by Tom Lloyd
‘What’s what?’ Bade asked at last.
‘I heard voices. A voice. Something whispering.’
Bade felt his cheek twitch. The dark concealed all, though, and for that he was glad of its embrace.
‘It’s nothing,’ hissed big Sergeant Ntir from her place up front. ‘Just the fucking wind.’
‘I heard a voice,’ insisted the dragoon.
Bade hadn’t bothered to learn that one’s name. The man was no lover of the dark – was not loved by mistress dark. He wouldn’t last. Here, in this place, Bade’s long years of experience and instinct had been honed to something he couldn’t even define. He knew the dragoon would soon fall, rejected by the dark, and was just waiting for it to happen so he could make sure he got out of the way. Ntir, on the other hand, could have been part of Bade’s former crew, strong and unflappable that one. He’d seen the dark welcome her. Ntir would be at his side to the end.
‘It’s not the whispers that’ll kill you,’ Bade muttered.
‘That ain’t exactly helping, sir,’ Ntir said.
‘Listen to the whispers, soldier,’ Bade added, ignoring her. ‘Yer god’s calling you.’
The big sergeant growled. ‘Everyone quiet. We need to move.’
They set off again, Bade lost in a haze of dark thoughts, his burns stinging sharp under his uniform and the grip on his pistol far from secure. Ntir had him surrounded by dragoons though, ten in all with a column of twenty following two dozen yards behind. Anything that leaped out of the shadows wouldn’t be getting a free mouthful, but they were still a long way from safe.
The company was headed for a cave at the far end of this canyon, where Bade wanted to establish an outpost. The situation had deteriorated in the last week and everyone was feeling it. There were bags under the eyes of most soldiers there. They were all pulling long shifts and the toll was starting to bite, but Bade sensed things were not going to get any better soon. He had a small army under his command and ammunition supplied direct from the sanctuary, but the war was nowhere near won.
‘Remember, boys and girls,’ Bade whispered. ‘You see something move, you kill the shit out of it as fast as you can.’
There were nods all round. Dragoons were used as shock troops. These would be familiar with the crack and burn of intense close combat, but Bade had taken that further. None of the soldiers carried an icer in the pipe, not here. Long-range ammunition wasn’t much use against what they faced. Here they needed the brutal stopping power of earthers, the indiscriminate savagery of sparkers and burners. He had the mages in the sanctuary working as hard as their handlers dared push them to ensure the supply of ammunition.
And o’ course all that magic’s just making shit harder out here.
The irony wasn’t lost on Bade, but in the greater scheme of things it wasn’t a few dozen mages that was the problem. Not by a bloody long shot.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, some instinct of the deepest black or caress of his dark mistress, Bade no longer knew, but he breathed a warning all the same.
‘Eyes up!’
Ntir knelt immediately, gun raised. The two dragoons at her side copied her movement while those on the flanks shifted to cover those. They stayed that way for a long while, waiting and listening. No one argued with Bade. The ones who had lived this long knew not to. The mountain was silent around them, only a faint breath of breeze disturbing the silence. Those few creatures of the surface still inhabiting these parts were absent. From somewhere high and distant came the clatter of stones. Several dragoons flinched or raised their guns, aware death could be waiting above them, but nothing descended.
‘Lantern,’ Bade said.
Ntir lifted an oblong chunk of dark glass bound in metal. She fumbled with it a moment then activated the mechanism. A wide beam of faint blue light flooded the ground ahead of them – picking out the lines of stone and strange threads of minerals that glowed in the rock strata. Rather than simply illuminate the group in a bubble of light, ready to be picked off, this lamp directed its light forward. To those like Bade who were used to Duegar lamps, it meant you could make out details from fifty yards or more off.
‘Up,’ Bade directed. ‘There.’
Ntir raised the lamp, sweeping the wide beam across a slanted overhang and the tunnels that riddled this part of the mountain. Then she paused. There was a rounded shape protruding from over the edge of one outcrop.
‘Stonecarver beetle,’ she hissed.
