by Tom Lloyd
He shook his head. ‘Someone’s got to stay with the boat, keep it from breaking on these rocks or attracting attention.’
‘Good enough job for a girl then ?’ she snapped.
‘Hard enough,’ he replied. ‘It’s a sailor’s job and you’re the only one o’ those we got.’
‘Oh, spare me platitudes.’
Enchei shrugged. ‘Fair enough,’ he said before abruptly grabbing Kesh by the arm and dragging her close. ‘Someone’s got to stay with the fucking boat, understand ? And you’re it – ’cos you’re the best sailor and the worst fighter, and I’m in charge. Being quick with a knife’s little use when everyone else has something longer and you’re not in some cramped little alley. Narin’s not in the best shape, but he’s been training for years and he’s bigger’n you so that’s the difference. You don’t like that, complain to the Gods above and see if they give two shits.’
Kesh stared back at him, struck dumb by the muted outburst. Eventually, she nodded and Enchei released her again. From inside the covered section towards the prow he retrieved a bag he’d slung there and began to pull items from it. To Kesh’s surprise, the first thing he retrieved was a strange sort of silk cloak. Once the bag was mostly empty he slipped its cord strap over his head and pulled the cloak over that. Dark grey and so thin it wouldn’t keep out any sort of breeze, the cloak hung limp from his shoulders down to his knees – blending almost perfectly into the evening gloom.
‘A cloak ?’ Narin asked.
They were all dressed in clothes retrieved from the goshe killed at Narin’s rooms. The bloodstains had been roughly scrubbed out and the tears sewn shut – perhaps not good enough to pass formal inspection but easily overlooked in the dark. Enchei had ripped at the sleeves of his before they left to fetch the smuggler’s boat – Kesh hadn’t got a good view, but there was something bulky strapped around his arm like an oversized vambrace.
‘Relic of my former life,’ Enchei muttered, settling the loose hood back on his shoulders before he slid his short-sword into a baldric and a stubby baton into a sheath. ‘My armour’s proof against most things the goshe have, but I’d prefer not to be seen in the first place.’
Lastly, he pulled a shapeless piece of thick black cloth, rolled it tight and tossed it to Narin. ‘For later. Hides things even from a God’s sight.’
The Investigator nodded and tied it to his own weapon belt as Enchei slipped on a pair of gauntlets with dull points on the fingertips, then hung a coiled rope from his baldric. At the end of the rope was an iron spike to be hammered into the ground so the others could follow him up the slope. Lastly he retrieved a helmet and, with an instinctive frown at the three people watching him, fitted it around his head.
Kesh exchanged a look with Narin. It wasn’t clear how Enchei could see anything at all ; the face-plate of the bizarre helmet was perfectly blank, but he seemed to be untroubled as he climbed out of the boat and took a grip on the rock.
‘Are you sure about this ?’
‘Shut up and wait,’ came his reply, Enchei’s voice apparently unencumbered by the helmet covering his mouth. ‘Irato, you follow up the rope when I give the signal – Narin, tie yourself to the end and we’ll pull you up, just remember to walk up the cliff to keep the rope as clear as you can.’
He gave the cliff one more speculative look then began to climb with remarkable speed, barely pausing to look before finding the next hold. The silk cloak drifted fitfully in the breeze as he went, blending so unnaturally well into the dark rock that if he had stopped, no idle observer would have noticed him.
Kesh looked over at the other two. Narin was watching with equal astonishment, while Irato’s face was tense and inscrutable.
‘You going to be okay ?’ she whispered to the goshe. ‘Not going to find yourself under their control ?’
‘The demons say not,’ he replied, looking far from reassured. ‘Not as long as they’re in there, anyway.’
‘Are the other goshe vulnerable to them ?’
He nodded and began to check his various long-knives, hatchets and crossbow. ‘Long as they get close enough and have time to break their defences. Probably the ones with the fever they can take at will.’
