Book 6 Chapter ex6: Interlude: Concert

"A problem that cannot be solved by brute strength can still be destroyed by it."

- Dread Empress Massacre

The Duke of Unrelenting Landslide struck like a mountain made hammer, his stride shaking the earth and his war cry echoing as if sung through a gorge.

Hakram Deadhand stood before him in his burnt plate, armed only with a shield and a long axe, and breathed in deep of the cool air of this place. Fear, fear did not come. It should have, for his foe was a godling in the flesh while he was nothing but old steel and arrogance, but all that Adjutant felt was a quickening of the blood. A stirring. His enemy roared out a challenge, but the orc did not answer: the time for taunt and boast was past. Instead the Adjutant breathed in deep, and even as the Duke of Faerie brought down his morningstar he moved. A step to the side, as the mace shattered stone, and with keen eyes he darted forth. Axe high he struck, but the great fae batted his blow aside with his bare hand and laughed.

The morningstar swept across and Adjutant was not swift enough to leap over the blow, his shield taking it head on as he stood his ground. The whisper of the word was with him, and it had been but a casual stroke, and still he was sent flying a dozen feet back as his shield bent. Hakram barrelled into a horse, toppling it, and rolled away as the morningstar came down and splashed the mount's entrails over rock. Twice now he'd escaped death narrowly, and yet where was the fear? No, instead a strange and wistful joy had come over him. Like he had come home, after a long journey, or found an old place once beloved. His voice escaped his throat, neither challenge nor scream, instead softly and almost sadly singing in the Kharsum of his youth.

"I sing of spring, come winter deep

I sing of a dream beyond sleep."

Adjutant stepped to the side, the lilting and bittersweet pace of The Old Raider guiding his feet. Down the morningstar went, the Duke roaring in implacable anger, but Hakram was not there.

"The world was fair, when I was young," he sang.

The wind screamed, the morningstar sweeping, but Adjutant had begin moving before it. Under he went, knees creaking, and rose to his feet as the Duke turned to him in surprise.

"My grip was strong, my fang was long," the orc sang.

The proud creature did not shy away when he approached, pitting its own strength against the curve of Adjutant's axe, but this time when the Duke slapped away the blow Hakram flicked his blade with Name-strength and the fae screamed. Its hand was bloody, and a finger fell onto broken sone.

"And never," Hakram of the Howling Wolves sang, "did my axe falter."

The Archer sped up the stairs, steps soft as the breeze as her aspect warmed her bones like noonday sun: she could Stride to the end of the world, never faltering nor lost, so long as it shone within her.

She'd already strung her longbow, felt the enchanted wood tighten against her finger as she pricked her ear for the sounds of fighting above. There were five beats to the song, three and two at odds, and the fae were on the side with the numbers. A woman let out a hoarse scream of pain - the Blessed Artificer, Archer guessed - and so made it clear that the fae were on the winning side as well. She must hurry, she thought, reaching for the quiver at her side. Her fingers brushed through the touch of magic that would keep dust and water away from the wood, thumb sifting through the fletching until it found strix feathers and extracting that particular arrow. Black alder wood for the shaft, two centuries old so that the taste for shade and quiet would seep into the ambient magic, and an arrowhead of steel forged by a blacksmith born mute. It was a lurker's arrow, a slayer's arrow.

The strix feathers were simply a fancy of Archer's: the great flesh-eating owls of Waning Woods, after all, preferred to hunt by moonless night.

Her boots touched the second story moments later, arrow loosely nocked as she slipped in the shadow of tall pillars. The foes were righting on the footbridge that tied the hanging spire of crystal to the sides of the Belfry, though the fae wove in and out as was their way. Roland and the Artificer stood on one side, the black-skinned woman bleeding from a long cut across her chest and the Rogue looking like he was so deep in an aspect migraine he could barely see. Against them: a child of straw, an antlered huntress and what could only be a traitor. The Exalted Poet, Archer recalled. Caster, but in a tricky way and not entirely vulnerable up close. Very much human, however. The Archer carefully chose her vantage even as sorcery and Light, past trying to win, desperately tried to keep the two from dying against the three. She would only strike in complete surprise once, and so the shot must be made to count.

