The Killing Light

by Myke Cole

  “We have done that already.” Sir Steven’s calm was forced. “You can see we survived.”

  “You fought a handful,” Tone said. “I have faced their full strength.”

  “And what can you tell us of them?” Sir Steven asked.

  Tone eased his hood back and faced the First Sword. Dried blood crusted black alongside a huge gash that ran from the ruin of Tone’s ear and up over the back of his head, leaving a ragged red furrow through the matted spikes of his golden hair. “I can tell you that I speak true that the Congregation can send them back, and that we are all lucky that I do.”

  After that, they rode in silence until the sun sank below the treetops and the gathering dark forced them to give up the march. Sir Steven ordered the kindling of fires. “Those monsters know where we are. If they’re coming, then they’re coming. We’ll not hide from them by going cold. If we’re to face them, we’ll do it with warm bodies and full bellies.”

  The order certainly lightened the mood, and Heloise could hear voices lifted in song as villagers and Traveling People mingled around the campfires, close to the flames and one another for warmth. The Imperials did not sing, but Heloise could see them clustered around Tone, heads bowed, the flickering flames sending shadows crawling up their chins as the Pilgrim led them in prayer.

  Heloise didn’t bother with her own fire. She’d have to leave the machine to get close enough to feel its warmth, and there was no way she would do that. Barnard did not return to her side, huddling beside Wolfun, Guntar, and Chunsia, hands stretched out toward the flames. Only Samson stood with her, and Xilyka of course, quiet as a shadow, bundled in her cloak.

  Heloise jerked her chin at Tone, the machine trembling as she stirred the control straps. “I am surprised…” She trailed off, unsure of how to finish.

  Her father looked over at Tone. The Pilgrim had raised a hand in benediction, a single finger pointing arrow-straight toward the night sky. Embers rose in a funnel, as if he had directed them.

  “At him? At me?”

  “At both you and him, and at Barnard, too. That you didn’t try to kill him.”

  “You think I don’t want to?”

  “I know you do. I do, too.”

  “So, why don’t you?” he asked her.

  “You heard my reasons when I addressed the army. But … I saw what you did to Sigir, Father. You knocked his teeth out.”

  “Aye.” The firelight had made her father’s face a thing of weathered stone. “And you burned him alive.”

  She was quiet at that, and her father’s expression softened. “Should I take vengeance? For your mother? She wouldn’t have wanted that. She liked life to go easy. She never stood on honor, or justice, or any of those things that didn’t put food in your belly or fix the thatch.”

  He paused, took a deep, shuddering breath. “Suppose I loved that about her most. She saw the world as it was, didn’t worry about how she wanted it to be. Men burn nations, kill each other by the thousands for some mad vision of the future. Your mother wasn’t like that. She just wanted to cook good food, and sit outside in the gloaming and watch the fireflies come on. Don’t think I ever realized how much that helped keep my feet on the ground until now.”

  “I feel like I never knew her,” Heloise said. “I feel like I wasn’t like her.”

  “Aye, you weren’t. Your mother never knew what to do with you. Always said if she hadn’t pushed you out of her own body, she’d have guessed you were someone else’s.” He chuckled, cuffing at his eyes.

  Heloise laughed, then felt badly for laughing, then laughed again. She realized she was crying, too. “Mother would never say something like that.”

  Samson laughed all the harder at that. “Oh, aye. Your mother said that and worse more times’n I can count. Not to you, mind, but she was a levy serjeant’s wife, after all.”

  “I never knew,” Heloise whispered. The hot tears pattered off the inside of the gorget. “I never knew.”

  Samson reached inside the frame and gripped her knee. “Ah, but she loved you, my dove, she loved you like she loved the dawn and the strawberry harvest and the birdsong at morning. You were her precious little girl and she was never happier than when she knew you were fed and warm and curled up beneath your blankets. She always told me that of all the gifts I’d ever given her, you were the greatest one of all.”

  “How? How could I not have known that?”

