For ten minutes, Beami continued at her task, her cloak billowing around her. She dared not stop to examine the hulk of metal now towering immediately before the shoreline.
There, that was the last of them.
She took several more deep breaths – and fled.
As she ran she heard the ship doors opening, the sound of them lowering to strike the stone quay, then the clanking of footsteps across a metal bridge. Things crawled out from inside, unnatural creatures with shells. Whatever they were, they were armed and came skittering across the quay towards her, towards the city, pouring out of the boats as if they’d sprung some vile kind of leak.
Deep breaths, remember.
There were shouts and cries from within the city, people beginning to react to this sight. An arrow whipped through the air from somewhere deeper in the city, and she prayed that the soldiers would not come forward to meet the invaders in combat, not yet.
Patience.
She crouched to plant the detonation device as one of the creatures scuttled forward, now only twenty feet away from her. With her heartbeats slamming in her mouth, she waited for as many of these things as possible to descend onto the harbour front. A subtle twist of her hand, and she set off her chain of devices.
A web of purple light shot out across the quayside. In an instant the harbour front ripped into the sky.
Cobbles exploded upwards all along its length and the aliens began to scream, unnatural and piercing, suffering under such an almighty display of her cultist power.
Deep breaths.
A brutal hail of stone fragments slammed down around her, and she ran further along the street to take shelter in a doorway. Ripped body parts and portions of exoskeleton clattered along behind her, coating the road with blood. A rumel head, severed by the blast, spun towards her and finally fell still, eyeing her reproachfully.
Suddenly she could sense the underpinning cohesion of the ground begin to fall apart, and she realized that she needed to escape. Dashing through successive street junctions, her cloak flapping around, she kept glancing back, but none of the unnatural invaders seemed about to catch her.
She turned to witness the next phase of her handiwork while nestling in the shelter of a narrow alleyway.
A terraced row of housing shook and leaned over in a surreal fashion, then fell forwards as if the buildings themselves were drunk, smothering any enemy left standing from the first assault.
Masonry dust and smoke obscured the scene, and when it partially cleared it revealed that hundreds of the creatures had been massacred – with no cost to civilian life. Beami felt an adrenalin rush at having for a moment halted the invasion, so she did not quite understand why she was crying and shaking.
Lupus burst through the smoke, still on horseback, and in silence he hauled her up behind him. She clasped her hands around his waist, and with her cheek pressed up against his back they rode off to the sanctuary of the Citadel, through gathering numbers of soldiers shifting forward to form a line of defence.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Abaris and Ramon sauntering slowly back the way she had come.
Into the Citadel and towards one of the broad arches surrounding the quadrangle. Lupus dismounted, helped her down, handed his horse over to a comrade. He lowered her onto a chair in a side room and wrapped her carefully in a blanket.
Beami was febrile and tears drenched her face, though she had stopped crying now.
‘Beami, I’m stunned by what you did,’ he whispered, his tone full of admiration.
But his words, like all other sounds, seemed so thick and distant.
As they strolled along the street, crowds of soldiers brushing past them, Abaris clasped the hand of his long-term lover, Ramon.
‘We are at war now, my dear,’ Abaris informed him. Above the helmeted heads of soldiers from the Regiment of Foot, he could see the metal hulls of the invading fleet. ‘Are you ready to work your hoodoo?’
Ramon reached under his vast black cloak to where, fastened on his left hip, were two animation relics he had designed himself. They were like hand-held metal dream-catchers, each consisting of a brass circular rim about a handspan across, filled with fine webbing and decorative muscovite mica. They were called Eigi, and one in each hand would suffice for these numbers. Abaris looked for a vantage point, and gestured to Ramon that they should climb the external steps of a three-storey whitewashed building just up ahead.
They proceeded slowly through the mass of soldiers, and then upwards, to the flat roof, where they enjoyed a spectacular view of the potential battleground. Extending out among the roofs either side of them were dozens of archers garbed in the green and brown uniform of the Dragoons, and they were firing remorselessly downwards. Now and then a runner would come by to dump a fully stocked quiver beside them, collecting the empty ones for refilling.
The rows of houses just in front had collapsed where that marvellous Beami woman had been at work. Most impressive, Abaris concluded, to be able to have such an impact. Such a wonderful use of cultism with Brenna-based devices to disassemble the natural world. He was not one for that side of their business, but could appreciate a well-devised relic when he saw one.
Below, the battle surged, violently loud. In thick trails of metal-covered flesh, the Empire’s regiments pooled into the streets heaped with rubble and debris from earlier. The two forces clashed awkwardly over such terrain. The grey ships – constructed from no element Abaris knew of – loomed vast and smooth and featureless. The so-called Okun came clambering out of the large holds, but struggled to achieve mass due to the destruction all around. And Abaris noted there were rumel following – red-skinned warriors with black armour, stepping more cautiously over the pulp of the dead.
The dead . . .
