ASHE
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Chapter Twelve
Calypso was sick of the hospital ward. She was tired too of the palace and so irritated by the ministrations of the Elders that she was on the verge of having them imprisoned or simply executed. Anything, just so long as she never had to see them again. And she was tired of the air of negativity that hung about the city of Lascar like a pernicious grey fog. She was bored of the tributes the servants accorded her, but she was really, really sick of the hospital ward. Only the depth of her feeling for Alexis allowed her to return – over and over again - down the silent corridors to hospital room, and the hospital bed in which Alexis lay. She approached the bed as quietly as she could, but it seemed that she must have made some noise, for Alexis said, “You look tired. Too much time spent dreaming?”
At that one moment, Calypso regretted her own lack of magic. She pulled her usual chair over from the wall and spun it round so that she could fold her arms along the top of the chair back. She rested her chin on her hands, looked at Alexis’s feverish, changed face and scowled. It did not occur to her to reach over and brush Alexis’s hair free of her damp forehead. It did not occur to her to offer even the lightest caress. Instead she said, as gently as she knew how: “You know about my dream? Were you there too?”
“No.” Alexis’s voice was weaker than Calypso had ever heard. “But I saw you with them. Betany and Ashe.”
“Oh, not another one, please! First water spirits and now another woman! Who in the name of the Gods is Betany? I feel that I should know her. And as for the other…” She spat out the words, “I thought Ashe was dead. I liked that thought. I believed that the flesh-eating women of the lower mountains had done me that much - ”
“Calypso: you’ll know when Ashe is dead.”
“How will I know? Have you had a vision that I get to kill her? Please tell me that I get to kill her. It’s the only thing that makes me want to go on drawing breath. Please tell me that I get to drive the little… freak to her knees.” For an instant the desire to have Ashe dead was so intense that Calypso could envisage the scene.
Alexis sighed, and said, “You’ll know when Ashe is dead. When she dies, I die. I have been thinking about all this, and that seems to me to be the most logical process. It would also be the time when Rhea regains her magic. It’ll mean a big ending: all fireworks. Wait for Ashe’s death, Calypso, and you’ll get what you want.”
Calypso had half-risen, when Alexis first spoke of death. On hearing Alexis on the subject of Ashe’s death she now sat back down. “Your life and Ashe’s life are connected? How in the name of all the gods did that come about?”
“When I… When we took Rhea’s magic I learned things that I should have thought to tell you. Rhea once wanted Ashe to become her apprentice, because Ashe can work more magic than Rhea, or myself, or you, or anyone else. Ashe is capable of great, final, magic, but she’ll only have one shot at it.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Calypso’s gentleness was at an end. She stood up and kicked the chair away. She began to pace. The karg would have recognised that angry movement, to and fro; life in a cage. “Why is nothing simple? Why can’t we just dispense with the whole magic thing? I am sick and tired of visions, dreams and intimations! I have had enough. Gods help me, I am going to have this war, and what’s more, I am going to win it. And as for Ashe…” Calypso had stopped pacing. “As for Ashe, alright, I can’t kill her because that would kill you, and I’m not having that at any cost, but Gods, can I ever make her remaining time a living example of pain and misery. Just watch me.”
Alexis said nothing for a moment. She inhaled the good smell of the linen sheets and the incense that was permanently burning. “Calypso, you always said that to win a war you must first consider the cost of losing.” Calypso shook her head.
“That was then,” she said. “This is now. Thank you, Alexis, but I have had enough advice and magical guidance to last me several lifetimes. Tomorrow… Today I will begin the process. That dream was useful in some ways. Now I know who my enemies are. And as for Ashe…” her voice trailed off. “As for Ashe, I don’t think she’ll ever get to perform whatever act of magic you have in mind for her.” She walked toward the door. “Alexis, try to sleep. I’ll be back to see you later on.” She added, “The Elders are taking good care of you?”
