Ravencry

by Ed McDonald

  I needed to save the Grandspire. If the drudge were successful and one of their missiles toppled it, then Thierro’s dream of seeing the Bright Lady reborn died too. And no matter what Dantry had told me, no matter what Crowfoot had warned me about, no matter how far-fetched it seemed, there was one thing I desired over any other. I didn’t believe that it could happen. But I have always been a gambler, and I was willing to take the smallest odds where Ezabeth was concerned.

  To save her.

  To be her hero.

  I almost laughed at my own idiocy. It was time. The song had begun.

  We descended into the crystal forest. The glassy spears thrust up from the dry, powdery sand like stalagmites, some no taller than my waist but most jutting ten or fifteen feet toward the night sky. The horses were the biggest concern as we led them between the spires. There was enough space for them to pass between the crystals, but the glow made them skittish. They were used to phos light, but they had eight days of Misery jitters behind them and the slightly translucent, light-holding pillars did nothing to calm them. Horses are built for running and their instinct when spooked is to run, run and don’t worry about what’s ahead. We couldn’t afford that now. Soft words reached their ears to calm them. They didn’t understand the words – horses are stupid – but they understood the tone. The men wore their travelling cloaks over their armour, the better to muffle the sound of our approach, but we didn’t need them. The singing resonated so loud here, magnified as it bounced from pillar to pillar. If it hadn’t been a form of power that sent death arcing through the sky, I might have found it beautiful.

  ‘We have three minutes to the end of the song,’ Thierro whispered. Seemed dumb to be whispering with that sound echoing from every pillar, filling the air, ruling the night. We’d counted the verses and choruses as they launched the previous missile.

  ‘Get your men ready,’ I said. ‘Double line. Volley fire, one-two. Then Witness Glaun gives the signal and we go. Concentrate everything you have on the Darlings. Only a direct blast to the brain will stop them. Ready?’

  Thierro cocked his flarelock. It was a finer weapon than those his soldiers were packing, a master-crafted weapon with a complex lens-sight mounted on the top. He was a good enough shot to justify it. His backup, for when his phos canisters were depleted.

  ‘We are. Take care of yourself out here, Captain. I’d hate to see you get hurt.’

  ‘I’m not planning on dying today,’ I said. I checked my kit over. My heavy sabre was ready to be drawn, the pistols were loaded, wadded and ready on my gun belt. I had a double-handed war sword across the saddle, just in case. Then there were daggers. Knowing your weapons helps put you at ease before the storm hits. Lets you feel that you’ve done everything in your power to see yourself through. Of course, the smartest thing to do is turn around and ride back the way you came as fast as you can. But we run when we can run, and we fight when we have to, and sometimes the dawn comes and there’s no choice but to grit your teeth, draw steel and scream against the night.

  ‘One other thing, Thierro,’ I said. ‘If this goes wrong – if it looks like we’ll be taken – don’t let them take us alive. None of us. You think we’re going to be captured, you aim for my head real slow, and you blow it clean off. If they take us, death will be a blessing.’

  ‘I’d never let them take you, Ryhalt. But it won’t come to that,’ Thierro said. I offered him my hand to shake but he’d already turned away, telling his men to prime their flarelock hand cannons. I wasn’t a praying man, but I asked the Spirit of Mercy to make sure none of them exploded before we even got started. I was still looking foolish with my hand outstretched and Nenn gave it a slap instead.

  ‘Third chorus,’ she said. ‘Two minutes. Ready?’

  ‘I’m always ready,’ I said. She chewed on her lip, spat.

  ‘Fuck it. Let’s do this, then.’

  I let Falcon feel my heels, and he moved toward what would have been the tree line in any sane part of the world. The drudge had mined away a broad swathe of the crystal pillars, leaving a clearing of stumps a good two hundred yards across. It was toward the centre of this glade that the Singers harmonized their song. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the power that Saravor sought to drive against the Eye. Could he ascend to godhood if the drudge’s missile came down right on top of the Eye? I’d thought it through, over and over, but it didn’t feel right. Too physical. Too ordinary. The Singers sat in a circle, facing one another, their faces so bloated and deformed that I couldn’t tell whether their eyes were open or closed. It wouldn’t have mattered either way. They were engrossed in their song, and if this worked then it was too late for them now. If we’d misjudged our hand, then it was all about to go sour anyway.

