by Tim Lebbon
They closed on the city and Lenora began to make out the individual defenses. Several rows of sharpened stakes faced outward, their tips fresh and pale. There were trenches-perhaps filled with oil-and large rocks, and a few humps that might have been trenches fronted by earthen bunds. She hoped that there were militia in those holes. That would bring blood a few heartbeats closer to her sword.
A hail of arrows greeted her as her machine crashed over the first line of stakes. The sound of splintering timber was deafening. An arrow sliced across her shoulder, another stuck her hip and shattered on the knives sheathed there, and then the men who had fired them leapt from a trench and ran for the gates.
She rode them down, leaning sideways to swipe at one with her sword. The others fell beneath the machine’s legs.
The machine vaulted a trench which erupted into flames. Lenora closed her eyes against the heat and enjoyed the brief touch on her skin; it had been cold for so long that it felt like sunlight.
More arrows came and Lenora sent an order to her machine. It rose on its hind legs and presented its underbelly, and the arrows snapped and shattered there. She slipped from her mount’s back, darted between its legs and jumped into a trench filled with several terrified militia.
“Please,” one of them said, and Lenora laughed. By the time they gathered their wits, there were only two left standing, and Lenora dodged their clumsy attacks and felled them both. They were wallowing in their own guts as she climbed from the trench and mounted her ride once more.
She glanced back and saw the other dozen Krotes ride their machines through the wall of flames, and Lenora shrieked as she rode on, the cry beginning in the very heart of her.
Thisislife! she thought. This is what you missed, my daughter.
She stopped a hundred steps from the city wall. The fires lit the whole scene, yet something slipped over the wall and slicked to the ground, hunkering down against the ancient stone structure to blend with the background.
Shade? Lenora thought.
Guards of the gate peered at her from atop the high wall. They were petrified. She could instruct her machine to kill them and it would, but this was a symbolic moment that she could not let pass. She knew that the best way to defeat an enemy was to soften their minds before slitting their throats.
“I have something for you!” she called. “A final message from your Duke.” She stood on her machine’s back, tugged the Duke’s head from its mount and held it up by the hair. “He says he’s sorry, he’s been busy fucking and taking drugs in Long Marrakash, but now he’s back and so you have nothing to fear. Do you hear me, Noreela?”
A flight of arrows came her way, and her Krotes launched several fireballs from their machines. Something flared, someone screamed and the day was growing brighter with every beat of her heart.
A shadow shifted away from the city wall and crossed the ground toward Lenora. She frowned, disturbed, but she could show no fear.
“So who wants him?” she called. Silence was her response. “Here’s a deal: Whoever catches the Duke, I’ll kill quickly.” She leaned back and prepared to throw the head toward the city wall.
The shadow rose before her, and she knew it for sure. Shade! The Mages had been here already…and they left something behind. It smothered the firelight for a few heartbeats, then passed around and through her, cold as the ice of Dana’Man, redolent of an emptiness she never imagined could exist.
Lenora gasped and swayed, and the shade disappeared behind her machine.
For a moment I was nothing…
Something shifted in her hand. The Duke’s eyes had opened wide and his mouth was working, dry tongue protruding between lips like a fattened grub. His eyes turned to her and held her gaze.
She threw the head as far as she could.
What is this?
It sailed through the air, spinning toward the city wall.
Nobody caught the head. It disappeared over the wall, and a few seconds later screams rose from beyond.
She rode her machine toward the city gate. Arrows and bolts zipped down from left and right, liquid flame poured from above as they tipped burning oil, but her Krotes protected her. The machines launched a blistering attack on the defenders with discs and bolts, fireballs and something less fiery, but more destructive. One of them leapt onto the wall and hung there like a spider, its rider standing on its head and firing arrows up at the Noreelans. The machine plucked several militia from the wall and dropped them into their own burning oil.