“The very best.” Alexis knew this to be true. If it hadn’t been, she would just have lied. Calypso in her present state of fury was not past killing any one of the Elders who’d failed in her duties to Alexis. Alexis didn’t object to the idea of killing, but just as Calypso was sick of the hospital, so Alexis was tired of the scent of blood.
*******
Sunrise, and Ashe, Calliope, Sam were on their way. The karg had gone ahead, presumably hunting up its breakfast. Its. Her. No. Ashe ran her hands through her hair in silent irritation. No matter how hard she tried, Ashe couldn’t bring herself to think of the karg and Gowdie as one being. It just couldn’t be done. It didn’t seem to pose a problem for the others, but then, they seemed able to accept everything. Ashe walked distractedly, her head full of the shared night’s dream, and what was to come. It looked as though a war was inevitable.
It was strange that she should have dreamed as she had done. Ashe had once expounded her theory that most wars could be avoided simply by taking the leaders of both sides - or from every side - aside and letting them beat out a philosophy of their own, face-to-face and sword to sword. This would work, she accepted, provided no-one was killed. You’d have to employ an arbitrator. But now that Ashe had seen the raw fury on Calypso’s face she understood that she’d been wrong. No single kill would appease the ferocity of that anger: only a massacre would satisfy Calypso.
In Lascar, at a time when Ashe was still finding her feet (and getting beaten in class for mistakes the princess made), plans were made for the siting of a new Lammoran city, to be built a day’s ride from Lascar. At a time when the preliminary scouting was going on, Leanna had ridden out to appraise the new site. Laure hadn’t wanted to go, but Ashe had. The thought of seeing the germ of a new city appealed to Ashe, who was all in favour of fresh starts.
Ashe and the queen reached the site at a time when an excavation was going on to explore a broad mound that stood squarely in the way of progress. Had the site not been so very appealing, no exploration would ever have gone on there, but the mound was a nuisance, and the architects were sure that the situation only needed to be addressed. Therefore, three sets of servants began digging, and after a couple of hours the earth at one point shivered and sank, and the bright sunlight of early afternoon shone on a mass of skeletons, stacked up, layer upon layer, like drying logs. A mass grave, dug to hold those killed in the last Lammoran war. Afterwards Ashe could always recall to mind the dull, empty sound of earth giving way. With so many corpses to be disposed of, someone had designed the little hill to serve as final resting place.
The discovery of the skeletons stopped building work for ever at the site. Leanna had decided that if and when another city was to be built, it would be anywhere but there. And she decreed that the remains, forgotten for so long, should be honoured in death as they might never have been in life. Ashe had been there to watch and participate as flowers were placed on and around the site, and fragrant bonfires were lit. Five hundred years after the dead had been buried, they came to be honoured. Ashe never talked with anyone about the experience: it had been the oddest of intimacies, and she respected Leanna for her treatment of the dead. On reflection, Ashe could see what strange determination had led her to build a cairn in the mountains. And what fate had overtaken those poor women? What kind of remembrance had they had?
Ashe could reluctantly envisage another dead mound, and the thought made her sick. It was too easy to imagine the likes of Sam and Calliope among the fallen dead. She saw the exercise repeated, with bonfires burning and a million flowers scattered. It was entirely wrong and yet it was going to happen. It was just a single death taken on a grand scale: and Ashe wondered if she’d end up lying there, too.
Calliope walked close to Ashe. She wanted to help Ashe, and she didn’t know how to. All the while, Sam trotted on happily enough, talking almost constantly, with Ashe responding only mechanically to the multitude of questions that Sam produced each and every day. From the moment that Ashe had remembered the mass grave she had begun to switch off to everything around her, letting her mind devolve into the memory and the host of scattered, unforgettable images. Reminders of death were legion: Ashe recollected the image of Cora falling to the ground, dying not long after in agony. What had happened to Cora? Why had she gone from fit and well to dead in the space of an hour? Oh, and it wasn’t just Cora: the more she reflected on the subject, the more angry Ashe became, and in time, her control over the growing fury began to slip. Her vision was blurring, her hands were unsteady – when Calliope handed Ashe the water flask to drink from, Ashe spilled most of it on her shirt - and her heart beat erratically. Suddenly, as the going became harder, and the incline that had been no issue for days became a hill , Ashe skidded to a halt.
