The Blood Groove (Purgatory Wars Book 4)

by Dragon Cobolt

  Go there.

  Kill them.

  Come back.

  It had been her life, for centuries, and she hadn’t minded. She had gotten to fight and fuck and not worry overmuch about where the food would come from.

  What had her mother done? But die?

  Leave her alone?

  Fizit sighed. “Now. Let's find out what we can. Then we can see about killing Ares.”

  The only problem was that the two days of fiddling with the sentry produced nothing but more confusion. Not every image was as clear and well remembered as the three that Liv had first found. A great many were filled with strange smears of light and textures unlike anything she had seen before. Imagine patterns of gray and white dots, intermixed and then shaken rapidly, so that the colors continually fuzzed through one another. It was almost hypnotic but it was also nearly useless.

  Sound, too, was spotty. Several had perfect recreations of sounds and voices. Too perfect, considering the fact that Liv wouldn’t forget the sound of her mother begging for mercy. Ever. But most had no sound at all. Some had sound that seemed to come from the bottom of a deep well, or was filled with unearthly screeches and howls and whistles and pops and rattling noises.

  They sifted through this information while eating through the last of their rations, but it only left Liv more confused.

  Apart from Liam's appearance, the the sentry only seemed to be interested in elves - and in an extremely morbid way. There were dozens of fragmentary images that showed elves being killed or dying. Some of sickness, most of violence.

  Liv hadn't recognised any of them, except Ares, who appeared in three images. The first was...

  The first she knew.

  The second showed Ares stepping into a ruined chamber. He looked around himself, nodded smugly, and then walked over to a large chunk of crystal. His hand touched the crystal, which started to glow a pale blue. Then the image fuzzed into useless.

  The last one was the only one that had given them any hint as to what had changed in Ares. It was five minutes long and most of it was a silent view of a doorway in a chamber that was dominated by several rectangular plinths. All but one were empty – the one that held anything at all contained what seemed to be a silvery skullcap. Liv had planned to leave after the first minute, but Fizit forced her to sit with a glower and a snap of her teeth. Over time, the door had started to crumple inwards. Then, finally, it exploded.

  If there had been sound, Liv realized, she’d have been hearing the battering.

  Ares walked into the ruined chamber, flanked by two hoplites. They looked like a scouting party, dressed in only light armor. Ares looked around the chamber, shook his head. His mouth moved and Liv thought he was ordering the hoplites to head back outside. Then his eyes fell on the helmet. He picked it up, eyed it.

  His mouth moved but the angle was bad.

  “He’s not going to put that on, is he?” Fizit asked.

  “Why? What is it?”

  “It’s an ancient artifact,” Fizit said. “I don’t know if you remember, but for most of Purgatory’s history, ancient artifacts killed people.”

  Liv snorted. “Well, I mean, their shrines tended to kill people.” She remembered a few men she had lost while trying to kill Liam as he fled with Tethis and Meg into a teleport shrine.

  Ares put the helmet on.

  Then he fell to his knees, his mouth open in a silent scream. His body arched and he started to flicker with flames. Literal flames – they burst into being around his body. His armor turned to slag and dripped off his form as his clothes scorched away. The only thing unaffected was his skin, which seemed unharmed, even as molten bronze dripped along his belly and off his balls. He writhed on the floor, still screaming.

  “Holy shit, this is awesome,” Liv whispered, grinning.

  Fizit glanced at her.

  The flames faded and then the image turned into a jagged mirror. It shattered into the white fuzz that meant that the sentry was confused or had forgotten or something.

  Liv scowled. “Come on! Did he die or what?”

  “I don’t think he died,” Fizit said. “I think that? That was the moment it changed. And more?” She looked at her. “It was a year ago.”

  Liv blinked. “How the fuck did you figure that out?”

  Fizit sighed. “I used my eyes. Come on. Let's get back to New Athens.”