‘Dead,’ Bade said. ‘Wouldn’t be sitting like that otherwise. Keep looking.’
The flutter of movement got her two companions twitching, but before they could get a fix on the targets they were gone.
‘Shit – bloodwyrms! Keep that lamp high, don’t let them get behind us.’
‘They killed a stonecarver?’
Bade shook his head. ‘Don’t reckon so – too tough.’
One of the men almost whimpered as Ntir grunted. ‘So there’s something else out here?’
‘Mebbe.’
She kept playing the lamp around above them, risking the odd flash down to front and back. Behind them, the other group had stopped and presented guns, fortunately none pointed Bade’s way. The next thing he knew was a crackling detonation ahead. Lost somewhere in the sound was a cry of warning then a shape thumped down on his neck. Bade shook himself like a dog, but didn’t see anything fall. More gunfire rang out, the orange bloom of a burner washing up the canyon wall just a dozen yards away. Bade ignored it, more concerned about what might have attached itself to him. He tore his knife from its sheath and smacked the flat of the blade against his neck. He felt the edge slice his skin in his hurry, but there was something just below it that provided greater resistance.
Bade scraped down and away, careless of his shoulder or coat, and was rewarded by the knife catching on something. Ignoring the sharp pain of his scar tissue he wrenched the knife away and cursed as he saw a bloodwyrm impaled on the fat blade. It was the length of his hand with pale papery wings and a rounded maw of tiny teeth. It was too dark to tell if the thing had bitten him, but he couldn’t see any blood there.
Soon find out, Bade thought manically, if I get all feeble an’ clumsy.
The dying bloodwyrm twisted left and right, blindly biting even as its life poured from the wound. He didn’t wait for it to die but crouched to hammer the butt of his mage-gun onto its head. On the second blow the head crunched flat and he scraped what was left off his dagger.
‘You good?’ Ntir called. She was still scanning above them like a good soldier, but now the urgent matter was dealt with Bade smelled burned wyrm. Away to his left the last of the burner’s flames licked at a dozen or more small corpses.
‘Aye, seems so,’ Bade replied, shrugging his shoulders and pleased for once that he could feel the tight, hot scar tissue there.
‘Good, cos there’s something ahead of us.’
Bade froze at her tone while the dragoons that had fired frantically reloaded. He followed the play of the lamp light and felt his guts turn cold. There was a tangle of limbs protruding from a crevasse about twenty yards away, four long limbs probing delicately at the ground around it.
‘Oh fuck,’ Bade moaned. ‘Don’t fire!’
Ntir paused. ‘You sure?’
‘Yeah. That’s what killed the stonecarver beetle. There’s bigger bastards out here, but nothing so gods-burned scary when they get moving. Enough to make a man’s balls crawl right up inta his throat, that thing.’
‘Sounds like we should kill it, then.’
‘That’s just some legs, you’ll only hurt it. Got to wait for the body to come into sight.’
‘Some legs?’ Ntir shivered. ‘Fuck I hate this place.’
‘They’re fast too – low and quicker’n a greyhound. Earthers and sparkers to the front.’
The dragoons shuffled around until most of them were aiming forward at the angular mess of limbs still probing the ground. The movement of their feet had attracted its atten
tion. The gunfire it’d have hardly noticed, Bade knew, but the thump of his gun-butt against the bloodwyrm would have been more attractive. He decided not to tell the others that, not yet anyway.
‘Ready?’ he breathed.
‘Aye.’
Bade nodded and started hammering his gun against the ground again. This time with a frantic energy born more from terror than strength. Out of the corner of his eye, the limbs exploded into sudden and terrifying motion. A blur of movement and Ntir was yelling the order, but she didn’t need to. Anyone presented with that mess of long skittering limbs and mandibles would fire on instinct.
The creature shrieked as it came, a furious and maddened sound that made Bade’s guts clench. The sound was swallowed by gunfire, the boom of earther hurting his ears but never so welcome. As Bade had remembered, the thing surged forward with terrifying speed. The huge forelimbs dragged it forward while six or more lesser legs thrashed away behind to propel it on.
