Howling Dark

by Christopher Ruocchio

  “What?” Valka and I said together. “You can’t!”

  A horrific cry went up behind us, high and thin as iron tearing in a vanishing atmosphere. It pierced me, lodged in me like a spike of ice, and I turned in time to see Prince Aranata staggering out from beneath Kharn’s pavilion. It screamed again, lips peeled back from row upon row of teeth like shattered windows, gums black as soot. “What have you done?” it howled. “What have you done?” Following its gaze, I beheld the shattered wreckage of the Bahali imnal Akura above. It was like a shattered moon, great pieces of it burning, spinning off still smoldering in the night. And I beheld the light of other ships—their drive-glows and the fire of their weapons streaking across the heavens.

  I felt pity then, pity for this creature and the wreckage of its world.

  “Yuramyu o-koarin,” I said. It wasn’t me. And gesturing from myself to Smythe—to Valka and Jinan and to Tor Varro where he crouched by the thrashing Suzuha. Prince Aranata took notice of me then for the first time and took a step toward me. “It wasn’t us. We were followed!”

  “Followed?” the Aeta repeated. “Followed?”

  “Stand aside, Lord Marlowe,” came that implacable voice behind me. Bassander’s voice. Turning I beheld him, tall and proud as ever I had seen him, resplendent in Legionary black, the maw of his phase disruptor pointed squarely at me, redly glowing. There was nothing in his eyes but the reflection of nuclear fire from the sky above. “Stand aside.”

  I turned, and thumbed my shield to life as I turned, brushing my coat back to free access to my sword, not knowing how or if I meant to use it. Smythe took a step forward, said, “Captain Lin, stand down!”

  His eyes did not even flicker. “Can’t do that, ma’am. Hauptmann’s orders.”

  I had no plan, no words left to me, no notion what to do. I only stood there, between the captain and the prince, as if by standing there I might forestall all decision and action too, might hold time immovable, as if by keeping us in the present I might find a way back to the place—the peace—where we had been before. “We were this close!” I said, and raised my fingers a micron’s breadth apart. “This close, Bassander! And you threw it all away!”

  “I told you to stand aside,” the Mandari captain said. “Stand aside, or by Earth, the official record will say you died fighting.” He thumbed some control on the side of his weapon, and it glowed more brightly. I didn’t blink. I was shielded. He knew that. I knew that. I could take a disruptor bolt dead on, could shield the prince.

  The prince.

  A roar went up behind me and a sound like the howling of cold winds. Cold hands seized me, lifted me into the air. Valka screamed, “Hadrian!” Claws bit into my side, the back of my neck. I felt blood well up there, and felt sure that the press of fangs would follow. I had forgotten my sword, forgotten all my years of training and struggle.

  Bassander hadn’t.

  The phase disruptor spat lightning, and I heard the prince groan. Numbed by conducted energy, I fell to the bruised grass, and Valka ran to me.

  “Are you all right?”

  The Cielcin are not like us, and the prince had not fallen, only released me in dumb shock. It leaped back, drawing from its belt a coil of black rope—or so it seemed. Snarling, the prince cast it at Bassander, and it flew at the young captain like one of the winged serpents, the ornithons so common on Emesh. I knew what it was at once, though I did not know its name. It was one of the Cielcin nahute, a toothed serpent of steel whose fangs—like the bit of some awful drill—would chew through a man like a parasite and kill him from within. It flew so fast that it rebounded off Bassander’s shield, distracting the captain as he fumbled for his sword.

  The other Cielcin soldiers were streaming up the hill, hurling serpents of their own, howling like the coming of Death on her pale horse.

  “Are you all right?” Valka asked, hand on my face, my wounded neck.

  I gripped her wrist. “We have to go.” With a grunt and her helping me, I found my feet. “Knight-Tribune! We have to go!”

  A shadow swallowed the light, and turning I saw Aranata Otiolo standing above me, white sword in hand. “You killed my people!” it screamed, and swung. My own blade leaped to my hand, highmatter sprouting, shining like the moon between my fingers. Exotic material met alien ceramic, and ceramic broke. Aranata’s sword fell useless in two pieces. I might have ended it there, might have struck down the demon prince and spared the worst of what followed.

  If I’d but had the nerve.

  If the wreckage of my dream did not burn around me as my enemy’s world burned above.

  The Cielcin troops were nearly on us, and pushing Valka by the shoulder I made to retreat down the hill.

  That was when the lights went out. The ship’s lights. The Demiurge’s lights. Men screamed, more alarmed than anything, and the sound of the Cielcin cheering as their darkness rose was like the breaking of ice against the rock face of my soul. An awful thought seized me, and a hope—though in my mind I saw us all hunted like rats in the black labyrinth of that evil ship. I heard Brethren’s words come echoing back to me: Protect the children.

  The children. “Varro!” I cried out, casting about by the nuclear firelight of the ship above. “Varro, bring the girl! Where’s Ren? The boy! Sagara’s boy!”

  “Here!” Jinan called out, and I saw her holding little Ren in her arms, hurrying down the hill toward the advance of our troops rising to meet the Cielcin.