Kesh fell silent again, feeling a faint sense of horror at the idea of demons lurking in Irato’s mind. They had been mostly quiet over the course of the day, but Enchei had spent half an hour engaged in some sort of clipped, one-sided conversation with them. Kesh still wasn’t entirely sure of what had gone on there, but they’d emerged with a plan of sorts for the island.
On the cliff, Enchei paused at the top and crept up over the edge – holding on without any apparent difficulty until he chose to advance out of view. After that there was silence for several minutes, long enough for Kesh’s anxiety to blossom into panic, before the rope slapped sharply against the cliff-face and made her almost cry out in surprise.
Irato gave the rope an experimental tug. Satisfied, the former goshe took it in both hands and began to walk up the cliff-face.
‘Just remember,’ Kesh said to Narin, ‘don’t get reckless up there. Kine’s going to need you alive, so keep your head and leave the fighting to those two.’
‘I remember.’ His eyes lowered. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
Seeing how quickly Irato was moving up the cliff, Narin made a last check of his weapons before it was his turn too. One of the daggers Enchei had given him was sheathed in his belt, the other replaced by a sword, a simple slashing blade to suit Narin’s stave training. Confirming they were both secured tightly, Narin slipped on the black goshe hood he’d brought with him and stood to tie the rope around his waist.
Once it was secure he gave a tug on the rope and felt one return as the slack was quickly taken up.
‘Keep safe,’ he said to Kesh as he stepped up onto the edge of the boat and rested one foot against the cliff.
‘You too,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘Good hunting.’
His response was lost as Irato and Enchei began to haul on the rope and jerked him up through the air. Narin turned back towards the top of the cliff and took the first few stuttering steps up. Against the darkened sky he quickly faded to just a blur of movement and Kesh found herself looking away.
She pulled on her own hood to hide her pale skin from what starlight there was and checked for her crossbow inside the covered prow. Finding it, she hunkered down, feeling a little better with the loaded weapon in her hand.
At the top of the cliff, Narin scrambled over and found himself face to face with a dead man. He gasped in surprise and almost let go of the cliff entirely as Enchei chuckled softly nearby.
‘Didn’t expect them to have guards ?’ the older man said softly. Both he and Irato were kneeling just to one side, puffing slightly after their exertion.
Narin glanced to his left and saw a second body not far away, stashed in a slight hollow so it wouldn’t be visible from the rest of the island.
He struggled up and untied the rope from his waist. In the distance, he could vaguely make out the shape of the goshe’s sanatorium complex, about two hundred yards away. There was little cover, just sporadic clumps of gorse no higher than his knees on this more-exposed end of the island. Away to the left, the ground sloped down towards the pebble beach the Lawbringers would be landing on. In the distance, Narin fancied he could see the faint flash of gunshots, but he couldn’t be certain and the wind was behind him so any sound was drowned out. The misshapen, bare-topped lump of Confessor’s Hill was a looming presence in the distance, its rocky peak edged in dull starlight while, lower down, a black tangle of trees nestled in its lee.
‘Now what ?’
‘Now I go scout things out,’ said Enchei. ‘You two stay here like you’re on guard until I fetch you.’
Before the man could leave, Irato suddenly gave a shuddering groan and doubled over. They watched him in alarm as, without warning, sparks briefly burst from his fingertips and a ghostly white mist leaked from his eyes and mouth. It la
sted only moments, thin tendrils of mist questing out before coiling back on themselves and returning into his head.
‘No,’ the man croaked, fist bunching with pain around the stem of a gorse bush and snapping it with ease. The crack of wood seemed to bring him back and with one final gasp Irato looked up, a pained expression on his face. ‘They’ve done it.’
‘Done what ?’ Narin demanded with mounting panic.
‘Something has awakened,’ he intoned – all expression falling away from his face as the demon took over. ‘The path is laid.’
‘Path ?’
‘The paths between minds,’ the demon confirmed. ‘They are linked. This one we have protected, have cut the links before his soul was touched by their servant.’
‘Servant ?’ Enchei asked sharply. ‘What servant ?’
‘An abomination – mindless slave to their will, formed from the clay of our kin.’