Angling herself so that the pillar would hide her from the side but she had a good view of the enemy's side, Archer breathed out. In the beat that followed, she fluidly drew the arrow past her ear and loosed in a single gesture. The lurker's arrow flew without making a sound or drawing the eye in any way, a wisp passing behind a flying tuft of straw from one fae being cleaved in two but inevitably, unerringly finding its target. Steel tore right through the Exalted Poet's throat, avoiding the spine but shredding the vocal cords. The man began choking on his own blood but Archer was already moving, slipping from shadow to shadow as her enemies fell into disarray.

One, the Archer counted

His insides were aching, the roughness of continued Use having taken him past raw and into bleeding. Worse, Roland was beginning to lack precision: he could not longer properly seize artefacts or sorcery, sometimes fumbling and losing a precious few moments before finally succeeding. It was the sort of time a man in his position - in over his head - simply could not afford to lose if he was to keep avoiding an unfortunate end.

"No wall, no gate, no mighty keep."

The Exalted Poet's rasping voice called out another spurt of what a generous man might call poetry - a far cry from the fine verses of Candide Farstride or those of the princess-poetess Luna Trastanes, what was being inflicted on Roland's ears - and the Rogue Sorcerer answered with the quickest thing he had at hand, a sizzling Liessen Chisel that spurted out form his sleeve. The Callowan spell was a ward-breaker by design, but it kicked like a horse and it would have shut up the Poet if it'd hit. If. The Lord of Plentiful Harvest leapt into the path, and thought the chisel split him in two it was straw and not blood that went flying: just another false body.

"Will turn away slumber's cr-"

An arrowhead bloomed in the Exalted Poet's throat, stealing his breath in a red gasp, and Roland de Beaumarais felt a startled, nervous giggle leave his throat.

"Rogue, what was that?" the Blessed Artificer asked.

Both fae scattered before she was done speaking, faces startled at the sudden bloodletting.

"The tune turns about, my friend," the Rogue Sorcerer said, grin tugging at his lips.

The tightening of the Helikean bronze burr into the flesh of his flank warned him that power was being directed at his back and Roland threw himself down, scrabbling for a sharp enough blade that he'd be able to make some damage. That unexpectedly lethal jet of acid from the Dominion hedge mage, or perhaps hellflame confiscated from one of the Eyes? Golden power shivered above him, biting into the railing and sending shards of white-hot metal and stone flying every which way. His coat took most of it, three layers of impact-negation enchantment blown through in the blink of an eye, but it couldn't cover everything. He swallowed a scream when a piece of shrapnel shredded through his cheek and the corner of his lip, his aspect stumbling into the use of another power.

"Bite," the Rogue Sorcerer shouted.

Ice erupted with a shrill cry, singing of death.

"The days were long in summer sun," Hakram sang.

There was Adjutant, and there was all that went on around him. In the coolness of his mind, he found himself able to follow both without trouble.

The Duke of Unrelenting Landslide stamped his foot against the stone, the air shivering of the power as a rippled went through the ground as if a pond had been struck. Hakram swiftly circled to the side, waiting until he had come near one of the remaining lancers and the fae struck out at him by sword to measuredly leap up. The lancer's blade rasped against his plate, burnt by fires mightier than any of those burning here today, and Hakram dropped his axe to catch the fae by the wrist and toss him to the side, right onto the downwards arc of the morningstar come to pulp him. He landed in a crouch, blood flecked all over him, and snatched up his axe.

Light flashed, the Blade of Mercy screaming as his greatsword shattered the spear of the Countess of Still Amber, drawing from the fae a scream of rage as he swept her down from her horse with pure strength. The Vagrant Spear whooped madly as she leapt sideways, smashing a bare foot into one of the distorted pale fae's face and an elbow into the others' neck. The three of them stumbled to the ground in a pile, even as one of the lancers made to run through the now-prone heroine only for a tight circle of red sorcery to form around his neck and choke him with his own momentum, buying just enough time for the Mirror Knight to lightly dance away from the Prince of Fallen Leavens and casually split the head from the body in a single stroke.