Foot soldiers piled in, thick rows of bodies that seemed too close together to manoeuvre – and the front lines were downed, men ripped apart by sabre or shredded by claw. More filled in behind – this was like a well of the future dead. At the rear came several lines of Dragoons on horseback, equipped with lances and maces – an odd tactic to use them so early, Abaris thought. They soon found themselves at the front, and fared fractionally better, the animals trampling down Okun, maces smashing the shells and cracking them open. Troop movements were fluid. Horses began to fall in that horrific silent manner. Abaris seemed so detached from it all up here, viewing the theatre of war from this distance. Dying screams and bellowed commands blurred into incoherency. People were dying without any context. Both cultists were familiar enough with death, but on this scale, it was something else, and they had to wait long enough for there to be sufficient numbers of dead to make what they intended to do worthwhile.
‘Let us begin, dear,’ Abaris declared, and Ramon held up the two Eigi.
Abaris reached beneath his cloak to retrieve the chargers, and slotted them into the handles of the devices Ramon was carrying. He took one of the relics himself.
Side by side, catching bemused glances from nearby archers, Abaris and Ramon watched as a soft light descended down to the carnage. Soldiers fought on, and in peripheral glances he could see someone’s arm being severed; another’s organs strewn up against a wall; a severed female head impaled on a shattered window frame.
And in the mass of the enemy pouring onto the streets, there was utter disarray. Rumel shouted in incomprehensible tongues, suggesting to Abaris that they were commanding other creatures. There was a noticeable alteration in the enemy’s mood.
It took a while for the pieces to aggregate, but they did, as they always would . . . Limbs began to coalesce. Arms to feet to flanks of thigh, ribcages woven around organs, fragments of tibia and humerus and femur melding. A slick and glistening thing began to rise up behind the invaders, and glared around with two eyes made from skulls. Its silhouette was that of a single giant, but this was not one creature, it was dozens.
The amalgamated flesh of the dead had become alive once more.
It scooped up
more of the carcasses of soldiers, and pasted them to its body, lathering on the blood. Hunched yet taller than any of the surrounding buildings, it lumbered slowly along the streets, Abaris and Ramon controlling it through strings of light. They sensed its abilities, perfected its movements, tentatively exploring what it could and could not do. As it shambled in a line towards them, the cultists shifted further along the rooftop to maintain a panoramic view.
A massive macabre marionette.
The thrill of it was shared by both the necromancers, as they exchanged knowing glances, not needing to voice their own awe.
They put it into action.
The monstrosity bent down awkwardly and swiped away red-skinned rumel soldiers then, one by one, gripped the Okun in its massive surrogate fist and forcefully imploded them. Victims perished, their oozing remnants offering it material for augmenting its growth on this plane of existence.
As it swung its arms they ripped off the parapets of buildings, sent roof tiles skidding into enemy lines amid a shower of masonry. Then it marched into the invaders with apparent glee.
Okun forces began to focus on their attacker, and relentlessly hacked into its composite flesh, angling swords and axes and claws at its feet.
But this thing already belonged to the dead.
It bent over and pulled a few dozen apart like bits of bread, then discarded them in a surge of blood that was pouring down towards the harbour. It leant back, wobbling on its flesh-jelly legs, then stood upright as if admiring its own devastation.
The battle lines became staggered and blurred, and neither invaders nor defenders were certain what this presence now meant. An increasing anxiousness hung over the scene.
A commanding officer ordered a retreat for the Dragoons, and the Imperial soldiers pulled back, maintaining a neat and efficient front line as they withdrew through the awkward, winding thoroughfares at this end of the city. All streets that the enemy might pass through remained blockaded and well defended. Archers hung from the windows ready to pick off those who attempted to follow, but the enemy had thinned out considerably.
The first onslaught having been halted, the cultists turned their puppet on to those remaining, crushing them or swiping them into the harbour. The seawater behind turned red.
No cheering, no cause for celebration.
Next stage: soldiers ran forward to retrieve the wounded. Stretchers were soon lined up and were carried back into the city.
It began to snow heavily.
Abaris released his control and let the monster come to a halt. Abaris did not realize just how excited he had become, his chest heaving in and out, his head perspiring.
Through the bleak vista beyond, another wave of invading ships loomed, at least twenty to Abaris’s eyes. He felt a vague disconnection from the scene. Even someone such as he, who was used to dealing with death, experienced dread at what might happen to this city.
Something ripped through the air and a building behind him exploded, coughing rubble on to the street. Ramon turned to see where it came from. Another explosion followed, originating from somewhere Abaris couldn’t see. One of the archers screamed. He turned quickly and heard a shrill whistle, then the roof on which he was standing rattled and shook, and began to collapse. As he held on to Ramon, they descended into the rubble.
*
Brynd watched the monstrous apparition fall slowly to one side, like a drunk keeling over at the end of a night. Whatever the thing was, it was no longer able to help them, but he was thankful to have had it on their side. The Night Guard were standing in a line along an observation platform of the Citadel watching the carnage in the snow. Some of them were eager to be deployed, but Brynd would only allow them to ride into combat when the first lines of defence were broken fully.
It was essential for him to retain an overview of the situation. Surveillance from garudas had confirmed that there were no enemy ships heading towards the settlements further along the coast. It meant that this was a blistering assault on the largest mass of population; and that, in itself, suggested their plan was to neutralize the place. Since there had been no attacks on supply routes feeding the city, they clearly did not anticipate a long-term siege. All-out annihilation was the enemy’s intention.
