Darksoul. Anna Stephens

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СКАЧАТЬ – is the Rank on its way? Reinforcements? They’ve been hammering at the wall for days now, sending men up there on ladders, cutting down our woods to build siege towers. I’m no soldier, but it looks pretty desperate from the glimpses we’ve had and the news we’ve heard.’

      Dom licked his lips. ‘Going to fight the Mireces?’ he asked. ‘Why’d you think that?’

      The farmer laughed. ‘Why else would you head towards the city? You’re a scout, a messenger or a warrior. Mind you, I’ve little idea how you expect to get past the Mireces and into the city without taking an arrow between the eyes. Still, you know best, I’m sure.’

      Dom rubbed his face and paused as long as he dared, but Her instructions were quite clear. He rose to his feet and looked up at the farmer, still a head taller than him. He glanced behind: three more. ‘Rilpor’s doomed, my friend, and so is Rilporin. The Gods of Light are failing. There’s only the Blood now, blood spilt and blood sacrificed and blood in Her name. I go to join the Mireces, to pledge them my sword, my life, my everything. You’d be wise to do the same; it might spare your families when the time comes. Spare you sacrifice, or slavery. Gift them half your crops and they might let you live your lives without a collar around your neck.’

      The farmer’s mouth was hanging open, his face red with disbelief and growing anger. There were curses from behind, muttered prayers for protection, a half-choked threat. The farmer strode around the fire and grabbed Dom by his rusty chainmail, jerking him forward on to his toes. ‘You fucking coward,’ he snarled. ‘You treacherous, weaselly, snivelling little shit. How can you say that? You’re a— Look at you, you’re dressed like a warrior. Gods alive, you’re one of them Wolf-folk, ain’t you? Sworn enemy of the fucking Raiders!’

      ‘Guilty as charged.’ Dom grinned. ‘Though my feet are on the Path and it is dark and bloody and glorious.’

      ‘Get out of my fucking fields, you scum,’ the farmer roared. ‘I should kill you here and now. I should—’

      Dom’s knife took him under the chin, punching through his tongue and into the base of his brain with a wet crack. He fell without a sound and Dom ripped the knife free, his fingers clumsy from the wound, and spun to face the others. ‘My feet are on the Path,’ he bellowed, waving the red knife. ‘Come, come and stop me. Come and try.’ Part of it was a plea, but the rest was ravening bloodlust, rage and hate. He’d kill the world if She asked him to. He’d kill them all.

      The three men clustered together exchanged identical, terrified looks and then fled, tools falling from their hands. They didn’t look back. Dom spat on the corpse and snatched up his sword. The rabbit was burnt on one side, raw on the other, but he took up the spit and wrapped it in a fold of his blanket. He stared into the flames for a long moment, in case anything looked back, but the Dancer was silent. She had nothing to say about the murder, nothing to say to him at all these days. Just as he liked it. He hawked and spat into the fire, set his back to the farmhouse and marched towards Rilporin.

      ‘My love,’ the Dark Lady purred in his ear, sending shivers down his spine. ‘My good, strong love. How pleased I am.’

      It was the same dream he’d had every night since leaving Watchtown. Those Wolves too broken to carry the fight further, who’d elected to stay in the ruins and lay out the dead, corralled between the God of Blood and the Dark Lady, Dom forming the third point of the triangle imprisoning them. Wolves for Gosfath to play with. Dying in the god’s bloody embrace. Rotting from the outside in. Screaming from the inside out.

      ‘Stop,’ Dom screamed in his turn, as loud as he could, fists balled at his side. ‘Stop it. I’ll do it. I’ll do what you want. I’ll do everything you want.’ His heart thudded slowly in his chest, as though his blood was thick as tree sap. ‘Please, Lady. My feet …’ He paused and swallowed hard as another died writhing, blackening, melting. ‘My feet are on the Path.’ A broken whisper from a broken soul.

      The Dark Lady raised one finger and Gosfath paused in his selection of further victims. At His feet eight men and women curled in on themselves in fetid death, their organs turning to mush and pus inside them even as they rattled their final breaths, outlines sloughing and melting into each other, a pool of decay. A pool of people.

      ‘What did you say?’ She asked in a voice of honey.

      Dom stared at the surviving Wolves huddled together, hope warring with terror on their faces, then back at Her. Do it. Say it. It’s true anyway, has been true for months. And it might save the rest of them.

      ‘My feet are on the Path,’ he said, knowing the disgust and terror on the faces of the Wolves – his kin – would haunt him forever.

      ‘Yes,’ She whispered, ‘they are. So you should ask yourself what you owe these people, the enemies of the true faith. Ask yourself why you care what happens to them, the men and women who’ve spent centuries killing those whose feet walk the Path. People like you, my love.’

      ‘Nothing,’ he said, suddenly understanding, seeing the hate in their eyes for what it was. ‘I owe them nothing.’ It was like light dawning after the blackest of nights. All his final doubts, all his lingering care, washed away in the red-tinged light of Her, the promise of Her redemption. He looked at the Wolves again, at their dying hope. It tingled over his skin like feathers. ‘You need me to go to Rilporin, my love. I will go. Now.’

      The Dark Lady put a hand on his shoulder. ‘And these?’ She asked.

      Dom bit the raw flesh of his right wrist as he studied the half-dozen surviving Wolves. Her glory was a fire that burnt and he exalted in the pain. He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. ‘They’re yours.’

      The Dark Lady’s smile was radiant and warmed Dom’s belly. ‘There he is,’ She whispered. ‘There’s my true believer. My calestar. My Godblind.’ Dom bowed to Her and to Holy Gosfath, and he walked away.

      Behind him, the screams began again.

      He woke with a jolt, as he always did at that part of the dream – don’t lie, it’s a memory, not a dream – and the sky was still black, glittering with stars like the hangman’s eyes through his hood. The screams rang at the edge of his hearing: his people dying.

       Not my people. Nothing to do with me. Past is dead. Past doesn’t matter. My life is Hers, my love is Hers. All else is ruin. There is only the Path, and Her at the end of it. I will not walk that Path.

       I will run it.

      ‘I’m coming, my love,’ he said and the endless, burrowing, worming itching in his arm faded and he was left with just the pain of it, the slow-flowing blood and the great scabby holes he’d chewed in his flesh in a desperate attempt to find the source of the itch. He grinned, waited, and then laughed. It was gone.

      Dom leapt to his feet, abandoning the half-cooked rabbit carcass, and snatched up his blanket. ‘My feet are on the Path,’ he crowed, capering in the dark, ‘and my arm doesn’t bloody itch!’

      The Dark Lady’s laughter drifted on the breeze, teasing, taunting him with flashes of different images this time, of Wolves drowning, dying in the dark. Rillirin was one of them, the slave destined to save or destroy them all. She was wrapped in another man’s arms as the water flooded over their faces. He could see her screaming.

      He laughed again, rolled the blanket, and broke into a steady run. Rilporin was close now. So close. And so was She.

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