Then he looked between Isavel and Sam, bewildered and frightened, and asked a question she did not even understand. But she nodded, pointed again. “Yes. Whatever. Go?”
He started nodding, more to himself than to her, and after a moment he was up and running, gesturing for her to follow.
“Go!” She shooed the others along. “Go! I’ll cover -”
She counted her party’s survivors. Gods damn it. She gritted her teeth.
“Hail, cover them.”
The hunter’s eyes widened. “Where are you -”
“The medic. And Zoa.”
“She - no.” Hail scowled. “She tried to kill -”
“ Hail. ” Isavel pointed again. “Cover them!”
Cowed, the hunter nodded and darted off, and they were all following the freed martian prisoners.
Isavel darted back into the smoke. Gunfire still flickered through, but her shields were enough for her. She couldn’t find the medic, try as she might, and there was only so long she could keep fanning the flames before gunshots found Zoa, so she closed in on the coder.
Who was still gripping her brother’s corpse. “Wake up wake up wake -”
And above her, hovering like a horrifyingly multiplied spider in a web, was the wraith. Tendrils slowly picking through the smoke, never quite close enough that Zoa noticed, barely visible in the haze.
Isavel stared and dared it for half a second before grabbing the coder’s shoulder. “Zoa. We’ve got a way out.”
“Fuck off!” Zoa spun around, her eyes briefly catching on the wraith before returning to Isavel. “You - this is all your fault! You and -”
“And the fucking gods!” She tried to pull the woman forward, away from the wraith. The creature seemed to watch, almost… curiously. “We can’t stay.”
“I’m not leaving my brother to rot in the fucking sand!”
Isavel nodded. She could not argue with that.
She yanked Zoa off balance, punched her hard enough in the gut to make her double over, and lifted her off the ground. If there was one good thing about this miserable Mars, it was that it was so much easier to run carrying an adult human against her will. Even as Zoa tried to struggle and protest, Isavel wrenched her grip around to immobilize the coder as much as possible, and bounded through the smoke after the others, wings at her back shielding them from gunfire.
She dashed across the red sand, bounding far further with each step than she ever could before despite the burden. An eerie wailing suddenly came from the smoke behind them, and the shifts in its tenor told her the wraith had burst from the cloud; a sight from the corner of her eye, trails of black breaching from a desiccated orange haze, confirmed it.
Then she heard them, gripped Zoa closer, and followed the sounds. She rounded a bend and found herself staring at a pack of two-legged creatures with almost-horizontal spines, heavy coats of feathers striped and spotted with reds and browns against sandy yellows, and long, backwards-bending legs. They looked birdlike, though with mouths not quite beaks, and to Isavel’s surprise they bore saddles.
The martians were on these saddles, looking extremely dubiously at the one martian who had apparently been brave enough to let Erran climb onto the saddle with her. The rest of them… they were still afraid.
“Hey!” Isavel shouted. “We have to go!”
Zoa was regaining her breath, squirming and kicking. “Put me down you insane fucking -”
There were five martians, and at least a dozen of the beasts. Sam was wrangling one for herself, and in that moment she managed to jump up onto it. “Horses!”
Tanos gaped at her. “Sam have you ever seen a horse?”
Sam scowled. “I just mean - I can ride. I think. Get up!” As she lifted Tanos, she made eye contact with Isavel and Zoa, nodding awkwardly. “Isavel, tie her hands!”
Zoa squirmed out of Isavel’s grasp, and she darted back towards the center of the ruins. Isavel caught her almost instantly, throwing her towards the animals - everything on Mars was lighter, impacts included. “Ren wouldn’t want you dying here!”
The coder’s dark eyes met her from behind her frazzled blue fringe, and for a moment she was just breathing. Hail had managed to get behind another martian, and Isavel stepped forward to heft the coder up. “We’ll come back for him.” She was lying. “Ride the giant fucking bird.”
