Two groups of figures were on the move from the camp, not marching in column but running over the ground, like wolves in a pack. There had to be thousands of them, Winter guessed, a motley mob of uniforms and civilian clothes, with muskets, spears, and swords. One group was headed due south, directly toward Bear Ridge, while the other kept to the bank of the river and moved southwest.
“Red-eyes!” Winter shouted, struggling to make herself heard above the wind. “They’re headed for the army!”
Alex nodded, her squinting eyes streaming tears.
“We have to warn them!” Winter said. “If we go back—”
“Marcus and Cyte know the red-eyes are out here,” Alex shouted back. “They’ll be ready. We have our own job to do!”
“And their departure makes that job easier,” the Ghost said, out of thin air. “Only a small force remains to defend the core.”
Winter looked down at the departing red-eyes, imagined the unstoppable tide of their charge crashing against the trenches the Girls’ Own had dug. Stay safe, Cyte. She squeezed her eyes shut. Please.
“I will descend first,” the Ghost said. “My winds will surround the castle and I will keep those outside from interfering as long as I can. Destroy the core and victory is ours.”
The wind died away as Sothe came to a halt directly over the old walls. Looking down, Winter saw clouds of sand and dust rising, enclosing the ruined castle on all sides. They grew and grew, larger than anything she’d seen the Ghost produce before, becoming a towering sandstorm whose eerie keening was audible even far above. In the center, the air was still clear, and small figures were emerging from their tents and running in all directions.
“Go!” Winter shouted.
Sothe dove, almost straight down. Winter nearly screamed, her throat frozen, all her previous calm ripped away in the terrifying descent. Alex was laughing, a mad cackle that blew away on the renewed wind. Just when Winter was certain nothing could arrest their fall, that they would plow into the earth like a spent cannonball in an explosion of stone and dirt, Sothe’s wings snapped out. They were jerked upward with bruising force, came to a halt, and drifted down the last few yards at the speed of a falling leaf. Sothe’s feet touched the ground gently, and she bent to deposit Alex and Winter on the rocky ground.
“You,” Winter gasped, looking up at Sothe. “You’re having fun, aren’t you?”
Sothe shrugged, featureless face impassive. Winter had to imagine the slight quirk of the lip.
Alex sat up with a whoop, breathing hard. “Balls of the Beast. And I thought jumping off the cathedral tower was good.”
“You’re both mad.” Winter caught movement out of the corner of her eye. “Here they come.”
They’d landed near the ruined wall, which was less dilapidated than it had appeared from the air; it was still almost ten feet high and surrounded by chunks of broken stone. A collapsed gate led into a broad yard, with dusty ground studded with small rocks and tufts of grass. On the other side of it were two slate-roofed wooden structures. One of these had collapsed entirely, leaving little more than a pile of timber and broken tiles, while the other had lost one wall and most of its roof but still seemed intact on the far side. Beyond them was another yard, where the tents they’d seen from above were pitched. All around, enveloping the curtain wall, was the swirling, shrieking curtain of sand and wind called up by the Ghost.
A half dozen men and women ran into the yard through the gap between the two buildings. Two wore white Murnskai uniforms, stained with sweat and mud, while a third was in Vordanai blue. Another pair were women, in the long skirts Winter had seen north of the border, while the last was a boy of no more than twelve, shirtless and grubby, with long, ragged fingernails.
No matter who they’d been, Winter knew what they were now. Crimson light sprang to life in six sets of eyes, flaring bright for a moment, then dying away. Two of the soldiers still had muskets slung over their backs, but they hadn’t made a move for them.
“Winter Ihernglass,” one of the women said. “You’re not supposed to be here. You’re—”
Sothe drew a knife from one of her straps and flicked it at the red-eye. The assassin’s accuracy had always been impressive, but now she had the inhuman strength of the Guardian as well. The woman’s head disintegrated, a spray of blood and brain painting the rubble behind her as her body toppled.
