by Adam Vine
I don’t know how I finished the climb, but I did. By the time I reached the top, my hands and arms were numb. My lungs burned like I’d inhaled toxic fumes and sweat steamed through the gap between my scarf and the hood of my furs, forming a pale halo that surrounded my vision. A lean old man with bottlebrush eyebrows helped me up over the ledge.
I took a few steps and collapsed into the snowbank next to Termite’s bow, where the other Vermin were already sitting, stretching out aching joints and massaging the numbness from their limbs. It took me a long time to recover my breath.
Eventually Barn Owl walked up behind me and started massaging my shoulders. “There a reason you look scared, Leech?” she said.
Everyone laughed. Everyone but Cheese Eater, that is, who only sat unlashing the blades from his boots and giving me an eerie, dichromatic stare.
“She.. (gasp)… tried to… (huff)… cut my line… (wheeze)….” I said.
“We know, kid. Everyone saw it. Mongoose was an old friend, but I can’t say I’m surprised that raggedy bitch decided to turn tail on us. Her whole family was taken by the Blight. She didn’t have much to live for. Always thought that meant she’d live for the cause, but I guess I was wrong.”
I laid in the snow with my eyes closed. “She… (huff)… said… (puff)… the Crippled King… sent her (wheeze).”
Barn Owl titled one eye at me. “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. But you should forget it. For now, anyway. We won’t know who-did-the-what-now until we get back to the Burrow, and we have a mission to finish. You owe Termite a drink.”
“No, he doesn’t,” the old man said, already crouching to re-attach the ropes for the climb down. His voice was soft, but gruff, deeply accented with a slow, meditative drawl.
Barn Owl chuckled. “Mmm-hmm. Keeping a special eye on him, were you? I suppose you would.”
Termite finished what he was doing and rose, walking over to us to stand in our glimmering circle of torchlight. He was bald, with a long, skinny face covered in scars that reminded me of the ancient dolomite front of the oldest churches in City, and a braided, forked beard speckled with streaks of black and gray poking out from inside his hood. “Yes, I was. Had to see it for myself. But he’s Vojciek’s boy, true as the Wanderer’s wisdom.”
“I can’t believe Auntie would just turn tail like that,” Bunny said.
“You can ask her to regale you with her grievances on the way down,” Barn Owl said. She cracked her back and yawned into her fist. “C’mon, Vermin. We’ve still got a whole shit load of ice to cross, and it ain’t getting any warmer. Leech, you going to thank this kind gentleman for saving your ass?”
Termite helped me to my feet. It was a little easier to talk now that the cold air had chased the fire from my lungs, but not much. “Sorry, sir. Didn’t mean to be rude. Just having a little trouble breathing. Thank you. That was one hell of a shot,” I said.
The old man examined me, the white bristles of his eyebrows becoming a single, downturned line. “I bore no great love for my twin brother, but blood is blood, even in this abominable form you’ve taken. I’ll accept no thanks, and no damned apologies. Pay it on, and help your own brothers and sisters when the time comes. Our father taught us that sacrifice is a virtue, though I didn’t know what that meant until I was already gray.”
Termite clapped me on the shoulder. His grip belied a monstrous strength far greater than his diminutive frame suggested. “If there’s any part of you in there that’s still my nephew, I’ll speak to him, now. Your father loved you, and he watches over you still, no matter what the faithless old fool believed about our savior and the path we all must take up the Spiral, or didn’t. You were a troubled boy, Len, but I hope that wherever you’ve gone, you’ve found peace. That’s all I wish to say.”
Barn Owl cleared her throat. “How’s the lake looking, Unc?”
Termite’s hand fell from my shoulder with a final squeeze. “Frozen solid. Checked your path thrice for soft spots hidden by the snow. You should be good to cross,” the old man said.
“And the facility?”
Termite stroked the twin prongs of his beard, blowing a thoughtful sigh. “I kept my distance. Didn’t get closer than the Graveyard of Trains. It’s heavily guarded. The scouts underestimated.”
