by Anthony Ryan
She detected a faint trace of a Corvantine accent in his voice, though certainly not sufficiently cultured to justify his title. “You are a long way from home, sir,” she observed.
“But one of many impoverished exiles who found their way to this haven. I thank the oracles dear Father is no longer alive to see how far I’ve fallen.”
The woman, Red Allice, voiced a small but deeply derisive snort at that, drawing a vicious glare from the supposed Burgrave. The depth of enmity Lizanne saw as their eyes met told her these people had been enemies only a short while before. “Your assistance is greatly appreciated,” she told the three of them, then gestured at the rapidly growing barricade being constructed nearby. “As you can see.”
The barricade ran the length of Caravan Road, all the way from the southern gate to the junction with Queen’s Row where it took a sharp left to close off the northern boundary of Colonial Town. It was being constructed from stone and sundry scrap iron discarded by the manufactory, Lizanne having ordered the demolition of several damaged buildings to provide the requisite materials. All hands that could be spared were hard at work either building this barrier or clearing the ground beyond it for a distance of twenty yards. Every scrap of wood, or anything else likely to catch a flame, was in the process of being torn down and carted off. Blood-blessed were conspicuous amongst the horde of labourers by virtue of the great stacks of stone they guided into place with Black, of which there was now a large, if rapidly dwindling, supply. Recent days had brought numerous reports from the breeding pens about the increasing belligerence of their Red and Green specimens, whilst the few captive Blacks remained relatively quiescent. Nevertheless, unwilling to harbour such a danger within the city, Lizanne had ordered them all slaughtered and the product harvested.
“You’re sectioning off Colonial Town,” Edgerhand observed.
“Indeed,” she said. “There is a surplus of Black if you would care to assist with the construction.”
“Always been more attuned to Green,” he replied, then jerked his head at the other two. “You can guess Allice’s speciality from her name. The Burgrave’s your man if you’re looking for menial labour.”
“Have a care, Edge,” the faux nobleman replied in a soft voice, his part-cultured vowels falling away completely.
Lizanne saw Edgerhand’s mouth twitch again before he addressed her once more, speaking in an oddly formal manner. “Mr. Cralmoor was firm in his instructions regarding our new employment. ‘Take care of Miss Blood,’ he said.” He gave a bow that was markedly more practised than Corvik’s. “It seems you now have a personal bodyguard courtesy of the Blinds.”
—
Come nightfall the barricade stood four feet tall for much of its length. Lizanne would have liked another foot at least but it couldn’t be helped; judging by the burgeoning cacophony of drake screams beyond the wall, time had evidently run out. She had refused suggestions to retire to a safe vantage point, instead placing herself at the barrier’s northern stretch where the weight of fire-power was most thin. She had overridden the numerous objections by simply pointing out that every capable hand was needed to make this work, and there was no longer a safe place in the city in any case.
On being told to stay with Jermayah at the manufactory, Tekela had come close to throwing the kind of tantrum Lizanne assumed was behind her, face flushing red and a dark glower filling her gaze. “I have this,” she said, touching a hand to the revolver on her hip but Lizanne had refused to be swayed, taking the girl by the arm and practically marching her to Jermayah’s side with orders to chain her up if she moved. Lizanne hadn’t told her Jermayah also had instructions to get them both on a ship should this stratagem fail. Those vessels already converted were fully fuelled and crewed, each with an Academy girl aboard, ready to make a run through the blockade of Blues in the event of disaster.
Gun-fire began to crackle on the wall as the last glimmer of light fled the sky, Growlers, Thumpers and rifles cutting through the discordant tumult of massed Greens baying in fury. Keen to occupy herself, Lizanne methodically loaded the twin revolvers holstered under each arm. Solid, reliable .35 Dessingers from the Covert Protectorate armoury, noisier and far less elegant than her lost Whisper, but the time for subtlety had gone. Now she wasn’t a spy, she was a soldier.
