The Horns of Ruin s-9

by Tim Akers

  He looked up the stairs, grimacing and twisting his hands around the short shotgun he had slung out. More shooting, much closer. Hot bullets traced a row of dimples into the wall just above us. He nodded.

  Once we were on our way down, it went fast. Those things, with their static voices and cold-piston hearts, must have sensed us. Must have known there were few of us left. The fever of the hunt was on them. I knew the feeling.

  "Get your men in the water. Maybe the Amonites swam out, and there's a quick path that we just can't see."

  "There are injured. They'll drown."

  "Drown or get shot," I said. "Now get 'em in the water."

  On the dock, the few remaining Healers were milling around. Alexians aren't cut out for this, I thought. How did we ever let them take charge? Who left them in the big-boy chair? This crowd had done a bangup job of getting the injured all lined up and field triage accomplished, but most of them had dropped their weapons. Those who were still walking around were pretty badly hurt themselves.

  Cassandra knelt by the edge of the water, staring nervously at the door. She had a guard or two, but those boys looked more scared than her, and she looked pretty scared. I pointed at her.

  "Don't you try getting away in all the excitement. This bit'll be over soon, and then we have business."

  She nodded at me, or at least in my direction. I turned my attention to the defenses, such as they were.

  Owen got into an argument with one of the older guys. It was pretty clear that no one was going into the water any time soon. I closed the hatch, but the lock was on the other side. A couple of the Alexians saw what I was doing and tried to help. That's when I saw the other Amonite.

  He was sitting cross-legged against the wall, staring at Cassandra. It was the guy who had opened the hatch for us, Owen's pet Scholar.

  "Hey, aren't you on the wrong side of this door?" I yelled. He shrugged, then stood and came over.

  "Would you like me to go out there, or would you like me to close that door?"

  "Can you close the door, and then maybe drown yourself?"

  He sighed, then placed one palm on either side of the pressurized window and began to invoke. All of our frictionlamps guttered, which is unusual for normal, mechanical lights. The air around us seemed to swell and grow heavy, like we were moving through molasses. His words stretched out in time, long syllables rolling out of his mouth and sticking in the air, their weight and density drawing us in. The room seemed ready to collapse.

  Everything snapped, the whole world rushing at the space between the Amonite's two palms. I lurched forward like a drunk on a ship, and the room lurched with me. We were in sudden vacuum, without sound or breath, the instinctive panic burning through my lungs before I even realized I couldn't breathe. The door crumpled like a child's toy and I felt an instant of betrayal, before I realized that the egglike hatch had flattened out and molded itself with the frame. The whole door was solid metal now, wrinkled and hot. Only the window remained intact, untouched among the violence.

  "That will do," the Amonite said, then shot me a dull look and returned to his seat. He went back to staring at the girl. She couldn't bring herself to look at him, at his chains.

  "How the hell will we get out of here?" one of the badly injured men asked. I shushed him. One problem at a time.

  And our first problem came up pretty quick. Through the window I saw pale blue light, and then the wide goggle eyes of the coldmen. I couldn't hear their static voices, but I could feel them, itching through my bones. It felt like I could taste that breath again, centuries dead. I put away the revolver. At least here, on the deck, I had room to swing some blade.

  "Everyone stay behind me. If it gets bad, jump in the drink and go under. If they come for you… swim."

  "Swim," Owen said, "and pray to Alexander for deliverance."

  "As you like," I said. "But mostly I would swim."

  Hammering at the door, now. A slow, patient, heavy stroke that rang the metal like a bell. The whole room echoed from the impact. The water behind us lapped against the dock. I drew my sword and began to invoke, drawing a semicircle on the ground in front of me and feeding it what power I could. What power Morgan could give me.

  The door burst like a shell, spitting hot metal across the dock, hissing as it struck the water. The debris arced off the flimsy wall of my shield. I kept my sword crossed over my chest, chanting the ritual of protection as hard as I could. When the explosion settled into nothing more than smoke and cinder I dropped the shield and rushed forward. Owen fired a shot into the roiling smoke from behind me, then cursed as I got in his way. I trusted my steel more than his lead.

