THE MEN WERE ALREADY pouring out of the shuttle and onto the Tamerlane’s great expanse of hull. We must have been a mile or more above the desert, so far were we toward the Tamerlane’s stern, where the great mass of the engines and the drained fuel tanks swelled beneath the smooth arc of the dorsal hull. However high we were, it was high enough that a dry wind scoured the almost limitless curve of adamant beneath our feet, pulling at my long hair and cloak like dead fingers hoping to drag me back down to hell upon those black sands.

I leaped down after the men, eyes following the carbon black scar the Ibis had made upon the Tamerlane. For more than a thousand feet it ran, following the slope of the enormous vessel down toward the sands and the temple. Behind us, the Tamerlane’s bow lay crumpled and broken. Ahead, the engine clusters and the ridge towers above the line of the stern rose in human challenge to the distant, square towers of the Enar’s ringed city. Looking back, I could see the dome of Miudanar’s skull below, could feel the pressure of its solitary and empty eye pressing on us all.

From so privileged a vantage point, I could see the tightening red spot of our army between twin shoals of black. The Cielcin had circled round behind the rear of the human column, cutting them off from retreat. So high above the carnage, the noise of slaughter was reduced to a thin and distant wail beneath the thunder of the Tamerlane’s guns. But Corvo could not fire on the Pale nearest the survivors, not without killing them. She could only drive off the outermost members of the horde. I saw little knots of Cielcin hurrying out across the sands, blue and green banners snapping or hurled down.

“Where do we go, lord?” asked one of the soldiers, a square-faced young woman, bald as any of the men. She was bleeding from twin gashes on her scalp, relic of some near brush with the Pale on the sands below.

“Inside,” I said, and looked about. “Pallino?”

The old chiliarch grunted as he emerged from the shuttle, red-eyed pain plain on his face. He checked the huge plasma rifle, ejected the tungsten core of the main heat sink before slotting another into place. “Should be a hatch somewhere near.”

Old habit brought a finger to the contact patch behind my ear. “Corvo,” I said, “are you tracking us?”

The captain’s response came a second later. “You and Pal, yes. There’s a service hatch about half a mile from you. Toward the stern and starboard.”

“Understood,” I said.

“What did she say?” Ilex asked. She had no comms unit. None of the others had, save Pallino.

“There’s a way in,” I said, scanning in the horizon for the right direction. I pointed with Crim’s knife. “That way.”

Ilex didn’t wait, but turned sharply, shouting to the men. “We have to move! Come on!” Then she was gone, leading the charge across the desolate hull of the wrecked ship, a green figure in legionary black.

“There isn’t much time,” Corvo said in my ear. “I won’t be able to keep them out of the ship for long.”

I hardly heard her. I had turned my gaze outward to the gates of Akterumu. The two towers rose higher than the setting sun, half-emerged by then from behind the limn of Dharan-Tun. Beneath that umber radiance, a great cloud was rising, gray dust kicked up by the passage of a new menace.

“The hell is that?” Pallino asked, seeming to stir from the fog Elara’s death had laid on him.

Not for the first time that day, I cursed my hair for keeping me from wearing my helmet. Without magnification, the cloud was just that.

“Corvo?” I said. “I think we have company.”

The Norman officer swore an oath that curdled even my well-seasoned ears. Her next words painted pictures, sketches white against the black pages of my mind. Outriders on skiffs kicking up great clouds of sand, xenobites clambering into low-flying shuttles bent to intercept and join the fray, and behind them? A second horde ravening on foot to slam shut our book of souls.

The port-side guns began to fire, and the outriders and the shuttles spread out, weaving, threading Corvo’s guns. Mighty as her defense was, Otavia Corvo was but one woman, and no mortal man or woman could fight so many. And yet she tried—like old Horatius at the bridge—she tried to hold back the tide of the enemy.

“Run!” someone yelled, and looking round I found that nearly all the men had fled with Ilex, were hurrying up the slope of the hull toward the engines. A mere four remained with myself and Pallino.

The old myrmidon had not moved.

“It’s not far now,” I said, pushing one of the men on and moving toward Pallino. “Half a mile, Corvo said. Then down to the Ascalon, eh?”

