Darksoul. Anna Stephens

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СКАЧАТЬ to pretend that he was amused, that all this was beneath him and their victory beyond doubt. An act that was wearing fucking thin these days.

      You still think your desires and expectations carry weight in this war, don’t you, Prince? Corvus thought sourly. The Godblind is the blade that tore the Dancer’s veil and let the Red Gods return, not you. You know this, but still you don’t understand it. I think now that you can’t.

      And yet Rivil had brought an army bigger than Corvus’s. An army better equipped and better suited to this tedious sort of warfare. They needed each other; Corvus just hoped Rivil hated it as much as he did.

      He rose to his feet and turned his back on the Godblind. Rivil’s eyes sharpened, perhaps hoping the man would lunge for him, but of course the Godblind did nothing. ‘Strip his weapons and put a slave collar and chain on him. I want him close and under control at all times. Even when he’s quiet, even when he’s broken, I want him collared and chained. And bring a scribe: whatever he says, no matter how insane it sounds, I want it written down. Everything.’

      ‘Your will, Sire,’ a guard said and snapped his fingers. Two men ran for their supply cache as Valan stripped the Godblind’s weapons from him, muttering in disgust at the grime coating him, his emaciation, his smell.

      ‘And give him a bath and some food,’ Corvus added, scratching unconsciously at his scalp. ‘Bastard’s probably got lice.’

      Corvus stared hard at the city, his eyes roaming the length of grey stone, forcing himself to focus on the recurrent problem of accessing it rather than the tantalising puzzle of the godblind Wolf.

       The problem is I have too many problems.

      What were the chances of them taking the wall and finding an empty city behind it, the citizens all fled through the so-called King Gate hidden from view at the rear? What would happen then? We’ll be fighting pockets of resistance for years, or skirmishes, or full-scale battles. We need to take this city and crush its defenders at the same time.

      But the Godblind. And Lanta. And Rivil. He slapped his thigh irritably; there were too many things happening at once.

      The Godblind looked up with a ghastly smile. ‘If you had more siege weapons you could bring down those stump walls leading to the rivers and shatter the bridges behind them. Well, the two closest, anyway. You’d never get an engine over the river to take out the eastern bridge from the King Gate, but if you’ve demolished the other two then you just need to station men at the end of the eastern bridge and they’d be trapped inside.’

      Corvus staggered back a step, his sword in his hand. Valan reacted to Corvus’s movement, grabbing the Godblind by the hair and placing his blade against the skinny throat.

      ‘You read minds?’ Corvus croaked. ‘You see my very fucking thoughts?’

      The man wheezed another laugh. ‘You were staring from the trebuchets to the city. It wasn’t hard to guess. And no, I don’t read minds. I speak the words of the Dark Lady.’ He laughed again. ‘But those ones before, they were mine, not Hers.’

      ‘What is happening here?’

      Lanta’s face was hard with interrogation as she strode into their midst, her eyes fixing on the kneeling man, judging, weighing. She stared for so long that even Corvus squirmed. The Godblind knelt in the grass, looking up with the patience of a blind man, seeming unaffected by her gaze.

      ‘This man claims to be the Godblind you told us of. He has just been suggesting a way we could more quickly gain entry to the city.’

      Lanta’s eyebrows rose and her lips parted, an expression of genuine surprise quickly masked. ‘You betray your country? Your people?’ she demanded.

      ‘My feet are on the Path. I do as my Lady commands.’ Another bloom of shock, swiftly hidden.

      There was another interminable silence as they all waited for Lanta’s verdict. It didn’t come.

      ‘He’s right,’ Corvus said eventually. She twitched. ‘About the stump walls and the gates. The more we can engage at multiple sites, the quicker we can force an end to this siege. We mustn’t forget the six soldiers we caught yesterday escaping the city to try and find aid. For all we know, more may have slipped past us. They could be raising a mercenary army in Listre within a week.’

      ‘Reinforcements, yes. Almost three thousand of them,’ the Godblind muttered, nodding. ‘Not mercenaries though.’

      Corvus stilled, his eyes locked on Valan, and together they swivelled to face the kneeling man. A guard was fixing the slave collar on him and he blanched when their twin gazes settled on him. He locked the collar and stepped back, not wanting to be under those eyes.

      ‘How many did you say?’ Corvus asked, dropping to one knee in the grass. The others crowded forward. ‘Who?’

      ‘Just under three thousand. The survivors of the West Rank and the Wolves. Your ploy in the tunnels didn’t kill them, not all of them anyway. Not enough of them. They’re about three days away. The North isn’t coming, of course,’ he added and pointed at Skerris, ‘because he killed them all, didn’t you, Skerris? Poisoned blankets. Clever, but unkind. Men should be given the chance to die fighting.’

      Valan was crouching beside him, and Corvus realised he was gripping his second’s forearm hard. Lanta knelt on his other side, blue eyes like chips of ice nailed to the Godblind’s face.

      ‘How do you know this?’ she asked, her voice hoarse.

      The Godblind frowned and looked up from the ruin of his arm. He tapped his temple with a finger. ‘The gods, of course. That’s who I am, remember, the vessel? You may style yourself Voice of the Gods, but I’m Their mouthpiece. Where you interpret images, I hear the actual words of our Bloody Mother. The Dark Lady sees the armies moving; She sees what’s coming. She tells me; I tell you.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not complicated.’

      The Blessed One flushed pink and Corvus saw her hand go to her belt and the knife and hammer it carried. Her fingertips flirted with the weapons, and then fell away.

      ‘You have yet to learn humility, Godblind,’ she said in a soft tone. ‘The Dark Lady may be pleased to teach you before too long.’

      ‘Forgive me, Blessed One,’ he said, looking anything but chastened. ‘You and I should be allies. We both serve a greater purpose than ourselves.’

      The air seemed to ignite as their stares met and Corvus found he was holding his breath. Though, of course, you could always count on a Rilporian to break the tension.

      Rivil spat on the grass. ‘Five thousand in the city and nearly three thousand on their way. We still outnumber them.’ He shrugged even as the Godblind blinked and used the interruption to look away. Corvus wasn’t sure if that meant the Blessed One had won. Or what the stakes might be. ‘Why not send a force to kill them before they make Rilporin’s harbour?’

      ‘And so finally, Sire, you will get to face your ancient enemy,’ the Godblind said, staring into Corvus’s eyes, ‘and on a field of your choosing.’

      ‘You offer up your own people to us?’ the Blessed One demanded again. ‘Why?’

      The Godblind’s lips curved in a gentle smile that sent shivers СКАЧАТЬ