Others among Rose’s company weren’t faring so well. An orc went down when a harpy tore his throat out, then lurched back to life a moment later and attacked the bloody-fisted raga who’d been defending his flank. One of the gnoll brothers had died earlier and was harassing his sibling, who was holding his brother at bay with an axe. The minotaur charged a knot of Astra’s kobolds. A few of the critters were trampled, but the rest quickly overwhelmed him.
One of Cura’s knives got snagged under the helmet of a scrawny gibberling. The bugger didn’t have the courtesy to die, and instead got its long fingers around the summoner’s throat. Tam lashed out with Nightbird, severing its arm, and pulled Cura from its reach.
“My knife!”
“I owe you one anyway,” Tam yelled, dragging her on.
Heartbreaker went down again, pierced through the neck by a barbed javelin. The stallion tried to stand but was bleeding out and couldn’t find the strength to rise. Brune hovered over Rose as she straddled the dying animal and pushed both swords into his neck. When she’d put an end to his misery, she wrenched the weapons in opposite directions, making damn sure Astra couldn’t bring him back from the dead.
The delay allowed Hawkshaw to gain on them. He was shouting at Rose, demanding she turn and face him. The Warden was so determined to catch up that he all but ignored the monsters around them. The gorilliath seized him with both hands and hurled him into a crowd of dead gremlins.
Tam could see Freecloud clearly now. The druin moved like a spectre across the battlefield, evading clubs and swords and sailing arrows with such ease as to seem incorporeal. He dodged blows before his opponents thought to deal them, retaliating with ruthless efficiency. Madrigal sang in his hands, and a rune-etched torc on his arm glowed the emerald green of a golem’s eyes.
Where Freecloud fought with cool precision, Rose attacked with wild abandon. She assailed each new enemy like she bore it some personal vendetta. What she couldn’t hack, slash, or stab, she elbowed, kicked, or shouldered aside. Tam had seen Kaskar berserkers fight with more careful consideration than Bloody Rose in the heat of battle.
Step by brutal step, she and Freecloud carved a path toward one another. In a moment of uncanny clarity between dodging a plant-monster’s swiping vine and cutting through its pulsing stem, Tam found herself wondering why Astra even bothered trying to keep the two of them apart.
Didn’t she know? Couldn’t she see? This was Rose and fucking Freecloud! The Winter Queen could have placed a mountain between them, or a sea, or the whole black ocean of night—it didn’t matter. They would scale it, or swim it; they would scour every star until they found one another.
Freecloud had once compared Rose to a flame to which he was inescapably drawn, but in truth they were both of them burning: he with a candle’s slow and steady light, she like a flaring match. Rose was attracted to the druin just as he was to her, and might have extinguished herself a thousand times were it not for his guiding light.
He’s the scabbard, mused the part of Tam’s mind that still thought itself a bard, and she’s the sword. They belong together, and they’re so close now …
Freecloud sliced through a half-eaten ogre.
Rose chopped down a white-eyed werewolf.
Freecloud split a galloping centaur down the middle.
Rose cut a troll’s head into halves.
He thrust his sword through a scuttling rust-eater and left it there.
She buried hers in a soaring plague hawk and didn’t bother watching it fall.
They lunged at one another next, crashing into an embrace that became an epically perilous kiss considering they were in the midst of a raging battlefield. Rose’s hands clawed at Freecloud’s hair, and the druin swept her into a dip—which Tam felt was a bit grandiose until she saw the dead minotaur charging her. The bull-headed brute tripped over Rose’s boots and ran down Hawkshaw instead. Its horns punched through the Warden’s chest and the beast’s momentum carried them both into the frenzied crowd.
“Our daughter?” Rose asked.
“Safe,” Freecloud told her. “She’s with Orbison. Somewhere deep in Caddabra by now.”
“Orbison? Won’t your father just order him back?”
The druin’s long ears signalled no. “I fixed him. Or broke him, rather. He’ll meet us at Turnstone when we’re finished here. Anyway, I think my father will be too preoccupied with his missing golems to worry about the two of them. And speaking of Contha”—Freecloud’s hand strayed to a rune-inscribed rod tucked into the sash at his waist—“we should get back to the city before he overrides my control.”
