Crowfall

by Ed McDonald

  They marched in their thousands. Drudge warriors, corpse-blue-skinned and heavily armoured, spears on their shoulders and shields on their arms. The banners of the Deep Kings flowed long and bright. A huge host, bearing down on us, ready to destroy.

  Look back to the west that you value so greatly, Acradius thundered. Loud as summer rain. Loud as a lover’s caress. Your gods have failed you. Where are they now? Cowering in their roosts, on their islands, in their graves beneath the earth. They send their ancient warriors to protect you because they fear to come themselves. Give yourself over to me. You cannot harness the power of the moons without destroying yourselves. Or have they sent you blindly into the storm?

  I pressed myself back up from the sand as friendly hands sought to right me. I pushed them away, my vision still filled with stars and swirling grit.

  ‘It wouldn’t matter if I stood here alone,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t matter if I was the last man alive. You’ll find me beneath the walls of Adrogorsk.’ I wiped slime and blood from my lips and stared into that black palanquin, stared past the iron and the cold to the swirling shadow that lurked beyond. ‘Bring your vassal Kings. Bring your drudge. Bring everything you fucking have, your whole damn empire if you need it. Bring it all. I’ll be waiting for you.’

  Acradius’ laughter echoed in my mind as he retreated from it.

  You won’t even make it that far.

  ‘What’s that?’ Kanalina cried, her eyes on the sky.

  Something big and black was coming at us from the east, cutting through the sky on vast, shadowed wings. Long in the body, a pair of scorpion tails trailing out behind it like rudders. Its flight was going to bring it right at us. A trail of black smoke stained the sky in its wake.

  A Shantar.

  I knelt and pressed a hand to the Misery, questing outwards, seeking to know what it was. I’d seen the flying things in Misery before but only at a distance and they’d never bothered me, not in six years. But as I let my senses flow through toxic sand and poisoned air, I felt twin essences combined. It was of the Misery, but it was something else besides. Taint upon taint, darkness twined with even deeper darkness.

  Acradius.

  ‘Spirits preserve us,’ Kanalina intoned, grabbing the charm at her throat. ‘Spinners, prepare to engage. Maximum range, all canisters.’

  The soldiers fell out from the wagons, priming their slow match, stuffing balls and tamping them down into the barrels as the officers bellowed orders. I doubted their weapons were going to be much use.

  The creature sped towards us, black and glistening, the sun at its back, its speed astonishing. I saw horned snouts and burning pits for eyes, razor teeth in three gaping maws, half a dozen long legs that ended in a splay of talons, a dual row of spines protruding from its back as it skimmed the sand, oily smoke in its wake.

  ‘Engage!’ Kanalina yelled.

  The Spinners drew phos, but the Shantar came in far faster than they’d anticipated, its size masking its speed until it came in close. Skimming the sand it raced in towards us, jaws stretched wide. Kanalina let fly a blast of light as matchlocks cracked, but the devil swerved away and raced through the group, then up, arcing away again into the sky. I heard the screams, looked up to see two of the Spinners caught in its claws, and then it squeezed and pieces of them tumbled through the sky. The smoke it left in its wake stank like hot tar.

  North drew his pistols, fired shots one after the other, but they seemed pitiful things compared to the huge, skyborne beast. Gunners discharged their weapons after it, but if they scored even one hit the beast didn’t slow. I ran to Valiya.

  ‘Get under the wagons,’ I told her. ‘Stay there.’ She knew that this wasn’t her fight, and she did as I’d asked.

  ‘What is that?’ Amaira asked. She had her blades out, but there was little that any of us could do against it on the ground.

  ‘A Shantar,’ I said. My teeth were gritted hard. ‘A creature from the earliest days of the Misery.’

  ‘You can’t drive it away?’

  ‘It’s not just the Misery,’ I hissed. ‘It’s Acradius.’

  I felt his presence within it as it scored a smoking trail through the sky. The black iron palanquin was imprinted upon it, forcing it to obey. To hunt for me. I felt a surge of fury. This thing, whatever it was, did not belong to Acradius. It was mine. The Misery belonged to me. The Deep Kings sought to take even that from me.