From above came the sudden screams of diving machines. Shadows emerged from the glare over the city and rained fire and metal across its rooftops. Some of them attacked the defenders inside the north wall, while more explosions and screams sounded from deeper within the city. Good, Lenora thought. Confusion for everyone.
She reached the gate. Her machine reared up and battered the thick wood with its front legs. Huge splinters erupted outward, and soon she could hear the massive gate beginning to crack and groan.
In the reveals to either side, shutters snapped open and bowmen began firing. Lenora ducked and shot a crossbow to her left, hearing a man groan as he fell. She spun right, swinging her slideshock and crunching the skull of the Noreelan on that side. She had an arrow through the flesh of her right arm, just above the elbow. She decided to leave it there; it would drive even more terror into her victims.
The gate cracked and fell, and her machine drove forward over its remains. She caught a brief glimpse of two men disappearing beneath the machine, flailing uselessly as its feet crushed them, and she paused for a heartbeat to assess the situation: before her was a wide road leading into Noreela City, barricaded several hundred steps along its length; to her left an alley barely wide enough for her machine, and just within its shadows lay the Duke’s head, chewing air.
She turned right and rode, knowing that she would be met with a hail of arrows. She had to get away from the gate, leaving room to allow more Krotes to enter. And she wanted to spread her own destruction deep into the heart of the city.
I’m here, she thought. I’m in Noreela’s capital!
She would circle around, back onto the wide road that led toward the city center, and attack the barricade from behind. Open up the main artery and watch the city begin to bleed to death.
Oh bleeding, she thought. There’ll be plenty of that. Plenty for us all. And again, that memory of the Mages’ lake of blood came to her, twisting the knife of uncertainty in her heart one more time.
A man jumped from a building and landed on the back of her machine. His sheer stupidity and bravery surprised her for a second, and he swung a heavy axe at her head. She ducked just in time, sprawled on her side and sent a message to her machine to stop. The sudden halt tipped the man forward, and he slid from the machine’s back and became snagged on two of its limbs.
“You’re a brave one!” Lenora shouted.
“You Mages can’t win,” he said.
“You’re not even militia.”
“It’s the normal people of Noreela who’ll beat you, just like before.”
The man was still trying to rise, hefting the axe in one hand and using the other to claw his way back up the side of the machine. He saw something-the machine’s eyes, its mouth?-and froze for a heartbeat in shock. Lenora cleaved his skull in two and kicked him to the ground.
She urged the machine on, turning left into a space between buildings. They rose two stories on either side, and the machine shattered balconies and smashed windows as it went. Whenever Lenora saw a pale face at a window she fired at it with a bolt or throwing star.
The alley opened into a courtyard with a fountain at its center and a group of militia trying to barricade themselves in. Sport, Lenora thought as she halted the machine and jumped from its back.
There were five militia, all men. “Any of you ever fought a woman?” she asked. They stared at her, utterly terrified, not one of them going for his sword. “I bet you have,” she muttered. “After you’ve fucked,
I bet you beat them, just to make you feel more like men.”
One of them went for a knife and Lenora jumped forward, opening his chest with her sword.
Something whispered to her left and she turned, but there was no one there. Is that you? she thought.
Two men came at her but they were slow and scared. She moved back from their first sword swings then stepped into their killing circles, taking one with a knife in the eye and pulling the other close, smiling at him, dipping her head and severing the main artery in his throat with one bite. His blood tasted weak.
Is this the living I missed? a voice said. Lenora dropped the man and turned, seeing something flit across her vision as though it existed on the surface of her eyes. She tried to follow but a man ran into her, trying to knock her from her feet. She stumbled and turned, letting him fall then kneeling astride him. As she brought her sword down with both hands she thought she saw something reflected in its blade: a face, young and innocent and so familiar. She twisted the sword mid-swing and struck the man with the flat side. He cried out, nose burst and cheekbones crushed. Lenora looked past her machine, wondering where the vision had gone.
“Is that you?” she asked out loud, and the loaded silence seemed answer enough.
The man beneath her whined and Lenora pushed her sword into his chest.
