Twig

by wildbow

  She’d brought a bomb, something larger, she’d waited until the explosives and fire raining down from above had slowed in amount, ordered the warbeast back and out of the way—

  Had the gate been open for our warbeasts to go through, she might have had her creature carry the bomb into our ranks, or planted the explosive further in, during the chaos, to make it a difficult or impossible to defend our wall. If we didn’t have the stairs up to the platform at the top, to shoot over and see what the enemy was doing…

  As it was, her explosion had damaged the gate.

  No, worse than that.

  Her warbeast renewed its attack.

  It struck the gate, and the gate did more than rattle. It knocked. Something was loose, banging against the frame. A second strike made a louder knock, with a creak marking something straining, falling out of place.

  The explosion damaged the gate—enough-.

  Enough that the warbeast could make headway.

  That the people on our side couldn’t haul it open.

  Enough that the enemy felt confident in mounting a proper attack.

  “Repair teams!” a commander called out.

  Men and women with wood, metal, tools, oversized stitched with them to do the heaviest lifting and work.

  They’d patch things up, but they needed room.

  The warbeast charged, and the billowing smoke expanded out of the way, showing its head. It had rammed through loosened wood and planks, head sticking through the gate.

  An order was given, one of our beasts, the energetic one, lunged. It gripped the enemy warbeast in its teeth, holding onto the thing’s head, twisting and wrenching. The struggle damaged the gate further, but the enemy warbeast quickly faltered, its skull being crushed at an agonizing rate.

  Our beast won, tearing the enemy warbeast’s head free of its neck. The amount of blood was astonishing.

  No gas, thankfully. I’d been wrong.

  “We shoot the gas canisters through, keep them at bay! Send the stitched in to do what they can!” the commander was saying. “When the gas dies down, step in to work and direct the stitched!”

  The repair crews gave their affirmative, but I could see the nervousness in their body language. The enemy could be marching on us now. More weapons, more beasts, more surprises. It was hard to say.

  This was going poorly, but if we could get the wall repaired—

  Cannons fired, aiming for the opening in our own gate. I could see the gas rise, higher than the wall on the other side. Something lethal, poisonous.

  Our stitched approached the gate, ignoring the thinner streams of gas that filtered through the damaged parts. There were a lot of damaged parts.

  “Be ready!” the commander called. “If they have stitched, they might try sending them through the gas! They won’t be commanded, so concentrate fire and be smart!”

  Mary reached out and clutched my sleeve.

  Gunshots sounded, close, and from the other side of the wall.

  A stitched laborer on our side dropped.

  A bullet caught a non-stitched laborer on our side.

  It was surprising, and the surprise accented the awfulness of it. The shock, the blood, the wrench of agony in the woman’s features.

  More bullets came. Through the cloud of vapor and the rain, I could see the shadows of legs, people ducking low, the flash of rifles firing through the gaps.

  Our side fired back. The enemy ducked out of the way. Grenades flew in through the gap, and when they exploded, they didn’t produce fire or explosion.

  Gas. Like we’d deployed.

  Smart stitched?

  Mary’s grip tightened. I grabbed her wrist, and grabbed Gordon’s sleeve. We backed away, taking cover.

  It was the inverse of the situation the commander had mentioned. As we hurried to fight back, pulling warbeasts out of the way and trying to organize our stitched in the midst of the chaos, our stitched were left leaderless. The exorcist rifles did horrific damage. One or two shots to down each stitched.

  As the gas crept closer to Mary and I, I pulled my shirt up around my nose. A sad measure, but the stuff hadn’t been aimed at us. It wouldn’t reach us, short of the wind changing direction.

  The men strode out of the gas. One or two rubbed at rheumy eyes and scarred eyelids. A mild reaction for the danger the gas should have posed.

  Plague men.

  I was reminded of Mauer’s speech on the horrors of the battlefield. I realized what might have driven a soldier to subject themselves to that kind of ugliness.

