by Jen Williams
‘Sarn’s bloody bones.’ Vintage pushed her fingers into the curly fur at Helcate’s neck. ‘Let’s hope she remembers she’s flying as part of a team.’
A beam of light shot from the war-beast’s mouth, and Vintage watched with satisfaction as a huge flower of ice crystals blossomed on part of what she was choosing to think of as the queen’s back. The bat flew closer, the beam growing fatter, and the flower spread, sending fingers of frost down and across to the bulbous maggot shapes growing from the monster’s back. The constant stream of varnish thinned to a dribble, then dried up entirely.
‘Oh look! Clever girl.’ Vintage couldn’t help smiling. ‘Such a powerful weapon, just as I knew it would be.’
Sharrik and Windfall appeared to be working in tandem now, with Bern and Tyranny shouting instructions and encouragement to each other. The bat was working on creating a ring of ice around the vast queen-monster, while Sharrik continued to plunge himself into the queen’s amorphous flesh, ploughing great furrows and tattering her tendrils into scattered pieces.
‘How are you feeling, darling? Are you ready to get back to it?’
Helcate made a series of hiccupping noises. ‘Helcate!’
‘Good work, my brave one.’
They soared down into the milieu only to be met by Chenlo on the back of her own bat. Her shirt was torn and the grey fur of her bat was scorched in places, and her hair was coming loose from its meticulous braid.
A rose in the heart of the Wild, thought Vintage.
‘We’ve run out of the heartbright,’ she called. ‘The women’s fire is starting to have little effect against the moon-metal.’
Vintage saw that she was right. The arcs and streams of winnowfire that criss-crossed the air around them were back to their more usual blue-green, with none of the spitting violence of the chemically enhanced flames.
‘Does Okaar have any more?’
Chenlo shook her head. ‘We took all of it with us.’
‘Helcate,’ said Helcate.
‘Of course.’ Vintage pursed her lips. ‘Winnowfire fuelled by war-beast life force is just as effective. My love, tell the women to take life force from Helcate and Sharrik. Warn them it can be overwhelming, warn them not to take too much, to be careful . . .’ Vintage shook her head. Telling them to be careful in the midst of this nightmare was laughable. ‘And don’t swarm us, I don’t want Sharrik kept from what he’s doing, or Helcate accidentally spitting acid all over a witch who didn’t get away in time.’
Bern, Sharrik. Did you catch that?
We did. We’ll look out for the witches.
Chenlo nodded once and flew off, shouting new instructions to the fell-witches. It was a testament to the Winnowry agent’s control that they weren’t immediately surrounded, but soon women were flying on their bats towards them, hands held out, and Helcate went to them gladly, his neck stretched out to meet them. It was a difficult manoeuvre – too many wings in the same airspace, thought Vintage grimly – but they managed it. After the first two flew away, their hands full of bright green fire, Vintage felt the wave of tiredness that moved through Helcate, and they dipped a little lower in the sky.
‘Darling, we must be careful. You will tell me if it’s too much?’
‘Helcate!’ said Helcate, a shade testily.
‘Because we can’t have you –’
Her words were lost in a roar that almost shook them from the sky. Helcate plummeted briefly, then struggled back up and away. There was something else in the sky with them, something huge. Vintage twisted in the harness and looked up, her stomach turning a slow somersault. It was Celaphon, the enormous purple dragon that had killed Eri, his wings spread and his huge jaws open and crackling with electricity.
‘Oh,’ she said, fighting against a wave of horror that threatened to stop her heart. ‘That particular monster can fuck right off.’
Chapter Fifty-two
Aldasair staggered to the ground, wiping a line of clear blood from his chin and redoubling the grip on his axe, which was streaked with Jure’lia gore. He looked up to see Jessen by the gates, the body of a drone clamped between her jaws and one of the remaining human soldiers cowering behind her. The Jure’lia hordes were still coming, and they had been pushed back through the city streets to the grounds of the palace. All around him were the sounds of men and women screaming and shouting, the smell of spilled human blood. There was so much of it, splashed across the grass and on the stones, it was making him dizzy, summoning memories he’d hoped would stay hidden forever.
