by Ed McDonald
‘You see, Galharrow!’ the raven crowed triumphantly. It flapped across the room and landed on my offered arm. ‘You see!’
I did see. Thousands of lives had been lost out there. Were still being lost. I thought of Nenn, Dantry and Tnota, wondered if they were dead. All those brave people shattered and broken so the Nameless could have their day. They’d been planning this so for long. What did it matter to them that the ants underfoot were crushed?
Shavada was being unmade. Nothing showy. Just the slow picking apart of his existence, the deliberate, precise extrication of his heart.
‘The Engine will destroy the drudge in the Misery,’ I said.
‘If we’re lucky we’ll get Acradius and Philon as well!’ Crowfoot cawed. He hopped from foot to foot. ‘Even if we don’t, we’ve managed to destroy one of them. A Deep King! We’ve bested one of them, done the impossible!’ He was gleeful in his victory.
‘Well, you got what you fucking wanted. Too late for the rest of us, though, isn’t it? The Engine can’t save Valengrad.’ I was angry despite myself. ‘There must be thousands of drudge in the streets by now. You’ve sacrificed the city to take out a single King.’
‘I don’t expect you to see how good a trade that is for us,’ Crowfoot said. ‘But aren’t you the marshal now? Isn’t it up to you to save the city?’
‘I’m just one man,’ I growled.
‘Maybe that’s all you are. What about her?’ Crowfoot said. ‘Seems to me the world’s greatest supply of phos is sitting directly above your heads. Seems to me Tanza’s got some rare talent. Come on, Galharrow, where’s that tenacity I mentioned?’
Over on the other side of the room, Crowfoot’s human form gave me a sneer and a wink.
Hope. It burns so intensely there’s not a brandy to match it as it goes down.
‘Better hurry, though,’ Crowfoot said. ‘The drudge are coming. They’ll stop you if they can.’
Ezabeth and I shared a look. The raven flapped into the air laughing as we crawled for the door.
38
I led the way, blade held ahead of the charge. It wasn’t far to the vast chamber where the battery coils were lined up, row after row of greenish metal. The air in the room was taut with static charge, the energy stored in those copper coils and iron drums eager to discharge. It was here, the phos of eighty years of Talents and mills spinning away, and it was pure and ready to be used.
‘Can you do it?’ I asked breathless. ‘Can you save us?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ezabeth said. ‘This isn’t the Engine. Look at it all. It’s just a bluff, a glorious bluff. Spirits of wisdom, this has been their intention for a century.’
‘The Nameless are the masters of lies,’ I said. I could smell my own anger, sour sweat and bitter bile in my throat. I went to the doorway and listened. Nothing yet. The drudge must have been in the city, following their master, but I couldn’t hear them. They didn’t know where to look, I reminded myself. Not one of them had been in this place before. I doubted their spies were going to wait around to greet them.
Ezabeth was moving from coil to coil, running her gloved hands across them.
‘Can you do it?’ I asked again.
‘Give me time,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. All this power, all this energy. So much of it. Maybe.’
I told her I’d be back and ventured back up to the ruin of the operating chamber. The gold-capped lever, the dials and the meters, the wheels and gears. I wondered if any of them were connected at all. Nall had made his Engine so complex that not even those who maintained it had truly understood how it worked. A shield against spies making their way into the Order. As for Songlope’s Paradox, they’d not only murdered its creator but outlawed its study. It was clear enough now why.
I stepped beyond the operating room and found the remains of the Order’s elite guards. They had the weaponry I wanted. Badly fitting armour was still better than no armour, and I sifted through enough of the blood-drenched steel until I had an undamaged breastplate, an open-faced helm and gauntlets. Half armour is like a whore’s dress: just enough there to cover the vitals without getting in the way of business. Most of the soldiers’ weapons had been broken in Maldon’s attack, but an ornamental shield hung on the wall. It would have been a common sight on a battlefield a few hundred years ago, and though an artist had spent weeks painting a beautiful scene of birds crossing between towers across its face, I was more interested in its ability to keep me alive. Good shields are heavy things and I liked its weight. I slung the shield strap over my head and gathered what little else I could. The sword I was wearing was the same that I’d taken from the wall in Station Twelve. I tried the edge with my finger. Still not very sharp.