  They’ve made their elite soldiers immune to the plagues, poisons, and parasites the Academy might use against them.

  They’d traded away the secret, but they’d seized the front gate in exchange.

  Previous Next

  Esprit de Corpse—5.13

  The spot we’d chosen to hide ended up being one of the worst possible positions, short of actually standing in between the two forces.

  Stones, planks, sandbags and barrels had been set down by the side of the road. We crouched there, using them for cover, while bullets flew. They smacked against the sandbags and stones intended for use in repairing the gate. Others struck the street and the dirt a matter of feet behind us, likely ricochets more than anything.

  It was hard to see, with both sides using noxious smoke and gas. Both sides were fighting more or less blind, only a hundred or two hundred feet from each other. What my ears told me, however, when I strained to process what was out there behind the shouting and the report of gunfire, was that the plague men were silent, the only noise being the tramp of boots as they shifted position and took cover. Our side was doing the same, but they had to cede ground to the gas, sending the stitched on and forward.

  “Idiots,” Gordon said, right in my ear. He was closer to the end of the pile of supplies, nearer to our people than to the gate. I strained my eyes to see what he was seeing.

  Whatever it was, I couldn’t make sense of it. As smoke swirled, I was only able to make out vague shapes, but the rote movements of the stitched and the fact that they didn’t move or reposition let me gradually put together a mental picture of what I was looking at. Stitched knelt behind sandbags, methodically reloading, aiming, firing, reloading, aiming, firing. They didn’t flinch as the larger bullets of the plague men’s special guns put massive holes in sandbags inches from their heads. When one stitched died, the rest kept on working.

  “Idiots?”

  It seemed dumb to be raising my voice to be heard over the gunfire when we were supposed to be hiding, but there was no other way to manage, and I doubted we would be heard.

  He shook his head. “Gave ground!”

  Gave ground.

  I could sort of see what he was thinking, now. The plague men were advancing, returning fire until the stitched weren’t shooting anymore, then moving up to take defensive positions. The stitched remained where they were, but they operated on simple rules and instructions. Face forward, shoot the enemy. They couldn’t improvise, and they didn’t have the basic creativity or problem solving ability to figure out less conventional defensive positions. They didn’t use the corners of buildings or the drop of porches, they didn’t realize when their cover was whittled away.

  There were a lot of reasons stitched were a terrifying weapon in war. In this fight, they weren’t being wielded right. They were being deployed to the rows of sandbags that had been placed in the road. They weren’t lasting long at all. They went down thrashing.

  While our side kept sending more into the clouds of gas with orders to take up the first available set of sandbags and open fire, convinced they were pushing the enemy back.

  Doing the same thing over and over again.

  Soon, the plague men would reach our cover, and there would be no chance of hiding.

  There were two likely options for our side, now, provided they realized the mistake they were making. They could pull back, secure positions, maybe even burn buildings that the enemy could use, r
egroup and make a concerted effort to use the stitched as they were supposed to be used, durable shock troops. We had enough of them, but without the coordination we would lose more than we killed.

  The second option was that our side might well release the warbeasts and other experiments.

  I was really hoping they didn’t release the warbeasts.

  An explosion in the vicinity of the gate nearly knocked me over. Blind gunfire touching the ground a bit behind me told me I could very well have died if I’d lost my balance and fallen.

  Another explosion touched down. It said a lot that I wasn’t sure which side was using it.

  “Careful!” Mary shouted.

  The explosion had stirred clouds of gas. All three of us turned away from the blast, so our backs were to the wind and the onrushing gas, hoods pulled up.

  I held my breath, even after the wind passed. I waited as long as I could, and when I could breathe again, I exhaled forcefully, for the little good it did. I kept one eye tightly closed and relied on the other, the knuckle of my thumb pressed to a nostril. Head down, moving as little as I had to, to keep my heart rate lower.

  Standard precautions, when dealing with unknown toxins.

