Frantic, Heinrich screamed, ‘Everyone to the shelters!’ Then he turned to Enoch and said, quieter, ‘This is not a fight we can win.’
‘Then save as many as you can. Get the children to safety and hide.’
‘We can’t win,’ whispered Jasper. ‘We can’t win.’
‘Get to a defensible position!’ ordered Enoch. ‘Make a stand, burn the bridges behind you and halt their advance!’
‘There are people all over Frosthaven, I will not abandon them.’
Enoch towered above Heinrich and glared down at him. ‘Then your death will be a noble one, and theirs will not be far behind you.’
Jasper grabbed Heinrich’s arm. ‘He’s right—Lyani and the children need you. I’ve helped maintain these bridges for years—no-one knows Frosthaven like me. The stone man can do the fighting and I’ll do the blowing-up.’
‘Stone Man.’ Tiera Martelo shoved through a knot of fleeing Frostcloaks. Her fingers caressed the hilts of her sheathed blades, eyes riveted to the sky. ‘The hell’s going on?’
‘Tiera, you should accompany those retreating to the shelters—they will need protecting.’
‘I’m not cowering with children in the dark.’ She spoke without removing her gaze from the sky.
‘We need to save these—’
‘Hear that? Something’s coming.’
Enoch did hear it—a roar rolling across the sky.
Descending through the roiling clouds like a shark chasing prey in murky depths came the Queen of the North.
‘It’s her.’ Ice water rushed through Serena’s veins. ‘It’s Ventris.’
Serena pressed against the skyglass. Lines of people scattered across the jagged tiers of Frosthaven, crowding its bridges. From the airship, the settlement resembled a broken jigsaw puzzle.
A bell tower collapsed, red smudges smeared across the snow and fires raged across Frosthaven’s bridges. Like a pack of wolves, motorcarriages bounded through the settlement, spitting bullets into villagers’ backs.
Gallows swore. ‘Sabretooths. They’re the Ryndarans’ anti-infantry vehicle.’
Serena’s hands pressed into her temples. ‘Why are they doing this? Why would the Ryndarans be working with Ventris?’
‘Arnault tooled ’em up. Shit, Serena, get back.’
‘Why?’
Before Gallows could answer, one of the Sabretooths halted. The gunner atop angled his gyrogun.
Gallows spun the wheel and the Childhood’s End lurched and ascended—but not fast enough. A storm of bullets tore through her envelope, chewing through the metal skeleton within. Something caught fire—the ship lurched and spun, throwing Serena into the wall. She fell, twisting her arm, and smacked her head off the floor, white lights filling her head.
‘Serena…!’ A piercing alarm rang, suffocating Gallows’ words.
The airship’s rudder struck something as it spun.
‘Get to the life capsule!’ Gallows hauled her up. ‘Go!’
The Childhood’s End spun over Frosthaven, smoke obscuring its skyglass. Serena’s stomach churned. Using the walls to steady herself, she stumbled towards the aft, bouncing from side to side, acrid smoke in her throat. She reached the life capsule, pulled its door open and scrambled inside. It was a cramped metal cage fixed with a balloon that inflated after it deployed. It didn’t fill her with hope.
Gallows slammed the door shut and unhooked the lifeboat from a rope line. ‘Pull that lever!’
Serena wrenched the lever back, bracing herself for the release.
It stuck.
Bullets screamed through the airship’s skin and bones.
Gallows tumbled towards Serena and clutched the lever with her.
‘Son of a bitch,’ he growled.
Freezing air snaked through bullet holes as the airship plummeted. Serena felt every push and jostle in her gut.
C’mon… C’mon… ‘There!’
With a metallic shriek, the lever lurched.
In an instant, the metal cage whipped away from its flaming mother craft and the balloon filled with lighter-than-air ignium. The Childhood’s End dwindled away, belching black smoke.
The capsule whipped in the wind, throwing Serena from side to side. Bullets rattled against its steel enclosure. A rope snapped, ignium leaked from the balloon, and the capsule spun towards the ground.
Another of Frosthaven’s bell towers erupted, thrusting stone and dust into Tiera’s eyes.