Through the haze of dark and light he guessed half of their shots went high, the horror already inside their range, but Bade wasn’t the only one to shoot low. An earther and sparker both lanced down from his right, the dragoons perched on a boulder for a better shot. One burst right through a great clawed forelimb and threw the creature around, the other enveloped it in lightning.
For a moment its full horror was revealed, the nightmarish tangle of limbs, mandibles and teeth around a long, spike-backed body. Bade felt his gut clench as he heard howls of terror around him. None of them bothered to reload, there wouldn’t be time so they pulled mage-pistols instead. Someone hurled a grenade, Bade didn’t even see who it was. He was already cringing from the blast.
The boom threw them all from their feet, a concussive blast of air that knocked back everything within forty yards. His knees screamed and popped as he fell, the fury of the earth-grenade rumbling like an earthquake through the ground underfoot. Against the juddering blur he glimpsed movement – pieces of stone and creature tossed aside in a giant’s rage.
The wild movement of the Duegar lamp illuminated a haze of gore and flesh. Bade rolled through dust sticky with blood. Stars burst before his eyes, men cried out and distantly he heard the crash of falling rock. But the creature did not shriek again. His ears rang, his scars burned and old wounds opened up once more. Bade lay slumped against one dragoon and moaned, stunned by the boomer’s impact and blinded by the dust-choked twilight.
The roar of the grenade faded only slowly, echoing away down the chaotic tunnels and fissures of the holy mountain. It remained in Bade’s head long after the sound had faded, a throbbing weight against his brain. His ears felt wet with pain, his eyes blurred and his balance failed him. When he tried to stand he couldn’t. Bade found himself sat up, blinking dumbly at the encroaching darkness as the rear group of dragoons raced forward. Less affected by the force of the boomer, they still moved unsteadily but they were able to raise their mage-guns and watch for other threats.
Bade saw them merely as ghosts. He searched around and found a dead man at his side, limp with blood running freely from a broken skull. It was the dragoon he’d mocked earlier. Some part of him felt bad about that, but it was a distant part of some other man. The man he used to be, before the fires, before the darkness reached out its hand.
Moving mechanically, he reloaded his mage-gun then took the dead man’s along with his cartridge case. When Bade looked up he could barely see any better, could hear almost nothing at all. He could make out the faint, confused and angry voice of Sergeant Ntir, but nothing of what she said.
Then everything fell away. The dust and blood, the dull voices and shadowy movement. Deep inside his bones he heard a voice, one that had been on the edges of his dreams for days now. And there ahead of him, through the blur and confusion, was a single point of clarity. A shape of perfect blackness, visible only by the half-formed outline of twilight and untouched by the Duegar lamp.
And it spoke his name.
Chapter 14
Two hundred miles away, in the crumpled valleys of the Obetran Hills, a woman ran. The sound of gunfire receded as she fled, running without thought, direction or reason. The red snarl of panic filled her mind, a scrawl that obscured all else. Underfoot, the ground was heavy. Thick mud caked her boots and weighed down her uniform, but she would not stop. The strained pant of her breath filled her ears. The distant echo of detonations and screams rolled like thunder through her head.
Thin, stunted trees blocked her path, needle-tipped branches laden with rain. She charged blindly forward, bursting through the bushes that tore and raged at her face and hands. Branches snagged her hair, appearing unseen to slap and scrape as she forced a way through. For a few moments a sharp resinous smell overlaid the hot stink of terror but then she came staggering out the other side.
Something caught in her tunic, tore it and caused her to lurch sideways. Her legs wavered and gave out, spilling her to the ground. But the shouts from behind sent an electric surge up her spine and she pushed herself upright once more. It looked like there was a clearing ahead. She headed for it without any real decision – desperation choosing the fastest path.
Her empty holster slapped against her thigh, the lower strap had come loose. A voice at the back of her head screamed at her to discard it, hurl it away along with all the foolish notions that had led her here, but she couldn’t. On she ran, caked in mud and lungs burning. A fallen pine lay slanted across her path and she scrambled over the lower trunk.