Sharp enough.
I heard a noise from somewhere up the stairs. Didn’t take more than a few seconds to identify it as the buzzing hum of the drudge language, the clatter of their weapons, the clank of harness. I hurried back down into the dark depths. The drudge had swarmed the city, were into the citadel. Not for the first time I wondered where Nenn was, if Tnota lived. I should have been with them for the end. Nothing I could do about that now except send as many drudge down to the hells as I could. I was aiming for at least two.
Ezabeth was standing very quietly in the centre of the power-room. Her scarred, too-smooth, twisted, beautiful face was wet with tears.
‘Anything?’
She looked up at me. Blinked away the tears.
‘I can do something. I don’t know if it will be enough.’
‘Anything’s better than nothing,’ I said.
She ran to me and put her arms around me. Despite what we’d shared, I was taken aback, unused to such intimacy. I circled her with my arms and held her against the cold steel of my breastplate. It couldn’t have been comfortable, but it was all there was time for. She was trembling.
‘They’re coming,’ I said. It didn’t help. Ezabeth stepped back, wiped a hand across her face.
‘Do you remember, back when we were children, the day that I took a fall from my horse?’
‘I remember. You hurt your leg.’
‘I tore my dress and skinned my knee,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘My leg was fine. I just wanted you to help me walk. It let me hold onto you.’
‘I remember. I was glad you fell. It let me hold you too.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For holding me again.’
I could hear the drudge coming now. Their buzzing echoed down the corridor. Somewhere below us their god was being dissected, his heart cut from the shadows of his chest. The Nameless would swat aside any drudge that got down to them, but up here we were very much in their path.
‘I need you to do something for me,’ Ezabeth said. ‘There is something that might work. But I need you to keep them away while I do it. Can you do that?’
I straightened up, rolled my shoulders, clicked my neck. I nodded. That had never been in question.
She walked me across to the entrance of the battery chamber and stood me on the outside.
‘They mustn’t enter,’ she said. ‘Keep them out.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘What I did at Station Twelve.’
She’d pulled it off then with just the power of a station. This was the entire might of Dortmark’s mills at her disposal. There was enough power here to level the world. But I thought too of the station commander’s blackened, smoking corpse. Ezabeth had funnelled the backlash of that light into him so that it wouldn’t consume her and he’d been annihilated. I frowned.
‘Goodbye, Ryhalt. I love you.’
‘What—?’
Ezabeth pressed a panel on the wall and the door shut. I struck at the panel on my side, hammered at it but the door sealed her away from me. A half-foot of solid oak.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t do it! Don’t do it, Ezabeth!’ I was yell
ing. I stopped shouting words, my cry becoming nothing more than a wordless scream of pain. Of rage. Of unfairness. ‘Don’t do it!’ I shouted. I kicked at the door, once, twice. To come this far only to lose so much. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t just.
I spun around at a noise. Down the corridor, drudge in blackened steel armour were descending the stairs. They were broad-shouldered, arms thick with heavy muscle and flab, noseless faces and clammy grey skin proclaiming that these were the oldest, the most changed creatures of the Dhojaran Empire. The leader had bands of red across his armour, the streamers of prayer cloth around his arms and legs dyed the same colour. Yellow eyes regarded me.
‘You. Move. Out. Way.’ Its voice was distended, the warped larynx struggling with our speech.
‘How about you fuck right off instead,’ I suggested.
‘God. Is. Below.’
‘Not for long.’
The drudge’s blank expression contorted into one of rage, revealing a dual row of spiny teeth. It drew a sword, curved as a crescent moon, gripped the long hilt with both hands and came to end me.
