by Col Buchanan
Nico could taste the charge of the winds as they blew through the ruined building. His own curly locks stood straight up on his head too, and everyone else with hair that he could see. It looked as though they were all in the process of falling.
Along the walls of this upper storey, soldiers and civilians were firing rifles or throwing bricks or fire flasks just like Nico, occasionally ducking down from enemy gunfire. Right outside, the imperial forces howled and screamed in the throes of their violence. With shields raised, they milled before the rubble blocking the front of the ruined chee house, and surged in their thousands against the barricade that ran across the street to another row of buildings on the far side, where more defenders were likewise pouring fire onto them.
Through a missing section of wall in the corner of the building, Nico could see the front of the fighting stretching off into the west of the city, towards the glittering hill that was the Mount of Truth. In the moonstruck darkness it looked as though the Imperial Expeditionary Force had thrown every last man at the Khosian defences, for the enemy massed as far as he could see now, steel glittering like the flitting backs of fish, glowing with the violet light of the charged winds.
Khosian horns were calling for reinforcements all along the line of barricades now. But there were no more reinforcements to aid them, other than citizens wielding fallen weapons, mangled to pieces by the heavy imperial infantry they rushed to stop.
Those citizens still sticking with Nico were those who had proven their mettle by so far surviving the night. In a hail of fresh mortar fire they had sought cover in the ruins of this building, where others already fired down upon the enemy, and here they had remained for the shelter it provided, the chance of living for another few minutes longer.
Another grenade flew through one of the windows. Aléas was quick enough to catch it out of the air so he could toss it back out. He cast a desperate glance his way, and then Nico threw another burning flask into the fray.
As the flames rose high he glimpsed a wedge of movement out there in the crowded market square; a formation pushing through the milling enemy, heading right for the chee house. Nico leaned forwards into the wind for a better look. He saw fifty hulking infantry rushing towards them at a fast though measured trot; a wedge of burly men wearing heavy suits of armour, black as night and covered all over by spikes and blades, bearing small shields fixed to their forearms, full helms on their heads, hatchets or cleavers in both hands.
‘Widowmakers,’ his father Cole spat from his hole in the wall. ‘Experts at close-quarters butchery.’
‘That sounds bad!’
‘More than you know.’
The thunder of their boots was loud enough to still everyone for a moment where they stood or hunkered down; their hair standing on end while the building trembled around them. Even some of the wounded looked around from where they lay at the back.
Squinting along the length of his longrifle, Cole took a shot then quickly broke open the smoking gun to reload it. ‘Better get ready,’ he called out with his voice calmer than it had any right to be. ‘They aim to take this building, and they don’t go down easy.’
No one needed telling twice. The defenders started shooting and throwing everything they could at the nearing force, until gunsmoke was filling the airy room. Across from Nico, a Volunteer manned a pair of repeating crossbows set upon a mount – his shoulders braced by wooden stocks as he fired the crossbows in quick succession at the approaching men. ‘Come on then! Come on!’
A fire flask crashed open at the enemy’s feet, but they stamped through the flames without slowing. In a rush, a squad of the Widowmakers made it to the foot of the building under the cover of wicker screens. One of the screens caught fire when Nico hit it with a flask. Then the squad was hurrying back into cover under another screen peppered with arrows.
‘They dropped something against the building,’ the Michinè yelled out, just as a mighty hand-clap shook the air and rattled the broken glass spread across the floor, and smoke and grit tumbled in through the gaps in the wall.
The Widowmakers were trying to breach the barricaded ground floor of the chee house with explosives. A second squad of them ran forwards under cover of their screens.
‘I need shells,’ his father was yelling. ‘Does anyone have any damned shells?’
‘A few,’ shouted a Volunteer. ‘I think the sergeant downstairs has more. Grab me some too!’
Cole vaulted for the stairs, leaping down them even as Nico called after him.
Another explosion shook the front of the building. It was hard to see with all the smoke filling the room now, but he made out the Volunteer manning the repeating crossbows, pointing the weapons almost straight down now, firing away with the spit flying from his lips. ‘Come on, come on!’ Suddenly a flaring white heat engulfed the Volunteer, knocking Nico off his feet.
He rolled onto his back, coughing, singed and smoking, to see that the man had been blown into ribbons of flesh still falling to the floor. In the haze the old Michinè fellow was retching and coughing his lungs up, while people cried out from where they had fallen. A staggering Red Guard was shouting something he couldn’t hear. Nico wriggled over to what remained of the front wall, and glanced out over the edge of a gaping hole.
Below in the market square, a few Widowmakers were aiming big tubes mounted on their shoulders at the building. A rocket streaked out from one of them like a screaming firework, and the upper corner of the chee house blew up in another blast of fire and air. Coughing hard, Nico blinked through the falling dust at the still form of the old Michinè fellow lying twisted amongst the rubble, his dead eyes staring back at him.
Brindle Valores, Nico thought to himself. Your name was Brindle Valores!