"Even sorrow sweet, in battles won," Hakram sang.

The Duchess of Red Sunset burned with power, grown incandescent, and the Adjutant could not touch her. None of them could. Tough she was weaker in power than the prince himself, in some ways the nature of that power was harder to deal with. Now it was only a matter of time until she unleashed the fires, and those might turn the tide. Her attention needed to be drawn, focused. The orc retreated towards her, stoking the Duke's anger even further as he found himself denied his foe.

"Coward," the Duke of Unrelenting Landslide screamed

The insult passed over him like water on a duck's back. The Duchess saw him coming, not blinded by her own works, and even as behind him the Duke roared and smashed into the melee like an angry bull she struck at him. A whip of flame lashed out from behind the blinding incandescence, unnaturally twisting over his raised shield and sweeping down to seize his hand. But the whip found only bone there, crafted by a Warlock of which there had been few equals, and there was no pain to loosen his grip. Hakram Deadhand lunged forward and struck at the fae within burning light, only to be driven back. It did not matter, for he'd heard her snarl in anger at his insolence. These were predictable creatures, once their nature was grasped.

The whip withdrew.

"And never did my hand linger," Hakram sang.

The fires of a setting sun swallowed him whole, but Adjutant had followed the rhythm: quick as the Duchess was, she was not so quick that his soul did not first echo with the will to Stand.

The huntress had come to hunt her, Archer saw with blade-sharp amusement.

She was a tall one, that fae, painted red and white with antlers tearing out of the sides of her head and a long spear of bone in her hand. Light-footed, almost reluctant to use her wings, and now striding across the stone floors of the Belfry in search of the archer who'd fired at her ally from behind. Ear to ear and eye to eye, Archer knew, the fae's senses were likely better than hers. In a game of shadows, at first glance it might seem like the huntress had the advantage. Of course, that perception relied on one assumption: that, when she heard the string of the bow being pulled, the fae could move faster than Archer could loose. The Named's fingers went drifting through her quiver once more, finding the arrow she sought by the soft touch of the bellhawk feather fletching. Prodigiously loud birds, bellhawks, known to use their cry to startle animals into leaving their hiding places.

The purpose of the matched arrow was a little different, but not dissimilar in essence.

Crouched atop the stacks, overlooking the huntress from the distance, the Archer drew and loosed before a single breath's span could pass. The antlered fae's head swivelled, but before she could finish finding the arrow from the whistling sound the enchantment carved into the birch shaft was awakened by the touch of wind and a deafening cry erupted. The huntress winced in pain, her unnaturally sharpened senses coming back to haunt her, and that delay cost her. While the fae narrowly managed to recover in time to catch the small glint of light on steel and swat aside the arrow, the second one - tipped in cold iron, a precaution she'd originally taken in case the Wild Hunt grew rebellious - that Archer had drawn and fired under the cover of the first found her thigh and struck true. The trick had been in the angle, aimed just so that the fae's peripheral vision would miss the second shot until it was too late. Even if the fae were magic made flesh, as Masego insisted, so long as they used human shape they shared the limitations of human eyes.

Two, the Archer counted.

The huntress screamed as the touch of cold iron spread through her veins like poison, ripping out the arrow only too late. It would not kill her, but she was slowed now. Weakened. And when the antlered fae looked atop the stacks, ready to unleash her wrath, she found only shadows there. Archer was gone, had been since the heartbeat that followed the second loosing. She did not need to stay to know whether her arrows had struck true.

It was with something like wariness that the huntress now eyed the open space before her.

The Rogue Sorcerer could feel it in the air, like a scent in the wind: the tide, it was turning.

The Lord of Plentiful Harvest snarled in anger, having been just a beat of the song too slow to escape the sudden blooming of the ice. His foot was frozen up to the knee, and with his childlike body even given his physical strength he was having a hard time finding the right angle to rip himself free. Roland was still panting even as he rose, he wouldn't make it in time, but he was not fighting alone. Adanna of Smyrna, bloodied but unbowed, turned a dark glare unto the fae they had each killed a dozen times only to see straw fly instead of blood. She was nearing exhaustion as well, sweat beading her brow and staining her clothes, but it was with a steady hand that she raised up a simple bundle of four twigs and crushed it in her grip. Four bolts of Light screamed to life, grasped tight and reflecting on her spectacles.

