As they dashed to the next tier and its fewer ladders and ropes, angry volleys rained from red ships across all the city’s tiers. With so much concerted weaponry firing down at Azure’s forces, it was no wonder the blue barges halted and backed away from Red Rise, if only minutely. Enough to ward them off, but patently not enough to defeat them unless they made a serious blunder.
Indeed, glancing back down she found some of the smallest barges weren’t backing away - they were lowering themselves just outside the city walls, where the city’s guns wouldn’t reach them. Unwilling to fire on its own people, Red Rise was allowing a vicious melee to play out across the battlements, and Isavel could tell at a glance that the blue tide was almost certainly going to gain access to the gates.
So. If the barges were too exposed they would invade on foot, since no sane person would fire heavy weaponry into their own city. Maybe the walls did serve a purpose. A hand, a thickly scaled hand of her own with nails like claws, gripped her shoulder as the dragoness whispered smoke into her ear. Go down there. Be the fire on the battlements, burning them as they come too close, devouring -
They wouldn’t hold. Another mid-sized barge punched a crack in the far right end of the wall with its cannons. Even if the soldiers couldn’t take the gates, they could chip away at the wall from the other side and let their soldiers in that way.
A real hand, Hail’s, gripped tight around her wrist and pulled. “We need to move!”
She nodded and scrabbled after Hail. This was not the time to get into a fight. The others were already running for the tier wall, and she tried to ignore the sounds of explosions below as she followed. Fifteen more tiers. Olympus, towering over her, boomed with the force of just how large such a small number could be.
They were gathering themselves atop the third tier when she spotted the first tentative forays of Azure’s soldiers clambering onto the second tier below. They were quickly driven back, but the defenders were cutting the ropes and abandoning the lower city - the stairs at the far end would be the only way to continue the climb.
“Perhaps it was built before the barges. It is only good to hold off ground invasions.” Tharson’s finger zigzagged as he pointed out the stairs to the second and third tiers. “The stairs alternate sides each tier. Makes the climb slower.”
“Why?” She held up a shield to catch a stray shot as they made for the wall up to the fourth tier. “There are barges everywhere on Mars. I’ve never seen so many ancient ships in use in one place.”
“Let us hope you can ask Crimson.”
She looked around, and for a moment it struck her that there was almost no technology to be seen here - not like Deep Tharsis, where leftover machinery and metal jutted out everywhere. Not like Glass Peaks, or Hive, or Campus, or any other ancient city. The whole thing seemed a giant monument carved into stone and nothing else.
There was little time to wonder. The third tier was cutting its ropes to the second already, and Isavel noticed with dismay that nobody on the fourth was offering a way out to the third. The enemy was already moving too fast to risk helping evacuees.
“This way!” Kelena drew their attention to the stairs to the next tier, on the eastern edge of the city. “Run!”
It was not a run she was glad to make by any stretch of the imagination, but they made it, joining the rushing press of martian bodies climbing to the fourth tier in a panic. Just as they did, two heavy cannons struck into the very tier they were on, cracking the stonework and sending dust and rock shards falling onto buildings and into crowds. People screamed, she pushed forward through the press of people, shoving past the monstrous, toothy grin of the dragoness as she ran straight into herself, ignoring the rumblings that chased after her. Coward. Coward! It was all Isavel could do not to turn and fight.
They were about to turn towards the other end of the tier, absurdly far away, when Tanos started shouting. “Isavel! Isavel, I’ve got an idea!”
She darted towards him, shield up for them both, but instead of explaining he rushed towards the tier wall. When they all reached it, he slapped the stone. “This - we can climb this. You can dig holes into it we can use with our hands and feet. We can jump pretty high here.”
She frowned, looking up the sheer face of the wall to the fifth tier. He wasn’t wrong, and the tiers really did seem to be getting progressively smaller as they made their way up the mountain. She laid her hand against the stone, fingers spread, and felt heat and tension begin to coil in the muscles of her arm. “Okay, Tanos. Try climbing.”
