Twig

by wildbow

  “I don’t know that one,” Lillian said.

  “Superweapon,” Duncan said. “Mucin glands, they spin out collagen-axon chains—”

  “The nerve in the hag nerve,” Lillian said.

  “—And filament chains. To form skeins that catch the water.”

  “It’s actually made of water?” I asked.

  “Ninety nine percent,” Duncan said. “Water, filaments like spider web, and the translucent organs that make the webs. It’s a blob of the slime you’d get if you dumped enough spider web into the water to keep it all collected into one mass.”

  The Tangle went on the offensive. It struck out, trying to sandwich the hag nerve blob between itself and the wall, and it slammed its body into the damaged gate, just a short distance from us. Harvesters were knocked loose, many thrown into our general direction.

  Mary moved to the rear of our group, tossing a rifle our way so it remained more or less upright, bayonet pointed skyward. There was no intended recipient, she simply trusted that one of us would catch it.

  I caught it, and used the weapon to stab a harvester that was getting too curious about us.

  The things were swarmers, though. They were gathering together into a mass. That would be uglier, if they veered our way instead of heading back to the Tangle Prime.

  Lillian opened a paper packet, pulled it over the top of a vial, and shook it, before tossing it at the swarm.

  It exploded in a small, five-foot diameter puff of dust, encompassing the building swarm. The cloud of dust was quickly beaten down by the rain.

  It seemed to keep the swarm from building. They didn’t dissipate, but it was something.

  “More problematic—” Duncan said.

  “The Hag Nerve thing is big,” I said.

  Duncan gripped his rifle, then said, “It’s spreading.”

  The Tangle waded through the Hag Nerve, and it was as though it was wading through gloopy slime. Over the course of several steps it went from being immersed to what amounted to its ankles to being immersed to its knees.

  The Hag Nerve began sloshing. It rocked, building momentum with each movement, and the Tangle’s feet were dragged across the slimy cobblestones, left, then right, until it fell over.

  In the course of its rocking, it rolled up against the side of one house, striking the gutter. The water that spilled out over the surface of the blob slowed and congealed as it rolled, not even spilling out and over to the sides.

  “Will explosives work?” Mary asked.

  “Some,” Duncan said. “But I don’t know if it would be worth it.”

  It’s just water, I thought.

  “We need to get around it,” I said. “Unless there’s a way to stop it?”

  “Horrendous amounts of digestive enzymes?” Duncan suggested. “Probably how they clean it up.”

  “Can we get access to their cleanup method? Wherever they went to get the acid rain going?”

  “It’s probably one of the most guarded locations.”

  “Given the protein focus, salt would work,” Lillian said. “Ion chains.”

  “Yeah,” Duncan said. Then he perked up. “Proteins! That gas Sy had Junior make would work nicely.”

  “I really didn’t want to use it so soon,” I said. “Really didn’t.”

  “He’s not back yet,” Mary said. “And I don’t think we want to wait.”

  “Salt then,” Lillian said.

  “We’re a long way from the ocean,” I added.

  Our rebels were apparently in position now.

  “Explosives out!” Mary called out. “Ready! Stand clear!”

  We were between two blobs. The one in the plaza was large—and I was seeing what Duncan meant about how it was spreading.

  Every body of water in the Academy grounds, some of the bodies of water beyond. All were interconnected now. All were part of this particular, deceptively simple weapon.

  “I hate enemies without brains,” I said. “I can never outsmart them.”

  “There’s something to be said about that, Sy,” Mary said.

  “Probably,” I said, my attention on the path before us. I could see the water recede, in its way, leaving the stones of the road through the gate almost dry. “Probably.”

  The Tangle was being smothered.

  “First throw!” Mary called out, pointing with a fresh rifle she’d borrowed.

  Someone threw a grenade. It detonated and didn’t fully divide the blob. As if time had frozen, the mass of water with dust, sticks, small stones and countless splinters stuck in it split, splashing out, and then stopped, the edges blurring and slumping into one another.