She didn’t slow down—let the Stone Man go against the armoured motorcarriages—she’d go for flesh and blood; the best way to protect yourself was to remove the threat—and when you didn’t have weapons, you used the enemy’s against them.
She pressed against a stone hut, the song of gunfire ringing around her.
The people of Frosthaven mewled like strangled cats. The Ryndarans burned them in their homes, destroyed their idols and shrines.
One of the Sabretooths rolled past—Tiera hid behind a wooden barrel in the back court of a stone house. The vehicle was decked out in desert camouflage and wrapped in barbed wire. Its shovelled head ploughed ice and corpses both.
The low-flying Queen of the North cast an impenetrable shadow over the village—she was bearing south, towards the treacherous landing island. Ropes slithered from her belly and men and women snaked down, organising on the ground. They were outfitted in Ryndaran military gear, but Tiera recognised more than one face.
When the pirates dispersed, Tiera climbed over the barrel and pressed beneath a window, listening as the troops ransacked the house. She unsheathed her curved kukri blades and inched towards the rear door, every movement crunching in the snow. One of the pirates stood in the doorway, so close Tiera could smell the sickly stench of tobacco clinging to his clothes. She recognised the stench’s owner—a pirate loyal to Helena. Tiera knew him to be a good man—yet he’d seen what Ventris had become and still stood by her.
In one movement, Tiera sprang out, cut his throat and dragged his body outside. His blood violated the untouched snow.
She let her eyes settle on him for a second before slipping inside. By the time her old comrades detected her, it was too late.
The life capsule struck a cliffside and bounced across ice and rock, battering the cage. Its hatch peeled away and spat Gallows out onto the ice, but Serena managed to stay inside.
The capsule tumbled down a serrated slope. Jagged ice and rock flew through the hatch and into Serena’s eyes. She slipped towards the open hatch—at the last second, she shot her legs out—her feet slammed into the capsule’s caged walls, straddling the empty hatch.
The crashing waves peered up at her, looming closer as the capsule picked up speed.
The wrench.
Serena grabbed it. If she could use it to pry a loose panel open, she could squeeze through and climb—
Screeching, the capsule halted, thrusting Serena forward. She scrambled to keep her footing, heart resounding in her ribcage.
She couldn’t take her eyes away from the open hatch—the life capsule hung parallel to the sea, swaying from side to side.
Serena didn’t waste time wondering what had stopped the lifeboat’s descent; she used her wrench to pry a weakened mesh panel from its frame and climbed through, ignoring the sharp metal cutting into her legs.
C’mon, c’mon…
Grimacing, she hauled herself up and onto the exterior of the capsule, fighting for purchase against a freezing gale—and saw just how precarious her position was: The capsule’s deflated envelope had snagged on the spiking branches of a bare tree—it had saved Serena’s life.
She grabbed onto the envelope’s snagged cables and used them to scale the cliff-face, unable to feel the rope snaking through her numb fingers. Her feet skidded across the icy rock and freezing air filled her lungs, but it didn’t numb the pain ringing through her.
C’mon…
The envelope tore and the lifeboat lurched, twisting Serena and slamming her back into the cliffside. She tried aga
in, faster this time, bolder, pain setting into her muscles like frostbite.
She reached the crest of the cliff and pulled on a fistful of canvas. Relief swept through her at the sensation of solid ground beneath her feet.
The moment she let go, the balloon tore, and the life capsule disappeared into the sea.
But Serena was far from safe.
She’d landed at the edge of Frosthaven, near a pen of mountain goats. Gunfire raged over the village and fire climbed through bell towers, burning them from the inside, hellish orange against the grey sky. Sabretooths rolled across bridges, bullets needling the knots of resistance. The Queen was heading for the landing site.
I’ll stop her. I’ll stop all of them.
But first she needed to help Gallows.
He lay ahead of her, his face buried in the snow. Serena hobbled to him and fell to her knees. ‘Get the hell up.’ She rolled him onto his back. Brownish blood caked his face.
‘Wake up… Wake up!’
He didn’t stir.
‘Gallows!’
Serena sensed him, felt the faint thread of the siren-song, as she could Myriel and Scruff. He was alive.
