A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  “Fuck …” Maroto dissolved into coughs, and then he expelled a sticky clod from his raw throat … along with his temporary madness. “Fuck that! Last stands are for losers, Fennec, and that ain’t us! We’ve got to fall back into the city, now, while there’s still time. If we hoof it we can make one of the other palaces, and—”

  “That’s the very order,” said Fennec, the paw that didn’t rest on Maroto’s shoulder crumpling a roll of parchment. “Or close enough. We’re not retreating to a palace, though, but the gatehouse at the heart of Othean. We’re going to try, I should say.”

  “What’s the gatehouse?” asked Maroto, squinting into the haze. “Is it, like, some kind of secret second Gate the Immaculates have kept hidden from us Outlanders all these years?”

  “Not that kind of gate, Maroto, the regular sort—over there.” Fennec pointed out to the horizon, where a pale band ended the sea of buildings. “That’s the wall that runs from the Summer Palace in the north all the way down to the Winter Palace at Othean Bay, bisecting the city. While we’ve been holding this castle for them the Immaculates have been evacuating West Othean into East Othean, behind the wall … and now we have to follow them.”

  “With all due respect, man, how are we not already there?” said Maroto, unable to believe he had to lecture Fennec of all people on when to cut a tactical retreat.

  “Because that’s not just a ghost town down there, it’s a murderhole. Half the capital is rigged, the biggest death trap the Star has ever seen, and we’re the bait. So long as they’re busy chasing a fleeing army the Tothans won’t take the time to inspect their surroundings until it’s too late. Her Elegance has been so good as to send us this map of the only safe route through the western city.”

  “Damn …” said Maroto, the quiet metropolis no longer seeming like such a welcome omen after all. “… Nobody likes to draw the short straw, granted, but you have to admit it ain’t a bad plan, far as last ditches go. Gives us a chance to get across and get safe behind another wall, anyway, which is better than no chance and no wall at all.”

  “But not so good as if she’d shared this plan with me from the beginning, when we actually had a prayer of getting most of our soldiers out,” said Fennec. “Even if we started the extraction now—”

  “Now it is!” said Maroto, striding forward … and falling back to one knee as the world lurched again. Or at least his world did, anyway. “… Damn.”

  “Yes, I was waiting until I could walk in a straight line before I tried to climb down from an unstable ruin to race an army of monsters through a massive city,” said Fennec, smart as ever in both the mouth and the arse. Or were those two of the same thing? “Once we start moving, Maroto, we won’t have much breath for chatter, so lest I don’t have another chance … thank you. For coming here, I mean, even when you had to know it was hopeless. I’m glad you came back.”

  “Well, shit …” said Maroto, letting Fennec help him up again, and not in such a hurry to get moving this time around. “Truth be told, Fennec, I didn’t even know you were here, nor none of the other Cobalts. I just came to clean up my own mess for a change. Figure it’s about time I started.”

  “The Mighty Maroto, a man whose ego is so grand he can take sole credit for an invasion of demons,” said Fennec, shaking his head and retrieving Bang’s pipe, which Maroto had dropped, and worse, forgotten he’d dropped.

  “See, it’s a lengthy song but it’s not a long song …” Maroto began, but trailed off as the rain further dispelled the cloud of dust and he could see back out to the west. The beetley black swarm teemed through the slums beneath them, cascading in through the sundered outer wall and pressing toward where they’d brought down the inner. Fuck, there were a lot of them, and other things down there, too. Worse things, knowing his luck, whose blazing green eyes he could glimpse through the dreary drizzle … and at that Maroto found his balance again. “Right, maybe even if we’re still at the crawling stage we get a move on, yeah?”

  “Long past,” agreed Fennec, coming to Maroto’s side and nodding down the listing terrace to where his officers awaited their descent at a more stable stretch of the ramparts. “I hate to do anything that benefits the empress but can’t very well decline a chance out for some of our loyal followers. Even if it’s only postponing our final reckoning with the Ten True Gods of Trve, we’ve got to try.”

  “I thought you traded in that particular cloth ages ago,” said Maroto.

