The Bitter Twins

by Jen Williams

  A hole was appearing in the side of the corpse moon, puckering open to reveal some busy inner darkness. Blue light flickered deep inside it, like the spitting lightning from a summer storm on the plains, and something large moved towards the light. Something very large.

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ said Noon.

  A monster was climbing out of the corpse moon.

  Tor felt a tingle travel down his back as all the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. This, he thought, was what it was like to be a tiny prey animal – a mouse or a bird perhaps – when the owl flies over. Or, his mind supplied viciously, this was what it was like to be a defenceless human when the Eboran hunting parties rode forth during the Carrion Wars. The dragon pulling itself out of the newly opened aperture was twice the size of Vostok, and bulkier, with enormous muscled shoulders and a thick, wedge-shaped head. It was black and purple and in some places, particularly the stiff serrated plates that protruded from its back and neck, it was an oily, dark green – the same colour as the corpse moon. It rolled eyes that were milky and white, yet evidently it could see, as it turned its head to follow Vostok as she shot past, and its jaws fell open to reveal long, dagger-like teeth.

  The monster lowered its head and unfurled thick, bat-like wings, and that was when Tor spotted the figure sitting on its back. Wiry and pale, Hestillion was wearing a strange collection of furs and leathers, utterly unlike the beautiful silks she had coveted in Ebora, and she sat poised in the harness, her sharp face intent, like a hawk’s. Inevitably, she looked up and they stared at each other, sister to brother. Her eyes, as deep a maroon as his, widened a fraction, but the expression on her face did not change.

  ‘Hest?’

  She could not have heard him, but Kirune did. ‘She is your blood,’ he pointed out, less than helpfully, and then, ‘and he is mine.’

  Tor realised he was talking about the dragon. ‘That might be true, but I don’t think they are on our side.’

  As if to prove it, the enormous dragon leapt from the side of the Behemoth. It did not move gracefully, but it was hardly slow, and immediately it set off after Vostok. The smaller dragon turned around to face it, and Tor caught a glimpse of Noon’s face, partly lit by the glove of green fire dancing around her hand. She looked defiant, and furious, and he felt a strange clash of emotions pressing on his throat; fear for her, and something else that he wasn’t about to look at too closely. Vostok opened her jaws and an elegant spear of violet fire shot down onto the larger dragon’s upturned head. The monster bellowed, a discordant, deafening roar of outrage and pain. Tor saw it twist its neck to avoid the flames and had enough time to note that it did not seem particularly injured before he and Kirune were hit violently from the side.

  Swearing, Tor slashed blindly with the Ninth Rain and felt it sink into something solid. Wrenching his body around, he saw that one of the grey men had landed on Kirune’s flank, with another clambering over it, so that Kirune’s right wing was restricted. The big cat hissed in annoyance, but Tor already had his sword embedded in the upper arm of one of the grey men. Reaching behind him he grabbed the thing around the throat, grimacing slightly at the faintly sticky touch of its flesh, and yanked it towards him. It was bigger than a human, and its face – what there was of it – was slack and unresponsive. Tor could feel no bones inside the thing, only slightly spongy flesh, so he pulled his sword free and slashed at its throat. It gaped open, a bloodless wound that reminded him eerily of the white monsters that Eeskar had commanded, and he threw it from Kirune’s side. The thing dropped out of sight, while the second one jumped away, retreating to a safer distance.

  Turning back to the battle, he saw that the Behemoth had stepped up its attack. The large burrowers had unfurled glass-like wings from under carapaces and taken to the air, and a swarm of them surrounded Helcate and Eri, who were on their own. Several of these and a number of the grey men were keeping Sharrik and Jessen from getting any closer to the corpse moon, despite their best efforts – he saw Bern’s axe held high above his head, its blade already dark with some unspeakable fluid, while Aldasair was stabbing a flying man over and over with something Tor could not make out. Taking up much of the air space was Vostok and the strange, purple dragon. They were locked in an embrace, two sets of wings beating frantically as each fought to subdue the other. Tor found he could hardly look away from the sight. Vostok seemed small and somehow wiry in the grip of the other dragon, and they snapped and lunged at each other viciously. Several times the enormous wedge-shaped head of the enemy war-beast came perilously close to where Noon was seated, yellowed teeth chomping at the space near her, and Vostok would drive him back, often simply crashing her head into his, or locking her own jaws around his throat.

