The Skein of Lament

by Chris Wooding

  Heart’s blood, if she’s run out on us, I’ll kill that woman myself, he thought.

  They had held this pass for over two hours now. There were only a limited number of ways out of the Knot, and each one had been fortified with one or more fire-cannons, as well as hastily constructed stone walls and earth banks. The sides of the defile rose sheer on either side, and the Aberrants were being forced to crowd uphill along an uneven surface of blood-slick stone to get to the barricade at the top. The sun had been slanting down into the enemy’s eyes all morning, dazzling them, though it had now risen overhead and would soon begin to do the same to the defenders.

  Rifles were fired dry, then swapped with loaders who refilled the chambers of the weapons and then swapped back when the next one was done. A small stack of guns steamed in a shadowed alcove, cooling so that the heat of repeated shooting would not make the ignition powder explode all at once. Three men attended to the fire-cannon behind the barricade, which was fashioned in the shape of a demon of the air, its body streamlined and mouth agape to spit flame. Half of the defile was ablaze from shellshot, sending thick black clouds of smoke up towards the defenders and making them squint. Yugi had been forced to limit use of the fire-cannon for fear of unwittingly providing the Aberrants with too much cover. The hot reek of bubbling fat and blackening flesh had resulted in vomiting behind the barricade, and in the midday heat the stench of warming stomach acids was appalling.

  ‘They’re trying again,’ Nomoru said, setting her rifle stock under her armpit and sighting. She took her eye away to glance at Yugi. ‘Wish I’d stayed with Kaiku now,’ she dead-panned. Yugi laughed explosively, but it came out with a manic and desperate edge to it.

  Despite the fact that the Nexuses had not been seen yet, their presence was still much in evidence in the way the Aberrants acted. They would attack in number, return and regroup in a very military fashion, and their strikes became more careful and organised as the day progressed. Yugi suspected that the Nexuses were hanging back after snipers like Nomoru had taught them that it was dangerous to show themselves, but their influence could still be observed.

  There had been a short pause in the attacks after the skrendel had managed to slip over the barricade. That had been a lucky run, a product of too many people swapping weapons at once, combined with the speed and agility of the creature. Now the Aberrants were coming again, dark shapes running around the flames and through the swirling smoke. Rifles cracked once more, pummelling iron balls into the attackers at high velocity, smacking through flesh and shattering bone.

  But this time, the Aberrants did not fall.

  It took the defenders too long to realise that the creatures were still coming. The riflemen and women had paused, expecting the Aberrants to collapse and provide a clearer shot at the ones behind. By the time Yugi had yelled at the fire-cannon crew, and another salvo of bullets had failed to stop the rush, Nomoru had realised what was going on.

  They were using their dead as shields.

  Out of the smoke came a half-dozen ghauregs, each with another one of their number propelled before them: limp bags of muscle that jerked like dolls as they absorbed the hail of rifle balls. The monstrous, shaggy humanoids were powering over the heaped corpses of their companions, forming a line across the defile behind which a horde of other Aberrants pressed forward. Nomoru picked off two of them by dint of her skill with the rifle, and another one had its legs shot out from under it by some quick-thinking defenders, but they had no sooner stumbled than they were borne up again by another ghaureg, lifted and presented as targets so that the creatures behind could push on. The fire-cannon roared, but it was fired in haste before the operators could decline the elevation enough; it blasted the middle of the horde to flaming ruin and prevented any more from getting through, but that still left too many, who discarded their burdens as they reached the barricade and began to clamber over.

  Guns were thrown aside and swords drawn as the defenders crowded to counter the assault. Yugi saw a ghaureg pick up an Aberrant woman by her leg and fling her into the side of the defile; he heard the breaking of her bones as she hit. Then he was in close, ducking a swipe from the creature’s enormous arm, his blade lashing out to sever the hand at the wrist. The beast roared in pain, then jerked as two men came from behind it and buried their weapons in its back. Its huge jaw went slack and the light went out in its eyes, and it slumped to the ground with a bubbling sigh.