Some men are born to charm ladies and spread their irresponsible seed across the land. Some exist to create the great works of art that inspire dreams and drive creativity for generations. Others are born to till the fields, put bread on the table, and raise their sons to till the fields, put bread on the table, raise sons of their own.
I was born to end lives.
I brought both sword and shield up to meet the slashing blow. As I bound his blade down with the shield my sword doubled around my head, cutting hard from my right. The drudge’s helm covered only the dome of his elongated skull and his head exploded like a melon, the top cut clean away. The body clanged down with a satisfying deadness. Little good his prayer strips had done him.
The drudge behind him stared at their fallen leader. Had I just ended a captain, a general? They didn’t contemplate it long, and then they too came to meet their deaths. The first led with his foot, arms cocked back and a simple lunge put my sword point through his face. He swiped down even so but the shield took his hammer easily. I threw him back into the path of the next drudge, spewing blood from his agonised face. A sword sliced the air in front of me once, twice. I made a cut out of distance to draw the next one in then knocked his thrust aside and struck his leg. I misjudged it, my sword struck armour but his lumbering drudge body wasn’t fast and I burst inside his guard, my sword finding a way up beneath his chin. Another one dead. Killing two had been unambitious. This was my place in the world, my reason to live. I would be lying if I said the slaughter did not hold a passion for me.
The light tubes glowed more intensely. Behind me, beyond that portal a humming sound had begun. I bellowed my anger, my rage at the unfairness of it all. The drudge cowered, thinking I challenged them. They looked from me to the groaning, bleeding bodies in front of me. They hated us, but they didn’t run eagerly to their deaths.
‘Come on, you fuckers!’ I taunted them. Tears stung my eyes. Ezabeth’s magic was lighting the place up bright as day and it was unnerving them. The humming intensified.
‘She’s doing it!’ Somehow that fucking raven had joined me. He flapped down onto the only drudge that had actually died from its wounds, pecked at an eye. The warriors in the corridor were packed in thick. A whole legion of them were cramming in to find and protect their lord.
‘Shouldn’t you be ripping the heart from their god?’ I growled.
The raven laughed, started jabbing at the drudge’s second eye. The other two that I’d maimed were trying to crawl away. I stepped forwards and struck one across the back of the neck. He lived through that, somehow.
‘Some help, maybe?’ I asked the raven, but he didn’t seem to care. Probably needed to focus all his power against Shavada below.
Two drudge tried to come at me together. They had spears, but while the spear is the king of weapons, there wasn’t so much they could do with them in the narrow corridor. They tried jabbing at me but I crouched low and my borrowed shield kept them at bay. The towers and birds had been scratched to shit, the priceless artwork lost to war.
No way that I could attack the spearmen except with bad language. The drudge packed up closer behind them, urging them forward, goading them on to escape the building crush. One of the spear-wielders stumbled as he was pushed across a body and I took the moment. I split his head clean through the centre, the sword hacking through his leather cap and splitting his skull like nothing before the hate that coursed through me, hotter than boiling lead. His friend slammed his spear into my shield but was caught in the shower of blood from the exploding head and as he tried to blink it away my rage dealt him a similar fate. I watched them die through a veil of bitter tears.
Breathing hard I staggered back. Fighting will exhaust you like no other work. My shield arm ached, my sword hand burned. Sweat poured down my face, stinging, into my eyes. I didn’t see the arrow coming from the corridor, didn’t realise what had happened until it fell away from my breastplate, the point blunted. A second arrow hummed into my shield. The drudge language buzzed in the air, the raven cawed his approval of the bloodshed and the humming of the light grew louder in my ears.
