Fire and Thunder

by Rachel Harrison

  Wyck hears it, then. A thunderous snarl from the eastward sky. He turns and looks to see a squadron of Thunderbolts. Three of them, coming up fast like great black hawks, looking to kill what the barrage didn’t.

  ‘Enemy aircraft!’ Hale shouts. ‘Break for cover!’

  They all run for the nearest intact building as the Thunderbolts start to fire. The chatter of autocannons fills the air. Shells kick up the dirt and take chunks out of the rubble all around Wyck. Broga disappears in an instant, torn up by the gunfire. No time to scream. A mist of blood hits Wyck’s face. Zane cries out and stumbles. The Thunderbolts must be low now. They are so loud. The air is alight with live fire. More screams. More blood in the air. The cathedral looms. Wyck is close.

  So close.

  Wyck throws himself into cover. He hits the marble floor hard and rolls, then puts his hands over his head and waits for the thunder of dropping bombs. He waits for the cathedral to collapse like the bridge did and bury him. The aircraft engines grow louder and louder until they are deafening. Wyck shuts his eyes.

  But there is no thunder. No collapse. The engines of the Thunderbolts reach a zenith and then go distant again. Wyck opens his eyes and sits up slowly. Once again, the commissar is first back on her feet. Her eyes are still and cold as the dark heart of a lake.

  ‘We need to move,’ she says.

  They keep off the streets, falling back through the halls and aisles and archways of Whend’s interconnected buildings, looking for a place to regroup and call for extraction. Progress is slow because of the wounded, and the Antari are quiet and uneasy around Raine, sweeping their lasguns back and forth. Even Crys barely says a word.

  As they cross another vaulted hall filled with devotionals, Lydia Zane stops moving. The psyker pauses in a flood of light that’s coming through the shattered windows, and moans through her teeth. Lightning flickers around her scalp cabling, arcing to the crystal at the top of her wooden staff. Raine can smell ozone and ice.

  ‘Zane,’ Hale says, warily. ‘What do you see?’

  The psyker doesn’t answer. Her halo of actinic light dances. Several of the Antari step back from her, their eyes wide with that fear that Raine recognises easily. Fear of the witch. Raine knows that every one of the Antari feel it to some degree. It is as much a part of them as their stories, or their grey eyes.

  ‘What’s up with her?’ Wyck snarls.

  He has all but pulled his rifle on Zane. Raine can see the way his hands tremor, just a little. It’s not solely due to the fear.

  ‘Wait,’ she says, and takes a step closer to the psyker, keeping her pistol pointed at the white stone floor.

  ‘Zane,’ she says.

  Zane doesn’t answer. Her breathing is fast and shallow, and her hand is pressed against her side, just above her hip. As Raine watches, blood starts dribbling through the psyker’s fingers, and she realises what exactly is wrong with Zane.

  ‘She’s been shot,’ Raine says.

  As if her words give Zane permission, the psyker slumps forwards. Raine holsters her pistol and catches hold of Zane to keep her from falling. The psyker is barely more than bones under her robes. Light and frail, like a bird. Lye jogs over as Raine lowers the psyker to the ground. Judging by the look on her face, Lye is just as afraid as the rest of the Antari, but the medic doesn’t have the luxury of giving into it. She drops to one knee beside Zane and unrolls her field kit. Lye doesn’t have much left, after almost thirty hours of fighting through the city.

  ‘When did this happen?’ Lye asks.

  ‘Snagged by the hawks,’ Zane slurs.

  ‘The hawks,’ Raine says. ‘The Thunderbolts.’

  Zane nods. Lye curses. She has cut through Zane’s robes and furs so that she can get a good look at the wound. Blood dribbles freely onto the dusty floor. Raine can’t see the damage clearly for the mess. Hale crouches down with them.

  ‘How bad is it?’ he asks.

  ‘Really bad,’ Lye says, her grey eyes wide. ‘It must have been a glance, or a deflected round. I don’t know how she was walking.’

  ‘I thought I might hold it,’ Zane says, haltingly. ‘Hold myself together until we were rescued.’

  ‘With witch-work,’ Hale says, somewhere between horrified and impressed. ‘You tried to knit a gunshot wound with a spell.’

  Zane nods. Wyck curses this time, vehemently.

