Again he lunges at her, piling riposte upon riposte as she just barely manages to parry. She knew Pandey was brilliant with a blade, but she never sparred with him when she was stationed in Bulikov. As her forearm and tricep begin to ache, she begins to doubt if she could have managed to take Pandey even in her prime: he fights with liquid grace, his sword seeming to dance weightlessly through the air. Yet he also fights with the fury of the bereaved: as she sees more and more gaps in his defenses, she becomes aware that Pandey is focused wholly on attack, indifferent as to whether or not she can land a blow, indifferent to his own life. She ignores her instincts and refuses to strike. I’ve killed enough, she thinks desperately. I’ve harmed enough. I won’t do it to you, Pandey, I just won’t.
She’s saved only by the uneven ground, which she uses to her advantage, scrambling over the rocks as Pandey flies at her with the speed and poise of a much, much younger person.
“Do you even know what that’s like?” he cries. “Have you ever had anything in your damnable life besides the service?”
Over Pandey’s shoulder she glimpses Sigrud hauling himself out of the gully and limping at them, clutching his broken arm. “Don’t, Sigrud!” she shouts. “He’ll kill you! I mean it, he wi—”
He forces her into a bind, his blade striking hers with such force that it shakes her all the way up into her shoulder. Again she falls back, and again he pursues.
The cannons boom and shriek, illuminating Pandey from behind with a hellish glow. Behind her the glowing vessels from the City of Blades are less than a quarter mile from the shore, and closing fast. Sometimes the shells strike home and one of the ships explodes, a great fireball laced with black smoke unfurling into the sky, battering them even here with a blast of broiling heat. Yet still Pandey leads his assault, beating down her defenses with seemingly inexhaustible stamina.
She missteps over a slick stone. Pandey jabs at her and her left arm lights up with pain. She can’t take the time to see, but she can tell from how much weaker her arm suddenly feels that he’s likely slashed open her tricep. Too slow, she thinks. Just too damned slow…
“Pandey, stop!” she shouts. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, none of it! Bu—”
“But it happened!” he screams, his face still wet with tears. He slashes forward and she just barely manages to stop his blade.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Pandey!”
“Hurt me?” he cries. “Hurt me?” He slashes down, and she reacts just in time to deflect his blade. “Am I not hurt!” he roars. “Am I not wounded!”
He thrusts forward again, and she bats the point of his sword away. But it’s getting harder and harder each time.
She thinks rapidly. She’s seen enough of his technique that she knows what to expect now: another thrust, turning into her and pushing forward and down with his right shoulder. She has an idea, though it’s a dangerous one: if she’s even slightly wrong about this odds are she’ll take his sword right in the gut. But if it works there’s a chance she can disable his right arm, putting him out of the fight.
“I loved her more than anything in this world!” he says, still weeping. “I loved her!”
“I know,” she says.
“You don’t!” he snarls. “You don’t!”
He attacks, and he does it exactly as she expected: a powerful, deadly thrust down toward her belly.
She uses her own blade to force his sword down to where she’s just placed her metal false hand. The point of his sword sinks an inch or two into the hinge at her false hand’s wrist, but goes no farther—Signe’s metalwork holds fast.
At the same time, Mulaghesh thrusts her own sword up, aiming for Pandey’s armpit….
But then Pandey screams in rage, raises himself up, and tries in futility to force his blade down through her hand; yet as he does he lifts himself up and onto the point of her sword.
The blade smoothly enters his rib cage and sinks a half a foot into his chest, up toward his heart.
Pandey freezes with a choke.
Mulaghesh blinks, staring at what she’s done.
“No,” she whispers.
He coughs faintly. He tugs his sword free of her false hand and steps back, her blade sliding out of him.
Blood spatters onto the stones. His sword clatters to the ground.
“P-Pandey?” says Mulaghesh.
He looks down at himself. Another cannon fires behind them and his features glow with bright white light. All the rage and fury is gone from his face, and instead he looks confused and shocked but also strangely disappointed, as if he’d thought the whole time that this might happen but never quite believed it. He looks at his hand, which is coated in blood as if he’d dipped his fingers in a bucket of it. Then he looks at his side and sees the waterfall of red dribbling out from between his ribs to tumble down his waist to his boots.
His legs go out from under him and he falls to the ground.
“Pandey!” she screams. She throws her sword away and kneels beside him.
Blood is pouring out of his right side. He coughs, and she knows she’s badly punctured a lung. He coughs again, more violently, and blood sprays from his mouth and dribbles down his chin.
He’s drowning in his own blood. She knows he is, but she has no idea what to do.
“Pandey, no,” she says. “No! Keep breathing, Pandey, keep breathing!”
He tries to speak then: he snorts strangely, trying to draw air into himself to form the words, but he only coughs more. Then he mouths six words to her, his eyes shameful and desperate and terrified: I messed up, ma’am. I’m sorry.
Mulaghesh realizes she’s weeping. “Dammit, Pandey. Oh, damn it, I…I didn’t mean to, I didn’t.”
He coughs again. The lower half of his face is slick with blood now, and there’s a shallow pool of it on his side. He tries to speak again, but the effort is agonizing.
She places her hand on his cheek and says, “No. No, don’t talk. Don’t. You don’t need to. It’ll make it worse.”
His eyes are red and watery. He stares at her, afraid, his handsome, boyish face marred by the spray of blood from his mouth. She smooths down his hair and whispers, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. We owed you so much more than you were given. I’m so sorry.”
He seems to lie back a little, to stop struggling to force his lungs clear. He steels himself and shuts his eyes as if preparing for some horrible blow. But then he relaxes, his brow growing smooth, his eyes calm, and Sergeant Major Pandey slowly gains the look of someone who’s just fallen into slightly uncomfortable sleep.
The cannons rage behind her. Just ahead, the ships threaten to land. She can see their decks brimming with Voortyashtani sentinels, ancient warriors eager to leap into the fray.
But she has no attention for any of it. She feels the scream begin to build in her.
Again, a child of her nation she was responsible for. Again, someone who once trusted her with all of their heart. Again, blood on her blade and a body cooling underneath foreign skies.
Again, again, again.
The world is afire. The night is filled with the screams of soldiers and civilians, scrambling and scrabbling in the face of incomprehensible war.
She can see Sigrud watching her, bent double, uncertain what to do.
She wishes to scream to him. Perhaps not just to him, but to the fortress, to the ships, to the terrified people at the base of these cliffs, to the night skies and the pale face of the moon turned a muddy brown behind a veil of smoke.
But then there’s a voice—a voice in her head that is not her own.
The voice whispers to her, very definitely asking her a question, soft and quiet yet filling the whole of her mind: