Page 385 of Of Empires and Dust
“I’d still knock you on your arse.”
Dahlen lifted his gaze and stared into Erik’s eyes. He had almost forgotten how long it had been since he’d seen his brother’s face. Over the course of their lives, they’d rarely spent even a night apart, and now a year had passed since last they’d laid eyes on each other. Even just the thought seemed incomprehensible. “I’ve missed you, brother.”
He could hear his father’s voice in his mind from when Erik had barely seen fourteen summers.“If anything ever happens to me, boys, all you have is each other. Remember that. You are blood. No matter what happens, you protect each other. No matter what.”
Erik clasped Dahlen’s cheek with his free hand. “I’m just happy we got here in time.”
A figure approached from Dahlen’s left, dropping from the back of a strangely coloured horse. “My parents, have you seen them? Are they all right?”
“Dann? Dann Pimm?” Dahlen pulled away from Erik to see the man who stood before them in blood-marred plate as fine as Erik’s was the same man Dahlen had shared wine with in Belduar before it had fallen. The same smartmouthed, quick-witted man who had seemed barely more than a boy only a year ago.
“No kiss?” Dann gave a half-smile and grasped Dahlen’s forearm. “Tharn and Ylinda Pimm, are they all right?”
“Your father?—”
“Dann!” Tharn Pimm came charging out of one of the buildings that had been barred from the inside. He pushed through the throng of people and mounts who held back behind the front line and crashed into Dann with the weight of a bull. His hands trembled as he grabbed at Dann’s head, voice shaking. “My boy. Ah gods, my boy.”
Dann didn’t say a word, which was probably the first time Dahlen had seen that happen. He just wrapped his arms around his father and held him close.
The sight made Dahlen think of his own father. Aeson had never been the type to show physical affection. At least not often. But Dahlen still loved him dearly. They argued and they fought and they bashed heads, but the time apart had shown him that mattered little. His father may not have been like Tharn Pimm, but he had given everything to Erik and Dahlen. And Dahlen was proud to say he was Aeson Virandr’s son.
Dahlen looked to Erik, who talked to an elf clad all in black plate with a silver star enamelled on the breastplate. She sat on the back of one of the enormous white stags, two other ridersclose at her side, also in black and silver steel bearing the same star sigil.
A fourth elf, garbed in the same armour as Erik, sat astride another stag to Erik’s right, his helmet in the crook of his arm, his golden hair tied with string. A star-pommeled sword rose up from his hip – a glorious-looking weapon. It took a moment, but Dahlen realised he knew the elf: Vaeril Ilyin.
Had Dahlen missed so much in the past year that even a ranger of Aravell now wore Calen’s sigil on his breast?
“Lord Captain.” The rain ran red down Thannon’s helmet as it washed the blood from the steel. “We must continue?—”
A crash followed by screams cut Thannon short.
Dahlen whipped his head around to see chunks of stone and burning wood tumbling down into the trench and over the ten-deep line of spears and shields who held the Uraks at bay.
Through the dust and thick of bodies, two Fades stood at the front of the great beasts, still and patient as Salme’s defenders rushed to drag the injured from beneath the debris.
A moment later, Uraks charged and bounded over the trench, cutting down anything that moved.
“Hold!” Dahlen roared as he pushed his way through the ranks. “Hold!”
Chapter 89
The Truth of War
24thDay of the Blood Moon
Salme – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
Anya crouchedlow as she moved through the streets, the rain hammering down over her so heavily it turned the ground to little more than sludge. Screams and clattering steel joined the crackling of fire that filled her ears. She turned down a side street, then pressed herself back against the building’s wooden wall as three Uraks appeared at the other end and fell upon a group of defenders, black steel hacking them to pieces.
Isla and Kam stood across from her, their bodies still, their faces shrouded in shadow. There had been three others that night who had volunteered to venture out with her and drag the injured to safety. They were dead now. Tom had vanished without a trace, but she’d watched a Bloodmarked tear Jenna in half and another crush Samwell’s skull beneath its feet while trying to drag one of the Lorians from an overturned wagon.
Those images flashed through her mind again and again, but she smothered them, focusing on her thumping heart and the feel of the coarse wood against her fingers as she pressed her hand into the wall. She drew a lungful of air through her nostrils, tasting the smell of burning wood at the back of her throat. Her tongue licked dirt and sweat from her lips. Anya had found, over the course of the months, that those senses grounded her, kept her fear from consuming everything.
“Let’s move,” she whispered to the others as the Uraks at the end of the street carried on. She crept through the mud as quickly as she dared, stopping where shadows met the light of the moon and the street opened up into a larger thoroughfare that ran perpendicular. She dropped to one knee and rested a hand on the neck of a man who lay in the mud, blood pooling about him. No pulse.
She lifted her gaze to look out across the street. A score of bodies were strewn about, unmoving. Not a single chest rose with breath, and many were so mutilated there was no possible way beneath the Enkara’s light that they yet lived. The Uraks had a tendency to never leave anything living where they passed. Anya rarely found injured warriors anywhere other than where Salme’s defenders had pushed the Uraks back. But that didn’t stop her from searching.
She wasn’t a fighter, and she never would be. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t do her part. She might not have the capacity to take lives, but she sure as damn well had the capacity to save them.
