The Blinding Knife(273)

Kip didn’t think it was his own joy he was feeling.

Gavin wasn’t waiting for Kip; he was sprinting for the spire. That he didn’t wait first hurt Kip’s feelings, then terrified him. Gavin would wait, if he could. If there wasn’t some absolutely desperate need, if seconds weren’t absolutely crucial, he would gather up his forces. Not only Kip, but everyone. Gavin would want to have his whole team together for both humane and tactical reasons. That he thought there was no time for either—

A sound like a thousand sighs swept across the bane—air being released, the hollow echo of bubbles opening. Kip ran straight over a rising cocoon yawning open, its membrane tearing as a jade green hand clawed the air. Commander Ironfist had been right. Green wights had flocked here by the hundreds or thousands to be perfected by the bane itself. And now they were rising. Kip hurdled over the color wight rising from its gooey cocoon and ran faster than he’d run in his entire life.


“Load the cannons,” Commander Ironfist said. He was looking out over the bay at the new island through the mounted long lens that the battery’s gunners had used to sight targets. His face was as hard as Teia had ever seen. “Hezik! You have some experience?”

A Blackguard with shoulders like a buffalo stepped forward. He had only one ear, a thick scar down the left half of his face testimony to a sword stroke. “Yessir, mother commanded a pirate hunter in the Narrows.”

“Recommendations. Time’s short.”

“Don’t load all the guns. Only these two can hit that damn thing at all, and only this one with any sort of accuracy.” He gestured to the big bronze culverin. “Six thousand paces, but from this height, and with this powder, nice big grains rather than fine, wrap the first shot in sacking to help me get the range…”

“Your command, Hezik. Take out the big tower.”

Hezik was silent for a second, thinking, then he began pointing to men. “Inventory. I want to know how much of this grain of powder we have, and what shot. Do we have any shells? You, weigh that ball on the scales over there, then measure out four-fifths of that weight. You, there should be some gunners’ notes somewhere. Find ’em!”


Gavin had set fire to the huge yellow sword he’d drafted and was throwing flames with his left hand and slashing green wights with his right, still running toward the spire. Karris was hard on his heels, her ataghan cutting necks and stomachs as wights’ eyes were drawn by Gavin’s figure in front of her. As always, Kip brought up the rear, short of breath, but able to do anything with green empowering him.

Before they could reach the spire, dozens of wights rose up. They’d been kneeling, worshipping before the spire, but seeing these interlopers, they ran to intercept them. The spire was still growing, twisting higher toward the heavens. The wights themselves were growing, too. The green bane was making all of them stronger. Every one of them used the power differently. Some went green golem, wrapping themselves in green armor that made them three times as wide. Others looked like saplings, stripped of bark, a thin green skin replacing their own skin, green over red, skeletal and all the more alien for being so close to human. Others made themselves hugely tall. Others drafted huge claws or great, springy frogs’ legs. Others, less imaginative, drafted thick shields and cudgels and helms.

Kip felt a thump reverberate dimly through the ground at his feet and a second later heard the sound of a cannon. A dim trail of smoke from a crater more than a hundred paces away pointed back toward the battery up on Ruic Head, where a much larger plume of black smoke was blowing away.

“To me, to me!” Gavin shouted.

After a moment of resistance at being ordered to do something, the green in him rebelling, Kip realized it was what he wanted to do anyway. In seconds, he and five Blackguards joined Gavin.

“They’re making a god. We kill it,” Gavin said. He drafted another yellow sword, handed it to a Blackguard who had lost her weapons. “No matter what. No matter how. Got it?” He made another yellow sword, and another, tossed one to a Blackguard and one to Kip. Then he started running toward the wights. His hands were surrounded with glowing knots of yellows and reds.

As the first green spear came shooting toward Gavin, he dropped under it and rolled on the ground, came up to his knees and threw his hands forward. A fan of yellow missiles blasted out from him, each trailing chains of flame. The missiles stabbed dozens of the wights and the chains whipped around them, wrapping some in flame and scoring the wights behind.

But Gavin barely slowed. He popped back up to his feet and kept running.