The Legion of Flame

by Anthony Ryan

  “Gotta stitch this up,” Loriabeth said, blood seeping through her fingers from the already soaked bandage. “She’ll bleed to death in moments otherwise.”

  Clay’s gaze snapped to the Red’s corpse. He rushed towards it, taking an empty vial and scooping up a portion of the blood leaking from the animal’s skull. His first try at drinking it left him retching with such force he abandoned the attempt. Raw Red, it transpired, was even fouler than raw Black. Cursing, he took his canteen and added a few drops of water to the vial, shaking it to dilute the contents. He steeled himself against the reaction and forced the whole lot down in one swallow, clamping a hand over his mouth to stop his body immediately rejecting the noxious brew.

  “Clay!” Loriabeth said.

  He staggered as the Red seemed to explode in his gut and would have fallen if Sigoral hadn’t caught him about the waist. “I’m alright,” he said, shrugging free and stumbling back to Kriz. Loriabeth moved aside as he slumped to his knees, pulling away the bandages she had applied to the wound. The sight of the deep, oozing rent in Kriz’s flesh nearly had him retching again but he managed to contain his gorge long enough to summon the product.

  “Hold her tight,” he told Sigoral and Loriabeth. “This’ll hurt.”

  He placed his hands at one end of the wound, pressing the lips of the cut together then unleashing a thin stream of Red. Kriz shuddered and let out a lacerating scream as her skin blistered under the intense heat, releasing a sickening stench that forced Loriabeth to turn away and heave up the contents of her stomach. Clay continued to work, tracking his gaze slowly along the length of the wound and leaving a hideous track of puckered, smoking flesh in its wake. But it was flesh that no longer bled. By the time he was done Kriz’s screams had faded into a faint whimpering and her body lay slack, her breathing shallow and skin cold.

  “Mr. Torcreek,” Sigoral said with quiet urgency. Clay glanced up to see him aiming his carbine at the quickly darkening sky. Just visible in the gloom were three winged silhouettes, growing closer by the second.

  “Go . . .” Kriz said in a barely audible whisper. Clay looked down to see her bright eyes meeting his as she smiled. “Leave . . . me.”

  “Fuck that.” Clay took out another vial of Green and drank it all before gathering Kriz into his arms and rising to his feet. “Stay close,” he told Loriabeth and Sigoral, turning and starting up the slope towards the building at a dead run. “Keep them off us.”

  Kriz sagged in his arms as she lost consciousness. Clay fixed his gaze on the building ahead and gave full vent to the product in his veins, resisting the urge to turn as the guns of his companions barked into life. Drake screams and blasts of heated air chased him up the slope, all the way to the building, which, he saw with a plummeting heart, appeared to be undamaged and lacking any obvious point of entry.

  He sagged against the building, laying Kriz down before turning about just in time to see Loriabeth hack a Red out of the sky with a concentrated burst from her repeating rifle. The beast crashed to earth a dozen feet away in a tangle of wings and dying flame, twitched and lay still. The other Reds screamed and wheeled away, weaving to and fro as Sigoral’s bullets tracked them across the sky. They retreated out of range of the guns and began to circle, calling out their piercing cries all the while.

  “What are they waiting for?” Loriabeth wondered.

  Clay’s enhanced vision picked out a distant shape above the jagged peaks. At first he took it for a cloud, then realised his mistake. Beyond the occasional patch of mist, this was a world without clouds. The shape soon grew and his unnaturally keen sight left no doubt as to its true nature. Reds. A whole flock of Reds.

  “Reinforcements,” Clay told his cousin, turning and casting his gaze around. Where is it? He found it at the corner of the building, a free-standing plinth identical to the others. Rushing towards it he slapped his palm to the crystal, sighing in explosive relief at the grind of stone as a section of wall slid aside to create an entrance. He gathered Kriz into his arms and rushed inside, the others following quickly. They moved into the cool dark interior then stopped, turning to regard the open entrance.

  “How do we close it?” Sigoral asked.

  Clay’s frantic gaze searched the surrounding gloom, finding no sign of another plinth. “Don’t think we can,” he said. “Guess when they built this place they weren’t overly concerned with locking their doors behind them.”