  ‘It’ll take time to treat her properly,’ Lye says. ‘I can’t do it here. It’s not safe.’

  Raine catches the sound of gunfire on the wind. It echoes all around them. Most of it sounds distant, but not all of it.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ she says.

  They hole up in a barracks that belonged to the Balfaran Home Guard before the war. Before most of them turned traitor, and those that didn’t were murdered by the folk they once called kin. The white stone walls are pitted from las-fire and solid rounds and spattered with old, dry blood. The floor is slick with it, too, but that’s not old blood.

  It’s witch’s blood.

  Daven Wyck keeps his distance as Crys sets Zane down on one of the cots in the barracks’ sleeping quarters. The comedown is hitting Wyck hard now. Taking the edges off everything and making it all seem far away, like watching a vid-capture on a dirty screen.

  ‘Zane, look at me,’ Lye is saying. ‘Just hold it a little longer.’

  Zane doesn’t acknowledge her. The witch is murmuring as if she’s asleep, though her false eyes are wide open. It takes Wyck a moment to catch the words clearly, because her voice is so distant. Slurring and rasping and clotted.

  The hounds, she is saying. They are howling.

  Wyck goes cold from the inside out, because Zane is murmuring about the duskhounds. About the old story that Fel’s unit took for their name.

  About death, coming close.

  ‘Dav.’

  Lye is looking at him as if he’s an idiot. She’s bloody to her elbows.

  ‘Get over here and give me a hand,’ she says.

  Wyck blinks. ‘You have got to be joking,’ he says.

  ‘Do I look like I’m joking?’ Lye snarls.

  She doesn’t. Wyck’s stomach turns.

  ‘You want me to help the witch,’ he says, flatly.

  Lye makes an exasperated noise.

  ‘I want you to help me,’ she says. ‘I’ve got no staff. Hardly any kit. You’ve got field basic, so get over here and do something useful.’

  Wyck curls his aching hands. If it were anyone else he’d walk right out, but he won’t do that to Lye. There’s too much blood spent between them for that.

  Plus, he could always use another owing from the medic.

  Wyck goes to join her, his boots sticking in the spilled witch’s blood. It’s cold, close to Zane. Ice is flaking away from her, and her skin is grey and sallow, like something long-dead.

  ‘It must have been a ricochet, because she’s not dead,’ Lye says. ‘But she is full of shrapnel. I need to get it out and close up what’s severed.’

  ‘Mother of spring,’ Crys mumbles.

  She looks almost as grey as Zane does at the sight of all that mess.

  ‘You hold her,’ Lye says to Crys. ‘Keep her still.’

  Crys nods and puts her big hands on Zane. Lye looks at Wyck.

  ‘External aortic compression,’ she says. ‘Do you remember how to do it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Throne’s sake, Dav,’ she says. ‘Hands, here.’

  She puts his hands just below Zane’s ribs, one on top of the other. Even through the ragged mess of the witch’s robes, Wyck’s skin crawls at touching her. He is struck by the animal urge to run.

  ‘Lean all of your weight on her and don’t let up, not until I tell you.’

  Wyck does as he’s told, and Zane makes a terrible, wordless noise. Lye doesn’t wait. She starts
digging around in the wound with a pair of forceps, pulling out slivers of metal. Zane tries to thrash free, but Crys holds her still. Ice blizzards in the air and the stink of witch-blood makes Wyck want to throw up. Lye stops pulling shrapnel and starts cautery and stitching. That smells even worse. Zane makes another unholy noise, and seizes. Her hand snaps up and grabs hold of Wyck’s arm. Lightning crackles over his skin, arcing between them.

  ‘Don’t let up!’ Lye shouts, but her voice is drowned out by the witch-words echoing in Wyck’s head.

  You cannot escape, Daven Wyck,+ Zane says. +Death is watching you.+

  ‘Mists and moors and shit,’ he says, and he reels back from her.

  ‘Damn it, Dav!’ Lye shouts, as Zane arches and tremors even with Crys pinning her to the table, but Wyck can’t go near her. He won’t go near her. The words are still bouncing around in his head.

  Death is watching you.

  And then Zane stops her trembling and falls still. Lye curses, loudly.

  ‘Is she dead?’ Wyck asks, numbly.