  “Somehow I always seem to rediscover my faith at times like these,” said Fennec. “But all the same I’d rather wait a while longer before discovering just how much Korpiklani and her nine siblings appreciate the prayers of a fair-weather friar, so let’s move fast.”

  “Faster than fast,” said Maroto, pocketing the pipe Fennec had returned—a few dings in the wood, but like certain other things Zosia had graced with her touch, the lucky briar had survived another fall. It reminded him to retrieve his mace, which teetered on an edge.

  “Do you see that?” Instead of squinting down from their vantage Fennec was looking up. “Am I … am I dreaming?”

  Between the rain coming down and the tendrils of dust or smoke still rising from where the wall had collapsed, Maroto couldn’t see at first … and when he did he wished he hadn’t. Never, ever say things couldn’t get any worse, was the lesson here.

  “Nah, you ain’t dreaming, friend, you’re looking at a nightmare I’ve met in the flesh.” Maroto scowled at the familiar flabby flapping of the squid-dragon as it rode the currents over the northern fields, shivered as he remembered being carried aloft in its sticky tendrils. It was still a ways off but those things covered ground fast, and while he could only see the one for now—

  “It’s her!” Fennec staggered past Maroto, lifting his fuzzy hands into the rain like a mad prophet reaching up for a handshake from the divine … and then an owlbat swooped between his claws, circled his head in a squeaking blur, and flew back out to the west. “Fellwing!”

  “Kang-ho, no, Ji-hyeon’s devil?” Maroto tracked the bobbing black dot through the rain, his hackles going up at the spooky image. “I heard if they outlive their master without ever being freed they’ve got to haunt the site of their grave, but figured that was just another myth. Poor damn thing.”

  “She’s not dead,” Fennec breathed. “She lived. She lived, and she’s come back!”

  “How’s that? You said the empress executed her!”

  “She executed Kang-ho, but Ji-hyeon fled into the Gate!” Fennec scampered over to the edge of the unstable terrace, the massive slabs beneath their feet shifting ever so slightly … and ever so queasily. “There! By the Temple of Pentacles, do you see?”

  Taking a far more cautious approach, Maroto advanced a few steps and tried to follow Fennec’s stare. All he could see were the countless black-shelled soldiers and their herds of warbeasts pushing into the outer wall … and of all the ill luck here came a second Tothan regiment, marching down through the northern fields. As far as the eye could see were monsters on the move, not one but three of the squid-dragons wheeling over their advancing legions. Had Fennec lost his shit entirely, to think Ji-hyeon had—

  No, there they were. Blue pennants just to the west, flitting around in the narrowing gap between the Tothan force invading the Autumn Palace and the second army coming from the north. There was that speck of white behind them, the Temple of Pentacles. It rose from the fields like a tooth … or an Imperial headstone. As he stared the black flood entering the outer wall began to flow backward, the Tothans reversing course to confront the Cobalt forces harrying their rear.

  “She came back,” Fennec repeated breathlessly. “She came back!”

  “She didn’t borrow enough from Zosia, now she’s got to fake her own death, too?” asked Maroto, but he was smiling wide. That kid of Kang-ho’s was all right, he’d known that from the first. “How’d she do that, exactly? And how many Cobalts followed her back into that Gate after the empress double-crossed you?”
<
br />   “I don’t know how she fucking did it, but she did it! And nobody went in with her. Those aren’t our soldiers—she’s brought a brand-new army with her!”

  “A brand-new army that’s about to go the way of every other army that finds itself playing pastrami in a two-front sandwich,” said Maroto, drawing Fennec’s attention to the second Tothan regiment. “The only thing their showing up now does is buy us some much-needed time to fall back through the city.”

  “No …” Fennec’s face fell and Maroto cursed himself for a tactless bastard as the inevitable sank in for his old friend. This was almost worse than if Ji-hyeon never came back at all, to return straight into the middle of a meat grinder. “We can’t just turn our back on her! She’s trapped out there!”

