He felt a tiny grip and saw Poppy had joined him, wanting to hold his hand as she surveyed the carnage. For a moment he watched its effect upon her face. Watched her eyes twitch as they darted here and there. Watched her grimace as they passed through a pall of smoke that carried a pungent shock of charring flesh and bone.
At last, miraculously, they saw the end of Jaspar’s dragon line coming into view. As Carnelian turned, he caught the incredulous glances of his Hands before they ducked their heads. He understood their consternation: they had seen a Master holding hands with a barbarian girl. He disengaged Poppy’s grip and asked her to go back to sit beside the homunculus. She made her way past his Righthand, and Carnelian returned to his chair.
As they approached the last enemy dragon, he slowed Earth-is-Strong and turned her so that her pipes could play their fire upon the creature and its tower. As they circled round its flank, other arcs of flame, from the dragons following him, fell on the same target. The bone tower blackened, charred and fiery mouths began opening into the decks within. He grimaced, imagining the crew’s fiery hell. Fire pouring down over its flanks and head, the enemy dragon screeched and tossed its head, yanking violently against the tyranny of its tower. With an audible crack its golden horn snapped, its tip flashing as it spun away upon its chain.
‘Look,’ cried Poppy.
Somehow she had crept back to the screen. The alarm on her face brought him quickly to her side. She pointed her thin arm through the screen. Peering at where she indicated, Carnelian could not at first see anything but smoke billows and dust rolling red over the land. But occasional ragged openings tore in the palls, through which Carnelian glimpsed masses, shapes that his mind resolved. Hornwalls, their circles squeezed out of shape by the pressure of attacks. He felt his blood draining to his feet. Unbelievable victory had made him forget their people on the ground. His first instinct was to take his dragons to their aid. Then at the edge of his vision he saw, to starboard, the vast movement of Jaspar’s dragons in flight, aflame. They were heading straight for Fern’s wing.
A thunderclap hurled Carnelian against the cabin wall. It was a moment before he could make sense of anything. A ragged hole had been torn in the starboard screen. Through it he saw an incandescent mass tumbling earthwards, streaming smoke. The enemy tower had exploded. Then he saw Poppy lying on the deck and surged forward, stooping to lift her. Stillness came upon him, deafness. She was dead, but then she stirred and the cacophony returned, though there was now a hissing in his ears. Poppy looked at him; she was only stunned. He gestured the homunculus to look after her, then threw himself into his command chair. He had his Lefthand flash a message to his dragons, commanding them to turn inwards towards the centre and herd Jaspar’s fleeing dragons into the open space between their aquar wings.
LIKE A TREE
A passion for permanence
Is nothing more than a fear of death.
Everything changes.
The wise man lets go.
(a Quyan fragment)
LURID FIRES SMOULDERED IN DEPRESSIONS IN THE GROUND. THE EARTH was everywhere ploughed up. A drifting mist of smoke and dust tearing across his vision made Carnelian cough behind his mask. At least he had its filters. The dozen or so men he had brought with him were squinting, stumbling around him, wheezing, grimacing, their swords drooping from their hands. Ahead, through the miasma, Carnelian could make out a swathe running east to west that looked like a ridge of debris washed up by a tide of tar. Peering through the eyeslits of his mask, he could make out furtive movements suggesting something there was still alive. He regarded them with more horror than hope. How could anyone have survived that firestorm or the stampede of dragons enraged by their own flesh burning? Though he had managed to herd his half of Jaspar’s dragons away from Fern’s wing into the open space to the west, Osidian’s attack had driven the other half directly into Lily’s wing.
As Carnelian plodded closer each step was more reluctant than the last. He did not want to see, but had no choice. Lily might be there somewhere, still alive. Looking west along the curve of carnage, it was obvious none of her wing had escaped the dragon tidal wave. Even the mounted auxiliaries of their left flank had been overwhelmed. An arc of smoke and dust running from the south round to the north-west showed where Osidian was still carrying on a relentless pursuit. With its flashes of dragonfire, its black angry clouds, it seemed a receding thunderstorm. Carnelian could still feel its tremor in the earth, but there was another, deeper thunder. A slow, rhythmic pounding. He glanced round and saw Earth-is-Strong following him, churning up spiralling tatters of dust, sheets of smoke tearing on her horns, her tower a pale slab upon her back. Her brassman, hanging open, was dangling the rope ladder that danced in time with the monster’s tread. He had left his Hands in charge and told them to follow him at a distance, vigilant for any command he should send them by means of the mirrorman he had brought with him. Poppy was up there. He had had to forbid her to accompany him, putting her in the keeping of the homunculus, whom she had come to respect.
