Campbell, Alan - Iron Angel

by Campbell, Alan

  Trench was driven back by the concentrated fury of her attack. He staggered and fell, but as he dropped to the ground he hissed another frantic word. Razor-sharp spikes burst out of his shield, shredding his opponent’s hands. Blood flew in arcs from Carnival’s flailing fists, but she did not stop.

  “Too much blood,” Anchor said. “I stop this now.” He looped a coil of loose rope around his huge bicep and strode forward, cracking his knuckles.

  Trench was pinned under his shield, desperately trying to keep it between him and the scarred angel’s frenzied blows. Carnival, seemingly oblivious to her own wounds, continued her assault without pause. Skin now hung in shreds from her lacerated fists.

  “Angel,” Anchor roared. “Leave the poor boy. It is time for you to face me now.”

  Carnival wheeled, her face riven with blood and scars and strands of her own black hair. The lights of Cinderbark Wood glimmered faintly in her eyes. “Assassins,” she hissed. “I’ve killed so many now.”

  “Don’t do this,” Rachel warned. “Carnival, please.”

  The giant gave Rachel a sad smile. “I make the end painless for your friend. You must not fear for her.”

  Carnival rose slowly from Trench’s battered and cowering body. The rage seemed to have drained out of her abruptly. She glanced at Rachel, then back at Anchor. “You’re unarmed,” she said.

  “I prefer fists and feet to steel. It is best for both of us, eh?”

  Carnival nodded. “Then I’ll kill you quickly.”

  Rachel cried out.

  But the scarred angel moved like the shadow of gale-torn cloud, a dark shape across the white sands.

  Rachel focused. She had no clear idea of how to stop this bloodshed, but she needed a chance to try. Time expanded around her. The warriors hanging from Cospinol’s skyship settled silently into their nooses. The Heshette horsemen froze in their saddles. Trench’s ragged breaths stopped.

  But Carnival did not. Moving as fast as any focused Spine, the scarred angel reached for Anchor’s throat. Had Rachel’s senses not been pushed beyond their normal limits, she might have missed the attack altogether.

  But then John Anchor did something astonishing.

  He seized Carnival’s outstretched hand and jerked it aside. Even at this increased speed, his fist had been a blur. Rachel knew that she’d just seen something impossible—the force of air alone should have shattered the big man’s bones.

  Yet Anchor now lifted his other fist and punched Carnival hard against the side of her head. The scarred angel went limp, slowly, and began to collapse at the giant’s feet.

  Rachel dragged herself back to her normal state, her muscles already cramping from that one focused instant. Her heart felt like it was racing, although it was actually slowing. She watched Anchor pick up Carnival’s body and sling it over his shoulder.

  “It is done,” he said wearily. “Another warrior for the Rotsward’s gins.” Then he plucked a reed from his breeches and blew into it.

  The Heshette were hard-pressed to keep their mounts from bolting when the clattering, clicking mass of shells and pincers descended from Cospinol’s ship. The crabs surged over the scarred angel, and then bore her body up Anchor’s rope. Rachel stared at the spectacle like a woman observing her own nightmare from the fringes of sleep. Was Carnival still alive?

  Conflicting emotions plucked at her. She had been through so much with the scarred angel—as bitter opponents, and then allies. Carnival had saved Rachel and tried to kill her. Now watching her former companion’s body ascending to the skyship, Rachel could not totally reconcile her divided feelings.

  High above her, the disparate warriors suspended from the Rotsward’s yards suddenly howled and roared with greater agitation. To Rachel’s ears, these cries evinced a profound madness. Was this what awaited the scarred angel?

  Carnival had disappeared now, borne rapidly up the great rope. Trench turned his eyes from the skyship, a look of grim satisfaction on his face, then addressed Anchor. “If I’m to meet your master,” he remarked, “I’d rather reach his skyship in a more traditional way.”

  Anchor laughed. “Rope and basket,” he said. “Same way we lift the fish and grain and fowl. Only John Anchor stays down here.” He stamped a foot on the ground. “John Anchor stays with the beasts.”