It wasn’t intentional: it just happened. Calliope stopped too and Sam nearly fell over the karg, which had just finished hunting and was pacing alongside them. “Ashe? What’s wrong?” Ashe dropped to her knees.
“I can’t do this,” she said. In her voice there was a note that the others had not heard before: it was a blend of exhaustion and grief, anger and despair. “Calliope? Sam? You should go back to your life in the river. Gowdie?” The karg stared up at her. “Go back to Caer Arianrhod. Tell everybody to go on with whatever vile thing they’ve decided to do. I can’t help them.”
Gowdie’s metamorphosis was achieved in seconds flat. On an inhalation she was the karg, and on the exhalation she stood in human form before Ashe, her expression shocked. “But Ashe, you’ve got to come. We need you.”
Ashe ran her hands through her hair until it stood up wildly. Her expression was desperate. “I can’t help you. Please understand this! There is nothing that I can do for any of you. I’m one person; I can’t win you a war: I don’t even want to fight.”
“But Ashe,” said Gowdie, eyes wide, “You can’t refused to fight! You know Lammor, the city and the people. We need your knowledge if we’re to take on Mercia and win.”
Ashe’s face was as white and unnatural as the snow on the distant mountains. “I’m sorry all, but I can’t help you.” She raked her dark hair in all directions until it stood out around her face and her bright, insane eyes. “Please, all of you. Listen to me. I was once a companion to a princess and now I’m nothing. Nothing. And I like it that way: it’s great. Being nothing is great! No-one tells me what to do all the time and if I don’t feel like sex – should I ever even consider another sexual relationship – then I can just say so… I don’t want to see any of you hurt. Please, go back to the lives you used to lead and forget me.” Ashe’s fists closed on the loose ground about her and for a moment it looked as if she was about to rip the grass free. She stayed where she was, head bent, shaking, sobbing.
Sam was wide-eyed and scared. Gowdie looked confused. Only Calliope’s expression hadn’t changed. She knelt down beside Ashe and put an arm gently around Ashe’s shoulders. The kindness of the gesture destroyed the last vestige of Ashe’s self-control.
Gowdie said, “You have to convince her that - ” but the look on Calliope’s face stopped her dead. “I’ll just go and… find us some supper, or something... Sam? Uh, why don’t you come with me?” The two of them walked away, Gowdie maintaining her human form. Sam only went reluctantly, and kept looking back over her shoulder, but Calliope shook her head, and Sam went on.
Ashe wanted to stop crying, but each time she fought for an end to the sobbing and a deep breath, her system seemed to shut down on her. Images from the past were racing through her brain. She remembered for the first time since it had happened, the feral faces of the women chasing her toward the ravine. She saw the pointed teeth. She saw contempt on Calypso’s face and blankness and boredom on Laure’s. She saw the fading face of Jura – who had always been kind to her – and the queen. She saw Rhea’s blind eyes and palsied hands. The racing images combined and their force imploded through Ashe’s brain. She had a single moment of utter clarity in which she saw the past and the future blending together. Sweat broke out across her forehead, her thoughts spun madly, and then she passed out cold.
*******
At Caer Arianrhod Betany was deep in discussion with her ministers. Cirrus was taking notes and drafting messages to be conveyed to each individual army leader. News had reached them earlier from the Mercian border that a troop of some five thousand soldiers had been seen marching toward the city of Lascar. News had reached Cirrus, too, of the funeral planned for the former queen and her consort. Messages of sympathy had been sent with envoys who had been instructed to stick around and deliver – should there be opportunity to do so – messages concerning the rumour of war. The voice of Caer Arianrhod was short and simple: they did not want war, but if Mercia and Lammor began an offensive of any sort, they would immediately become the enemy, and force would be used against them. It was all very neat and prescribed. Betany could not see anything amiss in any of the messages: an intention of peace, but not peace had at all costs, was being voiced.
