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  There were lions in his voice, grey lions with beaded manes, and wolves, snarling under their silver pelts …

  Lion – wolf—

  I am—

  I am Lionwolf—

  And I will tear them all in shreds—

  He was far in front of the whole Gullahammer now, and the bellowing of a beast detonated from his heart, throat and mouth. Cool above his own tumult, a diamond in his mind assessed the assault. Two minutes until he struck the enemy forward line – they could not stand against him. He, he alone, could shatter them into bits.

  It had happened before.

  This was when he finally saw the faces of those he was to destroy.

  Had he ever truly seen that in the past?

  Conceivably not. It shocked him, but only with delight. What did they matter? They were his to rend and splinter.

  His hand that held the knife, his other hand that held the sharp stone he had picked up, combined with the long thick talons which his nails had become. Was his face that of an animal? A lionwolf?

  There was one face in front of him, there in the enemy vanguard. He noticed it more than the rest. What was that face? It was only the face of a man …

  The sun was low in the east, but it burned on the shields the enemy held before them. Did they intend to form a shield-wall? That would do them no service. Two shields to every man, defence not aggression: insanity.

  Then the shields moved. Running full tilt Nameless – the Lionwolf – watched the shields draw in, fold out wide—

  Something changed.

  The forward line of the foe was breaking, lifting into the air, the sky—

  The shields flared. They had changed their nature.

  They were great wings.

  Every man of the opposing force was going up into the air, and swooping now in over the racing, bestially roaring army of Shabatu.

  And that face, that one face – the dark eyes had marked Lionwolf, even as Lionwolf’s eyes – no longer blue, blood-red now as his hair – marked the stranger’s.

  Lionwolf sprang upward. It was a jump no man, however mighty, could ever have accomplished, the wrath-frenzied vault of a lion. As he did so, the winged man stooped low to seize him.

  They met, between sky and land.

  The impact was gargantuan, as if two mountains collided.

  Lionwolf felt his talons sink through flesh, even as the talons of his enemy nailed themselves into his own. The flyer’s hands were unimpeded – the wings independent.

  They were eye to eye, like lovers struggling to a climax of death. But there could be no death now. Then what could there be, what invented alternative to destruction?

  Like Lionwolf’s the man’s features had set in a rictus of fury; he might have been carved from bronze.

  Lionwolf roped his adversary with his legs. This lock of limbs seemed impervious, but somehow the other dismantled it. In turn, he twined Lionwolf, and raked up one hand, clawed like that of the giant bird he had half become, to grip Lionwolf’s neck.

  Lionwolf instantly broke this hold, both of legs and hand. The stranger leaned away to give himself room and smote Lionwolf across the torso, a blow like that of a hammer. The stone Lionwolf had secured was gone.

  They reeled apart.

  The flyer, graceful as a hawk, balanced on the beating, dull-shining wings. He glanced behind and under him, searching it seemed to see how his comrades fared.

  Lionwolf too looked down. His opponent and he had met some distance from the earth, then gone up higher, borne by the winged adversary’s flight. Let go in nothing, Lionwolf found he did not drop, and was not astonished. Wingless, he too had the knack of withstanding gravity.

  Below, he saw his own men, those first twenty-three, and many more, battling, kicking and writhing in the clasp of flying men, or crashing the flyers to the plain, rolling over them, stabbing with blades—

  Lionwolf spun in air. He launched himself again straight at the one who had chosen to fight him and whom he had chosen to fight. Why procrastinate? Lionwolf thrust his knife up into the other’s guts. There was slight resistance. The flyer had no armour, only leather and woollen garments like Lionwolf’s own. The muscles beneath were hard enough, but not any match for steel.

  The flyer showed his teeth in pain, but Lionwolf saw also he was amused.

  ‘No death,’ the flyer said, and pulled out the knife and slung it down the sky to the plain.

  Lionwolf once more took hold of him then. He bent the flying man backward to snap his spine – but the flyer coiled and veered and lunged, seizing Lionwolf instead and pummelling his body so the punches rang.

