Godblind looked up with a ghastly smile. ‘If you had more siege weapons you could bring down those stump walls leading to the rivers and shatter the bridges behind them. Well, the two closest, anyway. You’d never get an engine over the river to take out the eastern bridge from the King Gate, but if you’ve demolished the other two then you just need to station men at the end of the eastern bridge and they’d be trapped inside.’
Corvus staggered back a step, his sword in his hand. Valan reacted to Corvus’s movement, grabbing the Godblind by the hair and placing his blade against the skinny throat.
‘You read minds?’ Corvus croaked. ‘You see my very fucking thoughts?’
The man wheezed another laugh. ‘You were staring from the trebuchets to the city. It wasn’t hard to guess. And no, I don’t read minds. I speak the words of the Dark Lady.’ He laughed again. ‘But those ones before, they were mine, not Hers.’
‘What is happening here?’
Lanta’s face was hard with interrogation as she strode into their midst, her eyes fixing on the kneeling man, judging, weighing. She stared for so long that even Corvus squirmed. The Godblind knelt in the grass, looking up with the patience of a blind man, seeming unaffected by her gaze.
‘This man claims to be the Godblind you told us of. He has just been suggesting a way we could more quickly gain entry to the city.’
Lanta’s eyebrows rose and her lips parted, an expression of genuine surprise quickly masked. ‘You betray your country? Your people?’ she demanded.
‘My feet are on the Path. I do as my Lady commands.’ Another bloom of shock, swiftly hidden.
There was another interminable silence as they all waited for Lanta’s verdict. It didn’t come.
‘He’s right,’ Corvus said eventually. She twitched. ‘About the stump walls and the gates. The more we can engage at multiple sites, the quicker we can force an end to this siege. We mustn’t forget the six soldiers we caught yesterday escaping the city to try and find aid. For all we know, more may have slipped past us. They could be raising a mercenary army in Listre within a week.’
‘Reinforcements, yes. Almost three thousand of them,’ the Godblind muttered, nodding. ‘Not mercenaries though.’
Corvus stilled, his eyes locked on Valan, and together they swivelled to face the kneeling man. A guard was fixing the slave collar on him and he blanched when their twin gazes settled on him. He locked the collar and stepped back, not wanting to be under those eyes.
‘How many did you say?’ Corvus asked, dropping to one knee in the grass. The others crowded forward. ‘Who?’
‘Just under three thousand. The survivors of the West Rank and the Wolves. Your ploy in the tunnels didn’t kill them, not all of them anyway. Not enough of them. They’re about three days away. The North isn’t coming, of course,’ he added and pointed at Skerris, ‘because he killed them all, didn’t you, Skerris? Poisoned blankets. Clever, but unkind. Men should be given the chance to die fighting.’
Valan was crouching beside him, and Corvus realised he was gripping his second’s forearm hard. Lanta knelt on his other side, blue eyes like chips of ice nailed to the Godblind’s face.
‘How do you know this?’ she asked, her voice hoarse.
The Godblind frowned and looked up from the ruin of his arm. He tapped his temple with a finger. ‘The gods, of course. That’s who I am, remember, the vessel? You may style yourself Voice of the Gods, but I’m Their mouthpiece. Where you interpret images, I hear the actual words of our Bloody Mother. The Dark Lady sees the armies moving; She sees what’s coming. She tells me; I tell you.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not complicated.’
The Blessed One flushed pink and Corvus saw her hand go to her belt and the knife and hammer it carried. Her fingertips flirted with the weapons, and then fell away.
‘You have yet to learn humility, Godblind,’ she said in a soft tone. ‘The Dark Lady may be pleased to teach you before too long.’
‘Forgive me, Blessed One,’ he said, looking anything but chastened. ‘You and I should be allies. We both serve a greater purpose than ourselves.’
The air seemed to ignite as their stares met and Corvus found he was holding his breath. Though, of course, you could always count on a Rilporian to break the tension.
Rivil spat on the grass. ‘Five thousand in the city and nearly three thousand on their way. We still outnumber them.’ He shrugged even as the Godblind blinked and used the interruption to look away. Corvus wasn’t sure if that meant the Blessed One had won. Or what the stakes might be. ‘Why not send a force to kill them before they make Rilporin’s harbour?’
‘And so finally, Sire, you will get to face your ancient enemy,’ the Godblind said, staring into Corvus’s eyes, ‘and on a field of your choosing.’
‘You offer up your own people to us?’ the Blessed One demanded again. ‘Why?’
The Godblind’s lips curved in a gentle smile that sent shivers worming down Corvus’s spine. ‘What are they to me now, when I have the gods in my heart and my head and my eyes?’
His serenity, the unshakeable faith that armoured him so effectively, was to Lanta a slap in the face, an insult she could not tolerate.
‘Yes, and isn’t it convenient,’ she snapped. There was a shrill tone to her voice now. ‘You appear out of nowhere to tell us everything we need to know. And yet we have no way of verifying your words. What’s to stop you lying? What’s to say this isn’t some last desperate ploy by our enemies?’
‘I am Dom Templeson, Calestar of the Wolves and chosen of the Dark Lady. Called Godblind by Her and by you. You foretold my coming to these very men on this very field on the first day of the siege. I felt you tell them. Felt your power,’ he added with a diplomacy Corvus thought he’d had to force. ‘Ask and know the truth of my answer. Ask anything.’
Lanta pressed her lips together and put her head on one side. ‘A children’s game,’ she said dismissively, as though it was of little matter. ‘The time will come when your truth or lies are laid bare.’
‘That time will come to us all,’ the Godblind agreed. ‘As for me, believe me, I have no wish to incur the Dark Lady’s wrath or punishments again. I will not – I cannot – lie. My feet are on the Path.’
‘So you say,’ Lanta hissed, jerking the chain attached to the collar so the Godblind lurched closer, ‘and I say we will find out soon enough.’
The Godblind pushed back up on to his knees and wagged his finger in her face. ‘You doubt the gods?’
Corvus went cold. She’ll kill him for that. She’s killed men for far less than doubting her faith. For laughing at her. He knew he couldn’t let her, and he knew he couldn’t stop her either, not unless he was prepared to lay a hand on her. The King of the Mireces found that he was not.
‘I doubt you,’ Lanta hissed. They were nose to nose, will to will, and although Corvus would have wagered everything he owned that the Godblind would back down, the opposite happened. Lanta let the links of the chain slide through her fingers one by one, releasing the tension so the Godblind could sit back. She waved a hand in dismissal, as though nothing of much importance had occurred.
‘I will commune with the gods.’ She rose to her feet and stared down at the men kneeling around her. ‘Do what you must to win this war. I will seek knowledge of our enemies. Remember whose voice it is that has guided you thus far.’ She stalked away through the grass, and the guards scattered from her path like sparrows from a cat.
‘Fuck me,’ Valan breathed once she was out of earshot. The Godblind cackled, and then they were all grinning foolishly at one another.
‘I’ll get the trebuchets moved,’ Skerris grunted, hauling himself to his feet.
Corvus