The song coursed through Serena’s veins. She pressed her fingers to his forehead.
‘Wake up… Wake up…’
Something stood in the way. Unlike when she’d tried to get inside Arnault’s head, or the blood-dancer’s, the song wasn’t blocked, not completely—but it was difficult.
Gallows was the only person she’d met who was semi-immune to her power—he’d made Serena swear never to use it on him—but right now, he needed her.
‘Wake up! Gods damn it, why have you got to be so bloody stubborn?’
The song burrowed deeper, navigating Gallows’ mind. It was like clasping a key between her thumb and index finger, then reaching her hand through a letterbox to open a door from the other side—except the key kept changing shape and the keyhole roamed around the door.
‘Wake up!’
Gallows squirmed. His eyes opened and he winced in pain, rolling away from Serena and spitting blood. ‘Tell me… you didn’t get inside my head?’
Serena wiped sweat and blood from her brow. ‘You’re welcome. Now help me end this.’
Homes and structures fell beneath the might of the Ryndaran onslaught.
Enoch fought the enemy infantry, his skin on fire from the volume of bullets he soaked up.
The soldiers of Frosthaven—if they could be called that—were vastly outgunned. The Frostcloaks employed guerrilla tactics—hitting and running, luring the enemy across arched bridges and blowing them, retreating further and further in. Jasper was the one setting the ignium charges—and while he slowed the advance of the motorcarriages, he couldn’t stop them.
Enoch slammed an enemy soldier against a wall, shattering his spine. He drew fire while Jasper and his Frostcloaks took cover behind a low wall, taking pot-shots with their rifles.
Children playing at soldiers.
They hurled bottles of alcohol with flaming rags at the armoured vehicles. A gyrogunner on the Sabretooth’s turret cut them down, blood bursting from their backs in an aerosol spray. Two more attempted the same and struck Ryndaran soldiers, but their own clothes caught fire. Inexperience will kill as surely as a bullet.
‘Fall back!’ Jasper roared. ‘Behind the coffee house!’
An inhuman growl, and a Sabretooth skidded across the main thoroughfare, roaring past the burned-out shell of its sister vehicle. Jasper and his men fled past.
‘You’ll do no good if you’re dead!’ the boy yelled at Enoch’s back. He took aim at the vehicle’s tyres but retreated when a hail of bullets almost took his head off.
Seeing Enoch, the gyrogunner concentrated his fire on him. The Stone Man flinched as bullets struck him, forcing him back.
Enoch could no longer feel the beat of his heart or the trickle of sweat—but a visceral rage burned through him. For a fleeting moment, he was alive.
He roared, charged and leapt up the vehicle’s mudguard and onto its hull. The turret twisted, but it was too late—he wrenched the gyrogunner from the hatch, peeled an ignium charge from his belt and hurled him across the alleyway. He activated the charge, dropped it inside and leapt away.
He watched as its occupants tried to escape. The charge exploded and the stench of burning liquid igneus and scorched metal filled Enoch’s nose.
The gunner squirmed on the ice, leg twisted at a nauseating angle. Enoch stomped towards him.
‘Mercy is greater than wrath’—Book of Musa.
‘That was amazing.’ Jasper’s voice trembled as he gazed at the destruction Enoch had wrought. ‘C’mon, we reckon Annie’s team are pinned down in the granary with one of those things.’
Enoch wrenched his gaze away from the young Ryndaran whining in the ice.
Then he stopped.
Something inside seized Enoch and pulled him back.
The squirming Ryndaran swore as he tried and failed to stand up.
‘Mercy is greater than wrath,’ Enoch recited. He bent over. The soldier’s lips parted and his muscles relaxed. He held a hand out to Enoch.
But instead of taking it in his own, Enoch placed a foot on the soldier’s chest. The lad’s eyes widened and the whine of a sick dog escaped his mouth.
‘You like to shoot people in the back as they flee.’ He pressed harder and a rib cracked. Like the legs of a wingless fly lying on its back, the soldier’s arms flailed.
‘S… stop… please…’
Enoch remembered the sensation of rushing adrenaline, of a heart thrumming faster than an engine.
