Page 38

‘ WHY DID YOU COME? ’

Elo was furious, but alive.

They had made it back to the second blockade, sprinting behind them in the brief reprieve that Geralfi managed by surprising the Talicians at the docks. His team had also returned, and the Middrenites were safe behind their own lines.

The enemy did not yet give them chase, instead regrouping themselves around the statue of Hseth. They were in arrow’s reach, but how many did they have to waste on mad firing into the dark?

Elo’s armour was bloody and dented. He stank of pitch and smoke, but he was alive, still alive. And angry. But it was not Arren he was angry with. Not this time.

‘I swore we would hold this bridge,’ said Elo more to himself than to the king. ‘I swore!’ He turned, wrenched off his helm and threw it at the closing barricades. ‘Where is Tulenne? I am going to drag him back to the front.’

Tulenne was nowhere to be seen. Tiamh was giving orders for shoring up the blockade, Elemni was taking count of their remaining forces, and Yesef was overseeing the replacement of blades that had been dropped or broken.

‘Elo,’ said Arren, holding his arms and trying to calm him. Elo did not look too injured, only half wild, ferocious with the fight and the failure. ‘Commander general, calm yourself. I need to speak with you.’

‘We could have claimed it,’ Elo hissed, his voice hoarse. ‘We were so close.’

‘I know,’ said Arren. He looked up. There were no stars above them through the mist and smoke, but he could see the slight hardening of the sky, from deep velvet to stone-grey. Dawn was coming.

‘They’re going to summon their god.’ Elo was still looking towards the east gate where the Talicians were regrouping, clearing the buildings, getting ready to march.

‘If we can’t retake the bridge before that then we’re lost. They don’t care how many die as they have more than enough to overrun us.

’ He tried to step back, but Arren held on to him. ‘Release me! We must send in a charge!’

‘Elo!’ Arren shook him. ‘Listen to me!’

Elo looked at him as if seeing him for the first time, his breathing slowing as the war-rage faded.

‘I have another plan,’

If they lost Gefyrton, even if Irisia came to their aid, it would be too late.

Bloody Craier would come back to a wasted land and a dead king.

If she came back at all. Talicia had moved fast, hard and brutally.

If the veiga hadn’t warned them of the invasion, hadn’t stopped the coup, they would have been decimated before they’d even known what was happening.

Arren glanced around. ‘Come,’ he said, and pulled Elo away from the barricade, towards the broken door of some kind of dresser’s shop.

Inside, all the tables, mirrors, furniture was gone, taken for the blockades, and only a few spools of fabric remained, trodden into the floor.

There were two people in there already, one weeping while the other held them, but as Arren entered they gathered themselves and left the two of them alone.

‘What?’ said Elo, as impatient as he had ever been. Arren turned to face him. He had hoped it wouldn’t come to this.

‘The barrels,’ he said. ‘I had them strapped to the beams of the lower bridge.’

‘Water barrels?’ said Elo.

Arren pinched his nose. ‘Not water, Elo. Blackfire.’

Elo understood. His face changed, and his temper cooled to icy. ‘No.’

‘If we destroy the bridge, the Talicians cannot cross into Middren,’ said Arren.

In the weeks after the coup, Arren’s guard had found a cache of Craier’s blackfire beneath the Sakrean palace that hadn’t caught with the others.

He had known it would come in useful.

‘What is it with you and breaking your own cities?’ said Elo, incredulous. ‘Don’t they matter to you? You scuppered Blenraden, marched on Lesscia, now you intend to burn Gefyrton …?’

‘You said it yourself. If we lose the bridge, we lose the war. They already control the eastern gate, half the dock, and they’ll soon be coming this way. With Hseth or no, this way our people will survive.’

Elo would survive.

They could hear the bells and drums, quaking the darkness of the pre-dawn. They could smell flesh burning as the Talicians kept calling for their god to come and tear them all away.

‘If you burn your own kingdom,’ hissed Elo, ‘you will lose it.’

‘Give me another way, Elo,’ said Arren. He clasped his friend’s shoulder, urging him, hoping that he was smarter, wiser, that he had another choice.