Pallino didn’t seem to hear me. He kept looking down at the churning mass of humanity and Cielcin, at the red blood—the great spreading patch of it visible even from this height—and at the skull of the vile god presiding over all. “This is it,” he said at last. “Isn’t it?”

“Not yet,” I said, and seized him by the shoulders.

“I used to think evil didn’t exist,” he said, not taking his eyes from the bloodletting. “That it was just dog-eat-dog, that everyone was a bastard just because it’s bastards as get to eat.” His hands tightened on the rifle slung over his shoulder. “But this . . . what can we do against this?”

Empty cup that I was, cracked and broken, I poured what little feeling I had left—what little energy—into that man who was then my oldest friend in all the universe. “Whatever we can.”

“This is evil, Hadrian,” he said, tears rising in red eyes again. “She’s gone.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I tried to move him, but he shook me off. Ilex’s words still stung me. You could have saved him. They had all died because of me. Elara had died because of me. Crim had died because of me. Bastien and Halford, Koskinen and Pherrine and all the others . . . dead because of me.

“It should have been me,” the myrmidon said. “Why wasn’t it me?” I could not argue with him. Had I not felt the same? Asked myself the same? “How can we stop this? We can’t stop this.”

I had not released the fellow’s arm. “We live. We fight. We die if we have to.”

“But she’s dead! They’re all dead!”

Before I could think, my fist slammed into the side of Pallino’s face. The myrmidon staggered back, cursing. He went to one knee—I was shocked and privately pleased to find such force remained in my arms. “We are not dead!” I screamed.

The old soldier blinked up at me with the eye his service had earned him, one hand on his bearded cheek.

“You’re right,” he said. “You’re right. Shit. Where’s that dumb pup from Colosso I used to know?”

“He died,” I said pointedly, and offered Pallino my hand.

Pallino slapped my hand aside. “I can stand, you asshole.”

“Then come on.”

We hadn’t far to go. Ilex and the others had already found the hatchway—to judge from the way they were clustered about a narrow round that swelled from the surface of the hull like the barrow of some ancient king. The mound rose gently, with a steep drop toward the Tamerlane’s stern that—precisely like those barrows—housed the narrow door.

“It won’t open!” Ilex shouted. Five men clustered about the doorway, pried at it with their hands.

“Stand back!” I said, pushing past the men clustered about the mound. The short run had cost me dearly, and I doubled over coughing. One man steadied me as I spat phlegm upon the ground at my feet, pink with blood.

The man at my arm asked, “Are you all right, my lord?”

“Poison,” I said, patting the fellow on the back as I straightened. “In the lungs.” Seeing his eyes grow wide, I shook my head. “It isn’t fatal.” I coughed again, gestured mutely at the men standing between me and the door, my sword unkindled in my fist. They got the message and stood clear. I tightened my grip, and the blade shone forth. The hull was adamant, but the hatch was common metal. I plunged the point through the metal of the gate, felt hot air rush out from where the blade tore its hole. Fire on the inside? I leaned against the pommel, pressing down to carve a slit from lintel to threshold, then adjusted my grip to drag the blade across the bottom of the door.

That was when we heard it again, high and cold and terrible as the moons that filled the sky above. Aulamn’s cry split the evening air, and high up I heard the beat of monstrous wings. Looking up, I saw the winged terror falling from heaven like the devil itself, wings tucked, clawed feet extended. Crim’s explosives had not killed it, had only maimed its arm and armor. A mere hundred feet separated those talons from me, and I raised my sword in mute defiance.

A dry boom shook the air around us, and a burst of violet flame caught the falling titan and blasted it aside.

“Got you, you bastard!” Pallino sighted along his rifle, watched the giant fall. Aulamn struck the hull several hundred feet away with a clatter of tangled limbs. The arm wasn’t all Crim’s bombs had seen to, it seemed. The vayadan had no shield. “Had!” the chiliarch shouted. “Get that fucking door open!”

“What happened?” Valka asked, voice chiming in over the comm.

“White Hand!” was all I managed in answer, returning to my work on the door. Pallino’s gun fired, and in the distance I heard the whine of engines.

