The Horns of Ruin

by Tim Akers

  hey were beginning to panic. You could see it in the way they clustered under the tracks of the elevated train, hear it in the strange squealing language of their voxorators. The sirens were getting closer, the emergency response teams rushing to rescue the injured from the monotrain accident. Several of the strange men had set off to intercept the sirens. That would bring an armed response, and they knew it. Time was running out.

  Nothing they had was going to cut through the Fratriarch's wards. And it was clear that he was their target, from the way they kept close to the train, the way so many of them kept climbing up and arguing and then climbing down. The way they looked up nervously to the car dangling from the ruined tracks, flaring light and dull explosions marking their failed attempts to get inside Barnabas's shields. No way they were going to do it. No way I could let them do it.

  When I stumbled out of the square, there was no immediate pursuit. They clustered under the train and regrouped. I did the same in a quiet alleyway, weaving invokations into armor and strength, flaring power along the length of my blade, cursing myself for letting the Fratriarch out of the monastery without a full guard. For letting him outside at all. I would get one chance to make it right, I knew. One chance to go in and cut them down before the old man's wards failed. Balancing act between recouping my arcane reserve and guessing how long Barnabas could last. Lots of unknowns in that equation, so I played it dangerous and went back in before I was fully invoked. No use being at full strength if they got away with the Fratriarch while I was buffing up in some corner.

  I crawled to the edge of the roadway behind some wreckage from the mono derailment to see how my strange little friends were progressing. The goggle-faced crew was under the tracks, talking and pointing. As I watched, a couple of them shrugged their burnpacks more firmly on their backs and walked to the center of the square. The wide, loud turbines began to cycle up. Hot, stinging air washed off them in oily waves.

  Going to get help. Going to get bigger explosives, or cutting torches, or ... Brothers knew what else. Going to get one of their renegade Amonites, probably, to Unmake the whole damn car until they could pry the old man out by his teeth. I couldn't let them go. If I was going to stop them, it had to happen now, or not at all. Now.

  I had already incanted the Rite of the Stag Hunt for speed, Morgan's Journey and the Long Stand to keep the fatigue far enough away, and, finally, the Walls of Alteraic. I didn't have the words that the Fratriarch could manage, or the more complicated invokations of the bullistic revolver that came with devotion to other paths, but I sparked up what I knew, and came in burning like a flare. The sword is my path, the sword my fire and my strength.

  I came out of cover at a blind sprint, the wide, flat steel of my sword held up over my head. They were facing away from me, the barrel-like engines of their burnpacks blocking my approach from their view. Halfway across the courtyard, my legs hammering the cobbles like iron pistons, I began to yell the invokation of the Mortal Blade. It doesn't last long, and you have to wait until the last second to flare it or it runs out before you run out of enemies. Plus it's nice for the intimidation.

  "I bind myself to the Champion, the Warrior, the battlefield, the blade!" I intoned, my flat, arcane voice grinding out like an avalanche of steel. As I spoke, fat red sparks rolled off my weapon like crimson leaves in an autumn breeze. The air around me coiled with power. Red and black flecks coalesced in front of me, plowing forward as I ran. "I bind to blood, to fire, to steel, to grave! I bind myself to battle and the war eternal! For Morgan, dead and unending!"

  They saw me, too late.

  The near one turned, raising the intricate double blades of his gauntlets into a guard that would never withstand such arcane fury. I cut him down, the blade sliding in an easy cross against his chest, his blades and his arms falling away as he crumpled to the ground. His companion took one look at the invokations roiling over my noetically armored body and fired the turbines on his burnpack. Flames and heat filled the square and a plume of smoke boiled down to the cobbles.

  I rushed toward him, my blade catching the fleeing warrior on the shoulder. He twisted, his control of the 'pack wavering as he sluiced sideways. I punched forward with the blade, strength and force coming from my hips, my legs. The tip of the wide sword parted his chest and drove back into the whining furnace of the turbines. A tongue of flame lashed out from the man's chest, charring the scream that died on his lips. I whipped the sword out in a backhand slash. The turbines ruptured, tearing the man apart.