  ‘This is beguiling. You fight so nicely, like a lovely girl,’ the flyer said, rocking back from the complementary blows Lionwolf slammed at his jaw.

  Lionwolf kissed his lips to the flyer, grabbed his shoulders above the roots of the wings, and tore out his throat with teeth that were those of lions and wolves.

  As the blood filled Lionwolf’s mouth, even then, some memory, dank as despair, slunk through him. But he did not let go. He could feel the other weaken, toppling – and then a tilting judder as some shaft hurled from the ground went through one of the wings.

  When he raised his head, face half masked in blood, hair of blood, eyes of blood, the Lionwolf saw the barely open eyes of the other watching back at him. The flyer could not speak, but somehow he swerved in the air, and, taking hold once more of Lionwolf’s own neck – broke it.

  Broke it. The ghastly grinding snap screamed through Lionwolf’s skull and brain.

  Death. There was death.

  Deaf and unseeing, darkness like a cloud – falling now in an insulting rain of feathers shaken from the wings of what still clutched him—

  Before they smashed into the stones, Lionwolf felt life come back. But it was too late. Healing, nevertheless he plummeted on rocks and on the mattressing bodies of men. He lay some minutes, only part living, and next to him the other – his foe – also part living, also coming back.

  When he could turn his head, Lionwolf turned it. He looked again into the eyes of the other fallen man.

  All that could come so far from either man’s voice box was a hoarse whisper.

  ‘I will kill you tomorrow, then,’ rasped the winged one.

  ‘And I you.’

  The mantra it seemed was no longer ‘No death’.

  ‘Tell me your name, so I can be sure to find you again,’ said the winged man, ‘when you turn tail to run away.’

  Lionwolf decided to hide his recovered name. He gave another version of it to this enemy.

  ‘Know me. I am Vashdran. You?’

  ‘You can know me by the name of Curjai.’

  The spilled blood on his throat was already flaking off, the skin and tendons beneath were whole.

  Lionwolf Vashdran lay looking up once more at the polished sky of the deathland, the bones of his spine thrumming as they knit. He thought, If ever I doubted, now I know. I’ve died before.

  The other was already up and away before Lionwolf could rouse himself. But all around, beneath the lifting of the morning sun blue as an iris, countless quantities of men, winged, wingless, lay immobile.

  It was like any battlefield. Yes, he could recall battlefields. Heaped corpses, decorated by blood, covering miles.

  How could this be?

  Kuul helped haul Lionwolf to his feet. Kuul said at once, ‘I’ve remembered my name. But I don’t want it, not here. I prefer Kuul.’

  Lionwolf said, in a voice whose use still hurt, ‘Do you remember the name of your wife?’

  ‘Jasibbi.’

  Others were moving up, the men who had been with Lionwolf – Nameless – the night before. Not all, however, not all.

  ‘How have they died?’ said Eleven, looking everywhere around. ‘You can’t die here. Can’t be injured that will last. I had some bastard’s bird claws through my eye – but it healed. Yorrin here, he got a slice in the heart – see him now.’ They looked at number nine, Y
orrin. The shirt and leather hung off in a stripe, all bloody, but under it the flesh was firm and closed, unscarred.

  Lionwolf looked down. He saw, where he had been lying, Choy, who had been for Lionwolf a softer cushion than the stones. And how, under his healing neck, had lain the little wiry Kelp Lifli, who prayed to a shell.

  ‘This place—’ said Lionwolf. He stopped himself. He stared at them, all the ones who remained. ‘We live. We will hold the rest in our memories. And we stick together like honey to a hive.’

  They cheered. But all across that dreadful extensive battle-ground, aching and repaved with dead, cheers were eerily rising, for delegated leaders, for those who survived.

  Lionwolf turned again to his band, now only ten in number. He said, ‘My name is Vashdran.’

  Going into Shabatu, the survivors of the battle stuck close, keeping to their own battalions.

  The blue priests had reappeared, accompanied by the snake-heads. A pair of phrases were spoken. Nothing about gods, death or honour. It was to do with victory, and reward.