  Lye checks Zane’s pulse with bloody fingers and lets out a slow breath.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘She’s alive. Just.’

  Crys barks a laugh out of shock. Lye wipes at the blood on her face with the back of her hand. Wyck watches Zane barely breathing and those words ring loud in his head again, and he can’t help wishing Lye’s answer were different.

  Light streams through the leaded windows of the barracks’ mess hall, catching on the casing of Raine’s timepiece as she turns it absently in her hands. Yuri Hale is sitting on one of the pale wooden benches with his elbows resting on his knees. He is tilting his canteen forwards and backwards, swilling what little water remains inside it. Makar Kayd sits cross-legged on the floor between them with his vox-set, trying for the dozenth time to raise the Balfar command group.

  ‘This is Makar Kayd, Eleventh Antari Rifles, hailing Balfar command group. Signal priority alpha. Please respond, over.’

  Kayd releases the broadcast trigger and waits as the vox-set hisses. The sound echoes around the mess hall, carrying up into the rafters. Kayd shakes his head and tries again.

  ‘I repeat,’ Kayd says. ‘This is Makar Kayd, Grey Company vox-officer, Eleventh Antari Rifles, hailing Balfar command group. Signal priority alpha. Please respond, over.’

  He releases the broadcast trigger. The vox-set hisses.

  ‘Come on,’ Hale mutters. ‘For Throne’s sake.’

  And the vox-set clicks and the hissing stops.

  ‘This is Tacticae Officer Logun of Balfar command group. Please disclose situation, disposition and location, over.’

  Kayd smiles. His teeth look very white against all the blood and dirt on his face.

  ‘Acknowledged, Balfar command,’ he says. ‘We were cut off during the bombardment that collapsed the Bridge of Graces. Disposition is twenty-three souls. We have secured ourselves in grid number oh-six-five, Whend’s western quarter. The secondary Balfaran barracks. We have injured personnel and require extraction, over.’

  There is a long hiss of vox. Raine has stopped turning the timepiece. It ticks against her palm softly. Kayd’s smile fades a little.

  ‘Do you read me, Balfar command?’ he says. ‘Please acknowledge.’

  The vox-set clicks.

  ‘Information received and acknowledged,’ says Logun. ‘There is no possibility of extraction at this time, over.’

  Kayd blinks. ‘What?’ he asks.

  ‘The Sighted maintain air superiority over the city,’ Logun says. ‘We cannot risk aircraft for the sake of twenty-three souls.’

  Raine closes her hand so tightly around the timepiece that the winding stud digs into her palm. Hale gets up from the bench and takes the vox-handset from Kayd.

  ‘This is Captain Hale,’ he says. ‘I want to speak with the Antari general. Get me Juna Keene, right now.’

  ‘There is no possibility at this time,’ Logun says, again. ‘Command group advise that you will need to exit the city by alternative means. Please confirm you understand.’

  ‘Teeth of winter,’ Hale says. ‘Listen to me. I’ve got people wounded. Dying. Just let me speak with Juna Keene.’

  ‘There is no possibility at this time. Please confirm you understand prior orders.’

  ‘They will not change their mind,’ Raine says. ‘No matter the cost.’

  Hale exhales slowly, and heavily. The vox-handset creaks in his grip.

  ‘Understood,’ he says. ‘We’ll find our own way out.’

  ‘Confirmed,’ says Logun. ‘May the Emperor watch over you.’

  The vox-set goes back to hissing until Kayd flips a switch and shuts it down.

  ‘We’re on our own, then,’ he says, hollowly.

  ‘Bloody looks like it,’ Hale says.

  Raine uncurls her fingers from around the timepiece. She pushes down her anger and frustration. Her exhaustion.

  ‘We have achieved much more, with a lot less,’ she says. ‘This will be no different. We just need to make a plan.’

  Hale exhales a slow breath and nods.

  ‘All right, then,’ he says. ‘Let’s make a plan.’

  ‘What are our options?’ Raine asks, as Yuri Hale unfolds his field-map onto one of the mess hall’s wooden tables. The map is creased and bloodstained, frayed along all of the folds, but it is still intact. Whend is illustrated in exacting detail from edge to edge, with the deep ravine that surrounds the city on all sides depicted as a thick black line. Raine can see where Hale has been marking and remarking borders and territories across the city over the course of the conflict in red ink. Pushing the Imperial lines back, over and over again.