“What? There’s nothing -”
“I need to see how high you can reach at a decent pace.”
He nodded and strapped his gun onto his hip again, then took a scrabbling leap up the side. She noted where his feet made it, judged the distance he could jump, and shortened it a little just in case. Then she took a deep breath and crackled glowing white claws out around her fingers like thick daggers, digging them into the stone and giving it a tough wrench with all her back and arm. She tore out a chunk like it was dry clay and flung it aside, sticking her foot in that one and digging her claws in for the next. It was slow going, ripping out the rock like this, but it was magnitudes faster than running all the way to the western edge of the city for the next set of stairs.
And here, at the top, her other self towered over her, sharp-eyed and tall, deadly palms crackling with energy that had nowhere to go. Claws. Like an animal. Or a warrior. The hunter’s grin grew as sharp as her eyes. Same thing. Could have shot the way up and saved yourself a lot of time.
She glared at her hunter’s instincts, but spun on her heel and leaned over the precipice. The others followed up the handholds she was tearing, and one by one she helped haul them up onto the tier, until only Zoa was left - halfway down the wall, awkwardly hobbling up the stairs with her hands pressed to the uncarved rock. Was she injured? No - what in the worlds was she doing? “Zoa! Hurry up!”
The coder glared up at her then ignored her. Isavel frowned, then noticed the faint glow of the coder’s gift up along the stone. She was tracing long lines of code on either side of the makeshift ladder as she climbed - why?
Isavel glanced back down into the city, and saw flickers of blue ascending across the second tier and firing shots off from the third. A brief flicker of metal told her a few of the smallest barges were advancing into the city, hugging the tier walls so defenders higher up couldn’t fire on them and boosting troops up.
“They’re gaining on us!”
Tharson tapped on her shoulder. “Isavel! We need to go!”
She waved him away. “We’ll catch up - find cover!”
They all darted off except Yarger, who was waiting with her as Zoa slowly climbed up. When the coder finally reached the top Isavel made to get away, but Zoa immediately started shouting at her. “Did you think for a second they’d be able to climb right up after us?”
Isavel blinked - she evidently hadn’t. “ You didn’t say anything!”
Zoa was on her knees, though, her fingers streaking across the stonework, connecting the two lines of code she’d drawn up the wall with a wide, glowing sigil across the ground. She didn’t know what Zoa was doing but she knew the enemy was closing in, and as more gunshots zipped at them from the lower city, she brought up her shields and stepped between Zoa and the edge of the tier, feeling the odd stray shot clink against hard light as Zoa furiously slashed away at the sigil.
Then she glanced at Isavel and shoved her head sideways. “Get off.”
Realizing she was standing on the two lines that led back down the tier, Isavel hopped out of the way, and Zoa traced a final line in the sigil. The code flashed pale and suddenly all the stonework between those two great lines, about a hand’s width deep into the rock, collapsed into sandy dust, transforming the hand-torn ladder into a sleek and shallow chute.
Yarger stared down it in shock as Zoa stood and shook her head, grabbing his arm. “They might still be able to climb, but I don’t think they’ll want
to.”
“Same goes for the rest of the civilians.”
Zoa glared at her and darted off with Yarger, leaving Isavel to run after them. Their companions were huddled in a narrow alley between two buildings carved out of the stone near the next tier wall, and as they regrouped Isavel glanced up the wall. “Zoa, do you think you’d be able to -”
A loud, angry hum filled the air, and the massive blue-trimmed shape of a war barge suddenly floated into view from behind the unworked cliffs on the western edge of the city. It was above eye level with Isavel, and even as red ships from on high started firing at it, it kept moving in a single long strafe, unleashing a column of blue-white fire straight into the tier wall above their heads.
“Run!”
