by Jen Williams
‘I am fine,’ snapped the dragon, some of her old imperiousness seeping back into her voice. ‘You fuss over nothing.’
‘It is not nothing,’ said Tor. He had unstrapped himself from Kirune and was climbing up Vostok’s harness. Noon, Vintage saw with a little flurry of dread, was slumped forward, her black hair covering her face.
‘Noon! By Sarn’s blessed roots, is she—?’
‘She is unconscious,’ said Tor. He put his arm around the witch’s shoulder, pushing her hair back to touch her face. Something about that soft movement, the way he bit his lip as he did so, seemed to send a shard of pain into Vintage’s heart. ‘We need to get her out of here.’
‘I felt something. What happened to Eri? Where . . .?’ Aldasair stopped. He had seen the sad little corpse, the pieces of it littered on the snow and dirt. Jessen made a panicked, whining noise.
‘That fucking bastard,’ said Bern. He sounded ill. ‘That fucking bastard. By the stones, I’ll cut him into pieces, I swear it.’
‘We failed Eri,’ said Vintage, thickly. ‘That monstrous thing killed him, killed him like someone swatting a fly.’ She stopped, aware that she was veering close to losing control, and there was no time. ‘Helcate is injured. We need to get under the trees, find cover and hide if we can, until Noon and Vostok have recovered.’
‘There was a cave,’ said Kirune. ‘I saw it as we came down. It is not far.’
‘Vintage, we cannot just hide,’ said Tor. ‘We are in the middle of a battle! That thing might be resting for a moment, but it’ll soon be back, and the corpse moon isn’t going anywhere unless we make it.’
‘No, Lady Vincenza is correct,’ said Aldasair. Jessen had trotted over to Helcate, and was licking the fur around his wound. The Eboran looked up, frowning at the sight of the Behemoth, bloated and strange. ‘We need to gather ourselves. And the Lady Noon is one of our strongest weapons, we need her back.’ He turned back to them, his handsome face very still. ‘Let’s get under the trees, quickly now. Kirune, lead the way.’
54
Celaphon was still bellowing with pain. On some level, Hestillion registered it, even understood that it was something she needed to deal with, but she could not quite look away from her hands, and the spots of black blood on them. As innocent as ink.
She had felt it falling on her like rain as Celaphon had shredded the boy between his teeth, and the power and the glory of battle had faded, becoming a distant echo, a conversation happening in another room somewhere, and instead she had felt herself retreating into some inner darkness.
Not the first blood I have shed, she told herself, but that had been some simple wine merchant’s boy, a human. This was one of her own, an Eboran child, something she had been quite sure did not exist anymore. When she had seen him flying with his diminutive war-beast she had registered some surprise – an unknown child – but he was an enemy and she was in the midst of battle glory, a feeling very like being drunk. He was something to be defeated. He had not looked like an enemy lying in the dirt, his eyes glassy and his guts looped around his knees.
Hestillion pressed her fingers to her lips, worried that she might suddenly vomit, and somehow this simple physical concern brought her back to herself. Celaphon had landed on the topmost side of the corpse moon, and he was shaking his head back and forth violently, hollering with pain. Taking a deep breath to steady her hands, Hestillion ripped the lower half of her tunic away. It wasn’t much, but it was the best she could do. She couldn’t see her brother and his comrades in the air, but they must still be close.
‘Celaphon, my sweet. Turn your head to me, please.’
She had to repeat herself, finally shouting the words, before he turned around. Letting herself out of her harness, she shuffled closer, trying not to think about how far above the ground they were, or how, if he chose to fly, she would fall and die.
‘That’s it, good. How are your eyes? Can you see?’
Celaphon dropped his head mournfully. ‘They burn! They hurt so much!’
The black and purple scales around his eyes and across his forehead were discoloured, turning a strange mottled yellow. Hestillion could clearly see the splash marks where the acid had hit him.
‘Open your eyes for me.’
He did. Thankfully, they did not seem much changed. His eyes, Hestillion reflected, already looked blind. She spat onto the piece of tunic and very carefully rubbed at a section of scales. Celaphon made a noise of discomfort, but did not move.
‘Does that help?’