As her ministers left the room, Betany turned to Cirrus. “Is there anything else that I should know? There’s something in your expression that I distrust. Has anything happened? Are our envoys all safe?”
Cirrus said, “Our envoys are fine, except for Gowdie.”
“Oh, Gods. What is wrong with her?”
“I had expected her to be here by now. All the news I’d had of her and her companions said that they were making good time. And now nothing.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have sent her,” said Betany. For the first time ever, Cirrus shrugged her shoulders.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You might have a point. She’s enthusiastic and I didn’t - ” Betany stopped her.
“You thought she was wrong for the job.”
“I am sorry to say that I asked her not to go. There were several others who I thought would do the job better. It is just that her enthusiasms can blind her to certain things. I wonder if perhaps she is meeting with a reluctance on the part of one of the party.”
“Why do I think you mean Ashe, when you say, ‘one of the party’?” Cirrus sighed assent. Betany continued: “Let me see if I can figure this one out for myself. Did my sister leap in and try to sweep Ashe off ?”
“I believe that Gowdie might have forgotten that Ashe might not automatically wish to become involved in a war, especially now that she is officially of no country. I cannot imagine that she would let something so dull as anger push her into someone else’s war. Gowdie and Calypso think they want a war.”
“You think Ashe might not come?”
“I suspect there is a risk that Gowdie will return without her.”
“Gods…” Betany’s voice was as close to anger as she ever let anyone see. “Alright, Cirrus. I somehow imagine that you have made alternative plans for Caer Arianrhod in the event of something like this happening?” Her tone was almost wistful. Cirrus nodded. “Of course you have. Thank you, Cirrus.”
“May I ask what you plan to do?”
Betany gave her a quick grin. “I haven’t the first idea,” she said. And she walked off to her own room, wondering all the time what to do, wanting Gowdie close enough to talk to her. At the doorway to her own room she stopped dead. Cirrus was still standing in her place along the corridor. “Oh, come on, Cirrus. Please.”
*******
“I wonder why it should be that while you and I don’t really like one another, the sex should still be good.” Calypso said the words out-loud but Laure did not hear her. Calypso was lying on the their shared bed, heavy-eyed and longing for sleep. She had not left Alexis until dawn was well-advanced, and when she returned to Laure, she found the princess still deeply asleep. Calypso thought, Princess? Gods, no. Now she’s the queen. I wonder why this hadn’t already struck me. Princess or queen, she sleeps the sleep of the innocent. And she thought, too, I wonder if she knows that I can’t. Now that she had begun the first moves toward a war Calypso was becoming aware of how vast and unreturnable-from were her thoughts and plans. If Laure woke up, Calypso could at least discuss the issue with her. Or not Today was the day of the funeral. No discussing war with the dead waiting their acknowledgement. Calypso made a sudden decision: she would not attend the funeral. Then common-sense returned and struck her hard between the eyes. Of course she would attend. How in the name of all the gods could she not?
She lay a little longer on the bed, watching Laure breathing, and envying her. She missed Alexis. Laure would have been surprised had she known that Calypso currently felt homesick as Laure did. But while Laure was homesick for the life that had been, such a very short time before, Calypso was homesick for a time and place that had never existed. Had she had cause to know it, Calypso might have been heartened by the fact that Ashe was feeling equally bad.
*******
Gowdie was getting scared. Sam was already scared. Calliope was just sad. She had sat with Ashe through the worst of Ashe’s sobbing, and there was nothing that she could do or say to improve Ashe’s condition.
