Lightning crackled, arced savagely out from a half-dozen sky keeps, converging on Ampelas Uprooted.
The detonations thundered. And the rain of slaughter began.
The huge wagons and their scrambling drones vanished beneath an avalanche that lifted nearby K’ell Hunters into the air, tails lashing for balance as they flailed about. Dust rolled out thick as a tidal wave to swallow the spreading horror as massive chunks of stone descended from the battered Uprooted.
Through the torrential, billowing smoke and rubble, Ampelas lashed back.
The saw-tooth line of Ve’Gath lifted as if heaved forward by the ridge itself, and all at once the huge warriors were pouring down the slope, straight for the lines of Nah’ruk.
Sorcery arced out from the wired clubs, crashed into a shield-locked wall of iron. The Ve’Gath staggered, but not one fell.
There was no time for a second salvo.
The Ve’Gath toothed line hammered into the Nah’ruk. The impact of the charge flattened two, then three ranks of the Short-Tails. Weapons lashed down as the Ve’Gath trampled the fallen enemy, closing with the deeper lines still reeling from the impact.
Stormy was at the very heart of the attack. He’d swung his sword twice, and both times his blade had bitten deep into armour—but his targets were in the act of dying anyway, for they had come within reach of his mount. He couldn’t close with anything worth hacking apart. He roared in frustration.
The Nah’ruk warriors were outmatched. They bore no shields. The Ve’Gath simply chewed through them.
Lightning ripped down from the sky, ploughed a bloody, burning swath through the rearmost Ve’Gath ranks, slaying hundreds in an instant.
Stormy snarled, battered by those sudden, terrible deaths. Break formation! Close with the enemy!
Another lash of sorcery scythed down hundreds more.
Close!
Ampelas Rooted burned from a dozen gaping fissures. Massive pieces had shorn clear, revealing exposed innards from which poured black smoke. The sky keep shuddered as attack after attack pounded into it. The edifice’s forward progress had halted, and now it was being buffeted backward. Still it spat its own fury, and Gesler could see one of the Nah’ruk keeps leaning far to one side, billowing flames and smoke, and from this one no lightning winged out.
But there were too many of the damned things. Three had drifted out to the east, and were now angling to draw up behind Ampelas Rooted—where the thick iron plates armouring that side of its flank had been removed to fashion shields for the Ve’Gath. In moments, they would strike a soft target.
And that’ll kill her. Like a knife to the back.
When she’s finished, those keeps will turn on us here below. If they can.
But I won’t let them.
‘K’ell Hunters! Flanking charge from both sides. Cut in behind the contact—hollow out those engaged legions! Don’t piss around, damn you all! Charge!’
The three Nah’ruk sky keeps loosed raging arcs of lightning. Kalyth stared in horror as the lower half of Ampelas Rooted seemed to bulge, limed in red glow. The concussion of the detonation threw Sag’Churok and Gunth Mach down. Kalyth tumbled clear of the thrashing beasts, rocks lacerating her shoulder and face. She rolled on to her back. The sky was burning, and flaming stones rained down.
She cried out, covering her eyes.
______
At the rush of hot wind, Stormy twisted round. The lower third of Ampelas Rooted was simply gone, and what remained was spilling its guts, everything burning as the wreckage plunged earthward. The impact was driving the keep on to its side—or back—exposing the destroyed maw of its base.
He swore as Ampelas Rooted somehow managed to return fire, two serpents of lightning writhing out behind it.
They must have struck, though he could not see past the Che’Malle keep, but the thunder of impacts trembled the earth—and then he saw one of the Nah’ruk keeps rising behind Ampelas Rooted, climbing on streamers of smoke.
His eyes widened to see the huge thing gaining speed as it shot still higher. With smoke swarming down its flanks, damaged beyond hope of control, the keep seemed to lunge as it shot into the sky—and kept going.
The remaining two ignited in another sorcerous strike.
Light engulfed Ampelas Uprooted—
The K’ell Hunters plunged into the buckling flanks of the Nah’ruk Furies that were locked jaw to jaw with the Ve’Gath. Their massive blades hacked bloody paths into the press. The Nah’ruk could not match their speed, their reach, and they seemed to melt before the attack.
