by Ari Marmell
Finally, just as War was growing truly irritated, and the wonders of Heaven had ceased to hold any appeal, he recognized the landmark for which he’d been searching. Recessed into a niche in the side of a great cathedral-like hall stood a particular statue. It, like nearly all the others, was the effigy of an angel, nearly three times War’s height. Where most either crouched, as though kneeling to some higher power, or stood rigid in an attitude of endless vigilance, this one leaned forward as though just beginning to swing the massive sword it clutched in both hands.
Once he’d spotted that statue, he was to continue on, past the next intersecting bridge, to the first building on the right. There, if the Charred Council’s informants had not deceived them, he would find Abaddon’s hidden arsenal.
If the spies had deceived them … Well, War had no idea who the informants were, or what influence the Council held over them to command their assistance, but if he’d been lied to, the Horseman was quite prepared to spend decades tracking them down.
War was now several levels deeper than the gate. The web-work of bridges and platforms above were sure to give his “escorts” some difficulty in keeping an eye on him, though he knew they were still above, trying their best. He was certain, as well, that many of the passersby on the roadway were actually guards, watching over the covert installation. So, although he’d much have preferred an open and comprehensive reconnaissance of his target, he settled for halting Ruin in the midst of the intersection, glancing about as though trying to remember his way. From here, he could at least study his objective from the corner of his eye. Several angels grumbled as they were forced to detour around the massive beast, but none seemed inclined to challenge him directly.
It was unimpressive, so far as White City architecture was concerned. It was less than two hundred paces across; the sweeping walls and minarets were “only” the height of a great castle. It was, for an angelic structure, downright humble.
Its walls were of that same white stone, however, and the shuttered windows far too narrow to allow entrance.
The Horseman dismissed the gold-edged front door the instant he spotted it. Abaddon might not rely much on eldritch defenses, according to the spies—a high concentration of magic would be too easily detected by rival White City factions—but he’d be an utter fool if the main entrance wasn’t warded by something. It could be as simple as an alarm, or a trap of flame or cannon-fire; or as complex as a teleportation portal designed to transport visitors somewhere other than the building’s interior. Those who had proper business doubtless had some means of deactivating the wards, or some hidden entrance elsewhere on the property. War didn’t know, and hardly had the time to go searching. So if the door wasn’t an option …
The Rider twisted in the saddle to look back at the way he had come, and his teeth gleamed in a vicious grin.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AT THE TERMINUS OF THE TWISTED STAIR, BEYOND A smattering of additional chambers, Death finally found what he sought.
A hazy cavern of equal parts ice and stone sprawled out before him, itself large enough to hold a small village. The wall gaped open at the far end, revealing an endless vista of snowcapped peaks. Rune-carved rings and crescents of metal, many of them hundreds of paces across, glowed with an inner light and rumbled with the grinding of metal on stone as they slowly rotated in and around each other across that gap. Some sort of orrery or timepiece, Death assumed, though any hint of its ultimate purpose escaped him.
From atop an array of columns, tiny against the creaking mechanism but still massive enough, more crow sculptures loomed, glaring down with eyes of gleaming scarlet.
And what they gazed upon was utter chaos. The ice-coated chamber swarmed with figures of brass and stone. Scores of them pressed forward, advancing on a single goal. Death couldn’t see their objective, not from where he stood, but he knew full well who it must be.
Death hit the back of the formation, a veritable cyclone of blades. Harvester spun, metal parted, limbs and torsos and spindles fell. He moved constantly, dancing through gaps in the line through which he should never have fit. Each time one of the constructs spun to strike back at whoever had just obliterated the soldier next to it, their enemy was already gone, turning someone else into so much scrap.
The sheer press of numbers, however, meant Death could only push so far before he was hemmed in. When a formidable contingent of the automatons spun on their bases, turning to focus on the new danger from behind, he had no choice but to fall back several steps and reassess.
“Go away, Horseman!” The words were as rough and pitted as the stone of the walls, carried on an ancient and ill-used voice, yet they crossed the great chamber clearly. “I neither desire nor require your assistance!”
“You’re welcome!” Death shouted back. The resulting grumble, though audible, was impossible to interpret.
Death warily surveyed the ranks of the enemy, drawing almost experimentally upon the necromancies at his beck and call. Three skeletal hands rose from the floor, which rippled like water around them rather than cracking like ice, and grabbed viciously at the constructs. The whirling spindles, however, proved too much for them; powdered bone flew, accompanied by a high-pitched whine, and then the hands exploded into fragments.
Summon the ghouls once more? The shambling corpses might occupy a few of the brass soldiers, but they’d be far too hemmed in to provide more than a mild distraction, and far too slow to compete with the flashing blades.
And while he had plenty of other magics on which to draw, he found himself reluctant to call upon them here. He wasn’t entirely certain that they wouldn’t harm the Crowfather himself, or at least do substantial damage to his abode, and if they should fail to end the battle, he might find himself too exhausted to continue.
So, no necromancy. He had to cross the battlefield. Death knew the sorts of powers the Crowfather could bring to bear, here in his own home. The pair of them standing side by side could easily repulse an army thrice this size.
