Lain followed, her fingers laced in Morgan’s, their palms slick with cold. Behind them, the men who had fallen – the ones Mallow had cut down – lay half-submerged where the rainwater pooled around them.
Something moved among the bodies. A coil, black and gleaming, sliding soundlessly between the corpses. Another followed, then another. Feathers slicked down their spines and inky manes. The smell of iron thickened as they came.
Their bodies were curved like ermines, their faces cat-like and predatory, eyes drops of molten gold. The bloodwyrms nosed at the dead, tasting. One lifted its head and opened its jaws. A hiss escaped it, and the others answered. Their talons raked shallow furrows through the mud.
Morgan didn’t look back. He only raised his free hand once, a brief motion, a command, perhaps. The wyrms bent to their work. Flesh tore softly under the rain.
Lain froze, staring. The black shapes writhed through the ruin like shadows come alive, stripping the dead. She could not tell if they served him by instinct or by choice. One of them lifted its head, jaw crimson, and turned its gaze on her. For a heartbeat its eyes found hers, and in that golden stare she caught a flicker of recognition, something almost human.
Morgan tugged her onward. “Don’t look. They’re only cleansing the field.”
She stumbled after him, the sound of the wyrms following. The smell of rain and blood clung to her hair, her cloak, her hands. Even when the trees closed around them and the clearing vanished behind, she could still hear the wet mastication, methodical and sacred in its own terrible way.
Dawn came through the gray, crawling up from the river. The fires had burned low, leaving the camp steeped in the smell of pitch and blood. What tents remained upright sagged with rain, seams blackened. The ground was slick with ash and trampled reeds.
They’d separated the dead before sunrise. Forty-three of Morgan’s dead, more than twice that number of Dagorlind.
Morgan’s fallen were laid closest to the river, their bodies wrapped in cloaks, hands crossed over their hearts. The Brighthand were carried to the far side of the plain, heaped like timber, their armor stripped and piled beside them in dull gleaming stacks. Smoke from the ruined tents still drifted across the field, smudging the line between the living and the dead.
Lain stood near the edge of the riverbank. The mist there was dense, curling around her ankles like fabric. The water whispered behind her.
When Morgan gave the faintest tilt of his head, bloodwyrms emerged from the mist around the camp, sliding toward the Brighthand dead. Others followed – five, six in all – rising from the mist. They worked with vigor, bodies flowing through the heaps of corpses, jaws widening to take hold. Flesh tore wetly. The smell of iron deepened until the air felt sharp with it.
None of the Ashborn looked away. Fear lingered, but so did reverence. These were their scavengers, their proof. Where the Dagorlind had priests and bells, Morgan had this: beasts of living darkness that fed upon the dead.
He stood above them on the ridge, his cloak unfastened, his hands behind his back, the wind snapping at his hair. The rain had finally broken. What came now was the faint glimmer of sun through the clouds, enough light to find every wound and make it shine.
When the wyrms had finished, they lifted their heads and loosed a low hiss that rippled through the camp, as if blessing the field.
Only when the last ripple faded did Morgan turn toward the pyres.
Rhalir and the Veinwritten men went down the lines with burning bowls of oil, anointing the fallen. When each name was spoken, a torch touched the pyre. The smoke rose, heavy and dark.
Lain could feel the bond pulsing between herself and Morgan, still raw from the night before. He was angry. He was often angry, but this anger was different, organized and useful.
When the last pyre caught, he came down the slope.
No one called the camp to order. But they turned to their leader, one after another. He stopped among the smoke and let the silence gather.
He spoke softly, but even so his tone was unmistakably clear. “This is what Ivath calls mercy.”
No one moved. The only sound was the hiss of rain on the pyres.
“After receiving a message of peaceful parlay, they sent us a Veinwright and his dogs to murder two unarmed women in the dark. They burned our camp. They killed our kin while they slept. They will call it purification.”
His gaze cut through the crowd, steady and unblinking. “Do you see their faith as I do?”
A murmur answered him, bitter as the chuff of a scorned and furious buck. Morgan lifted a hand, and the murmur grew to a growl, then fell again when he spoke.
“They call us heretics,” he said. “They call her –” He turned, beckoning Lain forward. She froze. “They call the Bellborn herself a monster, because she would not die on their altar.”
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
He reached his hand out, palm up. The bond tightened around her. Lain stepped forward, her heart hammering. The gaunt faces around her were streaked with soot and rain and tears. Some still looked at her with awe; others, fear.
“This woman,” Morgan said, “was their holy weapon. Their living hymn. They bled her, commanded her to sing. And when she refused to kill for them, they sent men in the night to finish the work.” His voice sharpened. “Tell me that isn’t cruelty. Tell me who the real sinners are.”
The crowd murmured again. Someone shouted, “No mercy for the Spire!” and the cry rippled outward until it became a chant, rough and fervent: No mercy, no mercy, no mercy.
