Cudgel goes where?
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You guessed it, more of Of Reconstruction. I suspect this is part 8 of 10 or 11, but I cannot be certain.
This one broke me not a little.
[back to part VII]
VIII: Return
Vayne’s voice is like cold mead. “Would you avenge Ghis?”
“His folly died with him,” Vossler answers, because crushing the transmitter in his hand is no longer possible. “I would have nothing to slay.”
“And perhaps you would credit his memory best at the stern of your fleet.” It’s not an admission, not a concession, and Vossler knows Archadian mockery from however many leagues away this is. “But I desire other of you.”
Vosser paces, can’t, won’t, hates himself for actually asking, “What is your will?”
-
This is pain.
No Dalmascan fears the earth, least of all his own. Vossler craves it, could not know how much, could not know the lightheadedness of descent-or perhaps he could. He has missed the sun, missed gravity, missed the passive hum of a not-so-distant paling, missed insects, humidity, the crunch of sand on stone underfoot.
But his foot hesitates over the cobbles outside the Aerodome. His helm stifles the glare of the sand through the West Gate. He sweats beneath this armor, more than he has since he was a youth. And his honor guard is in step around him, so he must follow and pretend to lead.
Vayne’s deputy of the Consulate greets him with an egregious, overwrought bow. Vossler wounded him in the sewers, and apparently the man limps for it. “Your Honor,” he says quick and unrestrained, “the citizens resist our attempts to evacuate them.”
“Of course they do,” Vossler says, and it’s the first whole truth he’s uttered in months. “They would rather die than obey you.”
-
Vossler stalks the Waterway, up to his calves in filth and down to his elbows in blood. Even the swordbreaker gleams with it, copper now in the acid-blue glow of the gepenst Vossler faces now, slays now, dismisses. He doesn’t know which fiend Howl sated herself on first but it doesn’t rightly matter, it was a fiend, a terror of Lowtown, and Vossler would find respite in that if he could.
The gepenst laughs as it wails, crumbles, and dies. Vossler grimaces over Howl’s crossguard.
He will be one of those ghosts, he decides. When he dies in the streets of his city, in another man’s armor, with another man’s name.
“Is this enough, your Honor?” one of his hoplites asks, aglow from the greaves up with decomposing rats.
“No.” Vossler is already heading deeper into the sewers. “If they will not leave the city, I will not have them die where they will shelter. We offer them this,” he orders, "and we have the Clans hold our lines once we draw them. And if they do not take it, they are stubborn fools.”
-
Raminas’ throne is draped in blue and gold. There are two years of dust on the cloth, on the bases of the pillars astride it. The chamber is dank with preservatives. It smells like Raithwall’s Tomb.
Perhaps it has been like this every time the royal city has been taken-never conquered-in its centuries of life. Perhaps there has been one enemy soldier, every time, who looked upon the place and mourned the fallen king.
But Vossler flatters himself with letting the doors close behind him, with dropping to his hands and knees, bowing so far forward the snout of his helm kicks the film off the carpet and into his mouth; with thinking that no other leader of the conqueror’s men has stood guard beside that throne, and beheld it for the first time as a petitioner.
The words don’t come to him. They are words for a court of law, and the dead make for ill judges.
---
[on to part IX]
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