Chapter 12 - Skeir
‘A crown on one's head may seem grand,
But is it not a trifle unplanned?
To inherit power through one's bloodline,
Is a privilege quite unearned and unkind.’
- ‘Betwixt Ass and Emperor’, author unknown
There was nowhere for them to go.
Skeir’s front and sides were covered in blood and horse meat, the remains of his mount scattered across the stones. Casting a quick glance about, he saw the others weren’t much better. The other chestnut mare had been knocked on its side by the blast, crushing Zarja beneath it. The mailed woman was still breathing by the looks of it, but with both legs pinned beneath the dead creature.
Thero was kneeling beside her, already preparing some kind of arcane feat. But Il Coru were here once more, and they wouldn’t give him the time he needed to complete his Working. Of Issa, he saw no sign - which meant she was at least up and hiding somewhere, ready to spring out on these bastards when they were at their most vulnerable.
Nameless lay not too far away, the woman’s hood discarded and looking around blearily. The old woman seemed unscathed, but Skeir saw battle shock on her face. There was a good chance she’d freeze up, cry or worse, flee the field entirely.
If that happened, the Mourners would cut her down in a heartbeat. He needed her to fight.
“Wha…”
“Shut up and take this,” Skeir pressed a knife into her hands.
What would it do, against a Mourner? Nothing. But if they were going to face their end here, better to do so holding onto a weapon. Every Helkorite knew that.
He had already drawn the highblade when Madness fell upon him. Its twin swords cut through the air like parchment, allowing it to take one step and already thrust inside the reach of his arm. But Skeir had fought this enemy once before, and he was ready for that approach. His right leg fell back as he brought his great sword along his body to parry the first blow, then he pivoted on his left and came in to shoulder-check the Mourner before it could follow-up.
He was rewarded with the satisfying sensation of shoving the enemy back, though not before throwing his body straight into metal. If he survived, that would leave a nasty bruise.
The two of them fell into low stances, circling one another. Skeir tried to look behind his foe’s mask. There was no trace of concern in the eyes there. The Mourner was a workman at its trade, and he wondered how many men it had killed, and it must have thought his death would be easy for it was better armored, equipped in Artifacts, better trained.
In short, it had all of the advantages. So Skeir charged at it.
He ran straight at the hunter, feinted right towards its dominant striking hand and broke hard to his left, still running, going past it. He was aware of the second blade swinging fast after him as he turned, but by then Skeir was already behind his enemy. It was still turning when he dropped to his knees, ducked, heard the next swing go over his head and he was up again, lunging.
The tip of the highblade pierced the Mourner’s mail beneath its breastplate, drawing blood just below its left shoulder. Madness was quicker than Skeir expected though, and was already moving in for a slice with its first scythia. A reflexive jerk of the head had the blade’s edge scoring his cheek rather than taking a chunk out of his throat. A thin line of burning pain joined the throbbing at his shoulder.
First blood had been drawn on both sides. If this went the same way their duel had in the catacombs, he was likely to lose; he had barely kept up with this killer, and if the sounds of battle nearby were any indication, Thero and Issa were thoroughly occupied.
And the distant ranks of the Thronekeepers did not move an inch. They remained in formation at the base of the fortress walls, waiting for the outcome of this battle. Someone had clearly ordered them to stand down.
He was on his own.
That didn’t stop Skeir from dancing left as Madness advanced, fending off its short swords with his own weapon and the crack of blades were the bells of the Afterlife and he lunged once more, this time going for the Mourner’s waist. It anticipated the assault and moved back quickly. Skeir jumped to the right, his arm jarred by the clash of the blades. He moved in fast, making the hunter turn. Then he feinted and lunged once again, brought it forward and darted to the left.
The ground at his feet was slippery, still slick from last night’s rain. Although Skeir feared falling, he knew that speed and momentum were his greatest allies in this fight. If he fought defensively, his foe could appear at any angle, attack with impunity, and flash step away before he could reply. Death by a thousand cuts would follow.