The stone sentinels had formed a circling cordon around them. The towering knights stood on opposite sides of the protective ring, using their hammers to deter Astra’s Horde from overrunning them.
Rose frowned. “Your father can do that?”
“He can.”
“But would he?” said Cura. “Is he really that callous?”
Freecloud paused before answering, but Tam and Rose said, “Yes,” as one.
The Inkwitch arched an eyebrow at the druin. “Your dad sounds like a dick.”
“He really is,” said Freecloud, then turned to Rose. “I assume you had a plan in place before you cast it aside in favour of charging recklessly into certain death?”
Rose and Brune shared a look. The wolf gave a small whine, and Rose shrugged. “That’s right,” she said.
“Would I have disapproved of it had I been there at the time?”
“Probably,” she admitted.
“Does it involve luring Astra into a trap using yourself as bait?
“Basically, yeah.”
“Well, then”—Freecloud wrenched Madrigal from the rust-eater’s carapace—“let’s go bait the trap.”
They battled their way to the Courtside Gate.
Desperate to keep her quarry from getting away, Astra’s thralls attacked with renewed ferocity. If not for Contha’s golems, Fable and their monstrous allies would have been overrun long before they reached the city. There were several hundred of the hulking sentinels (scarcely a fraction of the army she and Rose had discovered on their way out of the Exarch’s citadel), each with an S-shaped sigil engraved in the sockets of its eyes. The duramantium knights weren’t linked to the band on Freecloud’s arm, but were instead controlled by the rod secured at his waist.
The golems, though hardy, were not invincible. Now and then one of the Winter Queen’s minions—one of the bigger ones, usually—would tear the head or arms off one or knock it over and shatter it to rubble. Each sentinel had a glowing grilled vent where its mouth might have been, and Tam saw a mob of dead kobolds climb one of the constructs, pry off the grate, then ram a barbed spear into the socket until the golem’s eyes flickered and it collapsed in a heap.
A wyvern came plummeting down with its wings and talons outstretched. Tam raised her bow, but one of the knights caught the creature dead-on with a hammerblow that sent it soaring out of sight. Tam briefly imagined some grizzled Brycliffe farmer a hundred miles away braving the snow to feed his cows and finding a twice-dead wyvern lying broken in his yard.
Astra—wherever the hell she was hiding—threw everything she had at them, overwhelming the sentinels with sheer numbers. As Fable passed beneath the Courtside Gate every one of the defenders who’d been killed by the Winter Queen’s thralls or by Brontide’s rampage came to life and converged upon them.
Brune yowled as a stray arrow thudded into his flank. Freecloud narrowly missed being dive-bombed by a gargoyle. The surviving gnoll (who’d managed to dispatch his undead brother) got his leg lashed by a coiling tentacle. Tam leapt to his defense, whipping Nightbird from its scabbard and slicing through the leafy limb before it could drag him away.
He cuffed her shoulder and muttered, “K’yish,” which she assumed was hyena for thank you.
And now, to Tam’s horror, Brontide himself came plodding toward them. His maul dragged through the outer city, ploughing through shabby te
nements and grinding unlucky fighters into bloody smears.
But reinforcements were coming from Conthas as well: The trio of battle-ready skyships were flying to their aid, though one was barely airborne when a hail of wolfbats blew across its deck like a tempest. The vessel tipped sideways, spilling its crew overboard, and went spiralling into the Gutter. The bats took a run at the Barracuda next but were skewered by a broadside of spear-length crossbow bolts.
Freecloud grazed the rod at his waist, directing the duramantium knights to head off Brontide. Tam felt the tremor of the giant’s footsteps through the soles of her boots, and a sudden pang of fear threatened to choke her. Up close, the colossus seemed unreal, as indomitable as the Dragoneater itself. If Tam had been alone—or among strangers, even—she might have fled, or fallen to her knees, helpless in the grip of sheer terror.
It was Rose’s courage—and Cura’s, and Cloud’s, and Brune’s—that kept her moving forward, and she understood, now more than ever, the strength that came from being in a band.