Off to the left she could see the copse gave way to fields again, nothing higher than a tussock of grass. A dark smear across the landscape on her right was all she saw before heading that way, finding herself at the edge of a shallow gully. She scrambled down until she reached a point where she could cross and start the hard clamber up the far side.
Just as she reached level ground again, a figure stepped out from cover and she stumbled to a halt. For a moment she could see nothing but the gun, pointing directly at her. In that moment she thought she was dead – chased down at last and executed. The moment stretched out then finally she took a breath. Her body seemed to realise before her mind that she was still alive. She sank to her knees, panting and spent. Finally, she looked at the mage-pistol’s owner.
It was a woman – slim with tied-back fair hair and the cold eyes of a killer. Most likely an irregular scout. She wore no uniform, just a red scarf to go with a dark green greatcoat. Maybe not a Charneler, but no friend either. Those eyes were pitiless and professional. The lack of fanaticism in her face would be no saviour.
‘Do it then,’ she gasped, unable to bear the wait any longer. ‘Kill me, earn those scraps from your master’s table.’
‘There was me in two minds about it,’ the woman replied in accented Akodern. ‘You bloody religious types are always too keen to meet your god.’
As she spoke, a second woman emerged from cover, tall with a stern face and a matching red scarf. That one looked away, scanning the far side of the gully.
‘My name is Cylembair,’ she told the pair, still heaving for breath. ‘I am twenty years old, the eldest of four girls and one boy.’
The woman with the mage-pistol cocked her head. ‘So?’
‘So I want it to haunt you,’ Cylembair spat. ‘When you kill me, when you turn me over to be killed. I want you to remember my face and my name, to hear the cries of my siblings when you go to sleep.’
‘Oh, join the back of the bloody queue.’
‘How many of their names did you know? When you killed them?’
‘Enough.’
The woman looked up, hearing more sounds of pursuit.
‘What’s the plan?’ her companion rumbled in Parthish.
‘What do you think?’
‘Shattered gods, Suth! She’s unarmed, running for her life.’
Cylembair blinked. Were they arguing about this? Given the massacre she’d just witnessed, why was there even any debate? Unless …
‘You’re not with them?’ she
hazarded. ‘Do you know what they’ve just done?’
‘Yeah, we know. War’s nasty like that.’
‘They ambushed us!’ she almost wailed. ‘We were transporting supplies and they fell on us like we were at war.’
The shorter woman, Suth, scowled. ‘War was declared,’ she muttered. ‘Just not by anyone you lot were listening to.’
‘I’m a lieutenant in the Protectors of Light!’ Cylembair spat. ‘If war had been declared I would know before you. Do you even know why they did it?’
‘Better’n you, I’m afraid. Sorry about that. Kinda our fault, if I’m honest.’ The woman shook her head. ‘That’s why we’re here.’
‘They’re getting close,’ her companion said. ‘We can still let her go, but we need to do it now.’
‘That won’t work,’ Suth replied. ‘You know that.’
‘You expect me to watch you kill her in cold blood?’
‘Is there any other way?’
‘Find one.’
Cylembair watched. The woman didn’t swing her mage-gun around, but even from the floor she could see the implied threat. Suth merely gave a weary sigh in response, as though this was an old argument and not one they’d resolve today.
‘Sorry.’
Before Cylembair could understand the word, there was an explosion of light and noise. She gaped, rocked drunkenly back as a ghostly spear flashed forward at her. She felt it thump her chest, a strange sense of cold that reached deep inside.
The two women watched, one impassive, the other frozen in the act of crying out. Then she tipped back and a haze of shadows swam all around her. The cold in her chest spread. No pain, no fear even – just a numbness that flooded through her body like water enveloping her.
And with that, Cylembair – pious servant of Veraimin, sister to Ethbair, Haria, Obin and little Utobel – died with a gasp. In a blood-tinged burst of cloud her soul was driven from her body and ascended to the ever-warm embrace of the sun.