Corvo’s voice came in then, crackling in my ear. “Those shuttles will be on you in about two minutes. You’re like a raw nerve up there!”

Why couldn’t they stop talking? Why couldn’t they all stop talking?

The hatch was three inches of titanium plate, and even highmatter took its time shearing through it. I pulled with all my weight, carving a notch in the top of the hatch with the sword. A heavy shot smote the air, and red blood splashed across the door and the back of my head. Another shot, and a man screamed and fell beside me, clutching a ragged mess where his legs had been. A third shot broke against my shield, and whirling I saw Aulamn had recovered its feet then, spread membranous red wings. Its remaining arm had opened like a flower, exposing a short-barreled MAG weapon. The grainy red point of a targeting laser fingered my chest, and I raised an arm to shield my face.

The tungsten ball struck my shield at several times the speed of sound, shocking the very air. Only the Royse effect saved me, meeting the shot with its own kinetic energy. The pellet shattered into powder, and my shield curtain flickered blue-white. Pallino replied, opening fire on the demon, but Aulamn leaped skyward, shot twice more. Two of the men nearest me fell, their heads bursting apart as the MAG rounds tore through them.

“Door!” Pallino shouted, sprinting toward us.

I turned back to my charge, jammed the point of the Jaddian sword back through the metal door, dragging the molecule-fine edge down through the common metal. That done, I hurled my weight upon it, but the door would not budge. Men shouted behind me, and I heard the whine of engines, sensed the shuttles were drawing near. Ilex shouted something, and I heard the spat of plasma fire as she and Pallino battled Aulamn on the hull at my back. Again I threw my weight against the door, felt something buckle in the old metal.

Again Pallino shouted, “Door!”

“It’s stuck!” I growled, throwing my good left shoulder at the hatch.

One of the legionnaires joined me, his hands smearing blood on the bright metal. “On three, sir!” he said, counting down. On three we two threw our shoulders against the door. Something snapped behind the hatchway, and the heavy door fell inward on a lozenge-shaped airlock whose inner door opened by a lever striped yellow and black.

“We’re in!” I called back to Pallino as the other man moved to open the inner door. “Move!”

By then Aulamn had landed among a knot of the others, and with a sweep of one mighty wing it cuffed three men to the ground. With one clawed and bladed foot, the vayadan crushed one of the fallen, carving her into neat pieces as it took aim again at Pallino. The myrmidon got a shot off faster, and a bolt of violet plasma washed over the creature, tearing a chunk from the base of its left wing. Unfeeling, the Iedyr fired its weapon, and the tungsten round struck true. Pallino cursed blue lightning and dropped his smoking rifle. Shielded though he was, the muzzle of the huge plasma gun protruded farther than the Royse curtain could protect. Aulamn’s daimon-assisted mind had found its mark with laser-fine precision.

“You think you can escape him?” Aulamn’s voice came flat and cold, wholly without the strain of any living voice, so casual it might have been speaking across the banquet table. “You think you can defy fate?” The beast looked from me to Pallino, assessing threats. Crim’s knife still vibrated in its face.

A shot pinged off its head, knocked it back a step. Aulamn turned that head and found its attacker. Ilex stood not ten paces from it, Crim’s gun in her hands. She was impossibly steady. Cold. Tough as old roots. She did not say a word. The general had taken Crim from her. What words were there to say?

She shot Aulamn again, and the plasma tore a hole in one crimson wing.

Aulamn rounded on her. “Miserable insect,” it said. It raised its one remaining hand, the fingers clicking back into place, plates sliding to hide the MAG weapon away. With jagged motions, it reached up and plucked the dagger from its sparking eye. Ilex fired, and this time Aulamn pulled its wing across its face to weather the blow. Ilex fired again, three quick shots until the weapon hissed and ejected its heat sink. The smoking blank bounced away, and Aulamn turned, folding its wings back.

I saw Ilex’s eyes go wide. She did not have another heat sink. She ought not to have pushed the gun so hard. The Iedyr made a satisfied grunting sound, arm blurring as it hurled the knife. The blade caught Ilex point-first in the eye, the left eye, the same eye Crim had put out. The force of the impact snapped her head back, and she bent back, folding like a paper castle. I let out a stunned little gasp—too late. She was dead before she hit the deck.