She checked the Spider next, ensuring each vial was firmly seated and drawing a curious glance from Edgerhand who, along with his two companions, hadn’t strayed more than ten feet from her side since their first meeting. “Now, that’s an impressive instrument,” he said. “Your father’s work, I assume?”
She shook her head, feeling a familiar pang of annoyance at the recognition. “Mr. Tollermine has ever been my ingenious friend. Not all novelties bear the Lethridge name.”
“Only the great ones. I had the good fortune to hear your father lecture several years ago at the Annual Consolidated Research Conference in Sanorah.” He shrugged at her quizzical glance. “I was not always of such low standing. The Blinds provides a home for all manner of wretched souls.”
Her thoughts immediately went to Clay and the trance she had been forced to forgo tonight. “Not all are wretched,” she said, glancing around at the people enlisted to defend this stretch of wall. She had gathered all the city’s Blood-blessed, reinforced by a full company of dismounted regular cavalry armed with repeating carbines. “Besides,” she added, “events have conspired to make us all of equal standing. If only for tonight.”
Edgerhand began to answer but his words were drowned by a piercing scream from above, accompanied by an immediate chorus of “Reds! Reds!” from the surrounding defenders. Lizanne’s gaze snapped to the sky, seeing a crimson shape streaking down out of the blue-black void, mouth gaping and wings folded. A salvo from the Thumper battery stationed across the street caught the drake just as the flames began to blossom from its mouth. It came down with a crunching thud on the other side of the barricade. For a time it writhed in a spreading pool of blood, still attempting to breathe its fire at them, before a well-placed shot from a cavalryman shattered its skull.
There was the briefest pause then the air became filled with the cries of swarming Reds and the thunderous percussion of what sounded like every Thumper and Growler in the city. Lizanne soon lost count of the number of Reds hacked out of the sky by the interlocking arcs of fire as the searchlights cut through the gloom. It appeared all former caution had been stripped from the drakes and they launched themselves at the defending batteries with unhesitant savagery, Lizanne averting her gaze as she watched the Thumper crew that had saved her torn apart by three mortally wounded Reds. They learn with every attack, she recalled. But mostly they learned the value of sacrifice.
A loud boom drew her gaze back to the wall and she saw a mushroom of flame rising above the roof-tops of Colonial Town. She injected a drop of Green to enhance her sight, boosted vision revealing a pack of Greens boiling over the wall around a ruined gun position, flames still rising from the ashes of their ammunition. It had been part of her plan for the section of wall shielding Colonial Town to give way, but only after exacting a fearful toll on the attackers. Now it all appeared to be happening ahead of schedule.
She watched the Green pack launch themselves from the wall and into the darkened streets below, quickly followed by a dense throng of Spoiled using ropes to haul themselves up onto the parapet. For several frenzied minutes battle raged on the parapet, defenders and Spoiled locked in a savage embrace of bayonet and war-club, before numbers finally told and the mis-shapen horde came streaming over, accompanied by ever more Greens.
Lizanne lowered her gaze to the shadowed maze of Colonial Town, injecting more Green to follow the attackers’ progress. Off to her right there came the sound of a thousand or more rifles firing at once, followed by the ripping tumult of multiple Growlers, the barricade along Caravan Road lighting up from end to end as the defenders let loose at any Spoiled or Green unfor
tunate enough to emerge from the old district. It’s working, Lizanne thought with some relief, seeing the inhumanly fast, loping shadows of many Greens filling the unlit streets.
She looked round at a shout from one of the cavalry officers, his men all bringing their carbines up in readiness as a dozen or so figures sprinted into the newly fashioned no man’s land between barricade and houses. “STOP!” she shouted before the cavalrymen could fire. “They’re ours!”
The first runner leapt over the barricade in an impressive display of athleticism, spoilt somewhat by his untidy collapse into an exhausted heap upon reaching the other side. “You were supposed to head for the gate,” Lizanne told him.