"Four," the Blessed Artificer said, "will be plenty enough for you."

Not bad, Roland, mused even as Adanna's hand came down and the Light thundered. It was well-known among Chosen that speaking the right phrase or challenge could nudge the odds of a blow landing in your favour, and this seemed like it might just pass muster. The Lord of Plentiful Harvest had already lost an arm to Adanna earlier, and today she was to be his bane for the four streaks Light melded together into a single great spear that tore through his chest, burning its way through flesh and bone and whatever deceit lay at the heart of fae. The Rogue Sorcerer, sensing that the end of this was to come soon one way or another, touched a finger to one of the runes in his pocket. The bottom of the Slow Regret, that despicable piece of Stygian work, slapped against his palm and he withdrew the small clay statue depicting a crane.

"You insects," the Lord of Plentiful Harvest snarled, body visibly boiling in the wake of his wound. "I will see you annihilated for this."

He'd begun shedding strands of straw form the sides of the gaping hole the Artificer had burned, and with a shudder he contracted onto himself: becoming significantly smaller, yet whole again. Have we been destroying true pieces of him this entire time? Regardless Roland touched his bloody cheek and rubbed some of the redness against the side of the statue, watching it sink into the clay without a trace, then grimaced. They part that came after was not one he enjoyed.

The Rogue Sorcerer produced a knife, the same he'd used to bleed dry the Count of Green Apples, and with a ragged war cry ran towards the fae.

The flames of a dying sun seared him, scorched him, devoured him whole.

Hakram Deadhand should have been made ash, dust scattered on the wind, but he stood unbowed in the face of the wrath of the Duchess of Red Sunset. Like a statue made of conceit, he refused the fae's verdict and his aspect came smooth and deep at the call. It too, disapproved of the utter arrogance of that creature in believing her will was enough to end him. He bowed his neck to one woman only, and she had sent him out today to win. The fires waned, as all fires had and ever would, and when the last ember died the Adjutant stood still. Unmoved.

"I bore a crown once, of iron hewn," Hakram sang, and struck.

Through the blinding light still at the heart of the fae, Adjutant saw the recoil of dismay. His axe's edge cut through a whip of flame, a pretty trick but poor in defence, and found flesh beneath. The Duchess cried out in pain and he hammered her down on the ground, teeth bared. The orc felt a strong grip squeeze around his ankle, the Repentant Magister's enchantment warning him he was now under glamour. Without missing a beat, Hakram stepped back and closed his eyes. Find, he thought. Find me my foe. The aspect pulsed within him and blindly he swung, letting Creation guide his hand. The blow glanced off the side of a spear of ivory, a pale-skinned fae coming into existence with a sound like a shattered mirror.

"Flicker," the Blade of Mercy yelled.

In the heartbeat that followed he smashed into the pale fae's side, made entirely out of Light - it was a simulacrum, Hakram understood only when after cutting through the spear and tackling the glowing Blade winked out. The orc took the opening, shield smashing the Duchess' face when she tried to rise before he knelt atop her, axe rising. The incandescence flared, tossing him away in a torrent of flame but it had been enough. Already coming down, one eye wide open and burning from the refusal to close, the Vagrant Spear rammed her spear through the fae's open mouth, screaming in triumph. Hakram landed on his feet, steel boots shooting sparks as he slid to a halt.

"Earned riding," Hakram sang, "under autumn moon."

As if spellbound, the head of every single fae swivelled towards him. Unexpected, the Adjutant thought, but he could work with this. He rolled his shoulder, loosening it before all the howling Hells came for him.

"And never did my heart waver," Hakram Deadhand hummed.

Archer savoured the hesitation in the huntress' steps like fine wine, knowing it was the closest fae could come to true fear: the implicit recognition that there was something out there that could kill them, if it wanted to.