But she had not died in vain. The wing Aulamn had used to shield itself flapped now in tatters from its adamantine frame. This it threw from its shoulder like the cape of a matador entering the coliseum before his opening bow. One-eyed, one-winged, Aulamn of the White Hand rounded on me.

“Run!” I said to the men about me. “Get to the ship!”

“Durem ne?” Aulamn echoed. “Ship?” It snarled, staring at me across a hundred feet of open deck. “My master should have killed you years ago, yukajji. You are poison!”

“My lord?” the man nearest me asked, and it was only then that I recognized the ensign, Leon, who had served with me on Eikana.

Lifting my sword, I leveled its point at the vayadan, my torn shoulder flashing with pain. Still I held the blade in line, arm shaking from the strain. My lungs burned from the MINOS toxin that had killed the Aetavanni, and my head pounded where the Elusha’s claws had opened my scalp. “Go!” I said, and tried to focus my vision. Years of inability marred my sight, and the pain stretched my faculties almost to breaking. Still, I saw Aulamn as through a prism, its image multiplied across the breadth of time.

One strike. One strike was I all needed. All I could manage.

One strike, as I had used to slay Hushansa’s puppet on the sands of Virdi Planum. Aulamn crouched, preparing to strike. No word came to me then. No quotation. No cutting remark. A scream escaped instead—beneath language and beyond it—a roar of fury and of seven years of pain. The soldiers fled past me, clambering over the torn door and into the airlock. The first man had already opened the inner door and had gone inside. I little heeded them. My world collapsed then, narrowed into a slim corridor, a line connecting the demon and me.

Bladed talons scraping the deck, Aulamn pounced.

Roaring like the demon himself, Pallino barreled in from the side, caught Aulamn about the midsection and knocked the monster to the ground. Tall as it was, Aulamn’s body was mostly ceramic, and weighed little—weighed less, in fact, than the old myrmidon. Pallino wrestled the monster to the ground, threw his weight across its body and its one remaining arm. Before the monster could reply, Pallino had drawn his own knife and plunged the tip into the tangle of pistons and cords that passed for the chimera’s neck. Jerking the knife horribly, Pallino dragged the vibrating blade through wires and struts, severing them like tendon and sinew. White hydraulic fluid sprayed out, and Pallino grunted as a stream grazed his cheek and sliced it open. Still he torqued the knife, twisted until Aulamn’s red eye went dark and the white armored head lolled, more than half-severed from its body. I stood there, stunned, still braced for the blow that never came, mouth open in shock and mingled awe.

Pallino had beaten the demon nearly bare-handed.

But the demon had not died.

Aulamn tore its lone remaining hand free and clocked the myrmidon on the side of his head. It was a glancing blow, and a relatively weak one due to the weight of Pallino’s body on its shoulder, but it was sufficient to send the man rolling a dozen feet across the gray deck. Headless, blind, Aulamn lashed about, using its huge wingspan to sweep the space around it.

“Into the ship!” I shouted to the lone dozen or so survivors still outside. “Find Captain Corvo on the bridge and bring her to the Ascalon!”

“But sir!” The ensign, Leon, was still there.

“Damn your eyes, go!” I roared, inching nearer the wounded vayadan. “You’re no use here!” I raised my sword to parry a flailing wingtip, but the thing’s skeleton was adamant, and my blade was batted aside. Sensing me, blind Aulamn wheeled about and hurled its whole body in my direction. Only a desperate leap saved me from its claws, and I landed badly on my ruined shoulder and cried out. That noise brought the blind demon about, and—crawling with its one hand, feeling its way with its pinions, the torn crimson membranes of its wings fluttering in the stale breeze—Aulamn closed on me.

Again Pallino hurled himself at the monster, knife singing in his hand. Relying more on his weight than on strength alone, Pallino forced the demon down, rammed the point of his knife between the adamant plates at his enemy’s shoulder and into the metal beneath. “Had, you bastard! Go!” he said, voice thick with strain.

