The Ace of Skulls

by Chris Wooding

  It wasn’t.

  The terror hit him again, but he was already running, sprinting as fast as he could towards other side of the dining room. His muscles seized and the strength fell out of them, but his momentum carried him forward, and somehow he stumbled through the doorway and into the small sitting room beyond.

  To his relief, his strength came back. The fear was huge but bearable. And the more distance he put between himself and the Imperator, the more it diminished. He crossed the room, out into a corridor, turned a corner.

  It’s lost me, he thought. They cast their power like a net, and I slipped out from under it.

  The Imperator didn’t know where he was for the moment, but he’d been seen. His pursuer would come hunting.

  He reached into the side pocket of his pack and pulled out the control panel for the sonic flux emitter. It was a thin metal board with several dials and a switch, attached by wires to his pack. Like most daemonic equipment, it ate up power, and even with Kyne’s specialised batteries it wouldn’t last more than a couple of minutes. But the transmitters had quite a broadcast range. Maybe he could blast it out, find the Imperators’ frequency quickly. When they started to scream, he’d know he had it. It would serve as a warning shot across their bows. Drive them back, make them think twice.

  He just needed to know if it would work. He needed to know if he had any way to fight them. It was fear more than tactics that made him hit that switch.

  Nothing happened.

  He toggled it on and off again frantically. There should have at least been a hum of power from the pack.

  The wires.

  Some connection had come loose during all that running about. Maybe the battery, maybe something else. It was a haphazard, slipshod design, but they hadn’t exactly had the time to make something perfect. And now it wasn’t working.

  The darkness gathered through the doorway. The cold press of dread gathered with it. He heard a footstep.

  Oh no, he thought, and fled again.

  He ran through corridors and rooms, he ran downstairs when stairs presented themselves, but the Imperator was relentless. Whenever he stopped for breath, the air began to thicken behind him again, a nameless, primal horror bunching and growing there. Then he was forced to move on.

  The mansion was large, and in his fright he became lost in it. He heard banging from somewhere below him, and remembered the staff locked in the basement. The gunfire and explosions from the hamlet had panicked them, and they wanted out. The fools: if they knew what waited out here, they’d stay quiet.

  An idea had grown in him, that he might abandon the others and flee, out into the snow where his friends and his lover fought the Awakeners. Jez was there, at least. If the Imperators followed him, she could—

  Wait! His eyes went wide. Jez! She could save them! The half-Manes, the best weapons they had against the Imperators, were out there on the battlefield.

  Trying to catch the Imperators was the last thing on his mind now. He just wanted to live.

  He stopped, felt in his pocket for the earcuff. Quickly he drew it out, put it to his ear.

  An Imperator stepped round the corner.

  Crake yelled, staggered backwards, tripped on his heels. The earcuff fell from his hands and rolled onto the floor. He threw out his hand to balance himself. It found a door handle, which turned beneath his grip. The door swung open and he fell through just as he felt the icy grip of the Imperator’s power seize him again.

  He swung the door shut behind him as he staggered into the room. It was a pantry, large and well stocked with deep shelves full of canned goods and preserves. A small window, high up, gave a little light. Crake was still off-balance as he wheeled in. He turned and fell on his side; there was a loud crash as the pack on his back took another heavy knock.

  Panic. Blind panic. No way out. A closed room. No way out anywhere.

  He scrambled backwards towards the far wall, reaching for his gun as he went, digging in his pockets, looking for anything that would prevent the awful thing outside from coming in. His searching hand closed on a hard waxy cylinder as his pack bumped up against the shelves, allowing no further retreat.

  He pulled out a stick of dynamite from his pocket.

  A desperate cry escaped his lips. Spittle flecked his beard. He reached into another pocket and tugged out a box of matches, which scattered as they came. He picked one up and struck it against the stone floor.

  All he saw was a weapon. He was made automatic by terror, stripped down to survival instinct alone. The match flared, driving back the dark for an instant; he touched it to the fuse; then he flung the dynamite away from him with a futile blind motion, as a child might cast a stone at a man three times his size. The dynamite hit the door, bounced and rolled into the corner of the pantry, beneath the shelves, its fuse fizzing.

