by Ari Marmell
Only two of the squad remained; two that should hardly have been a problem, where the prior six were not. But for all his acumen, Death had never seen these things in battle, had only their clumsier six-limbed compatriots by which to judge.
And he badly underestimated just how quickly they could move.
By the time Death had come out of his spin, Harvester raised, the remaining pair were already upon him. The bits and scraps of their fallen allies proved no impediment at all. The whirring spindles dodged past the bulk of them without the slightest hesitation, and even launched the constructs in surprising leaps over the worst of the detritus. It was a peculiar hopping motion, almost silly looking, but startlingly effective.
They advanced together, synchronized as though guided by a single mind, each swinging all four of its hand-blades in one violent flurry. They rushed in, leaned in to the attack.
Death was more than swift enough to parry the array of blades with the haft of Harvester, but there was nothing he could do to mitigate the sheer momentum of the attack. The impact lifted him off his feet and drove him up and out …
Clear of the ledge, suspended for an eternal instant over the shattering drop—and then gravity began hauling at him with avaricious hands.
Before his knees had fallen below the level of the rocky surface, the extra head on Harvester flipped itself around, so that both blades now pointed in the same direction.
As the topmost blade passed the pitted sides of the thick spur, Death sank it deep into the stone, far deeper than any natural blade could have pierced.
He loosened his grip, allowing his own fall to continue even as Harvester stuck fast, until his hands had almost reached the second blade. Then he clamped down and simultaneously kicked his legs out in front of him. The blade slid through its niche in the stone, serving as a pivot, and Death was swinging forward beneath the jutting finger of rock.
A fearsome yank both dislodged the first blade and sank the second one into the opposite side of the overhang. Kicking out once more and curling his arms, he knifed his body upward at an angle that none but the most agile of angels could have duplicated. He released his grip on Harvester, which remained dangling from the rock, tucked into a backward roll, and landed in a crouch back on the outcropping, behind his attackers.
Again they rotated to face him with blinding speed, but this time he was ready for them. Rather than try to block the brass swords that swung his way—he couldn’t even if he’d wanted to, as his weapon was still lodged tight and dangling from the pitted rock—he fell backward, bending at the waist.
The blades hissed over his head in less than the blink of an eye—two of them, four, six …
Death reached up, balanced at a backward angle that even he could not hold for long, and snagged the fourth wrist on each of the two constructs as they passed. He gave each a solid tug, crossing his arms over his chest …
And sank each blade into the torso of the opposite construct.
They both froze, the animating magics trying to cope with the sudden damage. While those wounds alone might not, perhaps, have proved sufficient to destroy the creatures, the crossed arms provided enough leverage for Death to haul himself upright once more. Then, using only two fingers on each hand, he shoved both the metal soldiers at the shoulder and sent them plummeting over the edge as they had done to him. They twisted and spun as they fell, still locked in each other’s death wounds, until he could see no further trace of them.
“Hmm,” he grunted, watching for a long moment after they were gone. Then, as the cliff was clear at least in the immediate vicinity, he called Harvester up from where it hung and continued on his way.
THE FARTHER HE PENETRATED into the Crowfather’s realm, the more numerous the enemy became—but so, too, did the domain’s defenses grow more potent. The crows seemed more plentiful than the stars in the night sky, and while most were of a normal build, an occasional deafening cry or the flap of a wall-thick wing suggested avian defenders of truly prodigious size. Winds froze everything in their wake; lightning spiked and stabbed, a veritable forest of blinding bolts; and the mountains themselves had begun to shake with the crash of falling avalanches and slamming gorges.
So yes, the constructs were many, but Death himself was forced to deal with few indeed, and most of those were sufficiently distracted that he had little difficulty in taking them unawares. The Horseman ran, crept, climbed; Harvester rose and fell, sometimes a single great scythe, sometimes two, occasionally some other weapon entirely; and enemy after enemy dropped.
Now, not too terribly long after the clash on the protruding spur, Death neared the heart of the matter.
Just ahead, almost undetectable against the natural jagged lines and projections of the canyon walls, a great tower of worked stone jutted from the depths. It rose overhead, impossibly, unreasonably straight and sheer, so that any glance up into the blackened sky felt like a vertiginous drop into infinite depths. Seemingly natural bulges and niches served, to all purposes, as supporting arches, flying buttresses, embedded columns. Patches of ice glistened in what little remained of the light, adding the only sparks of color to what was otherwise a stew of shadowed blacks and rocky grays.
Death scrambled down the cliffs, allowing himself to drop a great deal of the way, then bolted for the tower’s entrance—a gaping maw of a cave in the rock face—at a dead sprint. The few constructs that stood in his way were clustered together within the hollow, drifting slowly forward, focused on guarding against attacks from before, not behind. Death swept through them without slowing, Harvester cutting them down or hurling them from the edges, and not one managed a single stroke in return.
Just inside the cave mouth, a great sculpture of a crow stared impassively at them all from its perch half embedded in the stone. Beyond that lay only shadow and frost.
And still no small trek. Death briefly cursed the Crowfather’s paranoia and egotism both, and continued.