‘Commander!’ He got back to his feet, glancing up at the sky as he did so. The situation up there didn’t look much better. ‘Commander, your soldiers –’
‘The last are inside the palace,’ said Commander Morota. She had stayed close to him and Jessen throughout the fight, and Aldasair had been impressed. The woman had the stamina of an Eboran, although she looked pale and exhausted now, sweat leaving dirty lines on her cheeks. ‘Inside and outside of the Hall of Roots.’
Aldasair nodded. It was what they had agreed. There were a tiny team of fell-witches on the roof too, staying close to Ygseril’s branches. If the tree-father fell, then they were likely all doomed anyway.
‘Jessen, there are more coming.’ A number of freshly made drones were shuffling their way across the palace lawn, their faces still contorted with the expressions of horror the humans had worn when the burrowers crammed down their throats. The wolf leapt from her place by the gates and thundered across the grass towards them, tearing and snapping until pieces of hollowed-out human lay scattered. ‘Commander, we may have to move inside the palace.’
‘I agree.’ She kicked away an insectoid creature the size of a dog, then drove her short sword down through its spine. ‘It’s more defensible. Seal the entrances, the windows, get more people out on the roof.’
She called to one of her remaining soldiers, and he raised a horn to his lips. A series of short, sharp notes blurted across the gardens, and those who were still able to began to run back towards the gates.
Do we go too?
Jessen came charging back across the grass. Aldasair had never seen her look so wild; her amber eyes were wide, her tongue lolled out of her mouth wetly. The fur on the front of her chest was dark and wet with the interior juices of so many worm-monsters.
We stay with them.
Together they ran through the gates and across the gravel yard, following the remaining soldiers through the wide central doors. Once inside, the doors were slammed shut, and more men and women ran to seal them with planks of wood and old Eboran furniture.
‘We just need to slow them down,’ Aldasair called to the humans. ‘Keep them from the central chambers long enough for our friends to do their work.’ He hoped his words were encouraging, but he doubted they were even listening. Their faces were tight with horror, the faces of people who had watched their friends eaten and their makeshift homes trampled under a wave of horrors. When the doors were sealed, they started on the windows, covering them up as best they could, but the palace had always been a warren, an organic sprawling place with no plan and no logic to its layout.
They’ll get in somewhere. Jessen’s voice in his head was tired. And if they don’t, she will.
Someone took his elbow and Aldasair almost raised his axe before realising it was the man Okaar. He wore a long thin sword at his waist, although the awkwardness of his movements suggested he was unlikely to be able to use it as skilfully as he once had.
‘My friend, you are bleeding from a dozen places.’
Aldasair glanced down. A couple of the wounds were oozing black blood, but there was no pain. No pain from any of the cuts. He shrugged, uncertain what to say. What did it matter who was bleeding at this point?
‘I don’t suppose we have any more of your clever barrels, Okaar?’
The assassin looked grave. ‘We had so few ingredients to begin with.’ Behind them, the doors began to shake as something outside crashed against them repeatedly
. ‘It’s all gone – on the heartbright, and the fire barrels. I am sorry.’
Aldasair shook his head. ‘Without you, we’d be in an even worse state now. You’d best get away if you can, Okaar, if you can’t –’ He swallowed the last words. If you can’t fight.
Okaar raised his eyebrows in a rueful expression. ‘And go where, Lord Aldasair?’ When Aldasair didn’t reply, he continued. ‘What of Tyranny? And the Lady Vintage? They are still out there?’
‘They fight on.’ Aldasair thought back to the brief glimpses of the sky he’d managed to get in between the fighting. ‘The air is alive with fire and ice. The queen edges forward though, for all their efforts.’
A piercing scream from outside caused them all to turn back to the doors. Aldasair went over to the nearest window with Commander Morota and Okaar at his back. The human troops had nailed a pair of boards over it, but it was still possible to see a strip of the outside world through the dirty glass.