“But we will not fight them as they do,” Morgan said, his voice smoothing into something almost tender. “We will not kneel to bells, or drench our hands in stinking oil to rid us of our empathy. The Dagorlind claim to purify by fire. They burn our homes to cleanse us of our land and our lives. They cleanse us to ashes.”
Several people booed. He turned slowly, meeting people’s eyes, the gravity of his gaze compelling them to lean in, to hold on as long as they could. “Then let us wear the name they’ve given us. Let them call us what remains when their purity fails.”
His gaze swept the crowd again, his voice rising. “They burned our homes, our fields, our dead – and still we live. We are the Ashborn. Born of fire, and unafraid of its heat.”
A murmur rippled outward, transforming into thunder. Ashborn. The word took root in the mouths of the men and grew. It rolled through the mist in waves until even the river seemed to echo it back.
He turned once more, caught Lain’s wrist, and raised it. “They call her Bellborn. I call her free.”
The shout that followed shook the valley. Spears struck the ground, a metallic thunder rising through the mist. Someone began to sing a battle march, the same melody that had haunted the road to Ivath, louder now, desperate and exultant.
Morgan leaned close enough for her to feel his breath at her ear. “Look at them,” he murmured. “They would burn the world for you.”
Lain stared over the sea of faces, their eyes burning. She wanted to feel proud. She wanted to believe the words he’d woven from ruin. But all she could think of was the sound of the river last night, the way it had swallowed men whole without caring who they were.
And now that he was close, now that she knew his fear, she could not bring her mind away from Mallow.
The chant of Ashborn still trembled through the camp when Morgan lifted his hand for silence. The sound ebbed reluctantly.
“Take heart,” he said. “The road to Ivath waits for no one. Today we march.”
The host began to move.
Wheels sank in the mud and found their stride. The pyres smoked behind them, dimming to embers. Ahead, the plain opened toward the mountain road, a long gray vein that vanished into the mist. At Morgan’s gesture, the bloodwyrms slithered forward to the fore of the column. Their bodies rippled in measured coils, their feathered manes slick with water. Each claw sank into the earth, leaving prints that filled instantly with rain. Their eyes burned faint gold in the fog, black scales glimmering. Six of them. The first one hissed, and the others answered.
No man tried to walk before them.
The Ashborn parted to let them pass, heads bowed, some muttering old prayers repurposed. A few touched their own foreheads, smearing soot in place of ash.
Morgan rode behind the wyrms, his cloak drawn but unfastened, his horse uneasy with the smell of them. He didn’t glance back at Lain, but the cold current of control through the bond remained. He was calm now, almost serene.
“Keep formation,” Rhalir called. His voice echoed across the field. “We march under truce. No blade drawn unless ordered.”
Lain walked between Sena and a pair of captains, her cloak brushing their armor as they moved. The chant of Ashborn had softened. The bloodwyrms’ sinuous movements carved a path ahead, steam rising where their bodies met the ground.
As they drew near Ivath, the river’s voice changed. The plains before them had flooded. Where once crops had dappled the banks of the river, now pools of water stagnated, remnants of grain floating on their surfaces, and places where green shoots were fully submerged and slowly drowning.
This was her fault. Her song had done this.
Ivath rose from the mist like ribs jutting from a receding tide. The city’s outer towers appeared first, pale shapes through the fog, bells glinting. The sound of them came next: slow tolls that rolled toward them, either in lament or warning.
Lain knew this road. It was the same one she’d taken when she’d been escorted out under the shameful cloak of an Unsung Sister, swallowing her voice and preparing to pay penance in the form of pilgrimage. Now she returned beneath the weight of afternoon, banners ahead, a hundred footsteps behind, all of them stitched together by their losses.
When they reached the first ridge, a lone rider waited beneath a white banner. His armor gleamed a dull silver, the bell sigil dark against the breastplate. His horse trembled, nostrils flaring at the scent of the wyrms. It stamped its forepaw twice in warning and snorted.
Morgan reigned in his mount. The host halted behind him. The wyrms stopped as well, their heads swaying gently.
The messenger dismounted and knelt, holding up a sealed letter bound in wax. “In the name of the High Glinnel Triad of Ivath,” the man called, “you are invited to enter the city under truce and parlay. The Bellborn and her escort will be received in peace.”
A ripple of disbelief moved through the ranks. Morgan didn’t take the letter. He let the man kneel in the mud, the banner shivering above him. “Peace?” he said at last, his tone mild. “Was that what your masters called it at the river?”
The messenger hesitated. “I – I only carry their words, my lord.”
Morgan’s smile was brief and blade-white. “Then carry mine in return. Tell your masters we come. Tell them the Ashborn march, and their fires no longer frighten us. We will parlay.”
The messenger bowed, mounted, and rode back toward the city at a gallop, the white banner trailing behind him like a scrap of surrender.
Morgan turned toward the host. “Forward,” he said. “Let Ivath see what they’ve made.”
The bloodwyrms moved first, slipping toward the pale silhouette of the city. The road thrummed beneath their weight. Above, the bells began to ring again, desperate and discordant.
A terrible stillness filled Lain’s chest, the one that asked her what she was becoming.