It was time to bring this to an end. First she allowed her boots to drag against the floor, the fae near instantly turning towards the noise and tossing a spear of blood-red power at the pillar Archer had been hiding behind. Stone shards and dust blew everywhere, but she'd already been moving. One, two, three steps even as the bellhawk arrow she'd reached for was nocked and loosed. The huntress went wild, charging forward, and though she parried the arrow in question with her bare hand the Archer had already released that second pulsing tension within her. The Flow that went beyond what earthly hands could master, hers to borrow for the shortest of whiles. Sometimes she wondered if that was what it felt like, to be the Lady. When everything fit perfectly, and you could place yourself within the parts of the world exactly the way you wanted.

There were twenty feet between the Archer and the huntress. Before one had been crossed, the second arrow was loosed: a slender thing of birch, that would have torn through the fae's left ankle were it not slapped aside by spear. Archer loosed the third arrow before the huntress was even done moving, and the cold iron tip tore through the fae's right shoulder. The enemy screamed in excruciating pain but strode forward. Seventeen feet left. The huntress had learned the trick, now, but it did not matter: Archer had killed things like here before. Much as the fae wanted to ignore the fourth arrow she could not, for it was of cold iron and headed right for her throat. She twisted around, ducking low as she moved - fifteen feet - but the fifth arrow ripped right through her left knee before the spear could adjust to the lowered height. The huntress stumbled but stubbornly carried on.

The sixth arrow was loosed low, at her midriff, and the fae's back erupted with red wings. One bat of them was enough for the fae to drag herself up, the shot passing under her as she forced her body straight - ten feet - but the seventh tore through the left wing and her flight swivelled downwards. The huntress hit the ground but struck at the stone with the butt of her spear first, so that she would remain half-standing and half-stumbling forward when her feet touched down. Eight feet. A simple trajectory, and the spear was already occupied: the eighth arrow, the last cold iron tip Archer carried, punched through the fae's ribcage and into her heart. She stumbled forward a few steps, gasping, and raised her spear in a last effort. The Archer felt the flow leave her, the world become clumsy and blind once more, but even at her least she could see the span of that death.

Nonchalantly, she stepped to the side of the huntress blow and waited for the antlered fae to drop down with a plaintive scream of pain. Unmoved, Archer took another two steps forward and nocked a mundane arrow before turning. The blood-red power the huntress had gathered above her head did not defend her from the shot the Archer loosed a heartbeat after turning, punching through the back of the fae's skull.

-

One of the Rogue Sorcerer's ribs shattered as the little fae slapped his side, throwing him away like a ragdoll, and he screamed in pain. It wouldn't be enough, damn him, damn this damned statue and the damned sorcerer whose damned soul had thought it was a clever damned thing to make. At least some sort of spell could have been woven in to numb the pain but no, Stygian sorcerers were all bloody sadists. Exception made for Nephele, of course, was a delight unless she had a few drinks in her and reason to be displeased. Roland landed on the stone footbridge, which was not great for his already bruised back, and tried to hack away at the fae that'd flown over to him and was now dropping down. Sadly his knifeplay had gone somewhat rusty of late, and the Lord of Plentiful Harvest snapped the wrist holding the knife before landing on his ribs and shattering another few. Gods, the pain.

"Duck," the Blessed Artificer screamed.

Sadly, between the excruciating amount of pain he was in and the fact that the fae was standing atop his abdomen it had been fated that Roland de Beaumarais was going nowhere. Which proved something of an issue when a bolt of Light struck him and not the Lord of Plentiful Harvest, who had been in a position to heed Adanna's advice. With a breathless scream of pain, the Rogue Sorcerer felt the power scythe through the last two layers of protection on his shirt and sear his skin. Not deeply, but he comforted himself with the knowledge that at least properties would be maintained.

"Cower," the childlike fae ordered, tossing a disk of golden power at the Blessed Artificer.

He then turned cruel eyes at the Rogue Sorcerer, freshly back on his feet, who met him gallantly with a raised knife.

"Adanna," he called out. "Still alive?"

"Yes," the Blessed Artificer panted back.

"Then prepare your sharpest blade," Roland de Beaumarais said. "This ends."

"In this," the Lord of Plentiful Harvest beatifically smiled, "you are correct. This ends, and it ends with you screaming."