The final militia man came at her, swinging a heavy mace on a long chain, and she sent a thought to her machine. A limb unfolded from its body and tripped the man, sending him sprawling onto the spiked ball of his own weapon. He screamed, tried to stand, and the machine planted one huge foot on his head.
“Not fair,” he said.
“Fair?” Lenora told her machine to press down.
The courtyard was silent now, but she could hear the sounds of conflict from all around. A building falling, a flying machine expelling fire, a woman screaming, a machine whistling as it ejected a spurt of steam or gas at some unsuspecting enemy. Keen to rejoin the fray, she took an ear from one of the dead, then climbed onto the back of her mount. Her fury was rich, her mouth rank with sour blood, her sword wet with it…and still her unborn daughter was here, being with her and existing within her.“Just a few more days!” Lenora pleaded.
A shadow seeped into the courtyard over one of the makeshift barricades. It passed over and through the five dead men and then left as quickly as it had come, paying Lenora no heed.
The men began to rise. The one with the crushed head stumbled in a continuous tight circle, but the others picked up their weapons and climbed the barricades at the entrances to the courtyard, staring about wide-eyed. One of them saw Lenora and moved on, seeking different prey.
Lenora now knew for sure where the shade had come from, and who had brought it. “By the Black, how can we lose?”
As she rode her machine from the courtyard, sensing several terrified observers watching from higher windows, that voice started in her head once more, and for the first time Lenora heard something other than anger and neglect in its tones.
What is it that you wish for me? How can my unknown life be precious? the voice of her daughter said, and then as it dissolved back into the darkness of her deep subconscious, it left one parting comment: This is not living.
THE FIGHT EXPANDED, intensified and rolled on, and a thousand Krotes took their fill of blood. Soon after smashing her way through Noreela City’s northern gates Lenora stopped thinking of it as the battle she had been hoping for; a battle was when two sides were fighting. This was a slaughter.
The level twilight made time almost impossible to judge. It could have lasted a few hours, or maybe it was a day. Much of the city lay in darkness where inhabitants had extinguished lanterns, but Lenora could smell burnt oil on the air. She and her Krotes lit up these areas, balls of fire cruising the streets and narrow alleys. Timber buildings provided excellent fuel, and Lenora’s machine extended a long, thin limb from its underside and pumped liquid fire through windows, doors and cracks in walls. The buildings’ windows lit up like the eyes of giants surprised awake, and soon the flames moved into their thatched or boarded roofs, heating stone tiles until they exploded, crawling into neighboring properties and catching them unawares. Fires spread as quickly as the killing. They became the signature of places the Krotes had already visited.
Many people fought, and Lenora was glad for that, but they were mostly untrained and resigned to defeat. Few of them came at her with anger or rage in their eyes, fewer still with hope. They blinked uselessly as they died on her sword.
Her machine took its toll of Noreelans. Lenora liked to kill them herself, but on occasion she was rushed by a dozen or more, and she took equal pleasure in guiding her mount through its own killing moves. It could only perform minimally on its own: it was her thoughts, her ideas, her action that drove it. Limbs flicked out and whipped across the chests of attackers. It kicked with one of its legs, spat fist-sized knots of molten stone that left smoking trails in the air, and vents along its sides opened to emit hails of razor discs, thudding into stone, wood and flesh alike. Some people went down fighting the machine, perhaps lost in the belief that this could only be a terrible nightmare. Others turned to flee, and these Lenora gave a slower death.
Her machine took occasional chunks of timber from collapsing buildings or stone from the ground and imbibed it, replenishing itself with its strange magic. It throbbed beneath her, and a bluish light bathed its legs for a few heartbeats at a time. Occasionally two of its eyes turned up to look at her, and though she felt their gaze she ignored it. They’re from him, she thought. From that farm boy. Long gone now.
