She released the whip handle and went rolling across the hard ground. As the ghouls came rushing in, River ended up on her back, revolver drawn. She knew from experience that anything less than a shot to the head would only anger these creatures. She fired three quick shots. The first two hit ghouls dead center in the forehead. The third shot went wide. As the first two ghouls dropped, the third lunged at her. River quickly aimed the weapon and shot the third in the face. He collapsed next to her.
Almost instantly, River was on her feet. She sprinted around an oncoming tank. The ghouls were marching north towards the mountains, and River headed directly south, right through the center of the battle. She heard distant cannon fire, and the eerie whistling sound of a cannonball hurtling through the air. The tank behind her exploded. Up ahead, legionnaires caught sight of her and started shouting. She turned left, racing at full speed towards the black wall of Ironhold.
Bullets and crossbow bolts whizzed by her head. River’s heart pounded in her ears. Her lungs ached and her muscles screamed. She didn’t have the strength. She couldn’t run much farther. She couldn’t fight them all. It was only a matter of moments until they were upon her.
River heard a shout. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw a ghoul closing in. He was tall, standing at about nine feet. A spring-powered exoskeleton enhanced his long legs and arms, and a cage of brass protected his chest. The monster brandished an axe big enough to cleave her in two. River spun. She drew her revolver, lined up the sites, and squeezed off a round. Her aim was perfect. A small circle appeared in the center of his forehead.
She narrowed her eyebrows, waiting for him to drop. To her surprise, the giant just smiled at her. He reached up, plucked the smashed bullet from his skull, and tossed it aside. The ghoul laughed. It raised the axe and started in her direction. River turned her head, scanning the area for any possible escape.
She was surrounded. The other ghouls were closing in. There were dozens of them. The only clear direction was towards the wall, but she’d never make it. Even if she could get there, she didn’t have the strength to climb it.
There was a cannon-like roar overhead. River heard a whooshing noise, and something big and round hit the giant square in the chest. The momentum threw him back, ripping his body apart as it hit the ground. The ghouls around her fell back. River turned, raising her gaze to the sky. To her surprise, an airship hovered overhead.
Her jaw dropped. That’s the Skyhart! she thought.
A familiar face appeared over the side of the rail, smiling down at her. “River!” Micah shouted. “Hang on, we’re sending down a ladder!”
Rowena’s crew used muskets and crossbows to drive back ghouls as the ladder went down. It swerved from side to side, and River had to chase it down. When she finally had it in her hands, River wrapped her arms around the wooden slats and held on for dear life. She knew she couldn’t make the climb. All she could do was wait for them to pull her up.
The ladder rose with a swift, sudden movement. River’s head swam, numbness working through her limbs. The ship had begun to climb, but she was about to black out. If she could just hold on a little longer. She lost her grip, and River felt herself falling...
River woke a few minutes later on the deck of the airship. Rowena stood over her, along with Micah, Morgane, and a few other crewmen. Micah stroked her bangs away from her eyes, smiling down at her. “Are you all right?”
“I fell...” she mumbled.
“Almost. Your legs were wrapped up in the ladder, or we’d have lost you.”
River reached up to touch the long scab on his face. “What happened to you? And where are your eyebrows?”
He chuckled. “It’s a long story.”
Micah helped her up. River rose unsteadily to her feet, and Morgane stepped closer to support her. River stared at her, confused. “Where did you come from?”
Rowena clapped a hand down on her shoulder and grinned.
“Micah said you might need our help,” the dark-skinned captain said. “It looks like I got here in the nick of time.”
River nodded. Her limbs felt weak and shaky. She turned her head and saw that they had already climbed a thousand feet into the air. The ship was moving northward. “Wait!” she cried. “We can’t leave yet. Socrates is still in the city.”
Rowena put two fingers to her lips and let out a shrill whistle. “Reverse course!” she shouted. “Take us over the city!”
“Aye, Captain,” the men shouted.
The propellers River had built for the ship went to work, and in a matter of minutes they had spun around and were headed for Ironhold. River went to the portside, near the bow, and leaned against the handrail, watching the city grow closer. Micah and Morgane stood nearby, close enough to help her if she needed it. River’s only interest was Socrates.
One of the crewmen passed by carrying a tankard. River’s instincts took over. She yanked it out of the man’s hand and gulped the contents down in three swigs. It had a bitter, slightly watered-down alcoholic flavor, with a hint of citrus. She wiped the moisture from her mouth on the back of her arm. “That’s good. What is it?”
He gave her a perplexed look. “It’s grog.”
“Got any more?”
He nodded at a barrel across the ship. River calculated the distance between her and there. She figured she’d probably drop about a third of the way. She handed the tankard back. The crewman, apparently used to this sort of treatment, hurried to fetch her more. As he returned with her refill, Rowena came to River’s side. The two women watched the deckhand wander off.
“That’s Wyl,” Rowena said with a wink. “He’s well trained. Make ‘em respect you, and they’ll all treat you like that.”
River snorted. “He reminds me of Kale.”
Rowena cocked an eyebrow. “Are you talking about that tall, dark-haired brute I bedded a few months ago?”