“I won’t leave you!” I said, and hewed at the exposed back of one iron knee. Aulamn kicked like a mule, a blow that caught me in the hip.

“You don’t get it, do you?” the old myrmidon groaned, holding the Iedyr’s chassis tight, trapping its lone arm to keep the bladed fingers from his exposed face. “It’s all worthless if you die! You’re the one that matters!”

Those words dealt a blow worse than the kick had, worse than any of the lashings I’d received. “I’m not leaving you!”

The Iedyr’s head wobbled on its few remaining connectors. It writhed beneath Pallino’s weight, scrabbling for a foothold in that smooth and barren place. Without warning, a hatch opened in its shoulder, and a short muzzle emerged, swiveled like a black eye toward Pallino. The myrmidon ducked as the shot caromed off his shield, bullet blown to splinters. The distraction was all Aulamn needed. Pallino’s knife slipped, and his hold on the blind monster’s arm slipped with it. The vayadan slammed its elbow into Pallino’s chest, and he flew three yards and struck his head against the hull plates. He lay there, stunned.

Still blind and nearly headless, Aulamn thrashed about, wielding its wings liked scythes. I parried one swipe, drawing the creature’s ire. One wing whipped out—I tried to parry it, but a lance of pain spiked up my arm, and I fell short. It caught me on the side of the head, and I fell, one adamantine pinion pinning me to the deck. I slashed at it, shredding a segment of the membrane, but skeleton would not cut. Holding me in place, the vayadan felt around with its arm, feeling for Pallino, crawling in his direction while still holding me down. When I turned my head, I could see the gauntleted hand seize my friend by the ankle.

“No!” Not again. It could not happen again! I tried to rise, but Aulamn tightened the crook of its wing, trapping me in place.

Aulamn dragged Pallino nearer, then lifted him from the ground as easily as a child lifts an unloved doll. Pallino seemed to come to all at once, and waved his arms, tried to right himself. I caught his eye then, and his brows contracted.

Then the vayadan slammed Pallino in the ground, slapped him against the hull as a fishmonger beats his prize against the pier. Pallino made no sound, even when Aulamn lifted him up and slapped him against the hull again. After the third time, Pallino lay still, bleeding from his head. My vision blurred again with tears, and I hammered on the pinion that held me, slicing through feet of wing membrane in my desperation to be free.

“Suja wo!” Aulamn said, voice coming from speakers embedded in its chest. “Enough of this!” Releasing Pallino’s ankle, it felt its way up his body, seeking his head, fingers groping their unseeing way ever upward. Its torn shoulder sparked as it drew up, looming over the other man.

Pallino turned his head. He was still alive! His lips moved, mouthed words I understood sharp as anything. Should have . . . run.

We were alone at the last. Leon and the others had run, gone to find Corvo and bring her to Valka. How often had we two been in such straits? In Colosso and after?

One last time.

“Pallino!” I said, and did the only thing I could.

I threw away my sword.

The blade vanished in a tongue of bluish vapor as it skittered across the deck and came to rest against the other man’s side. Pallino had seen it coming, and his fingers found the triggers. A second passed while the pentaquark core in the hilt cycled from one state to the next. An instant later, blue crystal sprang forth and flowed upward.

Pallino’s aim was true, and Aulamn’s arm fell from its shoulder and writhed upon the hull plates like a snake. Without its arm, the vayadan toppled, though its wing squeezed tighter, not letting me rise. I had a clear view of Pallino, however, standing with sword in hand. And then Pallino of Trieste, son of Auberno, did the single bravest thing I think I have ever seen.

He stood up.

Blood ran from the back of his head. His eyes were glassy and dull, and every fiber of him gave the impression that here was a man held together by nothing but sheer force of will. That, and pure—if righteous—rage.

“I have had . . . it up to here,” he said, words slurred. He paused, spat blood upon the deck. “. . . with you damned Pale bastards.” Aulamn half-righted itself and made to stand, its shoulder gun swiveling to find its target. But in doing so, the Iedyr succeeded only in offering the hole of its severed neck to Pallino’s blade.