‘That’s what’s linked the goshe minds ? Can it control them ?’
‘If instructed – but it possesses no will of its own. It is not truly alive, merely a tool.’
‘So we don’t have long,’ Enchei concluded. ‘No time to scout, just follow behind me and try not to get killed, okay ?’
‘Law Master !’ Rhe shouted, over the chaos of the goshe on the beach fighting to the last man. ‘We need to break down that gate !’
Law Master Sheven hurried over to him, pushing through the throng of Lawbringers and Investigators on the beach. ‘We’ll need a ram,’ he called back before he reached Rhe. ‘One of the boats ? A mast ?’
Rhe looked back at the debris of beached fishing boats up on the shore. ‘The shore boats,’ he replied, pointing. ‘That small one there, we can lift that.’
‘Not with those firebomb crossbows,’ Sheven warned. ‘You keep those goshe on the wall down or we’ll be burned before we get it near.’
Rhe nodded and Sheven set off back to the waterline where a cluster of rowboats from the larger transport ships lay. A few were making the journey back to their ships, looking to carry the remaining Lawbringers ashore, but the smallest had been left abandoned on the pebble beach.
Sheven physically grabbed half a dozen men and shoved them towards it, shouting instructions as he went. It took him a few moments to get them in order but Rhe left him to it, knowing the belligerent Law Master would bawl them into line soon enough. Almost unbidden, his hands went about the routine of reloading one of his pistols, but then he stopped halfway as he saw a figure rise up from the first boat to have arrived.
Not dressed as a Lawbringer, the woman stood jerkily and looked around. Then another hauled itself up beside her, this one a dark-skinned man dressed like a shopkeeper.
Are they recovered from the fever ? Rhe wondered distantly before a more alarming thought struck him. Stars in heaven, are they under some goshe compulsion ?
Before he could move or speak, a thin band of mist swirled around the man’s throat, shining bright in the gloom of an overcast night. Then he guessed the truth – not goshe, but the other player Narin had mentioned in this. Demons.
His mouth fell open just as a cry of alarm came from the men nearest, but the fever-stricken citizens moved as though in a dream – unaware of everything around them, and only a shout from Rhe stopped his men from turning to attack this new threat.
More figures rose from the deck of the fishing boat – three, then five, then ten. They swarmed forward with one purpose, tumbling over the gunwale of the boat and down into the waist-deep water below.
Rhe took an instinctive step forward then recovered himself and finished loading his remaining pistol in case he was wrong. The men and women continued to come forward over the edge of the boat as the first few waded through the water and up onto the beach. The white mist now surged and swarmed about then, three or four ribbons around the head of each – moving with purposeful, sinuous grace.
From the water at their feet came more nightmares ; misshapen creatures like spider-limbed monkeys that swarmed up between the demon-possessed people. Blade-shaped claws dragged their dark, glistening hides over the pebbles, crawling alongside the possessed like hounds of the lower hells hunting the living.
In the face of this, the Lawbringers frantically parted, scrambling to get out of the way as the stumbling possessed advanced. The demons seemed not to notice and they continued up the beach towards the wall. Cries of alarm and panic rang out all down the half-formed ranks of Lawbringers, all thoughts of the goshe forgotten until the crossbow bolts started to hammer down into the possessed – rocking them back and tearing mortal wounds in their flesh, but not stopping any of those they struck.
Rhe shouted for Kashte to resume the shooting that had tailed off in the shock, but before he could do so the leading possessed was struck by one of the corkscrewing fire-bolts. She exploded into flames, the trails of mist being thrown outward by the force as their vessel was torn apart by the force. Several trails dissipated entirely under the impact while one other was thrown up into the air. The faint impression of a ghostly wolf glowed against black sky as Rhe shielded his eyes from the conflagration, then the trail dropped back down to join the dance of spirits around the head of another possessed.
Gunshots rang out once more, bullets cracking against the stone parapet of the wall. The goshe were given no more opportunities to fire as the possessed surged forward. Once they were near, Rhe saw their mouths fall open, jaws hanging loose for a moment – but then the demon-cries began. The air seemed to split apart as scream after scream burst from their mouths – a garbled, high-pitched sound no human could ever make.
