A cloud of dust slowly settled, revealing the two black-iron statues still there, though something had changed. Red veins now ran through the iron, like seams of gold, and for a heartbeat the iron casing seemed to ripple and swell. Bleda thought he saw Asroth move. A twitch of his head, a flare of light at his eyes. Then the red veins faded, retracting through the figures, drawing in to a focal point. Asroth’s right fist. Or, to be exact, where his right fist had been. Now there was a stump, a bright forge glow about it, quickly fading.

The shaven-haired warrior with the black sword was on his feet again, the snapped shaft of Bleda’s arrow still protruding from his back. He bent and picked something up, black and heavy, put it inside a leather bag.

Others were climbing to their feet, giants and White-Wings, half-breeds, Ferals and Dark-Cloaks. A Kadoshim screeched and swept down from high in the chamber’s roof, swooping low, skimming heads. The man on the dais lifted an arm and the Kadoshim grabbed hold of him, swinging him around so that he straddled its back between its wings, and then it was banking left, turning a tight circle, wings beating and it powered for the chamber doors, other Kadoshim and half-breeds falling in about it, others snatching up surviving Dark-Cloaks and Ferals, and then they were flying out of the chamber doors like the north wind. Ethlinn threw her spear at one, skewered it through the chest, hurling it against one of the chamber doors, the blade driving deep into wood, thrumming, the Kadoshim slumped, pinned. Ben-Elim swept after the disappearing Kadoshim, a storm of wings.

Bleda looked back to the statues, the chamber floor littered and strewn with the dead and dying, screams, groans echoing, survivors climbing slowly to their feet.

Asroth and Meical were in the same positions they had ever been, Meical on his knees, grasping at Asroth, whose wings were spread, trying to lift free, one hand around Meical’s throat, the other drawn back into a fist.

Except that the fist was gone.

There was no fire glow now, just a stump at the wrist, the black iron back to the matt-dull that it had always been. No hint of life in Asroth’s eyes.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: DREM

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

DREM

Drem strode to the centre of his yard and drew his da’s sword.

My sword, he reminded himself. Da gave it to me, before he died.

He raised it over his head, gripping it two-handed.

Stooping falcon, he recited to himself, holding the pose, counting his heartbeats, feeling the slow burn beginning in his wrists, in his part-bent thighs.