  ‘Noon!’

  She could not hear him. Instead, she was intent on her fight, sending fireball after fireball of hot green flame crashing against the monster’s wings, or blasting a funnel of fire directly at its head. Vostok too would roar forth her own flames, but the two dragons were in such close quarters it was clearly hard for her to be accurate. Hestillion, meanwhile, had a sword at her waist but had not drawn it – instead she seemed to be speaking to the dragon, her mouth moving all the time.

  Sharrik had broken free of the enemies that had been holding them back, and he shot forward, Bern with his axe at the ready. Without hesitation they flew to the two dragons, Sharrik with his forepaws outstretched, claws ready. Tor saw the war-beast barrel into the monster’s side, his powerful beak attempting to get some sort of purchase on its slippery scales, but the dragon’s tail swung around and crashed across Sharrik’s outer wing. The tail was not long and thin like Vostok’s – it was shorter, thick with muscle and serrated plates, and Tor imagined it was like being hit with a log. Bern cried out, almost knocked clean out of the harness, and Sharrik dropped away, his wing held out awkward and stiff – Tor suspected that the big griffin had been stunned.

  ‘We have to help.’ Kirune had been leaping from flying enemy to flying enemy, dismembering neatly as he went so that they were followed by a rain of grey body parts, but he raised his head at Tor’s suggestion.

  ‘What can we do?’ he said, reasonably enough. ‘It is too big. If the loud bird cannot take it, how can we?’

  Tor shook his head impatiently even as he yanked his sword from the belly of a flying man. ‘All of us together? We have to do something . . .’

  The battle had drifted over the foothills until the mountains loomed over them, bringing colder air and the powerful scent of pine trees. Above, incredibly, the sky was still a bright, blameless blue, and Tor felt an irrational stab of annoyance at that; they could all die here, all of Sarn could die here, and the oblivious sun would continue to beat down on their broken bodies. All the while, more apertures were opening in the hide of the corpse moon, and through them were streaming a hideous parade of scuttling, whirring abominations.

  There was a high, thin cry – more of anger than of fright – and Tor looked back to see the enormous dragon closing its jaws so close to Noon that she had to lean right back in her harness to avoid being bitten in half. Tor saw the problem immediately – she was strapped in so she couldn’t fall, but it meant that she was trapped within range of the dragon’s considerable bite. She could be torn to pieces in a moment, despite her flames.

  ‘Right, that’s it.’ Tor sank his hands into Kirune’s fur, attempting to convey his own sense of urgency. ‘We’re going in.’

  ‘Up, up, up!’

  Fulcor floated up on an air current, her pinkish wings spread wide. From above Vintage could watch the play of the battle while being mostly removed from it, which was handy because she was almost out of crossbow bolts and many of the things crawling from the inside of the Behemoth looked like they might chew the bolts up and spit them back at her. From above, it was clear they would be overwhelmed soon. They were a tiny force in the face of an enemy that could seemingly produce endless soldiers. Nervously, she slotted another bolt home.

  ‘It’s
the Behemoth we have to defeat,’ she murmured. Fulcor squeaked in response, and Vintage leaned forward to pat the fluffy patch of fur between the bat’s ears. ‘You are a brave one, aren’t you? I hope your baby is all right, my darling.’ She took a deep breath, trying to slow the racing of her heart. ‘They will wear us down eventually, if we can’t wrangle some sort of advantage. It can’t just end here, it can’t.’

  Ignoring the various desperate struggles of her friends, Vintage focussed on the corpse moon. Like the Behemoth she and Nanthema had been inside when the Jure’lia woke up, it showed signs of having been inactive for a very long time. It was certainly in better shape than the rusted wreck on the coast, but there were darker patches on the skin that looked like recently repaired holes. She wondered if the surface were thinner there.

