The Crippled God

so few left.’
    Princess Felash came round from the other side of the ship’s prow, trailed by her handmaid. ‘I have found him,’ she announced through a gust of smoke. ‘He is indeed walking this chilly road, and it is safe to surmise, from careful gauging of the direction of his tracks, that he intends to walk all the way to that spire. Into that most unnatural rain.’
    Shurq Elalle squinted across what had been – only a short time ago – a bay. The awakening of Omtose Phellack had been like a fist to the side of the head, and only the captain had remained conscious through the unleashing of power that followed. She alone had witnessed the freezing of the seas, even as she struggled to ensure that none of her crew or guests slid over the side as the ship ran aground and started tilting hard to port.
    And, alone among them all, she had seen Hood setting out, on foot.
    A short time later, a storm had broken over the spire, releasing a torrential downpour of rain that seemed to glisten red as blood as it fell over the headland.
    Shurq Elalle regarded Felash. ‘Princess … any sense of the fate of your mother?’
    ‘Too much confusion, alas, in the ether. It seems,’ she added, pausing to draw on her pipe and turning to face inland, ‘that we too shall have to trek across this wretched ice field – and hope that it does not begin breaking up too soon, now that Omtose Phellack sleeps once more.’
    Skorgen scowled. ‘Excuse me … sleeps? Cap’n, she saying it’s going to melt?’
    ‘Pretty,’ said Shurq Elalle, ‘it is already. Very well then, shall we make haste?’
    But the princess lifted a plump hand. ‘At first, I considered following in Hood’s footsteps, but that appears to entail a steep and no doubt treacherous ascent. Therefore, might I suggest an alternative? That we strike due west from here?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Shurq Elalle. ‘Shall we spend half a day discussing this?’
    Felash frowned. ‘And what, precisely, did I say to invite such sarcasm? Hmm, Captain?’
    ‘My apologies, Highness. This has been a rather fraught journey.’
    ‘It is hardly done, my dear, and we can scarcely afford the luxury of complaining now, can we?’
    Shurq Elalle turned to Skorgen. ‘Get everything ready. There truly is no time to waste.’
    The first mate turned away and then glanced back at Shurq. ‘If that’s the case, then why in Mael’s name is she—’
    ‘That will be enough, Pretty.’
    ‘Aye, Cap’n. Sorry, Cap’n. On my way, aye.’
    Queen Abrastal, I will deliver your daughter into your keeping. With every blessing I can muster. Take her, I beg you. Before I close my hands round that soft delicious neck and squeeze until her brains spurt from every hole in her head. And then her handmaid will have to chop me into tiny pieces, and Skorgen will do something stupid and get his head sliced in half and won’t that be a scar worth bragging about?
    She could just make out Hood’s trail towards the spire, and caught herself looking at it longingly. Don’t be a fool, woman. Some destinies are better just hearing about, over ales in a tavern .
    Go well on your way, Hood. And the next face you see, well, why not just bite it off?

    He had passed through the Gates of Death, and this rain – in its brief moments of magic – could do nothing for ghosts. No kiss of rebirth, and no blinding veil to spare from me what I now see .
    Toc sat on his lifeless horse, and from a hillside long vanished – worn down to nothing but a gentle mound by centuries of ploughing – he watched, in horror, the murder of his most cherished dreams.
    It was not supposed to happen this way. We could smell the blood, yes – we knew it was coming .
    But Onos Toolan – none of this was your war. None of this battle belonged to you .
    He could see his old friend – there at the centre of less than a thousand Imass. The fourteen Jaghut had been separated from kin, and now fought in isolation, and archers had come forward and those Jaghut warriors were studded with arrows, yet still they fought on.
    The K’ell Hunters had been driven back, pushed away from the Imass, and Toc could see the Toblakai – barely fifty of them left – forced back to the very edge of the slope. There were Barghast on that far side now, but they were few and had arrived staggering, half dead with exhaustion.
    Toc found that he was holding his scimitar in his hand. But my power is gone. I gave the last of it away. What holds me