  “Cuz.” Loriabeth stood staring at the fast-approaching flock of Reds, less than a mile off now and closing quickly.

  “Take her,” Clay said, placing Kriz in Sigoral’s arms then rushing towards the entrance. He ran outside and moved to the plinth before taking out his wallet and extracting the vial of raw Black. He could hear the Reds now, the flock voicing a collective cry rich in hungry malice. He drank all the Black, swallowing with hard jerking gulps as it coursed down his throat to his gut. The burn of it provoked an agonised shout and he fell to his knees, gasping air into his lungs then pressing his hand to the crystal.

  He sprinted for the entrance as the grinding rumble rose again, the section of wall sliding closed with aggravating swiftness. He lashed out with the Black just as it came within a few inches of closing. The huge stone slab resisted the pressure at first, the hidden mechanicals pushing it were strong, but the Black was stronger. Clay maintained a steady pressure, widening the gap to an inch, then another, sweat coursing down his forehead as he felt the Black diminish with alarming rapidity.

  He could see Loriabeth and Sigoral on the other side, hands clutching the slab as they tried to widen the gap. Loriabeth called his name, the sound of which was barely audible above the rising fury of the Reds’ hungry chorus. Clay kept his gaze locked on the edge of the door, pushing and pushing until the gap widened to almost a foot.

  Feeling the last vestiges of Black fade from his veins, he lunged forward. Sigoral caught his arm and hauled him through just as the door slammed shut behind, sending a booming echo through the structure.

  Clay spent a few moments on his knees, dragging air into his lungs before he regained the strength to stand. He rose, surveying the building’s interior as Loriabeth lit her lantern. They were in a broad central chamber, the surrounding walls interrupted by several entrances. Clay moved to the closest one, peering at the symbols carved on either side but finding them unfamiliar, resembling a curved diagonal cross.

  “Look for something that looks like an eye,” he told the others, gulping Green and moving to the next entrance. His boosted sight found it a few moments later, the upturned eye flanking a corridor, the depths of which were lit by a soft glow. “This one,” he said, rushing to gather Kriz into his arms.

  They hurried along the corridor and out into another larger chamber. Loriabeth and Sigoral drew up short at the sight confronting them, although Clay had little time to wonder at the crystal floating above a huge stone egg. Like the chamber where they had found Kriz, the egg stood on a raised dais, bathed in the soft white light cast by the crystal.

  “Cuz?” Loriabeth asked, voice heavy with uncertainty as he moved swiftly to the dais.

  “It healed me,” Clay said, stepping into the crystal’s light. “It’ll heal her.”

  He gently set Kriz down on the dais, settling her onto her side so that her ravaged back was presented to the crystal. “Come on,” he implored in a whisper, stepping back, gaze locked on the slowly rotating stone. “Do it . . . Do it!”

  The crystal continued its serene rotation for several long seconds then Clay detected a subtle flicker deep in its facets. A new beam lanced out from the crystal to envelop Kriz. She groaned in response, limbs twitching and features tensing. Clay resisted the impulse to pull her clear of the light, focusing on her wound. After a few seconds he saw the redness surrounding the ragged puckered line in her back begin to fade. He kept watching to ensure it wasn’t some trick of the mind, finally letting out a relieved laugh
as the redness faded almost completely. Soon the glistening blistered flesh around the cauterized wound had begun to re-form itself, smooth skin replacing raw tissue.

  “How’d you get it to do that?” Loriabeth asked, moving closer, eyes wide in fascination.

  “I didn’t,” Clay said, staring up at the crystal. “I think it’ll heal any wounded body that comes into range of its light. It’s what it does.” He lowered his gaze to the egg, still bathed in the crystal’s light, which hadn’t faltered with the appearance of the second beam. “It keeps things alive,” he added in a soft murmur, eyeing the tightly sealed joins in its side where the segments fit together.

  “Back here!” Sigoral called from the far end of the chamber, voice high with uncharacteristic excitement.

  As Loriabeth answered the Corvantine’s call, Clay knelt to check Kriz’s breathing, finding it smooth and regular. Touching a hand to her forehead, he found the skin warm but free of fever. The only sign of distress was a slight flutter to her eyelids.

