Chapter 20
Part I

The roar thundered unceasing through the sky, vaster even than the dragon's.

Every day the sailing had grown harder, strong men's arms struggling to push oars through the accursed river Ash. Now, when their captains ordered more firewood piled on the torches, they saw why. Feeding the river mere miles upstream of them, a torrent of foamless grey water was crashing down from hundreds of feet high above their heads.

The pilgrims on the road into the darkness stopped at once. They dared not let a single droplet reach them. They made hurriedly for the shore, gathering at the right bank, and dropped anchor. They all were wary, knowing the words of their commander, urging them to go by river alone. He had said there were many terrible things in these lands that would not dare assail them only so long as they were on the Ash, for all things feared it.

When they were gathered ashore, Paraz Holqonak, Justin's most trusted lieutenant in his cohort, spoke of the enemy. "Strange we've seen no sign of Greyjoy. He can't have sailed up that."

"Mayhaps," said Justin, troubled. His thoughts went to black clouds congealing suddenly from a calm sky, a night turned white with lightning, a two-hundred-foot torso toppling into a lagoon. "With sorcerers I try not to speak of what can't be done."

"If not that," said Paraz, "where are his ships anchored? They can't be far."

"It may be he's hidden them in mist. The prince can do that," Justin said. "We could have sailed twenty feet from him and not known."

With that grim thought, the Swords of the Storm set off on the road to hell.

They were crossing a great expanse of land of eerie pale stalks—ghost grass, the prince called it—that stretched as far as the eye could see. They marched ever in battle-ready formation. A wall of pike-and-shield formed the outer ring. Swords, spears, axes, crossbows and more lay within. Their wagons of supplies—both food and firewood, for in these bleak lands, fire was the only light—were at the centre of their circle, leaving not a single avenue to approach them without going through the army first. And the centre-most of those wagons held a tall gaunt figure, wrapped in layers upon layers of bandages, save for the head only. Lying uselessly at the figure's sides were a bow the hue of burning gold and a long smoke-grey sword. Stannis Baratheon lay silent, still, eyes open and unseeing.

The Swords of the Storm marched for a day, mayhaps. This deep in the Shadow, it was beyond man to know day from night. Beforehand, they had had brief bits of sunlight, very dim as if at dusk, fainter than moon, and only in the hour of noonday. Nowadays, even that was gone. Here, so close to Stygai, it was if the sun did not exist. Everlasting Night reigned unchallengeable.

They marched, and marched, and marched on until they were too tired to march much longer. Thenceforth they began to look for a defensible place on which to set a camp and fortify. They found none, so at last they gave up and stopped on an open field.

The sellswords bent their weary backs to dig several lines of stakes and earthworks, lit by torches and with archers holding loaded crossbows as they dug. Justin had never yet seen the day when the Swords of the Storm would make camp without setting defences that would make most armies blush. Many called it overcautious. In the last ten years, Justin had stormed enough enemy camps by surprise that he had a rather different view of it than that. When that was done, Justin set up a tent with quick fingers of long practice, curled up on his coat and laid down his head to sleep.

He woke to screams: both the wordless cry of dying men and shouts of "'Ware, 'ware foes!"

In an instant he was up. He had no time for donning mail. Justin's hands moved swift as striking snakes, one to a dagger, one to a sword. He burst out of his tent and looked for foes.

He saw nothing.

The fire near the centre of the camp was burning well—dimmer than the moon, but not bad for what they were used to here in the night that never ends. They were not near out of wood. The screams were from no one way but from all. Their earthworks were untouched utterly. There was no place that looked trampled or where the stakes were turned aside.

The men were flailing wildly with spears and swords. He watched a man on the east side of camp fall screaming, nigh cut in half; another man on the south side fall, red hands grasping feebly at a slit throat; another on the north fall clutching a slashed leg, yet there was nothing there that cut him.

"We're fighting ghosts," a battle-hardened sellsword sobbed in terror.

They were. In his years with the Swords of the Storm he had battled demons and monsters beyond imagining, and he had thought that he knew terror. But it was as nothing compared to this. Men who had fearlessly climbed up the clawed legs of a fire-breathing dragon were screaming, whimpering, terrified. How could a man fight a foe that they could not hear or see?

But it was more than that, Justin realised. There was more than the natural fear of the unseen. This unseen enemy was deadly, but not more so than the soul-eaters of Yeen or the great demons that prowled in the ashes of Old Valyria. The fear filled him on a level more than real. It crept up into his eyes and his nose like a scent in the air, tingling through his flesh, supplanting his own instincts with a will that was not his own. You are nothing. You were nothing. You will always be nothing.