Brynd’s new plan was to force the Empire’s front lines as close to the invaders as was physically possible. He would smother them to prevent them from firing any more bombs, because it would mean too many casualties of their own – that was, if they had much in the way of morality.
Finally, a wave of garudas flew in from the east, carrying cultist-designed Brenna explosives, as he had instructed earlier. Ten avian soldiers entered the airspace above Villiren, and Brynd could see them modifying their flight paths to avoid dropping the devices on their own people.
They rushed towards Port Nostalgia and released the relics, and the explosions could be felt even up in the Citadel. The city rocked ten times, yet none of the garudas were shot down, retreating safely to the skies in the west.
Brynd’s hopes that their efforts would be lasting began to collapse when he counted at least another twenty-five enemy vessels approaching the harbour.
FORTY-FOUR
Investigator Jeryd was packing his belongings in their decrepit, dusty little hotel room. He and Marysa had spent a few good nights in safety here, and Jeryd had become strangely attached to the place, although he was aware such emotions were misplaced.
The blasts of explosions came and went in the distance, far enough away to not yet seem real, and occasionally there was the sound of a troop of soldiers or civilian militia trudging by under his window.
He could leave carrying only one small shoulder bag, and wondered where it might be stored when the time came to fight. Would there be rooms for those who weren’t in the traditional army? Would they all be expected to sleep in a dormitory? Would they be able to sleep at all? He assumed that this sort of thing would be well planned – Commander Lathraea seemed like a guy who knew what he was doing.
Jeryd checked his crossbow and slung it on the bed along with a bundle of bolts. He checked his various knives and placed them in his boots. He wore only a tight-fitting tunic, and folded his Inquisition robe on the bed. Would he even need it again after all this? One minute he was busy chasing criminals, the next . . . The change in circumstances had all happened so quickly.
Marysa joined him. He looked longingly at this woman he had loved for decades with such an emotion he felt a lump in his throat.
‘I want to go with you.’ Marysa clasped both his hands in hers.
‘No.’ Jeryd shook his head slowly, closing his eyes to block out her gaze. ‘It was me who dragged you all the way out here, into this mess. I want you to have a chance of getting away at least.’
‘But I can fight – I saved you, for pity’s sake!’
‘Marysa, I know you’re probably tougher than me after all your training. I thought we’d discussed this.’
That conversation had lasted for hours. They talked about her being more use in the escape tunnels, helping lead people out of the city. Jeryd said there’d be people who needed protecting from rapists and thieves, and that it was unfair that all the best fighters would be remaining above ground. There would be men and women and children who needed protecting from each other, and not even the major gangs had offered their services in any way.
He gave Marysa his spare Inquisition medallion as a badge, an object that might be more use to her than him. She sighed and focused on him with those big black eyes – so much was happening in that gaze, so many conversations from the past returning. He kissed her fondly, smelled her hair. It was funny that these would be the things he missed the most, the details he barely remembered in everyday life. He was more afraid of being without Marysa than he was of dying.
A painful goodbye.
Still with a faint hope that they’d see each other again very soon, they made arrangements for meeting after the end of the war, suggesting where they could meet a
t what hour of any given day. Past the Onyx Wings and the bone archways, by one of their favourite bistros. Or if the city was to fall they would meet at one of the villages further out, a couple of points on a map which he’d scribbled down for her.
Marysa went off first, leaving an overwhelming sense of emptiness, and the hotel room seemed to pause in time.
*
Jeryd put on his hat and marched through the streets. All around him people wrapped in warm layers were shifting through the narrow lanes, their expressions full of melancholy. Aside from the wailing of those who had already lost loved ones, the busy city was eerily quiet. He could almost breathe the tension. Another explosion came, and the massed confusion of battle could be heard in the distance – but closer than before.
Villiren wasn’t his city to protect, so why was he even here? He was doing this for the common good, he realized, a duty that seemed written in his heart. The same sense of morality that had kept him in the Inquisition for so many decades. Private gain didn’t matter. If everyone acted solely on private interests, there’d be no citizen militia, no lifeboat teams around the coast, no soup kitchens for the starving. Jeryd had to laugh at himself. Investigator Rumex Jeryd: now aspiring philosopher.
*
At some point near the Althing district Jeryd realized that he was caught up in the flotsam of new recruits for the citizen militia, men and women and children, with heads lowered against the driving snow, some with expressions of determination, others with a sad disconnection. The flow was moving towards the older buildings surrounding the Citadel, gaining in numbers and intensity. The streets lost consistency here, curving and twisting, a few blocked by the rubble, which was being carted off by soldiers to form defensive barriers. Row upon row of mounted Dragoons waited for engagement, shifting in their saddles, totally emotionless, consummate professionals.
Dozens of men in uniform stood about with hand-held boards taking names, patient and calm, directing people towards the Ancient Quarter. Citizens shuffled off wherever they were told to. There were a fair number of rumel too. Jeryd was asked to stand in line with the rest, silent as a queue waiting for the executioner’s block.
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