He needed to keep Madness off-balance, keep it reacting instead of acting. If he scored a few lucky hits, he could bleed the Mourner, get it to tire.
However, it had learned from their last engagement as well. A tearing sound saw the hunter disappear, stepping into space several feet behind him. The sound of boots on the flagstone were what warned Skeir, allowing him to turn around in time to block the strokes coming for his head and torso.
Then Madness was gone. This time the steps came from the left side, forcing Skeir to angle his body and roll into the attack. The hilt of one of its scythia went straight into his nose, and he heard a crunch and then his face was warm. He tasted his own blood in his mouth.
Thrice more, the Mourner cut through space to attack Skeir from different angles. He was barely able to repel his enemy, emerging with fresh wounds each time. It was all Skeir could do not to get a sword through the spine.
The hunter was barely breathing hard, and in less than a minute was already pushing him to the brink. If he didn’t take the initiative back, he wouldn’t live through the next one.
Skeir’s foot found a water-dark patch of stone and he slid. Colliding with the ground sent a spike of pain from his knee all the way to his teeth, but he couldn’t let that slow him down. The Mourner, sensing an opportunity, stepped in close for a swift thrust at his exposed upper chest, but Skeir was ready - for he had not slipped, only pretended to.
Pushing out with his right foot, he came out from under the blow and around Madness’ right flank, and it thrust its second blade out, tip catching his shoulder with its point and he knew he would have another scar there, but this was also his window of opportunity.
He launched the highblade forward and its edge caught the Mourner in the side, cutting it right between the seams of its plate and ripping through the mail. His weapon got snagged on the hunter’s belt, and it took him a precious second to tear it free, taking a piece of the segmented leather along with it.
A deep surge of power rippled outward from the belt, a crack in the air that sucked in light and expelled noise. Skeir’s eyes narrowed. There was puzzlement behind that mask now, and perhaps even concern, and he knew he’d struck a weak point.
The belt was one of its Artifacts.
The Mourner wasted no time trying to retake control over the engagement, a hurricane of sword blows and feints designed to overwhelm. Yet it no longer bounced around him, attacking head on like any other man.
He had defeated men. He had killed men. This would just be one more.
A few more blistering exchanges had them both at five paces apart, circling one another again. Over its shoulder, Skeir saw Thero holding the sad-faced Mourner - Despair, Issa had called it when they’d discussed Il Coru - in some kind of Latent paralysis, only for the entire scene to flow backwards like water flowing uphill as Dread, the last member of their veil, reverse time with its Artifact.
But Skeir had no time to think about the others, as Madness’ swords folded away into somewhere he could not see, and in their place hummed a length of dark wood that crackled with the power of an autumn hurricane.
Skeir barely had a second before his opponent thrust the Stormlance straight at him, a perfect killing blow. He could only step back to evade it - even blocking one of those could shock him into unconsciousness - putting the Mourner squarely out of his highblade’s reach.
He swore as the spear came around a second time and Il Coru pressed the advantage. The belt must have been what allowed Madness to teleport - he’d hoped that without a tool it had been accustomed to using, it would get sloppier.
Instead, Madness had just changed fighting styles. Now it had reach on him, and could keep him at bay with yet another Artifact it had pulled out of its ass. The hunter had no intention of getting close with no way out, not when it could incapacitate him with impunity from a greater distance.
Charging straight in now would be a simple death sentence. Skeir swapped his grip, exchanging hands at the base of his highblade as he put his right foot forward instead of his left, to give his foe a new puzzle. He’d fought with men who could fight with either hand, and perhaps he was one of them?
The length of the Stormlance meant that Madness would need to flip it up and over to defend from the other side if Skeir attacked, a process which took longer than it would for him to change sword hands. He took a step forward, and suddenly time was on his side again - if it was a bluff, Mourner would have to call it before Skeir was too close.
Another step. Madness edged backwards.
One more. Then the Mourner was flipping the spear and Skeir was rushing in on its right side, and it swung to its left because he was surely feinting once more - only this was no feint but a true swing. His highblade sparked against the contours of Madness’ pauldron, skidding its edge further than it should have, deep into the side of the hunter’s neck. Just like that, a glancing blow had been transformed into a grievous wound.