  Evidently the basket had carried a great deal more fish than grain and fowl, for the stench brought tears to Rachel’s eyes. Supported by a much thinner and frailer rope than the one Anchor used to pull the skyship, the wicker container plummeted quickly out of the fog and thumped against the sandy ground. Trench climbed in first and was hoisted up out of sight by unknown handlers.

  Several minutes later, the basket creaked down again out of the fog. It was empty. Rachel placed the puppy into the sour-smelling lift, and then hopped in beside it. She brushed her greasy hands on her breeches and wondered if the god she was about to meet would be likely to offer her a bath.

  The rope drew taut, and with a jerk the basket began to ascend into the fog, up among the moaning warriors in their nooses. Basilis sniffed around her feet and then peed against the wicker side. The softly glowing colours of Cinderbark Wood receded below, the branches blurring into streaks of purple, green, and yellow. From up here Rachel could see the hanging figures more clearly. They were dressed in queerly exotic armour, and while each of their suits was different from the next, they all shared the same pallid complexion of men long dead. Howling stares turned to follow Rachel as she rose among them. These warriors were suspended from a matrix of damp spars and masts, like a vast scaffold built from the bones of ships. It seemed endless.

  Up through the fog the basket climbed, wicker lattice creaking under Rachel’s boots. She could smell the brine strongly now; the taste of salt lingered on her lips. White crusts, like hoarfrost, laced the yards and ropes in places. Overhead loomed a shadow, denser than the surrounding network of timbers.

  And then she saw Cospinol’s great skyship: the huge tattered hull of dark oak, the sleek tapered bow, and the sheer bulk of the stern rising like the ramparts of a castle. Amidst this impossible scaffold, the vessel reminded Rachel of a spider at the center of its web.

  The basket rose until it clunked against the side of the midships balustrade and halted. Four slack-fleshed crewmen rested against their winch handles and fixed their vacant eyes upon the deck. There was no sign of Trench or of Carnival’s body. Warily, Rachel picked up the dog and climbed out of the basket.

  No sooner had she set foot upon Cospinol’s deck than a booming voice came from an open doorway in the stern of the vessel. “If this message is truly from Hasp, then my brother Rys is behind it by proxy!”

  “Rys knows nothing, I swear.”

  The second voice Rachel recognized as Trench’s. She ducked through the open doorway.

  Trench was pleading with an ancient battle-archon, a greybeard clad in crab-shell armour. The god of brine and fog? Cospinol was bedraggled, pigeon-winged, and wild of hair, and yet his blue eyes burned with feverish ferocity. “Twelve of them!” he roared, striding across the gloomy cabin. The floor dipped dangerously under his weight. “One arconite was dire news. But twelve…? Where did King Menoa find the power to construct so many?”

  “A piece of the shattered god burns within each arconite, thus granting them immortality.” Trench lowered his head. “But the souls inside these creatures were taken from the First Citadel. We have suffered losses during this siege.”

  Cospinol hissed. He glanced towards Rachel, but his eye fixed on the pup in her arms. Then he continued to pace his cabin again. “Twelve arconites,” he muttered. “This world is finished if Menoa can spill enough blood to release them all from Hell.”

  “He will butcher everything in his path to facilitate their release from the Maze. We must bargain with him, Cospinol.”

  “Bargain?” The god snorted. “Oh, Rys will like that.”

  Rachel said, “Trench, what’s going on?”

  “Who is this woman
?” Cospinol cried. His outstretched finger shook as he pointed at the tiny dog. “And why did she bring that bloody hound aboard my vessel?”

  The pup growled.

  Cospinol eyed the mangy creature warily. “What is your interest in all of this, Basilis? Since when did you meddle in the affairs of the gods?” When the dog made no sound, Cospinol lifted his gaze to Rachel. “Speak for your master, then, thaumaturge.”