Through frigid corridors so high that he could scarcely see the ceiling, through barren chambers in which the shapes of things long dead were only just visible within the ancient ice, and finally through a cavern so vast it generated its own currents and winds, the Horseman traveled. In that last, he picked his way between jutting rocks and fierce stalagmites, sliding across great sheets of slick frost. Feathers formed a sporadic carpeting, and the entire cavern smelled of guano and—despite the eternal cold—growing things from deep within the earth that no sentient beings of any world had ever seen.
He ignored them all, walking until the great pillar at the cavern’s center—a column of calcification and ice as thick as a hill—had come and gone. Until finally, finally, Death came to an open cave mouth at the grotto’s end, passed through to the stairs beyond, and began once more to climb.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WOULD HAVE PROVED SIMPLEST AND MOST EFFICIENT, OF course, if War could simply cross over into the White City directly beside his objective. Unfortunately, the angels—like the Charred Council, and several of the other great powers of Creation—were paranoid of their many enemies infiltrating through precisely such methods. They couldn’t prevent him from doing so, not as the Charred Council did, but the White City boasted sufficient wards and safeguards that the entire population would be alerted to his presence if he were to so materialize. And not only aware; they’d almost certainly assume, due to his means of arrival, that his intentions were unfriendly.
Whereas, if he arrived formally, they’d only suspect that his intentions were unfriendly.
So he appeared from the void between realms atop the great bridge and moved openly toward the gates of the White City. Nor, this time, was he alone.
The Rider sat atop a horse of phenomenal size, bulging with an almost overdeveloped musculature beneath hair of such rough gray it appeared to be granite. Indeed, perhaps it was granite, in places—for the horse’s lower legs and hooves were cracked like the plains of the Charred Council’s abode, showing the glow of a molten core withi
n. Gouges in the flesh along the neck and flank, shaped into runes of ancient mien, shared that fiery radiance, as did the beast’s eyes and nostrils. The saddle on which War sat was as much steel as leather; the bridle, like Death’s, was a chain, though this one was thick and free of blemish or rust.
Patches of bridge blackened beneath the beast’s hooves. It gave a guttural snort, as though in satisfaction.
“Easy, Ruin.” For his mount, War’s voice turned as gentle as it ever got—which wasn’t very. “No enemies here.”
Ruin’s low whinny sounded disappointed. War almost chuckled.
“Have no fear. There should be plenty of chaos and blood for the both of us soon enough.”
The span on which they trod was a gleaming gold, near enough to blind anyone who spent too long gazing down. Sweeping arches provided the bridge its support, while spouts with no natural source provided scintillating waterfalls between each arch. They flowed from the bridge itself, plummeting into depths unseen. It was musical, in its way, that constant rush.
Rocky outcroppings stood beside the bridge, boasting an array of knotted trees and thriving brush. Great statues of warrior angels, the stone worn and pitted by the flow of centuries, towered three or four times War’s own height from a few of those crags. They made, so far as the Horseman was concerned, unimpressive guardians. Grand in design, perhaps, but he would have expected a martial community to have live sentinels upon the bridge.
His first sight of the city itself was not the wall, but the highest of the flying isles. These small parcels of earth floated freely overhead, not merely ignoring but actively mocking a great many natural laws. They were jagged at the base, rather like mountains flipped upside down, and housed various fortresses and towers atop them. From this distance, War could make out few details, either of those structures or anything else. The faint shape of wings, flapping around the islands, might have been either angels or great birds for all he could tell.
Nor did his attention remain on those for long, for it was only moments later that the ramparts themselves hove into view.
The lines and angles—windows and cannon ports, embossed emblems, and of course the gate itself—gleamed in the light, though not so brightly as the bridge. These looked more brass than gold, due to that contrast, but War knew well that they were far sturdier than either metal. The walls themselves were of some pale stone; not quite like marble but, at least in War’s personal experience, even less like anything else. These, too, were carved and inlaid into sharp panels and inset layers, so that the entire bastion was a work of art. The ramparts were too high for War to see if any guards stood atop the wall, just as the cannon ports were too narrow to expose anyone within, but he felt certain they were present. The angels might leave the bridge unwatched, but never the gate itself.
The light, War could not help but notice, was purely ambient, radiating from all directions at once. Although the world was noon-bright around him, he saw no sun in the sky, nor any shadows falling across the luminous roadway. It was almost uncomfortable, in a way. The wall stood several dozen paces in height, the ornately sculpted barbican more than twice that. The approach should have been cloaked in deepest shade, yet there was none.
The portcullis was raised, presenting a long and seemingly empty corridor that cut straight through the impossibly thick wall. As Ruin approached, however, hooves ringing metallically on the bridge, War heard the blast of a great trumpet. Almost instantly his path was blocked by a small phalanx of angels, all heavily armored and clutching the race’s infamous halberds. Wings flapped above, as other soldiers appeared from over the wall, and though he couldn’t see them War could somehow feel the barrels of a multitude of cannons gaping his way.
That’s more like it, then.