He ripped out the sword and there was red, so much red, but he danced away from the last feeble counterattack and now Madness was faltering, stumbling, falling. It landed face first with a wet thud, and did not rise again. Both scythii appeared on the ground beside its corpse.
“I told you I’d make you pay for that,” he muttered to the body.
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Skeir stood over Madness and let the snarling beast within him subside. He allowed the vicious satisfaction, the thrill to pass through him and burn itself out. For this business was not yet done, and he couldn’t lose focus.
Several copies of Issa dove and weaved across Victor’s Row, one of them jumping underneath a Stormlance thrown by Dread only for the spear to detonate in midair. The lightning erupted with a wave of sound, sending the spy flying - the real one, for her body cracked loud enough for Skeir to hear it - into the base of the statue of Atronia IV.
Her cry of pain was also all too-real, not something a visual illusion could produce. He’d made sure to take note of her powers’ unspoken limitations when she’d first spoken of them.
Still the copies of Issa persisted, jumping about trying to screen her real self, which meant at the very least she remained conscious.
Not far away, Thero was holding both Despair and Rage at bay; the kyneid was seemingly stepping out of reality, playing their attacks off of one another, exchanging their position on the battlefield every few moments to disorient them. They seemed to be trying to time their attacks between the Latent’s Workings, but Thero would throw in some other trick each time to keep them on their guard: a barrage of steel ball bearings, accelerated faster than arrows. Another porcelain censer to put up a smokescreen.
But he would run out of tricks well before Issa would - and he tired faster.
It wasn’t much of a choice for Skeir in the end. He did not like the look of Rage’s cestus gauntlets, but the Mourner was the slowest among them and thus the easiest for Thero to handle. That left Despair, who carried what looked like a whip of pure light. Issa had called it a Lambent Arsenal, said it could change shapes at the wielder’s will.
He watched the Arsenal transform into a strung longbow, a matching translucent arrow in its hand. Yet Skeir saw a delay in the Artifact’s function - it took a second for its form to change and lock into a new composition.
That told him one thing: that he had a window of opportunity when Despair was completely defenseless.
Skeir stepped into the fray weapon-first, swinging the highblade downwards on a sweeping diagonal cut, but with a nudge from its partner Despair was able to turn around, its Artifact becoming a sword with dimensions not unlike his own. When the edges collided, they produced a shower of sparks, and it was all he could do to dart out of the way before the Mourner brought the Arsenal around in a wide glaive-form counter.
So much for a surprise attack. Skeir looked down at his sword, and to his dismay the highblade’s edges had already begun to melt. Fucking Artifacts.
Not that its edge would have lasted in a blade-to-blade duel, but was it too much to ask that he fight people who didn’t have magic weapons that could literally melt metal? He would need to spend a few good days at a forge to fix this.
Biting back a curse, the Helkorite flipped his weapon to the other side and dove back towards Despair. He had to end this before the two could focus back on Thero and the kyneid burned himself out completely.
This time, he did not try for an overwhelming attack but rather went in low. He would cut off the Mourner at the legs, disrupt his balance and force him on the back foot. Then, when he was changing weapons, Skeir could finish him off.
But it never happened. Despair saw him coming each time he advanced, had his Artifact ready and Skeir was forced to withdraw lest he ruin what was left of his weapon.
When he saw a shadow creeping up on his left side, Skeir thought at first it was Issa - but a glance across the stones saw her still dancing with Dread, playing a game of shadowy cat and mouse. Instead, he met the lucid gaze of Maugrim Nameless, who had picked up one of Madness’ discarded scythii to wield alongside the knife he’d given her.
There was an intensity there that Skeir had not yet seen before. What was once a peak shrouded by snowfall - bleary, remote, and entirely out of reach - had been stirred over the course of a single horse ride into the first rumbles that preceded an avalanche.
Despair saw the other woman, its magical tool transforming into another polearm, this one ending in a long double sided cutting ax blade - best for defending against multiple opponents. The Mourner squared its feet against them, ready for their approach.