‘A little.’ He still sounded very sorry for himself.
The discoloration had not changed in the spot where he had been splashed, but a lessening of his pain was a start.
‘Well, I’m not sure I have enough spit for this.’ She reached out to the corpse moon, feeling along the link to find one of the queen’s scuttling creatures close by. The crystal in her chest itched.
The green skin of the Behemoth next to them peeled back, and a tiny oozing homunculus emerged holding a dun-coloured pod.
‘Bring it up here, then.’
The pod was heavy and sloshed satisfyingly in her hands, and when she poured it onto the tunic she saw that it was water – just what she had asked for. Briskly, and more and more aware that the enemy could be retreating, she bathed the dragon’s face, taking particular care with his eyes. She could sense the queen quite clearly – watching, tasting their battle glory in small doses, like a wolf lapping at blood. The death of the boy had pleased her.
‘An acid-spitting war-beast,’ she said aloud. ‘That is very rare indeed. Almost as rare as your lightning, my sweet.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Celaphon said, sulkily. ‘It is cowardly. It is not my brother. I don’t like it.’
‘Well, I’m not surprised.’ An image of the boy’s hand, upturned and slack in the dirt, floated across Hestillion’s mind. She bit her lip, focussing on the pain. ‘We will make them pay, my sweet.’
The cave was really more like a great horizontal crack in the mountain, very wide but not very high or deep. Packed in all together they weren’t especially comfortable – Vostok was grumbling the loudest about having to keep her head lowered – but they were certainly invisible from above. Tor took a deep shaky breath and rubbed his hands over his face. Helcate was curled against the far wall, his nose pointing down at the floor.
‘Are we all here?’ Vintage looked drawn, dark circles under her eyes, and she was back to limping heavily. ‘Is anyone other than Helcate injured?’
Tor looked at Noon, who had regained consciousness on their way to the cave. When they had told her about Eri, she had cried aloud, the sound of something wounded, and now she leaned heavily against Vostok with her hair in her face.
‘I am fine,’ she said, sensing their concerned looks. ‘I don’t much fancy doing that again, but it’s nothing I can’t get over.’
Silence pooled between them. Tor realised that he could feel Kirune’s sorrow like a great heavy coat, and through that could feel the sorrow of all of them. Helcate most of all was a beacon of pain, his loss like an open wound, and it was making it strangely hard to breathe.
‘The poor lad,’ said Bern eventually. The big man’s face was still wet from the tears he had shed. ‘He was so brave.’ He shook his head. ‘They murdered him, and I felt it.’ He looked around at them all, as though seeking an explanation. ‘I felt him die. I hoped it wasn’t that, but . . .’
‘We all did,’ said Aldasair. ‘It’s the nature of the bond between us and our war-beasts. They are bonded to each other, as family, so when they feel the passing, so do we.’
Bern made a choked noise. Sharrik bent his big head and nudged his shoulder. ‘Bloody cursed stones, am I ever tired of feeling . . . all of this.’
‘We should go, now,’ said Tor. ‘Sneak off while we still can, hide from them as long as we can. There’s just not enough of us. We need to get an army to take down that thing.’
Vintage was already shaking her head.
‘And leave Ygseril vulnerable? And what of all the humans and Eborans still living in your homeland? We can hardly leave the remaining war-beast pods, they could still be viable . . .’ She seemed to lose some of her bluster at this, and looked down at the ground for a moment. Tor noticed that Helcate had raised his head and was looking at her keenly. ‘Besides, there are some factors you aren’t aware of yet, my dear.’
To Tor’s surprise, Bern stepped forward and held up his hand. A thick shard of blue crystal protruded from the centre of it. Tor blinked.
‘What happened? Was this in Finneral?’
‘Your cousin and I were captured by the worm people.’
‘What?’ Noon’s head snapped up. ‘When? Vintage, why didn’t you tell us?’
Vintage flapped her hands at her irritably. ‘There was no time.’
‘That weird sticky bitch wanted us to be connected to her people,’ continued Bern. ‘It’s that dragon, Celaphon. He’s a war-beast, but he’s . . . warped.’ Bern shook his head and rubbed a finger across his eyebrow. ‘By the stones, I’m not sure how to explain all this.’
