I glanced around at the scene before us, though I knew I wasn't moving. 'Am I already dead?'

She looked up, the way she used to when calculating how much seed we could afford to buy for the spring planting. 'Not quite yet.'

I sighed. I had really thought I was done with living. I'd fought so long and so hard, for a dream that was doomed to failure you'd think I'd be grateful to end things. Instead, I heard myself say, 'I don't want to die.'

She wrapped her arms around me, and never has anything felt so real in my entire life. 'Have you forgotten what I told you?' she asked. 'Do you not remember the oath I took?'

'You said you'd protect me.'

'And haven't I done so?'

I was going say something funny, but it was a sob that escaped my lips. 'Every day.'

She let go of me and patted my cheek with Ethalia's hand. 'Poor Falcio. For a duelling magistrate who leaps at every chance to risk his life, you really are quite sentimental. Do you know, I think you wept during our entire wedding ceremony?'

I took in a breath, about to explain that the tears had come from the realisation of just how cold-hearted my future wife was going to be, but the air in my lungs suddenly felt very different cold. Real. Aline put a finger to my lips. 'Hush now, Husband, save that breath. It's about to begin.' She patted the sword hanging loosely in my hand. 'Time to stick the pointy end through the bad man's heart.'

Everything speeded up again as the heel of the God's foot met the floor of the dais and the blade of his axe came for the centre of my skull. But the blow never landed; instead, he fell backwards as a dozen visions of mercy and valour smashed into him with the force of a hurricane.

I brought my sword up into guard and glanced at Aline standing next to me, that wicked grin of hers on Ethalia's face. I felt a moment of perfect joy, as though the greatest failure of my life, the unpardonable sin of having failed to protect my Aline, had been erased. She was here, alive. We were together, and together we would stare down the Blacksmith and his God and every foul thing the world had ever made. It was foolish, I knew a desperate child's fantasy but it was nonetheless, for that one brief instant, glorious.

The God's axe whirled in the air, fast as ever, but now each time he tried to strike, the force of Aline's will channelled through Ethalia's Sainthood knocked it aside. 'Did you think I would let you have him?' she cried out, her voice a symphony of rage and mercy, of love and tenacity. 'Did you believe something so small as death could withstand a wife's vow, you feckless, callow creature?'

The God reeled from the force of her Awe: the weight of an ocean crashing down on the tiny wooden boat of his strength. This was why the Saints had been born, I understood finally; this was how we had resisted the yoke our own Gods had tried to force on us.

'Stop,' he said, and he started pulling in the Faith of his followers, winding it around and around the blade of his axe until it became so pure and full of power that I knew it would pierce Aline's will and kill Ethalia.

'No!' I shouted, striking with the warsword, interrupting him and drawing his attention back to me. He swung the axe in a wide horizontal cut, so much raw fury behind it that I knew even if I managed to parry it, that blade would smash right through my own weapon. I fell back, feeling the edge slice through the top layer of leather on my coat.

Aline redoubled her efforts, and he slid backwards in the circle, but sweat was flooding down Ethalia's forehead. 'I'm so sorry . . .' she panted, 'he's just too strong . . .'

The God roared with joy as he felt her will slipping and turned his attack on her, his axe whipping through the air like a scythe, shredding the visions that were shielding us. 'You may carry the powers of a Saint,' the God crowed, 'but you are still just a woman.' He backhanded her across the face with such a force that I thought her neck would break.

I ran for him, trying to throw myself at him, but he knocked me aside effortlessly and stepped forward to grab Aline. Wearing Fost's face, his grin, his rapacious hunger, he flooded her with a thousand cries born of her own terror. 'Look upon me,' he commanded.

She did, and suddenly the corners of her mouth turned up in a wry smile. 'You see, this is why the Gods can never rule,' she said, suddenly no longer panting for breath. 'You're all so very gullible.' She reached out with both hands and the air around us ignited, becoming a pure, white light that lit the world and, just for an instant, made it as clear and beautiful as the memory of first love. The God of Fear turned away, blinded by it, Aline turned to me and shouted, 'Husband now-!'

In one of his more poetic passages, Bottio insists that at the moment of the final blow, the mind simply ceases to be: there are no more thoughts or choices to be made so the body, of its own volition, becomes a single, unstoppable weapon.

The heel of my left foot pressed against the floor of the dais, my calf clenched, and then the muscles of my back leg exploded, driving me forward. My hips carried the force up into my torso, transferring the energy into my arm as it extended into a straight, perfect line. My weapon suddenly became weightless in my hand; there was no sword, not really. I am the blade.

A spark skittered along the God's breastplate as the tip of the warsword struck against the hard steel and for just a fraction of a second it stopped there, metal against unyielding metal but then the surface of the armour gave way, bending then parting, and a screeching sound filled the air. Tiny fragments of steel went flying in all directions and the blade slid with the ease of a lover's tongue into the breech of the God's armour.

He looked down at the sword sticking into his chest and we stood there, bonded together like a sculpture meant to last for ever. 'We win,' I said, then I twisted the blade hard, widening the hole in the breastplate as I withdrew my sword.