  Rachel gaped at him. “I’m no thaumaturge,” she replied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This pup belongs to someone else. We…” She had been about to say We rescued it, but in light of these new events, she now began to wonder otherwise.

  What exactly was Basilis?

  Cospinol regarded her darkly for a long moment. “This is a conspiracy,” he growled. “Rys sends me to the other side of the world—to avenge our brother’s death, he says. To gather power for myself, he says. To seal a portal and halt a second incursion.” His chest rose and fell under the crab-shell plate. “All lies. Now that I’m here, what do I find? A messenger from Hell who insists we must abandon this land to the Mesmerists. And now a demon with his lying thaumaturge.”

  “Abandon this land?” Rachel placed a hand on Trench’s arm. “What does he mean? Who are these arconites you spoke of?”

  Trench was looking at Basilis, his brow creased in thought, but he now raised his eyes to meet the assassin’s own. “I’m sorry, Rachel. This has always been my message. King Menoa is assembling a new force of warriors: twelve giants who are able to walk on unblooded ground—who can travel freely beyond the Mesmerist Veil.” His shoulders slumped. “Just one of these arconites destroyed the bulk of Rys’s army at Skirl before they managed to subdue it. And even then they could not kill the thing. It was chained in the ruins of a flooded city. But the gods on earth now lack the strength to fight a second arconite. Cospinol and his brothers must surrender to the ruler of Hell and beg for his mercy, or they will perish.”

  “But what about Deepgate?”

  “There’s no hope for Deepgate,” he replied, “and no hope for Pandemeria, either. The gods must now act to save themselves. I’m afraid there’s no hope for mankind at all.”

  The Heshette wouldn’t desert their horses. Caulker had hoped to be rid of at least some of them by now. He had expected them to take up Anchor’s offer of sanctuary aboard Cospinol’s skyship, but they remained down here—as firmly entrenched in the giant’s company as lice in a crone’s scalp.

  Anchor himself had become subdued. For a while he kept one ear to the skies above as though eavesdropping upon a secret conversation, but then announced, “We go soon, I think. Bad news.”

  “I’ll be glad to get out of this wood,” Caulker muttered. He had already dismounted and was pacing back and forth between the boles of two poisoned trees. “Although the path out of here is likely to be just as treacherous. The skyship must have brought down half a hundred branches from the canopy.”

  Yet despite his misgivings, Caulker was beginning to feel more comfortable. Anchor had dispatched the scarred angel with consummate ease. Any Spine they encountered on the road to Deepgate would not pose a threat to him. It seemed to Caulker that they had survived the worst of it.

  The tethered man took a soulpearl from his pouch and swallowed it. Then he rolled his huge shoulders and gave a great sigh. “War always benefits Hell,” he said. “Death and bloodshed make it stronger. Menoa knows this. It is why he wants war. The gods know this, too, but they cannot be slaves to Menoa.” He shook his head. “I do not think there will ever be peace between them.”

  “You think Hell is bound to win?” Caulker asked.

  “It is likely,” Anchor admitted.

  Caulker had suspected as much. All souls flowed to the Maze eventually. And with Iril shattered and powerless, no one could stop Menoa from claiming those souls. The King’s Mesmerists would inevitably rise to consume this earth, and all who stood against them would die.

  It made no sense to Caulker to be on the losing side.

  John Anchor remained distracted. Absently, he consumed another soulpearl. This time, when he swallowed the glass bead, he grimaced and looked like he was about to spit. An incautious choice of soul, perhaps?

  The cutthroat eyed the bag of soulpearls. A single strike with the flat of a sword—or even a stick—would shatter most of them, releasing the furious spirits inside. Despite Anchor’s great strength and speed, the wrath of one spectral archon had drawn the big man’s blood. What damage could a horde of such ghosts accomplish? And what if they were released during the heat of battle? King Menoa would surely reward such cunning.

  “How do you plan to deal with the Mesmerists?” Caulker asked. “Deepgate must be crawling with them by now.”

