Save

Within moments of the Revenant ending, Hanno saw the tide begin to turn again to the north. Doom was clawing back the day, so the hero moved again. Save, his soul sang, and he raced against the dark. Hadn’t he all his life?

It was not a straight path. Again and again he went to the side, cradling another flame against his palms so it would not blow out. A handful of conscripts surrounded in a ditch, fighting under a dipping banner. A lone fantassin in a garish striped vest of orange and green, drowning in their own blood as a Revenant speared their limbs – and coming into a Name as Hanno cauterized their wound with Light, gasping out in pain. A company of Nicaeans being trampled by a tusk, a pair of Helikeans desperately fighting to bring back the unconscious body of a woman in general’s armour. Delosi mercenaries grimly protecting a stripe-cheeked corpse from an onslaught of ghouls. Each a candle, an inch of Creation reclaimed from the dark.

Doom was approaching, strengthening, so Hanno lengthened his stride. He did not even break it when he smashed through a pack of hexenghouls, pulling one off a richly armoured Taghreb girl just before it sank its fangs into her throat. Even as she called out in relief and surprise he kept moving, ignoring her shouts and that of be beleaguered retinue to duck under an arch just before it fell and blocked the way across the street. He grabbed a loose stone jutting out from a wall, using it to drag himself up on the roof just in time to see a bearded man and an old woman in robes dissecting a corpse atop rooftiles turned to glass. Their cries of triumph turned into dismay when miasma came pouring out, Hanno loosing a spear of Light into the cloud without batting an eye.

It dispersed and leapt down the roof before they could even see his face, landing on a beorn’s back and carving through the construct’s head. It collapsed forward, sliding down the sloped street and bringing him right before the ragged ranks of a warband of painted Levantines. They parted ranks as he jumped past them and sped up, feeling the call to be so very close now. He turned the corner fast enough his boot slid in the ash, eyes already on the fight ahead of him. The two of them fought back-to-back. Aquiline Osena moving in a sinuous blur of green and bronze, hooked sword blunt from having hewn too many heads open. Razin Tanja in grey and crimson, patient and measured as he killed in sharp strikes. The dead were swarming them, a battered warband collapsing around the lovers as skeletons climbed over the corpses of hundreds of Levantines.

An ambush had been sprung here, the Dead King come to take the lives of the Blood. One of you could live, Hanno thought, if they ran for it. But you never even thought of it, did you?

His aspect pounding inside of him like a marching drum, Hanno charged in. It was a blur as he moved with Light shivering down his legs, darting forward between blows as he smashed his way through the ranks of the dead. They began to throw themselves at him, to slow him down and tangle his legs, but Hanno let out a grunt and flared Light. His veins burned but the undead fled the pain, leaving him just enough room to push through and then… three steps and he swung, arm outstretched as the very tip of his sword brushed the arrow’s side. Enough to foul it, enough that it went wide instead of going through Razin Tanja’s open mouth. Hanno laughed, triumphant, for the tide was turning against doom.

He had saved candles, today, but these two felt like a torch.

“Retreat,” Hanno told them.

“Lord White,” Lady Aquiline said, “I give honour to your deed, but there are too many for-”

“There could be a thousand more,” Hanno of Arwad said, “and today it would not be enough. Retreat, my lady of Tartessos. They will not pass by me.”

He turned towards the tide, smiling, and flicked his sword to batter a javelin aside as the dead surged forward. Hanno returned to the fight, like a sword returning to the anvil, and in the back of his mind the song began again. Save, it prayed.

The day was not over, and neither was the labour of his hands.

- Book 7, Interlude: Legends IV