Realising that they were going to travel not much further that day, with the temperature cooling fast, and the wind was rising, Calliope suggested that the foursome found a room at an inn, should they pass a township. Gowdie was unenthusiastic: the last town she’d visited had almost stoned her – in karg form – and she was appropriately nervous. Sam was excited and scared, having never visited a town before. Calliope was nervous, too. Her experience of towns was confined to knowing what they were called. But she was frightened about Ashe’s condition, and liked the idea of them having a roof over their collective heads for one night at least. It was bound to feel like a strange roof, Calliope having been used to having water to fill in all the angles and shapes of her world, but it was something that might be reassuring to Ashe, if and when Ashe started paying attention to her surroundings. What they were to do about payment, Calliope had not the slightest idea. Somehow she got the feeling that Ashe had never had any money. Perhaps they could offer up work in exchange for hospitality?
Ashe had gone a little too far down an unfamiliar path. The older river spirits would have understood her: they’d seen the inside of her thoughts when they had lifted her out of one element and into another. They would have seen what no-one else could – that there was something inside Ashe that had been too badly broken to ever be mended – and that Ashe had become aware of the break. The recent time with Sam and Calliope – and less so, the time spent in Gowdie's company – had relaxed Ashe’s usual control. Ashe had begun to envisage another way of life, and it seemed that such a way was already barricaded against her. So she had people. So what. Ashe didn’t want people. Ashe didn’t want a personal race. All she wanted to do was go back into the water with Calliope, and make a home there, preferably forever.
*******
Alexis’s condition had improved, ever so slightly. When Calypso had given up on all hopes of sleep, and had gone instead to the hospital, she found that the bleeding had slowed, and that for the first time since the start of the illness, Alexis had eaten something. Only soup, for what that was worth, but Calypso wanted an improvement so badly that she happily exaggerated the slight change, making it a major one, and was accordingly jubilant.
“I take it that it’s not just your being so much better.” It did not come out as a question, but Alexis treated it as though it had.
“You want me to say that if I’m doing better, Ashe must be doing worse?” Calypso’s nodding was almost comic in its intensity. “Alright, Calypso, for what it’s worth, I think that Ashe is doing a little less well.”
“Has she been hurt? Has anyone else tried to kill her?” Alexis almost smiled. Calypso’s hatred of Ashe was becoming too extreme to be anything other than insane.
“Not hurt, not killed, obviously. Just… very sad.” Calypso stared. Her mouth opened foolishly. She stared at Alexis.
“You’re telling me that you’ve backed off a few steps from death because Ashe is… sad?” Calypso achieved a new high in contempt. Alexis smiled wryly. “Oh, as if I should even care! Let’s hope it’s a good long and grim sadness, then. Let’s hope it almost – yes, Alexis, I said almost – kills her.”
Calypso almost ran from the room, rejuvenated by the thought of Ashe in trouble. Alexis didn’t want to profit from whatever was going wrong with Ashe, and wondered how long her temporary convalescence would last. It was a salutary experience: she had never known that soup could taste so good.
*******
Calliope wasn’t interested in listening to anything that Gowdie and Sam had to say, and they tried very hard to make her listen. Calliope was simply concerned with Ashe. Indeed, when Gowdie began again on her We-need-Ashe-to-fight-for-us-because-whatever, Calliope just stared fiercely past her into the middle distance until Gowdie’s confidence failed and her voice trailed off. Later, when Gowdie tried to persuade Sam to have another go at Calliope, Sam followed Calliope’s example.
They had been exceptionally lucky, or so it seemed: Calliope had suddenly developed a reluctance to treat anything that fitted with their plans as either secured or permanent. They had found a township, and they had found an inn, where the proprietor had found them two rooms without requesting a deposit or asking any searching questions. Calliope had become single-minded to a remarkable extent. Sam, watching her, was beginning to understand.
The division of the two rooms had not been what Gowdie had expected, either. She assumed she’d be sharing with Ashe, and that the others, as water spirits, would want to hang out together. But Calliope had pulled Ashe into one room and left Sam and the shape-shifter to share the other. The truth of the matter was that Gowdie was so frustrated at their seemingly-stagnating situation and Ashe’s reluctance to do anything, that she was virtually skipping from foot to foot. In this state she kept half-changing, which amused Sam beyond measure.
