Twig

by wildbow

  All six nobles had found places to roost. They stood on chimneys and sat on rooftops. Gloria had chosen to stand on a pillar of wood from a burned building.

  Even the army and beasts that accompanied the nobles had mostly found places to go.

  Carling turned, then raised a hand high overhead. He dropped it until it was pointed our way.

  There was scarcely a delay before the gossamer creature pulled away from the main building. It was only a fraction slower than we’d seen it before, but that fraction applied to all of the strands. With the way it moved, attaching, anchoring, and reeling in to the point closest to its destination, it began to take on an image of a small animal on ice, trying and failing to get traction. Not all of the tendrils that should’ve been forming anchors were doing so.

  “Aww,” Helen said. “It’s hurting.”

  “I can’t begin to imagine it has anything resembling nerves,” Duncan said.

  “But it’s hurting,” Helen said.

  “Let’s not anthropomorphize it,” Duncan said. “Are we just taking this hit?”

  “Probably,” Jessie said.

  “If it was a person it would be limping,” Ashton said.

  “Please stop sympathizing with the superweapon,” Duncan said.

  “Abby’s saying that it’s suffering,” Nora said.

  Duncan sighed.

  It needs to eat, drink, and rest. We disturbed its rest, we denied it the opportunity to rehydrate, and now it’s slower.

  It was still terrifying. Powerful, hard to wrap my head around.

  The thing drew closer, beginning to form its spike.

  Carling was standing there on a chimney, watching us.

  What’s your move?

  We had a series of traps arranged. A dozen countermeasures, lined up and ready. They wanted to reach a window or a door, they wanted to get inside, and then they could start doing untold damage.

  He was playing a game with us, trying to stay a step ahead, to anticipate. He knew that the countermeasures wouldn’t stop with the gas.

  Come on, I thought. Come on.

  Carling spoke, dropping to one knee, and his position atop the chimney would have been precarious if it wasn’t for his physical prowess. His hands worked on his slacks. Tucking them into his boots.

  “He said to stay. He’s acting alone,” Jessie translated.

  The noble cinched the straps on his boots tight. The gossamer thing drew nearer. It was already setting anchors in place.

  I wondered if it had the mental faculties to remember its prior attacks. It felt faster on the uptake than it had been before, even as it struggled to anchor itself here and there.

  “Gloria’s saying—” Jessie started. “The hazard is…”

  “Is?” Nora asked.

  But there was no telling. Lady Gloria had raised a hand to her mouth. No more lipreading was possible until she moved it.

  “The hazard is already clearing up,” I guessed.

  “Yeah,” Lillian said.

  The statement meant that Lord Carling was more or less free to move. He dropped from the chimney, and moved with surprising speed as he headed toward the barrels they’d brought.

  “Release the stray warbeasts,” Mary said. “Yes? Even with the gas—”

  “Yes,” Jessie said.

  “Told them,” Nora said.

  Carling reached the barrels, seizing the upper rim in his hands.

  Stepping forward, he twisted his upper body around, then swung the barrel. He released it three-quarters of the way through the swing, and the barrel sailed our way.

  I didn’t see where it hit, but I heard glass break, just a couple of floors down. It had penetrated a window.

  “We’re going to find out what that is, I suppose,” I said.

  “Bastard of ten bitches. That had to be a sixth story window,” Duncan said.

  He managed to hurl another before our second play came into effect. Warbeasts. They were minor, all things considered, scarcely more than attack dogs with extra mass and ruffs of quills and spines extending down their backs, cresting at the shoulders.

  There were no special tricks, no poisons on the quills, no hidden benefits to using the dogs. They’d been something we’d been able to prepare in the short time we’d had, and they now unwittingly attacked a target that they had virtually no chance against.

  They were, in this moment, little more than obstacles that made Carling take just a little bit longer before he could throw another barrel.

  Mary broke away from the group, running. Knives fell from Mary’s sleeves, dangling on wire. She began spinning them around, wire and knife forming a circular blur. She turned on her heel, “Nora!”

  Helen went with her, not looking even half as dangerous.

  We collectively worked without needing to communicate in too much detail. We were at the pivoting point. We’d scarcely communicated who would do what, but we knew each other well enough to know who should handle what.

  Duncan ran, one hand on Ashton’s shoulder, steering him. Jessie followed behind, lagging, her eye on what was going on outside.

  Lillian pulled slightly on the chain. She wanted to go in the direction Mary had.

  Carling was using the barrel to bludgeon the spike-dogs. They bit for him and he was quicker. They bit for the barrel, and with its weight, it was slower.

  He unslung his axe from behind him, then in short order cut down the full pack of spike-dogs, one hand still on a barrel that was being jerked and tugged by the two hundred pound lesser warbeast.

  Slamming the weapon down into the body of a spike dog that lay in arm’s reach, he returned to a two handed grip on the barrel. He heaved it around and threw it.

  A different corner of the building this time, again punching through a window.

  This time, it coincided almost perfectly with the terrible noise of the spike grinding and scraping its way through the building, crushing wood and cleaving through stone, impaling the building.

