Yarger, Kelena, and Zoa were all here, but Tharson was nowhere to be seen. “Where is he?”
Kelena shook her head. “Tharrak lived on the floor above this place. He’s looking, but it’s small. I don’t think -”
Sure enough, Tharson staggered back out from a door in the depths. “There’s spilled food, still fresh. He can’t have left long ago.”
Zoa grabbed Yarger and started dragging him away. “We don’t have time for this -”
“Zoa’s right.” Isavel turned to Tharson. “He’ll be heading up. We should do the same.”
“It’s not like him to run alone.” Tharson scowled. “He’d be helping people. We should -”
Kelena stepped directly in front of him, and though Isavel couldn’t see the expression on her face, she could tell it stopped Tharson for a moment and made him think. Then he sighed and shook his head, looking defeated.
“You’re right. We should climb.”
“I sent the others ahead.”
Zoa glared at her, and for a moment the melding feathers around her shoulders seemed to flare with the blue of her hair. “Good, the ghosts and traitors will be safe.”
She felt her muscles tense, but with gunfire chipping away haphazardly at the stonework outside and explosive reverberations crisscrossing the air above, it was better to let these things go. “Come on. I’ll shield.”
She spread out the shield on her left arm and tried to cover the four of them as they darted out and wove through the back streets of the tier that weren’t directly exposed. About halfway to the tier, though, she noticed something different about the sounds and the shots ringing out, and a quick peak around a building confirmed her suspicions: Azure’s people had already made it to the sixth tier. Just a few at first, quickly picked off by defenders higher up, but more would follow.
She fired off a few shots as she saw the opportunity, her broader hexagonal shards flickering brighter between the needle-like pulses of the martian guns. Whether guns were more common on Mars or Azure had simply brought everything he could to bear on a rival god’s city, she couldn’t say, but for all the poor aiming there was as much shooting going on here as in any battle on Earth.
“Isavel!”
Hail’s voice caught her attention - it was coming from higher up on the seventh tier, which lay only a few human heights above the sixth. She looked up and saw glimpses of Tanos and Sam taking cover behind the thicker pillars of the tier’s balustrade. “I see you! Just go!”
“Jump! We’ll cover you!”
She thought for an instant Hail was suggesting she abandon the others - certainly, it wasn’t unlikely that was what she meant - but a quick glance told her she should be able to make the jump with one of them at a time, just barely. “Kelena. I’m taking you up.”
The martian woman’s eyes widened a little, but she nodded and let Isavel hook her arms under her shoulders. Wings alight, she tried to reach for as much of the dragon’s gift as she could, and kicked off in a single motion, hauling the swordswoman into the air, feeling the air suddenly grow cold as it rushed against her skin. She hopped back down as fast as she could, hauling up Yarger and Tharson as well in great bounds.
Then Zoa. But the two of them didn’t get quite as far - earthlings were significantly heavier than martians, it turned out. They made two thirds of the height before the jump peaked, and Isavel grumbled and lashed her claws into the wall. “Hang on!”
She heard Zoa grumble, but the coder kept quiet. Her other self didn’t, though.
None of you should be here. You have to find a way back.
Beside her, climbing the sheer wall, the way she had climbed rockfaces with her father. Her hair fairer, her skin a little paler, her back stronger than it had been, at that age. She saw more of the shape of his jaw, more of the colour of his eyes. She wasn’t speaking; this was just for her, and her. That’s what I’m doing .
Not just for them. Her other self shook her head. This isn’t home. Even Earth isn’t - no whole world is home. But there’s a corner of it -
With nothing left!
There can always be more. Her voice was deeper, softer, a lake that yielded but could not be moved. You could have looked to heal what was left - priests, survivors, our family. Her father’s half family, she understood. The ones she had met, a handful of times, from far-off villages. But no - you ran, and ran, and ran.
She angrily dug a claw into the stone. They were almost there. The world was ending -
And your first thought wasn’t family. Wasn’t home. Her other self sighed. It was running away. Never going back. How easy is it, for you, to cut things loose and forget them?