  “Might wanna come see this, Clay!” Loriabeth called, just as excited as Sigoral.

  He found them standing next to a plinth several yards away from the dais. It sat close to the edge of a twelve-foot-wide circular indentation in the floor. Hearing the echo birthed by his footsteps, Clay looked up. The shaft rose into the gloom above, the length of the echo indicating it went a very long way up.

  “We made it, Cuz,” Loriabeth enthused, coming closer to hug him tight. “We’re finally getting out.”

  “We need to know it works first,” Sigoral said, gesturing at the plinth.

  Clay disentangled himself from his cousin, giving the plinth a brief glance before turning back to the crystal. “All in good time,” he said.

  “Mr. Torcreek,” Sigoral said, stepping into his path and jabbing an insistent finger at the plinth.

  “Not quite ready to try it yet, Lieutenant,” Clay replied, stepping around him. “Kriz ain’t fully healed. And we don’t have what we came for.”

  “I’m afraid I must insist, Mr. Torcreek,” Sigoral stated in an unambiguous tone of command. Clay turned to find the Corvantine regarding him with a steady, determined gaze, the butt of his carbine against his shoulder.

  “I ain’t on your crew, Lieutenant,” Clay reminded him. “And I didn’t come all this way to leave without answers. We ain’t done here.”

  “I am done here.” Sigoral raised his carbine, centring the sight on Clay’s chest.

  Seeing the hard, implacable determination in the Corvantine’s gaze Clay recalled the words of Silverpin’s ghost. You led a lot of people into certain death . . . it wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d had a choice. But whatever compulsive power she alluded to didn’t appear to be working on the lieutenant just now. Just like hers didn’t work on me.

  “Thought you had a duty,” Clay said.

  “My duty is to return home and report everything I’ve seen here.”

  “And what good’s that gonna do if no one understands it? Do you? Got any answers to share? Some great insight the rest of us missed, maybe?”

  “Enough of this shit,” Loriabeth said, moving to wedge herself between them, pushing Sigoral’s carbine aside.

  The Corvantine met her gaze, jaw clenching as he tensed. “I have no desire to see you hurt, Miss Torcreek,” he said. “But I have to get out of here. We have to get out of here. You know I’m right. It’s only a matter of time before some fresh horror appears. And I suspect our luck is wearing thin.”

  “Like my patience iffen you don’t lower that weapon,” Loriabeth grated, returning his glare in full measure.

  “No . . . way . . . out.”

  They turned at the sound of Kriz’s thin, croaking voice. She was on her feet, leaning heavily on the curved flank of the huge stone egg. Although the crystal’s healing light continued to bathe her, she regarded them with bright, pain-filled eyes, features pale and slack from blood loss.

  “What?” Sigoral demanded, the muzzle of his carbine moving to point at her.

  “No . . . way out,” Kriz repeated, raising a hand in a weak fluttering gesture at the shaft above.

  “This will take us out,” Sigoral insisted, stepping closer to her. “It leads back to the surface.”

  “Not . . . now,” she told him, her hand falling limply to her side. “Too much . . . ice.”

  “Ice?” Sigoral’s face took on a reddish tinge as he moved closer to Kriz, speaking through clenched teeth. “Enough riddles. Tell me exactly what you mean.”

  “Ice . . . less when we . . . built it all,” Kriz replied, then winced as a spasm of pain wracked her. “Not any more. So many . . . years.”

  “What?” Sigoral demanded, moving closer still.

  “The ice,” Clay said. “She means it was thinner in her day. Guess it’s built up over the years to cover this whole place. The spire was the only bit of it still visible.” He glanced up at the shaft. “Even if we get to the top of this, there’s no way out.”

  “Then why,” Sigoral grated at Kriz, finger twitching on the carbine’s trigger, “did you bring us here?”