Zoa stared, and glared, and rode the giant fucking bird. The martian in front did not seem happy about this in the slightest, a deep look of distress on her face, but she kicked off as soon as was reasonable, the animal warbling nasally as it made excellent pace off across the sands. The others followed, leaving Isavel to climb on the animal with the man she had first met.
He looked at her fearfully as she approached, but she didn’t leave him too much time to worry, leaping up behind him. The animal honked briefly before settling, and she tapped the martian on the back. “Go!”
That he understood. They went. Isavel looked back; the wraith was following them like some kind of dread bird, wailing and chirping, and some of the martians with guns were firing at it from the ruins. As they drew off, the receding cluster of buildings seemed smaller, like just another part of the scrubland, blue cloth banners snapping awkwardly over a few domes.
The wraith came closer, blocking out more of the olive-bluing sky, thick flat wings of crackling black spread maybe a metre on either side. The martian riding squawked and urged his mount faster, but the wraith maintained that distance, and after a moment it and the mounts settled into a pattern.
And that was it. They rode.
At first, Isavel’s blood was pumping through her head, her muscles were tense, her gifts ready to fight. But it soon became clear there was nothing to fight. Her guts settled into place, and her mind started to clear. They were not being followed.
In the calming, she started to see the world they had stumbled into.
The animals bounded up a hill and veered sideways to skirt a dark-brown ridge that fell off into a small valley. Down below, on either side of an oddly ruddy river that almost looked like dark wine, were fields covered in grasses that waved at her in reds and pinks. Trees burst above the grass here and there, pale sand-coloured trunks and resplendent dark purple and deep red foliage. There was precious little green to be seen anywhere, despite the plant life.
Nobody was shooting at them. Really? She kept looking, kept expecting the shots.
She glanced towards the dim sun, still haloed in blue, and it seemed lower in the sky. It must be dusk, and if the sun was still anything to judge by, they were headed south. There was a moon, too, but it looked wrong - small, lumpy, and she could swear it almost seemed like it had moved.
Their mounts slowed as they passed down through a smooth gully into the valley. Creatures flitted from tree to tree, and alien smells breaking across Isavel’s face were snapped away by the wind.
She looked across at the other animals, bounding along with huge, easy strides that would probably be impossible on Earth. All her companions were clinging to a rider’s back - except Sam, who was at the reins. She was doing remarkably well, though she looked a bit terrified, and her animal seemed to be swerving about; Tanos looked the most confident of the three.
The others were staring as well. All the sights, the most basic things like dirt and grass and trees, were maddeningly unlike anything they had ever seen - how could they not stare? Even the wraith seemed to occasionally grow distracted, bobbing down from the air towards some tree or rock or bush before hurrying after them again.
So Mars was a horribly real place. Old stories passed down from walker to walker had ripped her here through the dreams of gods. She gritted her teeth. Gods she had insulted, through a shrine she had destroyed. She, their Herald, stepping so far out of line she had been banished from Earth, from the light of the ring and the bright sun and the full moon, from the gods themselves.
That was it, wasn’t it? This was what she got for demanding her due. This is what she got for serving t
he gods. Chaos and death. As if she hadn’t had enough of that already.
When the animals reached a stop, she found those two old constants well in evidence. She immediately heard the sounds, the screaming, and saw lights flickering in the strange blue dusk. Her eyes quickly resolved the village, the fire and smoke, the great barges flying in the air above it all, guns and banners flickering in the evening.
The man in the saddle with her turned and pointed, and there was fear in his eyes, but something else, too - something pleading.
She understood. A village being put to the sword. A call for help. How mundane. Yet some jagged, horrible part of her still found this a relief. Mars was not so different after all. This, if nothing else in the world, she understood. You’re a killer . This she could do.