  Samson stepped up onto the machine’s knee, reached for her hand. She slipped her fingers out of the control strap and twined her fingers with his.

  “Remember what Tone said of faith,” Samson whispered fiercely. “Sometimes you don’t have to understand, only believe.”

  * * *

  One moment there was only the unbroken curtain of the falling snow, and the next, the capital appeared, black spires suddenly piercing the gray-white.

  Crenelated turrets, black stone towers filled the horizon, cutting toward the clouds. The capital’s skyline reminded Heloise of a devil’s teeth, black, long, wickedly sharp.

  Heloise could see the smoke rising even through the driving snow, could hear the distant shouts of fighting, the clash of metal and stone. The eagle-shrieking of the devils pierced the air so thick that it sounded as if a giant flock of predator birds were circling the black stone parapets half-visible through the weather.

  “We have come too late,” Sir Steven said.

  “No.” Tone practically spoke over him. “Those are the calls of fighting men. The Emperor will not let His city fall.”

  He reined his horse around, looking toward the knot of Imperial troops that stood staring at the smoke on the horizon. Sir Steven seized the reins. “Where are you going, Pilgrim?”

  Tone yanked on the reins, trying to free them from Sir Steven’s grip. “Release me. The Sacred Throne itself is besieged. I must go to its defense!”

  Sir Steven tightened his grip. “And you will. But because of the friendship between us, I will not let you go alone, to be cut down by the devils with ease. Instead, you will go with all of us, and our combined force will strike the monsters from behind. Then, we will have the victory, and together, we will liberate the Sacred Throne.”

  He let go of the reins and the horse shied, forcing Tone to take a moment to get it back under control.

  “There is no need to thank me,” Sir Steven said. “I do this for the love I bear you.”

  Sir Steven sent outriders to scout the enemy position, and drew up his archers while they waited. Florea assented to draw the Hapti knife-casters up on their flank, and Heloise nearly gasped at how few they were, a knot of rabble alongside the disciplined line of the Red Lords’ troops.

  When the outriders returned, they looked frightened. “The garrison cannot hold, First Sword,” their captain said. “The gate is breached.”

  “Do the monsters have pickets out?” Sir Steven asked.

  The captain looked confused. “They are like hungry dogs, First Sword. They only have eyes for what is before them.”

  “How many are there?”

  “It is difficult to count, with all those arms, sir. More’n a score, I’d wager. Perhaps twice as many.”

  The news wasn’t precisely a surprise, but Sir Steven was still silent for a moment while he took it in. “Scorpions would help here,” he said at last, “but there is no time to build them.”

  “The garrison will have them,” Tone said, “and catapults besides.”

  “He’s right, First Sword,” the captain said. “We saw them on the battlements. But the monsters are too close to the wall for the crews to man them, and the rest do not have a line of sight.”

  “Then we must draw the monsters away,” Sir Steven said, “and give the garrison time to man their siege engines again.”

  “First Sword, why?” one of his knights, a big man made even bigger by his red enameled armor, asked. “The creatures have the city invested. Let them have the run of it, and we will come behind them after the Imperials have softened th
eir ranks.”

  The captain shook his head. “We didn’t see much, sir, but it didn’t look like there was much softening being done.”

  “Sir Tobias”—Sir Steven turned to the knight—“do you believe that I serve the will of the Senate?”

  “Of course, First Sword.” Sir Tobias’s face fell. “It’s just that—”

  “It’s just that the Senate’s will is best served by a whole city delivered into their hands, with a grateful Imperial government willing to make favorable terms. It is worst served by a city leveled to the ground, depopulated, and overrun by an army of monsters we presently have a chance to strike unawares.”

  “Yes, First Sword,” Sir Tobias said. “Of course, sir.”

  Tone nodded, turning to his troops again. Sir Steven stopped him with a hand on the Pilgrim’s shoulder. “You,” he said, “will also serve the will of the Senate. And it is the Senate’s will that you ensure the garrison’s siege engines are turned only upon the monsters, and not upon us.”