  “She’d do the same if we were out there and she was in here, with one chance to make a getaway,” said Maroto, hating the words even as he said them. Hating the truth in them. What a cold and terrible world they lived in, where only the ruthless could survive, where only the heartless could prosper.

  “You’re probably right,” said Fennec. “Which is why it’s so important we old-timers set a better example for the next generation.”

  “Yeah, I—wait, what?”

  Fennec was grinning the sort of crazy grin he’d always accused Maroto and Zosia of wearing right before doing something really, really stupid. It was a good look on him.

  “You see a Cobalt unit about to be crushed between two Tothan armies, but I see a Tothan unit about to be crushed between two Cobalt hordes,” said Fennec, beginning to clamber down the ruined terrace toward his captains. “We smash them fast and hard with everything we’ve got and we can clear the way for Ji-hyeon and her soldiers to get inside Othean, before that second regiment swallows them whole. Then we all retreat together.”

  “That’s fucking barmy!” cried Maroto. “The Tothans are already pushing into the hole they just punched in the Autumn Palace, and you told me they’re ten thousand strong! We’ve got one golden fucking opportunity here to escape through the city and instead you want to try plowing through an army of monsters? With a second army of monsters almost on top of us? All to try to save a friend you already gave up for dead, and who’s like as not going to buy it for real long before we can reach her?”

  “That’s your general’s plan,” said Fennec, the terrace wobbling even worse than before as he and Maroto picked their way down to where the officers had convened on the wall-walk below. “You don’t like it, barbarian?”

  “Like it?” Maroto balanced his mace on his shoulder as he swayed on a seesawing beam atop a ruined castle at the end of the world. “I fucking love it. Just let me pop into a washroom first—need to freshen up my makeup before we go dancing.”

  CHAPTER

  21

  Love was not a word Y’Homa had been familiar with in her old life. She knew what it meant, of course, had used it many times over to describe her relationship with the Fallen Mother, and the Allmother’s affection for the broken world. Yet that had all been so abstract, so speculative. Now that she had taken an angel into her flesh she not only understood love, she experienced it. Her soul was full to bursting with it, making her as giddy as a sinner reveling in the delights of the Deceiver.

  She loved to bond with Sherdenn and Lagren, her fellow angeliacs. She loved the feel of Lagren’s spiders crawling from their mistress onto her own flesh, and she loved Sherdenn’s bombastic oration as they flew south to oversee the assault. She loved the sensation of missing Lagren, the priestess staying behind on the northern shore of Othean to supervise the stream of reinforcements swimming down from Jex Toth, and to prepare for the arrival of the Immaculate navy once the heathens realized their blockade had been useless against the deep-diving leviathans. She loved to feel the power of something greater than herself flying through her body, and more than anything else, she loved the feel of flight.

  Her angelic charge had soared through the First Dark, and now they soared together over the fallow fields of Othean, and the sensation was indescribable save for that holiest of four-letter words. Their steed was also of the First Dark, which was to say, further fruit of the Fallen Mother’s abyssal womb. The longer she kept counsel with her angel, the better Y’Homa came to understand that was the true nature of the First Dark, after all—the primeval paradise wrought by their maker, that eternal font from whence all good things sprung, and to where all good souls returned. That she had been raised to believe the First Dark was hell just proved how powerful the wiles of the Deceiver truly were. Hell was all too real, obviously, but it was not to be found beyond the Gates. Hell was the flesh, the world of sensation where the Deceiver held court like a mad king. To escape the snares of the Enemy one must travel beyond the veil, or better still, tear that veil asunder, so that the Allmother could cast her cleansing gaze over the clean and the unclean alike, judging all mortalkind before assuming her rightful place on the throne of the world. Everything was happening.

  Still, it brought Y’Homa no pleasure to see her armies cut down the sinners who stood against them. She had thought it would, before she awoke, but now she knew better. She did not revel in the slaughter. She felt no love to see the misled mortals fall before the scythe of their savior. Their fear in her coming, that filled her with love, and their anguish as they realized their reckoning was at hand, certainly, but the act itself did not stir her breast. No, each death broke her heart anew, as if their failures were her own. She took no joy in her conquests, even as she knew their sacrifice on the sacred blades of the Fallen Mother’s army ushered in a new age, a better age.