She jumped off the animal, landing uneasily on the ground. The man said something to her, sounding concerned and afraid, and she looked back up at him, heedless of the language barrier. “What? This is what you wanted from me.” She snapped a sword of hard light onto her hand; if she couldn’t kill gods today, someone else would have to do. “This is all you ever want from me. You’ll get it.”
Chapter 4
The world was always burning. It was always so easy for things to collapse under the weight of time, the fires of entropy. It was a wonder there had ever been anything more than dust and ash.
“Isavel Valdéz. You had a great many names on Earth. They won’t serve you here.”
The flash of blue confirmed what she already knew: colours were strange, on Mars. Blue skies, blue hair, blue birds, blue haskap and berries and plums - the colour was so mundane on Earth, she had never really considered how it was also the colour of the killing gifts. Warriors and hunters both, more often than not, glowed blue with their powers.
So too did the blue-hot lance from a great twin-hulled barge in the sky, searing into the centre of the village. The thrum of the blast drowned every other sound as Isavel let herself drop like a rock, shielded behind her own blue against the hot wind. The glow devoured the village and spat out dirt and scraps of stone and wood that chimed against her twin shields. She pressed her eyes shut, but even with her eyelids down the blue came through, and she lowered her head as light and the brief shrieks of the dying flew past.
“You stopped looking for answers, and started asking for rewards. Eminently understandable.”
Blue too was the armour of the martians on the barges, and blue the banners they flew. Blue whorls of light held two drones aloft as they buzzed around the village. Blue was all danger, here. And of course - on Mars, of course, blue was the colour of the dying night, the dying day, the drying blood of the dead sprawled around the village, gunned down as they fled. It was the colour of precious little else.
“Some gods, alas, are quite averse to bargaining.”
There was still fighting in the rest of the village. Gunfire still needled at the barges. If she could bring down that barge… whoever it was might stand a chance. She spread her blade wings from her back and leapt down the hillside, dragon’s gift easily keeping her light enough to coast all the way down. She kept a shield in her hand, ready to loose it like cannonfire against whatever seemed like a weakness on the barge.
“What do you know about me, then, god of Mars?”
The connection between the twin hulls - where the weapon was - tempted the tension in her hands. If she could snap it -
“Everything. Your gods told me everything, after your arrival. Quite interesting.”
A black cloud passed overhead, a murder of crows, of magic and chaos. The wraith lunged through the sky at the twin-hulled barge, gunfire passing harmlessly through it, and latched onto the ship. The screams spread.
“It’s a pity your gods weren’t more forthright, Isavel. But we do things differently on Mars. We have little choice in the matter.”
She stood on the outskirts and stared as the wraith did something that disintegrated the connection between the hulls and the ship collapsed. Energy and fire split from seams as blue-armored martians jumped from the sides to flee this shadow of Earth. The other barge was turning away. The sounds of dying were dying, the battle losing to the silence.
“Help me, and I will send you and your friends home. And I will tell you what your gods hid from you.”
One of the triangular drones had dropped down through the smoke and dust, and had started to speak to her.
“Haven’t you ever wondered why you died? I can even explain that.”
The voice was calm, smooth, vaguely masculine, and singular. The drone’s steady blue glow did not leave much room in her mind as to who she was speaking to. One god, not a collective. A god offering her a bargain.
One eye on the wraith, its interest in fighting suddenly dissipated as the barges crashed into the smoking ruins of the village. It descended instead into the ash and smoke where half the village had been razed, a cloud that was curling outwards along the winds towards Isavel, blocking her view of the scene. Another eye on this drone. “What is your name, then?”
“The martian words are old and otherwise out of fashion. Call me Azure, for a proper sense of it. I have a simple offer for you.”
“Azure.” Her hand twitched at the drone, its blue shared across all these points of violence. She could easily have shot it down. She didn’t, though not because she wasn’t considering it.
Her heart was beating unhappily now, trying to match the rhythm of her morbid curiosity and her suspicion. She was not inclined to trust a murderous god. But a god speaking plainly, promising her the very thing she needed right now, for herself and her companions? A specific, clearly-defined, honest trade?