He scowled behind the mask as he casually parried the first attack to come his way, ignoring the sparks that rained over him as brass blades skittered over Harvester. Yes, they could repulse the attack with relative ease, but only if he could get over there! Fighting isolated, as they were now … Well, the Rider had the utmost faith in his abilities, but it did him no good if the Crowfather fell before he reached the Old One’s side. Such a thing probably wouldn’t happen, but Death disliked even taking the chance. So, how …?
Ah.
Death backpedaled, drawing the back rank of construct soldiers after him in loose formation. They weren’t utterly mindless, these things; they approached slowly, carefully, wary of some trap or trick.
Harvester rippled in his hands, becoming a thin spear more than twice Death’s own height. He took a few sharp jabs at the advancing enemy, as though determined to keep them at length.
And then he flipped the spear to an underhand grip, hefted it, and hurled the massive projectile as if it were the lightest of javelins.
Up and out it flew, arcing over half the assembled constructs, until it plunged straight down. It struck none of the enemy—its parabolic flight allowed more than sufficient opportunity for the speedy automatons to dodge aside, even on the crowded platform—and sank its tip deep into the floor, not merely through ice but through rock. It quivered briefly before it settled, jutting upward like some wayward sapling.
Even before that quivering had fully ceased, Death was sprinting straight at the nearest construct. His first bound carried him over the thrusting blades to the thing’s shoulders, where the head ought to have been. From there he kicked off again, with more than enough force to send it staggering.
Like his weapon before him, Death soared over the enemy, beyond their reach. The Horseman knew, before he began his leap, that even his prodigious strength and dexterity weren’t sufficient to carry him across the entire cavern; that if he tried, he’d come down smack in the middle of the enemy, and
find himself more hemmed in than he’d been before.
But then, he wasn’t trying to cross the entire platform. Not in a single bound, anyway.
Had it been any weapon less mystical, less potent, than Harvester, it could never have pierced the stone deeply enough to remain stable. Had it been any creature less agile than Death, he could never have targeted so minuscule a surface.
The Horseman’s bound carried him perfectly into the center of the chamber, directly atop the waiting weapon. With his left foot only, he kicked off the end of the shaft, setting it once more to wobbling violently, tucking into a forward roll as he jumped. It wasn’t nearly as high or as graceful an arc as the first—couldn’t have been, what with the precarious launching point—but it was more than enough to carry him the rest of the way.
He landed awkwardly, slightly off balance, his feet at two different levels on what looked to be yet another staircase, but he recovered well before the startled constructs could even begin to react. An outstretched hand, a mental call, and Harvester jumped free of the stone and hurtled back to its master. It was once more a scythe by the time Death’s fingers closed.
“Well, now that you’re here,” the Crowfather grumbled, “I suppose you might as well do something useful.”
“Your gratitude and geniality make it all worthwhile,” Death said, taking just an instant to absorb the new situation.
The Crowfather, perhaps the most ancient of the Old Ones and Creation’s most notorious recluse, seemed unchanged from the last time Death had seen him, nearly five centuries gone by. The same wrinkled, bearded face he’d seen in his earlier vision peered out from a thick mantle of onyxblack feathers. He was clad, otherwise, in a drab robe, its hue so faded that it fell somewhere in the gritty overlap between brown and gray. The wrists of his spindly, age-spotted arms were chafed raw without apparent cause.
In one hand, he clutched a twisted walking stick that apparently served double duty as a cudgel. The other was raised toward the enemy, gnarled fingers and ragged nails curled into veritable talons. As he moved, Death could see that he wore something on a chain around his neck, but the robe and the mantle of feathers prevented closer examination.
He stood upon a raised dais in the shadow of the orrery. Behind him rose a great throne, carved from the living rock and adorned with uncountable effigies of …
“I see you’re still going with crows,” Death observed aloud. “Bold choice.”
“Your sarcasm is unwelcome here, Horseman,” the Crowfather rasped at him.
“Pity. It seems determined to follow me everywhere.”
The old hermit opened his colorless lips, but whatever comment he might have made would have to wait. The animated soldiers surged forward once more.
They were clever enough not to advance in a single mass, where the sheer press of numbers would hinder their movements. They came, instead, in small squads of three or four, each group approaching the dais, and its defenders, from different angles. The bulk of the constructs waited at the base of the dais’s steps, ready to plug the gap should any of their brethren fall. They came at Death and the Crowfather from every direction but directly behind, attacking on multiple fronts at once, their every strike orchestrated to leave their enemies open to a blow from some other quarter.
Against any normal foe, they’d likely have succeeded.
The Crowfather lashed out at the oncoming soldiers, and the world lashed out with him. A stab of a finger brought an icy gale from on high. It froze a trio of constructs solid, shredded a handful of others with razor-edged hail. Static, building in the swirling particles, gleefully arced from construct to construct, attracted to their metallic carapaces, searing holes through brass and blackening stone. A vicious slash was matched by the talons of a thousand crows; the clench of a fist summoned the permafrost and stones to wrap around a target and squeeze it into a shapeless lump. Every so often, one of the constructs drew uncomfortably near, having made it up the steps largely unscathed. At such times, the Old One swung his gnarled cudgel, striking with a force more than sufficient to crush metal and end their artificial lives.