  The fact that Crake was alone in a room with a lighted stick of dynamite was drowned out by the landslide of horror that came down on him. His throat tightened. He couldn’t breathe. His heart wrenched against its moorings.

  The handle turned, and slowly the door opened, and Crake knew that when he laid eyes on the creature that had come to claim him, he’d die on the spot. Yet when the Imperator stepped through, he realised he was wrong, that there was another level to terror previously unimagined. The Imperator turned his atrocious gaze upon Crake and pinned him there, and Crake mewled and whimpered and would have screamed if he could, but there was no breath left in his body. His heart was going like a machine gun, and it burned in his chest like he’d swallowed hot coals.

  Then it was as if someone had clapped two hands over his ears, hard. As if he was a boy on a beach, hit by a wave too big to withstand, brought under where the world was a dull roar, to be dashed on the stones. His legs were seized and he flipped round so that he was thrown face-first into the shelves. The air was full of projectiles; he was battered from above by falling jars and cans. He covered his head as best he could, too shocked to make sense of what was happening.

  Peace returned, except for the clink and clatter of falling glass and rolling cans.

  He let out a breath. His heart was still pounding fit to burst. He listened to it slow, his back to the room. Every part of him was pummelled. His pulse and breath seemed amplified, but all external sounds were dull, as if his ears were clogged with cotton wool.

  With numb fingers, he undid the belts that held his backpack to his body. He slipped his arm out and sat up and looked.

  The room had been destroyed. Shelves had collapsed, shedding their contents. Glass was everywhere. A black and broken heap of leather and flesh lay on the floor by the door. There was little blood. But the monster was still, and the fear had gone.

  Gritting his teeth in advance of the pain, Crake got to his feet. He could still do that, then. He looked at himself. He was bruised and cut everywhere, but with effort he could move everything. Dry-mouthed and battered, but alive.

  ‘I killed you,’ he croaked at the dead Imperator. He was almost as surprised by that as the Imperator must have been. ‘I killed you.’

  A defiant bravery crept over him, and any notion of escape was pushed aside. He still had breath in his body, and the enemy was proven fallible. He wouldn’t call on the half-Manes. He didn’t need them.

  One down, he thought. Two to go.

  Thirty-One

  Bess, Unleashed – Frozen Up – Line of Sight – The Runt of the Litter – A Slaughter

  Frey scrambled down a snow-laden bank, bullets clipping the trees behind him. The slope was steeper than it looked beneath the drifts; his heels skidded and he fell on his arse, slithering the rest of the way. He rolled onto his belly as he went, and ended up with his pistol out, aiming back up the slope.

  A figure appeared in the flurrying murk. He was wearing a thick coat and furred hood, and was carrying a rifle. Frey shot him before he had a chance to use it.

  He heard footsteps rasping in the snow. Two men came running round the side of the bank, having take
n a shallower way down. One of them shouted and pointed at him. Frey rose up on his elbow and aimed at them through the stark black trees, but before he touched the trigger, two shotguns fired simultaneously and the men flailed and went down.

  Samandra came jogging through the trees. She halted before him and spun her twin lever-action weapons, chambering new shells with a quick jerk of her wrists. Then she holstered them and offered a hand to Frey.

  ‘Think that’s the last of ’em,’ she said, as she pulled him from the drift.

  ‘Persistent sons of bitches, weren’t they?’

  ‘Reckon they got orders saying nobody leaves alive.’

  ‘Well, I bloody am,’ said Frey. ‘Come on, can’t be far now. Swear I’ve got frostbite.’ He rubbed his hands together. They were numb and aching, but he couldn’t aim worth shit wearing his gloves, so he was forced to endure it.

  Samandra was listening to the distant gunfire. ‘Strikes me my talents might be more use back there with them,’ she said.

  ‘By the time you get back there, there won’t be anything left. We gotta do something about their air superiority, and I need you on the autocannon.’