Shouts of alarm were rising through the wooden beams of the floor. And then he heard the awful ring of steel against steel as the uproar rose even louder, knowing the enemy had breached the ground level. Nico squirmed to a hole in the planking and looked down into the room below, glimpsing shapes hewing this way and that in the glow of a swinging lantern, hatchets and cleavers rising and falling fast.
The screams that rose up from the scene were enough to chill his blood.
Father!
On all-fours he scrambled towards the top of the stairs, but others were quicker, and closer: Aléas drew a pair of stubby curved swords, and without hesitation the young Rōshun bounded down the stairs into the desperate melee below.
Another rocket exploded. A body toppled over Nico, and he struggled clear as more of his companions lay dead or screaming. Bloody faces peered at him from the shadows at the back where they’d put the wounded, people unable to move. It was all falling apart, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.
Growling like a cornered dog, Nico drew his sword and scrambled to the very top of the stairs. His blade was glowing with a pale hue, just like the blades of the figures filling the stairwell below him; people fending off blows as they were forced back up towards him. In dry-throated desperation, he looked for his father or Aléas amongst their numbers.
At the bottom they were being cut down one by one, until Nico finally saw the Widowmakers themselves, their spiky black bulks forcing their way onto the stairs; hulking men in helms and armour of overlapping plates, which swords bounced clean off or were snared by the spikes and blades covering them all over, so that they were using the heavy suits offensively too, even as they hacked away like butchers. Sweet Mercy, they even wore leather butcher’s aprons across their fronts.
They’re dead, Nico thought in horror. Everyone down there is dead.
The last two defenders on the stairs fell beneath their blades. And then someone staggered over to Nico’s side, a flame flickering in his grasp.
‘Here,’ said the young lad with the Caw-Caw gang tattoos, and he handed Nico a lit fire flask. ‘Burn the bastards.’
Tears streaked Nico’s face as he hurled the flask down the stairwell onto the advancing figures. Their sudden h
uman yells were enough to break the spell of their monstrosity. Quickly the lad beside him threw down a flask too.
Black smoke tumbled up the stairwell to engulf them both. Flames caught and billowed on the updraught from the gusting Arcwind. They both dropped to the ground to escape the worst of it, gasping for air. Someone was still firing their rifle out of a window.
‘No way am I going out like this!’ shouted the young hood from the floor. ‘No way!’
And then a rocket streaked into the room and burst the world into a million tiny pieces, sending Nico falling through its shattering crust.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Diplomat
It was just like Tume all over again, Ché kept thinking in his racing mind; he and Curl trapped behind imperial lines while they tried to make their way to the Khosians and safety. Even the air here stank from all the ponds of tar, just like Simmer Lake up in the Reach, where the city floated on its raft of weeds.
Curl didn’t want to hear it though, such reminders of their previous brief time together. Panting from the weight of the medico bag she still insisted on carrying with her, she ran just ahead of him along the darkened alley refusing to acknowledge his chatter in any way.
‘Am I boring you?’ he panted at her back.
But still she said nothing.
It angered Ché, the girl’s continuing hostility towards him. As though everything the Mannian Empire had done to her people was somehow his responsibility. Even his efforts to save her life here seemed to mean nothing.
‘Maybe I should have just left you behind back there, like the rest of them did.’
The girl cast a rare glance over her thin shoulder, meeting his stare with the flash of an eye.
‘I didn’t ask you for any favours.’
‘So? The least you can do is acknowledge that I’m talking to you.’
‘I’m acknowledging you now, aren’t I?’
At the front of their short line, the Rōshun Wild raised a dry chuckle.
Ché cursed mentally in annoyance. For a moment he considered cutting off on his own here, and leaving them to get back to the Khosian lines by themselves. He could escape this city easily enough on his own. Curl would just have to take her chances like everyone else. Wild was more than capable of protecting her.
Indeed what was stopping him?
‘Give me one reason.’
‘What?’
‘Give me one reason I shouldn’t just take off on my own here?’
Curl said nothing, just hunched her shoulders a little more, gasping into the blowy night air.
‘Fine,’ he snapped, and stopped running. With the others bounding onwards, Ché turned and started walking back the way they had just come, feeling angry and bad at the same time.
Let them laugh. Let them ignore him. If she wanted it this way, then she could have it.
‘Ché!’ called her hushed voice after him, and Ché jerked to a stop, startled by the sound of her voice saying his name. He turned to see them both panting back at him.
‘I’ll be no one’s whipping boy in this life, you hear me?’
In the distance a man screamed out from a rooftop, and voices laughed and jeered. Wild shifted impatiently.
‘I hear you,’ said Curl. ‘All right? I hear you. Now stop messing around!’
*
And so Ché found himself jogging along behind them once again, mostly heading south towards the Khosian lines.
At least an hour had passed since their frantic flight from the Broken Wheel, pursued by drunken imperial soldiers whom they had quickly given the slip. Since then, the trio had spent most of their time trying to find a way past the looting imperial forces, sometimes slipping through back yards and houses, sometimes holing up for a spell when they had to.
But now in the southern Flats the streets seemed clear for a stretch, and they were making the most of it, hurrying through a deserted residential district of winding back streets and small plazas. The sounds of battle seemed louder here, echoing between the tall whitewashed tenements that rose up on either side like canyon walls. Wild led them onwards.
