Amidst the screams and stench of blood, Kael inhaled sharply. The sensation of wrongness spread within him. It tugged at his mind from two opposing directions, as if his anchor showed him that continuing to oppose it would eventually tear who he was in half.
For three heartbeats, he clasped his arms in cold shivers. From his memories, the anchor-ghast Giovanni had become glared at him. Its eyes begged for answers it couldn't grasp anymore.
You didn't pave the way for me to fail.
The memory faded at the slight chip of his anchor, and the thug's corpse replaced it. Clangs and whistles grounded him on the roof.
The stress should have reached 50%... Good. I'll let it rest for a while.
Huffing, he turned when Tonio patted his back. The rat-man pointed at the corpse with a genuine grin. "Kael learn. Strong soon. Heal. My turn."
He pointed at his own chest a little too quickly, and Kael returned the grin. "I have your back... Well, do you even need it?"
With a lifted palm, he checked the thugs on the surrounding roofs. Perhaps over forty. "Hmm. Stop after killing five, or they'll notice."
Tonio's grin twisted into a vengeful smirk. "Five little. But Tonio understand."
At Kael's nod, he leapt over the alley, landing on the next roof. The man he rushed didn't have time to scream. Tonio's fingers dug into his jaw and plugged his mouth shut. He pulled, forcing the thug's back parallel to the ground as he snatched an arrow from the quiver with his free hand.
The diving projectile reflected in the thug's wide eyes. The arrow jabbed into his heart carved that expression on his face. Forever.
Before the stiffness of death crawled in, Tonio snatched half the coins from his pouch. Only after pocketing them did he allow the corpse to crash on the roof.
But his gaze was already on his next prey.
While he reached for his third archer, Kael scratched his head. It wasn't killing anymore. It was a lesson from someone whose mind struggled with notions but trusted him to understand them from action.
Flexibility and fluidity that made strength irrelevant, adaptability that allowed for hundreds of ways to do the job.
He's showing me the next step. He pressed himself against the roof. I'm too far to dream about it yet. I'll keep it in mind during training, though.
He forced himself to look away from Tonio.
On the street below, Silma still smirked at the tannery in a circle of split arrows. Like him, she glared past the trail of corpses to her men pressing the door.
Arrows poured from the windows above, rattling dark, long shields raised overhead. Those who didn't protect slammed their shields against the metallic doors, while spearmen shoved blades between hinges and pulled in a chorus of organised screams.
Others lit cloths jutting out of glass bottles and hurled them at the windows. They burst into flames, smearing scalding oil or grease through the bars.
The Sump Dogs wailed inside the building, and Kael covered his nose when the stench of burned flesh replaced blood.
What were these weapons?
Only chaos answered him. The Sump Dogs answered by hurling glowing coal down and scarlding water.
More corpses littered the street with each minute crawling by. New men charged to fill the gaps in the formation without glancing at the wounded wailing on the way. Errand boys followed: a couple of teenagers his age. Many younger.
His blue eyes locked on three of them. Their faces reddened as they dragged the wounded behind Silma. But it was their faces that made him bite his lip.
He knew them. Clove, the fourteen-year-old boy who almost fainted when Kael used the soot-coated stick to write on his scavenged paper in Sister Harrow's night shelter. A kid who smiled whenever he could, even though his parents dropped him off one day and never came back.
Now he walked backwards beside Bram, his best friend, both dragging a wounded man, both shivering enough for their tears to fly each time an arrow drilled the pavement a little too close.
Leave these bastards and run, you fools!
He clung to the edge of the roof until his fingers pierced the moldy thatch. Even now, he could remember Clove's coy voice when he asked about learning to read, and Bram snorting that counting already felt like stabbing his own leg, and he would very much like to keep the other working.
Half the kids had laughed back then. The other half didn't only because they listened to Harrow preaching Morvana's bullshit about weaving everyone's fate.
So why... why?
The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth as he pierced his bitten lip... the same way an arrow ricocheted off an angled shield. He saw it fly more clearly than anything else on the battlefield... and pierce Clove's back.
The boy jerked forward, feet torn off the pavement. He crashed to the ground. Snot mixed with tears as he crawled two steps forward. He reached his arm. To whom? Morvana, who wove his death, or Silma, who didn't even know of his name?
No, only Kael witnessed Clove's trembling hand before it fell limp.
Bram was there too. He had to have seen it. If he could survive...
Yet, Kael found the boy three steps behind Clove... on his knees... an arrowhead bursting through his right eye from the back of his skull. Worse, his left eye rolled upward, and Kael exchanged a glance that made his guts ache when Bram tumbled to the side.
Limp. Dead.
Why did these fools walk to their deaths on their own two feet? Didn't they dream of running a shoe shop later?