  But the men of the enemy force, the shield-wing flyers, were also encouragingly brought back towards the walls. So who had won this cutch of a battle?

  The corpses were left without ceremony. In the empty sky not even any scavenger birds had gathered.

  By day, the non-gleaming city walls looked only pale and unreasonable.

  In through the iron gates all the men walked, Lionwolf Vashdran among them, under the silent gaping trumpet-mouth.

  Within the first high wall was a space about wide enough for fourteen or fifteen men to move easily abreast. Running the far side of that lay another wall, high, opaque and toneless like the first. Both curved round together, and soon the upward-tending roadway gave on a flight of shallow stone steps. Vashdran counted the treads as they climbed. There were fifty, before another ascending roadway replaced them.

  As they went on, Vashdran noted the other walls, rising and rising with them, one behind another. They were in fact continuations of the same two walls. The host climbed then on a spiral route, like that which marked the back of a sen-snail. Ah. He had remembered the name of a snail.

  There had been another city too, more a big ice-glass town, effete if quite attractive. Had that also had a very long wide stair? Someone had told him of it … who?

  Most of the men trekked up the roadways and steps without much said. There was no tiredness though many of them, so you heard, had been badly wounded, even slaughtered. Nothing remained of that.

  The walls and walks were planed to a glacial uniformity, and nothing lived there, either in or on them, that Vashdran could detect. He judged their height as he would a crag. Choy had thought the city was a cliff. Why had Choy, Lifli, those others – those other hundreds spread outside on the stones – not survived?

  ‘A long walk,’ said Yorrin the heart-sliced, trudging just behind Vashdran. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Up there.’ The voice of the one called Eleven in Jafn: Behf.

  ‘Up where?’

  ‘The top.’

  Vashdran listened to them sparring, nearly good-humoured, at his back.

  The sun rose with them as they wended up the city, and met them again startlingly an hour later when they came out on a high flat plateau. It was coiled in by the penultimate wall, and it supported at its centre the sky-pointing cone of the last wall of any.

  The priests, who had gone ahead of them, flowed away over this space. The snake-heads still escorted the fighting force. The hair of these guards, hissing and worming about, had even here and there managed to escape by now its ties and slid down over backs and shoulders, to thrash and spit glaucous venom. The poison regularly showered both guards and warriors; the latter cursed it but seemed to suffer no harm. The jatchas had also padded up the city.

  There was another gate in the central wall. This had chalk-white doors, complexly sculpted with tangled forms.

  The sun had reached the zenith. Noon.

  Suddenly voices sang out in a rhythmic chorus. The white gates flew wide. An imposing vista was seen inside them, a broad road lined with human-like forms which sang and danced, playing instruments. Drums beat and rattles cracked, small harps let out plinking cadences. The music burst up into the air. The words were in some tongue Vashdran did not know. Perhaps none of them could. But it bounced with feral joy, with lawless optimistic praise. Welcome to Shabatu.

  Through the wall and along the road the victors strode and the music gyrated against them. Flowers fell on them, lush blue and purple, as if from the hothouses of a king. Vashdran caught one of these blooms. He looked into the amethyst cup of the flower, and saw there a single ice-grey eye, looking stonily back at him. He cast the flower away.

  But the dancing, singing crowd was applauding them. Men were in the throng, and now women were both audible and visible, their high cajoling tones added to the chorus. Slim bangled arms shook trills from strings of bells, hair fluttered, rounded hips swayed.

  Were any of them real? Or were they illusions, sprites …

  At the end of the wide road a towering archway opened on what must be some vast palace of Shabatu.

  They went in, the crowd surging and ceaselessly praising them in the unknown tongue, the unruly music.

  The flowers with eyes were crushed underfoot.

  A labyrinth. Hall gave on hall. Everything still stretched upwards, vaguely, coolly shining. There was no roof. The sun circled over, letting down sails of light.

  Sometimes too things dropped from up there. Dimly seen in distance and at speed, each would strike somewhere below with a clashing thud.