  It was a mistake to be here, but the ebb and flow of the fight had moved faster than we’d been able. Now we were pinned down. There was nothing clever we could do to get out and away, because there were no people here. Nobody to manipulate, no tools to use, outside of sticks and stones. No place to run.

  Horns sounded. Warbeasts roared. The ground shook.

  My head was already bowed, hood pulled down, back hunched over. I was already in a pretty defeated posture. There weren’t any options for expressing my absolute dismay.

  My nostrils and eyes were burning. When I blinked, my vision streaked, as if I were looking through a smudged window.

  The rumbling of the ground intensified as the warbeasts drew closer.

  I heard Gordon’s alarmed grunt, felt his shoulder touch me, and with no idea what to do, I let myself go limp, trying to fall so I was lying along the base of the stack of wood and stone.

  The crushing impact was powerful enough that I was left momentarily breathless, and it wasn’t even a direct hit. I felt something collide with the construction supplies we were using for cover, and the power of the blow passed from the pile to the ground, and through me.

  I looked up, and I saw the warbeast charging on, into the smoke and gas by the gate. Wood and stone flew through the air, some fragments clinging to the single horn that had struck the edge of the pile.

  Our cover was mostly gone.

  This wasn’t why I’d hated the idea of sending the warbeasts. This was a bonus. A crummy-ass bonus in a crummy-ass situation.

  The problem was that they weren’t realizing the problem.

  This wasn’t a dumb, thoughtless attack. We were fighting people who knew us, knew the tools the Academy had. Why the hell would they attack if they didn’t think they could deal with the warbeasts?

  Near the gate, another of the rebellion’s warbeasts lunged out of the smoke. It collided with ours.

  Two-thirds of the size, the rebellion warbeast was furless, thick-skinned, and functioned like a blunt weapon. A crude club, used for smashing.

  Ours was thick skinned, but had thick fur at the head and shoulders, a bison’s mantle or a lion’s mane, massive, sweeping horns, and pirahna teeth. It could bite, bash, rend, slice, and it could likely do any of the four better than the smaller one could smash against things. Combine traits of the four, and it was a devastating work of art.

  I wondered if the student who’d made it knew how carelessly it was being thrown away.

  We had armored vehicles. Just as there were cars on the road, there were armored cars with guns mounted on them, and powerful engines. There were armies that had relied on them.

  The problem was, warbeasts like these were built to last. They could take the gunfire offered by the armored cars, close the distance, and then there was nothing the armored car could do. One headbutt, and the car could be rolled. Claws could tear at doors or hatches, and powerful limbs could tear at guns.

  That had led to a series of countermeasures and counter-countermeasures. Bait cars were rolled into the field, set to explode when a warbeast attempted to roll it. Warbeasts got smarter and tougher, or they got mass-produced. It was too expensive to make those bait-cars compared to how easy it was to grow the beasts. More inventive countermeasures had to be developed.

  It was hard to wage a war when one side was forced to constantly outdo itself in being inventive and devious, and the other simply had to do the same thing they were doing, only a little bit better every time. Stronger, faster, tougher.

  Plague men moved out of the noxious gas, the exorcists dangling from straps. They were holding other, smaller guns, spreading out and firing at our warbeast.

  Two more of the Academy’s warbeasts joined the fray. One collided with the wall, claws scraping against stone. Another aimed for the plague men, who moved out of the way, too spread out for the beast to go after more than one or two at a time. With the gas blocking some of the view, I wasn’t sure if it was making any contact at all.

  What had come first? Had they possessed the eerie calm and ability to focus wholly on this fight first, leading to them agreeing to be modified, or had the mental changes been part and parcel of it?

  A combination of the two?

  The rapid report of a higher-tech gun marked more bullets being fired. The warbeast closest to us twisted around a hundred and eighty degrees, switching the side that was exposed to the gunfire, and then reversed direction, unable to escape the hail of fire.

  It roared and then abruptly charged with no provocation. It collided with the wall, to the left of the gate. I was pretty sure it had caught one of the plague men between its head and the stones. It wasn’t the smoke obscuring my view, but the blurriness in one eye. It was getting worse.