  “Of course.” Tone looked offended.

  “Sir Tobias,” Sir Steven said.

  The big knight saluted. “First Sword.”

  “You will take a squadron of your best and ride with Brother Tone at all times. If he forgets his promise to ensure our safety from the Imperial garrison, you will remind him.”

  Sir Tobias lowered his visor and tapped his sword hilt. “I have never more dearly wished for a man to prove false.”

  “My faith is the Emperor. All else is dust.” Tone kicked his heels and trotted off to rally his men, the Red Lords escort close behind.

  Heloise moved just behind the line of archers as they prepared to march. Xilyka rode out to join her.

  “Come back,” Samson called. “No need to be in the thick of it now.”

  “Your father is right,” Sir Steven said. “My men know their business. We need only draw them off.”

  “There is one person in this army who has killed a devil,” Heloise said, “and she is speaking. I haven’t fought in many battles, but I’ve fought in enough to know that things … go wrong. And when they do, you’ll be glad I’m there.”

  Samson’s reply was lost in the sound of the horn and the serjeants bellowing their orders to set the army marching again. Heloise was surprised to find that she felt no fear, only a burning impatience. The promise of the devils had more power over her than the creatures themselves. The sooner she came to grips with them, the sooner she could break their power to frighten her.

  The sound of the battle was nearly deafening by the time they finally crested the rancid-skim of a rise and the capital wall came into view. It was made of thick black stone, the huge blocks interlocking perfectly, making the wall at Lyse look like a child’s lark. The towers soared into the air, and would have reminded Heloise of a devil’s horns save for the gold-stitched banners that fluttered from them. The massive front gates were made of thick beams of fire-blackened wood, banded with even darker strips of iron. A portcullis lay in the slime before them, twisted by the force that had ripped it from its anchoring chains.

  The walls were far too thick for the devils to breach, but the gates had been smashed apart, one of the huge doors sagging askew from a single massive iron hinge.

  The devils surged outside the gates. Heloise nearly gasped at their numbers. How many had she thought they might face? She could scarcely imagine a score. There were at least twice as many swarming at the base of the walls, a tangle of purple-white limbs, a bobbing throng of black, corkscrewing horns. Just six of them nearly destroyed us. We cannot hope to fight so many. No army can. The devils stretched and scrambled, climbing over one another like ants striving for a bit of fallen fruit. The fruit here was the garrison, falling back from the parapet walk that topped the gatehouse. Heloise could see the shattered remains of two scorpions, the broken winches and crossbars hanging between the crenellations of the battlements. As she watched, one of the devils leapt and managed to grasp the edge of the parapet with one clawed hand, only to hang for a moment before giving up and dropping back to the ground. The walls are too high for them, why don’t they just go through the gate?

  An instant later, one of the devils stumbled back, and she saw the answer. The garrison had built a barricade of overturned wagons, bits of broken masonry, sacks of meal probably dragged up from larders across the city. Pikemen stood in packed ranks behind it, presenting a hedge of bristling points to the enemy. The devils surged forward, and she could hear the shafts snapping as the points caught on scales, stopped cold before they could do damage. A devil swatted down with one claw, knocking the points down, snapping more of the weapons. She could see soldiers passing fresh pikes forward, flights of arrows arcing up through the open gate into the devils’ faces. They did little to bring the monsters down, but more than a few of them fell back, raising hands to guard the clusters of their white, stalked eyes.

  Heloise could see a handful of Pilgrims just behind the pikemen, flails in the crooks of their arms, texts held out before them. “They’re reciting the Writ.”

  “Don’t seem to be helping,” Wolfun said.

  A moment later he caught his breath. “Don’t seem to have helped at all.”

  Heloise looked over at him, followed his gaze to the base of the wall.