In his mind, Gesler was shouting the same words over and over, a mantra of desperation. Close close close in—close—they won’t fire if—
Two sky keeps, hovering directly above the battle, sent down writhing spears. Nah’ruk, Ve’Gath and K’ell bodies lifted into the air, blackened, iron shattering.
You pieces of shit!
It was lost. All of it. He realized that in this instant.
The keeps would sterilize the plain below them, if that was what it took—
Off to the west, two more sky keeps were swinging round to approach the battle.
Gesler glared at them.
And then both exploded.
My flesh is stone. My blood rages hot as molten iron. I have a thousand eyes. A thousand swords. And one mind.
I have heard the death-cry. Was she kin? She said as much, when first she touched me. We were upon the ground. Far from each other, and yet of a kind.
I heard her die.
And so I came to mourn her, I came to find her body, her silent tomb.
But she dies still. I do not understand. She dies still—and there are strangers. Cruel strangers. I knew them once. I know them now. I know, too, that they will not yield.
Who am I?
What am I?
But I know the answers to these questions. I believe, at last, that I do.
Strangers, you bring pain. You bring suffering. You bring to so many dreams the dust of death.
But, strangers, I am Icarium.
And I bring far worse.
Kalyth’s eyes flickered open, on a scene jostled and chaotic with smoke. She was in Gunth Mach’s clutches, gripped as would be a child. The One Daughter was flanked on the right by Sag’Churok and by Bre’nigan on the left, the three of them running at a steady trot across the valley floor.
The battle raged just beyond the J’an Sentinel. The K’ell Hunters had cut through to the foremost ranks of the Ve’Gath, but now the enemy had begun an encirclement.
Lightning lashed down from the keeps directly above the field, tearing ragged paths of destruction through the press.
Huge drums were pounding the air to her right and she twisted round to look in that direction. Two Nah’ruk keeps were breaking apart, the fires in their cores burning so hot she saw stone melting like wax, falling away from iron bones. The one to the north was descending earthward as if sinking through water. Multiple explosions racked them both.
Rising from behind them, shouldering through thick pillars of black smoke, another Uprooted.
What? Who? Sag’Churok—
‘Kalse Uprooted, Destriant. But there is no Matron within it. The one who commands . . . it has been a long time since he last walked among the K’Chain Che’Malle and Nah’ruk.’
Sorcery swarmed round Kalse, green, blue and white—a kind she had never before seen—and then suddenly pulsed out in a seething wave. The magic cut through the two dying keeps and Kalyth gasped to see ice explode out from fissures in the ravaged black stone. As the wave burst through the struck keeps, the one to the south simply split in half, the lower section dropping like a mountain, the upper end lifting and spinning inside swirling streams of smoke, rubble and shards of ice. The other one’s upper third disintegrated in a white cloud moments before it struck the ground.
The concussions of the two impacts shook the earth. The hills to the west were crushed flat. The remnants of the keeps blew apart in vast clo
uds of dust and rock.
At this same moment the wave passed directly over Kalyth and the three K’Chain Che’Malle, carrying with it air so cold it stunned her lungs. Gasping, agony convulsing her chest, she did not see the wave strike the three sky keeps above the battlefield. The explosions deafened her—darkness rushed in, even as Gunth Mach staggered.
______
The arrival of a second Che’Malle keep filled the sky with a storm of violence. Above them, Gesler could see nothing but churning clouds and deathly flashes—even the bulks of the keeps had vanished. It seemed as if the sky itself burned, raining white-hot stones that snapped as they shot down through bitterly cold air. Impossibly, snow swirled down amidst ashes and rubble.
Nah’ruk keeps crowded the warren’s gate, as if seeking to break through to bring succour to those dying before the stranger’s onslaught, but wave after wave slammed into them, and the unknown Uprooted was bulling ever closer, as if to drive down the very throat of the warren. Lightning lashed into it, tore huge gashes in its flanks. Death poured down from the sky.