  Darlings. Two of them. They sat near to the Singers, the only other living things within a bow’s reach. One looked like a young girl, scars on her face, hair patchy and falling out. The second had been male, but he’d not only been made into a Darling, he’d been marked and had begun his drudge changes. His face was greyish and too flat, the nose smoothly spreading into his cheeks. And there it was, behind him: a short, flexing tail. The Darling I was after. This was part of Saravor’s plan. Getting hold of that Darling and somehow surviving long enough to force it to talk wasn’t part of the plan, but if opportunity reared her head, I’d take it. I’d played on worse odds before.

  Had either of the Darlings been paying attention, they might have seen us, shadows moving between the spires, but if Darlings do have a weakness, then it’s their confidence. They looked bored. Of course, confidence isn’t much of a weakness when you’re practically indestructible and command a dark and terrible power.

  ‘One minute,’ Nenn said. I drew my sabre. Good curved steel, she sat my hand like her hilt had been sculpted for it. Through the thin leather of my glove I could feel the silver wire of the hilt. I’d had her a long time.

  ‘Witness Thierro. Give fire!’

  I gave the order. It had been a while since I’d given that kind of order. It felt good.

  ‘First rank, ready arms!’ Thierro called. The marksmen ran forward, out of the cover of the spires. They held their flarelocks out in front of them. The Singers’ voices rose, soaring, vast and inhuman.

  ‘Take aim!’ Thierro called. The weapons nestled in against the men’s shoulders. One of the Darlings looked up from whatever book it had been leafing through, shouted and scrambled to its feet.

  ‘Give fire!’

  The flarelocks cackled and whined, and bolts of bright light spat across the cleared plain. Two of the guns misfired, jettisoning sparks but not blowing themselves apart. Some of the men had aimed for the Darlings. Some of them had aimed for the Singers, and the song faltered and wobbled. The iron basin of crystal shards was shimmering with power, gold and purple, greens and deep, bloody oranges, but the moment the song faltered it began to sputter. Wild vents of energy spat out and one of the Singers was sprayed by what looked like hot coals. It struggled to brush them away, its limbs too large for the task.

  ‘Second rank, give fire!’

  Thierro’s second rank sent out another volley, flarelocks screeching. At least one of the Darlings was hit – not an easy target at that range. I saw blood fly from her shoulder and hip. The male had flattened himself behind the stump of one of the crystals.

  ‘Ride!’ Nenn shouted. ‘Ride, ride, ride!’ She whirled her sabre around her head. Dangerous thing to do, that. Somebody could lose a nose that way.

  I gave Falcon my spurs, let him know it was time. He responded eagerly, and as the first horse surged out the others gladly followed suit. I hunched low over Falcon’s neck, reins in my left hand, gripping with my calves and spurring him on. Falcon’s long legs ate the ground, but we were charging toward something straight out of my nightmares.

  The girl Darling picked herself up. She wouldn’t be stopped by a couple of flarelock blasts. Her mo
uth stretched wide as she screeched something which wasn’t clear over the faltering song, as the Singers struggled to bring the magic in the iron basin under control. The Darling interposed herself between us and the monstrous creatures, shrieking as she unleashed something against us. The blast ripped up pebbles and a spray of sand as it sliced forward – and then disintegrated in a shower of sparks. Glaun and the Spinners were doing their work.

  The tailed Darling tried another ploy, an old one. Faced with a charging line of cavalry he sent out the mind-worms and caught one of our riders who jerked his horse to the right, trying to crash it into the others. At a gallop, a fall onto those crystal stumps would have brought broken bones or worse, a sharp edge might split a man open.

  There is an old adage that a good offence is the best defence, and in this case it was true. The Spinners saw that the Darling had opted for subtlety and they took the opposite course. The Darling was immersed in a series of blazing bursts of phos light, gold and blue, traces of flame left in their wake.