  It had taken the entire trip down the mountain for Liv to finally get Fizit to explain how she had figured it out. Snooty bitch. She had said that there were symbols she spotted in each image – they were placed right next to the main ‘interface’ (that was the word Liam had used for that kinda thing on his iPhone at least.) Apparently, she had compared the symbols every time she had had a specific date and the numbering for Liam’s arrival and the numbering for Ares’ change were so close as to be nearly identical.

  “I think Liam’s arrival came after. Barely,” Fizit said.

  That had given Liv a lot to think about.

  Which was the problem.

  She didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to wait in a camp, hunting for food and drinking water from a stream while considering history and her own outrage. She wanted to plunge a spear through Ares eye socket and have that be that.

  “You okay?” Fizit asked, breaking Liv out of her memories.

  “No,” Liv said.

  Fizit shook her head. “Have you noticed the clouds?”

  Liv’s brow furrowed. The past few days had been quite sunny and hot. No sign of storms or anything. But now that Fizit mentioned it, she had noticed clouds. But they had been distant enough that her brain had filed them away as being unimportant. She craned her head backwards. The sun shone overhead – and there was a cloud streaming out from behind it. Not impossible. Save that the angle looked wrong. Clouds tended to clump close to the ground on the other side of Purgatory. This cloud seemed to be billowing from behind the sun, as if someone had started boiling water by flinging it at the surface of the sun.

  “That...” She paused, groping for words.

  “Is fucking weird?” Fizit suggested.

  Liv nodded.

  “That’s one word for it.” She did some mental math. “That’s got to be directly over Babylon.”

  “Has to be,” Fizit said. “According to Brax, before I left, spies were reporting that nothing much was happening.” She frowned. “If Loki’s not behind subverting my spy network, I am going to be pissed off at Tark.”

  “What if Loki is behind it?”

  “Then I hope Tark’s alive,” Fizit said, shaking her head. “Still. There’s nothing in the world quite as shit as not knowing what is going on.”

  “Liam’s probably going to do something stupid and suicidally dangerous,” Liv muttered, poking at the fire in the camp.

  “I doubt that he’s putting himself in danger. He’s a king now,” Fizit said. “King’s don’t do that.”

  ***

  “And if you die?” Neb asked, her tail lashing from side to side.

  “Liam is not going to die,” Meg said, glaring at the nervous looking jackalgirl. “If he does, I’m killing him.”

  “But Babylon needs a leader,” Neb said. “And you should at least take the secondary convoy, the one over the ocean. The safer one.”

  Liam chuckled as he stood on the entrance to the wooden construct. It wasn’t the first off the production line – the first few had been carefully smuggled out of the city to be tested in the desert, far from prying eyes. The first few had also crashed. But Liam was studiously not thinking about that. Instead, he just smiled at Neb.

  “If I die, then Meg kills me, and then they have a new election. I have faith in Babylon’s democracy.” He nodded. “I got to be here. This is a frightening thing to ask of any man or woman who serves under me.”

  Meg snickered quietly.

  Liam ignored her. “I have to be with them,” he said, his voice firm.

  When he stepped into the construct, he saw the others who wo
uld be going up. Each construct had ten seats and room for their supplies – carefully packed rations, Minié balls and gunpowder. Each Cross Guard wore their uniform - a concept unknown in Purgatory, save for a few small mercenary units, or symbols painted on shields. Liam hoped that the sight of the Cross Guard in their white tunics with the red cross – the full Cross Guard, the trained Cross Guard – would put some fear in the bad guy’s hearts.

  Once he was seated next to one of the soldiers – a lilin girl who smiled at him – he called out, “Take us up!”

  Meg had demanded to be on the line for this transport. She and three other valkyrie took hold of the hawsers, then started to beat their wings in unison. As the transport shuddered and started to move up, the lilin hissed to Liam.

  “Are we sure they won’t drop us?”

  Liam chuckled. “Mary,” he said, speaking loudly enough that everyone in the transport could hear him. “Mary’s seen to that.”