“You going to be all right getting back?” Barn Owl said.
The old man spat off the cliff edge.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Barn Owl said. “Okay. You heard the man, Vermin. Time to get where we’re going. There’s enough Frosties for everyone. Blades out. And if any one of you makes a single, goddamned peep, I will make you rue the day you joined.”
THE NIGHT COUNTRY
A half-hour march through waist-high snow and bitter wind led us to the frozen shore of Lake Bagra. The giant, black mirror of the lake stretched in an even plane nearly to the foot of the mountain, broken only by scattered islands of bare granite rising through the ice like the scalps of giant, stone heads. The lights of our destination glittered far out beneath that veiling darkness.
Barn Owl warned us not to follow the lights, as theirs was a false path that might lead us onto ice too thin to hold our weight. Instead, she used her pathfinding mirror to plot the trail of invisible dust the scouts had left for us.
The way across the lake was winding and treacherous. Barn Owl and Gator both killed their torches, leaving only the scarce traces of the facility’s distant floodlights for us to see by. We each kept one hand on the shoulder of the Vermin in front of us. Even with that small security, my heart slammed into the inside of my chest the entire way.
We’re completely exposed. The worst danger here isn’t the ice. It’s having nowhere to run. No wonder the Vermin wanted to wait for a good omen before attacking this place.
Yet despite my apprehension at being so out in the open, that fear didn’t come to fruition. The worst thing that happened was Bunny Rabbit losing her feet, causing a ripple of hushed laughter to erupt through the line.
“I thought archers were supposed to be nimble,” Squirrel whispered.
“Really? I always thought that was a myth. You seen this one try to string a bow? It’s about as graceful as watching a glowspider fuck a mushroom,” Vole said.
“Both of you can grow mold,” Bunny said, struggling to get her feet back. She slid again, but this time Cheese Eater caught her and helped her up. Another giggle spread through the group. Bunny went for her dagger.
“Save it,” Cheese Eater told her, placing a gentle hand over the scabbard. “We get over that ridge, and you can cut up all the icky bastards you want.”
Bunny spat in Squirrel and Vole’s direction. “Is that supposed to be a joke? These cave-divers aren’t worth any more of my time. I’ll probably kill twenty Frosties before they even get one, between the two of them.”
Barn Owl’s voice hissed back at us across the ice. “Shut the hell up back there. Not another word.”
No one spoke until we reached the opposite shore, where a long, black beach sloped steadily up to a wall of abandoned train cars lying half-buried in the ice. The trains formed a kind of labyrinth. Some were connected, while others weren’t, making it difficult to tell if we were progressing forward or just moving in circles. We would’ve easily gotten lost if not for Barn Owl and her magic mirror.
Once we reached the perimeter, we crouched inside one of the ancient, ruined cars for a final huddle. There was a clear view of the facility from the car’s rusted-out side windows. Barn Owl gestured for us to be silent, and we waited about ten minutes while she surveyed the objective.
The facility itself was small, only a few clusters of buildings all orbiting around a much larger main one, but the outer yard was gigantic, surrounded by a nasty razor wire fence full of squat watchtowers all pouring their floodlights down onto an icy common that ran for miles. The satellite buildings, which I guessed were prisoner barracks, looked brand-new, their brick walls and tiny jailhouse windows all crisp and shuttered. One building appeared
to still be under construction.
The main hall was a single, behemoth four-story tower with two adjoining wings, both several centuries newer than the core. The tower itself wasn’t constructed of bricks, but of huge blocks of ancient, blue stone. There was ornate statuary decorating its crenellated abutments. It had large, panoramic windows, and the first floor was built straight into the cliff face. I suspected that its bowels ran deep under the mountain.
It looks like some billionaire’s Hollywood mansion, I thought. No, more like a rich private hospital. Or a school.