But the God only smiled.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO.

The Shot

Valiana stepped onto the dais with the heir to the throne beside her. 'The duel is ended. Your champion has lost. Your so-called "God's Needles" are dead. You will withdraw from this place, from this country, from this world.'

And that should have been the end of it. If life were fair, even to the smallest degree, my blade piercing the God's heart should have sent blood gushing from the wound and a gurgle from his throat as he died at my feet. And just what, in your miserable life, has ever convinced you that you were that lucky?

The Blacksmith came forward, his expression one of shock and disbelief. I don't think that even with all his Inlaudati genius, his ability to see all the patterns of the world, that he'd foreseen any way we could have won. 'Remarkable,' he said, sounding so much like Kest after a fight we should have lost that I almost broke out laughing. He met my gaze. 'What you have done is wondrous. You should be proud. Alas, I'm afraid Gods aren't killed by a simple stab wound.'

The God, despite the gaping hole into nothingness in his breastplate, lifted his axe and stepped back into the circle, waiting for us.

'Shall we call this round two?' the Blacksmith asked.

'Wouldn't that be cheating?' Brasti asked, stepping onto the dais along with Kest.

I tried to lift the sword again, but it was hopeless. There comes a point when, no matter the odds or the stakes, you just can't go on. I tossed the weapon aside. 'Forget it,' I said. 'I'm done with you.'

The Blacksmith signalled to the God, who raised the axe up high overhead. I felt entombed in its shadow, but I looked up without fear.

As the axe came down, Kest stepped in front of me and knocked it aside with his shield. 'That would definitely be cheating,' he confirmed for Brasti. 'Though I suppose it's to be expected. Fear is an especially venal sort of deity.'

The God growled and swung again, and once again Kest saved me. On the third attack, the shield broke.

'It is over,' the Blacksmith said. 'You have failed.'

'Possibly,' Kest conceded, 'but in fairness, I was only the distraction.'

Even the God's eyes widened as Kest stepped aside, revealing Brasti brandishing an arrow, an oddly shaped stone tip attached to its end, aimed at the hole in the God's breastplate. 'My turn,' Brasti said, smiling.

I could see the Blacksmith understood what we'd been planning now that we'd figured out why a God so powerful would still choose to wear armour.

'No!' the Blacksmith screamed as Brasti fired the arrow.

A crack of stone striking against steel plate was followed by the snap of the arrow's shaft. The God looked down at the broken remains of the arrow on the ground.

Brasti had missed.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE.

The Arrow

Everything we'd planned for was undone in that moment. Brasti Goodbow, the man who swore he always shot true when it counted, had just missed his target.

We all watched in horror as our last, best hope fell apart.

'What?' Brasti asked. He looked at me. 'How many times have I told you this? When you're shooting with new arrows, you have to test-fire one to get the weight. How many times?' He sounded exasperated.

All of us looked down at the arrow on the ground. That's when I noticed it wasn't tipped with the prayer-stone.

'Stop!' the God shouted.

'Oh, do shut up,' Brasti said, and with a single fluid motion, a perfect illustration of the beautiful harmony of the archer and his art, he nocked the second arrow this one glittering at its tip and loosed it.

The thrum of the bowstring was the only sound as the arrow found its target, burying the prayer-stone deep inside the hole within the God's armour.

The God of Fear looked down at the arrow embedded in his chest, the shaft still shivering with the last vibrations of its flight. He stared at us, and all of a sudden he looked different to me. I couldn't say I recognised his face now, but I'd seen that same expression on the face of hundreds of men who'd met their end in battle. His was a mask of fear: a mask of infamy.

The man who had just killed him stared right back at him. 'My name is Brasti Goodbow,' he said, 'and I am the Queen's Jest.'

The God fell slowly to his knees on the ground before us. He clasped his hands together as if in prayer.

Who do you pray to? I wondered.

Then what was left of his consciousness faded as he slid down on to the dais and into whatever hells await those Gods we no longer need.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR.

The Surrender

If I'd ever given any thought to the dying of Gods, I suppose I would have imagined it would be different from the ways of men.

'Not all that impressive, is he?' Kest said, coming to stand next to me as we looked down at the dead God.

Brasti joined us. 'Fear becomes ever smaller, the longer a man faces it.'

Kest turned to look at him. 'That's actually quite astute . . . did you prepare that line ahead of time?'

Brasti grinned. 'Been working on it ever since Falcio told me the plan. I want the stories to give my shining victory the weight it deserves.'

'I suspect you probably shouldn't have added that last part, then,' Valiana said.

He shrugged. 'Well, a man can only be so glorious, I suppose.'

What was left of the God of Fear looked up at us, his dead eyes disbelieving. I wondered what the others felt now, for I was surprised that I felt neither rage nor even relief at his passing. I had no desire to humiliate him, or to comfort him in his passing, so I simply turned to the Blacksmith and said, 'It is done.'

He nodded to me. I thought perhaps he might try to attack me, or raise some tiny blade to his own throat to end his life, but he didn't. He just knelt down on the ground before us and said, 'I surrender.'

People surprise you, sometimes.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE.

Aftermath