She gritted her teeth, and felt her paler hand reaching for her real one, sheathed in its draconic claws.
Like your humanity?
A finger grazed her neck.
Or -?
She roared and pulled, vaulting herself and Zoa up the remainder of the gap and winding herself as she rammed into the balustrade stomach-first. Zoa scrabbled over her and started running; she turned to look, to see, but all she saw was destruction below her.
All eight of them were running again, joining the martians and overburdened galhak who made up the tail end of the refugees. Isavel heard the wraith’s wailing, but glancing into the distance revealed nothing. Nothing but the occasional image of herself, there but not there, her but not her. Crouched on the roofs, looking down, wings eager to take flight. Wings of flesh and bone.
The eighth tier wall was even shorter to climb, but defensive fire from atop the city was dwindling and the blue was rising faster and faster. There was no point in trying to stall them anymore - Isavel blasted into the wall at strategic locations, creating rough and ragged footholds everybody should be able to climb. She wrapped her arms around Hail and bounded to the top of the tier, both of them turning around to cover the others as they climbed, picking off any blue-clad martian soldiers who seemed to have a line of sight to their party. They were up soon, and Isavel steeled herself at the sight of eight more tiers - even though their individual heights tapered off so quickly that she was sure they had already climbed most of the way.
“Tharson!”
The unknown voice came from the fleeing crowd, and suddenly she saw someone dressed in a plain rust-brown tunic pushing against the current of bodies to get back to them. The family resemblance was immediately striking, softer features aside; the look of concern all too real. Tharson seemed frozen for a moment before yelling back and running towards his brother. “Tharrak! Tharrak!”
His brother turned to look at her and the others, bewildered and scared, but they had no time to explain. “Tharson, we need to keep running!”
An explosion rocked the tier, gouging out a chunk of rock a few dozen metres behind them. It came from above, but as she looked up she realized it wasn’t some war barge - there were drones up there, too. She swore and reached out to fire at the drones, picking off a few, but others seemed to notice her and fired back down at her all of a sudden. Where was that damned wraith? “Run! Run, damn it!”
They made for cover, and Isavel started looking for a good spot to puncture another set of footholds. There, at the end of an alley. A few shots did the trick and everyone was scrabbling up.
Tharson said something to his brother and sent him up first, and suddenly he was on his knees.
Isavel turned, bringing up a shield and darting towards him even as his brother did the same. “Tharson!” His brother caught him, and she looked down to see that a shot had pierced him through the side of the ribs, bursting clear out the other side. He was coughing blood, looking up at them both in fear. His brother was shouting something, a look of anguish melting his features.
Isavel pressed her hands to both wounds and scorched them shut with dragonfire, watching his pale face only grow paler as he groaned in pain. She looked around in a panic, but there was no medic in her, no medic here to help. Only her warrior, solid arms crossed like the woven branches of the First Tree
, shoulders barred, shaking her head at Isavel in disappointment. You could protect people. Shield them. Hold the line. Instead, they all die.
Isavel waved the brother up the wall. “Go, go! I’ll carry him!”
Tharrak staggered backwards, eyes wide in horror, but did as told and scampered up the tier with the others. She hefted the martian into her arms and bounded up the tier in a single clear jump. When she landed, Tharson sputtered a spurt of blood, and Kelena’s eyes widened as she and Tharrak clustered around them. “He’s bleeding inside.”
“What do we do? Do you have -” If they had medics, she hadn’t learned the word for them. “Someone who can help?”
Kelena gave her a stony look that told her all she needed to know. Then she drew the Red Sword. “Isavel, put him down.”
“What? What are you -”
“Do it!”
She hesitated, but when Tharson nodded she laid him on the ground. He coughed blood again, and was growing slower, but Kelena shoved the hilt of the Red Sword into Tharson’s palm. “Tharrak! Your hand, now!”
With only a little hesitance Tharrak, still wide-eyed, pressed his hand against his brother’s, the Red Sword’s hilt between them.