Calliope didn’t ask why they’d gotten a room without difficulty, she left Ashe sitting numbly on the bed, locked the door behind her and went next door to talk to Sam. “Keep Gowdie occupied,” she said. “I don’t care what you do. Drug her if necessary. Knock her out if all else fails. I need some time. Possibly a day. And Sam, if I so much as hear the sound of any shape shifting, I will personally make Gowdie into a coat.”
Sam looked shocked, but she nodded. “I can do that.”
“Good.”
Calliope returned to Ashe, putting to the bolt on the inside of the door and placing the key deep inside her pocket. She sat on the bed beside Ashe and took Ashe’s cold hands in her own. For a long time they sat in silence.
Ashe cleared her throat. She said, “I’m sorry. I seem to have gotten lost. I know that I should be doing all these things, but I don’t think I can. And I don’t want to fight anyone.”
“Right now, I don’t think you could fight anyone,” said Calliope, but she said it kindly. “Ashe, if I left you alone in here, do you think you could manage not to start hitting the walls?” It was a serious question. Ashe tried to manage a smile and failed entirely.
“I don’t know,” she said. Calliope nodded.
“No, I don’t think you do. Alright.” She had made up her mind. “Ashe, I want to help you, but to do so, I need for you to do some things for me.” Ashe raised her eyebrows.
“Does it require any more energy than breathing?”
There came a knock at the door. Calliope got up, released the bolt and accepted from one of the inn staff a tray on which were cups and a bottle of wine. She poured wine into two cups and added to Ashe’s share the content of a small leather bag, which she had kept hidden in an inside pocket. She swirled the mixture round and handed it to Ashe.
Even as Ashe drank, she became aware of a sense of recognition. The powder added to her drink smelled faintly of saffron, but she didn’t register a difference in taste until she had drained the cup entirely and glanced up at Calliope as if for further instructions. Ashe became aware that she was immediately much warmer: it was as if the prolonged chill of earlier had been replaced by a fever. She blinked hard, began to speak and then simply fell back onto the bed, insensible.
Calliope just sat and watched Ashe for a time. She was aware that what she was about to do had not won approval from anyone, but that no longer worried her. What did matter was that Ashe was sliding away from them all, and that the movement had to be stopped and then reversed. Calliope arranged herself on the bed, Ashe’s head in her lap, and pressed her fingertips to either side of Ashe’s forehead. She took a deep breath, let it out, and closed her eyes.
The substance that Ashe had just drunk did not simply cause insensibility; it also caused the barriers to shared thought to be erased. Calliope wandered about inside Ashe’s memory as she might have walked through the corridors of the Lascan palace. She could pass by all the figures from Ashe’s life, Laure, Jura, the queen, even Calypso and Alexis, although these last two she avoided, though not from any sense of fear. Alexis was a potential risk because she was inhabiting – for the main part – a world not dissimilar to the one in which Ashe now lay. As a result, Alexis was the only person liable to understand what was going on, even to the point of interfering in Calliope’s plans. They are oddly tied, Calliope thought, seeing Alexis where she lay quietly in the hospital ward, the dressing pad on her back less stained than usual. Calliope could even smell the incense that was burning, although she could not fully identify it: rose? sandalwood? patchouli? In the river all her senses had been fully engaged, all of the time. It was strange and it felt quite pleasant to have such a selective experience.
She saw Calypso, who, in company with some of her advisors, was planning the beginnings of the war that would – if it went ahead – raze Lascar to the ground, deplete Mercia beyond hope of continuation and leave sufficient corpses to make up an entire mountain. Forget the scenic mound… this would be appalling.
She found Laure, who was, usefully, so intent upon her own grief, as the final stages to the funeral were put into operation, that she was ignorant of Calliope’s touch. She looked in on Rhea, and that visit was the most productive. Beneath the coating of lunacy and confusion, Rhea’s innermost thoughts were still compact and as organised as Calliope might have dreamed of. Eventually she passed through the main corridors listening to the servants talking, and when she went back through the city itself, toward the gate, invisible and untouchable, she found Rhea’s tower.