  He cast about for Nomoru, but the wiry scout was nowhere to be seen. The warble of a shrilling warned him an instant before it leaped from the top of the barricade towards him. He dodged the first pounce, but it reared up on its hind legs and slashed a sickle-claw, which cut a furrow through his shirt and missed his skin by the width of a hair. His count-erstrike was pre-empted by a rifle shot from his left, which smashed through the creature’s skull armour and dropped it to the dusty ground. He glanced at his saviour, already knowing who it would be. Nomoru had retreated to a nook further up the pass and was crouching there, picking off Aberrants one by one. She was no hand-to-hand fighter; she was much more deadly from a distance.

  Reassured now that he knew where she was, he swung back to the fray. The barricade had collapsed under the weight of the ghauregs that lumbered over it. Already the ground was cluttered with the fallen, attacker and defender alike. The Aberrants were heavily outnumbered, and their reinforcements were cut off by a wall of flame further down the defile, but they took three for every one of them that died. Yugi vaulted a man whose throat had been torn out and ran to the rescue of another who was facing a furie alone. He recognised it from Kaiku’s description: like some demonic boar, its multiple tusks huge and hooked, its trotters like blades, its back tufted with spines and its face warped into a snarl. His attempt at intervention was foiled as something appeared as if from nowhere in front of him, an awful, shrieking creature with tentacles whirling around a circular maw and a body black, hairless and glistening. It was already wounded, maddened with pain; he finished it off in moments, but by the time he returned to his original objective, the man had been stamped underfoot by the furie and lay bloodied and dead in a rising haze of dust.

  He was about to chase after the beast, motivated by some illogical sense of responsibility at allowing the man to be killed, when he heard the rising wail of the wind-alarms from behind him, an eerie, mournful howl coming from the east. More of them joined in, the Libera Dramach lookouts spinning tubes of hollow wood on long ropes around their heads to create a noise that could be heard for miles. It was an idea stolen from the Speakers at the Imperial councils, who used smaller versions to call for order among the assembly. Yugi had been dreading to hear it ever since that morning.

  Somewhere along the defensive line, the enemy had broken through. They were at the Fold, and behind the Libera Dramach positions. The retreat had been sounded.

  He went for the furie anyway. The fight was not yet over here, though the Aberrants were few in number and were being whittled down at great cost to the defenders. If there were going to be any folk left to retreat at all, there would need to be more Aberrant blood spilt. Thinking of the streets of his home being trampled under the feet of these predators, he let his anger and frustration fuel him, and with a cry Yugi threw himself into the battle.

  The rim of the Fold was a mass of fortifications, and no more so than on the western side. Enemies coming down from the north, south or east slopes could be engaged on the valley floor, where the defenders would have the advantage of height, being able to attack from the plateaux and rain death down on any invaders. But anyone surmounting the western end would be above the town, critically negating the Libera Dramach’s ability to use artillery for fear of hitting their own buildings. The invaders could spill over the cave-riddled cliffs like a river over a waterfall, flooding down through the steps and levels of the town. Because of this, the western edge was guarded most fiercely of all; and since it was directly in their way, that was where the Aberrant army struck hardest. />
  The primary defence was a stockade wall, a triple layer of tree trunks driven into holes bored into the stone. The effort it had taken to dig out the foundations had been enormous, but in the Xarana Fault security was the most important priority. Kamako cane scaffolding had been built up behind the wall, supporting walkways and small pulleys, a jumble of ladders and ropes. Now it was aswarm with men and women, vibrating beneath the weight of running feet. Fire-cannons bellowed from their positions atop the wall; ballistae threw rocks and explosives, lobbing them in languid and deadly arcs against the clear blue sky. The sound of rifles was a deafening and constant rattle, interspersed with the sinister hum of bowstrings, and the air stank of burnt ignition powder and sweat.

  Zaelis tu Unterlyn clambered up the last ladder to the top of the wall, his lame leg making the climb awkward. His heart was racing: the chaos all around him terrified him. He was no general. He knew little of the arts of combat and had never been this close to conflict before. The defence of the Fold he had left in the hands of men like Yugi, who knew what they were doing. For his own part, he felt suddenly demoted and useless. It was a hard thing for him to surrender the reins of an organisation he had built from the ground up, even temporarily. Between that and his daughter’s sudden and entirely unexpected rebellion against his will, he felt more like an old man than he ever had before. He feared he was not taking it well.