Barn Owl’s voice stirred the silence of the rusted train car. “Well, folks. We ain’t getting over or under it. The only way in is to go through. I don’t like it any more than you do. Intel says the back gate should be right over there.” I looked to where she was pointing at a pair of twin watchtowers guarded by a group of Snowmen shivering in the light of a single lamp.
“How many in the towers?” Cheese Eater said.
“Who knows? I’m not worried as long as we stay clear of those floodlights. The real problem is going to be the Lice. But all I see on that yard is Frosties, which tells me the Lice are sleeping, and won’t come out to play unless there’s an alarm. Intel couldn’t spot them directly, either. Only their tracks.”
“Maybe your intel was wrong,” Gator said.
“My intel is never wrong, asshole.”
“They must have good archers in those towers,” Bunny Rabbit said.
“Then you’ll just have to be better, won’t you?” Barn Owl said.
Bunny chewed her lip and nodded.
“What you see is what you get, people. The guard is heavy enough for no one to get out, and to keep anyone brash or imprecise from getting in. But we ain’t brash or imprecise, are we, Vermin?”
“Sir, no sir,” the Vermin said.
“Damn right. We’re the goddamned razor blades of God.”
“You think there’s any possibility it’s a trap?” I said.
“Sure I do,” Barn Owl said. “Everything we do is walking into traps, Leech. Or did you forget who we are?”
“Oh. I see. No, sir, I didn’t,” I said.
“Good. How’s that arm, Princess?”
Zaea was kneeling under the red ruin of the car window, vigorously massaging some hidden pain in her forearm. “It hurts a little. I think it’s reacting to my anxiety about passing next to those towers. I’ll get it under control.”
“You better turn I’ll get into I’ve got, five seconds ago. Can I still trust you to use that weapon without dismantling any members of this team?” Barn Owl said.
“I can handle it.”
“You can handle it, sir.”
“I can, sir.”
“Awfully humble for a princess, ain’t she, Vermin? Where the hell did you say you’re from, again?” Barn Owl said.
“I’m not a princess here, sir,” Zaea said.
“Good. Any thinking you are, and that your life is more valuable than any of ours, is going to get us, or you killed. So we ain’t gonna encourage that type of thinking in this unit. From now on, you’re Little Mouse. And you’re gonna be silent as a little mouse out there, aren’t you, Zaea?”
“Yes, sir,” Zaea said.
How come she gets a good nickname, and I got stuck with Leech?
Barn Owl made a final survey of the compound, tracing an invisible path through the back gate and across the yard to the nearest cluster of prisoner barracks with an outstretched finger. “We make our approach there. That way Bunny has plenty of time to take out those four Frosties at the gate. How close do you need to be?”
“Twenty meters,” Bunny Rabbit said.
“Can you kill two at thirty?”
“Yep. Yep,” Bunny said.
“Then I’ll get one with my spear, and Vole will take the other one. Little Mouse could use the ghost, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. We don’t want to destroy anything big enough to wake up the Lice before we know exactly where they are. So keep it sheathed until my signal, Mouse. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir,” Zaea said.
“Once we’re in, we’ll split into two groups. I’ll take Gator and the newbies underground. Bunny, Cheese, Squirrel, and Vole, you guys work on clearing those barracks. I count twelve buildings, but intel says less than half of them are occupied. Maybe none are. That report was a week old. They might’ve moved everyone into the main facility for all we know. When you find our people, move directly to extraction. Get as many of them as far away from this place as you can. If you make it all the way home, wonderful. If not, we’ll rendezvous at the foot of the icefall. If those buildings are empty, you come find us in the main hall immediately. All of that clear?” Barn Owl said.
“Yes, sir,” the Vermin answered.
“Good. Run fast, and stay low. The yard has been salted, so there’s no snow, but there could still be patches of black ice, and nothing will fuck up this mission faster than if one of you slips and pulls a Bunny Rabbit.”
The Vermin chuckled. Even Bunny was forced to smile.