When you fought by yourself, you looked after yourself. When your life was in danger, you did whatever you could to preserve it. If you fought for the glory of some noble lord, you were apt to flee the battlefield behind him when the tide turned against you. And when things looked truly hopeless, even bravery pinned to the loftiest ideal was inclined to point out some distant oddity and beat it while your back was turned.
But a bond between bandmates was different. It was, as Rose had declared over her father’s pyre, something familial. When you fought alongside those whose lives meant more to you than your own, succumbing to fear simply wasn’t an option, because nothing—not a lifeless Horde, or a vengeful queen, or even a staggeringly huge, zombified giant—was as scary as the prospect of losing them.
Tam’s fear evaporated in a flush of swelling pride as she considered—really considered, for the first time since smashing her mother’s lute—what being a part of Fable meant to her. A new home. A second family. Friends she loved, who loved her in return.
They hadn’t said so. They didn’t need to. They were here beside her, drawing the same inexhaustible courage from her as she was from them. And that was enough.
Even when the shadow of the colossus fell upon them, it was enough.
Chapter Fifty-five
Sacrifice
As if in mockery of Tam’s burgeoning confidence, the haze of cloud and smoke above Conthas billowed as something incomprehensibly vast surged through it. The Simurg’s bulk sheared the veil like the hull of some titanic ship. Dusky feathers rained from its wings as it descended toward them.
Its talons closed on one of the knights, hoisting the construct off its feet and tearing it apart as though it were nothing more than a straw-stuffed doll. The raptor discarded the duramantium limbs and turned a ponderous half circle above the boiling multitudes of the Brumal Horde.
Hurricane winds raked over the band as it landed on the gate behind them, crushing it, and dragging down a whole section of the curtain wall.
In death, the Dragoneater was degrading rapidly. Its tail-feathers were gone, its fanning crest was depleted as well. As it bowed its head, Tam saw a lone figure perched between two of its twilight quills.
Say one thing for the Winter Queen, she thought sardonically, the woman knows how to make an entrance.
All at once the feverish assault of Astra’s thralls relented. They scattered like fish from a grasping hand, dispersing into the ruins north and south. Their mistress had no need for them now, having pincered Rose and her bandmates between her two most potent weapons. Glancing bleakly in either direction, Tam couldn’t help but wonder if there was a technical term for when a blacksmith replaced his anvil with a second hammer and just pounded the shit out of some poor tool.
Freecloud winced, apparently pondering something similar. “I don’t suppose you have a plan for killing the Dragoneater a second time?”
Rose shook her head. “I don’t.”
“I do,” said Cura. She dragged the black-feather shawl from her shoulders, pulled loose the sash belting her tunic, and shrugged it off despite the cold.
“What are you doing?” Tam asked.
“What I must,” said the Inkwitch. She sounded distant, disconnected, like a sleepwalker insisting she answer a knock at the door.
Rose put a hand on the summoner’s bare shoulder. “Cura …”
“I can do this,” Cura insisted.
“Not alone, you can’t.”
She looked back. Her lip curled, not quite a smile. “I’m not alone.”
Rose swallowed. Nodded. Let her hand fall away.
“KURAGEN!”
Brune growled his concern, and Freecloud’s ears made his disquiet obvious as he took a step toward the Inkwitch. “Cura, you don’t—”
“YOMINA!”
“Stay back,” Rose snapped, as the vulture-necked swordsman and the sea goddess leapt to engage the Simurg.
“MANGU! HARRADIL! NANSHA!” Cura screamed as though stretched on a torturer’s rack. One by one her nightmares took shape: a pale serpent with feathered wings; a hammer-wielding giant wearing a blood-soaked blindfold; an old woman made of soiled junk holding a pair of squirming white goats …
“ABRAXAS!” Cura stumbled as the winged steed kicked free of her arm. Her voice was hoarse. Blood streamed from her nose, trickled from her ears.
Rose barred Tam with an arm as she started forward. “Don’t.”
“She’s killing herself!”
“She’s not,” Rose told her. “She’s killing them.”