  Yet even in the darkest hour of her pity for the wretches she exterminated there shone a light. So much had been false but there remained some deeper truth in the Chain Canticles, and that was what she saw as her armies crashed through Othean’s inner wall. She was bringing salvation through sacrifice. She was lighting a candle for the First Dark. As each unworthy Immaculate perished on the bones and barbs of her righteous legions, the Fallen Mother swam ever closer through the void, and when the beacon burned bright enough she would return to this benighted world. She would save it from itself, bringing with her the host of angels who were the rightful heirs of the Star. The Deceiver had sought to claim the Star for his own, planting the evil of free will in every single mortal breast from the moment it was exiled from the womb, but soon they would be freed from that burden. Soon the Fallen Mother would return home, and her bastard offspring would know nothing but reverence, forevermore.

  First, however, the sacrifices must be made. Mortal sins must be paid with mortal flesh. The world must prove itself worthy of salvation, its barren fields made rich with offerings of blood and ash. The Garden of the Star was not Jex Toth, it was what the world would become if only the faithful were strong enough to see it done. This was Y’Homa’s sacred task, something only one who truly loved the world could carry out, because the truth was it agonized her to see so many die. To reap such a bitter harvest. Such was the love Y’Homa felt for her imperfect, corrupted realm, that even through her tears she would see this through to the end.

  Not that it would take long now. The seed was planted deep, the earth damp and fertile. Smoke was rising from where their forces had brought down the inner wall, opening up the flank of the castle and the city beyond. The Empress of the Immaculate Isles hid within, and no matter how fiercely her guards fought they could not stand against their righteous executioners. It had taken less than ten thousand knight-queens to break through the walls, and now Y’Homa and Sherdenn brought three times as many reinforcements to overwhelm the Immaculates.

  Thousands upon thousands of warriors incapable of fear or mercy, living only to serve the orders of the Vex Assembly—each black-shelled soldier consisted of dozens upon dozens of drones working in tandem to fulfill the orders of their queen, angel-ridden insects that dreamed of being human. It did not escape Y’Homa’s notice that the knight-queens’ very existence was a microcosm of the Tothan command, and in
deed, of all life on the Star—swarms of lesser beings striving in ignorance to fulfill the obligations of their mother, to become something greater than the sum of their parts. The queens themselves even possessed souls, the same as any mortal; the only real difference was that these blessed children of the Allmother were incapable of going against the commands of their masters, which was to say, incapable of sin.

  The rest of the army proved slightly less predictable, but even more powerful. Most of the holy spawn the Vex Assembly had called up from the deepest recesses of heaven loped on four legs but others lumbered on two, or eight, or didn’t have legs at all, slithering their spiny bulk through the muck of this mortal realm. Banking her steed just out of arrow’s reach along the outer wall, Y’Homa felt her horde’s excitement at the unexpected presence of mortal fear and fury on the field ahead. She goaded her mount to fly faster through the rain, her second-soul aching with love even as she felt the twinge of remorse that they could not simply eat and eat forever, that however hard these sinners fought, their resistance must be short-lived.

  Slower. Sherdenn’s thought pulsed through her head, the ancient priest flying somewhere near the rear of their army. The message smelled of dust and rotten fruit. Cautiously.

  Faster, thought Y’Homa, her angel seconding this course as she ground her flesh against the bone saddle of her steed, the thrill of reckless flight electrifying. Beneath them, the muddy fields trembled as her army picked up the hot scent of her intention and broke into a charge, struggling to keep up with their commander. Her mount began to careen from side to side through the driving rain, unable to completely satisfy her lust for speed. Despite her angel’s joy in the mad flight she slowed their pace, banking again to fly back to the rear where Sherdenn waited. He wanted their legions to approach with slow and stately grace, to further amplify the fear of their damned quarry, and unless Y’Homa ceased her outriding at once the army would mistakenly follow her swift lead and the pungent trail that hung in her wake.