  Nenn was shrieking to match the Darlings. She didn’t have a battle cry, she just liked to shriek. She raised her sword and we left the Darlings to the Spinners. They were too hard to kill and too dangerous to get close to. But the huge bodies of the Singers? They were a different matter.

  Up close the Singers were grotesque, worse than I had thought. Their skin had the same clammy greyness common to many of the drudge, but they were patterned with huge stretch marks as though their thin-stretched hides struggled to contain their mass. They were vast, swollen five times larger than a man or woman should have been. Huge jowls hung from their faces, dragging the skin down beneath bloodshot eyes. They wore soft robes, their elongated ears studded with gold ornaments and their oversized bodies, altered to accommodate their great lungs, were too deformed to allow a natural range of movement. They seemed confused as they looked at the rush of cavalry about to hit them, their ponderous heads unable to swivel and eyes unable to focus. I wasn’t at all sure that they understood what was happening as I rose in my stirrups and brought my sabre down on a Singer’s head with all my strength.

  I am a big man, and I put myself through a good deal of training and exertion to make sure that I’m as strong as my body can be. But even with a ton of horse beneath me, my sabre only slashed through scalp and the shreds of clinging hair, didn’t cut through the Singer’s overthick skull. It groaned like a drunk and tried waving its hands around, struggled to rise, but it was defeated by its own bulk. I wheeled around, hacked at it again, drawing plenty of blood and wails but the beast wasn’t going to die that easily. It was like attacking a bull with a kitchen knife.

  Pistols and carbines were cracking. Several of our horsemen had chosen to close on the female Darling, firing down into her body, unloading their pistols in blasts of dragon-smoke, drawing another and firing them off too. There was a lot of dust, a lot of smoke, and I could make out nothing of the Darling. Maybe they’d got her. Perhaps we’d got lucky.

  A blast of Darling magic ripped through the air close by and cut a horse and man in two. The drudge-marked Darling had broken free of the Spinners’ bindings and was blasting around indiscriminately. Armour offered no protection against that force, and another two men were cut from their saddles. Sparks crackled in the air around it as the Spinners tried to weave something new, but the Darling’s rage gave it power. His half-human face was filled with that pure, wild hate that I’ve only ever seen on a Darling as he cast lashes of razored air left and right. I drew my pistols, took as careful aim as two seconds and a frightened horse would allow and missed my first shot. I tried a second and missed with that too. The Darling turned as the shot whipped by its face, saw me, and might have ended me right then if a riderless horse had not accidentally trampled him. The sorcerer went down in a spray of crystal dust as the horse’s hooves crushed him into the dirt.

  I looked at the Singers. They were bloody and wailing in deep, frightened moans. Too large, too grotesque to even flee, they bellowed feebly for help as our men slashed at them. It was horrible butchery, and a lesser man might have felt pity for these wretched, deformed things. I may not have been a Darling, but I knew how to hate. These things had killed thousands with their damned sorcery. I would kill them all, personally, piece by piece if I had to.

  The drudge soldiers were coming at pace. Some came on foot with pikes and swords, others rode at us on heavy, shaggy-looking creatures. The job should have been done by now, the retreat sounded, but the Singers wouldn’t fucking die. Broken bodies of Nenn’s good men lay in pieces everywhere, victims of the Darlings’ furious sorcery. A trio of them stood over what I guessed was the female Darling, hacking down at it over and over, struggling to make it stay dead.

  I saw Nenn. She had dismounted, and like me she had a two-handed sword. She drove it all the way into one of the Singers from behind as the warbling monster tried futilely to get up. Their legs were not up to the task. The blade came out of its chest, but that didn’t seem to stop it. Nenn drew the blade out again, jerking savagely to get it out of the ribs, but the Singer gave no indication that it was going to die.

  ‘We’ve done all we can,’ Stracht shouted. He was bleeding from the mouth where a Singer had managed to bat at him with a swollen, oversized hand. ‘We can’t fight all those drudge.’

  He was right. Hundreds of them began to stream from their encampment, galvanised and swarming to save their sorcerers. A series of muffled thumps sounded nearby as the Spinners managed to pin the boy Darling down against the earth. His body was smoking, but still the damn thing kept twitching. The chances of getting anything out of it had been negligible anyway but I saw my best lead burn up with it.