River gave a nod of her head. “That’s him.”
“You must be kidding. What does he have in common with Wyl?”
River considered it. “Nothing physical, obviously.”
“I’d say not. I’ve seen Kale take down half a dozen men while wielding a two-handed sword in each hand. All without breaking a sweat.”
“I don’t know,” River mused. “Just the way Wyl acts. I guess it reminds me of Kale.”
“Are you talking about Wyl’s servility? His eagerness to please?”
“I suppose.”
Rowena laughed. “Girl, if Kale treated you like that, you must be one in a million.”
River frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”
Rowena gave a shake of her head. “You need to learn the difference between obedience and love.” She walked off. River stared after her, not quite understanding what the woman meant.
River turned back to look at the city, and realized that they had drifted over the northern part of Ironhold. As they moved south, she could see some sort of commotion on the main street, near the gates. She asked the pilot to steer in that direction, and then borrowed a spyglass from him.
At first, she only caught glimpses of movement, but as the ship moved closer, she got a clear view down the length of an alley. What she saw there chilled her to the bone. It was Socrates. He was fighting the androids. River saw mechanical limbs and body parts flying through the air. She saw the ape lift one of the robots and smash it down on the others.
They had turned on him, she realized. Just like they had turned on her. Socrates was strong, but he didn’t stand a chance against so many. There must have been thousands of them. She moved closer to the bow and shouted for someone to bring a rifle. She screamed at the top of her lungs, telling Socrates to hang on for just another minute. They were almost there...
While she watched, a wave of machines washed over the ape, dragging him to the ground, pummeling him. He vanished, and before she even realized what had happened, it was all over. River could only watch in horror as the androids disassembled the automaton’s man
gled body and tossed the remains onto a wagon bed.
At some point, Rowena, Micah, and Morgane had joined her. She didn’t notice them there until it was all over. River sank to the deck, pressing her face into her hands. Micah knelt next to her, wrapping a comforting arm over her shoulders. Micah’s own grief brought tears to his eyes, and he wiped them away with a sniff.
Morgane, sensing River’s weakness, wandered toward the aft of the ship so the two could be alone. She didn’t know Socrates the way they had, and though it pained her to see what had happened to him, she doubted River would want her sympathy. Rowena made a motion in the air, gesturing for the pilot to turn back around.
River and Micah sat together in silence for some time, absorbing the shock of what had just happened. There were no words between them, just a mutual and overwhelming sense of grief and disbelief. The commander’s end had come so swiftly that it almost didn’t seem real.
Eventually, River pushed to her feet and said, “I need something to eat.”
“I’ll take you to the galley,” Micah said.
He steadied her as they crossed the deck and went down the stairs, descending into the bowels of the ship. He helped her into one of the booths outside the galley, and disappeared while he found her some food. When he returned, River didn’t thank him. She simply ate the food and stared into the distance as if she could see something that no one else could. Micah made a few attempts to talk to her, but all failed. His head swam with thoughts of what he had seen. He had so many questions about Ironhold, about what River and Socrates had found there, but she refused to answer.
When she had finished with her meal, the halfling took River to one of the ship’s bunkrooms. He helped her into a hammock and pulled a blanket up over her. River closed her eyes and immediately fell into a deep sleep.
“Is she all right?” Rowena asked when Micah returned topside.
“She will be. She’ll need time.”
Morgane came over to him, taking his hand in hers. Her eyes were red, and he realized she had been crying. “Are you all right?” Morgane said, looking down into his face.
Micah squeezed her hand. He guided her over to the portside rail, where they could talk in private. He could already see the ridges of the mountains and the plateaus at the edge of the Firelands up ahead.
“There was nothing we could have done,” he said. “He’s dead, and there’s nothing we could do to save him.”
“But he was a machine,” Morgane said. “How can you both feel so much love for a machine?”
“He was more than that,” Micah said. “You must know that, even though you only knew him for a short time.”
“I suppose I do,” she sighed.
“You can’t fool me. I can see that you have been weeping.”
Morgane smiled. “I do not weep for Socrates. I weep for you.” She pulled him close, pressing her warm perfume-scented body against him. “I don’t want you to be hurt. I can’t bear to see it.”
“Don’t worry about me. Worry about the rest of the world. If the Legion wins this war-”
“They won’t!” she said. “They can’t. We won’t let that happen.”
“I hope you’re right. We’ll know soon enough.”
She narrowed her eyebrows. “How is that?”
“By nightfall, we’ll be over Kantraya. We’ll get to see the size of the Legion firsthand.”
Her eyes widened, but she said nothing. They fell to silence, listening to the deep drumming of the ship’s massive steam engine, and the rush of the wind in the sails.
Chapter 25
Loren traveled through the treetops when possible, flitting from limb to limb and tree to tree with the agility of a bird. He was almost invisible, his deep green cloak and tanned leather boots blending easily into the surrounding foliage. If he made any noise at all, it was no more than the rustling of leaves in the breeze.