  ‘There are no more bridges in Imperial territory,’ Hales says, then he shakes his head. ‘Not that there’s much in the way of Imperial territory, now, either. The eastern quarter was our last beachhead.’

  ‘Then we must go back into the city,’ Raine says.

  ‘And back into the fight,’ Hale says, picking up his inkmarker pen.

  ‘There’s another bridge in the northern quarter,’ he says, reaching over the table and marking the location. He has to lean a good way to do it. ‘The Gildroad. It’s a sixteen-mile march.’

  Raine doesn’t have to consider it for long. Just three ticks of the timepiece in her pocket.

  ‘The Sighted set the northern quarter alight days ago, and it is still burning now,’ she says. ‘It would be a difficult march without the wounded. With them, it will be near impossible, especially given Zane’s condition.’

  Hale leans heavily on the table, frowning at the map. For a moment he looks as tired as he must feel.

  ‘I won’t leave the wounded behind,’ he says. ‘Even Zane. She might be a witch, but she has saved us twice today. There’s an owing in that.’

  Raine doesn’t have to consider that at all.

  ‘We might not have a choice,’ she says. ‘If we cannot find a path that the wounded can take, then we cannot take the wounded with us.’

  ‘I’d rather die alongside my own than leave them for the enemy,’ Hale says.

  ‘I would not leave them for the enemy, captain,’ Raine says. ‘Be sure of that.’

  Hale exhales slowly.

  ‘You are talking about killing them, when they’ve fought so hard not to die.’

  ‘I am talking about choices, captain,’ Raine says, levelly. ‘Whether they are favourable or not.’

  Raine has performed many executions since becoming a commissar. She has levelled her pistol at officers and infantry alike in the name of punishment and of mercy. On every occasion she has pulled the trigger without malice, or cruelty, because those things are not the purpose of a commissar. A commissar’s purpose is to drive those they serve with to act despite their fear, or their misgivings. To make difficult choices when others will not.

/>   And to bear the weight of those choices, no matter how heavy they might be.

  ‘If we can find a way out of the city with Zane, then it is a choice I will not need to make,’ Raine says. ‘She is a valuable asset, but I cannot allow the loss of so many for the sake of a single life.’

  Despite his self-control, Raine can see the same old feelings written on Hale’s face. That instinctual hatred that Raine has known every day since she took up her pistol and sabre. She pays it no mind.

  ‘Is that clear, captain?’ she asks him.

  Hale stops leaning on the table and straightens up. Somehow, it makes him look more tired than before.

  ‘Clear, commissar,’ Hale says. ‘We’ll find another way.’

  They go back to the map, then, proposing and discarding options. Many of the minor bridges connecting Whend to the outlands are collapsed, like the Bridge of Graces, or they are too far away, like the Gildroad. Raine’s timepiece ticks on. The snap of lasgun fire echoes down the avenues, and aircraft thunder overhead, rattling the glassaic in the windows. Raine is about to say that they have spent enough time looking when she catches sight of something.

  ‘The Deadways,’ she says.

  Hale frowns.

  ‘The burial district,’ he says. ‘There’s no bridge there. No room for aircraft to put down either, even if we could call one. The place is a labyrinth.’

  Raine shakes her head. ‘There is no bridge,’ she says. ‘But there is something like one.’ She walks around to his side of the table and puts her fingers to the map, tracing along the eastern edge of the city where it meets the ravine.

  ‘There,’ Raine says, pointing to a thin line that joins the city to the outlands. It is not marked as a bridge because it isn’t one. Not really. Raine nearly smiles.

  ‘The Saint’s Blessing,’ Hale says, reading from the map. ‘An aqueduct.’

  Raine nods. ‘The oldest one in the city, built in honour of their patron saint and crowned with her likeness in stone.’

  Raine remembers the picts from the pre-deployment briefing. She remembers Saint Selayna’s outstretched hand, and her benevolent, upturned face.

  ‘The Saint’s Blessing serves the entire western quarter,’ Raine says. ‘Which means it will likely still be standing, unless the Sighted can do without water.’