‘What was that back there?’ asked Ché. ‘The big black woman with all the hair. How did she drop us like that?’
‘No idea,’ answered Wild. ‘Never seen anything like it. I thought my guts were going to burst.’
‘Maybe she’s a Dreamer,’ said Curl.
‘If she is, I didn’t see a glimmersuit.’
Ahead in the darkness Ché saw another crossroads where the alley branched into three others. They were starting to all look the same now in this winding warren of tenements.
‘Here, Wild, turn right again.’
It was the fourth time he’d told the man to change direction.
‘What? I’m telling you, lad, this is taking us round in a circle.’
‘I know that.’
Both moons had risen now, their light shining off the whitewashed walls and striping the alleys with shadows cast from the lines of washing overhead. The lean wind was standing all his hairs on end as Ché paused suddenly, tying something across the alley from the grills of opposite high windows.
Ché cast a quick glance over his shoulder, then hurried onwards to catch up with the pair again. Wild and Curl had stopped in yet another crossing of alleyways.
‘We’ve been through this place already,’ said Curl. ‘Why are we going round in a circle?’
‘Because we’re being followed, lass,’ answered the Rōshun before Ché could.
‘Followed by who?’ she said, turning for a proper look, until Ché stopped her with a grab of her arm.
‘Diplomats,’ he hissed into her ear.
‘What – where?’
‘All around us,’ growled the Rōshun, Wild, as though his throat was suddenly parched, peering along one gloomy alley and then another. ‘You certain they’re Diplomats?’
Ché was looking to the far end of an alley, where a shape was now darting towards them.
‘You ever hear of how Diplomats have glands in their necks that pulse when other Diplomats are close by?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well mine’s pounding away like it’s about to burst.’
Wild cursed and drew his curved blade, spreading his feet slightly beneath his black robe. ‘They’re coming for you, you mean?’
‘I doubt they’ll be in the mood for making distinctions.’
Wild was breathing in the mindful Rōshun manner, stilling himself, emptying himself, preparing to unleash his body and mind into action.
‘How many?’ he rasped.
‘Hard to say. Half a dozen, at least.’
Wild glanced back at him with apprehension.
‘We can’t handle that many, lad.’
Four alleys speared off from the crossroads. A figure was sprinting down every one.
‘We’re trapped,’ gasped Curl. She hurried across to a door and tried to tug it open, but it was locked. She looked to Ché as he stepped casually out into the middle of the crossroads next to Wild.
‘We can’t just stand here!’
Ché held up his hand with his digit finger extended like the barrel of a pistol, and aimed it at the nearest approaching Diplomat.
‘Great,’ said Wild, backing himself against a wall. ‘Man’s gone and lost his mind.’
Out of the shadows hurled the nearest figure, trailing a dark cloak that flared behind him like sweeping wings, close enough that Ché saw the whites of the young man’s eyes and the glints on his blades.
Timing it precisely, Ché fired the pretend pistol that was his hand, and watched as the nearing Diplomat was jerked impossibly off his feet.
Wild took a surprised step from the wall. ‘How did you . . .’
But already Ché was turning towards another alleyway and another Diplomat – a running figure clad in the same flaring cloak as the last one. Ché fired again with his pretend gun, and once more the fellow jerked back as though shot through the neck.
‘How’s he doing that?’ gasped Curl, even as Ché took out a third man with a twitch of his finger.
He swung around to face the remaining figure coming at them, drawing a knife from his belt as he did so. Launching the blade spinning through the air, it struck the man square in the forehead and sent him sprawling to the ground.
Ché turned to Curl and tossed the coil of stitching twine into her hand that he’d taken earlier from her medico bag.
‘Magic,’ he told her.
But his neck was still beating fast where the pulsegland lay beneath the skin. He glanced up, just as a form leapt across the alleyway overhead, followed by another.
Ché was pushing Curl back against the wall even as something round clattered onto the cobbles behind them. It was a grenade, with its fuse cut so short it was about to go off, no time even to think about it.
A flash of movement swept past them both – Wild kicking the damned thing away. But it exploded in his face, and he was thrown spinning to the ground in a blast of light and heat.
Curl shrieked while the Diplomats overhead howled for their blood.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Coya
Out of the starry night sky came the skyboat trailing smoke from its fiercely burning thrusters. Downwards it dropped, with its canopy backlit by fiery pulses ranging across the city skyline, cutting its thrusters at the last moment so the flat-bottomed hull first bounced and then skidded across the inkworks’ grassy yard, while men ran to grab at the mooring lines being cast left and right.
Quickly a figure hurried from the opening door of its hull, waving aside the gathering people to limp with his cane towards the front entrance of the building, his excited shouts cutting through the storm of the battle.
‘Let me through!’ he hollered, bearing aloft a leather satchel as though it contained the most precious thing in the world. ‘Let me through there!’
*
‘I’ve got some!’ Coya called out as he burst through the doorway of the Dreamer’s work room. ‘I’ve got some moondust!’