  The Shantar was coming around for another pass. The remaining Spinners had formed up, and now their canisters whined as they drew energy. Phos smoked from their skin as they overloaded themselves.

  ‘Loose!’ Kanalina screeched, and a volley of light-spheres blazed out into the sky. But the Shantar was faster than its forty-foot length suggested, and it twisted in flight, dropping, and the orbs detonated harmlessly in the air amidst the black trail in the sky. The devil corrected its flight with a drive of black wings and a sweep of its tail, and then it was coming for us again.

  ‘Hope you have that spear handy,’ I said to North. ‘Now would be the time.’

  North ran for the wagons.

  ‘Loose!’ Kanalina ordered, but only three of the Spinners obeyed her, the others throwing themselves flat as the beast roared past. Two of the phos-blasts struck the Shantar head-on, detonating in clouds of sparkling light, and it wavered but still came on. A slash of its claws and a lash of its tails as it passed and there were more screams, blood in the air and dying men and women on the ground. It was targeting our sorcerers. Kanalina picked herself up from the dust, terror in her eyes as the Shantar arced away into the sky again. Matchlocks roared as the soldiers poured fire towards it but it was too fast and their shot was no more effective against it than the smoke that flowed from their barrels.

  ‘It’s going for the Spinners,’ I said. ‘Acradius is trying to take them down. Get them under cover.’

  ‘Do something!’ Kanalina demanded, and I thought that she was speaking to me, but then I realised that she was commanding the Marble Guard. They stood without fear, impassive, red eyes turning to the blood pooling around the decapitated Spinners. As if tearing their eyes from it were agony, they swung in chilling unison to watch the creature come around for a third pass.

  ‘Get those culverins up here!’ General Kazna yelled. Her sabre was out as she screamed orders, getting men to form lines, but there were no drills against an airborne enemy.

  North was back with his jade-tipped spear. I felt a tug of recognition at seeing it again, something about it too familiar, but there was no time to consider it as winged death swooped low again. My sword was in my hand but down here it was going to be about as effective against the Shantar as bad language.

  The voice of a thousand years of suffering and hatred screeched nails across a slate in my mind.

  How little you grasp your insignificance, Acradius whispered. The Shantar screeched in unison with the thought, possessed, taken by the Deep Emperor’s power. You think the Misery serves you, but I turn even your own weapons against you. The beast in the sky sped across the sand.

  None of the Spinners faced it on its third approach. They ran for cover as it swooped in, and sensing easier prey, the Shantar swerved from the fleeing figures towards the Marble Guard. That proved to be a mistake. Half of them readied their glaives like javelins, and as the Shantar came closer they threw. Their glaives were not made for throwing. They were polearms, more axe than spear, but the Guardians propelled them with the force of a hurricane. Not one missed, the wide blades punching deep,and with a reptilian bellow of rage, it arced upwards. The weapons fell away, some from the force of the sudden lurch upwards through the air, some as the beast tore them away with its fangs. It crested in its flight, hanging suspended for a moment.

  A many-sided dome of light encased the Shantar. Kanalina and the Spinners were working, splays of lightning crackling between them. The light-dome abruptly contr
acted around it, then detonated in a roar of intense heat. I looked away, momentarily blinded by the blast, light filling my eyes. With a crash, the Shantar hit the ground, the leathery wings blazing with flame, and now we didn’t just face a devil, we faced a devil that was on fire.

  Sometimes your luck’s just not in.

  The Marble Guard who’d retained their weapons advanced on it. The three heads hissed and snapped, talons raking the earth, barbed tails arching overhead. And then in a fury of claws and jaws it lunged for them. The Guardians moved silently, but they were fast, as fast as I remembered First being when I’d tried to stop him smashing me to pieces, and they moved as a single cohesive unit. Glaives lanced up to pierce the Shantar’s body, or cut shallow slices through its thick, smoking hide, but the smouldering creature was no easy prey. The Shantar caught one of the Guardians in its jaws and ripped it in half, another fell silently as a tail-sting punched through its shoulder. The Guardian’s pale white flesh blackened in seconds, sloughing away to nothing. It fought on, half-dissolved, until a snapping mouth tore away its head.