  She didn’t argue the point any further. They hurried onward. Both were tired: ploughing through the snow was hard work. To their right the land rose, busy with the dark bristles of a hibernating forest. To their left there were no trees, just the howling emptiness of the gorge. Frey navigated by that.

  As they went, he took his earcuff from his pocket and attached it with some difficulty. The snap of gunfire sounded in his ear, closer now, coming through Malvery’s earcuff.

  ‘Doc! How we doing?’

  ‘Ain’t good, Cap’n,’ came the reply. ‘Jez’s gone berserk and the whispermonger’s gone after her. We took down one gunship and the other’s pulled back a bit, but there’s a whole shitload of Awakeners crawlin’ up our arses and we only got five guns.’

  Five guns. He did a quick mental count. Ashua, Silo, Malvery, Harkins, Grudge. They were all still fighting, he realised with relief.

  ‘Help’s on the way,’ he said. ‘Keep your heads down. You heard from Crake?’

  ‘You’d know if you ever put your bloody earcuff in,’ said Malvery. ‘No, not a peep.’

  Frey couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he said ‘Good luck, mate.’

  ‘Yeah, you too.’

  The boom of Malvery’s shotgun made him wince. He pulled out the earcuff and pocketed it again. Samandra was watching him, her eyes keen beneath the snow-specked fur lining of her hood.

  ‘No news is good news, right?’ he said to her.

  Samandra said nothing.

  They climbed another bank, and on the far side they found a clearing on the edge of the chasm, where the trees drew back and there was a stony hollow in the land. Looming out of the snow was the Ketty Jay, her blocky form solid and reassuring in the world of ghostly white.

  Some of the tension went out of Frey as he saw her. A small part of him had been worrying that the Awakeners might have found her and surrounded her, as they had the Wrath on the landing pad.

  There was a keypad on one of the Ketty Jay’s rear landing struts. Frey poked at the keys with trembling fingers. There was a thump inside the craft, and the squeaking of hydraulics as the ramp opened.

  It had barely touched the ground before Bess came barrelling out of the darkened interior. She came to a halt at the bottom of the ramp, swinging her body left and right, looking for enemies. She’d been cooped up too long, and the sound of gunfire had made her agitated.

  ‘That way,’ said Frey, pointing back towards the hamlet. ‘Anyone that isn’t us, kick ’em all the way to the Wrack.’

  Bess roared and thundered off into the trees.

  ‘That’s some precision strategy you got there,’ Samandra commented as they headed up the ramp.

  Frey turned on the lights in the hold and closed the ramp behind them. ‘Every toolkit needs a hammer.’

  They went quickly through the cargo hold, their breath steaming the air, and made their way up the stairs to the main passageway. Frey indicated the ladder leading up to the gunnery cupola as he went by.

  ‘Up there,’ he told her, already halfway to the cockpit.

  Samandra slowed and looked up. ‘I ain’t got a clue how to work an autocannon,’ she said.

  ‘Just point it and pull the trigger,’ Frey called over his shoulder. He jumped in the pilot seat and began flicking switches, beginning with the heaters.

  ‘Why are there so many rum bottles up here?’ Samandra’s voice drifted through the cockpit door. He ignored her, tapped in the ignition code and hit the engines.

  Nothing happened.

  He tried again. This time the engines gave an asthmatic wheeze. Frey swore and started pumping the choke.

  ‘Can’t help noticing a distinct lack of any damn thing happenin’, Frey,’ Samandra shouted down. ‘Why ain’t we takin’ off?’

  ‘She’s frozen up!’ he yelled back. ‘Gotta let the internals heat through, get the anti-freeze going.’ He cursed himself. He should have had Silo out here keeping her warm. He never thought they’d need a quick launch.

  ‘How long’s that gonna take? Our guys ain’t exactly got a surplus of time.’

  ‘Not long!’ he called back confidently. Then, under his breath: ‘I hope.’

  Crake went quietly through the mansion, listening as best he could through the ringing in his ears. There was an Imperator somewhere nearby. He felt it.