“—supposed to be in Murnsk,” the boy picked up without a pause. “What a slippery creature.”
“We’re here to put an end to you,” Winter said.
“I gathered that, yes.” The boy smiled, revealing stained, rotting teeth. “You’re welcome to try.”
The two soldiers went for their muskets. Alex raised a hand, and a lance of darkness speared one of them through the chest, withdrawing just as quickly and leaving him to stagger for a few moments before he collapsed. The other managed to get his weapon up and trained on Winter, but Sothe sidestepped between them as he pulled the trigger. The ball struck her in the shoulder and whined away, leaving only a tiny chip in her stony surface.
The remaining three charged, knives and clubs in their hands. Alex cut down the second woman with another bolt of shadow, and Sothe drew a knife as long as Winter’s forearm and engaged the other two. The red-eyes were fast and moved with a coordination no human fighters could have matched, but even before her transformation Sothe had been death with a blade. Now she seemed unstoppable, weaving casually out of the way of a blow to crush a man’s face with a punch, then drawing her knife across the boy and opening his guts in a spray of blood and bile.
Saints and martyrs, Winter thought. She hadn’t even had time to reach for her own weapons. Thank God Almighty she’s on our side. She shook her head and pointed to the tents.
“Come on! The Ghost won’t be able to keep this up forever, and there may be a lot more of them outside.”
Sothe nodded and jumped to the top of the pile of rubble in a single leap. Alex ran between the two ruined buildings, Winter following behind. Three large tents had been set up in what had been the castle’s main courtyard, with another, larger pile of broken, rotting wood marking where a building had once stood. Red-eyes were pouring out of the tents. Soldiers, civilians, men and women, children and grandfathers. We’re all just fodder for the Beast.
“Watch for Jane!” Winter shouted as they charged.
Sothe took the lead, another leap taking her into the middle of the red-eyes, and she almost absentmindedly flicked a blade out to slash a man’s head from his shoulders. The nearest turned to engage her, but she was already moving, cutting a bloody swath through the press. It was like watching a master swordsman fight children, children made of soft dough who came apart at her slightest touch. Splashes of blood sprayed across Sothe, streaks of red dripping from her polished skin.
Winter drew her own saber as more of the red-eyes charged. Alex, just behind her, raised her hands and shot them down methodically, sending a single bolt of shadow through the head of each attacker. One woman ducked, avoiding the shot, and came at Winter with a short sword. The red-eye feinted left, and nearly got around Winter’s parry. There was no time to pull away and riposte.
Instead, Winter let the woman’s momentum carry her onward, and slapped her off hand against the red-eye’s arm, unleashing Infernivore. The hungry demon surged into her opponent, and Winter felt the crimson thread of the Beast withdraw rather than face it, leaving the red-eye an empty shell. Winter stepped away and let her collapse just in time to see a young girl coming at her with a long kitchen knife, her blond hair spiky and crusted with blood and dirt. Winter thrust by instinct, and the girl willingly impaled herself, letting the saber sink into her belly as she thrust the knife at Winter’s arm. Winter hastily grabbed her wrist before the blow could land; she once again called on her demon, and the girl’s body slid limply off her sword as the Beast withdrew.
Up ahead, a half dozen red-eyes had thrown themselves at Sothe, ig
noring her knives and trying to bear her to the ground by sheer weight. For a moment she staggered, even as she stabbed one opponent repeatedly. Then her white wings snapped out, throwing two enemies away from her, and she dropped her knife to put her hands around the necks of two more. She hurled them into the rumble with a crunch of rotten wood and shattering tile. She grabbed the last pair and slammed their heads together so hard that both skulls shattered, washing Sothe’s hand in bloody fragments.
Really fucking glad she’s on our side. The two red-eyes that had been knocked away were climbing to their feet only to be neatly speared by Alex. That left nothing moving in the courtyard aside from themselves, but there was still no sign of Jane.
Winter interrogated her senses, but Infernivore was so agitated by being denied its meals that it was hard to tell if it still felt another demon. “Alex! Can you feel it?”
