down the track.
‘We’re going to kill that white bear,’ Ulf said, looking down at Drem from the back of his horse. Hildith and a score of her lads were with her.
‘If you’re wanting some payback for your da, you’re welcome to join us,’ she said to him, sympathy in her eyes softening the hardness in her face.
Drem rubbed his chin, surprised at how long his stubble of beard had grown. He’d already gone to Ulf and told him that the white bear had not killed his da, that it had been a different bear.
Ulf hadn’t believed him.
‘We all saw the bear, lad. We fought it in that glade,’ Ulf had said to him. ‘Many didn’t leave the glade breathing because of it. Of course it was the white bear that killed your da.’
Drem had told Ulf his reasoning, but Ulf had baulked at the idea of digging up Olin’s body and inspecting his wounds.
‘Disrespectful,’ he’d said, looking at Drem with a little horror and a lot of disgust in his eyes. ‘Don’t need to go digging up a corpse that’s been buried a ten-night, anyhow. Think about it. A swipe with the other paw, a different angle than you remember in your mind.’ Ulf shrugged. ‘It was fast, confusing, and you had a crack on your head, Drem. Easy to make a mistake. Now stop spouting your nonsense theory like it’s fact, and go sharpen your spear. We’ll hunt that white bear down soon enough.’
Drem had known better than to argue, knowing how men got that look in their eyes and tilt to their head when a discussion had gone past the facts and somehow turned in their minds into a question of who was cleverest, wisest, strongest, most skilled, whatever.
So Drem had just sighed and left.
‘Drem, we’re talking to you,’ Ulf said to him now.
Drem blinked and focused back on Ulf, Hildith.
‘You coming or not?’
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the goats, standing and staring. Heads swivelling from Ulf to Drem, as if they were waiting for his answer.
‘No,’ Drem said.
‘All right then. Too painful. It’ll bring it all back, I understand.’ Ulf nodded, turning his horse in a circle. ‘Wanted to make the offer, though. I’ll bring you a set of claws to match the one round your neck.’
Drem didn’t say anything to that and after a moment’s silence Ulf clicked his horse on, back to the gates and track. Hildith hovered a moment, then dipped her head to Drem and followed.
Drem waited until they had faded from sight, the track empty, just churned snow and ice and sentinel trees. He drew in a deep breath and sighed.