  The explosion battered my shields, framing me in angry fire, flames of blue and red that tore up into the sky. The shock wave rippled up into the towers that surrounded the square. Glass shattered into a diamond snow that crashed down to the cobbles. Glittering shards flaked across the remnants of my shield, building up a shell of starry light shot through with skeins of furious red.

  The glass settled into a field of sharp light, reflected from the sun above. The cataclysm of the explosion echoed through the canyons of the city. The bodies of the two men lay twisted under the tiny glass flecks.

  I turned to the men standing beneath the elevated tracks and raised my sword in salute.

  "I bind myself," I said quietly, gasping with the effort of the invokations and the fight, "to battle. The blade. The grave."

  The last misty shards of glass shuffled to the ground. They crunched under the knobby treads of my boots like broken bones. In the shining light that reflected off the broken-tooth windows far above, the courtyard was silent. The goggle-eyed men and I stared at one another. Before they gather themselves, I thought. Before they recover from watching me blow one of their comrades into rags of meat and ash. Before I collapse from the strain of the attack, from the sheer arcane weight crushing my lungs and straining against my bones. Before I became something I couldn't control.

  I moved, and the air shimmered around me as I ran. Waves of force tore away from my sword as I swung it into a variable guard-to-strike position. The stones under my boots boomed as I rushed them, rushed them like an avalanche broken free from the mountain of god. My scream was meaningless and terrifying, full of incoherent rage, full of pain and anger.

  I moved and they fell back. Dropped their weapons, their guards, their formation, and fell back. But not fast enough. Never fast enough. The first one I caught on his heels, his sword held forgotten by his knee. Two more fell before any of them held a guard worth avoiding. I burned bright, flaring my invokations for quick results. Had to break them fast. I couldn't win a long fight, not against this many.

  Another down, arm and shoulder split from his chest, the heat of my blade curling up in wisps of smoke from the edges of the wound. My head was a dull roar, little in it but the form of the sword and the rage of murdered Morgan arcing through my bones. Something lurked at the edge of my attention, though, something begging to be heard through the fire of the battle. The next one managed a guard block and counterstrike as my mind raced.

  Blood. The blood. I raised my sword warily, sparring with the warrior. The others were circling. Another one came at me and I fell into a dual guard position without thinking about it, cycling my sword in broad, sweeping arcs, finally finishing the first attacker with a cut to the inner thigh that slid through bone and whirled up into the stinking mess of his guts. He folded, and I spun around to give my full attention to the second man. I held my sword in front of me.

  The blood hung on the wide blade like lumpy mud, smearing across the sun-bright metal in uneven streaks. Old blood, cold blood, blood that had clotted and cooled and stiffened like tar.

  Dead man's blood.

  I looked at the man at my feet. He sat on the ground, a clumpy pool of thick gore spilling out of his burst gut. His voxorator squealed in mindless complaint, then he raised the gauntlet of his right hand and drove the blade into my knee.

  Pain burst through my leg like a wildfire, and I shrieked. The tip of his weapon skidded off the hazy shell of my invoked shield, but was thrust hard en
ough and came close enough that it drew blood and scraped bone. Still screaming, I brought the sword down. Put the blade into his head near the base of the sword, then drew back, slicing, running the dull metal of his helmet along the full length of the sword in a long, rasping strike that slid through metal, bone, and meat. Tarthick blood spilled out. A swirling tendril of fog followed the blade through the wound like smoke snatched by the wind. Frost glittered along the blade, and then the man fell back. Dead. Finally.

  The others were on me in a breath. Seven or eight of them, and it was all I could do to stay in one piece. Blades slipped through the waning shield, the power of the invokation stressed by the explosion and the sheer number and ferocity of their attacks. I was able to sneak in a handful of guard strikes to legs and hands that would have crippled living men. These things, these warriors, these cold-meat, dead-blood monsters ... they fought on. Glittering frost and gummy blood slopped from their wounds with each strike. I retreated, foot by foot, shifting my stance closer to the edge of the square. When I got to the mouth of an alleyway I dropped the rest of my arcane bindings and flared the invokation of the Rite of the Stag Hunt, pushed it into my legs, and leapt away from contact with the dead men in a series of long, ground-shuddering steps. I slid around a corner and started to run in a staggering gait.