Yet it was not ready for Zarja Triosi, who had dragged herself out from beneath her horse despite having no working legs and now stabbed a dagger deep into its ankle. The hunter did not cry out, instead delivering the tattooed guardswoman a kick to the temple to knock her out - but a distraction was all they’d needed.
Nameless’ swing was blocked first, which gave Skeir the chance to weave around the end of the hastily brandished poleaxe. Despair whirled around, its Arsenal in the midst of transforming into a shield large enough to contain his attack.
And in that moment, while the energy was still forming, Skeir’s highblade thrust up from below its breastplate and deep into its ribs, lifting the Mourner bodily from the ground.
There was a faint grunting noise from beneath the mask, Despair’s wide eyes staring down at him as its lifeblood flowed down the blade and began to pool at Skeir’s feet. His muscles trembled from the effort, but he held the hunter in place as it died. Then, with a victorious grunt, the Helkorite lowered the weapon and body to the flagstones.
Skeir barely heard the war cry behind him as heavy footfalls approached. Drained, exhausted, he turned to face Rage as the third Mourner charged him - only to stop, frozen in place.
“Please,” came Thero’s voice from behind, sleep-heavy, “someone cut his fucking throat.”
Two steps to Nameless to take the knife, another five to Rage, one clean motion underneath its helm and then there was only one member left in Il Coru’s veil.
Issa and Dread’s game had continued all around the row, with several detonations of the latter’s Stormlance periodically bursting in through all the prior melees. Skeir saw the spy transform into her shadow-self to avoid the latest Artifact strike, reforming a few paces away in its aftermath. They did not look to have gotten too far from the last time he looked - likely because of its time magic, he figured.
Skeir took a step towards Dread and /
He found himself standing over Despair once more, fresh blood as though the wound had been inflicted anew. The Mourner had turned back time for them once more - though not far enough to save its companion.
This time, he knew what was coming. He dropped Despair’s body, allowing his weapon to guide it down to earth and teeter in the dying Mourner’s chest while he ducked and rolled off to the side to avoid the inevitable thunderclap explosion that followed.
When he had recovered enough to look up, he saw that Thero had been sent flying with the blast, Dread’s Stormlance expertly interrupting his Working. The kyneid lay prone on the stones, a wicked series of burns melting cloth and flesh along his left side. Alive he may yet be, but he wouldn’t be of much immediate use to him.
And Rage was upon him now, moving to grapple him down by the arm. If he got pinned, Skeir knew, he would face a swift and deadly beating at the hands of the gauntleted warrior.
So he kept rolling, anything to stay out of Rage’s grasp. He saw the large champion lunge down, arms outstretched, and a quick kick to knock away a hand gave him enough room to get to his knees, then back on his feet.
In some ways, fighting this one would be the opposite of combating its kin. He was no longer the bull, but the dog baiting it. He needed to be faster than Rage, to strike when the hunter was overextended and off-balance.
Then Maugrim was on the other side, the old woman cutting into the Mourner with her short sword. It did little to actually damage his enemy besides drawing a few more scratches, but it drew Rage’s attention for the time being.
“Here!” Maugrim tossed him back the knife - the same he’d given her and gotten back, in another time.
Together they were able to harry Rage, timing their advances so that one was tangling with the Mourner while the other got in to stab at it from the side. It wasn’t all that dignified, but survival rarely was, when you got right down to it.
Eventually, while the other Helkorite had Rage occupied with a parry, Skeir got right back in behind the Mourner. Once more, the knife was drawn across its neck. Funny, he thought as he watched the hunter fall, that all Dread’s intervention had done was delay something inevitable.
Then it was three of them on one. Dread itself had more than a few Artifacts - it was not limited to its chroneid sliver and Stormlance - but it could not keep up with all of them at once. The tide had turned in their favour now, and it was not so hard a thing when they had numbers on their side. Time rippled outwards again right as they were about to finish the job, which only allowed them to reposition themselves and come at the Mourner at more precise angles.