  It had actually been an idea each of them had contributed to – him, Meg and Mary, after one of their late night semi-regular threesomes, had all discussed the problem. Skyheart – driven by the bitterness of two generations of his family turning on him – had definitely been the most extreme, but a general sense that landlings weren’t actually people remained among the valks, even if they were following Meg. Though part of that might have been the fact Meg had already kicked the asses of two challengers before the week had ended.

  So, when the project started, and the valks started to work directly with Babylon’s artisans, Meg and Mary worked together to pick the artisans they needed. Not the best artisans. The work hadn't really required skill. It just needed a complete lack of fear, the ability to follow the instructions Neb had printed in bulk on broadsheets for the workers, and the ability to trust in valkyries.

  Meg had picked those who were without fear.

  Mary had picked those who were personable. Charming.

  “F-fuckable,” Mary had admitted after Liam had eaten her out. “I also picked the ones t-that were, uh, fuckable!”

  Liam grinned at the Cross Guard looking at them. “You know these valk that are carrying us up? Half of them are marrying landlings once this war’s over. The rest have already done it.” He chuckled.

  Nothing like workplace relationships.

  It wouldn’t fix the problem. He was sure there were still valks who grumbled and muttered to one another about landlings. He was sure in seventy or so years, they’d be back in full strength. But for now, things were settled.

  The Cross Guard laughed, looking relieved.

  And Liam could settle back into his primary job of not looking utterly terrified.

  Because he was.

  This entire idea had seemed very clever when he had come up with it months ago. Now, sitting in the first transport to be taken up, he was beginning to really grasp just how nuts this was. They were contained in a glider, roughly the half the size as a Greek trireme, built out of the thinnest, lightest wood that could still hold a frame. The wings were based off the same designs that Liam had brought on his iPod, and they had been tested.

  It’d glide just fine.

  Rather than having a tow-cable and an airplane, though, the glider was being dragged upwards by four valkyrie. Other gliders were going up at the same time, but Liam’s had launched first. And as they rose up into the air, Liam started to breathe more and more. He felt like he had been jogging in place – and his head spun. He called out to the rest of the Cross Guard.

  “It’ll pass – height sickness passes soon. Don’t worry.”

  One of the Guard groaned quietly.

  The glider rose.

  The air thinned.

  And then lightness that Liam had only felt twice before came to him. But rather than falling off a cliff-side or tumbling off a city wall, this time the lightness wouldn’t end with a bunch of snapped bones. Then the glider shuddered and he heard Meg’s voice – slightly attenuated by the thin air – come through the wall. “You’re in place!”

  Liam laughed. “Now we wait,” he said, grinning at the others.

  The rest of the Cross Guard looked deeply queasy. Humans and lilin were worst off up here. Elves handled it slightly better. Goblins showed no sign of getting sick in microgravity, lucky them.

  Liam himself just focused on not vomiting in front of the troops.

  The gliders were dragged upwards in stages – the valkyrie working quickly and en masse. Four to a glider, five hundred and thirty four valkyrie alternating as quickly as possible, meant a hundred and thirty three gliders every trip. The shipwrights had been given some assistance when it came to building the gliders. Materials had been brought along the coast as fast as Ra could cut the trees down and ship them, while the guilds of magicians and alchemists shared secrets they had once kept dear to their chests.

  All with the goal of building as many gliders as quickly as possible.

  Ten soldiers to a glider.

  Ten thousand men and women – some from Babylon, some from beyond: Aesir, Hellenes, Coptics, Tuatha. They had come and they had been drilled in the simple mechanics of gunpowder warfare. Listen to your orders. Stand your ground. Reload. Fire.

  A thousand gliders. Each one piloted by a man or woman given a crash course – bad phrasing, that, Liam thought – as the other gliders were built.