Something happened, then. Something neither Isavel nor Kelena nor anyone but the brothers were privy to. She saw it flicker across their faces, as though stunning them both for just a moment. Then Kelena pulled the sword away from them, shoved Tharrak towards Isavel, and met her eyes with a steely gaze. “Take him. Do not let him stay.”
She did, grabbing the brother and pushing him forcefully up the narrow string of pocks in the next tier wall. When she reached the top she looked back down and found Kelena not far behind her. Alone. She met the martian’s eyes as she vaulted onto the tier, and the swordswoman’s face was utterly blank, like her heart had taken leave of her self.
“Keep running.”
Still shocked, she turned and ran. A thick column of light hammered into the buildings of the tier, flinging dust and smoke and debris all around them. The city below was bleeding smoke like an open wound. Red-flagged ships still coursed up near the top of the city - so close, now - but attacking fire had taken its toll, and Isavel’s party was already running through a city that was mostly ruins.
They had almost reached the tenth tier when the city shook. It wasn’t the kind of shake caused by an explosion, either. If the whole city was collapsing, they could all die - she fired ahead at the tier wall and everybody was scrabbling up, but Azure’s soldiers were right on their heels, just one tier behind and gaining fast with the help of their ever-closer barges.
When Isavel reached the tenth tier, she turned to see what had caused all the commotion. More dust was rising from the city, but -
Something was wrong. The way the blue fleet was moving had suddenly gone erratic. The gunfire that wasn’t flying up the city anymore. The smoke that had veered from beige-white and rusty orange to black -
She almost staggered. Of course that wasn’t smoke.
All at once the ruined city oozed impenetrable black from a hundred cracks and crevices, jagged angry lines darting into the air and spearing barges by the dozens. When the larger war barges fired back into the black entire forests of shadowy tendrils evaporated like nothing, and the wraith’s mournful wailing filled the air. But the darkness kept coming.
And yet, in the heart of the city, something was glowing as well.
Whatever it was was getting brighter, and parts of the stonework were breaking off, floating around it as though in a whirlpool, collapsing into it in flashes of light.
“Isavel!”
She spun around when Hail grabbed her, and saw the others had already crossed towards the next tier. They ran, but a roar started to sound from the base of the city. It was familiar. She had heard it before.
Somewhere on Earth.
They scrabbled up to the eleventh tier. They were almost there. And Isave was already there, standing on the edge, looking down into the whorling chaos, crying. You should have gone with her. None of this would have happened.
Hail kept running, but Isavel turned to look. At the wraith’s weaves, at Azure’s ships firing at the wraith, at whole clouds of it vanishing in fire. At the self who couldn’t look at it and not see. She chose to leave. She chose not-me.
Her other self, her face still bleary-eyed and weeping, glared at her. You know it isn’t that simple.
The thrumming was building, the pillar of light… it wasn’t a pillar, this time. She turned and bolted for Hail, knocking her and Kelena to the ground behind the nearest building. “Down!”
The explosion ripped through the lower half of the city. Blinding white light gushed out of the city, shining straight through Isavel’s eyelids as she squeezed them shut. The natural cliffs to either side of the stonework cracked and crumbled. Knock-off explosions that might be war barges echoed up the walls, and suddenly a hot storm of dust and ash devoured the air around them.
A heavy rock struck her on the shoulder, and she snapped up a shield and raised it above them, catching two more. As debris continued to patter down onto them, though, the savaged remnants of Red Rise were eerily quiet.
“What happened?” Kelena stared at her coldly, pale knuckles white around the Red Sword, blinking out into the dust. Isavel couldn’t tell if she was struggling to remain composed, or was an utter void.
“The wraith. I don’t know.” She heard shouting down the tier, though, and it didn’t sound friendly. If they had survived, some of the enemy could have as well. “We need to go now, before the dust falls.”