  There were hot springs, room after room of them. The fighters flung off garments, splashed and swam through fountains, or lay about in the long steaming pools of liquid azure water. Young men and women advanced to wait on them, bringing unguents, alcohol and sweets. When the first warrior chanced pulling a partner in with him, she swam against him in the water willingly. Soon enough, half the pools were busy with coupling. Noises of pleasure echoed through the halls.

  Vashdran absented himself. After the heat of the bath, which made wet only during immersion, diminished, the cold of the labyrinth palace grew solid again. The atmosphere was visibly braided with patterns of frost. But it did not discomfort; you were unharmed.

  He walked, as if idly, from pool to pool. The antics of the couples left him unaroused. The laughter and shouts were like those of children. Had they forgotten the morning?

  For some, he supposed, to live like this – or be dead like this – was all they would ever want. War and invulnerable success, sex and jollity after. Well, had he not vowed they would get these rewards?

  His men – if they were his – did not follow him now. Not even Kuul, who lay out on the poolside with a fair-haired girl astride him.

  Vashdran though was looking for something else. He had a purpose.

  Finally he began to find groups of the enemy, the shield-wing flyers. They had not mingled with their adversaries, but their bathrooms commenced only a matter of paces off, and separated only by one more open arch.

  Curjai was lying on his back in the third pool Vashdran came to. His dark hair floated round him on the water’s top, his lean muscular body drifted. His eyes were closed, but the instant Vashdran stood over him the flyer spoke. ‘So, you love me that much, you couldn’t keep yourself away. I’m touched. Or have you only come to beg for mercy?’

  Vashdran stood looking down at Curjai. Naked as the flyer, Vashdran seemed to notice similarities between them, in build, length of leg, physical stamina. Curjai too, as Vashdran did, had a skin that was tawny in colour, though the flyer’s hair was a brownish-black. Neither bore scars, only the useful calluses on their hands.

  Curjai’s eyes opened lazily. Droplets of watered steam hung on his lashes. He smiled. ‘You carry your weapon downwards. It can’t be love then, can it?’

  ‘Wake up,’ said Vashdran. He was unsure why he said this.

  ‘I’m awak
e. You?’

  ‘Why did so many die?’ said Vashdran. ‘Answer that.’

  Curjai looked aside. Men cavorted around them, in the pools or out, taking no notice either of the red-haired man standing there or of Curjai lying on the water.

  ‘The gods know,’ said Curjai. ‘Why anyway is it always like that, some dying, some left alive?’

  ‘We are not alive.’

  Curjai frowned. ‘You have something in that. This is an after-world. Somehow …’

  Vashdran reached out into the air, and plucked one of the feathers of frost. ‘This is Hell.’

  Curjai came exploding from the pool, landing in front of Vashdran. Now they showed themselves to be also of equal height. And they had snarled into each other’s faces not long before, were practised. ‘You,’ said Curjai, ‘run home to your mother. I’m not done with you. Better have joy while you can.’

  Vashdran pushed Curjai slowly and irresistibly away, and watched as the flyer fell back into the pool with a tidal concussion. Men swore, their sex-games disturbed.

  Vashdran walked off through the arch.

  ‘Where did you go?’ asked Kuul, sprawled now eating dates and sugary things.

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘To a wonderful place. That girl took me there and we never moved off the spot. I must find her again in a minute.’

  Vashdran sat by the smooth carapace of a wall. He thought he could feel it breathing against him. He thought it murmured, a sort of song: Ask the snow what it is, ask ice, wind, sea and sky, ask wisely, wisely, but oh, what am I?

  A river ran through the feasthall, and away into dim caverns either side.

  On each bank of it was a wide table, long as any lane, and through the middle of these two tables also two tributaries of the river went, bubbling and plashing in broad streams.

  Evening was beginning, sky blue and bruising to black.

  Torches burned white, like flaming snow.

  Soft and easy from their bath and play the men, led by their attendants, wandered in and took their seats on the long benches. They peered into the tables’ darting streams. ‘Moving water! There are fish in there!’