  “No doubt,” Anchor replied. “But we do not meet Menoa’s forces there.”

  “No? But I thought—”

  “We go east.”

  “East?” Caulker gaped at him. “But Deepgate lies to the west.”

  “Cospinol changed plan,” Anchor said. “We leave Deepgate to the Mesmerists and go back across the sea to Pandemeria. All are welcome. Even you, Jack Caulker. There is no more debt between us.”

  The ember of Caulker’s own plan faded. If he was to gain favor with the Mesmerists, he needed something with which to bargain. The cutthroat needed to show King Menoa where his loyalties lay. “You mean to abandon Deepgate to the enemy?” he asked.

  “Yes. We go to sea.”

  A sea journey?

  With the Heshette as companions? Muttering curses to himself, Jack Caulker slouched further into his fog-damp jacket. What other choice remained? He could hardly remain here. His vision of plummeting from the Rockwall battlements returned to him, and now it seemed apt—for he felt like a man who had stepped off a precipice, leaving his destiny in the hands of the gods.

  Anchor was consulting Ramnir now. Caulker could not hear their hushed conversation, but the big man’s hand gestures were urgent. Finally the pair clasped arms.

  And so Caulker found himself once more sharing the saddle with a Heshette horseman as the group picked their way east now through Cinderbark Wood. They reached the edge of the petrified woodland without incident and stopped to camp a short distance out from the colourful boles while they waited for the rest of the original party to bring the livestock down the eastern edge of the wood to join them. The tribesmen built a dismal fire from their supplies of dried dung, boiling strips of tough meat in a small iron pot, which they insisted on sharing with both Anchor and Caulker.

  Caulker chewed the meat without tasting it. He was exhausted. Sleep tugged at him, but his fears of reliving that nightmare fall from Rockwall’s battlements forced him to resist.

  The tethered giant accepted the meal graciously enough, but he insisted on allowing Cospinol to improve their fare. Again the same basket was lowered from the skyship, now loaded with flagons of water, wine, and salted fish. Anchor and Ramnir continued to converse in hushed tones while they ate. Ramnir seemed disturbed, often shaking his head or gazing thoughtfully into the fire.

  Finally Caulker could no longer remain awake. He curled up on a foul-smelling Heshette blanket and closed his eyes. And in his dreams he fell a thousand times. Again and again he found himself peering down into that deep, fog-shrouded valley. He smelled the fresh mountain pines and he watched the eagles soaring through the mists below the high battlements. The cutthroat had no wings to save him. Each time Anchor pushed him, he fell screaming to his death.

  He woke to the sound of his own cries. Sweat plastered his hair and face, his muscles ached, and for a heartbeat he feared that his plummet from the fortress battlements had been real, that his body now lay broken in the gloom beneath that faraway fortress. But then he became aware of the early-morning sun shining through the fog like beaten gold. Horses were snorting and goat-bells tinkling nearby. He could smell livestock and dung fires.

  The whole camp was already full of life. Heshette riders were cinching saddles an
d tackle, and strapping packs and weapons to their mounts. Women were milking goats, and chattering in their heathen language. Those greybeards and family descendants who had driven their livestock around the northern edge of Cinderbark Wood had finally caught up with the rest of the party.

  Ramnir gathered the Heshette together and addressed them: “Most of you have already seen the red mists rising from Deepgate,” he cried. “This pestilence is the breath of Hell, and it has been brought upon us by the chained city’s own priests.” He raised his hands to quell the murmuring crowd. “Iril was shattered in the War Against Heaven, and now Hell has a new king. This bloody Veil heralds the approach of his armies. It is already spreading beyond the abyss, poisoning the lands all around Deepgate.”

  One of the older greybeards yelled out, “We’ll pray for rain!”

  “Rain will not wash this away,” Ramnir said to the man. “Nor will Ayen lower Heaven’s barricades to help us. We cannot stop this thing. The Deadsands will be consumed.”

  “The Heshette do not flee.” The old man spat.