  “Second throw!”

  Each detonation made me jump, my teeth rattling enough I worried I’d bite my tongue. The tower-top artillery hadn’t been shooting. Too many of us were too close to the base of the wall to be aimed at, and nobody, Junior included, seemed to be comfortable approaching.

  “Hurry!”

  With the blob divided, our rebels made a break for it. There were eight of them, and two slipped on the slime.

  I jumped forward, reversing the rifle in my hands. Holding the barrel just behind where the bayonet blade was attached to it, I extended the rifle-butt their way. They grabbed it, and I hauled the first one out. The second was grabbed by the people who were mostly clear.

  The Hag Nerve’s slime didn’t pull away so much as it simply stretched out, hampering their movement even once they were free. The girl I’d helped fell as she came more or less free. She hissed as she turned around, so she was sitting instead of lying down.

  “You alright?” I asked.

  She moved her leg around, raising one of her pants legs to expose her calf. Red.

  “Plague?” I asked. I was aware of the change in expressions.

  She shook her head. “Acid. It’s mild. Diluted, but the Hag Nerve grips you. Like an indian burn with something caustic on your hands.”

  “Good to know,” I said. I tried to wrap my head around that, what it meant for us. “How is it to walk on?”

  The Hag Nerve around us was shifting. The divided portion was trying to reconnect, outside the gates and we still had soldiers on the far side of it.

  The Tangle, fighting to find a way to escape, moved at the other side of the gate, dragging itself against the damaged door. The door swung in, and slammed against the frame, hard. More harvesters and a few scattered harvester-riddled bodies were shed, landing around the partially closed set of doors.

  Of the large set of double doors, only half of one of the two doors was now held closed, but it was enough to narrow our exit into the Academy itself. The path beyond—I could see the Primordial Child standing in the puddles and the runoff from gutters. The drains that were supposed to vent out the rain were clogged with Hag-stuff.

  Duncan, Lillian, and Ashton stepped forward to deal with the harvesters and their hosts. Ashton had only a knife, but he did his part, presumably, with his innate abilities.

  Neither of the threats could easily be stopped. Most attempts to wound or stop them would only divide them.

  “Next round, third throw!” Mary called out. Nobody was close enough to get caught in any blast.

  I braced myself. The detonation wasn’t as bad as the two prior ones. A bad throw—the road was raised with ditches on either side, and the explosive had landed on the far slope of the road. If anything, it blew a portion of the blob in our direction.

  But it slipped away, the two halves sliding into the ditches on either side of the road. The rest of our small army was free to follow.

  The Tangle bludgeoned the same partially intact gate door it had struck before, threatening to batter it free of the hinges.

  “The Hag Nerve is neat to look at,” Ashton said, looking back. “That’s nice, at least.”

  “It’s massively inconvenient,” I said. “Can you get the Tangle to move away from the door?”

  “It’s trying and it can’t. It’s all Hagged up,” Ashton said. “Try
harder, Tangle! I’m cheering for you!”

  I looked at Mary, “Do you see Junior?”

  “No sign,” Mary said.

  “I’d hate for him to get cut off,” I said. “Some people should stay behind, keep an eye out for him. I think we can get partway to where we need to be, but this would be a lot easier if we had a good answer.”

  “I’ll handle it, I’ll stay, make sure he has a route. You get as far as you can,” Mary said.

  “I don’t like leaving you behind,” Lillian said.

  “It’s the best way,” Mary responded. “Bea, you and yours with me. That’s—fifteen?”

  “Fifteen,” Bea said. She made a face. “Marcus didn’t make it, Fang couldn’t come. Plague.”

  “Everyone else, with the Lambs,” Mary said.

  “You’ll catch up?” I asked.

  “I’ll catch up,” she said.

  I gave her a lingering look.

  “Look after each other,” Mary said.