Alex nodded, breathing hard. “It’s definitely here.” She frowned. “There’s something—”
“The tents,” Winter said. “She must be in there.”
Sothe jumped again, landing in the center of the three tents and scattering the ashes of a dead campfire. She grabbed the fabric of one and pulled, tearing the pegs from the ground. The interior was empty, so she turned to the next.
Something happened to the air in front of the tent, something that hurt Winter’s eyes even to look at. The air twisted, shimmering with iridescence like a raven’s wing. Sothe was picked up and hurled backward with tremendous force, clipping the top of a ruined building in a spray of splinters before impacting with the outer wall. Stone crunched, and a whole section of curtain wall collapsed in a rising cloud of dust that was quickly sucked into the shrieking sandstorm.
The tent was hurled aside, and a black-clad figure rose slowly to its feet. It was a man, at least seven feet tall and almost skeletally thin. His clothes hung off him like funeral garb from a desiccated corpse, loops and folds of black fabric draped over him like a second skin. His face was invisible behind a dark mask made from tiny chips of obsidian. For a moment he looked in Sothe’s direction; then he turned toward Winter and Alex.
“Penitent!” Alex hissed. She raised her hands, but before she could unleash her power, another weird ripple surrounded her with bands of color. There was the start of a scream, abruptly cut off, and then she was pinwheeling through the air, landing hard on the rocky ground of the courtyard.
“That’s better.” The third tent flap opened, and Jane emerged, followed by two hulking, leather-armored brutes with glowing red eyes. “As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted, Winter, I thought I’d left you in Murnsk. Much against my will, I might add. Jane so wanted your company.” The Beast tapped a finger against the side of its head. “But you had to be obstinate.”
Saints and fucking martyrs. Winter raised her saber, not daring to look and see if Alex was all right. Jane hopped lightly up to a broken beam, spreading her arms for balance. Her hair had grown back, the long, silky red that Winter remembered. Her clothes were rags, her skin grimy, but she moved with such effortless grace that none of it seemed to matter. Even now, like this, Winter felt a twist in her chest at the sight of her.
“You’re probably wondering,” Jane went on, gesturing at the Penitent, “who this fellow is, since I don’t allow interloping demons in my bodies. He’s really a fascinating case. I found him in the dungeons under Elysium.” The tall, skeletal figure in black turned to stare at her, and Jane shot him a smile. “He was locked away for heresy, you see. He’d come to believe that the Beast of Judgment should cleanse the world of humanity, since our sins are so very many. Because he attempted to free me, his fellow Priests of the Black had thrown him in their darkest hole to be tortured. They removed his tongue, lest he spread his blasphemy. Pity he was right and they were wrong!”
“Don’t listen to her,” Winter said in Murnskai. “The Beast isn’t an answer for our sins. It’s a demon. You should be trying to destroy it!”
“I wouldn’t bother,” Jane said. “What he wants more than anything in the world is to be a part of me. And I’ll grant him that, in time. Once you are dead and the Thousand Names are mine, there will be nothing left in this world that can threaten me.”
Winter felt a trickle of sweat run down her cheek. Jane and the Penitent were at least fifteen yards away, too far to cover in a quick dash. And whatever his power is, it’s fast. She looked up at the whirlwind and wondered if the Steel Ghost could see what was happening. I need some kind of distraction. As long as I can get to Jane, it doesn’t matter what happens afterward...
“No need to wait around all day,” Jane said. “Kill her.”
Helplessly, Winter raised her sword. As she moved, space twisted around her, a shimmering distortion forming at each of her wrists. The blade fell from numbed fingers as an unstoppable force lifted her into the air, her shoulders screaming as her feet left the ground.
The Penitent cocked his head curiously. He put Winter in mind of a child pulling the legs off a spider. He held up one hand, fingers spread, and the two twists in space started to drift apart, taking Winter’s arms with them. It was a gentle, unstoppable movement, like the turning of a waterwheel. In a few seconds, Winter was stretched as if pinned to a rack. The force kept pulling, and she started to scream.