‘You are doing well,’ said Aldasair softly. ‘And they need to know.’
‘Well. Those crystals Vintage saw? There’s one at the heart of every Behemoth, and they hold them all together, like the connections in a spider’s web.’ He laced his fingers together, demonstrating. ‘By giving me a piece of this crystal, she caught me in that web. I can hear them, feel them, and they can feel me. When we escaped, the corpse moon followed us across Ebora, no matter where we hid. The Lady Hestillion also had a crystal joined to her body, as did the dragon.’
‘My sister? She has joined so deeply with the Jure’lia?’
Bern met his eyes steadily. ‘She has, aye.’
‘A traitor to her own kind,’ said Vostok.
‘So you see, we cannot just run,’ said Vintage. She had pressed her hands to the side of her face, a gesture familiar to Tor: it meant she was trying to think her way around a particularly thorny problem. ‘And we can’t hide for long.’
‘How then? How can we defeat them?’ Tor looked around the cave – he saw a bedraggled bunch, grief and sorrow etched into every face, clear from the curve of every shoulder. Jessen, the great black wolf, had curled herself into a circle on the cave floor, her nose tucked neatly away and her eyes shut. ‘We are broken.’
‘Eri,’ said Helcate.
For a long moment, no one could speak. Tor thought of the boy and his bucket of bones, and the slow sense over the weeks that he was returning to life somehow – it seemed impossible that he was gone. Eventually, into the silence, came Vintage’s voice, sounding much older than her years.
‘Oh my darling, I know. I know.’ She went to the war-beast and heedless of the bloody wound on his shoulder put her arms around his neck and held him. ‘I know, I know.’
‘This connection.’ Tor’s eyes were stinging and there was a great weight in his chest. ‘I’m not sure I can do this. I feel Helcate’s pain, and it’s wiping everything else from my mind. How can we do anything, like this? Losing one of us has destroyed us.’
‘You are wrong.’
It was Kirune. The big cat had been silent so far, skulking at the back of the cave. His eyes, as they turned towards the light, flashed a ghostly winnowfire-green. ‘We went looking for something that connected us. We did not find it. The amber tablets are not what we needed.’
‘Thanks, Kirune. I really wanted to be reminded of that particular failure right now.’
‘This pain is not weakness. It is strength.’ Kirune padded forward slowly, coming to stand in the midst of them. ‘Our grief binds us. Do you not feel it?’
‘I do,’ said Noon. She lifted her head. ‘I can feel you all, sharper than before, but deeper too.’
Kirune shook out his coat. ‘The witch understands. Eri was ours. We will not forget him. We will not forget this act.’
‘Revenge, then,’ said Vostok. The dragon had lifted her head also, almost mimicking Noon. ‘Yes, revenge will unite us. We shall all be weapons, forged in the heat of revenge.’
‘And love,’ added Aldasair. ‘Love binds us.’
Tor stared at them all. He wanted to rave at them, he wanted to shake his cousin. He wanted to take hold of Noon and convince her to run with him – they would go to Jarlsbad or Reidn, or somewhere even more distant, and they would hide. Yet underneath all that, he could feel what they were talking about well enough: the raw pain of losing Eri had opened them up to each other, somehow.
Vintage stood up, pushing her hair back from her forehead. Her face was wet, but her eyes, when they met Tor’s, glittered with some new emotion.
‘The connection is the key,’ she said. ‘Bones of Sarn be damned, the idiots might just have bloody handed us the weapon on a plate.’
‘Vintage, what are you talking about?’ Tor’s voice was terse, but there was a terrible feeling growing in his chest, and he had a horrible suspicion it was hope.
‘We are connected,’ she said. ‘And so are they. And, thanks to the Jure’lia queen, Bern is connected to them. Do you remember how you escaped, Bern my darling?’
‘We pushed our way out,’ he said. ‘There are parts of the corpse moon that will listen to me.’ He grimaced. ‘It was bloody awful.’
‘If you can get out, then we can get in.’ Vintage grinned. ‘And I’m fairly sure we can do them a mischief while we’re in there.’
‘You mean to attack them directly?’ Aldasair glanced at Bern, who shrugged.