  ‘And what of the queen?’ she said aloud. ‘We know from Bern and Aldasair that she is on board, but she hasn’t shown her face, such as it is.’

  A roar of outrage from Vostok echoed across the mountains, and Vintage transferred her attention back to the dragons. Kirune and Tor had joined them, the big cat doing what he could to get close enough for Tor to use his sword. It seemed that Vostok had attempted to fly out of the larger dragon’s reach, but it had lunged after her and fastened its terrifying jaws around her tail, yanking her back down. For a moment the view was lost in a corona of violet flame, and then when that dissipated and the dragons loomed back into view, Vintage saw that the great brute appeared to be hiccupping. She blinked, trying to figure out what it could be doing: its throat, ringed with muscle and purple scales, was twitching and flexing, and it held its enormous jaws open, revealing a tongue the colour of bad cream.

  ‘It looks like a bloody cat coughing up a hairball!’

  It looked amusing for the briefest moment, and then a hot spark of blue light burst into life deep within its throat. Vintage opened her mouth, to call a warning or shout for help, but before she could, a bolt of blue lightning shot from between the dragon’s jaws, striking Vostok in the underbelly and from there branching out around her like a web of veins. Unlike real lightning, it lasted for a good three seconds, and then Vostok was limp in the arms of the giant beast. Vintage saw a flurry of white feathers, swirling madly in the cold air, but she could not see Noon. The larger dragon tipped back its head and roared its triumph – the noise echoed around them, like summer thunder.

  ‘No! Oh no!’

  It curved his great neck, clearly meaning to tear the smaller dragon’s throat out. Vintage did not know if it could bite through Vostok’s tough white scales but the power behind the creature’s enormous jaws had to be considerable. Lost and horrified, she found herself raising her crossbow, although she knew that was next to useless.

  ‘Someone help her!’

  A bronze shape shot across the battlefield and collided with the purple dragon. It did very little, although the monster did turn his head to see what had hit him. It was Helcate, the small war-beast twisting in the air to bring himself around to face his enemy. On his back, Eri was half standing in the harness, his face set and fierce. He looked older suddenly, and Vintage had a glimpse of the man he would become, handsome and golden-haired. He shouted something, and Helcate opened his own jaws and spat – a steaming stream of acid shot through the air and hit the monstrous dragon across the face, sizzling on impact.

  Vintage gasped. The bellow of rage and pain that rolled across them made the dragon’s previous roar sound like a polite cough. Immediately, it dropped Vostok, who fell away towards the ground, and lunged after the smaller war-beast.

  Fulcor was swooping down before Vintage was aware that she had even given the order. The dragon loomed closer, and she saw that Kirune – who had also taken something of a shock from the blast of electricity – was harrying its wings, attempting to slow it, but already it had a hold of Helcate. Helcate, with his soft fur and velvet muzzle, the more decorative and less useful armour, the only armour that would fit him . . .

  ‘No!’

  The dragon closed his jaws around the boney lump of Helcate’s shoulder and shook him viciously. There was a howl of pain, as piercing and as terrible as the dragon’s roar in its own way, and then the monster was bearing Helcate down to the ground. With no other ideas, Vintage urged Fulcor to follow, and so she arrived in time to see the purple dragon tearing Eri from his harness, while Helcate lay amidst a jumbled collection of rocks and grass and snow. Without really knowing what she was doing, Vintage yanked herself free of Fulcor and stumbled onto the ground.

  ‘Leave him be! Drop him this instant, you big ugly bastard!’

  The dragon took no notice of her at all. The scales around its eyes looked discoloured, a splash of mottled lighter purple where the acid had hit, and a clear fluid was running constantly from the creature’s eyes. Vintage transferred her gaze to the Eboran riding him. The woman she knew to be Tor’s sister was flushed and sweating, and as she met Vintage’s eye, her face split into a wide grin – or at least, she bared her teeth. She did not look sane.

  ‘Tell your monster to let him go.’ Vintage raised the crossbow and aimed it at the Lady Hestillion. ‘You might be strong, darling, but I suspect a bolt in the middle of your forehead would still ruin your afternoon.’

