She turned round.
Two swords, points thrust into the mud.
‘Kettle – take them – give them-’
A wet gasp, and she spun back, to see the bared arms of another figure, clawing up to wrap about her friend – a woman’s arms, lean, ribboned in muscle. He was dragged back – she saw him drive an elbow into the fiercely twisting, black-streaked face that rose suddenly from the slime. Connecting hard in a splatter of blood. But the clutching hands would not let go.
And they both sank back into the swirling foam.
Whimpering, Kettle crawled over to the swords. She tugged them from the mud, then clambered back to the water’s edge.
Limbs appeared amidst the thrashing waves.
Shivering, Kettle waited.
So easy, now, a slave once more, as the Wyval suffused his body, stealing the will of every muscle, every organ, the charging blood in his veins. Udinaas could barely see through his own eyes, as street after street blurred past. Sudden moments of brutal clarity, as he came upon three Soletaken wolves – which turned as one with snarls and bared fangs – and was among them, his hands now talons, the thumb-long claws tearing into wolf-flesh, curling round ribs and ripping them loose. A massive, gnarled fist, slamming into the side of a lunging, snapping head, breaking bone – the wolf’s head suddenly lolling, the eyes blank in death.
Then, motion once more.
His master needed him. Needed him now. No time to lose.
A slave. Absolved of all responsibility, nothing more than a tool.
And this, Udinaas knew, was the poison of surrender.
Close, now, and closing.
There is nothing new in being used. Look upon these sprawled corpses, after all. Poor Letherii soldiers lying dead for no reason. Defending the corpse of a kingdom, citizens once more every one of them. The kingdom that does not move, the kingdom in service to the god of dust – you will find the temples in crooked alleys, in the cracks between cobbles .
You will find, my friends, no sweeter world than this, where honour and faith and freedom are notions levelled one and all, layers as thin as hate, envy and betrayal. Every notion vulnerable to any sordid breeze, stirred up, stirred together. A world without demands to challenge the confused haze of holy apathy.
The god of dust rises dominant -
Ahead, a dozen wolves, charging straight for him.