The force of the impact gutted the stonework and sent shards flying everywhere. Screams and shouts were drowned out by the sound of rock splitting apart, and they barely made it out of the alley as rubble descended from the wall. Isavel shielded them as they took cover behind another house. The parts of the next tier nearest the edge had collapsed - no buildings were so close to the edge, but parts of the intricately-carved balustrades and delicately tiled walkways were gone.
On the plus side, the tier wall was more of a rugged hill, now. She looked at her companions, and was sure they could climb it.
“Tharson! When Azure’s people attacked the old forest - one of the barges had orange stuff in it, like smoke.”
He nodded. “They use it to hide their crew from fire, or confuse an enemy enough to get out of range.”
“They all have it?”
“They should.”
She nodded. “You - all of you are going to run up that hill.” She pointed them up. “I’ll cover you.”
“What?” Hail stared at her wide-eyed, pointing at the trail the great weapon had left behind. “Isavel, you can’t cover us against that .”
She reached behind her neck, rubbing her upper back, wondering if it was still there. Then she bared her palms and pooled them with the hunter’s gift, this time letting it seethe black, its usual glow devoured into something cavernous and empty. Hail blinked; neither she nor anyone else could so willfully mutate the colour of their gifts. “I’ve got an idea.”
She felt the muscles in her mind shaping and molding the shot - she had thrown explosive fire at things before, but this would need to be a bit different. She could feel the chaos it needed, though - the corkscrews and bursts, glittering flashes of black. Palms wide, she peeked around the edge of cover and fired into the air.
The shots cracked and burst like cautious fireworks, too sinuous and dense to really impress, but they stained the sky in unnatural patterns. A few moments later, her hope was vindicated by unnatural cooing, echoing across the collapsing stonework. The wraith sloughed up the tier wall onto the fifth like some kind of tidal wave, then whorled into a snaky comet of black and wound its way towards her, blooming before her out like some kind of flower made of night sky and starlight.
“Wraith! You remember the barge you killed? The orange smoke? We need to get some of that.” She glanced at her companions, who clearly thought she had lost her mind, and stepped out of cover. “Can you help me?”
It made noises that, as far as she could tell, sounded positive. She darted for the tier wall, dodging the ever-dwindling number of people who were running to the eastern edge of the tier for the stairs. Once she was overlooking the lower tier she saw ships already moving. Larger barges had snuck into the first few tiers and were firing at defenders who looked to be on the eight tier at least, and a few of the barges from both sides were venturing out of their respective positions to trade blows up and down the city’s height.
The smaller barges, though - one was fairly close, a little off to her right. She could easily glide to it, but there were too many people with too many guns for her to make the jump alone. Still, she ran for it, and the wraith swooped after her like a hawk on fire. When she got as close as she could, she spread black wings and dove.
The city rushed away from her as she entered an empty world of gunfire and rushing wind, and suddenly the wraith was in front of her. It crackled like boiling lightning and shielded her from anyone on the barge that might attack, but when it suddenly snapped to the side she found herself only a split-second from the barge. She twisted as she slammed into the metal deck, her wings evaporating, her right leg and shoulder smarting with the sudden impact.
She quickly glance around the deck, which was about the size of a small house but longer and thinner. Bits of blue gore and bloody scraps of armour told her the wraith had cleared the way for her. She tried not to think about it, or the pieces of its kindred magic etched into her skin.
She hauled herself to the podium that seemed to double as controls, and the wraith swirled around the ship, its core still an impenetrable black but the rest of it scattering into a whirlwind. She had to act fast, before one of those war barges realized this crew was dead and fired on her. A simple touch to the controls and a force of will was all she needed, apparently - and it immediately made her feel dizzy. But she didn’t need to go far, so she let the dragoness’ hands and comfort with vertigo hold her steady as the barge practically flew itself where she wanted. Its ease and speed that seemed to surprise even the wraith.
A heavy cannon shot struck at them from above, and the wraith parted out of the way, letting it crack against the deck and fling a piece of metal out into the air. She scowled at it, but she couldn’t fault it for wanting to avoid… injury, if indeed it could be injured. “Cover me!”