‘Any other way that will save us, and I will try. I will call the gods, I will slaughter our horses, I will throw myself on their blades, but tell me it would work.’

Elo shut his mouth. He was running through possibilities, options, hopes, and coming up short.

What if it isn’t the king who burns the bridge?

Hestra’s voice cut through both of them, Elo wincing as she came into his mind. Arren felt his chest warm. Light crept up from beneath his plates, flames brightening the room.

What if Talicians bring their army onto the bridge, the god at their front, and it is she who sends them burning to their deaths?

‘Hestra?’ said Arren, releasing Elo. She sounded shy, uncertain, but was this her offering help?

The only way to defeat Hseth is to break the Talician faith in her.

Elo shook his head. ‘Even if we throw her into the falls she wouldn’t die, not with the power she holds.’

It would begin it. An army ready to win, then destroyed by their own god.

The story would spread from soldier to soldier, all the way to the coast. They are already so tired, already starving, this is why Hseth has not yet come.

Give them hope enough that she will hear them, then break it.

Nothing shatters love more than failure.

Arren put his hand to his chest, feeling the warm metal.

You are willing to hope? he said to her, mind to mind.

Hestra was quiet for a moment, then, Perhaps I still have some story to tell.

Arren and Elo met eyes. Could they do it? Elo looked sceptical.

‘Gefyris know how bridges work,’ said Elo. ‘They saw you setting the barrels. They will not be fooled.’

‘Then call it a sacrifice,’ said Arren, ‘but call it a success. I will take responsibility for my actions, but the Talicians would have no knowledge of them.’ He paused, then began to pace. ‘My fear is that by clearing the bridge of people they will realise they are entering a trap. It won’t work.’

‘Unless,’ said Elo, a shade glimmering around him, a colour. A deep flurry of blue, edged with gold and silver. Then it faded. ‘Unless we fool them,’ he said. ‘Keep a skeleton of fighters maintaining the defence, have the Talicians push far enough that they can’t run back.’

‘Slow their advance,’ mused Arren, ‘but not stop it.’ He hadn’t spoken to Elo like this in an age. No barbs, no points to score, just a battle, and a plan. This was what had made them, and broken them too.

Elo put his gauntleted hand on his head, thinking. He looked so tired. Would he agree to this? Or would he once more lay down his sword and walk away?

‘It could work,’ he said at last. ‘I will lead the defence.’

‘Elo, no.’

‘If I plan it well enough, we can keep casualties low. I will not ask of anyone what I would not ask of myself.’

Arren shook his head. He had just ridden into a battle to rescue Elo, he would not lose him again. ‘I won’t allow it.’

‘I won’t give you a choice,’ Elo declared, their brief moment of cohesion breaking. ‘Isn’t that what you wanted? To make a martyr of me?’

Arren flinched. ‘Elo,’ he said, ‘why do you think I came for you? I need you.’

‘Ask someone else!’ snapped Elo. The weight of all he had seen that night, in Lesscia, in previous wars, looked as if it were coming down upon him to crush his struggling heart. ‘You ask too much of me. You always asked too much of me.’

They could hear the bells ringing. Each moment was tipping by, but no one had sounded that the Talicians were advancing yet.

Elo pressed his gauntlets to his face. ‘Ask someone else,’ he said again.

Arren put his own gloved hands on Elo’s, holding them. Hestra kept quiet in his chest, out of respect? Or pity?

‘I know,’ Arren said, and his voice cracked. ‘I’m so sorry Elo. I know. But I’m asking you now. Do not sacrifice yourself. Elogast, my still-beating heart. Please live.’

How many moments had they shared like this together? So close, so tender, when all Arren could think was how little it would take to lean in and kiss him, to tell him, to hold him.

But then Elo would back away, the wall would go up between them. Prince and knight, king and commander, noble and merchant’s child. Friends. Arren never tried. Elo had never let him.

And, as if he heard Arren’s thoughts, Elo stiffened and stepped back, breaking their hold. His eyes were dark in the gloom, his bearing proud.

‘You ask me to die, then ask me to live,’ he said. ‘No. No more. You made me your commander, King Arren, now let me take command. I will force the fire god to come, and I will have her kill them.’