  Like Jessie was for Duncan and Ashton, Lillian and I were support for Mary and Helen. We weren’t in fighting shape, there wasn’t much for us to do, with me having my hands behind my back and Lillian being not fantastically equipped for a fight.

  The spike dissolved into strands, and Mary cut, throwing knives and having them cut through the air, using the razor wire here and there to control the movements of the strands more than to cut or harm them.

  Helen was simply reaching up and batting at strands with her hands, moving in jerky, offbeat ways that let her move through the worst of the clouds.

  Here and there, the strands of the great gossamer creature would cut at Helen’s hair or at some extraneous bit of lace or ribbon on Mary’s dress.

  Helen wasn’t immune to being cut, but she had some protections. She gathered the strands into clusters.

  Carling attacked yet again. Another broken window.

  He was spacing them out. The last one had been close to the middle of the building, which was also very close to where we were. Had he seen us with that keen eyesight, Carling would have known that a good offensive measure would be best placed hereabouts.

  “Let’s go see what that is,” I said.

  Lillian nodded.

  “We’ll be close!” I called out.

  It wasn’t far. Lillian gripped the chain, as if she thought I was going to snap and run away. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t about to—that I was sixty percent sure that my inner Infante wouldn’t act if he didn’t think he could do something.

  But there was something equitable in that I was bound and at Lillian’s mercy, at least in part.

  Lillian pushed a set of doors open, and I saw the scant light moving over the shards of glass from the broken window. The barrel had come to rest here too; both the top and bottom ends had been designed to come off on impact.

  One gaunt figure had already come forth and stood, where he or she had been contorted within. Another was crawling out. They were crimson, their flesh more like
something coagulated and hardened, blood clots in crude humanoid form, and they barely looked ambulatory.

  But they were crusted with growths. More of the growths crusted the inner walls of the barrel.

  It looked like a hive, and a swarm of insects as red as the blood clot ambulatory hosts were spreading through the air. They crawled in and out of the hives and crevices in the hosts.

  Lillian and I stared at the scene, then reversed course. We slammed the door shut behind us.

  “Okay, no,” Lillian said. “Nothing we can do about that for now.”

  “No gas? No drugs or countermeasures?”

  “Not like this,” she said.

  We headed back to the others. Lillian’s hand slid down from the chain to my hand, clutching it.

  I squeezed back, for reassurance, for whatever else.

  The spike plunged into the building again. Somewhere close. Lillian and I had to stop while the building rumbled, settling in the aftermath of the architectural violence.

  Okay, I thought.

  We hurried in the direction of the attack. We found Mary and Helen there, still cutting, still collecting. Collected strands were gathered together with curtains torn from hangers, bundled together like sheafs of grain. Helen heaved one over her shoulder, backing away as Mary redoubled her efforts, damaging the creature as much as possible while it withdrew.

  “Bugs,” I said. “Probably parasites.”

  “They know Sy’s here, so if they’re using parasites, it’s probably something nasty he’s not going to be so resistant to,” Lillian said.

  “Telling them,” Nora said.

  Mary and I glanced out the window at the same time. Her eye was on the gossamer creature. Mine was with a mind for Carling, who was retreating some while the other nobles and experiments advanced.

  He was gone.

  We were caught up enough in watching out for the enemy that the other Lambs caught up with us more than we caught up with them. They’d collected the young ones. Abby, Bo Peep, Lara, and Emmett.

  “Ready?” Jessie asked.

  Duncan already had the first cloth tunnel, and he knew how to mount it at the window. Ashton, inexplicably, also knew. I wondered if he’d read all of the safety manuals. It seemed like his thing, since he had a way of reveling in what others found interminably boring.

  The tunnel was placed at the window, then allowed to unfurl. It extended down to the ground.

  “Feet out to the sides,” Ashton said. “Use them to slow yourself down.”

  One by one, Lamb and neo-Lamb made their way down.

  As strategies went, it wasn’t intuitive, but it wouldn’t have worked if it hadn’t been a touch unintuitive. We abandoned the admin building and those who still remained within.

  We placed ourselves on the ground level of the city, against the best this crop of lesser nobles could provide.

  Helen was one of the last to descend, and she didn’t use the inside of the tube, instead sliding along the outside. She gestured firmly for us to go.

  This came down to strategy and head games, anticipating what Gloria or Carling might try, and getting ahead of that. It had been a part of the plan since we’d needed to come up with a new way of doing things, after Ferres had spoiled the timing.

  Carling had seen all of the Lambs together, he’d seen how and where we’d staged attacks and he’d inferred where we were setting up and taking action. Faced with that information, he’d elected to do the cowardly thing; he was organizing his troops into attacking a different section of the academy. The Girls’ dorm, the Boys’ dorm, restoring peace at the harbor—

  This was the real danger, the point where our most vulnerable were at the most risk, faced with the enemy’s most dangerous.

  It mandated special attention, personal involvement.

  The shackles clanked and bounced behind me as I ran, the Lambs all around me.