An axeman came for me. He died. A swordsman came for me. He died too. I was screaming my hate, my pain, my anger. I fought. I cut and I hewed at them, felt my head ring as a scything blade slashed across my helmet. Felt my arm jolt as I cut through a spine. I stood before a growing mound of corpses, my shield a battered, dented plate on my arm, my sword nocked and notched. Blood ran down my arm. I hadn’t noticed the wound when I took it. It didn’t matter. I was a god of death, the lord of destruction. The drudge could keep their gods. I was the only one needed: Death, The Long End.
A spear punched into my thigh. I cut back, claimed a few fingers. The spearman scampered away as I fell to one knee. No good! Couldn’t fight from the ground. Rose again, found a big drudge taking the spearman’s place, a two-handed war sword in her oversized hands and red mottling on her yellow face. She swung down on my shield and a strap broke. Weariness had found my arms and she parried my counter-strike. When she sliced at me it was only my breastplate that kept me alive. I staggered back, shaking the remnants of the shield from my arm and trying to menace the encroaching warriors with my sword. I saw then that the point had broken away. When had that happened? Everything was growing difficult to understand. The pain in my leg seemed distant, but then it buckled on me and I sprawled backwards onto my arse.
The drudge loomed over me, the red markings across her flat face looking like the spray of my blood that was about to decorate it. I tried one last slash but she swatted the sword to the ground, stepped on it.
The light tubes flared, far beyond their ordinary intensity. The drudge was startled. She glanced upwards as the humming stopped. Then nothing, silence. She looked down at me as I struggled with the sword beneath her foot, but she raised her war sword in two hands, ready to take my head off.
Power leapt from the tubes above, a crackle of yellow lightning. It struck the big drudge for a moment, her body spasming and then with a crunch she exploded. The drudge behind stared dumbly for a moment and then it too was struck by the lightning. The next followed, then the one behind. Along the corridor, drudge after drudge was blasted into pieces. There was no sound, just the stench of hot intestines and shit and metal.
In seconds the corridor was clear and the light faded back to dimness. Shrieks of terror rang from the stairway beyond, the popping of bodies as Ezabeth blew them to pieces. The light in the tubes started to dim. My leg was bleeding a lot. It started to hurt. I didn’t need to cut bandage cloth, instead I used a strip of prayer cloth I found on a detached arm. I bound my leg up as tight as I was able to. Did the same for my arm. The end of my nose had got nicked somehow, but it wasn’t too bad a cut and I hadn’t been pretty to begin with.
Everything became very quiet. Silent. T
he light tubes grew dimmer still.
One of the drudge had been carrying a heavy axe. I was tired, beyond tired and my limbs were lead. Didn’t matter. I put the axe to work against the door. It took longer than expected, but then I didn’t have a lot of strength left to use and the door had been made to be strong. When I finally got through I saw the inside was charred black with soot. Any remaining hopes I’d had were lost then. Hopes for Ezabeth, hopes for me, for us. I’d told myself that she’d survive it, that she could unleash all that power and Songlope’s backlash wouldn’t turn her to ash.
There was nothing left of Ezabeth Tanza. Nothing at all. The charge from the air was gone inside the coil room, the batteries were piles of half-melted, fused and twisted metal. The drums had imploded, become crumpled wrecks. Of my Ezabeth there was no sign. Not even a charred set of bones to mark her passing. I would have nothing of her to bury.
Outside, she’d killed drudge in their thousands. Blown them to pieces. I limped out into a silent city, a city of corpses and body parts. A cold rain had started to fall and I leaned against the citadel’s gates, looked out towards the Misery’s broken bronze sky. The sky was howling her song, a song of sorrow and defilement. The moons were slung low, a lazy line of gold, blue and scarlet beyond the ruddy-tinged clouds.
Above the citadel, the arms of the great projector slowly began to move. I watched them as Nall’s Engine began to arm itself. The Nameless had done their work, they had the heart they needed. I shook my head, limped back into the fortress. I couldn’t be bothered to watch any more killing.
39
‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’
Children get so excited by change. It didn’t matter that they’d seen its like before. To a ten-year-old, the world is still new and magical enough that anything will lift their spirits.