The guardpost’s commander—War knew him to be the commander, as he was the only angel whose face and platinum hair were unconstrained by any helm, and who carried a great axe rather than a halberd—marched ahead of the others. He planted himself directly in Ruin’s way, and War couldn’t quite restrain a nod of respect. Not only did the angel handle his bardiche easily, never mind that the weapon was twice his height with a blade broader across than the warhorse’s girth, but he showed no qualms about standing before a potential adversary whom he knew was far deadlier than he.
The portcullis remained up, but War knew well that it could be dropped in the blink of an eye, if necessary.
“Horseman,” the angel greeted him with a cold courtesy.
“Commander.”
“What business has a Rider of the Charred Council in the White City?”
“I’m to deliver a message.”
Silence, then. Clearly, the answer didn’t strike the angel as a likely one, not with War, yet he had no formal standing that would allow him to question the Horseman’s word.
“To whom?” he finally asked.
“Not your concern.”
Again, a moment of silence. The angel seemed at a loss. Heaven and the Council were not at war. The Rider had offered a legitimate purpose, and he wasn’t legally required to tell the gate guards who the recipient might be. So, no formal cause existed to deny him entrance. On the other hand, the presence of a Horseman rarely, if ever, boded well for either the inhabitants or even the property unfortunate enough to find themselves in his vicinity.
In the end, however, angels were creatures of law, and the law was clear. With an obvious reluctance that bordered on the offensive, he stepped aside and waved for his warriors to do the same.
“Welcome to the White City, then, Horseman. May your sojourn be fruitful and blessedly free of any unnecessary delay.”
War didn’t even need to flick the reins, as Ruin clearly recognized the meaning in the corridor that abruptly sprouted between the armored figures. Mount and Rider passed beneath the portcullis, heads held high, and it would have been difficult to say which of the two more effectively conveyed the impression that far more magnificent sights than these had, in the past, failed utterly to dazzle them.
It was, for all that, an act, performed for the sake of the watching angels. Not even War could gaze upon the White City and not find himself a little bit awed.
The city was constructed in layers, as high as the clouds and deeper than the eye could see. Some of those layers consisted of the floating isles War had noted on his approach. Others were wholly artificial: entire neighborhoods, structures and roadways, built atop ornate pillars and graceful arches. Bridges and winding stairs connected one to another, though a few had crumbled from disuse, leaving several of the older isles and buildings isolated from the rest.
Courtyards, paved in geometric patterns, were surrounded by statues as tall as those on the bridge outside. The buildings … By Oblivion, the buildings! Towers that stabbed the sky, great cathedrals as broad and as tall as small mountains. All were made up of sharp angles or elegant archways, and all were of the same stone-and-gold construction as the outer wall. Only trees sprouting in the courtyards and the stained glass of the many windows provided any real color to the tableau.
Or rather, those—and the outfits of the angels who did not wander the White City in full armor.
Most of these were clad in flowing robes of deep reds and violets, though a handful wore green and a great many wore white—these last failing to stand out from the background as much as the others. Gold belts and ostentatious headdresses were common, as were slightly more subtle circlets.
War found it peculiar, contemplating non-warrior angels. Angel craftsmen? Angel couriers? Angel merchants? It was difficult to picture—but then, the race had the same needs as any other, did they not? The Horseman briefly found himself wondering what they used as currency, before deciding he didn’t care enough to give it any real attention.
Even the sounds of the city were magnificent. Where the amalgamation of labors and voices in most communities formed an ugly, cacophonic drone, the conversations of the angels and the blare of distant trumpets produced an almost orchestral ten
or.
Ruin marched along at a stately pace, War taking it all in, though he was careful never to be caught staring. The same could not be said of the angels. All those who passed him by, on foot or on the wing, stared until it seemed their eyes must burst. Most either took a couple of steps away or made a deliberate show of not doing so, but few showed any inclination toward approaching him.
Few, save the flight of five circling high above, who had been with him since the gate. Guards, doubtless, watching to be sure he started no trouble. Well, let them watch!
It occurred to War that he must be passing all manner of establishments: workshops and warehouses, shops and homes. Yet he could see no way of telling one from another. Every structure was grand and imposing, more magnificent than temples or palaces in most other worlds. Some boasted sigils in angelic script above or near the doors, and War assumed that these were sufficient to tell the angels what they needed to know. Other than those, he could find no pattern, nor any hint of what purpose any given building served.
And he had plenty of time to examine them, for his route could generously be called circuitous. Even though he’d chosen the most efficient and straightforward path to the structure that the Council’s agents had dubbed his objective, he would be long in reaching his objective—because the most efficient that he could manage was still not efficient at all.
The angels had to transport goods and building materials, and they often played host to Makers or other Old Ones, so the vast majority of their structures were indeed accessible by bridge and by road. For their own part, however, the angels were creatures of the air as much as the ground, and the most direct path between this building and that, this district and that, was often open sky. War and Ruin, bound as they were by gravity, had to wend their way around entire neighborhoods, up and down multiple levels, for hours on end, to reach a destination that, for an angel, was only a few moments away.