Behind the dragon, dust was fluttering off in russet banners from a ridge moving south-east towards their camp. No smoke there and it was closer to the ground, Fern’s wing riding down the Ichorian aquar who had broken even as Carnelian turned their burning dragons away from them. Perhaps it had been the explosion of the tower, perhaps the flames and smoke and smoulder burning all along their line that had made the Ichorians flee. Carnelian suppressed a fear that Fern and his Lepers and auxiliaries might yet find the Bloodguard more than a match for them. Before he had had a chance to make a choice, they had already sped too far away for him to intervene. So he had detached Earth-is-Strong from the pursuit and turned her towards Lily and the left wing to see what he could do there.
A whiff of burnt flesh made him return his attention to what lay ahead. How could anything in that black strand have survived?
As the miasma cleared, Carnelian saw he had reached the dead. His gaze flitted across the charred carpet of mangled men and aquar hoping not to see anything clearly, but so much blood and shit had soaked the earth it had become too wet to rise as dust. He looked back to where Earth-is-Strong loomed, wreathed in smoke. The rest of the world seemed insubstantial in comparison with the reality at his back. He turned slowly until the edge of the carnage came into view in the corner of his left eyeslit. Most likely, Lily would lie somewhere at the end of that forbidding curve. He began walking. He stopped. ‘Too easy,’ he muttered. He spied what seemed a rock rising from that dark surf. Pale it was, though blackened by the tide. Finding a dark path slicing away through the dead, he set off along it, hardly aware of his attendants lurching after him. He kept his head down, walking around the smoking boulders that were strewn all along the path. It intersected another. Lifting his head, he determined which seemed more likely to lead him to the rock. As he watched his feet, he became aware that the path he walked must be an arc branded into the earth by a scything flame-pipe. The organic shapes of the boulders were threatening to become limbs and torsos and heads. He pressed on, switching naphtha paths, his pale-leathered feet blackening.
He came to a depression filled with brown paste. Its rim of limbs made it seem the remains of some gigantic crab a vast footfall had crushed. Then he saw a torso rising from it: a bag whose contents had been squeezed out to add to the paste. The vomit rose and he struggled to release his mask. Too late. His stomach pumped acid against the barrier of his mask. Vomit thrust up into his nose and oozed out under the chin. Stinging, it choked him. The mask came loose and he almost flung it away. With his free hands he scraped the filth from his face, blew his nostrils clean and gulped at the air. The noisome miasma was so thickened by the stench of decay his lungs clamped tight. Tears in his eyes, blinked clear. He was confronted by the crazed skull-grin of a face stripped by fire of its nose and lips. He doubled over and pumped more vomit out on the ground. His mask was digging into his hand. He glanced at it and saw its gold lips were rouged with filth. He pu
lled his cowl down over his face and cautiously looked round. The crewmen were all either being sick or reeling, sickly pale, staring blindly. He began to move on, and they staggered after him.
He walked through that realm of filth and death, his stomach clenching in dry heaves. His gaze darted from horror to horror, but there was always more. What steadied his steps was the discovery that some still lived among the dead. Of these, most had faces already greyed with death, but others looked as if they might survive. It gave him a focus: the hope of salvaging something from this atrocity.
At last he came to a region where the irregular contours of the dead gave way to rings. There the Lepers lay fallen in the hornwalls he had taught them to make. Rimmed by the ridged leather cuirasses of the half-tattooed Ichorians, the Leper formations were still unbroken. He felt a manic pride that they had withstood the Ichorian onslaught.