  ‘Use that damn spear,’ I told North. He hung back to let the Guardians fight, as I did.

  ‘I can’t waste it,’ he snapped at me. ‘Get in there. Use that monster blood of yours.’

  ‘Against that thing?’

  ‘Ah, you can take it,’ Nenn said.

  ‘The Galharrow I knew would have been first into the fight,’ Venzer agreed.

  Another two Guardians had fallen, but one of the Shantar’s heads had been half-severed, lolling on its neck, still hissing and spitting. The devil’s hide bubbled like liquid tar, jets of smoke pluming and reeking as a dark cloud swirled around the battle. I heard Dantry’s horrified gasp, and saw Amaira circling around, trying to get in with her sword. She flung herself back as a scorpion tail lashed around in an arc, barely avoiding it, losing her sword. She tore a spiked grenadoe from her belt, ripped out a spark cord, and made to throw.

  The Shantar surged forwards, smashing a pair of men aside, and there before it: Dantry, charging recklessly, madly to Amaira’s aid. A piece of an armsman knocked him flat, and the Shantar strode forwards, its smoking belly passing over him as it sought upright prey.

  Amaira hesitated. The grenadoe was a good bet for bringing the Shantar down. The fast-burn fuse reached the ball of spike-studded iron. But the Shantar was over Dantry. Too near. With a shriek she hurled it back, away into the Misery-sand. The blast rang out, kicking sand and grit into the air.

  She had chosen to save him, even with death casting its shadow over him. Saved him, maybe killed us. I readied my sword. It was the one I’d taken from my drudge captors, long ago, and it had never failed me. I was going to have to go in against it, but I doubted that even my Misery-hardened skin would take a blow from one of those claws, not even here where I was strongest. The Misery had made me proof against the likes of Kanalina’s sorcery, had hardened me against falling ice, but that thing could tear my head off with one bite. For all my Misery corruption, I’d never be as strong as I wanted to be.

  A pair of culverins, small cannon, roared and the Shantar reeled back as the powerful balls smashed into it. It staggered, bellowing, one of its heads blown clean away. It turned from Dantry and rushed the gunners, far too fast, and was on them in moments. Black claws swept the guns aside, tossed the brave gunners into the air. They bought their distraction with their lives.

  Kanalina and her surviving Spinners gripped hands, working together in unison, their phos canisters detonating as they blew through all of their remaining power. A thundering series of explosions lit the devil up from the inside and the Shantar’s rib cage detonated outwards, spraying viscous black liquid across those gunners who’d escaped its talons. They screamed, flesh and armour dissolving in the creature’s toxins as its remaining tail lashed left and right, tearing a wagon’s canvas to shreds, but finally the last remaining head made a few savage snaps and the devil was done. The fire in its eye pits flickered and died, and then the bones of its huge, burned-away wings sagged down to the Misery-sand.

  The snarls died away, the explosions drifted aside on the wind. Gun smoke flowed across the sand in pale wisps. Quiet returned to the Misery.

  Dantry huddled over Amaira, who was coughing in the smoke that billowed from the creature’s body, waving it from her face. My chest unclenched, the pit of my stomach falling away. I thought I’d lost her. Lost them both. Though the air stank, and oily, Misery-tainted smoke blew around them, they still found their moment of purity as they clung to one another.

  I remembered how that had felt. Another lifetime ago, it seemed now. I knew it was important. It just wasn’t for me. Instead, another pressure played against my mind.

  The Shantar’s corpse called to me. I felt its draw, a sudden lurching pull at something deep in my core. The Misery insisted. Demanded. My mind filled with a shadow-filled haze as I staggered towards the scene of the battle. The sand and rock had been tossed and gouged by the creature’s huge claws. Of the twenty Guardians, seven lay torn and broken, their corpses bloodless. The remaining warriors had reclaimed their thrown weapons, but showed no emotion, no remorse. Their eyes had returned to the blood pooling around the dead Spinners, tongues snaking across lips. Hungry.

  They knew nothing of hunger. Not as I did.

  ‘This is not a good idea,’ Nenn said. ‘You probably need to think about this.’