  Behind us, Helen triggered the traps, securing the admin building in a way that would bar the enemy, slow them down. Strands of the creature filled the air all around her, glistening dangerously in the rays of light that cut through the overcast atmosphere. A distant rumbling sound got quieter and quieter still, and only because we were moving away from it. Had we been close, we might have been able to shape some of it.

  Instead, the builder’s wood began to raise an almost inverse portcullis, ground to sky.

  Would that man with the keen eyesight see it? Would paranoia win out on his side? Would he attack one of the dormitories and do grievous harm to the rebels within?

  There were other nobles, any of which could have struck out on their own or broken from pattern.

  “Enemies are close,” Helen murmured.

  Everyone present drew their weapons, with the exception of the little ones, Lillian and myself.

  By retreating, they’d wanted to bait us out. They’d succeeded. We were out of the building.

  Jessie had led us up a gentle slope, and now that we were there, we had a better view of everything around us. Hands went up, gesturing, marking the forces that were surrounding us.

  Other gestures were to draw attention to the admin building. Our departure point, we’d barred the path by littering the area with Helen’s rain of cutting strands, we’d sealed gates, trapped the scattered few within inside.

  Carling was circling back now. He’d drawn us out, and now sought to claim a critical territory, the admin building we’d taken special measures for. He wanted the supplies, medical resources, accommodations, everything they might want or need in order to weather this siege. He moved faster than us, and it seemed to be a foregone conclusion.

  When the smallest of us were entirely out of breath and those of us who could carry could carry them no longer, we stopped.

  There wasn’t a full minute’s respite before there was another message.

  Explosions, one after another.

  The remaining bridges fell much as the one between the main building and the admin building had.

  The explosions continued to rattle the city, which wasn’t large. An explosion on one side of the city made windows rattle in their frames until they cracked, on the other side.

  It seemed to go on for an hour, when it might have only been five minutes.

  The face of the admin building was damaged, but already, the damage was repairing. Further up, the edge of the roof was cracked, and material was flowing out, down the face of the building.

  It was the cosmetic side of Hackthorn, weaponized. The builder’s wood and the seeds with accelerated growth for the hanging gardens now cascaded down the front of the building, caught by flowerbeds and windowsills, settling between shingles and in gutters.

  Even the creatures that surrounded us were pausing to take it all in, to watch the wood grow moment by moment, curling, twisting, and forming elaborate shapes.

  The trap had been sprung. Assuming they’d been caught, in whole or in part, and that they hadn’t sprung it prematurely out of sheer guile, they would still get free eventually. But if we’d captured some, most, or all, then we had them. The siege was a few steps from being won.

  But the biggest part, the part that satisfied so thoroughly, was that, barring a terminal wrinkle in this plan, our targets having wholly slipped the net, we were right back to what we’d originally planned—our enemy divided.

  As for the conquered part of that…

  I glanced at the Infante.

  We were pretty sure the Lambs were ready.

  Previous Next

  Root and Branch—19.11

  In the distance, on the far side of Hackthorn, barely visible with the main building and the other constructions barring the view some, a gargantuan warbeast climbed up the face of the boy’s dormitory. It was vaguely apelike, but with a long crimson mane and no mouth on its face. It was quick, acting with jerky moments and deceptive speed for something its size. Its feet kicked in through windows on the third floor while oversized hands gripped windowsills on the fifth.

  The
gossamer thing floated a distance behind it. The two had been taking turns, not because they were that incredibly coordinated, but because the ape was scared shitless of the gossamer thing, but was compelled to attack, so it moved in whenever the gossamer thing backed off.

  Between them, they were doing a fair amount of damage. The gossamer thing had slowed down considerably in recent hours, but the boy’s dormitory wasn’t quite as formidable as the admin building. I worried.

  It found a grip on another window, and it started to make its ascent, tearing down architecture by accident more than by purpose.

  No sooner was its grip settled than a flash of light and fire flared around the hand. The sound of the explosion reached us a second later. They’d anticipated where it might grab and timed explosives to go off when the hand appeared.

  One of its paws now a bloody ruin, the silent ape tumbled to the ground below, landing in what had to have been an awkward position, given my last glimpse of it before it dropped out of sight behind the intervening buildings. It didn’t rise to its feet or crawl anywhere, instead thrashing on the spot, an occasional leg, foot, or arm sticking up to where we could see from our vantage point.

  The blind and deaf apes were still in reserve, but I wasn’t overly concerned. By all reports, they were designed to be big, but they didn’t have a great deal going for them otherwise. They were a mediocre project from one of the smallest Academies.

  For now, it looked like the gossamer thing didn’t have much left in it.

  “I’m trying to figure out how I feel about all this,” Helen said.

  “You’re not one for agonizing and self doubt,” I observed. “Or even for doubting the rest of us.”

  Helen stirred restlessly in her seat. She’d taken a nice window seat, padded with cushions on either side, and curled up in it. The way she’d positioned herself was just so, when it came to Helen. In more ways than one, she was too curled up, too able to move her head to view what was happening in the world beyond, given the way she was oriented.

  Lillian was standing just a short distance away, hands in her coat pockets, tense and analytical as she watched proceedings in… very possibly the absolute opposite perspective that Helen was.