Gesler’s mount towered amidst the K’ell Hunters crowded in on all sides—he knew the K’ell were providing a cordon around them—though nothing could defend any of them against the deadly deluge from above. He could see the rear Nah’ruk Furies committing to the battle—they had been and were still being decimated by falling wreckage. Even so, sheer numbers alone were beginning to tell. Stormy’s Ve’Gath had ceased their advance, but Gesler could see his friend, the battle lust upon him, his face red as his hair, his eyes blazing with madness.
‘Stormy! Stormy! Androjan Redarr, you brainless bastard!’
The head swung round. The man smiled.
Gods below, Stormy. ‘We’re encircled!’
‘And we’re cutting ’em to pieces!’
‘We need to break out—the sky’s killing us!’
‘Withdraw your K’ell! Regroup and set up a charge!’
‘Which side?’
‘Whatever’s behind Kalse!’
Kalse. I ain’t been paying attention. ‘And you?’
‘Back-to-back wedges—we’re driving out to the fucking sides! You watch ’em pour into the gap and then you charge ’em! We about face and close the vice!’
Stormy, you Hood-damned genius. ‘Agreed!’
The pain was overwhelming. He bled from wounds sheathing his body. Blow after blow hammered into him. Blind, deafened, he struck back, not even knowing if his sorcery found the enemy. He felt himself tearing loose, moments from being ripped from his flesh of cracked stone, his bones of tortured iron.
I shall become a ghost again. Lost. Where are my children? You have abandoned me—there are too many of them, they close like wolves—my children—help me—
‘You must close the gate.’
Breath?
‘Yes. Feather Witch. The Errant drowned me. I took his eye, he took my life. Never bargain with gods. His eye—I give it to you, Lifestealer. The gate—do you see it? You are drawing nearer—Lifestealer, do not stop—’
Another voice spoke. ‘They killed a dragon for this power, Icarium.’
Taxilian?
‘Its blood burned this hole—if you fail, the sky shall fill with the enemy machines—and the Nah’ruk will triumph this day. See the K’Chain Che’Malle, Icarium? They can win this—if you stop the Gath’ran Citadels, if you stop them from entering this realm. Seal the gate!’
He could see it now. He held in his hand the eye of an Elder God. Slick, soft, smeared with blood.
The wound between the realms was vast—even Kalse Uprooted could not—
‘You must build a wall—’
‘A prison!’
Feather Witch hissed, ‘Root and Blueiron, Lifestealer! Ice Haunt is not enough! You must awaken the warrens within you! Root to the rock and earth. Blueiron to hold life in your machines. Command the breach!’
‘I cannot hold. I am dying.’
‘There are children in the world, Icarium.’
‘Asane? You do not understand. You are not enough—’
‘There are children in the world. The warrens you have made from your own blood—’
Feather Witch snarled. ‘Our blood!’
‘And ours, yes. The warrens, Icarium—did you imagine they belonged to you and none other? It is too late for that. This day is the day of fire, Icarium. The children wait. The children hear.’
In his mind, even as it crumbled on all sides, he could hear a new voice, a sweet voice, one he had never heard before.
‘I dream we are three
Rutt who is not Rutt and Held
Who cannot be held—
The girl knows silence
Is a game
The boy knows the kiss
Of the Eres’al
The mother of wheeling stars
Who seeds all time
Through me they hear your need
I am the voice of the unborn
In crystal I see fire and I see smoke
I see lizards and Fathers
In crystal I see the boy and the girl.
Heal the wound, God,
Your children are close—’
Rautos whispered—the last words Icarium would remember. ‘Icarium, in the name of a blessed wife . . . have faith.’
Faith. He took hold of that word.
His hand closed about the eye and he heard the shriek of an Elder God, as he transformed the eye into what he needed. For Root.
A seed.
A Finnest.
Kalyth saw Kalse Uprooted plunge into the maw, and then halt as a storm of lightning tore into it. The very sky seemed to tremble, and then the ground began to shake, and as she stared, she saw stone burst upward from the plain, directly beneath Kalse. The bedrock lifted like gnarled arms, as if an enormous upended tree was flinging roots into the air.