Its piping whine sounded aggressively annoyed, but it continued to swirl around her, and she noticed smaller gunshots continued to harmlessly swerve away when they got too close. It just didn’t want to test its strength against the bigger guns.
Soaring up to the fifth tier and towards her friends, she tried to understand how the smokescreen worked, but nothing came to her the way it did with the flight itself, and the more she thought about her connection to the craft the more she wanted to let go and feel herself again. She started pressing and hitting things at random, but all that brought forth from the vehicle were unhappy noises.
Suddenly a black tendril snaked its way into her field of vision. It quickly took a shape eerily resembling a thin, jagged human hand, slowly moving towards hers.
She stared at it. “What? What do you want?”
It hooted something and grabbed her hands -
And -
She was a martian man, thirteen long, long years old, a newly blooded follower of Azure, the Lord of the Hunt, keeping the herds of humanity healthy and strong by culling the weak. He had been defeated in battle, not by the enemies and usurpers he knew, but by a thing he -
He screamed as blackness filled his vision, panicked, reached into a crevasse underneath the main control array to activate the smokescreen, dug his fingers into the controls, and the machine knew his urgent need. It didn’t help, and the black coils filled his vision and flayed his living skin and oozed dark needles into the back of his skull -
She staggered when the wraith let go of her, and for a moment stared at it with the very residual fear of one of the martians it had killed and eaten in the old forest. Gods on the ring, should she really tolerate this creature? “What did you do? ”
It coiled and tensed and relaxed tendrils of black all around her, chattering and hooting, and then another heavy cannon shot struck the barge and the wraith evidently decided it had had enough. It snapped away like lightning, leaving her exposed, and with all that black suddenly disappearing from her vision she was shocked into action by the brightness against the red and orange and sandy stone of Red Rise. She darted forward, doing as the now-dead martian and triggering a thick, intense burst of orange smoke even as she set the thing down right against the crumbling tier wall. She looked at her hand, briefly, wishing she had thought of something else.
She jumped off near where her companions had been hiding, but even with her gifted senses it took
a moment to find them in the smoke. Her arm met someone else’s and she pulled, and it turned out to be Tanos. He was clearly holding onto Sam, and as they moved Isavel realized they had all linked up in a chain to stay with each other in the murk.
“Go!” She shouted, urging them up the ruined wall past her, touching them each on the shoulder as they passed her. “Go, all of you!”
The wraith wailed and howled incoherently somewhere else in the city, but she wasn’t about to step into the open to see what it had done now. She bounded up the rock over her companions, light as a feather, clearing the wall in two hops. The distances she could cross here on Mars would be exhilarating, to some part of her, if she didn’t need to keep a buckler up to block incoming gunfire.
The column of orange smoke resting against the ruined tier wall was apparently uninteresting to the enemy fleet, and one by one the others emerged unscathed. Tharson immediately darted off to the side, and Isavel’s count caught up - sixth tier. His brother was here somewhere. The other martians and indeed Zoa followed him immediately, but Hail stuck by her as she grabbed Sam and Tanos by the shoulders.
“You two - go. Keep running straight to the top.” She glanced at Hail. If history was anything to go by, getting away from Isavel was a good way to stay alive. “Help them; keep them safe.” Don’t wait for me.
“Isavel, I -”
“Do it. I’ll be right behind you.”
“What if his brother isn’t here?”
She set her jaw. “If we can’t find him quickly we’ll have to leave. If Tharson won’t, I’ll carry him.”
Hail smirked a little. Sam wasted no time pulling Tanos forward towards the stairs on the opposite end of the tier, and Hail darted after them, the three quickly vanishing behind the cover of ancient buildings. Isavel ran where she had seen the martians go, and found them in short order. They had ducked into a wide-open building that didn’t look like a home - a long counter dominated one end, with bottles and bowls and food still scattered across it, tables and chairs everywhere upended in a hurry.
Fourth Under Sol (Digitesque Book 5) Page 20