They ran. The silence, save for the occasional shouting, persisted. Either the barges weren’t going to fly into this haze, or they were all gone. No wraith sounds echoed across the ruins. Gunfire picked up again when they had two tiers left to go, but the heavy cannons remained silent. Occasionally they passed others in the smoke, dead or cowering or running as well.
With only one tier left to go, they were almost onto Olympus proper. And then… they would have to keep running, no doubt. Gunfire rattled against the stonework, and they took cover. Next to her, in the smoke, the pathfinder inside her melded with the dust, skin rippling in colour and wind. Run.
More gunfire came, and through the clearing smoke she glimpsed blue-clad figures in armour still coming. They had no more air support, and gods only knew how many of them were left, but they were going to try and accomplish whatever mission their god had set out for them.
The pathfinder shifted, silent in the rubble, whispers only for Isavel’s pathfinder ears. Run. I’ve gotten you this far -
Isavel ran, holding u p a shield, running behind the others down the alley, then turned to cover them as they climbed. Hail was the last to start climbing, and when she was above Isavel’s head Isavel bounded up to the top of that last tier, turning back and kneeling down to reach for Hail’s hand and haul her up the rest of the way.
She wasn’t there.
It took Isavel a second to register that Hail was lying on the ground at the base of the tier. Flashes of red coloured her hands, one of them clutching at a spot on her chest.
“Hail!”
She jumped down, snaked her hand under the hunter’s clothes to sear the wound shut with her palms as Hail’s eyes widened in fear and pain. Isavel gathered her into her arms.
“No, no, no, no -”
She jumped back up to the last tier, trying not to jostle her too much, trying not to think.
She couldn’t carry Hail across a mountainside in this state. She would die.
She couldn’t let her rest or wait for help - they would be killed.
She tried not to think about Hail dying either way.
Chapter 13
The hunter’s face, angular and pale features framed with that golden blond that had become so familiar, was halfway between stunned and slack. The wound had been small, but the smallest wound in the right place could still kill.
Sure enough, piece by piece, the gods were taking ev
erything from her. They seemed determined to destroy everything she touched. If they took Hail from her, too -
She felt the rage well before she truly understood what she was thinking. If they took Hail from her, too, she would kill them. She would hunt down every last god and destroy them or die trying; whatever it took. For what they were doing to her, to everyone; for everything they were failing to prevent. For gods, the two were one and the same.
She hauled Hail forward, her eyes finding Kelena, and she cut off the swordswoman’s disapproving look before it could form speech. “Crimson! Where!”
Kelena kept her mouth shut and pointed to the ground, tracing a finger along a red stone path leading through the tall buildings of the city’s crown to the south-west. Isavel ran, bounding lightly across the path, and was soon darting out of the city’s walls and onto the rugged, uneven face of Olympus.
She hoped it wasn’t far. She hoped it wasn’t hours away. Or days. Or weeks.
As she cleared the billowing column of dust and smoke rising from the city, red-flagged barges soared overhead towards the other end of the tier. As her eyes adjusted to unfiltered daylight, she suddenly saw it - a path of irregular red flagstone snaking its way to suspiciously polished dark metal jutting out of a distant, steep hillside. Good enough. Holding Hail tighter, she pressed onward, one long martian stride after another.
“Crimson!”
The temple wasn’t metal, she realized as she approached - it was dark polished stone. There must be watchers about to keep it in such a state.
“Crimson! You owe me! You gods fucking owe me this! ”
Ancient markings hung above the huge metal door that loomed before her, unmoving and uncaring. She shouted as she ran towards it.
“My name is Isavel Valdéz and if you don’t -”
The door cracked open. She almost stumbled, but kept her balance. The two metal plates creaked apart slowly, opening a sliver just fast enough for her to run straight into the ancient temple.
Lights flickered on along a long hallway, lined on either side with pale stones polished and covered in engravings, and a reddish-pink stone floor that looked like one long, smooth slab. In the distance, unnaturally bright and smooth light glowed in a wider room.
Fourth Under Sol (Digitesque Book 5) Page 21