‘I ran onto a sword – held by a dead man.’
The gash was deep and long, beginning just below the warrior’s left elbow and continuing up into his shoulder. ‘Find yourself a healer,’ Trull said, ‘before you bleed out.’
‘I shall. I saw you slay the witch.’ A statement to which Ahlrada added nothing.
‘Where is Canarth?’ Trull asked. ‘I do not see my troop.’
‘Scattered. I saw Canarth dragging Badar from the press. Badar was dying.’
Trull studied the blood and fragments of flesh on the iron point of his spear. ‘He was young.’
‘He was blooded, Trull.’
Trull glanced over at High Fort’s walls. He could see soldiers lining it. The garrison, witness to the annihilation of the Letherii manning the outer defences. The nearest bastion was still launching quarrels, tracking the few demons still in range.
‘I must join my brother, Ahlrada. See if you can gather our warriors. There may be more fighting to come.’
Huddled in the lee of the west wall, Moroch Nevath watched a dozen wolves pad from one heap of corpses to another. The beasts were covered in blood. They gathered round a wounded soldier, there was a sudden flurry of snarls, and the twitching body went still.
All over… so fast. Decisive indeed .
He had never found the horses.
On the rampart opposite him, eighty paces distant, a score of Tiste Edur had found Prince Quillas. Dishevelled but alive. Moroch wondered if the queen’s corpse lay somewhere beneath the mounds of broken flesh. Beadwork unstrung and scattered in the welter, her jewelled sword still locked in its scabbard, the ambitious light in her eyes dulled and drying and blind to this world.
It seemed impossible.
But so did all these dead Letherii, these obliterated battalions and brigades.
There had been no negation of magic. The eleven mages had been destroyed by the counter-attack. A battle had been transformed into a slaughter, and it was this inequity that stung Moroch the deepest.
He and his people had been on the delivering end, time and again, until it seemed inherently just and righteous. Something went wrong. There was treachery. The proper course of the world has been… upended . The words repeating in his head were growing increasingly bitter. It is not for us to be humbled. Ever. Failure drives us to succeed tenfold. All will be put right, again. It shall. We cannot be denied our destiny .