He grumbled and groused under his breath throughout it all, as though engaged in some onerous but largely mundane chore that he’d much rather have shirked.
Given the constructs’ speed and inhuman tenacity, it seemed just conceivable—not likely, but possible—that, had the Crowfather been alone, a few might have slipped past his defenses, both mystical and martial, to pose a true threat to his life.
Each time one of them so much as drew near, however, Death was there to block its path. Harvester spun in short, vicious arcs, blurring back and forth between one weapon and two. So violently did some of the constructs burst apart beneath the Horseman’s assault that several other automatons were destroyed, not by any direct action of Death himself, but by the flying shrapnel that had once been their compatriots.
It was laborious, time-consuming work. It was painful, as even the Rider’s astounding prowess couldn’t shield him from every attack. Here and there, an edge sliced his skin, revealing only pale and mottled tissue below, without so much as a dribble of blood.
They never so much as slowed him down, and the outcome could never have been in doubt.
A final gust of chilling wind from above, a final cut of Harvester’s ever-sharp blade, and the last of the brass legion lay scattered across the platform. The crows, screeching and fluttering, rose in a thick mass toward the vast temple ceiling. There they continued to circle, but the sounds of their passage were less cacophonic, less deafening.
The Crowfather shuffled to his throne and sank into it with a contented sigh. Death studied his every move, and only as the hermit settled did his guest spot the heavy chains bracketed to the floor just behind the throne, and the blocky manacles fastened at their other end. He turned his head, pointedly staring first at those, and then at the Crowfather’s abraded wrists.
“None of your concern,” the Old One snapped at him.
The Horseman nodded. The orange gleam of his eyes flickered briefly, passing from the Crowfather’s wrists to the small bulge where he wore something on a chain beneath his robes. “I suppose you’re entitled to your secrets.”
“Oh, how generous of you. What are you doing here, Horseman? If I’d wanted guests, I would have—well, actually, I never want guests.”
“You called me here, old man. Or at least, your little servant did.”
“I? I’ve not the vaguest idea what you’re—”
Death raised his arm and whistled. The sound pierced the crying of the crows, seeming to shatter their own screeching like a rock through stained glass. A moment, a flurry of feathers, and one particular bird swooped from the others to land on the outstretched wrist.
Dust squawked once, clearly adamant about making some point or other, and then began idly pecking at the loose flaps of skin around Death’s nearest open wound.
“Ah,” the Crowfather said.
Death took the few intervening steps at a methodical, inexorable pace, until he loomed over the Old One in his throne.
“When I came to you,” the Horseman said, his voice dangerously soft, “and offered you the prize you so desired …” Again his eyes flickered toward whatever it was the hermit wore beside his heart. “… you told me that, to break its link to me and take it upon yourself, you would have to create a new bond, a symbolic tie between my soul and your own. Hence …” He raised Dust to eye level. The bird squawked again, dancing sideways to maintain his balance.
“Yes, I recall,” the Crowfather said blandly. “I was there at the time.”
“Apparently, you neglected to tell me that Dust also remained bound to you! I do not like being spied on, Crowfather. I’m inclined to take it personally.”
“Oh, do get over yourself, Death. I’ve not been spying on you.”
“No? How do I—?”
“Of course Dust remains bound to me.” The hermit’s lip curled as he spoke the name. He seemed unimpre
ssed, ill amused with Death’s choice—or even that the Horseman had felt the need to bestow a moniker upon the bird at all. “He’s a crow. I am the Crowfather. Thus we are linked, until the one or the other of us is dead. I can observe the world through his eyes, feel what he feels, know what he knows. Such is the natural order.
“But,” he continued as Death seemed about to speak, “I have not, and will not, take advantage of that link. Not with Dust.”
“And I’m to believe this why, exactly?” Death’s tone remained faint, but Harvester actually creaked beneath the pressure of his tightening fist.
“Because you are here, Horseman.”
Silence, for a moment—or at least, silence between the two of them. The symphony of crows above sang as stridently as ever.
At last, the Crowfather coughed angrily, dragged his over-long nails on the arm of his throne with a high-pitched grating, and spoke once more. “Have you even the faintest glimmer of a suspicion that I desired your presence here, Death?”
“You made it fairly clear that you didn’t.”
“And yet, here you are. The only way you could have known something was amiss is through Dust.”
The Horseman nodded brusquely.
“I did not make contact with him deliberately. He must have sensed, through our lingering bond, that I was engaged in most violent pursuits, that his brethren in my domain were afraid. And due to your link with him, you became aware of the situation soon after.
“Do you truly suppose, then, that you would not be equally aware if I were to make deliberate contact with Dust? The bond he shares with you is far stronger than that he and I still possess. I could not use him to spy on you without your knowledge. And as you would most assuredly never again leave me alone, I have not the slightest interest in making an enemy of you.”
For long moments, Death studied the Old One, eyes blazing through the slits in his mask. And then, eventually, he gave a third and final nod.
“Very well, Crowfather. I’ll accept that—for now, anyway.”