‘I do. The Jure’lia are still recovering – I saw that myself when I was in the air. And she hasn’t brought any other ships with her, so angry was she at your escape. We have a very small chance, but I think it’s worth taking.’ Vintage removed a scrap of fabric from somewhere in her jacket and used it to sweep her hair back from her face and tie it in place. ‘Get ready, my darlings. We are going to fuck them up.’
55
Flying with Helcate was a vastly different experience to flying with Fulcor. Vintage noted this as she gritted her teeth, hanging on, it seemed to her, for dear life. As the smallest war-beast catapulted her back into the heart of the battle, she could feel the immense power of his muscles, thrumming like the winnowline engine, and with each movement her ankle echoed with pain. I’m riding a near-mythical beast, she told herself. Possibly to my death, but even so.
The others were spread out in a fan, and already the great dragon Celaphon was lifting from his perch on top of the corpse moon, ready to meet them. The other minions of the Jure’lia, the mothers and the burrowers and the strange grey winged-men, were a shifting cloud, like starlings at dusk – only significantly less beautiful. Looking to her side, she saw Sharrik and Bern. The big man’s face was set and grim, and his steely determination was reflected in the posture of his griffin. Vintage knew that there were aspects of this plan they were unhappy with. Sarn’s broken arse, she was pretty unhappy with it too, but what else did they have?
As the cloud of enemies swarmed down on them with Celaphon just behind, Sharrik ducked abruptly out of their fan formation, and Helcate followed suit. This was the first risk: if they did not drop away cleanly, then everything else would be several magnitudes harder, but Vostok shot forward, engaging Celaphon directly, and as they had hoped, the main force stayed with the other war-beasts. Meanwhile, the two of them flew fast and low, the rugged mountainside below a grey and green blur, and eventually they passed under the belly of the corpse moon. The shadow of it, colder than it should be, covered them like a shroud.
It took them some time to fly underneath, but eventually they came up on the far side, to the place that Vintage could not help thinking of as the Behemoth’s arse. There were apertures here, some of which were pinched shut. Others were covered with a pearlescent grey membrane that made Vintage think of a fly’s eye, made up of thousands of interlocking hexagons. One of these entrances was very large, several times the height of Sharrik, and she recognised it as the place where the
Behemoth could birth its enormous maggots. It was inert currently, but when it was time, the thing would flex and excrete its monstrous offspring. Vintage grimaced. Excrete was the polite term.
‘Are you sure you can do this?’
Both war-beasts were hovering outside the membrane. Bern raised his eyebrows at her.
‘Stones alive, of course I’m not sure. This was your bloody idea!’
‘Yes, well. Here’s where we find out, I suppose.’
Sharrik flew as close as he could to the membrane, and Bern leaned as far out of his harness as he could go, the hand with the crystal embedded in it held out towards the Behemoth. He closed his eyes.
In the silence, Vintage listened. She could hear the sounds of battle. Once or twice she thought she heard Tor shouting, and every now and then, a roar. They would have very little time.
Sweat was running down Bern’s face, and his hand was trembling with the effort. Vintage bit her lip, telling herself that he needed to concentrate, but the sense of time passing was like a hand creeping up her back, reaching for her throat. The others could be in serious trouble, could be dead already. Bern and Sharrik might sense their deaths through the link they shared, but she wouldn’t.
‘How’s it going?’
Bern’s eyes popped open and he glared at her. ‘I’m telling it to open up, that I belong here. But I have to do it quietly, in case she hears.’
‘Hmm. Can you pretend to be one of her creatures?’
‘Pretend?’
‘Picture it, in your head. Imagine being that shape.’ Vintage paused. ‘You must know, better than any of us, what that might be like.’
For a moment, Bern looked utterly dismayed, and Vintage felt a stab of guilt. She had reminded him that he was on intimate terms with a murderous, monstrous enemy. But he closed his eyes again, and this time the membrane did peel back. Quickly, they flew inside. Bern unstrapped himself, then went to Vintage and helped her down. Her crutch was retrieved from Helcate’s harness.
‘I don’t like this,’ said Sharrik. ‘I should go with you!’