In one shop window, Lenora saw the reflection of a small girl, her face pale and eyes devoid of emotion. Lenora smashed the window with her slideshock and spun around, but there was only a dead tree standing behind her. She rode on and passed a fountain, saw that same girl beneath its surface, mouth hanging open as if in mid-scream. She turned away, thinking, That can’t be you.
The shade had been busy. The dead were rising. She saw one of them as she rounded a corner, a shambling wreck of a woman with only one arm and a spear protruding from her throat. She wore simple clothes and carried a mewling dead child in one arm. She passed Lenora and her machine as though they had always been a part of this street, and disappeared through an open doorway into a small house. The spear banged the door frame on the way in, and as Lenora saw its bloodied tip disappear from view, she heard the first scream.
She drove onward, riding fast and stopping to fight only when there was no way past the enemy. She wanted to push through and cut the great Noreela City in two with her presence. That girl’s face glanced at her from windows lit by the flicker of distant fires, and ponds and fountains reflecting the moons. The shimmer of her sword caught the child’s reflection several times before being buried in warm flesh. That’s not you, she thought, over and over again. That’s not you. You never were. That’s not you. You never were. It became a mantra, a beat by which she judged moments in time. She saw a lone militia slinking through shadows-that’s not you-and took his head from his shoulders-you’re not her. She held the head up but the shade must have been elsewhere. She looked into the man’s vacant eyes and wished she could question his mind, discover where he had been going and whether the shade of an unborn girl haunted this city.
She haunts me and me alone, Lenora thought, but the idea had the voice she had given her daughter.
She killed a small group of fodder protected only by an old woman. “Why?” the woman asked, desperate rather than afraid. “Because you deserve it,” Lenora said. She saw a shadow moving from the corner of her eye, a fire deflected by something that should not be, and she left the old woman alive.
Entering a large park at the center of Noreela City, Lenora found many people seeking shelter there. They were huddled beneath trees or behind bushes, listening to the destruction and gasping as a building collapsed, rocking the ground and sending balls of fire sparkling into the air. Lenora rode in quietly, keeping to sha
dows and listening to their voices. She found no strength here at all, no wisdom or bravery, only fear and hopelessness. They had already given up.
She passed through a collection of statue pedestals. There were fifteen in total, though none of them retained the statue they had been built to bear. The most that remained were two legs from the knees down, clad in worn stone sandals. Any writing that had once been there had been erased by time and neglect. Whomever these statues honored-heroes or artists, writers or explorers-history had long since forgotten.
Lenora told the machine to crush the pedestals, and the noise caused a stir of activity across the park.
“You’re all cowards!” Lenora roared. She jumped from the machine and ordered it to remain where it was. Strung an arrow in her bow. Felt the weight of weapons on her belt, stars and knives and slideshock still ready to take their fill of this night. “You hide here like cowards, so expect to die like that too.”
“Please don’t hurt us!” a woman said from the darkness. Lenora sent an arrow after the voice and heard a gasp of pain. A body hit the ground, a man screamed in grief and anger, and the fight began.
Lenora knew that she was being foolish. As she ran here and there, ducking sword swipes, making another corpse with her own blade, she knew that she should have forged through this park on her machine, let it do the killing while she thought on ahead. But the absence of that voice in her mind was disturbing her. She would have welcomed the absence were it not for the little girl she saw reflected in windows and ponds. At least here there’s nowhere to see her, she thought, but she was wrong. As she grappled with one man, jamming a knife into his back as he hugged her tight, she saw the girl’s face in his eyes.
The shade passed through the park and bodies rose to continue the killing. Wives gasped their relief at seeing husbands stand, then screamed as they fell together. Children ran toward shambling parents, mothers smothered daughters and the dead soon outnumbered the living.
Lenora stood by her machine, certain that she would see a little girl’s form emerge from between the trees. She would hear her first-there were more leaves dead on the ground than remained on the branches-but the sounds of destruction were drawing nearer every second. The skies to the north were alight, and sparks and burning embers were drifting down all across the park. Lenora could hear the fire’s roar even from this distance.