There was no question of surrender, of course. Dread never cried out for quarter, never sought to flee the field. Here, at long last, was an enemy worthy of the Pale Oath. Maugrim was the one to finish it off, the veteran exchanging a series of vicious parries and ripostes with the Mourner only to get in under its guard and separate its head from its shoulders.
In that moment - her teeth bared, eyes flared in triumph - Skeir saw at last a face that had led thousands to war.
When the last of the veil was slain and Il Coru lay scattered around them, the Pallbearer ran to tend to Zarja and Thero. Maugrim, meanwhile, looked at all of them as though seeing them for the first time. The old woman’s blue-green eyes crinkled as she squinted, light reflected from the glare off the nearby armored regiment.
“Whoever you are,” she croaked, “whatever you’re doing here, you’re facing this danger on my account.” She extended a calloused hand over to him.
“If so, then I am truly in your debt. What honour remains to me, I owe to you.”
Skeir hesitated. This was no criminal: she was Nameless, her roll of deeds struck down from record in the Reikscourt after the Tears. Even her statue went unacknowledged, an awkward rendering of an anonymous officer.
But what had honour ever done for him?
“Keep it.” He looked away all the same. “I’ll not be in your debt.”
Why had he done that? Refuse a clear means of getting the information he’d bled over for what felt like twelve straight hours of struggle? She knew Ninth Company’s plans, she was perhaps the best person in Equinox to tell him what he needed to know.
Yet in that moment, he was a cadet in Daniva once again, mountain sun on his face. He saw Dragan’s face, heard Breda’s laughter. He was, in his bones, still a Helkorite, and that meant keeping promises older even than the pit.
She saw the warmth leave his eyes, his stance change. Something set in her jaw, and the old soldier turned away.
The bodies of the Mourners barely had time to settle before Skeir heard the distinct sounds of raised voices, this time from the other side of the Princes’ Door. He picked up on the ominous groan of metal on stone; the gates into the Seat were opening at long last, though to what end he was not sure. The Thronekeepers amassed in ranks on their side of the wall - previously having stood at attention - now began to march forward in tandem.
From the ramparts, a figure in bright mail called down to them, a male authoritative voice ringing out among the statues and the dead:
“DROP YOUR WEAPONS IMMEDIATELY, OR BE FIRED UPON!”
Maugrim looked up at the glittering sea of incoming steel and let out a single shuddering breath. The scythia she’d picked up slipped in her fingers, the savage vitality that saw her decapitating other men ebbing away before Skeir’s sight. She called Issa over.
“I don't... don't know how much time I’ll have in there.” Maugrim’s eyes, bright only moments ago, were already losing their luster. She barely saw any of them, gaze wheeling about the carnage of Victor’s Row and starting to slip back away into dissociation.
“In case we do not speak again, you need to know the truth. He’s free - the Butcher of Pelagious is free. Do not trust the Justices - for there are none worthy of that name in the City of the Empty Throne.” She waved at the pillar of smoke that continued to rise from Isceria Zone at their back.
Skeir felt as though he had been stabbed anew.
“How do you know?” He grabbed the old woman’s arm roughly, hauling her around to face him. “How do you know?”
She met his eyes, and there was fear in them. Not fear of him, not fear of the impending army, but fear of a man whose voice he still heard every night.
Fear of Saryn Corvane.
“I saw him at Last Point. He’s here.”
He moved to ask her more, but they had no time. The Thronekeeper sentinels atop the wall had nocked arrows and put them to string. The first rank of spearmen was upon them as well, points and shields surrounding them on all sides.
By then, the Prince’s Door had fully opened. And what he saw when light spilled from the gap into the castle grounds were not merely Thronekeepers. He spotted among the banners and heralds the telltale wolf and crossed axes of Helkoran, the winding phoenix of Isceria, the blazing sun of Medeus, and more besides. Complements from every single one of the recognized nations of the continent were gathered on the other side of the gate, all assembled in trains behind twelve figures who stood in the courtyard beyond.
The Equineal Justices had arrived at last to collect their fugitive.