Movement.
Sound.
Life.
But, in that moment, for Sword… all was silent. All was still.
The world hung breathless. Waiting for the response from an old man who had more power than any save the Gods themselves. Who held the power of life and death for untold thousands – perhaps millions – in his gauntleted hands.
He nodded.
He stepped forward, his hand outstretched to her.
She reached out as well. Dared a smile of hope.
And that was when the explosion blew her off her feet.
16
She was many things: a Dog, a soldier, an assassin. Someone trying to make the world a bit better.
One thing she was not, though: indestructible.
The explosion rent the earth, scooping it up and then raining it down again as tiny pebbles. Where once people slowly picked their way across black rock, now stood only a crater the size of an auto-car, with blood and bodies – parts of bodies – strewn around and within it.
The shockwave pounded out, and though Sword could move impossibly fast when possessed of her Gift, there was no weapon she could call, no instrument she could use, that would protect her. The blast slammed into her, and she was suddenly airborne, flying ten, fifteen, twenty feet straight back. She hit rock with a glancing blow that slammed all the breath from her lungs. Then she bounced, came down again, flew up and back once more, and finally settled to earth.
She couldn't feel much of anything. Just the vague sensation of blood, spilling down her nose, out split lips, welling from long lacerations where the ground had shredded her flesh.
The rest of her… numb. No feeling in her limbs, no concept of whether she was upright or laying down, no idea of anything at all.
Just confusion.
Terror.
Her thoughts bounced around madly. Finding nothing to reassure, to provide any sense of where they were or how they had come to be in such a dark place.
What happened?
A high-pitched whine filled her ears – the first thing she really became aware of other than the blood streaming from her cuts. The whine gradually rose to become a shriek, then that shriek transformed to the thundering rush of a waterfall that had somehow found its way into her skull.
She couldn't hear anything for a moment. Just the shriek. The water.
(The blood.)
Then she could hear. And wished to return to her strange, loud deafness.
Screams.
Moans of pain.
Explosions. Blasts that rocked the earth and pounded air out in invisible pulses strong enough to level stone.
She managed to turn her head, realizing only as she tried to do so that she had landed facedown on the stony ground. She twisted, and as she did sensation finally came to her flesh: pain exploded through every nerve of her body. Every fiber screamed to just lay there lay there lay there and die.
She ignored it. Forced herself to roll over. To look up.
To see.
At first she couldn't understand what was happening. And even when she did understand what she was seeing, she could not understand how it was possible.
No. It can't be – Who ordered this?
The Imperial Army had arrived.
She tried to quell her jumbled thoughts. Concentrated on standing, on doing something to stop what was happening.
She had seen the tanks before. Great, armored monsters that had been enchanted to fly like an air-car. But unlike an air-car, the tanks had no balloons helping them remain aloft. Just magic.
Unlike an air-car, the tanks held only a small crew – three or four people in each vehicle.
And unlike an air-car, the tanks were not meant for travel. Only for attack.
Each tank had a long pipe that extended out of their forward shielding: the muzzle of a gun the likes of which the Empire had never before seen. Not until the Chancellor – until Phoenix. He designed these weapons, and used them to level the Grand Cathedral, to try to hunt and kill Sword and her friends.
A tank hovered directly overhead. It thundered as the bullets it carried – enchanted to explode when they impacted their targets – flew forth, turning men and women and rock to nothing but ash and blood and bone.
Sword tried to stand. Tried to move. To call forth a sword of flame that would let her do something. Would let her fight back.
Only… only there was no sword. Her fist clenched, but held nothing but itself. Empty, useless.
Where is it? Where is my sword?
Nothing came. She couldn't concentrate enough to bring forth her Gift. Her thoughts swirled and swayed, and no matter how hard she tried, standing seemed an impossible task. She managed to roll over, then threw up as screams and explosions rent the sky.
Concussion.
She couldn't concentrate; didn't even know if the single word that pounded in her mind referred to the explosion that knocked her down, or the possibility that she was seriously injured.
Another blast sounded, this one different than the others. A muted roar accompanied it, one that she knew, and she managed to look up in time to see Tiawan's armored form shoot toward one of the tanks. His fist extended, roaring forward like the largest explosive Shell ever created, able to punch through the thick armor of the tanks like a spike through soft cheese… and then he bounced off nothing, his precise flight turning into a mad spin as he slammed into the force field that surrounded each tank.
The invisible shields were another gift of Phoenix, one of whose powers had been the conjuring of such things to protect himself and others around him. Sword had wondered for a time why the shields hadn't stopped working when she killed the once-Chancellor.
But I didn't kill him. That's why his magic still works.
Why does that matter now?
It doesn't.
(Survive.
Stop this.
Stop the killing.)