  His hands were ready on the control panel of the sonic flux emitter. He’d fixed the broken connections, and now he was confident it would work as it should. Reasonably confident, anyway. There was no way of telling how much damage the device had suffered by being bashed about. No way except turning it on, anyway. And he wouldn’t do that yet.

  Before, he’d been scared. He hadn’t been thinking straight. Turning on the device would likely have drawn the Imperators to him; he was lucky it hadn’t worked. But now he’d killed one of his opponents, and the fight was back in him.

  He’d reclaimed his earcuff from where it had fallen, but he hadn’t put it in. He didn’t need help from the crew. He could do this. He could take down the Imperators.

  Every muscle was stiff, every movement painful. The skin of his face felt blasted and scoured. A dozen tiny cuts stretched and opened beneath the slashes in his clothes. He bore it all with a stoicism he’d never imagined he possessed.

  He crept up to a doorway and looked through. The room beyond was lit by a fire in the grate. A harpsichord stood askew, a settee out of place, a card table on its side. This was the parlour where the Imperators had first attacked them. He’d come back to find his companions.

  Nothing moved, but for the lunge and swing of the firelight. He crept into the room, walking softly. From here, he could see past the harpsichord. Behind it, in the corner, a dark lump lay.

  A faint nausea trickled into his stomach. Plome. Oh, no, Plome. I didn’t want to drag you into this.

  But he’d done it anyway. He’d known the risks of asking his friend to be bait for the Imperators and he’d still gone ahead. Because the Awakeners had to be stopped.

  He checked the room again and crept closer, crossing in front of the fire. Once the light was behind him, he could see a little better. He frowned. The lump was too small for Plome, and twisted in a strange way. Another step nearer, and he saw. A rug. A bunched-up rug, that had skidded into the corner, sent there by a running foot.

  Plome was nowhere to be seen.

  He let out a slow breath of relief. A quick check round the room found no sign of Kyne, either. They hadn’t been killed here. They’d escaped, as he had.

  That’s good. That’s great. Now all I need to do is find them.

  He slipped out of the parlour and into a corridor. The fight was still in full swing outside. Once in a while, faint screams came to him on the skirling wind. Still he felt the crawling sense of a daemonic presence, somewhere in the dark, somewher
e close.

  He looked round a corner. A long corridor stretched away from him, with windows all along one side, looking out across the chasm at the white valley slopes. He was on the far side of the mansion from the hamlet, and out there was nothing. Bleak light struggled in, casting the shadow of the panes onto the polished floor.

  Where are you? he thought, as he crept onward. His senses were on edge now, suspicion gnawing at him. The Imperator was close. Should he go back instead? But what if it was sneaking up behind him?

  He passed an open doorway, and looked inside. Nothing. He walked on, and a moment later was seized from behind.

  A hand clamped around his mouth. He was pulled backwards into the doorway, tottering on his heels. He tried to struggle, but suddenly he was grabbed and turned, and found himself face to face with

  an Imperator.

  Morben Kyne, his green eyes shining beneath his hood, one finger held up to his mouth-grille in an urgent demand for silence. Crake’s cry of alarm died in his throat. Slowly, Kyne pointed off through the wall, in the direction Crake had come from.

  There’s one of them following me.

  Kyne had turned his head away from Crake, and was staring at the blank wall. Looking through it.

  He can see them. He really can. Spit and blood, what knowledge he must have, what resources! A daemonist sanctioned by the Archduke! The things I could do, if I didn’t have to hide away like a criminal. The things I could learn from him!

  Kyne drew his large-bore pistol and stepped out into the corridor. Crake peered round the edge of the doorway. He could sense the presence of the approaching Imperator, the dread of it. Kyne aimed down the corridor, his arm out straight.

  ‘Kyne!’ Crake whispered. ‘What are you doing? They’ll bring down the terror on us before you get line of sight.’

  Kyne didn’t appear to have heard him. He was impassive, still as a statue. The dark at the end of the corridor began to curl and clot. Crake watched helplessly, half in hope and half in fear, because if the Imperator laid eyes on them it would all be over.