  Kriz blinked her too-bright eyes and turned towards the egg, running her hand over the surface. “To see . . . my father.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Hilemore

  “. . . and so I commend my soul to the King of the Deep,” Hilemore read. The logbook lay open on the desk before him, just as he found it on entering the cabin occupied by the Dreadfire’s captain. “I avow my firm knowledge that He, alone amongst all the gods, will afford me the most fair and careful judgement. To any who may one day read these words know that I die with the greatest contrition burning in my heart. I have lived as a pirate, but I perish as a penitent. Signed Arneas Bledthorne, Master of the Dreadfire, on this day 17th Termester in the Queen’s Year 1491.”

  “Pretty way with words for a pirate,” Skaggerhill observed.

  “Yes.” Hilemore scanned the finely rendered script flowing across the page. “I suspect Captain Bledthorne may well have been a fellow of some education.”

  “Fat lot of good it did him,” Scrimshine muttered, casting a glance at the corpse lying on the cabin’s only bunk. Despite the many decades since his death, the cold ensured Arneas Bledthorne’s body retained a fair amount of its flesh, desiccated and blackened though it was. His stiff, grey hands lay on his chest, one of the fingers still lodged in the trigger-guard of an antique flint-lock pistol. A large hole in the top of the captain’s skull provided further evidence of how he had contrived to make his exit from the world. Before undertaking his final repose Bledthorne had clad himself in a fine set of well-tailored clothes, the cuffs and lapels braided with gold in the manner of an admiral. So far this was the only gold they had found aboard the Dreadfire.

  “Don’t s’pose he makes mention of where he stashed his treasure, Skipper?” Scrimshine asked Hilemore, brows raised to a hopeful angle.

  “If he had any treasure he didn’t feel compelled to record it here.”

  Hilemore leafed through the log, noting how each entry grew shorter as the voyage progressed towards its fateful conclusion. It told a tale of thievery, murder and mutiny, all recorded in Bledthorne’s unwaveringly elegant script and eloquent phrasing. It appeared the Dreadfire had encountered a full squadron of Royal Mandinorian Navy ships after an abortive attempt to seize a freighter off the south-east Arradsian coast. In response Captain Bledthorne embarked upon a series of desperate navigational gambles in an effort to evade his deserved meeting with the hangman. The farther south they sailed the more fractious the crew became, forcing the captain to resort to what he termed, “Mortal punishment, undertaken with the barbed, three-tongued whip, for it creates the more lasting impression on the weak-minded.” After that the log became a grim litany of repeated mutiny and bloody murder until Bledthorne found himself sailing alone in icy waters, reduced to a mere passenger o
n a ship he had no crew to sail. Hilemore doubted the judgement afforded by the King of the Deep would have been as merciful as Bledthorne hoped.

  Hilemore looked up as a heavy hand knocked on the cabin door. “Enter.”

  Steelfine came in, standing to attention before the desk and saluting smartly. “Inspection complete, sir.”

  “Excellent, Number One. In what state do we find our new command?”

  “The hull is intact below the water-line, sir. Benefit of the iron-cladding, I assume, else the ice would have crushed her long ago. There’s cordage aplenty too, though we’ll have to spend time thawing it out before it’s of any use. Life-boat’s intact and fully oared. The sheets are more of a concern.”

  Hilemore nodded in sober acknowledgment. The Dreadfire’s masts were bare of canvas, the sails no doubt having been torn away by the polar winds over the course of many years. “Do we have any?”

  “There’s spares in the hold, sir, but not enough for every mast. I’m confident she’ll make headway, but it’ll be a canter rather than a gallop.”

  “You are familiar with the intricacies of sail then, Mr. Steelfine?”

  “My first ship was all-sail, sir. Some things you never forget.”

  “Very good, Number One. I hereby appoint you Sailing Master of the newly acquired Ironship Protectorate Vessel Dreadfire. Mr. Scrimshine will undertake the duties of helmsman. Mr. Skaggerhill, I request you act as the ship’s physician and quartermaster for the time being. Supplies will have to be strictly rationed from now on. Also, Green will be administered at your discretion.”

  The harvester gave a cautious nod. “Happy to do my part, Captain. Probably a good idea if you ask Preacher to take the crow’s nest, put those eyes of his to good use.”

  “A fine suggestion, sir.” Hilemore glanced down at the log once more. “All appointments to be recorded in the ship’s books just as soon as I find something to write with. Mr. Steelfine, let’s get those sheets unpacked.”