He reached his beacon rock and found it to be a ruined dragon tower heeled over on its roof. Its mast, now a splintered stump, propped it up. Charred and shattered, in places its bone walls had blistered, exposing its decks, spilling its entrails of pipes and ropes and furnaces. The wreck lay in an ooze of naphtha like black blood. Raising his eyes, Carnelian saw the trail of carnage the tower had made as it rolled to a halt and realized he had witnessed its meteor fall. As far as he could see, the earth was clothed by the dead and dying. A moaning exhaling from many throats stirred in him again the need to save those he could.
It was the pale corona of her hair that showed him where she lay. An Ichorian corpse half covering her had torn the shrouds from her head. Carnelian took hold of the man’s black-tattooed arm, then rolled him off. He gaped at Lily. Between her legs a still wet welling of blood glued her shrouds to her thighs and oozed out to join the gore soaking the earth so that, for a moment, it seemed it was her menstruation that had flooded the battlefield. He crouched and, gingerly, pulled aside the cloth looking for a wound. The flesh below was rosy, but whole. The blood was not hers. He moved up her body, peering into her face, smearing red finger-marks on her white hair as he carefully turned her head. A bruise there was already blackening, but under it her skull seemed unbroken. He let go of her as she groaned, eyelids fluttering open. Her ruby eyes stared at him. She frowned in a way that suggested she was not sure what she was seeing.
‘It’s me, Lily.’
Her hands fumbled at him, pushing him away. She sat up, staring around her, confused. There was a lack of comprehension in her eyes as she gazed upon the blacks and scarlets of the Ichorians interleaved with the greys of her people patterning the earth as far as she could see.
A vibration was approaching like a downpour. Lifting his head, Carnelian saw a wall of dust sweeping towards them. He offered her his hand. She took it. Carefully he pulled her up. He watched with concern as she stood, shakily, then together they turned to meet the riders.
The wall of dust began collapsing as it scudded thinning away into the north-east. A mass of riders were revealed scraping to a halt. A few of them were still coming on. When they reached the edge of the fallen they dismounted. Carnelian recognized Fern by his height and gait. He looked for and found, with relief, Krow at his side. As Fern drew closer Carnelian began to notice how dark his hands were, how stained his sleeves. Brown swathes across his chest and his right shoulder. Across his face. Dried blood – though, by the way he moved, not his own. His eyes seemed over-bright in his blood-crusted face as he took in the scale of the carnage. At last his gaze fell on Lily. ‘Are you hurt?’
She did not answer, still blind with shock. Krow had thrown back his cowl. His shrouds too were bloodstained, but only as if he had been too close when Fern had dived into a lake of blood. The rest of their companions were the same; all were staring around them at the dead. Carnelian gazed at Fern. ‘You’ve defeated the Bloodguard?’
Fern refused to look at him. Krow, gazing at him, had pity in his face, but also anger. ‘We drove them onto the road and there, against its wall, we butchered them.’
The skin around the youth’s eyes twitched as if he were seeing it again. Carnelian considered Fern’s averted gaze, wondering what it was Krow was not saying; then Fern glanced up at him and Carnelian knew how it had been. Fern’s shame connected with his own. He understood Krow’s expression. What had just happened was bound up with the massacre of the Ochre. Carnelian knew that Fern had reason to hate the Bloodguard. One of them had killed his father. It was that death and the woundings suffered that day on the road that had led to Carnelian and Osidian being taken into the Earthsky and, ultimately, to the massacre of the Ochre. Still, what a lone Ichorian had done back then could not justify such merciless destruction of his fellows; Carnelian knew in his heart that the rage Fern had unleashed on them should have fallen on Osidian, perhaps even upon himself. And now Fern recognized that he had acted like Osidian: unable to take revenge on those he truly hated, he had vented his fury on those within reach. Almost Carnelian said: But it’s different; Osidian acted in cold blood. He held his tongue. Even if he had wanted to condone massacre, Fern was in no way prepared to hear it condoned. He sought in vain for a way to offer comfort. Finally, it was his heart that spoke. ‘Fern, among this mess many are still alive. Get your men to come and search with us for those we can take back to camp. As for the dying, we can at least release them from suffering.’