That—the thought of someone trying to crush his will—made Justin see red. He yelled at the top of his voice, calling for his men.

"Come together!" he bellowed in his battlefield voice. "Don't leave gaps between us. Stick close! Strike out!"

For all their fear, the Swords of the Storm heeded captains' commands. "To me! Massey's cohort to me!" cried Justin, and men who knew the sound of his voice rushed to him. Most lived. Some didn't. Justin saw a lean young man running towards his captain as if Justin were a rope and he were drowning. The man fell screaming. Blood was welling out from a hole in his chest.

The unnatural fear took hold of him again. It made him feel tiny and insignificant, an ant under the boot, and made the whole world feel black and bleak and terrifying. It made him want to freeze like a child trembling in the night. Struggling against the black magic clouding his mind, it took a great effort of will to move at all.

They lashed out blindly in the dark, and some of them hit something. It was hard to tell what. At least the clustering seemed to help somewhat. No men were killed while surrounded by their fellows. That was the only strength they had.

Then Marro Namerin, foremost of the Black Captains, cried out, "Look in the shadows!"

That sounded mad. But for the Swords of the Storm, discipline was instinct, second nature, even to such a strange command. They obeyed, and they were glad they did. For there was something in the shadows. It was hard to see, for Stannis was gone and his witchlight with him. The only light was that of the dancing flames of the campfires, much less steady than the witchlight's cool sure glow. But it was enough to see that there were shadows of men's shapes that were not being cast by any men.

Their attackers could not be seen, but their attackers' shadows could.

"For gods' sake, feed the fire!" roared Alequo Nudoon towards the centre of camp. Terrified sellswords rushed to obey. More light would make it easier to see the shadows of their enemies. An extra log of firewood was dumped on, then another, then another… then with horror Justin saw a man carrying a new log fall and shriek. His intestines were spilling from his belly.

"They're by the fire!" Justin called, seeing a cluster of shadows flickering on the grassy earth with no men there to cast them. "'Ware by the fire! They've got to camp centre—!"

And then it struck him. Why they were doing this. What they were after.

"To the commander!"

Justin lunged forth to the centre of the camp, heedless of the peril. His whole cohort of men around him took a moment to understand. Then they ran after him, spears and swords bristling, trying to catch up. Yet none could outpace Justin Massey in that hour. He loped, leapt, bounded forward with desperate strength. The Black Captain kept looking down at his own shadow. Near there he saw a shadow and no legs of the man casting it; his sword slashed out… but it met something. It was like he had charged into a stone wall. The force of impact jarred his arm. Whatever he struck could not be seen. He only saw his sword clash with empty air. But in the shadows, the shadow of his sword smashed into another sword and shattered, silvery shards dropping to the floor. Shadow severed steel like an axe through ripe cheese. Even dismayed, Justin's battle-instincts did not fail him; he leapt backward to dodge the killing blow. But none came. The shadow-creature passed on, ignoring him.

Justin rushed to stand by his prince, but he was not fast enough. Were he the swiftest of men ever born, it could not be done. There was too much ground to cover. The shadows without men to cast them moved faster. One of them had drawn near to the wagon that bore their commander. This close, Justin could see its shadow well, even in the flickering light of the flames, by the shadow of the wagon. The unseen thing casting the shadow still could not be seen, but in its shadow Justin saw a raised long, thin shape like a sword.

In its shadow, he saw the sword lifted, raised for a beheading blow. Yet then it paused.

For a man had got between it and its prey. There Marro Namerin stood, Marro of Braavos, Black Captain of the Swords of the Storm, scale-mailed, dirk-armed in both hands, short and slight and deadly, he who had been Stannis Baratheon's closest confidant and companion for six-and-ten years. He stood before the thing born of shadow, so close that the full weight of its fear pressed down overpowering upon him, and he stood unafraid.

"Go!" he said.

And a deep voice that flickered and hissed like hot coals answered him. The sounds that came from the shadow-creature were nothing human, and yet somehow every man could hear them as if they were in his mother tongue.

"Flee," it said. "It is not you that we seek, O thing of mortal flesh. There is a sweet morsel before us. We will take the power that is in him. You are free to run, for there is no power in you."

"He's not your morsel," said Marro Namerin.

"He will be soon enough," said the voice of burning embers. "Move!"

Yet Marro stood there still, and under all that force of otherworldly fear he was only slightly trembling. "I don't know what you are," he said. "I don't know what hell you came from. But I know I stand before the man I've pledged my life to. You will die, or I will, before I let you take him."