‘Sarn’s bloody bones,’ spat Morota. ‘We’ve barely made a dent.’
To Aldasair, it was like looking through a portal into a vision of a nightmare, or the distant past. The lawn, the gardens, the ornate gates; all were almost completely lost under a swarm of teeming insect creatures. There were human figures out there staggering around, most of them already drones, although the screaming indicated there were a few whose insides were still in the process of being eaten. The city itself was dwarfed under the shadow of the queen, and her tentacles squirmed through the broken windows of houses, across roofs and along the streets. Peering up into the sky, squinting against the light, he could just make out Bern and Sharrik as a flitting shape somewhere up near the queen’s head, and there was the shimmering blast of Windfall’s ice beam. There were Behemoths up there too, and a great deal of movement around them. Their forces – their brave and desperate team – looked like tiny scraps of broken leaves in the face of the Jure’lia.
‘You cannot hope to win against that,’ said Okaar. His words were rusty chunks, dry and broken.
‘We don’t have to.’ Aldasair turned away from the window and grabbed the man’s arm briefly. ‘We just have to hold them off for long enough.’
‘There, that roof. It’s clear. Land there.’
‘I will not,’ thundered Sharrik. ‘We are in the middle of battle, and I will not –’
‘Stones’ arses, this is not the time to argue with me!’ Bern leaned low over the griffin’s neck, shouting the words directly into his tufted ear. ‘Bloody well land!’
For a wonder, the war-beast did as he was told. They peeled away from the chaos that was the space around the queen and flew low over the ruined city, coming to rest on a long, low roof lined with green tiles. Once they were down, Bern untied himself from the harness and stepped down, pushing the handle of his axe into one of the straps.
‘This is an insult,’ grumbled Sharrik.
‘You are exhausted. Rest for a moment, brother, or you’ll get us both killed.’
The griffin lowered his head, and then sunk down, folding his thickly muscled legs beneath him. Bern ran his hand down the beast’s neck, feeling a tide of weariness lap at him through the connection they shared.
‘Just a few moments,’ Sharrik conceded. ‘Such a battle I have never seen.’
There was a long black barb sticking out of the griffin’s shoulder – some piece of Jure’lia carapace wedged deep in the fur so that a thin trickle of black blood was leaking from the wound. Bern pulled it free, wincing at the jagged tooth-like spur.
‘It’s too much.’ Inevitably he raised his head and looked back at the shape of the queen. Windfall continued her icy dance around the monster, while Vostok harried the creature’s head, yet he wasn’t sure they were causing the thing any real damage. A peal of violet flames lit up the sky. Gouts of green and blue fire shot through the air like comets. Another bulky shape circled at a distance; the dragon Celaphon, although he appeared to be riderless, and had yet to attack. ‘The fell-witches taking your energy too . . .’
‘I can do it,’ said Sharrik gruffly, but Bern could see how the griffin’s head was nodding even as he spoke. He put his arms around the war-beast’s enormous neck, and rested his head against his beak for a moment.
‘I know you can, brother,’ he said.
For a little while they sat in silence together, surrounded by the noise of war and buffeted by the terrors of their companions. Instinctively, Bern sought out Aldasair amongst the mayhem, and felt him somewhere close. He was distracted, worried, and trying not to show it. There was very little time left for any of them.
‘It is not so glorious,’ said Sharrik eventually, in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. ‘This war. There is so much sorrow, so much pain.’
‘That’s all war,’ said Bern. He was looking at the stump where his wrist had been, but he was thinking of the various little conflicts his people had had with the Sown. All those years of grudges, skirmishes, broken oaths and revenge. It all seemed very small now; the squabbling of children.
‘I’m not so sure that I like it after all.’
Bern thumped Sharrik on his meaty shoulder. ‘I don’t blame you. But after this war, you won’t have to fight again. How about that?’ He forced himself to smile. ‘We will go to Finneral, you and I, and we’ll spend our days eating and drinking and get good and fat. How about that?’