Jasper called something but his voice floated over Enoch.
Another crack, and blood erupted from the Ryndaran’s mouth.
‘That’s a lung gone, boy.’
The lad wheezed, blood gurgling in his mouth. His limbs jerked and scrabbled.
And then he stopped moving.
Tiera slung a dead pirate’s repeater rifle around her shoulder and raced up to the house’s sloped roof, slipping between its still-smoking chimneys.
A Ryndaran soldier knelt by a low wall, firing in three-round bursts. He killed a Frostcloak sniper in a bell tower across a thoroughfare—Tiera watched his flailing body plummet from the window, trailing blood like a shower of rubies.
The Ryndaran adjusted and kept firing. He didn’t hear Tiera creep up on him, and he couldn’t stop his skull from splitting when she heaved him over the edge.
Killing came so easy now, ever since Datthias branded her in the name of the Fayth. That was Yulia. She is gone.
She should never have freed Ventris from the Gravehold. What was it Morton had said about the Fayth? That without it, he’d have been a much worse man? Tiera had forgotten how much she wanted to be a sister of the Fayth, how much she wanted to help people.
Foolish notion.
Gunfire raged and explosions rocked the earth. On the western side, the Frostcloaks took cover behind low walls and rubble, shooting with old bolt-action rifles, covering the retreat of the old and the children. Tiera stayed low; bullets zipped overhead. She swung her own weapon onto the wall, inching to the side, looking for a space to flank the bastards.
Armoured motorcarriages spat bullets through Frostcloaks, their tracked wheels churning through the ice and soil, grinding bones into the mud. The Frostcloaks fled, luring enemies through narrow alleys and into ambush points—but they were outnumbered and outgunned; for every pirate who fell, three more took his place.
Tiera knelt and took aim—a commander ordered the execution of three men pleading for mercy; she squeezed the trigger, and the commander collapsed like an unstrung puppet.
The commander’s men opened fire—bullets chipped the wall and showered Tiera with stone. She returned fire, distracting the soldiers long enough for Frostcloaks to shoot them in the back and set their comrades free.
She ducked and took position at the other side, cracks spreading across the roof. Another Frostcloa
k sniper took position in a bell tower—he drew fire from the invaders, but his aim was good. If Tiera could neutralise his assailants while they were occupied with him, she could cleave a hole through their lines, then sneak aboard the Queen and kill Ventris.
Another Sabretooth wheeled down the eastern side of the twisting thoroughfare, drilling bullets through homes, stalls, monuments. Tiera thanked Nyr for her luck.
She pulled the repeater into her shoulder, got the gyrogunner in her sights, and—
A deafening boom like two claps of thunder cracked the sky.
The top of the bell tower disappeared, taking the Frostcloak sniper with it.
Tiera hit the deck. The roof shook, its grey slates loosening and tumbling like snowfall.
The Sabretooths didn’t have the kind of ordnance that could bring down a tower, and the bombardment didn’t come from the Queen. Tiera risked a glance, scanning the ground through the repeater’s iron sights…
And glimpsed something rolling between the squat halls and stone towers of Frosthaven—something big.
A tank.
Tiera had never seen anything like it—a hulking behemoth swept through the sturdy worshipping hall like a snowplough through slush. Two huge barrels protruded from its turret—and when they discharged, the world trembled.
Adrenaline turned to ice in her veins and she fought to keep her fingers from trembling. The iron monster delivered another volley, and the rest of the bell tower collapsed like a column of playing cards, summoning a wall of dust and stone.
Worms squirmed in Tiera’s belly. Still time to run. Ventris’ days are numbered anyway.
Bullets drilled closer to her, and the roof cracked and convulsed. With a groan, a hole widened. Tiera leapt over the wall, sliding down the sloping roof, slates unpinning from the momentum. Wind sheared her face and bullets zipped past her as she hurtled towards the ground, her own weapon roaring.
Behind her, the toll of the iron behemoth rang, a one-two punch as loud as any warship cannon.
Tiera flew off the roof and rolled onto the snow, the world spinning around her and ripping the repeater from her hands.
Wrath of Storms Page 38