  They came out of the gaping hole in the wall, the jagged wound of the hatch. The coldmen. Their eyes were luminescent in the smoke and steam. White fog vented out of their faces, frost riming the blades of their greaves. They lurked, like animals stalking into the light of a campfire. Their eyes flashed, and then I was on them, screaming.

  They fell stubbornly. I put the blade into chests, shoulders, thighs, drawing harshly back to pull the sharp edge of the sword through their flesh as I retreated. I heard and felt the remaining Alexians firing their weapons into the flanks of the horde of coldmen who spilled out of the door. Hot white lances punched into dead skin, rupturing bone and metal. They kept coming. They always kept coming.

  I dove in and out, slashing and giving ground. There wasn't a lot of ground to give. Their wrist blades were sharp, and I had no shield to protect me. The wide blade of my sword got mired in a rib cage; another of them punched metal through my coat, slicing skin. The holy-forged form of my noetic armor crumpled under the assault like a child's toy. I let go of my sword with my right hand and punched the one in front of me twice, fast, reeling him back, then drew my bully. I started firing as soon as it cleared the holster, putting the first shot into the long bone of his shin, splintering it as the bullet went from knee to heel. My second shot cracked open his hip. I whipped the revolver up, slamming the thick barrel into his chin, cracking it like a wishbone. He fell back, taking his blades with him, out of my skin and my coat.

  The sword came free when I put the tip of the revolver I had stolen against the offending rib cage and blasted it away with three quick shots, then holstered the bully and cleared the space around me, swinging metal into bone. There were so many of them, and we'd been pushed back nearly to the edge of the dock. I was losing sight of the ruined hatch. I lost sight of the girl, too.

  "Justicar!" I yelled, looking around for the scion of Alexander. He was off to my side, trying to reload the fat cylinder of his shotgun. "We're going to have to make a move here awfully quick."

  "We'll keep fighting, Paladin. Until we're out."

  "That's not going to-"

  The air cracked around me and I stumbled. The planks of the dock went crazy. The world was moving, sliding farther into the water. Away from the hatch.

  The dock must have been damaged in the explosion, or the girl had cut us loose. I spun around, looking for her. Nothing. The dock twisted on its supports and pulled free of the wall, slapping against the water. We started to sink in cold water and earnest.

  The wounded screamed, those awake enough to register the danger. Several rolled off and disappeared into the water, soundlessly. The coldmen didn't seem to notice, just kept fighting, pressing, coming. I fought on, because it was what I knew how to do. The water made it to my ankles, my knees, the shocking spike of cold into my crotch taking the breath from my lungs. The platform was tilting and I slipped, ashy water splashing into my mouth and eyes. I hauled myself to my feet.

  I lost sight of Owen, of the other Alexians, of the walls all around. A couple of the frictionlamps bobbed on the surface of the water, a couple more glowed dimly as they sank beneath the waters. I saw the girl, once, refastening the mask that she had surrendered, her eyes panicking as the water rushed up around her throat and into her still-open mouth as she slid beneath the surface. Hands clutched at me, and I cut the
m, unsure if they belonged to the coldmen or my dying companions. My attackers gabbled at me in staticky panic, falling beneath my blade or stumbling off the platform to disappear. The planks under my feet began to shift as the whole structure lost integrity, forgot that it was supposed to be stable and flat. I was standing on a loose bundle of boards, and the bundle was coming apart. I tried to pick out the ruin of the hatch, but could see nothing but blackness and the swallowing darkness of the water. I picked a direction, lurched toward it, thrashing against the water to try to stay up, then stepped off into an abyss, into oblivion.

  The water swallowed me, and the darkness, and the cold.

  7

  he corridor was a tube of slimy brick with gutters on both sides of a narrow iron walkway. There was no light, other than the soft glow coming off the Healers' runed cuffs as they invoked over the bodies of the nearly dead. I was on my back, shoulders arched uncomfortably over the mass of the articulated sheath. The corridor ended in a waterfall that fell silently, held back by some hidden force. I sat up. Owen saw me and came over.