The Tal’mar warrior skirted around the lake, making his way toward the undead warriors at the southern shore. Already, Loren could see that the enemy was more embedded than he had imagined. He and the others had assumed that the Legion had just discovered this lake, but as he approached, Loren caught glimpses of several buildings, and in the field beyond, a small encampment. He located the tallest tree in the area and sped to the top for a better view.
Loren alighted on a narrow branch near the top of the giant evergreen. A light breeze blew across the top of the mountain, and the trunk made a seesawing motion that was not unlike standing on the deck of a ship. The Tal’mar paid little attention to any of this. His sharp vision picked out the individual ghoul soldiers moving about the camp, and his long elfin ears caught the sounds of their distant voices like whispers on the wind. They spoke in ghoulish, or whatever it was that they called their strange language of soft drawn-out vowels and harsh, abrupt consonants. He couldn’t understand them, but he didn’t need to. It was clear enough what they were up to.
The Legion had constructed some sort of a refinery, not unlike the process Socrates had used at Stormwatch. The ghouls used steam-powered pumps to draw water from the lake and pump it into a building on the shore. Here, through some mysterious process, they separated the starfall from the water. The water spilled out of the building by way of a sluice that ran along the western end of the camp and dumped in an endless stream down the side of the mountain. The starfall left the building in barrels, rolled down a ramp and loaded onto steamwagons for transfer back to the Legion.
The process didn’t seem particularly efficient. Smoke bellowed out of the building’s open doors and windows, and from the steam engines along the shore. The ghouls continuously hurried back and forth to the lake in order to repair the machinery and the crude hoses that seemed to continuously spring new leaks. For all their work, the ghouls had filled only two steamwagons with barrels. A third wagon held one barrel, and waited for three more to fill its capacity. Judging by what he saw, Loren estimated that the ghouls could only refine three or four barrels a day.
He imagined that possibly three times a week, the ghouls took their steamwagons down the mountain. This would have been a challenging drive, and he suspected that the ghouls probably lost as many barrels as they saved. Altogether, it made him wonder why they went through such a tedious process when he knew they had airships that could handle the loads with much greater efficiency.
Because they wanted to keep it secret, Loren realized. Parking an airship over the lake would have invited attention, and the ghouls didn’t want anyone else to know about their hidden resource. For now, they were willing to risk losing a certain percentage of the valuable element in order to protect the rest. After battling their way into Astatia and Danaise -after securing the surrounding territories- then the Legion would expand their operation.
Loren scanned the lake, noting the tendrils and waterways weaving back into the mountains. There was no telling how vast the body of water really was. Some of those channels might stretch back for a mile, and he couldn’t even guess at the depth of that milky liquid. Suddenly, everything about the Legion’s plan made sense. As it all came into focus, the Tal’mar realized that he had reached a vital crossroad.
Somewhere, hundreds of miles to the west, the armies of Astatia and Kantraya were likely gathering for battle. The war may already have begun. The Legion, with its tens of thousands of ghouls that were nearly indestructible, made a terrifying enemy. Even if not for their mechanical enhancements and immortal constitutions, they were an overwhelming force of sheer numbers. If they succeeded, all humanity -humans, Tal’mar, even Vangars and Kanters- would likely be enslaved and used as little more than cattle. They would be bred for superior stock to be converted into ghouls, to grow the Legion. The weak and the sick, those that were inferior in any way, would be brutally slaughtered.
By pure chance, Loren and the others had stumbled onto the Legion’s lifeline. Not only that, but they also used the element to power their technology. Without it, their flying machines and war machines would be u
seless. Once he realized the significance of this tiny refining operation, there was little choice in the matter. He had to do something: He had to destroy it.
Loren worked his way through the trees, circling around the camp. He studied their operation, taking count of the ghouls and observing their routines. The surrounding area had been clear cut, making observation easy, but also making infiltration almost impossible. The constant movement of the creatures meant any attempt to sneak into the refinery would likely fail. It seemed his best bet would be to wait until dark. Once night had fallen, Loren could move around the camp undetected, sabotaging the ghouls’ equipment.
With his mind made up, the Tal’mar began to make his way north, back to where his companions were hiding. In a matter of minutes, he had gone a quarter of a mile around the southern end of the lake and was moving into deeper forest. It was at this time that a loud screeching noise brought him to a halt. The sound echoed through the woods and across the lake. Loren was certain it had originated in the camp.
He scurried to the top of the tallest nearby tree and pulled his hood over his head to shield his eyes from the sun. The Tal’mar warrior narrowed his eyes to slits. His hawk-like vision immediately discerned the source of the noise. One of the fully loaded steamwagons was moving through the camp, making its way toward the road. They were taking a load back to the army!
In a panic, Loren flew down the tree and raced back the way he had come. By the time he reached the camp, the wagon had already begun its descent down the mountain. Loren pursued it around the southern end of the camp. He had the advantage of speed, since the ghouls had to be careful with their load and the road they traveled was little more than a rugged trail weaving its way through the mountains. The steamwagon made a wild racket as it bounced down the trail. The rusted leaf springs squealed and the wagon’s chassis squeaked and cracked as it twisted over the uneven terrain.
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