Arberus gave her a baleful stare, face streaked with soot and blood, fortunately not his own. “War rarely goes according to plan,” he returned evenly. His face softened a little as she offered a hand as he levered himself upright. Another ten men followed him over the barricade, apparently all that was left from his company of turncoat Corvantines. “Best get them in order,” Lizanne told him, knowing this to be the wrong moment for sympathy.
Arberus gave a tired nod before straightening and moving away, casting a tirade of profanity-laden Varsal at his near-spent men. “Stand up, you shit-eaters! This look like a fucking holiday to you, does it? You, pick up that rifle or I’ll find a place for it in your arse!”
Lizanne turned away to be greeted by the sight of at least two dozen Greens charging into the open. At their officer’s shouted command, the cavalrymen delivered a rapid volley with their carbines, most of the Greens tumbling to a halt under the weight of fire before they had covered half the distance to the barricade.
“Drink up!” Lizanne called to the surrounding Blood-blessed, depressing three buttons on the Spider and drawing one of her revolvers. “You all know the plan! None can get through!”
The sound of gun-fire faded as the cavalrymen paused to reload their carbines. A few Greens had survived the initial blast and kept on, though most were limping. Lizanne fixed her enhanced eyes on the most lively one and put a bullet through its head from sixty yards, a second volley from the Protectorate troops accounting for the others. Lizanne turned to watch the Blood-blessed drinking the large vials they had been given, each containing an Ironship-patented dilution of Red, Green and Black, probably the finest and most potent product any of them had ever tasted. Or are ever likely to taste, she thought, then grimaced at her own indulgence. Feel guilty later.
A huge and savage uproar dragged her gaze back to no man’s land to be greeted by the sight of Spoiled and Green charging from the shadows in a dense mass. She drew her second revolver and emptied both weapons in a series of rapid but precisely aimed shots, Spoiled and drake falling to every bullet. With no time to reload she lowered the guns and waited until the on-coming horde came within twenty feet then unleashed her Black, freezing a dozen or more so that they created a dam in the tide of flesh, howling warriors and screaming Greens piling up behind. The process was repeated all along the line as the Blood-blessed followed her example, a great mass of attackers building up as they sought vainly to push past the invisible barrier. Finding her view of Colonial Town obscured by so many thrashing bodies, Lizanne hopped up onto the barricade, peering into the streets and ducking the arrows the Spoiled launched at her. She could see that the number streaming over the wall had thinned to a trickle and the streets below were now choked with attackers. It was time.
She got down and reached for the rocket flare propped against the barricade, a gift from the Maritime Protectorate. She held it aloft and lit the fuse with a burst of Red, sending the flare streaming into the night sky where drakes were still wheeling about amidst the hail of gun-fire. She could only hope the gunners would see the flare amidst the aerial carnage as she watched it explode into a green starburst. For several seconds there was no response. The drakes and the Spoiled continued to throw themselves against the wall of Black, falling by the dozen as the cavalrymen maintained a furious fire with their carbines. But the weight of numbers was beginning to tell and the first signs of diminishing product started to show amongst the Blood-blessed, sweat-soaked faces straining and teeth clenched as they continued to expend their Black. It would only be a moment or more before the barrier failed.
The first artillery shell arced into the mass of Greens and Spoiled with a faint whine, the explosion tossing a fountain of sundered bodies into the air, quickly followed by half a dozen more. The mass of attackers reeled back as the barrage tore through them and the pressure on those in front relaxed, the weight of Black propelling them backwards in a cascade as the shells continued to rain down. Beyond them explosions ripped through Colonial Town from end to end, every Protectorate artillery piece remaining in the city firing a mix of blast and incendiary shells at pre-sighted targets. The incendiaries ignited the coating of oil and kerosene a small army of workers had spread over the buildings, whilst the blast shells fanned the flames and shredded roofs and walls to cast the burning debris far and wide. Greens and Spoiled soon came boiling out of the district from every open street, many on fire. The massed guns along Caravan Road roared into life once more, scything down the attackers en masse so that none made it to within ten feet of the barricade.