  "Careful now," he said. He passed a palm over my head, whispering some invokation of anatomy. He had put on his Healer's rings, a dull silver cuff for each finger, and they glowed a dim blue as he watched me with nervous eyes. "That was an unusual method of drowning."

  "What happened?" I asked. My head felt like it had been stuffed with kindling and then used to start a particularly stubborn fire. The Justicar put his palm against my forehead, shook his head, then began to invoke. His skin was cool and wet, surprisingly soft. I closed my eyes and lay back against the damp tunnel wall. "Where are we?"

  "Under the water," he said, then broke contact. The pain in my head dampened to a soft roar. "There's some mechanism in the water that dragged us in here. You should be fine until we get to the surface."

  "A force?" I sat up again and looked at the waterfall. The water flickered light. I could detect a pulse in my bones now, not unlike the feeling I got standing on the monotracks, staring at the distant tower of the impellor. "This is how the Amonites got away?"

  "Probably. Clever kids, those Scholars." He stood up, hunching under the curved brick ceiling. "We can talk about it later. I've got people to attend."

  "Did our wounded get through?" I asked.

  "Some of them. There must be a point in the water where the field is most effective. We just brushed it. Lucky, really." He started to turn away, then paused. "Some of those… things came through, too. We cut them and threw them back."

  "What about the girl?"

  He nodded down the hallway. "Yeah. We've got her guarded, best we can. Took her toys away and made her drowsy." He rubbed his knuckles around the cuffs, like an old man worrying the arthritis from his bones. "She's scared, Eva."

  "Yeah. I scare people."

  "Not sure it's you. Not sure it's any of us." He pulled one of his cuffs off, buffed it against his shirt, and put it back on. "Anyway."

  I nodded, and he returned to the row of bodies lined up along the center of the corridor, checking pulses and invoking his rings. I eased myself into a more comfortable position and did a quick inventory of the meat. One of the Healers had already patched me up, Owen or one of his boys. I felt pretty good, for a girl who had just fought off a horde of dead men, followed promptly by a short period of drowning and unconsciousness. My sword was in its sheath, either returned by one of my fellow survivors or plucked out of the water by the articulators as it fell out of my hand. Watching the sheath do its thing could be creepy sometimes, like watching a spider pounce across the tense strands of its web. But it was good at what it did.

  "How much of the city is like this?" I asked myself, quietly. The waterfall at the end of the hallway looked like a living painting, an artifact from the time of the Feyr. Might even be that old, though most of their ancient city had been torn apart after the siege. "How many burrows are there, for our little Amonite friends to hide in?"

  "He did build the city," Owen said. He was sitting against the curve of the wall behind me, still rubbing his hands. "Who knows what Amon laced between the walls?"

  "These guys do, obviously." I looked up at him. "If I can't get the girl to talk, maybe we should have a chat with your friends in the Library Desolate."

  He shook his head. "We've found places like this before. Hidden rooms, empty tunnels. Sometimes evidence that someone had just left, or maybe provisioned the place like they intended to come back. We've interrogated the captive Scholars about it. Nothing."

  "There are no plans for the city, somewhere?"

  "Sure. They were in Amon's personal library. The one you guys burned to the ground."

  "Ah. Well." It had happened in the angry days between Morgan's murder and Amon's capture. "Sorry about that."

  He shrugged, then pulled off his Healer's rings and dropped them into a satchel on his belt. "We should get going. A lot of these guys can't be moved, and they're beyond my abilities. We'll have to bring a real Healer down here."

  "Sure." I stood, then looked around the corridor. "Can your guys watch the girl?"

  "Cassandra. She said her name is Cassandra."

  I looked at him in the dim light of the waterfall. He wouldn't meet my eyes.

  "Can your guys handle her?"

  "Sure. She's out. Come on."

  I nodded and checked my pockets. "I think I lost my gun. You see it?"