  A volley of flarelock fire spat out toward the drudge, but fifty hand cannons against that horde wasn’t going to make much more of an impact than we were making on the Singers.

  ‘Grenadoes!’ I ordered. ‘Light them up.’

  Nenn gave me a vicious grin. I hadn’t realised just how immobile the Singers were until now. The smallest of them had almost managed to drag itself a few feet. We carried grenadoes as a last resort against the bigger, stupider things the Misery can throw at you.

  I rode up to the first Singer. Its big eyes sought me out, bloody veins running through flat yellow orbs.

  ‘Kill … me …’ it croaked, slow enough that I understood its drudge language. There was so much pain in its voice. The Deep Kings had ten hells of damnation to answer for when they were finally ripped out of existence, but I still couldn’t bring myself to sympathise with this creature. It could have refused. It had chosen this tortured existence over preventing the murder of innocent women, men and children. I lit the grenadoe’s long fuse and stuffed it inside the creature’s robes. Its arms were too heavily deformed to bend enough at the elbow to do anything about it.

  I began to whistle as I lit others and went around the group. Between Nenn, Stracht and I, we got them all sizzling and then ran for the horses. Stracht’s horse had fled the fighting and he and I both ran for Falcon, who was snorting and prancing, flicking his hooves at the ground, but his training kept him near me. I jumped up. The drudge were closing so fast, but their mounts – ponies? Yaks?–weren’t swift. They were hardy things, bred for Misery work, not for cavalry charges, and we’d be ahead of them.

  ‘Let’s move, let’s move,’ Stracht said. Nenn waited with us, readying a pistol.

  ‘Get down!’ she shouted, but too late. The Darling was on fire, flames raged along its leg and tail, half of its face burned away completely by the Spinners, but it was barely twenty feet away and I could see its ire burning hotter than the magic charring it. It summoned what little magic it had left to strike us down.

  A lick of power came out at us, scything the air. It struck Stracht first, and I was just behind him and should have been next – but death didn’t come. The energy exploded around Stracht, almost as though it bounced off him, fragments of deadly ma
gic spraying back. The Darling took a hit from its own power, cutting itself near in half, rag-dolling over and over in the dust.

  Falcon pranced, snorting and blowing as I grabbed his reins. Stracht seemed miraculously alive given that he’d just taken a full-on blast from a Darling but there was no time to ask him, however, as the drudge were about to arrive. Our men had retreated, only Nenn, Stracht and the dead were left. I gripped Stracht’s forearm, hauled him up. He struggled, too old to be out here doing this and no stirrup to get a foot in.

  ‘Stracht, come on,’ I said. I tried hauling again, but my strength was spent and I couldn’t pull him up alone. Nenn cocked her pistol. Her grin was gone.

  Twin tracks of blood wept from her eyes.

  ‘No,’ I breathed.

  ‘Thank you, Galharrow,’ she said, and the voice that issued from her lips was dry and dusty as a tomb. ‘I thought you were going to cause problems. But look, you’ve stopped the drudge barrage for me.’

  ‘Let her go,’ I said. My teeth locked rigid at seeing my worst fear come to life. Nenn pointed the pistol at me.

  ‘How about a deal?’ Saravor said through her lips. A twisted smile. Nenn could never have looked at another person with that malice. She hadn’t the cruelty. ‘You tell me now how to take the Bright Lady’s power, and I’ll let this one continue to serve me.’

  The mounted drudge were nearly upon us.

  ‘She’ll destroy you,’ I spat. ‘Just try her.’

  ‘An empty threat. How disappointing. I thought you would die with greater dignity. Good-bye, Captain Galharrow.’

  I flinched as Nenn’s fingers squeezed on the firing trigger – but not quite hard enough. Her body trembled, and in her eyes, there was still a flicker of Nenn’s consciousness. Her shoulders shook, her hand wavered as she battled for control.

  ‘I’ll kill you,’ Saravor whispered, but it was with an effort, and then, pained, ‘Go, Ryhalt. Ride.’