Chapter 74: Líran – Storm of Steel
The smoke from the funeral pyre was like a curtain between Tuen and Chambert. Líran remembered the first human she met. Where was Frederico? The story should have pulled him here by now, brought him together with the other shards od Franária that Pierre was gluing together. Líran coughed and saw that she was alone in the smoke. Then Vivianne pulled her to where the burnt ones were standing; to where she could breathe.
‘I don’t know where you came from,’ said Vivianne, ‘nor what kind of creature you were before, but human beings tend to die if they don’t breathe air.’
‘It was not on purpose,’ said Líran.
‘Most people die like that,’ said Germon, ‘not on purpose.’
Dying was too easy for Líran’s taste.
‘Where is Pierre?’ asked Vivianne.
Líran pointed and all of Tuen turned to Chambert, to the lonely man crossing the castle’s gate.
Luc was on the wall, but he had his back to the entrance. The smell of smoke reached the top of Chambert’s wall, but he refused to look.
‘Someone is coming,’ said Leonard.
So? Luc thought he had died inside long ago, but he found out that he could always die a little more.
‘It’s Pierre.’ Leonard opened the gate.
Luc took the stairs down. He didn’t want to see Pierre. Nor did he want to see Jean, who came up the stairs two at a time.
Jean followed Pierre’s smell. It blinded him, that crushing smell that opened Chambert’s gates. Jean looked for movement, caught the creature who was causing the opening of the gates and threw it over the wall.
Luc was coming down the stairs when Leonard fell by him, trying to cling to the walls. There was a hiccup, as though the castle took a fright. The walls hard stone tore away the skin from Leonard’s hands, two red streaks of blood painted the inner side of the wall. It took Leonard three second to fall (Luc counted, he didn’t know why). The silence after lasted much longer. Up on the tower, Jean moved the gears to close the gate, shutting Chambert with iron teeth.
Pierre was already inside.
Jean came down from the wall. The smell. The smell! Where was Leonard? Why was everything so cofusing?
Luc saw people from Tuen on the other side of the gate, reaching in for Pierre, who walked to where Leonard lay crumpled on the ground.
‘He lives,’ Pierre told Luc, who was frozen at the bottom of the stairs.
Silent heads watched from the top of the walls, the windows, the doors of Chambert. Tuen was at the gate. Jean jumped from the top of the wall to the ground.
‘Leonard is alive,’ repeated Pierre.
He looked straight at Luc. The one-eyed man steped toward Leonard’s crumpled figure. Jean’s rusty sword hissed free of its sheath. Jean ran up to Luc, snarling. The one-eyed man smelled of Pierre.
Luc turned around. He was too slow. So that was his end: to die right there, by a pig’s hand, beside Leonard, who still lived.
Another metalic whisper, a white blade faster than a snake. Jean’s sword was parried forming a brief X with Pierre’s sword in front of Luc’s throat. Astonished, the one-eyed man checked that his own neck was still there.
Then he saw it.
Chambert saw it.
Tuen saw it.
A storm of blades, metal lightning, rusty thunder. Pierre was a storm with a sword. So that was what Nakamura’s sword looked like; so that was how mysteries fought. Bushido was not honor; bushido was death.
Pierre’s sword turned in the air, it seemed to be made of air, forcing Jean to dance with it. Jean moved with feline speed, the languid agility of a predator, a cougar with rusty claws, but Pierre was the storm; Pierre was mystery and darkness. He buried his blad between Jean’s ribs. The predator’s claws went limb, the rusty blade went down.
Jean fell and disappeared. In his place there was a cat without a tail. It staggered, then jumped on Leonard’s chest, touched its snout to Leonard’s face and began to lick the Accident’s shut eyes.
Pierre lowered his sword.
‘Luc,’ he said. ‘Fulbert has crossed the Mouth by now. To reach Debur, he must first defeat Tuen. Our best chance is to unite Tuen and Chambert under command of the Frontier. Join us or let as be. What is your choice?’
Luc bent down to pick up Leonard. The cat came with the Accident.
‘Chambert is all I’ve got left,’ he looked up to the walls full of eyes. ‘And it belongs to you.’