Sharrik gave a low chuckle.
‘We’ll fish, and hunt, and tell stories, just like my father. And there will be peace for us. After this war.’
‘After this war,’ agreed Sharrik. ‘No more fighting. But now –’ the griffin stood up again – ‘but now our friends need us.’
When they were back in the air again, Sharrik seemed somewhat renewed, fighting with fresh energy and purpose. They dove and swerved through the grasping tendrils of the Jure’lia queen, and more than once they called encouragement to Vostok, who was slathering the enemy in a waterfall of violet fire. Windfall, with her one blind eye, was continuing her spiral of ice, and Bern caught sight of Tyranny, her face wild and flushed. He lifted a hand to her, and saw her grin back at him, and that was when it happened. A flailing black tendril of Jure’lia fluid flew through the air as fast as a whip crack, and abruptly Tyranny and Windfall were no longer there. A second later Bern caught sight of the ex-queen of Tygrish – she had been ripped bodily from her harness and was falling through the air down to the city below.
‘Sharrik, quick!’
It was impossibly close. Sharrik shot after her, coming close to a free fall, and Bern, his axe shoved back through his belt, reached out, grabbing her hand with a smack that seemed oddly loud amongst the chaos of everything else.
‘Tyranny! Hold on!’
She looked up at him, her eyes so wild they looked like they would fall out of her head.
‘Where’s Windfall?’
Sharrik had swept round and up, trying to avoid the hordes of Jure’lia creatures on the ground, and they were above the queen again. Windfall was there, flapping steadily in mid-air, not moving. To Bern the war-beast looked stunned, as though she wasn’t quite sure where she was. Her huge mouth hung open, but there was no sign of the ice beam.
‘Windfall, look out!’
The long pointed head of the queen swept up, like a dog hearing an unexpected noise, and then it split open, revealing rows and rows of nightmarish teeth, marching all the way down her throat. She snapped her jaws shut, and Windfall was sheared in two.
‘No!’ Still hanging from Bern’s hand, Tyranny began to kick violently, her whole body shaking with grief and anger. ‘NO!’
‘Tyranny, don’t, you’ll fall!’
A shimmer of sorrow and pain coursed through Bern as the reality of Windfall’s death moved through the connection between the war-beasts. Sharrik roared in anger, echoing Tyranny, echoing the pain of all of them.
‘You bitch!’ In her free hand, Tyranny summoned a glove of green fire. ‘You will die for this!’
And then to B
ern’s horror, she let go of his hand, and she dropped like a stone onto the queen below, trailing flames as she went. There was a blossom of fire as she landed, and Bern saw her throwing fireballs directly at the queen’s enormous split head, but if she did any damage, he didn’t see it, and the black ooze that she stood on shifted and flowed up her legs, over her waist, and finally dragged her down into the body of the thing itself.
It was easy enough to see where they had been. Dead Jure’lia creatures lay in smoking heaps along the corridors, many of them crushed or sliced to pieces, and the walls themselves were blackened and tainted with winnow-soot. Hestillion wrinkled her nose at it, and walked a little faster. It also seemed obvious enough where they were heading. Perhaps, she reasoned, they meant to break the crystal in the same way that her cousin had, by planting some alien memory inside it.
‘It’s too late for that,’ she muttered. ‘Too late for any of that nonsense.’
Nevertheless, she reached out again to the First, instructing him to intercept them before they reached the crystal chamber, but then to her surprise she heard them herself. They were arguing, their voices raised. Hestillion stepped around a corner to see her brother standing with the human witch, his war-beast some distance away, killing the last of the worm minions.
‘It’s my choice,’ he was saying hotly, his face set into its usual stubborn lines. ‘What difference does it make to me at this point?’
‘What difference?’ The young woman’s hands were curled into fists at her sides, and she looked furious. ‘What about what difference it will make to everyone else? We don’t have time for this, Tor, our friends are dying out there . . .’
‘Your sister is here,’ commented the war-beast dryly.