Lizanne reloaded her guns and refreshed her Green with the Spider, using her amplified vision to gauge the progress of the fire. At least half of Colonial Town was fully ablaze now, the flames soaring high as they leapt from building to building. The slaughter of the attackers before her was mostly complete, the survivors of the first salvo quickly falling to the guns of the cavalrymen. A few Spoiled, possessed of both astonishing luck and deranged ferocity, came charging out of the carnage, somehow weathering the hail of gun-fire to launch themselves at the barricade. Most were shot down within seconds and the others cast back by the Blood-blessed, thrown high with Black to fall into the inferno that now consumed all of Colonial Town.
All along the barricade the guns fell silent as no more attackers appeared, the roar of the flames failing to obscure the screams as thousands of drakes and Spoiled shrieked their death agonies. Lizanne sagged a little, relief mingling with satisfaction. It actually worked. However, any triumph proved to be short-lived when Edgerhand gently touched her arm and pointed to the city. “I don’t think we’re done yet, miss.”
The Reds. They were streaming out of the sky everywhere she looked, for the most part unhindered by any Thumper or Growler fire, though she could hear a few batteries still firing in the Blinds. Her gaze went from one roof-top position to another, finding each one destroyed, most smothered under the weight of a dead or dying Red. Flames were rising in the city beyond, accompanied by a fresh wave of screams, but these were all too human.
She didn’t bother to issue any orders, instead simply drawing her guns and running towards the source of the loudest screams. She knew the Blood-blessed would follow, for where else could they go?
—
“I regret I have not been able to calculate an exact figure . . .”
“Your best approximation will be sufficient,” Lizanne said.
The Accounts manager, whose name she still hadn’t contrived to remember, ran an unsteady hand through his thinning hair. Like everyone else called to Lizanne’s office, from Arberus to Captain Flaxknot, he wore clothes besmirched by soot and blood though he had evidently found time to wash his face where others hadn’t. Lizanne’s gaze drifted to the space where Commander Stavemoor usually stood, finding his absence more affecting than she might have expected. He had last been seen alive charging headlong into the mass of Spoiled advancing along the top of the wall. One old man charging with sword in hand as his men dithered in fear. The commander’s example had been enough to compel his troops to greater efforts and the wall had been secured against further encroachment. However, the sight of Stavemoor’s body had been enough to convince Lizanne that the notion of glorious death in battle was a pernicious lie.
“We lost over a thousand defending the wall and the barricade,” the accountant said, pausing to swallow before continuing, “and nearly six thousand dead in the city itself. Plus over two thousand wounded.”
Lizanne closed her eyes as a groan of dismay filled the room. She had been entertaining the faint hope that their success in containing the Greens and the Spoiled hadn’t been purchased at the expense of the rest of the city, despite what she had witnessed the night before. She had led the Blood-blessed from one nightmare to another. The first had been the sight of a Red tearing apart a house on Carter’s Walk, digging through roof and walls to tear away the floor-boards and breathe its fire on the family cowering in the cellar, a mother with four children reduced to ash in the space of a heart-beat. Lizanne and her self-appointed Blinds bodyguards held the drake in place with Black whilst the others brought down a torrent of debris to batter it into submission, the rain of bricks eventually sending it lifeless to the cobbles.
Lizanne led them on, through Baldon Park where they killed a pair of Reds chasing fleeing people across burning flower-beds, and into Corporate Square where she organised a defence of the hospital which, so far, remained mercifully untouched. She divided the Blood-blessed into smaller groups and set them in a loose perimeter around the square, then sent runners to the barricades with orders to shift all their Thumpers and Growlers to the roof-tops and get any ruined batteries back into action. Soon the familiar dance of searchlight and drake resumed in the sky, the onslaught abating though the struggle wore on throughout the night. Contractors were released from the wall to roam the city, killing Reds wherever they could, but losing many of their number as the drakes continued to streak out of the sky, killing with talon and flame before the marksmen brought them down. The last Red finally fled with the onset of sunrise, leaving Carvenport to suffer under a pall of thickening smoke.