She climbed the steps cautiously. The events of the past weeks were cleanly etched onto the brickwork. There Calliope saw Cairo, felt the wash of anger and loss that radiated from that memory and understood what had taken place. Then she wove together the final threads of thought and let her mind take her back to the inn room where Ashe was still sleeping. Next door she knew that Sam would be working hard at calming down the fractious Gowdie, but she had no doubt that Sam could cope. She could devote all her energies to Ashe. She would enter in Ashe’s desires and then she could meet them. Ashe would feel – But Calliope knew in that instant that she wasn’t going to get the chance of meeting any desires, let alone a deadline. There were loud and angry voices coming up the stairs, and loud and angry people accompanying them. Calliope could have kicked herself… She had been so concentrated on getting Ashe into a better state that she hadn’t seen just how easy the room had been to get, the service prompt and courteous. The voices were growing louder by the instant. Calliope sighed deeply and forced herself into Ashe’s mind. It would be a rude awakening by any standards, but it was that or die. In the palace of Ashe’s dreams there came a tornado, that tugged down the bricks and shattered all the shutters. In an instant Ashe was up and clear-headed. Later she would have the worst headache of all time, Calliope knew, but that was a reasonable price to pay.
“What in the name of all the gods brought your rotten kind into our town?” The question was not meant to be answered, especially as the speaker had a knife to Sam’s throat: Ashe wondered if Sam would bleed water or blood, if the knife went in. “Vermin and kargs. And what are you? Some other kind of beast?” The speaker, tall and rude and arrogant was eyeing Ashe, who had unlocked the next door and slid into the corridor like water flowing. Ashe grinned madly.
“I’m vermin and kargs,” she said. “And some other kind of beast. What excuse is there for you?” So saying she slid her sword free and swung the blade. There was no time for deft violence: Ashe simply took the speaker’s head off before their knife could end Sam’s wandering conversation once and for all.
There was blood everywhere: Ashe was bathed in it. Oddly, she didn’t look inappropriate, and although Gowdie growled in human form she wasn’t half as frightening to the assembled townspeople as Ashe, with her strange scarred hands fixed solidly on the halt of her sword and a look of utter calm on her face.
Ashe grinned, and wiped the blood out of her eyes. “Now,” she said, “My friends and I are about to leave. Who else’s soul would like to accompany us? I’m easy: I’ll happily take the whole gods-forsaken lot of you.”
And she meant it. No-one looking into that sanely-insane expression could doubt it. Gowdie stayed frozen in human form; Ashe’s blood-letting had shocked her into staying put.
But someone in the crowd must have thought that Ashe was either bluffing or at the very least, incapable of dealing with them all, and rushed at Calliope.
The knife went up, and should have come in Calliope’s side, but Ashe’s anger had finally come back, and found an outlet. She threw back her head and roared, and as she did so, the world all around them seemed to shift a little. Ashe grabbed for the knife and even when it went through her hand she didn’t seem to feel it. She twisted her hand round, the blade still stuck in it, until it reached its owner’s throat. Ashe growled, and the blade sank home. Ashe took back her hand, shook it free of the knife, watched the blood fly.
Enemy reinforcements were coming in from both sides, and the inn was becoming decidedly crowded. Gowdie could not have changed had it been the most desirable thing in the world, and Sam and Calliope were jammed up against the wall, helpless. Ashe couldn’t swing her sword, so she had taken hold of it at each end and was using it almost as a stave. For a moment it seemed as if despite Ashe’s rage and the very best intentions of her companions, the game was up. Calliope had time to wonder if she should have traversed the insides of Ashe’s head; Sam wondered if she’d ever see the river again, Gowdie howled in silent protest and Ashe grinned. There was an end to indecision: there wasn’t the time for it.
Then there came a sound like a real tornado, a huge clap of thunder and a vast rush of air and noise, and the roof of the inn was lifted off and hurled into the sky. Ashe stared up into the sudden blue and caught her breath.