32
Raesinia
“Another one!”
The cutter’s tent was a concentrated mass of human suffering. The air was thick with smoke, shot through with the scent of blood and shit to form a concentrated miasma. The floor was awash in vileness, mixing with dirt to make a sticky mud that spattered everyone to the thighs. Raesinia’s ears rang with screams, curses, and desperate pleading.
Hannah and her assistants strode through this morass like horrible angels, bone saws in hand. At the door, two men surveyed the incoming casualties and turned away both those who would live at least a few hours and those who would die for certain. The rejected were laid outside, where their howls added to the din. Those “lucky” enough to merit the cutter’s attention were taken to one of the tables, strapped down, and given a wooden bit to put between their teeth.
That Hannah was an expert was apparent from how few strokes of the bone saw it took her to remove a limb. Razor-sharp teeth sliced through flesh with ease, and when they met bone they made the awful, almost musical sound that was capable of reducing any soldier to shudders. In no time at all, the ruined arm or leg tumbled to the ground and the cutter turned away, already moving on to the next victim. Her assistants tied off the stump, reducing the pumping blood to a trickle, and gathered up the discarded flesh to add to the pile outside. Transporting the patients afterward was a task for any able-bodied people who happened to be nearby. Which, in this case, included the Queen of Vordan.
You said you wanted to help, Raesinia told herself as she grabbed a lanky young man by the ankle. Another soldier took him under the armpits, and together they walked him out the tent flap, mud squelching underfoot. The hospital tents were long since full, and they were reduced to simply laying casualties in the dirt. They maneuvered the youth into an open space between an old man whose left leg ended just above the ankle and a volunteer woman whose colorful linen dress was splashed with blood.
The young man’s breath rattled in his throat. Raesinia didn’t think he’d live. Only half of those Hannah operated on did, she’d been told, and she was one of the best cutters. The old man was either swearing or praying, so quietly it was hard to tell which. The woman was still and silent. Too silent. Raesinia watched her a moment, then nudged her partner. He glanced at her, shook his head, and grabbed her by the ankles, dragging the corpse away. A moment later, two men set a mop-haired soldier with a splinted leg in the space thus vacated, deaf to his constant shrieks.
Underneath the screams and groans, the cannonade continued, a deep grumble like constant thunder. There was fighting on all sides of the hill now, and from the left and right came the occasional sounds of musketry. Closer, the Sec
ond Division and the volunteers had repelled three assaults, waves of Vordanai and Murnskai soldiers breaking against the breastworks like surf on a beach. Each time, after the enemy pulled back, the bombardment began again, the massive battery Janus had assembled pounding the hillside with solid shot. Howitzers joined in as well, less accurate but more deadly, throwing pot-shaped bombs that exploded into shards of spinning metal.
Raesinia looked up to find another casualty team approaching, two girls who couldn’t be older than twelve or thirteen carrying an older woman on a stretcher. They left their burden at the tent flap and turned away. One of the pair, dark-haired and wide-eyed, was clutching her stomach, and her skin was pale as death under the blood and grime. Her companion had to support her through the mud. Raesinia got to her feet and stepped in front of them.
“You’re hurt,” she said, as the pair blinked at her. “You’re not going to the cutter?”
The uninjured girl’s lip twisted into a snarl, but her companion just shook her head. She tugged her shirt up a few inches to show a deep gash in her stomach, crudely stitched shut with twine.
“Gut wound,” she said. “It’ll fester by nightfall. Better they help those that might live.”
“You don’t—” the other girl said, then choked off in a sob.
Hannah would probably say the same thing. Raesinia looked around, satisfied herself that no one was paying attention to them, and put her arm on the girl’s shoulder. “Come with me.”
“I want to help,” the injured girl said. “While I can.”
“Just come here, all right?”
The Infernal Battalion Page 57