  She tried not to look at the limp form hanging from the dragon’s jaws. Abruptly she remembered that Aldasair had said the dragon’s name was Celaphon; an oddly elegant name for such a beast.

  ‘If you hurt me, he will kill you in an instant,’ said Hestillion. She sounded calm, even serene, despite the glistening lines of sweat running from her temples.

  In the moment of silence that followed, Helcate raised his head from the ground. The fur around his shoulder was torn and smeared with black blood.

  ‘Helcate,’ he said plaintively, and in Celaphon’s jaws Eri twitched, his arms reaching for his war-beast. This seemed to trigger something in the great dragon. He dropped Eri onto the rubble and snow, then, turning his head to get a good purchase, he closed his jaws around the boy’s torso and pulled up sharply, dragging his teeth through Eri’s flesh.

  The boy screamed. Mindlessly, Vintage ran, ignoring the pain in her ankle and loosing the bolt as she did so – it thunked harmlessly against the dragon’s scales and fell to the ground – and threw herself down next to Eri, taking his hand. There was a great deal of blood already, seeping into the knees of her trousers, black and terribly final. The boy looked up at her, his face oddly blank with pain. A stray curl of ash blond hair had stuck to his forehead.

  ‘Eri, look at me, look at me, it will be—’

  Suddenly Vintage found she was on her back some ten feet away. Celaphon had knocked her to one side, and now he had his head bent to the ground in a terrifyingly busy fashion, turning back and forth to better savage the flesh underneath him. As she watched, the dragon pressed one enormous clawed foot to Eri’s head, and then began to tug at his lower body . . .

  Vintage looked at the ground. Stones and mud and tiny blades of grass. Dust and dirt and ice crystals, hard and old and grey, like grit. There were wet noises she didn’t care to hear, but no more screaming. She blinked rapidly, willing herself not to pass out. She would die here if she did.

  She looked up. There were shapes moving in the sky, a confusion of bodies blurred into shifting masses by the tears that were running freely down her face. The other war-beasts were still up there, she hoped, still fighting. The great dragon Celaphon dropped Eri’s corpse and shook his head rapidly, thick eyelids like the scuffed leather on a boot squeezing over his eyes. It was as though he had just remembered the acid on his face, and with the heat of his anger spent, the pain was coming back. Hestillion was speaking again, leaning forward and murmuring soft words into his ear, and abruptly he leaned back and roared again, although whether it was in triumph or rage, Vintage could not tell. His wings unfurled with a dry crack, and he leapt back up into the air, heading back towards the corpse moon.

  Gingerly, Vintage got to her feet, wincing at the
newly awakened pain in her ankle.

  ‘Oh, my dear.’

  There was very little she could do for Eri save to close his eyes. She did so, her hand shaking badly, and then lurched unsteadily to where Helcate lay. Miraculously, Celaphon appeared to have forgotten the smaller war-beast, and although the bite across his shoulder looked painful, the black blood was already running clear. He would live. He lifted his head, looking past her to the mess on the ground, so she took hold of his snout, forcing him to look at her. His eyes were unfocussed, and with a feeling of sick pressure in the centre of her chest she saw that he was trembling all over, like a whipped dog.

  ‘I am so sorry.’ She gasped, trying to swallow the sob that threatened to close her throat. ‘My darling, I can’t . . .’ Gently, she lowered her face to press her cheek against his. The fur that tickled her nose was coarser than it had been. ‘I’ve seen some awful things, but this? What terrible times we have come to know.’

  A shadow passed over them and Vintage jumped, thinking it must be Celaphon come to finish the job, but it was Vostok, being supported in the air by Sharrik and Kirune. The dragon was conscious, but her head was bowed, and as they landed she stumbled a little, trying to find her feet. Jessen landed lightly behind them, Aldasair sitting up very straight in his glittering white armour, which was now spattered with grey gore.

  ‘What’s happening?’ called Vintage.

  Aldasair urged Jessen forward. ‘Celaphon has retreated to the corpse moon – I think Helcate’s attack has hurt him more than we realised. Vostok has been badly stunned, she needs to rest.’