The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,422

wounded Mighty to be together so that they could be protected together.

Ferkudi lay gasping, and slowly felt sensation and control returning to his limbs.

And then Mot seemed to wink out of existence altogether, and the blue was truly free.

“The blue bane is broken,” Arius said, and a big crooked-toothed smile lit his dark face.

“Good, good,” Ferkudi said, pushing himself to his feet, his legs trembling. “Now we can attack.”

“What?” Arius asked.

Ferkudi took a step. His leg folded and he caught himself on the edge of the wall. He picked up one of his hand axes from a Blood Robe’s split skull. Had he thrown this ax? That never worked! And then he found his other one, stuck where it had split another drafter’s mouth. Yuck. The guy wasn’t dead, either.

Ferkudi slashed the man’s throat and gave him a moment to die before retrieving that one. “Where’s Itri? Where’s Yuften?” he asked. “We gotta go. We got orders!”

“Itri got burned. Bad. They gave him poppy wine. He’s out, but . . . we’re gonna have to give him the black mercy. Yuften’s got a broken arm.”

“It’s my off hand! I can fight!” Yuften said, limping into sight. Apparently the broken arm wasn’t his only wound. “I’m with you, sir! To the end!”

“Are you hurt?” Arius asked.

Ferkudi checked himself. There was a lot of blood on him, but none of it seemed to be his. He’d had some hair singed off—that’s right, now he remembered extinguishing the flames with blue. He was sore in a dozen places and knew that by tomorrow that would expand to a hundred. But he didn’t seem to be injured, just exhausted with the bone-deep weariness and the shakes that come every time after the terror and thrill and total muscular exertion of a battle. And Ferkudi had never fought so hard or so long in his life.

He sucked down some watered wine from a skin someone put in his hand, and watched the red drafters and wights falling back.

“Shit,” he said at a sudden thought. It could be mere exhaustion and lightsickness. But maybe it was more. “How are my halos?”

Arius looked at him. “Strained to the absolute limits, sir.”

“But not broken?”

Yuften said, “Wouldn’t lie to you, sir.”

So merely exhausted, lightsick, and half-dead. It didn’t make Ferkudi feel better. Nor did the adoring looks in all the people’s eyes—even the woman who’d saved his life.

“We have our orders,” he said plaintively. He looked at the people and the few soldiers standing atop the wall, all jubilant at their victory. They were already talking of what they’d done, sharing stories and asking each other if they’d seen some dragon’s wings or fire wings or something down north on the island, and something about a beam of white light like Orholam’s finger stretching across the sky. (Ferkudi did remember a white light, briefly, there at the end.) They were all thrilled with themselves—but they weren’t proper soldiers. These were people defending their homes. They wouldn’t leave this wall to go charging across that hellscape out there, not even if led by Ferkudi.

And if they did? They’d be massacred in the first counterattack.

The people had rallied. Ferkudi had saved the wall at its weakest spot . . . but he’d saved nothing else. He’d spent the last, best portion of his life’s strength on this fight, and he’d changed nothing. The red bane remained. Dagnu still ruled it, and the seed crystal was intact.

They’d be back tomorrow at first light, and Ferkudi wouldn’t be able to stop them.

‘Avoid battle, seek victory,’ Breaker always said. Ferkudi had gotten caught up in a battle instead, and he’d won it. But he’d guaranteed the Blood Robes would win the next battle, tomorrow.

He sank down, and sat on a ledge. He didn’t even have the strength to stand now.

He’d had his orders, and he’d failed.

Chapter 131

“You’re a tenacious little bastard,” Karris said. She’d regained her breath from the run, and had been in the only group that made it off the blue bane before it dissolved and dropped everything and everyone on it into the waves.

“I accept the compliment,” Grinwoody said, hands on his knees, dripping water, chest heaving.

She hadn’t been waiting for him—not specifically—but she had needed to re-form her forces here, just outside the city walls. Half of her people had been dropped into the water, and not a few of those in water deep enough to drown men wearing armor. She’d sent her good swimmers to save those they could