  The last few days he had been either interfering in the battle plans of men who clearly knew their business better than he did, or clashing with Lucia. Having never had to discipline her before, he had no idea what to do. She was not like other children he had tutored in years past. To some extent, he dared not punish her at all because he relied so much on her as the uniting force behind his organisation, and to estrange her would be divisive to the Libera Dramach.

  Were they right, Lucia and Cailin? Did Zaelis truly care for the Libera Dramach more than he cared for his own daughter? Had he adopted her simply to keep his most important asset under his control? Gods, he did not even want to think what that said about him, but he could not wholly dismiss the idea either.

  Alskain Mar. It had all started at Alskain Mar, when he had pushed Lucia into using her powers again, had lowered her into the lair of a creature of unimaginable power and unguessable intent. Because he was afraid of what might happen to the people of the Fold, he had risked her. Heart’s blood, what had possessed him? Even when he had been agonising over his choice, had it been because he had been weighing the danger to his most precious figurehead, not to his daughter as he should have been? She had been so passive and pliable for so long that he had almost forgotten there was a person behind those distant eyes. No wonder she felt betrayed. No wonder she turned on him.

  He could see her drifting closer to Cailin day by day. Since Alskain Mar. But he could not allow the Red Order to have Lucia’s heart; they were too influential by half as it was, and they shared little of the Libera Dramach’s dedication of purpose. They were looking to their own advantage, their own survival. And they were secretive. Cailin had not shared her plans concerning the invasion with Zaelis, and had refused to participate in collaborative strategies. Now she had disappeared entirely when he needed her most.

  One thing he feared more than losing Lucia was losing her to Cailin. But once again, the question scratched at him: whom do you love, your daughter or the people you gathered to follow her?

  He was still thinking it as he climbed onto the walkway and looked out over the stockade wall and to the west, but the sight there chased it from his mind as the blood drained from his cheeks.

  The Aberrants were everywhere, a vast black swathe pressed up against the stockade wall, a terrible horde of tooth and muscle and armoured skin that gnashed and raged with bloodlust. They had poured out of the labyrinth of thin defiles and ravines that led down into the Knot and thrown themselves against the stockade walls to be massacred. Black columns of smoke billowed upward, where shellshot had made flaming ruin of the attackers. Explosions scorched the stone and sent broken bodies flying as ballistae found their mark.

  At the base of the wall, hundreds lay crushed and dead, and still more piled on top to add their corpses, forming a steadily growing slope of blood and gristle. They were concentrating their efforts in several spots, seeking to make a mound big enough to get over the wall. Their suicidal singularity of purpose was horrifying; but worse, it was unstoppable.

  Next to Zaelis, four men took a cauldron of molten metal that had been winched up from the ground and tipped it onto those creatures that were clamouring beneath them, but their animal screams only signified new additions to the slippery heap that was already halfway up the stockade.

  ‘Burn them!’ someone was shouting. ‘Bring oil and burn them! Keep them burning!’

  Zaelis looked along the wall at the man who was striding along the walkway towards him. Yugi. He was dirtied and gore-smeared, his hair in its usual disarray behind the rag around his forehead, but he broke into a grin as he saw Zaelis, and greeted him warmly. He sent a runner down the line of the stockade to spread the order, which had come from the general in command of the western defences, and then looked Zaelis over.

  ‘Heart’s blood, you look terrible,’ he said.

  ‘No more than you,’ Zaelis countered. He scratched his bearded neck, which was itching with sweat. ‘I’m glad to see you got back behind the wall in one piece.’

  ‘Zaelis, what’s happening? Where are the Red Order? We need them to organise ourselves. It’s taking too long for word to get from one place to another.’

  ‘I know, Yugi, I know,’ Zaelis said helplessly, moving aside as someone jostled past them with a murmured apology. ‘But you’ve dealt with their kind.’