Fern and Carnelian connected, wordlessly, but in a way that threatened to overwhelm them with pain. The Plainsman turned and strode back towards his men. Krow jerked Carnelian a nod and a pale smile, then followed him.
Smoke from the burning Marula dead drifted above the camp, smearing out the stars. Their casualties had been relatively light, but Carnelian, sitting at Lily’s side unmasked, was concerned Sthax’s body might be in that pyre. Morunasa had survived; Carnelian had seen him moving among his people.
Consternation among Aurum’s auxiliaries was now spreading to the Lepers. Carnelian glanced round, wearily. What he saw caused him to jump up and cover his face with his mask. Darkness was rolling towards them from the west. His heart pounded as he waited. Vast black shapes were looming up out of the night. If these were dragons the whole camp lay defenceless before them. As the campfire light found horns and bellies, their towers too became clearer. Carnelian counted their tiers, then released a sigh.
‘They’re ours,’ said Krow.
Carnelian announced he must go and talk to the Master and would be back when he could, gave Lily one last look of concern, then made for the watch-tower.
When the two Masters walked out onto Heart-of-Thunder’s brassman, Carnelian’s immediate impression was that the one holding a staff must be Osidian. The weakness evident in the other’s gait seemed more characteristic of Aurum, but as he watched them climb to the leftway, he realized the stronger of the two was Aurum.
Slightly hunched, Osidian raised his mask to Carnelian. ‘You left your legion leaderless, my Lord.’
‘Was I needed for what remained? I assumed you could handle the pursuit without my help. Is Jaspar dead?’
It was Aurum who answered. ‘Whether he is or not makes no difference. Even if he has survived, the stump that is all he has left of the Ichorian poses little threat to us.’
Carnelian regarded the old Lord. Though he still walked with his staff, he no longer leaned on it. He seemed taller and much more like the man who had come to the island. Even his voice had regained its brazen resonance.
Osidian’s hand flew up, shaping a ragged sign: Silence! ‘You left your appointed place, my Lord.’
Carnelian was in no mood to apologize for anything. ‘I sought to do what could be done for our left wing that you caused to be trampled and incinerated by the fleeing huimur.’
‘The destruction of our enemy was my prime concern,’ Osidian said, icily.
‘As it was mine; however, I still managed to direct the flight away from my wing.’ He extended his hand, inviting Osidian to gaze over the camp. It was clear just how many fewer campfires there were than there
had been before the battle. It would have been still fewer had he not brought back the wounded. His heart lingered on how the life seemed to have gone out of Lily and sadness quenched his anger. He turned to Osidian. ‘Was all this carnage worthwhile?’
‘With Imago’s failure, my mother will fall. The Great who supported her in this perilous adventure will be discredited. The Wise, already weakened, will be only too aware of what damage we could do to them should we reveal the part they played in this. This defeat is as much theirs as it is my mother’s. The Powers have no choice but to negotiate with me. Even were they not in disarray, they cannot be unaware of how exposed they are to my threat.’
‘You intend, then, that we shall march upon Osrakum?’
Osidian sketched a vague gesture. ‘I do not believe it will come to that. Once they learn of my victory, they will be able to read the board as well as I.’
Carnelian pondered this. ‘How do you intend to communicate the news to them?’
For answer Osidian raised his arm, slowly. ‘I shall send them this and its brothers.’
Hanging from his trembling fingers, a thick band of metal caught the light. It seemed a bracelet, but if so, for an arm of a girth greater even than a Master’s. A waft of iron coming off it made Carnelian look closer. Surely it was gold? He noticed the rings threaded onto its curve. Sliders. A legionary collar, then, with three broken, zero rings.
Aurum’s mask glinted in his cowl. ‘It belonged to a huimur commander. Our commanders will bring us the rest. The Lesser Chosen have little love for the Ichorians.’
Carnelian regarded the trophy. Without the skills the Wise jealously guarded there was but one way it could have been removed from its wearer’s neck.
As he followed Osidian and Aurum into the watch-tower, Carnelian glanced towards the stables ramp. It was the way back to his people and poor Lily. He yearned to be with them, but knew he was too conflicted. His confidence that the victory justified the blood price was ebbing. They would look after each other.
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