My old friend wasted no time. He slammed the point of Sir Olorin’s sword downward, down along the chimera’s spinal column and into the chest cavity where doubtless lay the brain. In a final, desperate act, Aulamn released me and wrapped its pinions around Pallino’s hands, using what was left of its wings as surrogate arms. It had no fingers, but the adamant bars squeezed tight as pincers. I swore I heard the bones in Pallino’s hands break, saw blue sparks crackle from the sword hilt.

Pallino winced, but did not blink or pull away. The sword smoked in his hands, but he gritted his teeth and drove the point in further.

Another moment passed, and it was over.

Aulamn fell dead, and Pallino sagged atop it, coughing. Free at last, I rolled him over and propped him up against the dead monster’s corpse. Phosphorescent blue fluid dribbled from the severed neck, mingled with the milky hydraulic discharge. Pallino had struck true and scrambled Aulamn’s brain in its armored chassis.

“Dead?” he asked, grinning with bloody teeth.

I went to one knee before him, hands on his shoulders. “Dead,” I confirmed. “We haven’t far to go. Can you walk?”

“Shit!” the myrmidon almost laughed. “Can’t fucking stand, Had. Bastard broke damn near . . . every rib I’ve got, I reckon.” His breathing was shallow, ragged, came in desperate gasps. “Fucked your sword,” he said.

The hilt lay in his lap along with his broken hands. Azure smoke rose in lazy coils from the emitter. The wine-dark Jaddian leather was torn, and the metal beneath had more in common with a dinted rations can than a work of art. I took it from him with great care, slotted it into its hasp at my belt. “Doesn’t matter.”

“No wonder you think you’re so good, eh?” He nodded to indicate the ruined weapon. “Shit makes it all too easy.” I laughed. He laughed, and both of us descended into coughing and gasps of pain. When Pallino opened his eyes again—his pupils uneven and unfocused—he said, “The fuck they do to you?”

“About everything you can imagine,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his chest burbled as he breathed. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” I said. “I can carry you.”

“No good!” Pallino tried to shake his head, but failed. “Won’t be long now.”

My own head started shaking before I knew it. It was all too much, too terrible. A stale wind raked over us, carrying with it the scent of smoke and the sound of distant slaughter. Far below, the red patch of humanity had shrunk almost to naught. I realized I had not heard the thunder of the Tamerlane’s guns for several minutes. Where were the shuttles and the army spilling in from Akterumu’s outer gates? I could not see them.

The sun had sunk very low.

“It’s all right,” the other man said. “Was old when we met. You gave me a second life. Only right I give it back.” Another bout of coughing took him, and he cursed the pain. “You have to go.”

“I won’t leave you.”

“You dumb-ass, pig-headed bastard,” Pallino said, speaking over me. “You can’t die here. Not after all you’ve done.” Blue eyes settled on my face and seemed to find their focus. “You’re too important. These things you can do . . . you kill the bastard for me, eh? Tell them I sent you.”

“You tell them yourself,” I said. “You’re the Son of Fortitude, remember?”

“The Son of Fortitude!” Pallino snorted, regretted it at once. The man was silent for an instant, and very still, but it was only a prelude to the final stillness settling over his limbs. “I would have gone with you to the end, Had,” he said. “The very end.”

My fingers—five and three—tightened on his armored shoulders. “I know.”

“Tell me one thing, before . . .” His words failed to silence. “Before.” Pallino’s head lolled backward, and I had to steady it with my own. The back of his skull felt soft. “This ain’t it, right? This ain’t . . . all? I mean . . .”

I knew what he meant. “It’s not,” I told him, breathing sharply to hold back the tears.

Absurdly, Pallino smiled. “Then I’ll be . . . be seeing . . . be seeing Elara sooner than I thought. See Ghen, too, and Switch and the rest. I’ll tell them, tell them Hadrian said hello.” His eyes focused on some point beyond my shoulder, and his lips hardly moved. “You give them hell now,” he said.

And then his eyes focused on no point at all.

Stiffly, I stood, cloak billowing about me. There was no time to build a monument or say a few words. I had lingered too long already. So late, I turned and heeded my dead friend’s words: drying my eyes as best I could, I ran toward the gate and ducked into the dying Tamerlane.

The day and its horrors were not quite done.