Her thoughts still tumbled like Tiawan, falling in a flat spin that he gradually managed to correct. Then another roar overpowered the sound of the tanks –
(so many of them it must be every tank that was at the Strongholds)
– as La'ug, again in her creature form, flew into the air. Sword blinked, her jumbled thoughts still incapable of making sense of what she was seeing. Then she realized that the monster must have jumped, leaping at a tank that skimmed over the camp at a low altitude.
La'ug sailed at the tank, which turned the huge bore of its gun to face her. Sword, even in her pain, gritted her teeth at what must come: either La'ug would be blown to pieces, or she would bounce off the shield. It just depended if she would reach the shield first, or if the tank's gunner would manage to pull the trigger before then.
Neither happened.
La'ug flew forward, batted the tank's muzzle out of the way, and landed on the tank. A moment later she was tearing great ribbons of metal shielding away the way Sword might peel a fruit.
Of course. The shields don't stop people.
They had discovered that while testing the tanks after Phoenix fell through the clouds. The shields he created allowed people through – otherwise no one could have driven the vehicles – but stopped bullets, arrows, stones, and the like. She didn't understand the mechanics of it – the magic of it – but clearly the shields were not built to hold back a ten-foot-tall woolly/vengeful little girl combination.
La'ug finished tearing away one side of the tank. She reached into the gaping hole with a huge, clawed hand, and began yanking out the crew of the tank, slashing at them as she did, so that what fell was less "people" and more "pieces."
Then she leaped away from the tank as, crewless, it veered in the sky. The war machine slammed hard into the ground a hundred feet away and remained still, while La'ug continued her great leap toward another nearby tank.
A moment later, Sword feared her injuries must be worse than she thought, as La'ug seemed to split in half in mid-air.
Not La'ug. Wahy.
; The man-child had been clinging to La'ug's back, nearly unseen in the madness of the moment. Now he leaped from the beast's back. He had been blooded. No longer the innocent person he had been.
The mad berserker reigned.
Looking at him, Sword suddenly understood what she and her friends were fighting for. They had fought against corruption, and now they fought against this. Wahy was the epitome of true, total war. Conflict without sides, without compassion, without lines. War would make his berserker insanity pale as a match before the sun.
We are right. We have to stop them. Have to stop Tiawan. Have to keep the people safe.
It takes longer, but the other choice… madness.
Wahy and La'ug landed on separate tanks. La'ug repeated her earlier actions, tearing apart the side of the tank and reaching in like a bear hunting for grubs in a rotted tree.
Wahy simply pounded at the tank with fists that bled and broke and healed and bled and broke and healed again. Blood smeared the side of the armored war-machine, but it began to buckle under the combined might of Strong's magic and berserker's rage.
A moment later, it opened to him. He pushed his way inside, not seeming to mind that the opening was not quite big enough for him. He left flesh and skin behind as he shoved through the jagged edges of the split he had created.
A moment later, Sword saw… things… rain out of the same hole. Clouds of red trailing after pieces of the crew that rained down in the fluttering remains of their Imperial Army uniforms.
Wahy emerged, shrieking insanely into the sky as the tank swerved to the side. He leaped away from it, caught by Tiawan, who had swooped in and captured him in one great fist, the other holding tight to the scruff of La'ug's neck.
Tiawan rocketed upward, the fires in his back and feet brightening as he flew above two more tanks, dropping Wahy on one and La'ug on the other. He evaded several blasts from the other tanks while he waited for them to repeat what they had done before; to finish their bloody work.
Bodies fell. Pieces. Neither La'ug nor Wahy let anything larger than half a man emerge from the tanks.
Sword looked away. There was nothing she could do, and what was happening above sickened her. Not just the carnage, but the very reality of it.
Who could have ordered the Army to attack this place? Malal was incapacitated, and her friends were in charge at the palace. None of them would have done this, so how….?
She managed to stand, her confusion mounting even as she regained some physical equilibrium. The sounds still beat upon her, pounded at her with near-physical violence. Explosions, the shriek of bullets flying and the fires at Tiawan's back. The roars of Wahy and La'ug.
The screams of the dying.
The terrible silence of the dead.
One by one, the tanks fell from the sky, brought down by the combination of berserker and beast. But they fired their bullets up to the final moment, killing those in the camp even as they themselves died.
Sword tripped through the dust, the haze. She nearly fell over something. Realized it was a body. An old man who reminded her of Brother Scieran.
An omen.
She turned away. Tried to move somewhere –
(safe
away from here)
– where she could catch her breath and figure out what was happening.
A sound came to her ears.
Strange to think: that a single noise, a grunt, a small cough of terror, could pierce the enormous wall of sound that had been born around her. But it happened.
Sword swiveled, orienting on the noise. She didn't know what it was, but it had sounded like someone in distress. Someone in pain. Someone….
There!
She ran toward the sound. It was a girl, small and malnourished as were all the souls here – those that remained. Sword had an instant to wonder what crime she could have possibly committed that would warrant imprisonment in the Walled City of Fear –
("Most of the people of Halaw are nothing more than dissidents and their families," said Tiawan, and La'ug spat, "People who dared speak against the Emperor.")