On the beach, many Lawbringers dropped their weapons and clapped their hands to their ears, assailed by the intensity of the demon-cries while, on the wall, several goshe were even more affected by it. Rhe watched one man howl in pain, crossbow abandoned as he threw himself around, trying to escape the noise, before tumbling backwards off the wall.
Those less assailed continued to fire down at the demons. One pulled a pouch from their waist and jammed a burning torch inside it – a bag of fire-bolts, Rhe guessed. They wasted no time in dropping that over the edge and ducking back out of sight again before the riflemen could line up a shot.
The explosion ripped open the ground at their feet, throwing even the demons to the ground and ripping half a dozen apart in the process. The swirling spirits recoiled and drew back, but their monstrous hounds were undaunted. Even those injured in the explosion hauled themselves forward again and began to climb the wall with terrifying ease, long claws digging into the mortar as they scrambled up towards the goshe.
Rhe didn’t see them reach the enemy. Before he could think to call the advance and urge his comrades on in the wake of the demons, a deep and thunderous roar rolled across the sky. Icy dread slithered down his spine as the ground trembled underfoot. It was unlike any sound he’d ever heard – the rage-filled bellow of some monstrous creature, but somehow he recognised it still.
Even as he turned, he knew what he was looking for – from the tales of his own House’s centuries-old wars, from the fate of the Ebalee Trading Company and a dozen other fragmentary accounts. A roar that heralded the death of armies.
From the water at the far end of the beach rose a new terror – faceless and stone-skinned, pale ghosts emerging from the gloom. Larger than all but the tallest men, the thick-limbed figures stood in the shallow water and surveyed the fighting ahead. Their booming war-cry crashed against Rhe’s ears once more, shaking his bones as the first of the figures began to advance. They looked like living statues, skin as cold and seamless as carved stone, with long cylinders of the same material slung under their right arms like the stub of a lance.
The nearest statue lowered its lance and pointed its concave tip past Rhe, towards the wall. The Lawbringer dropped to the ground in anticipation and others nearby did likewise. There was a rushing sound and Rhe saw the air ripped apart as intense heat washed against his skin. He didn’t move in time to see the gate be stru
ck by the Dragon’s Breath, but he heard the conflagration as it erupted into flames and the stones around it shattered.
A rare spark of fear fluttered in Rhe’s heart. Few who witnessed this ever lived to tell the tale, but famous it was all the same. The Stone Dragons had announced their presence in death and flame.
Chapter 27
Of the Astaren there are many tales, but few are recognised as truth. Only those of the Stone Dragons are given credence because House Dragon is happy to demonstrate their power to the entire Empire. One must wonder what other weapons they keep secret when the Lords of Dragon are willing for their enemies to know the terrible strength of these battlefield destroyers.
From A History by Ayel Sorote
Synter took a step towards Father Jehq, axe half-raised before she even realised what she was doing. Without lowering the weapon, she composed herself and asked coldly, ‘What do you mean, leave them ?’
‘There is no time,’ Jehq replied. ‘You heard the call of the Stone Dragons. Either they hold out or they’re already dead.’
‘I can’t leave my men to die ! I don’t care about the moon-born goshe, but there are Detenii out there too.’
‘And we will mourn them,’ he said calmly, ‘but there is nothing we can do. Caric is no fool, he’ll disengage and leave the rest to die. We must complete the ceremony or we are all dead.’
‘How long ?’
Jehq looked back down an open stairway at the lavish hall below. Six large pillars supported a central dome painted black and studded with silver constellations, while a square cloister of alcoves and doorways surrounded it. The pair stood at the edge of a balcony with a view over the front courtyard. Beyond it, the leper colony was visible in the distance, columns of flame rising up from several parts as the Stone Dragons did their work.
‘Assuming those flames don’t reach the houses where the lepers have been left ? It is hard to gauge. Mother Yliss is gone, Pallasane is being drawn now,’ Jehq noted.