“One more thing before we go. Even if you don’t believe, I want to see everyone take the hands of the Vermin next to you and say a prayer. I’d better see those goddamned heads bowed, people, and you’d better bow them low.”
We did.
Barn Owl prayed: “Lord, Son of the Spiral and Sower of Seeds, give us strength so that we might do your good work. We ascend the Spiral by your grace alone. Move us now, so that we may be your flame, for you are the ember, the light, and the sun that will return. All together now, everyone. We are the fire.”
“We are the fire,” the Vermin reprised.
V
Far below in the valley green
An army camped by rushing stream
Standards limp in the early mist
The soldiers sav'ring sleep's last kiss.
Hidden in thick pines high above
The Good Knight flicked a battered glove,
His hussars3 poured down 'pon the glen
Their winged song a fell siren.
For weeks he'd watched the birds of prey
That haunted the highest, crook'd ways,
Observed their predatory make
God’s own terror in avian shape.
The whore, Ola designed the wings
Of countless faggots, feathers, strings,
She’d worn a costume once onstage
When the late Queen Ania she had played.
The king’s men died still in their tents
With covered ears and bowels spent.
By sunrise, lo, how they had lent!
Their armor cleaned, their standards rent.
A new force rose in that red haze
Ten thousand ghostly royal shades,
Dead men marched, false banners raised,
To meet the king in three short days.
3Winged knights who fought on horseback. Their wings were constructed of wood frames holding the feathers of hawks or ospreys, and would create a terrifying, high-pitched shriek.
THE FACILITY
WE RAN at a low crouch across the no man’s land that hemmed the outer darkness of the compound, eight scampering Vermin clothed in shadow and snow. The four guards standing watch astride the gate didn’t hear us until Bunny had already let her arrows fly. The shafts sprouted between the leather stitches of their eye sockets, their cries of agony caught sputtering in their throats.
Vole took another Snowman down with a throwing axe at twenty paces. It whistled through the air and sunk into the creature’s belly with a raw, meaty smack. The Snowman doubled over, his groan cut short by a second axe growing from the bridge of his nose. Barn Owl took care of the fourth, chucking her Wyvernwood spear through his stomach and pinning the creature to the permafrost, where it thrashed, croaked, and died.
We halted under the north gate tower, kneeling in the snow to keep out of view of the sentries prowling the walls of the compound. Even from this distance, I could see the
Snowmen up on the battlements still had their eyes. They were alphas, and the bone arrows they carried by the dozens in leather quivers on their hips were likely as accurate as Bunny’s.
Cheese Eater tested the monstrous, iron slab of the gate for a weak point, but was interrupted by an arrow thumping into the snow between his feet. Before the sniper could shoot again or raise the alarm, Bunny soundlessly shot him out of the gate tower. She pulled the arrow from between Cheese Eater’s feet, examined it, and stuck it in her own quiver with a shrug. Cheese Eater went back to checking the gate.
The gate was solid iron through and through. We weren’t going to chop it down or open it from the outside. Squirrel took Vole’s leather whip and tied a four-pronged metal hook to the end, creating a makeshift grappling hook. He wrapped the hook part in cloth to dampen the noise of impact before tossing it up into the gate tower and scrambling up to disappear into the dark, slatted window above. The clash of steel and the muffled sounds of a fight drifted down. A few seconds later, a Snowman - who I guessed had been sleeping at his watch - flew out of the window, fell two stories, and impaled himself on Vole’s awaiting spear.
A lock clicked open on the other side of the gate, and the giant, iron slab swung inward.
The crack Squirrel opened was barely large enough for each of us to squeeze through. I saw why once I’d made it to the other side. The gate had to be opened by hand, either pushed or pulled to the side you wanted it to open, and was heavy enough to require the strength of several men to move. I should’ve noticed how strong Squirrel was down in the tunnels, when he’d pulled his own bodyweight up a naked cliff face with no equipment and a parkourist’s ease. The guy was a head shorter than I was, but pound for pound, he was practically superhuman.