Those roots rose yet higher, touched the base of Kalse Uprooted, and then spread in a frenzy outward. Branches of rock twisted, crowded against the edges of the gate, where fires flared only to vanish. The Wastelands seemed to grow ashen on all sides, as if the very last drops of its lifeblood were being drawn into this savage growth.
The four surviving Nah’ruk sky keeps on this side of the portal unleashed a frenzied assault upon Kalse. Stone exploded. Massive fissures ripped through, spewing molten rock—the entire city was moments from bursting apart.
The stranger fails—but, such glory! To see this! To witness such courage!
The stone tree—if that was what it was—did not cease its mad growth, and she saw roots curl into the wounds in the city’s flanks. Where the lightning struck the writhing stone, the sound of the impacts boomed deeper than any thunder, but everywhere that wounds broke open stone swarmed in to heal the damage.
All at once the attacks ceased. Sudden heat washed down upon Kalyth and she cried out in pain.
The four Nah’ruk sky keeps were engulfed in flames, reeling away from the gate. The fires brightened, and then, in a flash, burst incandescent white at their cores. As she watched, in horror, in wonder, the keeps seemed to be vaporizing before her eyes. Churning, the towering pillars of fire pitched eastward, beneath them the ground blackening with scorching heat.
Gunth Mach spoke in her mind. ‘Destriant. See through my eyes. Do you see?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
Two figures stood upon a torn, ruined ridge to the northwest. Sorcery poured from them in terrible waves.
A boy.
A girl.
He didn’t care. The world could be moments from being swallowed by the Abyss itself, Stormy was finally in the midst of war’s sharpest truths and nothing else—nothing—mattered. Laughing, he slashed and hacked at the Nah’ruk as they pressed in, as the dead-eyed lizards sought to clamber over the Ve’Gath, sought by numbers alone to overwhelm this savage wall of denial.
Gesler’s charge down the pocket had pierced the bastards like a boar-sticker, forcing them into the narrow spaces between the frenzied K�
�ell and the shield-locked Ve’Gath. They fought with appalling ferocity, and died in chilling silence.
His mount was wounded. His mount was probably dying—who could tell? All these lizards fought until their last breath. But its defences had slowed, weakened. There was blood everywhere and he could feel its chest heaving with shuddering cadence.
A short-snouted maw lunged at his face.
Cursing, he pitched back to avoid the snapping dagger teeth, struggled to draw close his short-handled axe—but the damned Nah’ruk surged still closer, clawing its way up the Ve’Gath’s shoulder. His mount staggered—
He chopped with his axe, but the range was too tight, and though the edge bit into the side of the lizard’s head the wound it delivered was not enough to sway the creature. The jaws opened wide. The head snapped forward—
Something snarling struck the Nah’ruk, a knotted mass of mottled, scar-seamed hide and muscle, savage canines sinking deep into the lizard’s neck.
Disbelieving, Stormy kicked his boots free of the stirrups to roll further back—
A fucking dog?
Bent?
That you?
Oh, but it surely was.
Greenish blood spilled from the Nah’ruk’s mouth. The eyes dulled, and a heartbeat later dog and lizard pitched down from the Ve’Gath.
At that moment, Stormy saw the burning sky keeps.
And the storm was gone, the thunder vanished, the world filling with sounds of iron, flesh and bone. The song of ten thousand battles, made eerily surreal by there being not a single scream, not a single cry of agony or shriek begging mercy.
The Nah’ruk were falling.
Battle halted. Slaughter commenced.
No song lives upon a single note.
But to a soldier, who had faced death for an eternity since the dawn, this grisly music was the sweetest music of all.
Slaughter! For my brave Ve’Gath! Slaughter! For Gesler and his K’ell! Slaughter, for the Bonehunters—my friends—SLAUGHTER!
As if some fulcrum had been irrevocably destroyed, Ampelas Uprooted slowly rolled upside down. The entire edifice was burning now, spilling sheets of flaming oil that splashed bright upon rubble, corpses and wounded drones directly below.
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