  Radham was a city of perpetual rain. Everything was wet, and the Hag Nerve operated by extending itself through that interconnected wet. There was no safe route to take except the high ground, and I knew Radham well enough to know that there wouldn’t be a good way to get from the walls to the places we wanted to be.

  My mental picture of Radham Academy was shifting. A mire, a bog, every step being one we had to fight for.

  “Sy?” Lillian asked.

  “It’s not a very Lamb sort of problem, is it?” I asked, taking in the scene. The Tangle was still close to the door. “It’s… a pretty perfect way to tie our hands. Slow us down, keep us rooted. It would mess with Mauer, too, but it really messes with us.”

  “It’s not great,” Lillian said.

  “Kind of drives home that we’re dealing with Fray and Hayle, who know us,” I said.

  “Kind of,” Duncan said.

  I turned around.

  Mary had her contingent keeping the Hag at bay. They worked to keep it from lapping its way up the slopes that led up to the main road. But there was a large group, otherwise. Our rebels, our soldiers.

  “You guys have weapons, you have tools,” I said. “Our goal is to get up through the Hedge—”

  “The hospital,” Lillian clarified. “We’re actually smack dab in the middle of it. It’s the building to either side and above us, integrated into the wall.”

  “And to the tower,” I said.

  “High ground?” Ashton asked.

  “Yeah, but not for reasons you’re thinking,” I said.

  “The Hedge is going to be defended,” Mary said. She was a distance away, but listening in.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But first, we’ve got to get to the door.”

  “That’s our job?” the Treasurer asked.

  “Please,” I said.

  “Which way is the door?” he asked.

  Lillian pointed. “About a hundred paces.”

  “I think the Tangle won’t come after us,” Ashton said. “But it can’t move further away either.”

  “Grenades first, then,” the Treasurer said. “We’ll need to clear a way, we move in a tight group.”

  “There’ll be enemies on the other side of the door,” I said. “You need to be able to hold out while we work.”

  “Fire?” the Treasurer asked.

  “It’s made of water,” Duncan said.

  “A ring of ignited oil?”

  “I don’t know if we have enough, but yes,” Duncan said.

  “Then it’ll have to do,” I said.

  “Once we move,” Duncan said. “There’ll be no safe ground, no place we can stop where we won’t be fighting.”

  “We get to the Hedge. Then—”

  Then what?

  Claret Hall or the Tower?

  Which would Hayle go to? Claret Hall was technically the headmaster’s office. It was where he could go to coordinate with the rest of his people.

  As Mary had done, the Treasurer was arranging the soldiers into a relay of grenade tosses. We’d stagger them out.

  “Then the Tower,” I said.

  “What are you thinking?” Lillian asked.

  “A message,” I said.

  I punctuated the statement with my signal to the Treasurer.

  “We’ll only have a couple of minutes of oil at best,” Duncan said, as the Treasurer called out. He and Lillian had their bags out. They were examining their stock.

  The first grenade was thrown.

  “Maybe less,” Duncan said. “Whatever you’re going to do, you’ll need to be fast.”

  “I’ll do my be—”

  The explosive detonated. To pass through the gate, we had to pass beneath the nose of the Tangle, which had reared back from the noise and light. We had to move within range of a claw swipe.

  Ashton lingered, while we moved forward as a group. Lillian, Duncan, myself. Jessie and her stitched, the Treasurer, and one rebel with the next grenade. We went around the corner, stepping into the Academy grounds, and I could see the distant door.

  The plan was to move along the wall. A hundred paces. I gauged the amount of space we’d carved out with the first throw.

  Twenty paces. But as hard as we pushed, it was already pushing back. Faster, initially, then slower.

  Those twenty paces shrank to fifteen by the time we were in position. After a minute or five, it might shrink to five or ten.

  We moved fast. Another throw. The rebel who’d thrown didn’t move ahead with us, instead standing with their back tight against the wall.

  It wasn’t the best way to move forward. The explosions drew attention, we carved out little space, we couldn’t stand close to the detonations, and the Hag Nerve was retaking ground.