– then she only wondered how to stop what was happening.
A soldier of the Imperial Army had his arms around the girl's legs. He himself appeared to be laying down – perhaps knocked down by one of the explosions, or perhaps by one of the ex-prisoners who had managed to survive this long. Now he was grappling with her, grabbing her calves, reaching for her thighs….
Sword charged. She still felt dizzy, queasy. She still didn't understand what was happening. But she did know that it was wrong. That it shouldn't be happening.
The girl is innocent. I will protect her.
Her power returned in a rush, rage tearing the confusion apart and returning clarity to her. A red-orange throwing knife appeared in each hand, and she hurled them straight at the soldier.
She didn't want to kill him, either – she didn't know who had ordered the attack, and in any event it was unlikely that a low-ranking soldier would have anything to do with it or any understanding beyond going where he was told. Another thing she had learned: much of the "corruption" of the Army and government was simply men and women who believed the lies they were told, and truly thought they were stopping dangerous people – or who simply feared for their own lives and didn't know what else to do.
An evil empire, she had found, is not one controlled by a corrupt population – but by an evil few, followed by the many who are unwilling or unable to understand what is truly happening around them. Who will follow the loudest voice, because the loudest voice promises safety, peace. And the lie is easier to believe than the reality.
So the knives flew not at the soldier's head, but his arms. They pierced his flesh, wounding him non-fatally but in a way that would make it impossible for him to keep holding the girl. He would let go. Would scream. Would bleed.
And would live.
Only… when the knives plunged into his arms, none of that happened. He did not let go, did not make a sound. Only a tiny trickle of blood appeared, and even that was dark and strange.
The soldier kept yanking at the girl. She was about to fall.
And Sword finally saw what was happening. Saw what he was. And knew that if the girl fell, she would not rise again.
Or, worse, perhaps she will.
The soldier wasn't lying on the ground, after all. Sword had thought he must have been knocked down, perhaps grabbed the girl as she ran by. The reality was much uglier. The soldier was reaching up because that was all he could do. He could not stand. Could not run after her.
He ended at the waist. Nothing beyond his belt but the tattered remnants of leggings and other trailing things she preferred not to think about.
Sword's forward momentum stuttered as she saw it, and she realized even as he turned to look at her that he must have come out of one of the tanks. Must have been thrown down after being cut to pieces.
He was trying to kill a girl after a fall and wounds that had to be fatal.
The soldier was already dead. He glared at Sword with eyes that had turned milky white, the cataracts of a corpse.
A thought. A single word, like a knife stabbed into the center of her brain.
Marionette.
This was the work of the mad child who had once been one of the Blessed Ones. An assassin who killed with the dead – whose weapons were the fallen themselves.
It was the first and only Gift that Sword had ever seen that was, as much as she could tell, purely evil.
Marionette is here.
As far as Sword knew, Marionette – The Poppet – had to be fairly close to use her Greater Gift.
Where is she?
No time to look. Sword kept running at the girl before her, and the dead man who was trying to kill her. The knives Sword had thrown disappeared from the creature's arms, returning to the never-place from whence she called them. Now she held swords, and as she closed in she slashed down with them, separating the thing's arms from its body. It made no soun
d as she kicked its torso away, though she could feel its hatred, its rage.
The girl the dead man had attacked was still in danger: Sword had cut its arms from its body, and the body had fallen away… but the arms still clung to their intended victim. They wrapped around her legs, the hands clutched at her and inched their way higher.
"Don't move," said Sword. The girl stiffened, though whether it was because she heard Sword's instruction or simply went rigid with terror could not be said. Sword's long blade disappeared, replaced by smaller knives. She slashed with them, and dead arms were separated at the wrists from still-clutching hands.
Another quick set of slices and the fingers were cut in two.
The hands fell away. The girl realized she was standing in the middle of a body that had died long ago – the small parts of which still moved and twitched hideously – and shrieked. The sound was so loud and piercing that Sword worried the girl might have lost her mind.
She ran to the girl. Clung to her. Held her tight and whispered that it would be all right, that they would survive and all would be fine and whatever other kind lies she could think of.
She heard screams, explosions, the rasping un-sounds of men and women undead. She knew she should move, should help. But for a moment all she could do was hold tight to the child. For a moment, all that mattered was this little girl, and Sword was gripped by the conviction that if the girl did not survive, then all in Ansborn would die.
At last, though, she pressed the girl against the ground. No cover to speak of, and the only safety available came of being close to the earth.
No escape. Just cringing and crying and hoping not to be seen.
The girl clutched at Sword. Screamed.
Sword pressed her down to the earth, to the deep embrace of dark stone.
Then she turned to the fight.
17
Arrow drove like a madman. He pushed the auto-car to its fastest, taking unpaved roads at speeds that threatened to flip the vehicle off its wheels.
Child of Sorrows Page 31