  "Nope. Then again, I lost ten guys and whatever evidence those monsters destroyed on the way. So maybe I wasn't looking too hard for your gun."

  He spoke quietly to one of the Healers he was leaving behind to watch the injured, then pulled a frictionlamp from his pack and started down the corridor. I followed, balancing my way past the line of dead and injured that took up the center of the path. We walked that way longer than I expected. Cassandra was at the end of the row, three Healers crouched around her, taking turns touching light fingers to her temples, her wrists, her ankles. She was out. She looked a lot paler in the frictionlight than I remembered. Once we were past all the quiet bodies, Owen and I walked in silence and shadows.

  * * *

  The brick tunnel led to a series of ladders that ended in a monostation on the city's inner horn. It was pretty clear that these were maintenance tunnels. There were doors that led to rooms that were nothing but machine and conduit, loud, hammering rooms that looked as if they'd been running for generations and could run for generations more. Several times the tunnel filled with vented smoke or steam, only to ventilate just as suddenly through hidden ports.

  Also plenty of signs of recent traffic. Someone had bled all over one of the ladders, someone else had thrown up in a cubby-room off the main drag. There were abandoned clothes, a bag of dinnerware thrown to one side, even a muzzleloader that probably hadn't been fired in years, propped up between two pipes. There was plenty of dust, too, but it had been disturbed. This passage was ancient and hardly used. It was an easy trail to follow.

  "How many people know about these places?" I asked. It was the first thing either of us had said since we'd left Owen's people behind. "Amonites come down here for maintenance, remember it when they get away from your zero-escape-rate Library?"

  He shook his head thoughtfully. "Probably not. Maintenance is a problem. We know these passages exist, we just don't know where they are. Long as something doesn't break, we don't worry about it."

  "And if something does break?"

  He shrugged. "We dig to it."

  Once we were on the surface, Owen disappeared to coordinate the rescue party. They closed off the monotrain station and filled the newfound tunnel with men carrying lamps and shotguns. I waited until the girl was brought up, arranged an escort for her back to Alexander's royal court where she could be questioned about the Fratriarch's disappearance, then lost interest. I had been gearing up emotionally for a hell of a chase, and it had just ended in a flash. There was still the Fratriarch to find, and these coldmen to figure out, but for now I was between tasks. I caught the last m
ono the Healers let stop at that station and began the long series of circular orbits and exchanges that would get me back to the Strength of Morgan.

  I sat alone in the plush cabin of the mono, staring at the pendant Cassandra had left for me on the dock. It was the Fratriarch's, though not something associated with his office. More accurate to say that it belonged to Barnabas, the man I knew, rather than the Fratriarch I served. He had been wearing it as long as I'd known him, which had been forever. As long as I can remember, at least.

  Did this mean that she knew where he was? If her compatriots were holding him captive, he would be bound and nearly naked. The icons of the faith are powerful tools for channeling the invokations of Morgan. My sword was an obsessively precise mimic of Morgan's own blade, the Grimwield. Same with the revolver. My armor, the pauldrons and gauntlets and greaves, all mirrored Morgan's battle dress, at least in style and spirit. At the higher levels of the faith, the icons became more obscure and more genuine. The staff Barnabas carried had at its core the driftwood staff that Morgan had carried with him into the mountains during the Thousand Lost Days. Many of the pendants and charms that the Elders wore or had stamped onto their robes reflected some aspect of Morgan's personal life. Some were genuine, some were decoy, to protect the secrets of Morgan's life. It was only knowledge of these things that powered them, and that knowledge was carefully guarded by the ranks of the initiated.

  So they would have stripped the old man. Of his robe, his jewelry, even that ancient staff. This pendant would have been taken from him, too. The girl could have lifted it from the stash of his belongings, feeling some regret perhaps over her involvement in his kidnapping. It didn't make any sense.

  Soon enough, the Chanters of the Cult of Alexander would find their way into the girl's brain, and then we'd know. It was a slow process, but she didn't seem the type to give it up to fear or intimidation. I sighed and rested my head against the glass of the window. I'd know, soon enough.