  I was spent. By the time I disengaged, I counted five attackers left. Just as many more were limping off, arms or legs mangled beyond use. Still too many in my present condition. As I ran the final invokations wisped away, leaving me drained. When the Hunt faltered, I stumbled to a halt against the side of a building to catch my breath. Hell, it was all I could do not to lie down and tremble into sleep. I slid to the ground, sword tumbling to the stone of the street.

  "What the hell is going on back there?" I gasped to the empty street. My hands shook as I wiped the clods of blood away from my sword with a rag. Tired, bone-tired. Scared, too. I tried to go through the meditation of assessment, struggling to focus against the hammering of my heart. Blood leaked from my knee, both arms, a dozen smaller cuts, and a deeper wound that had scraped my ribs. The invokations that had wrapped me away from these things were gone, and now the flesh was back and full of holes. My hands hummed from the constant striking of metal against metal and yielding bone. I fumbled open the first-aid kit from my thigh pocket and bandaged up as best I could. I didn't have it in me to invoke the Binding of Flesh just now. Didn't have anything left. I wiped the blood from my hands and threw the rag to the ground.

  I struggled to my feet. Tired, scared. Unsure of the tactical situation. Had they gone for help? Had they gotten at the Fratriarch? More important, why in the name of the living Brother was I fighting dead men, and what did they want with the Fratriarch? I was used to fighting alone. I expected to fight alone. Just not dead men, and not with the life of the Fratriarch on the line. And he was back there, alone with the girl. With the Amonite. Those wards of his wouldn't last forever.

  I jogged toward the wreck of the monotrain, taking a longer, circuitous route back. The streets were quiet. I held the double-handed sword in a loose grip, hugging it close to my body. So tired, afraid I was going to drop it, but more afraid that if I sheathed it I wouldn't be able to draw fast enough if one of those dead men jumped me.

  Creeping the last few yards to the square, I invoked a weak shield and snuck up to the corner. The courtyard was empty.

  I moved carefully around the wreckage of the fight. The civilians were long gone, obviously, but where were my attackers? I reached the elevated track and reluctantly put the blade away, then started to climb. The iron trestles offered good handholds, but I was drained to the bone. Twice I nearly fell before I was able to scramble onto the track.

  The car leaned dangerously away from the courtyard, probably unsettled by the burnpack's explosion or some other tampering by the undying assailants as they tried to pry Barnabas from his shell. I stepped inside carefully, this time holding the revolver in shaky hands. There was a body in the entrance, the scarred metal of the dead man's armor rimed with frost. I put a boot into his shoulder and turned him over.

  His chest had burst open, the grim smile of ribs clenched behind the metal. That same tarry blood lined the wound, but where there should have been heart and lungs, there was a glass cylinder. A piston cycled slowly inside the glass, a plunger of leather and brass that rose slowly before settling to the bottom of the tube with a metallic sigh. Up and down, slowly. Breathing.

  I drew back the hammer of the ordained revolver and sighted along the barrel, then fired a slug into the dead man's chest. The glass popped and a cloud of fog erupted out, twisting up to the revolver before dancing across my chest and filling my face. Startled, I gasped for air and swallowed a century's cold lungful of ancient, stale breath. It tasted like metal caskets and the frozen memories of tombs, buried in stone and ice. I staggered back, coughing until my lungs were clear. Shivering just as much from the memory of that breath as from the cold, I stepped into the car.

  The floor was charred. Not an easy task with metal. The seats were nothing but twisted wreckage, the windows all blown out, and the Fratriarch's column of metal was gone. Where it had been, the floor was clear, spotless. There was something at the edge, a tiny dot of color against the dark metal. I bent down for a closer look. Just a drop, really. I put a finger to it and it burst, splattering across my nail. Holding it up to my face, I twisted to get a better look in the light from outside the car.