  Yugi nodded grimly. ‘Where’s Lucia?’ he asked.

  ‘Hidden,’ Zaelis said. ‘Guarded. She would not leave. That was all I could do.’

  ‘She’s your daughter!’ Yugi was aghast.

  ‘I could hardly force her,’ Zaelis replied. ‘She is not like a normal child.’

  ‘That’s exactly what she’s like,’ Yugi said. ‘She’s fourteen harvests of age, and every one of those things out there is baying for her blood! Don’t you think she’s scared? You need to be with her, not out here.’

  Zaelis was about to protest, but Yugi overrode him. ‘Show me where she is,’ he said, grabbing the older man’s arm.

  ‘You have to stay!’ Zaelis said.

  ‘If she’s going to be guarded, I’ll guard her.’ He was propelling them both towards a ladder now. ‘There are Weavers about, Zaelis. If I’ve learned one lesson from this whole mess, it’s that you can’t keep anything hidden from them for long.’

  The cellar of Flen’s house was hot and dark. What light there was came from imperfections in the fit of the floorboards overhead, thin lines of warm daylight spilling through to stripe the faces of the two adolescents that were concealed there.

  As with most Saramyr cellars, the air was too dry for mildew or damp, and though plain it was kept neat and presentable with the same fastidiousness as the rest of the house. The wooden floor and walls were sanded and varnished. Barrels and boxes were neatly stacked and secured with hemp webbing. Bottles of wine lay in racks, half-seen outlines in the gloom.

  A set of steps ran up to a hatch in the ceiling, which had been closed on them an hour ago. Since then, they had sat on floor-mats down here, whispering to each other, taking occasional sips from the jug of berry juice that they had been provided with and ignoring the parcel of food wrapped in wax paper that came with it. Overhead, the creaking footsteps of the guards went to and fro, sometimes blocking the light so that it seemed as if a great shadow crossed the cellar.

  They hid, and waited, and listened to the reverberations of the fire-cannons in the distance.

  ‘I hope he’ll not be hurt,’ Flen said, for the dozenth time. His train of thought had been returning to the same subject over and over again, whenever enough silence had passed.

  Lu
cia betrayed no sign of impatience, but she did not respond. She had feared he might bring it up again. A few minutes ago Lucia had experienced an unpleasant intuition that Flen’s father – the object of his musing – had been killed. She could not say for sure, but it would be far from the first time her instincts had informed her of something she could not possibly have known otherwise. Perhaps she had unconsciously picked it up from the indecipherable sussurus of the spirit-voices that surrounded her, some half-gleaned shred of intention or meaning that hinted at revelation. She had, after all, been giving Flen’s father a lot of thought on her friend’s behalf.

  Flen looked up at her, expecting her to reassure him; but she could not. Hurt flickered in his eyes. She hesitated a moment, then slid nearer to him and hugged him gently. He hugged her back, looking over her shoulder into the darkness that surrounded them, and the two of them embraced in the dim island of illumination for a time, the lines of sunlight from above moulding to the contours of their shoulders and faces.

  ‘They’re all being killed,’ she whispered. ‘And it’s my fault.’

  ‘No,’ Flen hissed before she had even finished. ‘It’s not your fault. What the Weavers did isn’t your fault. It’s their fault you were born with the abilities you have; it’s their fault. You didn’t do anything.’

  ‘I started this all,’ she said. ‘I let Purloch take that lock of my hair. I let him go back to the Weavers with proof I was an Aberrant. If I hadn’t done that . . . Mother might still be alive . . . nobody would be dying . . .’

  Flen clutched her harder, his own troubles forgotten in the need to reassure her. He stroked her hair, his fingers running onto the burned and puckered skin at the nape of her neck, gliding over its nerveless surface.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ he repeated. ‘You can’t help what you are.’

  ‘What am I?’ she said, drawing back from him. Had it been any other girl, he would have expected tears in her eyes, but her gaze was fey and strange. Did she feel remorse or guilt as other people did? Did it make her truly sad? Or had what he had taken as self-recrimination simply been a statement of fact? So long he had known her, and he would never understand her properly.