The Rogue Sorcerer smiled, deeply relieved.

"Say what you will about Theodosian," Roland said, "but the little bastard would have seen it coming."

On that scathing assessment his fingers closed around the clay statue artefact still in his pocket, the Slow Regret. With a grunt he shattered the clay with his grip and pointed a single finer at the childlike fae. Before his foe could even blink a small thread of translucent sorcery connected them, and Roland screamed once more as his ribs unsnapped. The Lord of Plentiful Harvest turned surprised, pained eye on the Rogue Sorcerer, who grinned back mockingly. Roland's seared skin healed, while the fae screamed as the burning touch of Light ate at its chest.

"Artificer," he yelled. "Now is-"

"Soon," Adanna yelled back, tone distracted.

The Rogue Sorcerer's ribs unshattered once more, as the last if the wounds he'd taken since binding himself to the Slow Regret flowed through, and the fae broke out of the enchantment with a yell of triumph.

"Now," the Lord of Plentiful Harvest said, "you-"

He paused, looking up, and Roland followed his gaze. Above them, the crackling web of Light that had been preventing the fae from going up was gone. Instead a hundred glinting swords of Light hung in the air, while the Blessed Artificer grinned a devil's grin at them both.

"Boom," Roland helpfully said, flicking a finger at the fae.

The swords came down and the world went white.

-

"Spring passed into summer song," Hakram sang.

His ankle was still being squeezed, a reminder that he was under glamour and could not trust all that his eyes told him. Yet he saw much, in the moment where the Court of Autumn tried to destroy him. The Maddened Keeper, laying the lightest of touches on one of the pale fae - it melted from the inside in the beat that followed, in too much pain to even scream. The Repentant Magister, throwing a bauble of silver at the Countess of Still Amber that froze her in place just long enough for the Blade of Mercy to cleave her in two. And Hakram saw, too, the wrath headed his way: a cloud of rot and decay, from the Prince of Fallen Leaves' hand, and single smooth pebble from the Duke of Unrelenting Landslide. Adjutant knew the latter would carry with it the strength of an entire avalanche and was likely to kill him on impact even if the former did not.

The Mirror Knight, unflinching, stood between the orc and the onslaught. Straight-backed, shield raised, the hero widened his stance.

"Withstand," Christophe de Pavanie said.

And though death struck at the Mirror Knight, he looked upon it in disdain and let it wash over him. It was an opening, Hakram thought as the rot split around the Proceran. They would not see him coming, not through that. The Adjutant did not embrace fury, for the Red Rage had never been in his blood. He reached instead for the cold, for the frozen bite, and let it flow through his veins. Strength filled his limbs, and he knew the Rampage had begun.

"Then summer into fall, headlong," Hakram sang.

The rot ate at his flesh as he leapt through it, but in the throes of his aspect that meant nothing. It was back, and he emerged from the cloud with his axe raised high. The Duke of Unrelenting Landslide blinked in surprise, but swung down the morningstar without hesitation. A step to the side, as the stone broke. The morningstar swung, but Adjutant had the measure of his foe now. And the swiftness to act on that measure. He leapt over the swing, and with all his might smashed his shield in the Duke's face. The fae rocked back, in pain, and took a hand off the morningstar to blindly swipe. Adjutant began to duck the moment he landed, smooth and measured, and his axe sliced through the fae's heel. The Duke screamed out in pain, falling onto his knee, and there the orc was waiting.

"And I know what waits after," Hakram Deadhand sang, axe smashing through the Duke of Unrelenting Landslide's forehead.

Again and again he ripped free and swung, making a red mess of the fae's head, until the giant toppled at his feet and he breathed out. He chanced a look around him, finding that now only the Prince of Fallen Leaves still stood and that the band of five was surrounding him. Yet Hakram's ankle was still squeezed tight: a heartbeat later Sidonia struck at the fae, only for the illusion to shatter, and the orc grasped that there was worst yet ahead.

The prince was in the wind, and there was no one protecting the sword meant to slay the Dead King. The last two lines of the old song came to him, like a mournful warning.

I sing of spring, come winter deep

I sing of a dream beyond sleep