The darkness stirred and churned. "So be it," hissed the voice of fire. It struck out with its sword…

…but Marro struck sooner, faster. His dirk slid swift as a striking snake into empty air: the space where the shadow-creature's body would have been, if it were not unseen. In the shadows cast by the fire, Justin saw the shadow of the dirk enter the shadow of a body shaped like a man.

There was a high-pitched shriek of pain. A sudden wind rushed among them. The shadow of the unseen thing flickered and shimmered, then erupted into hundreds of wisps of darkness that were blown away. Long after its passing, its shriek lingered, an otherworldly wail in the wind.

All the men's hearts soared with hope. But then there was a rattling hiss came from the darkness, like logs falling apart in a flame. Rage. And four more shadow-creatures came for the one that had fallen. They struck back with blows of their own. Marro dashed backward to dodge one, then another; but by instinct he raised a dirk to parry a third cut. The shadow-creature did not dodge the blade. With relish, it let the two clash. And just as had befallen Justin, the shadow-blade cut straight through mortal steel. The dirk was sliced in twain, and with it Marro's arm at the elbow.

Marro fell, his stump gushing blood. The shadow-creature stepped over him. It raised its sword above the commander's wagon. Justin lunged forward to intercept but he was still too far away. The shadow-sword fell—

—and struck the shadow of another sword.

Up in the real world, the other sword looked to be vain, parrying empty air. But in the shadows, two swords were crossing. One was the sword of the shadow-creature; the other was a longsword dark as sooty smoke. Justin's eyes followed from smoky sword, to pale hand, to skeletal arm, to the shoulder of the corpselike figure in slumber.

For a frozen moment it was as if the world stopped turning. The shadow with no man to cast it stood still, stunned, shocked. Mayhaps it had never seen its weapon be parried before.

That frozen moment ended. The arm of fleshless bone lashed out. The smoke-grey sword turned from parry to thrust. He saw it pass through nothing but empty air, but in the shadows cast by the fire, the sword's shadow pierced the shadow of the unseen creature's chest…

…and the shadow vanished, wailing a high unearthly scream.

The corpselike figure sat up. Layers and layers of bandages spilt away, revealing an emaciated chest, deathly pale skin stretching between sharp clear bones. A long cruel wound, dark red, barely scabbed over, ran from shoulder to belly. Its eyes were like ocean depths, dark and blue.

Its legs swung down. The corpselike figure rose to its full, gigantic height, towering over lesser men. It rose slowly, but there was no weakness in that slowness. It rose with a monstrous inevitability, like a mountain rising from the sea, casting the whole world into its shadow.

For a moment, all fell silent. Then the corpselike figure opened its mouth, and in a voice like storm-winds screaming through the sky it said:

"Light."

And there was light—a cold light that slashed splendour into the darkness. From the corpselike figure's eyes it shone like a second sun arisen in the night. There was nothing natural in that light. It was a fireless blaze, pale blue and cold as ice.

With the coming of the light, quite suddenly the blanket of fear that had crawled over the men was blasted away. The light gave them no comfort. It was a cruel light, not a kind one. But it was possessive, and it would permit no other power to lay hands on those that it claimed as its own.

One instant, the witchlight was nothing. The next instant, it outshone all the torches in the camp at once. It blasted out into the world, and that moment of brilliance lit up the plain for miles and miles, blazing defiance against Everlasting Night. There was no sun, no moon, no stars, but for that brief brilliant moment the witchlight shone for all of them. Suddenly they could see the pale eerie ghost-grass, whole meadows of it, for miles and miles… the shape of the land, valleys and rolling hills, long denied to their eyes by the cloak of everlasting darkness… the dead grey waters of the Ash, flowing by in its slow dread splendour… and in the far distance, a glimpse of midnight-black spires, towering and twisted like a cruel clawed hand grasping up at them from beyond the horizon.

Within the camp itself, every shadow was thrown into stark relief: black against the whitish ghost-grass ground. The man-like shapes of the unseen creatures were exposed plain for the eye to see. They did not like that. They did not like that at all.

A hideous high shriek came from the creatures of shadow caught in the power of the cold and the light. The shadows wavered, trembled, flickered against the ground. Then they burst as if aflame. In the places of seeming-empty air where the men who cast those shadows should have been seen, suddenly something was seen: man-shaped figures of pale light, shining, screaming.

There was a strong, choking scent, like smoke. Wisps of darkness rose wafting into the air from the figures outlined in cold light. And finally, one by one, the wailing shadows burst into shards of darkness and were swept away.