Them? Before she could ask, Tam noticed that Cura’s tattoos weren’t only fading as she called their names—they were disappearing, peeling themselves from her flesh so that not even the scars that defined them remained.
Cura wasn’t only using her power—she was relinquishing it entirely.
“MELEAGANT!” A spider made entirely of bones scuttled from her abdomen. “RAN!” A cloaked figure swirled into being—three pairs of long-nailed hands emerged from either sleeve, and six more held its garment closed. “KINKALI!” The silver-scaled women linked by chains slithered from her calf.
What terrors had this woman witnessed? Tam wondered as the inklings took shape. What trauma had she endured and internalized—and then evoked time and time again in service to her band?
From her knees, Cura sobbed, “AGANI!” The monstrous tree clawed from her back, howling as its crown caught fire. The summoner went to all fours and vomited into the muddied snow. Brune groaned in empathy, and Freecloud looked ready to rush to her aid regardless of the fact that Rose had warned him not to.
The inklings converged on the Simurg. It managed to snag the winged snake in its teeth and swat the garbage-woman so hard she went sprawling, spilling her armful of goats, but it could only defend itself against a few adversaries at once. Abraxas struck it with a bolt of blue lightning. The giant, Harradil, cracked his hammer across the Dragoneater’s skull. Tam saw the Winter Queen slide from her perch and out of sight.
The bone spider, Maleagant, began spewing strands of razorwire webbing at the Simurg’s hind legs. Kuragen grappled its head, burrowing her salt-slick tentacles into its nostrils and through the burning sockets of its eyes. Yomina went to work on its forelegs, hacking through flesh and bone like a lumberjack on a Lion’s Leaf bender.
The scales on the Simurg’s belly had begun to flake off. Its remaining feathers were withered and grey, no longer sheathed in armouring ice. Whatever complex biology had granted the Dragoneater its coldfire breath had been shredded to uselessness by Rose’s blades.
Even diminished, though, it was hardly a pushover.
Its powerful jaws sheared through the winged snake. It caught and crushed the cloak-of-hands called Ran, then stomped the hag, Nansha, into a pile of scattered trash. Her goats screamed and puffed into wisps of black cloud.
It’s not enough, Tam dreaded. One by one, it will kill them—and then us, unless Brontide reaches us first.
> Except Cura wasn’t finished yet. She raised a trembling arm, like a sacrifice opening her veins above some wicked altar. There was blood on her lips, blood trickling from her nose. Droplets of deep red stained her pale skin, which was otherwise pristine. For the first time since a girl’s grief had compelled her to press an edge to her flesh and drive away pain with pain, she was free.
Or almost free.
“BLOODY ROSE!” she cried.
The apparition of Fable’s frontwoman blazed to life, its molten boots steaming in the snow. Tam half-expected it to confront Rose, for the two of them to acknowledge one another the way sisters separated at birth might recognize their long-lost twin, but it sprang into the sky without looking back.
Cura collapsed into the slush. Rose rushed to her side. Freecloud peered with narrowed eyes at the embattled Dragoneater, probably searching for sign of the Winter Queen.
To the west, the skyships were closing in on Brontide. The Barracuda circled beyond his reach, launching another volley of missiles from its portside rail. The bolts stuck and shivered in the giant’s head but couldn’t punch through his thick skull. The other ship, a sleek frigate called the Atom Heart, went straight for him, veering sharply aside when Brontide brought his maul swinging in a lazy arc. Someone on board—either a wizard or some madman with a wand—sent a barrage of sizzling magic bolts at the titan’s face. They missed, and forced the deep-bellied Barracuda to swerve from their errant path.
A flock of foul things tailed both vessels, so Tam almost didn’t notice the smaller skyship bringing up the rear. The Old Glory had been drastically retrofitted since she saw it last. The hull had been nailed over with battered steel plates, and a ridge of spikes bristled down its prow. Faster than either the carrack or the frigate, it soared straight past the giant’s nose. Brontide swiped at it with one huge hand, but Doshi cinched the rigging; the cutter dropped steeply, and had almost hit the ground before, with the boom of a faraway thunderclap, its sails fanned open.
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