  ‘The opportunity is too good to waste,’ I told her. ‘Besides. The Bell serves worse.’

  ‘I’m a ghost, and even I think this is stupid,’ Nenn argued. ‘People are watching you. You aren’t thinkin’ straight.’

  Her words played at the shadowed edges of my mind, but the Shantar was too pure, too exquisite to waste. This thing was ninety years old, and it had been born in the Misery’s most primal days. I stood before the Shantar’s splayed rib cage and there, inside, I saw the mangled remains of its heart giving its last feeble twitches. The creature’s skin still bubbled and smoked, oily foulness filling the air. It was beginning to dissolve, its essence returning to the Misery that had made it. That heart held so much power, so much essence for change. With it, I could be closer to the Misery than ever before. So much stronger. I needed this. I had to.

  ‘No, Ryhalt,’ Valiya said, coming to stand behind me. Her arms encircled me, as she whispered, ‘Not this. It’s too much for you.’

  She laid a hand over mine, pushing it down. I blinked at her.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I said quietly. My voice shook. ‘There’s so much power here.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said gently. ‘But not yet. Not now. Not unless the need is utterly desperate.’

  I shook my head. The need was all too desperate. She just didn’t see it yet.

  I looked back to Dantry and Amaira, for whom the rest of the world had ceased to exist. If I could not protect them one way, I would another, and now I knew what I would do.

  28

  That same fucking door.

  ‘Lady’s Name,’ North snapped when we rounded a dune and it came into sight again. ‘What is this, Captain Galharrow? What do you like about this bloody thing so much?’

  I stared at the grey stone, the wind tugging at my coattails. I shook my head. I didn’t know.

  ‘Set the camp,’ I said. ‘Something’s going wrong. We’ll wait out the night and see what we can do in the morning.’

  ‘Time’s running out,’ North said briskly. ‘We’ve only three days before we have to be at Adrogorsk. Two, to set up in time to spin from the eclipse.’

  ‘We’ll be there,’ I snapped. ‘This isn’t like following a map. This is the opposite of following a fucking map. I’ll figure it out. Go and organise the camp and leave me to think.’

  The wagons were formed into their usual defensive circle, the iron box containing the ice fiend’s heart in the centre. After it was uncoupled, one of the longhorn
s sank down onto the sand and refused to get up again. The others wouldn’t feed. I left them all to it, went to the foot of the doorway, and looked up at the empty dark beyond. I took off my sword belt and put it down on the sand, smoothed a little patch for myself, then sat cross-legged at the foot of the steps. The dark archway stared down at me, empty, a portal into nothing.

  ‘I don’t like North,’ Nenn said, slumping down beside me. ‘He’s a prick. I don’t trust him.’

  ‘I don’t trust any of them,’ I said. ‘They’re all just pawns. None of them understand what will happen if Crowfoot manages to detonate the fiend’s heart. They think that the Nameless mean to save us. People will convince themselves of anything if it serves their purposes. Ironic, isn’t it, that Saravor saw it more clearly than any of them.’

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on North for you,’ Nenn said. ‘Got your back, just like always.’

  ‘You always had my back,’ I said. ‘I miss you, Nenn. Even after all this time. I miss you.’

  ‘I didn’t go anywhere,’ she laughed. ‘I’d still drink you under the table.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You aren’t anything. Not really. There are times that I think you’re so real I could touch you, and then sometimes, like now, I know what you are. You’re just a shadow. Just a ghost. A reflection of my guilt and nothing else.’

  ‘I dunno about that,’ Nenn said. ‘You don’t have shit to feel guilty about where I’m concerned. I got to die with a sword in my hand, and I got to live and to love. Life’s not a race towards the deathbed, hoping that you’ll get to snooze off peacefully without knowing it. Me, I was glad to look it full in the face. Better to go out doing something that matters.’

  ‘Then you should have gone out drunk, fucking Betch, and spitting in some nobleman’s eye.’

  ‘That would have been good!’ Nenn laughed. ‘What about you? You ready for it?’

  ‘I’ve been ready for a long time,’ I said. ‘Much as anyone can be. Maybe you can’t truly ready yourself to die. What’s it like, on the other side? Anything that we’d hoped for?’