  It sounded like a lot to be dragged upwards to the place where the sun’s gravity and the gravity of Purgatory canceled one another out and something could ‘orbit’ safely. But when you had five hundred valkyrie, a mountain could come to Mohammad. Or, at the very least, be carted there on wheelbarrows. Liam closed his eyes and wished for a window.

  But glass was expensive. There was only enough for a single slit for the pilot.

  Liam could only imagine what was above them.

  In the simplest term, it was a heat shield to end all heat shields. The sun was four times hotter here than it was on the surface of Purgatory. Hot enough to burn wood and crisp sails and cook men and women alike. The valks wore amulets of Ra, which protected them from the heat. But for the gliders and the Cross Guard there was the heat shield. The design was simple: ceramic tiles, layered atop one another, enchanted with the same kind of magic Tethis had used to channel heat. That heat was dumped right back into the kilns to make more pottery. Water, dredged from the ocean, purified of salt, and then dumped onto the heat shield by teams of valkyrie completed the chilling effect needed to keep the shield intact and protect the gliders beneath.

  And best of all?

  It covered the whole construction with a cloud of steam.

  After three hours, the sounds of the valks flying around changed slightly. Liam grinned slightly, opening his eyes. “Everyone, get ready.”

  ***

  Meg beat backwards and away from the heat shield. The amulet hanging around her neck prevented the heat from being killing but it didn’t stop her from sweating buckets. She had never felt quite so tired. But she had never been so elated, either. This was something new in the world. The gods had helped along the edges, but the basics? The real guts of the work?

  All of it had been done by mortals. Mortals had made the clay, mortals had assembled the heat shield, mortals had risked their lives. Though, amazingly, none had died. Several had come close, but valks had managed to catch all of them before they tumbled out of the area of microgravity. And now there were a thousand gliders mounted to the heat shield – wings touching one another. The only thing that ruined the moment was the fact it was night.

  She tried to imagine what it would look like during the day with the sun shining off the heat shield and every glider glowing with reflected light. She shook her head, squared her shoulders, and called out,“Wings! To flank! Go!”

  The tribe beat their wings and men and women soared past her, flying around to the left end of the heat shield. They each wore gauntlets – thick hawser ropes were great at ripping up palms, so hand guards and gloved had been required. They came in handy here. Dozen
s of bronze bars thrust from the left flank of the heat shield, providing a place for the valks to grab – then start to push. And push.

  And push.

  Liam had explained this carefully when the plan was first being hashed out.

  Weight was a function of mass and gravity. Take the gravity away, the weight was gone but the mass remained. It took energy to move mass, even if there was limited friction. Each beat of the wings caused the whole heat shield to groan quietly – and to move.

  Meg grinned, her own wings starting to strain.

  “Come on!” she shouted. “We’ve got this!”

  The heat shield and the glider army took four hours to move from the space above Babylon to New Athens.

  A flight that normally took days, if not weeks, in a matter of hours.

  Sunchaser – who was on the push-bar next to Meg – beamed at her. “Think this counts as the straight shot?” he asked, gasping and panting, his whole body quivering.

  “No,” Meg said. “But it’ll be close enough.”

  She pulled a crystal from her belt pouch.

  Snapped it.

  And the magical charges in a thousand wooden mooring posts went off. Tiny blasts of gunpowder rang out and each glider dropped away from the heat shield. They started to fall forward, their wings spread out wide. Their pilots guided them forward into the darkness, their rears suddenly illuminated by mage lights, so that each could follow the other behind it. They swooped into the darkness of Purgatory’s night.

  Meg panted.

  Now was time for the hard part.

  ***

  Liam clung to the side of the glider – feeling weight returning to him. The lilin next to him vomited on the floor. He patted her back one handed.

  A goblin behind him whooped.

  Then the turbulence faded. The atmosphere grew thick enough that the wings were able to catch it. The air was filled with the sound of creaking wings and groaning wood. Liam’s mouth felt dry. He was aware they were falling – soaring, not falling – towards the chosen battlefield. But he didn’t know if his glider was going to be the one that crashed.