  Blood. Real blood, red and warm and slippery between my fingers. The Fratriarch was gone.

  My earliest memory of the Fratriarch is one of my earliest memories, period. I was in a car, the interior warm red leather, the woman sitting next to me dressed in a tight gray dress, her face covered by a white lace veil. My mother, I think, or a woman who was mourning my mother. I had the feeling of coming from some complicated ritual. Something that I hadn't understood, but that everyone around me took very seriously. Very sadly. Later in life I told myself it was a funeral. It could have been anything. I remember not understanding, but also not being afraid.

  It was raining outside. The car drove through parts of the city I didn't know. More than that. Drove through a city I didn't know, like I didn't know what cities were. I knelt on the seat and looked out the window at all the close-together houses, the tall buildings, the crowded sidewalks. So many people. Something in my memory compared this to long gardens, carefully manicured, perfectly empty. Even the trees of my memory were empty. No birds, no squirrels.

  The woman sitting next to me pulled me to the seat beside her, wrapping my tiny hands in her long, cold fingers, pressing them into my lap. I looked up at her, but she was facing forward. Watching where we were going.

  The driver was a man, just another man, gray coat and hat and gloves. He drove stiffly. I pulled on my mother-mourner's hand, straining to look out the window, but all I could see were the rainstreaked clouds and the stony tops of buildings.

  The car stopped and the man got out and came around to our door. The woman looked at me for the first and last time, then released my hands. The man opened my door. A wave of rain washed into the car, spattering across the deep-red leather. I shied away from the sudden cold and wet. Afraid to ruin my dress and my little hat. The woman put a hand on my hip and slid me out. I stumbled on the runner and nearly fell, catching the man's pants leg in a twist of my fingers. He closed the door and went around to the front again. I looked back at the car, water beading across its beetle-smooth black shell, its engine huffing quietly in the rain. I was getting soaked.

  A square, like a courtyard, but shabbier. I don't know what I compared this place to, to consider it shabby. There was a statue, a high wall that surrounded the circular drive, an iron gate that was open. I was standing in the lee of a grand high building, made of old stone and curving smoothly away from the ground like a big old egg. It looked like the coldest, hardest place I'd ever seen. There was a door that looked tiny, but only because it led out from this enormous pla
ce. A dozen half-circle stairs led up to the door, and there were two men in simple gray robes standing close to the building, out of the rain.

  The car roared to life behind me, and I turned just in time to see it roll through the iron gate and out of view. How did I feel about that? Surprised? Relieved? Cold. Mostly I felt cold.

  The closest man tossed a cigarette into a puddle and shrugged his hood over his head, then ran out into the rain to me. He was a large man, his shoulders wide as blocks, his face wrinkled and smiling. Like he enjoyed running in the rain. He leaned over me, cutting the rain off with his bulk, then held out a wide, flat hand to me.

  "Miss Eva Forge? Welcome home. My name is Barnabas."

  "Barnabas what?"

  He shook his great head slowly, happily. "Silent. But never mind that. We don't have use for more name than that, here. Would you like to come inside?"

  I looked back to the gate, where the car had driven off, then up at the friendly man and his enormous face.

  "My name is Eva Forge," I said.

  "Of course, dear. Now come inside."

  His hand smelled like nicotine and oil. I held it and walked back to the door. He took tiny steps at my side, hunching down and keeping the rain off my nice, new hat.

  I burst through the door and swept into the foyer. The Alexians had given me a white linen cloth to clean up with on the way over, and I tossed it at the stony feet of the idol of Saint Marcus and made for the holy nave. The whiteshirts who had given me a ride clustered anxiously at the door, afraid to enter but anxious to see the scene.

  "Tomas!" I yelled. "Isabel! Any of you bloody old ... lordships, if you please. Tomas!"

  "You rode in on every siren in the city, Eva. You don't have to yell," Tomas said from the engraved stone archway that led to the Chamber of the Fist. "We're gathered, all the Elders. Let Barnabas come inside and we can talk about whatever it is-"