  There was a window nearby. I had dim recollections, of being on the other side of those windows. When I had my appointments at a young age, before Lillian felt equipped to see to them, I’d had them in the Hedge. In offices and doctor’s rooms. I would be without any Lambs, in pain I didn’t yet know how to deal with, staring out through the bars of my cage.

  The others would make their way forward. They’d buy themselves time with oil and fire.

  I’d get a headstart on my own role in things.

  “Jessie,” I said. “Come with.”

  Lillian and Duncan looked at me with surprise.

  Ashton was Ashton, like Helen had always been Helen.

  “I love you all,” I said. “Make sure Mary doesn’t use Junior’s gas unless she absolutely has to.”

  “What—” Lillian started.

  I grabbed the bars, and I started climbing.

  “Oh. Be safe, Sy.”

  The rain poured down around us, onto the Hag Nerve, onto the Tangle of dead bodies. It drenched an Academy that had gone quiet, making my every move a precarious one, where a finger or the toe of a boot could slip from wet metal.

  Jessie’s stitched followed, after brief direction from Duncan. It was large enough to reach where I had to jump. It managed its slow, inexorable climb, Jessie on its back, piggy-backing it. My climb was more precarious, and I was in a hurry.

  A nice climb was one where I had three points of contact with the wall, two feet and one hand, or both hands and one foot. I could reach with the free limb. This wasn’t a nice climb. There weren’t two points of contact here. There oftentimes wasn’t even one.

  There were gaps between windows large enough that I had to make little jumps, where I touched nothing but air and rain, before reaching out to grab at another set of bars.

  One set would be rusty. Another would rattle as I grabbed it. Another leap had a loose stone in the sill.

  The group below used the weapons we’d brought with us from the ship to carve a way forward. They were just at the door now.

  I spotted what I was looking for. The branches reinforced the wall higher up, grown into the architecture, supporting parts that had started to crumble. Those same branches provided a wealth of handholds and security that stone alone didn’t.

&
nbsp; As multiple sets had overlapped, they made it harder to set up the bars.

  I’d hoped to find a place where Jessie’s stitched could help rip the bars away. I found better. The bars had been done away with entirely on one of the upper floors, where the branches almost completely enclosed one window.

  I worked the window open, slipping a knife through the gap to flip the latch, and I climbed within.

  Patients were arranged on beds. Two were asleep or in too dire a shape to move. Five more were awake. An old woman, one with a long face and her hair curled, glasses making her eyes hard to make out. Two injured men who might have been soldiers. A woman who might have been a mother, sitting in the bed with her child.

  This would be long-term care.

  Water dripped from me as I walked down the row between the beds. “How many doctors on the floor?”

  “Two nurses, they rotate. One is always a shout away,” the old woman said. “Doctors are two shouts away, if something happens.”

  “Hey,” a soldier said. “Quiet now.”

  “He has a knife,” the old woman said. “I’ve come this far. I’d like to live.”

  “The fighting’s over,” I said. I glanced out the window, then leaned out a bit further, waving my arm so the stitched could see.

  “Is it? I hear explosions,” a soldier said.

  “Cutting through the mess,” I said. “The fighting is over, but the outcome hasn’t been decided.”

  “You’re here to influence that outcome?”

  “I’m here to decide,” I said.

  Jessie’s stitched ripped away the branches. I put one hand on Jessie’s arm, holding it, so she wasn’t scraped free & left to fall to the ground far below as the stitched climbed through the window.

  “I’m a soldier,” one of the patients said. He moved like he was going to get out of bed, and I could see the pain on his face.

  I drew my gun. Not for him.

  A nurse came to respond to the sound Jessie’s stitched had made. I pointed the gun at her.

  “The Infante is dead. The armies on all sides have been devastated,” I said. I motioned for the stitched to follow. “The people who got us to this point, myself included, need to get some things out of the way. Either it’s me against them, or all three of us have different opinions on how this should go. Now… where is the man in charge?”