"Harrow..." he let out a guttural growl, the name ripped from the hate burning in his viscera.
They needed money for their shop, like he had needed money to survive. That's why they ran when the old bitch cupped her mouth and whispered her flowery crap about fate. She sold them to the Black Cask. As she had sold all the kids whose bones decorated the bed of the corrosive lake.
As she had sold him to die in that damned mine.
Forget about Garrick. I'm not letting that fake sister sell another kid. You're first, Harrow. I swear it, I'll kill you before anyone else!
Huffing, his eyes darted to the third teenager he knew, someone a head taller than him, even though they were of the same age.
Jorgen had charged ahead of Clove and Bram, but the storm of harrows caught up to him all the same. Yet, unlike their naive eyes, his glinted with something more. They always had whenever he glared from the corner everyone thought was his best and only friend.
And they still did as he gripped the wounded thug by the neck. The man didn't have time to scream when Jorgen lifted his face in front of the arrows. He squatted behind his back, the impacts pushing the thug over him.
Blood dripped onto his stitched tunic, yet he crawled from beneath the fresh corpse. He dusted his pants without glancing at his meat shield, then jogged to the back line.
When he passed by Silma, she tore her eyes off the tannery for the first time. Not a glare. Not even to scold him. But to redirect him to a group of ten men at the back with her finger.
That was the only path for teenagers like him: become beasts at the service of monsters... Or corpses for the same monsters.
The flames gnawing at the tannery's walls cast shadows on Kael's face. Beneath, Jorgen offered water canteens to the ten men.
But Jorgen didn't matter anymore. The men did. Some wore cuirasses and helmets. Others held bows without quivers at their belts. They were bulkier than any other man.
Why did they not fight?
Among them, two faces made him frown. Then his eyes widened. The two thugs from the mines! If they were there, this group had to be the truth bearers on the Black Cask side. Eleven with Silma... Brannick didn't even come.
The seven archers he had killed with Tonio wouldn't impact the war if the Sump Dogs couldn't deal with them.
Muffled footsteps echoed behind him, and he sighed when he saw Tonio approach.
Nothing he could do about it.
Whether because of his shoulder, which hurt much less than five minutes ago or his dark face, Tonio crouched beside him. "Hurt?"
"I'm good... I think." Kael's voice cracked. "Let's watch from the alley."
"Hide. Better."
Kael smiled at Tonio's satisfied grin. Somehow, it felt like the shine of a lamppost through the slum's fog. He took the rat-man's hand, and together they jumped over the first roof.
While they climbed down the cracked wall, Tonio whispered. "Five bad men dead. Kael watch?"
Kael let himself fall. He pulled the blankets covering their makeshift junk wall, gesturing for Tonio to join. Once they were both covered, he pursed his lips. "I'll move like you tomorrow."
Tonio's eyes widened beneath the dark frame of relic 78. Then, he slapped Kael's back hard enough to make him cough. "Kael fast like Tonio tomorrow. Good!"
Kael opened and closed his mouth. After two heartbeats, he rolled his eyes. "Of course not. It was irony."
"Irony? Iron?" Tonio tilted his head. "Not tomorrow? Kael suck. More training. More meat."
"I guess... I forgot your mind misses a few lights..."
The war's scream engulfed their silent alley. The doors caved in under the bashing, yet the hinges never gave up. It endured long enough for the replacement in the formation to litter the ground, and for the replacement replacements to follow.
How long did this butchery last? Kael couldn't tell. But it ended when Silma's voice tore through the cacophony. "You holed yourselves well. I guess it's second nature for rats like you. Recruits won't do."
Her men rushed back at her wave. From the one hundred and twenty who came, only around sixty remained.
"You can return to heal. Good job on surviving this joke of a war." She grinned playfully.
Around forty wounded men retreated before she even finished.
"Recruits? Pah! You'd say anything to keep your face straight, right bitch?" Fen's voice echoed from the tannery. "Send twice the men and your boss's dog. I promise I'll return their corpses to you."
Silma clenched her elbows, her shoulder trembling. Her long braid flew when she jerked her head back. "Hahaha!"
Her laughter replaced the crackle of fire, of dripping blood. Kael shifted beneath the blanket, his throat tight. It wasn't a desperate laugh—just a disdainful one.
"Very well. Treat your men. Repair your windows."
The twenty men moved in front of her, the group from earlier among them. Their sharp eyes, when they drew their weapons with fluidity, made Kael shiver. Not all had truths, but they stood straight as if this war was just the next among the dozens they had won.
"At sunrise, I'll take you down with these twenty men. Struggle, old dog. That's all you're worth today. Tomorrow, you'll be worth less than rotten flesh to the maggot of the burial pit."