Dust of Dreams

what are you doing sitting here? On your feet, marine—those heavies are dying where they stand. And we’re going to join them. You, Reliko! Pull Vastly on his feet there—you’re all coming with me!’
    Silent, without a single word of protest, the marines clambered to their feet. They were bleeding. They were exhausted.
    They gathered up their weapons, and, Tarr in the lead, set out for the trench.
     
    Nearby, Urb plucked away the shattered fragments of his shield. Hellian crouched beside him, breathing hard, her face streaked with blood and puke, with more of both drenching her chest. She’d said she didn’t know whose blood it was. Glancing at her, he saw her hard eyes, her hard expression. Other soldiers were drawn up behind them.
    Urb turned. ‘We do what Tarr says, soldiers. Back into it. Now.’
    Hellian almost pushed past him on the way to the trench.
     
    Henar Vygulf reined in beneath the hill—he could see fallen horses and sprawled, scorched bodies where the Adjunct’s command post had been. He slipped down from his horse, drew his two swords and jogged up the slope.
    Reaching the summit, he saw four Nah’ruk arriving on the opposite ridge.
    Lostara Yil and the Adjunct were lying almost side by side. Likely dead, but he needed to make sure. If he could.
    He charged forward.
     
    The clash of iron woke her. Blinking, Lostara stared into the sky, trying to recall what had happened. Her head ached and she could feel dried blood crusting her nostrils, crackling in her ears. She turned her head, saw the Adjunct lying beside her.
    Chest slowly rising and falling.
    Ah, good.
    Someone grunted as if in pain.
    She sat up. In time to see Henar Vygulf stagger back, blood spraying from a chest wound. Three Nah’ruk closed.
    Henar fell on to his back almost at Lostara’s feet.
    She rose, drawing her blades.
    He saw her, and the anguish in his eyes took her breath away.
    ‘I’m sorry—’
    ‘You’re going to live,’ she told him, stepping past. ‘Prop yourself up, man—that’s an order!’
    He managed to lift himself on one elbow. ‘Captain—’
    She glanced at the Nah’ruk. Almost upon her, slowed by wounds. Behind them, a dozen more appeared. ‘Just remember, Henar, I don’t do this for just anybody!’
    ‘Do what?’
    She stepped forward, blades lifting. ‘
Dance.
’
    The old forms returned, as if they had but been awaiting her, awaiting this one moment when at last she awoke—possibly one last time—no matter.
For you, Henar. For you.
    The Shadow Dance belonged to this.
    Here.
    Now.
     
    Henar watched her, and his eyes slowly widened.
    ______
    A league to the southeast, Kisswhere dragged herself from her fallen horse. A badger burrow, the den mouth of a fox, something. Her horse thrashed, front legs shattered, its screams shrill in the air.
    Kisswhere’s left leg was bent in four places. The stub of bone thrust through her leggings. She drew a knife and twisted round to study the horse, eyes fixing on a pulsing artery in its neck.
    Didn’t matter. They were all dead. Even if she could have reached the Mortal Sword and that mad red-haired Queen, it wouldn’t have mattered.
    She glanced up. The sky was flesh, and that flesh was rotting before her eyes.
    Sinter. Badan.
    Bonehunters—Adjunct, are you happy? You killed them all.
    You killed us all.

Chapter Twenty-Four
    On this dawn they lined the banks of the ancient river, a whole city turned out, near a hundred thousand, as the sun lifted east of the mouth that opened to the deep bay. What had brought them there? What ever brings the multitudes to a moment, a place, an instant when a hundred thousand bodies become one body?
    As the red waters spilled into the bay’s salty tears, they stood, saying little, and the great ship pyre took hold of the fires and the wind took hold of the soaked sails, and the sky took hold of the black column of smoke.
    Ehrlitan’s great king was dead, the last of the Dessimb line, and the future was blowing sands, the storm’s whisper was but a roar of strife made mercifully distant, a thing of promise drawing ever closer.
    They came to weep. They came seeking salvation, for in the end, even grief masks a selfish indulgence. We weep in our lives for the things lost to us, the worlds done. A great man was dead, but we cannot follow him—we dare not, for to each of us death finds a new path.
    An age was dead. The new age belonged to generations still to come. In the stalls of the market rounds the