  Gordon was reaching over me. I raised myself up out of the puddle at the base of our meager cover, to get a better look.

  It was black, and it looked more like a crystal than anything, pointed at both ends, more akin to a needle than anything. Almost akin to obsidian, but not quite so sharp at the edges of each plane.

  Where had he picked that up?

  The stitched. The one that had fallen from the wall.

  “Bullet?” Mary asked.

  Gordon nodded. I couldn’t make out what he was saying over the chaos of the combat.

  They examined the thing between them, each keeping half of an eye on the situation, half on the bullet. My focus was on trying to track how the situation was unfolding.

  I blinked hard, trying to clear my vision. My nose and eye were burning, and it was a surprising amount, considering how resistant I tended to be to most poisons and chemical weapons.

  “—to go!” Mary said.

  Stating the obvious, but sometimes the obvious needed to be stated. The problem wasn’t the enemy—they were focusing on the warbeasts. It was our side, shooting blindly.

  The gas canisters and weapons that had opened the foray were long out of juice, and wind was carrying away the worst of the gas. The area was clearing up, which made us easier to spot.

  The distance to the next set of structures that could provide cover was two hundred feet. Short grass, torn-up dirt, mud, and loose, crushed stone.

  I heard a shout from the among the plague men. A sharp crack marked an explosive going off in their vicinity. Heads were turned away, hands raised to faces.

  “Can’t see,” Gordon said, rubbing at his eyes with a sleeve.

  With my shoulder pressed up against Mary’s side, I felt rather than heard the affirmative sound she made.

  There was no happy ending here. Even if the Brigadier stepped in and got the Academy to start fighting back properly, and if Helen, Jamie, Lillian and Shipman knew enough to start an effort to extract us, I wasn’t sure it was possible. We were too close to the enemy, our side
had given ground, and we’d been left behind.

  Half-blind, outnumbered.

  The warbeasts were struggling. They spent more time flinching and snarling at the gunfire than attacking. I heard the louder fire of the exorcists going off. The warbeast farthest from us staggered and dropped. A moment later, it was on fire, ignited by something thrown.

  In case of parasites more than anything else, I suspected.

  I reached out, pushing my fingers into Gordon’s closed fist. He was gripping a handkerchief.

  He loosened his fingers, then held his hand out as I unfolded the handkerchief and took the black shard from within.

  I pricked the back of my hand.

  “Mf,” I made a sound.

  It burned like fire. Within a few seconds, the muscle was twitching involuntarily, the burning sensation like a thousand papercuts a second.

  “Mmmmurrggh,” I started off making one sound, then ended up making a guttural noise instead. My voice was tight as I managed an, “Okay.”

  “The heck are you doing?” Gordon asked.

  “It’s poisoned,” I said, my voice still tight. “Or it’s crystallized poison or it’s something. Ow.”

  “Peralta?” Gordon asked.

  “Peralta,” I said, in a strained, intense way.

  There was a detonation closer to the wall, aimed at one of the beasts. It didn’t do much more than kick up dirt. The cliff-side was only a dozen feet away, and both debris and moisture bounced off of the wall to land on and around us.

  Shorter ranged guns, delivering only pain.

  I remembered how the stitched had acted.

  That had been the aim. It was why our lines were disintegrating as fast as they were. Faced with stitched and warbeasts who felt only as much pain as they needed to be able to function, Pock had given the enemy a weapon that delivered it, distilled.

  The alarm on Mary’s face suggested she was very aware of just what that meant. The look on Gordon’s face, as he stared at the ongoing fight with the Warbeasts, was one of deep concern.

  The beasts didn’t know how to process the experience. Their well of experience might have been limited to experiencing only a moment of pain, enough to know where the harm was coming from so they could lash out. Except now they were feeling that moment over and over, from all directions. They lunged, swung their horns around, howled, and attacked nothing in particular, only periodically going after the plague men.