Darksoul. Anna Stephens

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       MACE

       Fourth moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth

       South Rank harbour, River Gil, Western Plain

      ‘You’ve got that look again.’

      Mace started and focused on Dalli. ‘What? What look?’

      ‘Like someone just kicked your puppy,’ she said, and then put a conciliatory hand on his thigh. ‘At the risk of repeating myself – because I am repeating myself – it wasn’t your fault and we’ll get there in time. We were out of choices at Yew Cove and it’s not like you ordered us into those tunnels. You didn’t do this, Mace. Look, your Da knows how to defend a city. Gods, he’ll probably have won it single-handed before we arrive. And wouldn’t that be bloody nice?’ she added under her breath.

      Mace’s smile felt false even to himself, and judging from Dalli’s expression it looked even worse, but it was still the best he could do. ‘We lost days in those bastard tunnels and recovering afterwards. The city might have fallen by now.’

      Dalli puffed out her cheeks. ‘We couldn’t have moved any faster than we did. Not with our numbers of wounded. If we hadn’t rested, there’d just be corpses crewing these ships down to Rilporin. You know that.’

      He stared back out across the harbour at the approaching dusk. When they’d come up out of those tunnels in the aftermath, the pitiful, shattered remains of his proud Rank, there’d been no thought of continuing the march. Too heartsore at the scale of their losses, at the sheer callous deliberation on the part of the Mireces to drown them, in the tight, choking black beneath the ground.

      Easy to blame the villagers who’d been forced into the deception. Easier to blame himself. The semblance of order he’d managed had lasted until Lim Broadsword, chief of the decimated Wolves, had climbed out of the tunnels with his wife’s corpse in his arms. A hundred folk of Yew Cove had died under Wolf blades – Wolf and Rank blades – before Mace and Dalli had been able to calm them.

       We turned on our own to try and stop the hurting. Took innocent lives.

       What is this war turning us into?

      Mace didn’t have an answer. Mace had just one overriding imperative now – to reach Rilporin, aid his father and the defence, and take his vengeance on the Mireces. Justice, his mind insisted. Vengeance, his gut replied.

      Whichever one his Rank was after, once they’d rested – the first genuine rest since the battle of the Blood Pass Valley – they’d marched with him, and the Wolves too. None of them had anything to go home to, after all. They’d all given everything for their country, and it had chewed them up and spat them out. They were the broken remnants of war’s ravenous appetite, and they were going back for more.

      The South Rank’s fleet had been mostly destroyed, no doubt Corvus’s work, but it looked as though there were enough ships, just, for his troops and the Wolves to set sail for Rilporin and the siege.

      There was splashing as someone waded into the river towards a drifting bow line and Mace shuddered and looked away. He remembered the water taking his legs from under him as he and his Rank charged through the smugglers’ tunnels towards the surface. Too slow, too far to run, the water a screaming animal behind, around, above and then in front of them and no air left, no air to breathe, water battering them against tunnel floor and roof and walls, smashing them into each other, men in plate armour tossed like straw dolls to twist and flail and sink and die.

      ‘Mace? Mace, love, easy now. Breathe, that’s it, just breathe.’ Dalli’s voice was firm and strong and he clung to it as though he was drowning again.

      He СКАЧАТЬ