  Pilgrims and Sojourners lay in heaps beneath the towers astride the broken gates. The red and gray of their cloaks were streaked with blood and the black slime that marked the devils’ passage. Flails were tossed among them, broken like so much matchwood. Horses were strewn across the field around them, piled here and there in places where it was plain the Order had tried to use their corpses as barricades. It had done them little good. There were more cloaked dead than all the losses the Red Lords, villagers, and Traveling People had sustained combined. Perhaps a thousand in all. Heloise wouldn’t have been surprised to find that it was nearly every ordained Pilgrim and Sojourner left in the Emperor’s service.

  She wanted to look to Tone, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from it. The fight is already over. The devils did our work for us.

  “Stupid bastards.” Wolfun gave voice to Heloise’s thoughts. “They must have ridden out to face them.”

  “Of course they did,” Heloise breathed. “The Order was made to fight devils.”

  Wolfun shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it was much of a fight.”

  “We can’t win this,” Heloise said, taking in the thronging devils. “We have to find another way … Sir Steven…”

  She turned to the Red Lords’ commander, but he had already drawn his sword, held it over his head. “Captain! Loose shafts by ranks! Stay wide of the gates! And someone get that Pilgrim up here!”

  “Sir Steven!” Heloise shouted. “No!”

  But his orders were already being relayed down the line and the First Sword was turning to face his army. “On your guards, Free People! The fight is about to begin!”

  She took a step toward him, banging her knife-hand against the shield’s edge to get his attention. “No!”

  But the first flight was already away, a great rush of wind as the feathered shafts rose, arcing up and out, and began falling among the devils, plinking against the hard scales and spinning off into the black scum the devils’ touch made of the snow. The archers fired true. Not a single arrow fell within the confines of the gatehouse, where it might harm the men of the garrison. The devils were not harmed, either, but she could see them staggering slightly as the stronger shots landed on them, letting out their eagle screams as they spun to face their tormentors. They hissed, crouched, spread their clawed limbs.

  “Captain!” Sir Steven shouted. “Have your men fall back by ranks! Prepare to…”

  Heloise did not hear him finish his order. The devils moved so quickly that it seemed they simply blinked into existence among her troops. Her mind vaguely reported them turning from the walls, charging toward them, but it was a thin thing, a wisp of a dream. Her waking mind only knew that one moment they had been gathe
red outside the ruined gate, and the next they were among the army, throwing the archers screaming into the air with great sweeps of their huge arms.

  All semblance of order vanished, and the careful ranks of the Red Lords became a chaos of shouting men. Heloise saw Sir Steven knocked from his horse, rising to one elbow, eyes dazed. His bodyguard raced for him, only to be bowled from their saddles by a huge devil with one broken horn and a scorpion bolt protruding from its side. It snarled, pounding the ground with one of its fists, Sir Steven just managing to roll to the side before he could be crushed. Xilyka threw a knife at it, but the creature paid it no mind, reaching for the First Sword.

  Heloise leapt over him, swatting the monster’s hand aside with her shield, punching the protruding bolt with her knife-hand, ripping the wound wide. The devil shrieked and fell back, but Heloise couldn’t see it fall. It was instantly replaced by two more, raising sparks from the heavy shield with swipes of their clawed hands. The sound of battle was suddenly a roar around her, so loud and so close that she felt as if she stood in a cave made entirely of screeching noise—the clanging of blades against armored scales, the screams of terrified men.

  “I have him!” Xilyka’s shout cut through the din as she helped Sir Steven to his feet.

  Heloise caught a claw on her shield’s corner, counterpunched, was rewarded by the feel of something giving way and an eagle scream that nearly deafened her.

  “We have to run…” Sir Steven slurred. His face was ashen and blood trickled from his temple. “… Buy time for the garrison to man the engines…”

  Heloise spared a glance at the army. It was riddled with devils. She could not see a single unit formed and fighting. Two of the Hapti wagons lay on their sides, a third smashed into splinters. She could see her villagers mixed in with the Red Lords’ troops desperately trying to strike at the enemy, succeeding only in tangling themselves up with their allies, ill-timed strikes fouling spear thrusts, or worse, missing entirely, hitting their comrades. The shouts of alarm were hysterical.