If it was his blue that donned the martians who had shot Ren and Lorra dead, Azure was a terrible god. But was it possible that, terrible as he was, he was also honest? “Why are you killing people?”
The drone bobbed, almost as if to nod. “Two reasons. Mars has less food and soil and water and space than Earth. Nature could collapse entirely if humans are not kept in check. It is my duty to keep humanity from exceeding its natural bounds.”
It was not the most sympathetic reasoning she had ever heard, when this world seemed perfectly alive wherever Azure wasn’t. There was more life here than in the wastelands that devoured the world east of her homeland, despite the dark cloud of char and ash now curling around her. “I hope your second is better.”
“Second. I want the Red Sword. An artifact that should not be in human hands. I lost track of it for decades before uncovering its location again last year. I have been hunting it ever since, but Mars is poor in many things, including tools for me to use. It was time to manage the villages again, and I noticed the Red Sword was moving through this region, so I saw an opportunity to discourage other villages from assisting the thieves in hiding the weapon.”
“A sword?” She crossed her arms, her eyes widening. This was among the simplest of the stories - the quest for a singular ancient artifact of great power. It also seemed ridiculous for a god to ask for such a thing. “What in the - why would a god want a sword?” She stepped towards the drone. “If you’re a god who can’t acquire one damned sword, what good are you to me?”
“I am a god of strength - I have the power to destroy cities, to fling you across the stars, to withstand the rage of the burning sun. But the thieves of the Red Sword are deceptive and full of tricks, and have struck dark bargains.” The drone bobbed back a little. “You, however, Isavel Valdéz. You, a Dragoneater, are of my stock. Bring the Red Sword to my devotees or my creations, and I will tell you every secret your gods hid, send your friends home, and give you the power over your destiny you’ve always said you wanted.”
She wavered. Just when she had started demanding her due - well. Was this an offer? Or several offers. One in particular. “Why should I trust you?”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t. But my offer will always stand - even if, in youthful foolishness, you cross blades with me before coming to the right decision. Give me th
e Red Sword, and anything else can be forgiven.”
“I don’t even know -”
She was cut off by a sudden wail and a whoosh of motion that seemed to take her and the drone equally by surprise. Black coils billowed out of the dust and snapped Azure’s voice, catching it even as it bobbed to avoid the wraith, pinning it between two dark disks. In moments too fast for Isavel to comprehend, the wraith seemed to devour the drone entirely, and after a few moments it spat out a torn-apart pile of shrapnel and dead machinery onto the ground.
She staggered backwards. The wraith simply cooed at her, then vanished back into the smoke, leaving Isavel alone on the hillside.
She turned around to see the others standing well back. The remaining barge had turned and fled; the sounds of battle were fading before she had crossed blades with anyone. Turning back to glance into the murk, she saw the surviving drone zipping off with the barge, no doubt shepherding the blue acolytes onboard.
Azure - a god of strength. Strength enough to fling her across the stars.
She turned and walked back up the hill to the others. She breathed. The martian she had been riding with lingered just long enough for her to see the look of a man who couldn’t believe what a terrible mistake he had made, then he turned his animal and bolted towards the village.
Some shouting evicted the other earthlings from their seats, Zoa and Hail and Erran awkwardly hopping off and being cursed away by their martian riders, and all the villagers fled. Sam and Tanos kept their mount, but clambered down and yanked it in towards the others.
“What was that?” Hail glanced down into the settling ashes.
Isavel raised an eyebrow. “You’ll never guess. Another damned god.” She looked at the fleeing barge. “A lone one, though. And he doesn’t speak in vague riddles.”
“Doesn’t dream either, though.” Erran was still staring around as though he were lost. Isavel regarded him for a moment before answering the obvious question.
Fourth Under Sol (Digitesque Book 5) Page 5