Chapter 296

Round Kvar, the ragged regiment of glowing ash: forty, fifty shapes in old coats and old scarves, spears and swords and a drum, faces blank, standing still, flickering, pictures. Around them the fighting goes on: Everlasting, chains, the crews on the slope, the Manticore's gold wings above.

walking slowly among them. Looking at each blank face. Touching a shoulder that doesn't feel him.

in the ranks, a boy of twelve made of ash, an apron over his coat, a cook's ladle at his belt. Blank-faced. Kvar's own size, once.

A battlefield in ash and rain, long ago. Bodies everywhere. And one twelve-year-old boy with a ladle standing alone in the middle of it, untouched, the only thing left standing, looking around.

(No balloon.)

Aska in her chains, the crowned flame of the King pulling her fire out of her through the white-hot links, her cracks racing. And her coal eyes on the foot of the pyre. On the blank-faced company. On the tired man walking among them.

a long breath of smoke. The chains pulling. Her fire streaming out of her toward the King's flame. And her turning it.

The fire being dragged out of Aska along the white-hot chains toward the crowned flame bending: veering away from the King, pouring instead down the side of the pyre, a river of ember-orange light running down the black ash toward the foot of the hill.

of the Ember King, starved of her fire, guttering, sinking back into the ash.

reaching the foot of the pyre and pouring into the company: into every blank ash face at once. Aska's voice coming down the hill with it, hoarse, counting.

a lean grey-moustached soldier made of ash, and his face filling in: eyes, a crooked nose, a scar, a mouth. Blinking. Breathing. Looking down at his own hands, then up, at the tired man in the scarf in front of him.

Fifty relit soldiers snapping into a line across the foot of the pyre: shoulder to shoulder, spears down, the drum beating. And Kvar, in the middle of it, being shoved into place by the man on his left.

standing in a line of soldiers for the first time in his life. Not at the edge. Not behind. In it. His spade held across his chest like a pike.

(Count: 11.)

The Birch Company advancing up the pyre-hill, drum beating, spears level, into the Everlasting's ring of white robes and white-hot chains. And everything aimed at Kvar missing him, as it always does, routing around him, onto the ash behind the line, where nobody stands, because the whole company is beside him.

swinging a white-hot chain at Kvar's head, the chain bending around him, missing, and Big Nils's spear-butt laying the acolyte flat.

(Count: 19… 27… 33…)

The company breaking the Everlasting's ring round the pyre: chains torn out of white-robed hands, stakes knocked loose, a gap opening up the hill.

The crews pouring through the gap behind them: Rougeina, Vigolas, Krydog, Kali, Smurjan's shadow.

Lasse, a boy of sixteen in a too-big helmet, grinning at Krydog as Krydog goes down and gets up beside him: "How do you DO that?" / "Practice!"

side by side on the slope, spade and sword, the line around them.

The Everlasting's ring broken. Their chains in the ash. Acolytes fleeing down the far side of the pyre. The path to the summit open. And the company stopping, halfway up the hill, as the drum slows.

(Count: 44.)

looking at his own hand. At the ember-orange creeping in at the fingertips. He knows.

turning to him. To all of them. His face working.

gathering round him on the slope, shoulder to shoulder, close, the way soldiers stand round a fire. Lasse. Big Nils. The drummer. And the small figure at the back with an apron and a ladle: the boy he was, a picture still, the one thing on the hill that can't be relit, because he never burned.

looking round at their faces, one after another. The ember creeping up their arms.

a long breath. Then the other thing.

at 56, grinning, unwinding his own regimental scarf, birch-green and ash-grey, from his neck, and winding it round Kvar's, over all the others, on top.

at 58, punching Kvar on the shoulder.

60. The Birch Company burning: all fifty at once, from the fingertips in, gold, gentle, standing in their line round him, still grinning, the drum's last beat going up in sparks. And settling back into ash on the black slope of the Burn. Each ash once. They will never be relit again.

alone on the slope, standing in a ring of ash, a birch-green scarf on top of a hundred others round his neck. Not moving.

(No balloon.)

kneeling. Not to bury them; for once, not to bury anyone. Just putting his palm flat on the warm ash, the way you'd put a hand on a sleeping friend's back.

written across Kvar's back under his coat, a hundred armies' worth, glowing faintly through the leather. And among them, at the top, the oldest ones, the Birch Company's, fading, gently, one by one, until his back is a little lighter.

(He stands up a little straighter than he has in a thousand years.)

Aska in her remaining chains, sagging, grey, her cracks a web across her whole body, the ember-knot at her sternum barely glowing. She gave a company sixty heartbeats each out of what the chains were pulling from her. There's almost nothing left.

the Kindler, looming over her, enraged, his stove-door eyes blazing.

The furnace-giant seizing the last white-hot chains in both fists and hauling, and the crowned flame of the King lurching up out of the ash once more, and Aska's last fire tearing out of her toward it, her cracks reaching her heart.

almost out, coal eyes dimming to embers, looking up past the giant at the sky of Helios where light comes before the lamp. And remembering something. Something very old.