  “We need him and the girl! Where’s Smythe?” I shouted. I’d lost her in the chaos. “Where’s Crossflane?” I ground my teeth, casting about for the lost officers. Without them, Bassander Lin would be left in sole command, and I trusted the snake only so far as I could throw him. In any case, Bassander had vanished as well, gone down the hill or up it pursued by Aranata’s drone.

  Valka shook her head. “I’m not sure!”

  “Noyn jitat!” I swore, falling back on that old Jaddian chestnut. I cast about, looking for any sign. The pavilion still stood flapping in the breeze beneath creaking bows, even in the semi-darkness and the blood light of the broken worldship and the occasional flash of annihilation. “I’m going back to find them and Tor Varro! Go with Jinan!” If she protested I didn’t hear, for I turned back at once and pounded up the hill, sword in hand. “Smythe!” I called. “Varro! Crossflane!”

  “Here!”

  It was Tor Varro. The Chalcenterite had not heard me calling before, nor stirred from his patient’s side. Suzuha still spasmed in her unconsciousness, thrashing against the tree roots like a woman possessed. “I’m not sure what’s wrong with her,” the scholiast said. “She screamed and collapsed right after the attack.”

  “Her brother, too—did you see?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “Can you carry her? We haven’t much time!”

  “Marlowe!”

  Something heavy and solid struck me in the flank. I groaned, bent double, and turned round, swearing, struggling to keep myself between Varro and whatever it was that had attacked me.

  The tattoo-faced herald, Oalicomn, stood behind me, clutching its staff in pale fingers. It said something in its language I did not quite understand, turning its weapon over in its hands as though it were a lance. “It is as I said,” it said. “Tukanyi yukajjimn susulatari.” Susulatari. Monsters.

  Devils.

  Devils indeed.

  Furious, embarrassed, and afraid, I drew myself up to my full height. “Run, scholiast!”

  “But—”

  “Take her and go!” I said, taking my sword in both hands. Varro rose, and from the corner of my eye the green shape of him seemed almost Gibson at my side.

  He put his hand on my shoulder, and whatever he said was lost to me, for it was Gibson’s voice I heard instead. Always forward, he said. Always down.

  “And never left or right,” I murmured.

  Time as well stop
ped a moment and lingered at my shoulder, and with eyes unclouded I saw another shape standing just beside the tall and white-robed herald. It was as if some unseen hand pointed to it.

  Nobuta.

  The Aeta’s child cowered, small and useless for its kind, young and nearly alone, behind the figure of its servant. They must have remained behind the pavilion, seeing that most of we humans had fled. Where was Aranata? Gone after Bassander, perhaps? After Smythe and Crossflane—wherever they had gone? Or perhaps it had gone to lead its men in assaulting the humans. I knew not.

  Oalicomn barked a challenge, ducked its horns. “You will pay for this betrayal!” it bellowed.

  I said nothing.

  It lunged.

  The cutting edge of a highmatter sword is fine as carbon monofilament. It can cut nearly anything. Flesh. Bone. Metal. Stone. Only adamant—the stuff of which starship hulls are made—and highmatter itself are immune. Whatever alien alloy the herald’s staff was spun of was no object. I parried the herald’s blow with ease, and its weighted head spun away and bounced off the council table behind me. I did not hesitate, but stepped in, raising my sword. The herald never learned what happened. It never understood.

  I cut.

  It fell in two pieces.

  Blood. Black blood soaked white robes and blue. I expected young Nobuta to scream. It only cowered and slunk away. I expected it to cry out. It only shivered. For a moment, we were alone in all the chaos—the devil and the demon prince—somehow forgotten. Varro had carried Suzuha away, and beyond the edge of the pavilion the battle was joined in full. I went to one knee before the child, Nobuta, and shut off my sword. The blade melted away like smoke, and I extended my empty hand. “Tukayu jelcu,” I said, unknowingly echoing the words of the angels out of mankind’s most ancient memory. Don’t be afraid. It tried to crawl away, to push itself away with its hands.

  I seized it by the wrist. “Nobuta, it’s not safe here. You must come with me now.”

  “Yelnuri ne?” it repeated. “With you?”

  “I’ll keep you safe,” I said, not then knowing it was a lie. “When the fighting is done, I will return you to your father.” To this day, I do not know if I meant to take the child as a hostage or to keep it safe—or what the difference was between those two things. “Please,” I said. It twitched its head no and tried to pull away. I did not tighten my grip. I did not want to frighten it. “Listen,” I said. “Ubba! I brought Tanaran back to you, didn’t I?” And where was Tanaran? “I brought it back unhurt! Tanaran trusts me. You trust Tanaran, don’t you?” When the child didn’t answer, I shook its arm to shake loose its thoughts. “Don’t you?” Nobuta’s eyes—like the eyes of a frightened horse—would focus on nothing. They rolled blackly in its head. In the distance, I heard a man screaming, and knew that one of the Cielcin serpents had chewed its way through armor and into flesh. “Imemneuyu o-Tanaran ne?” I asked. Don’t you trust Tanaran?

  Pale fingers tightened on my wrist. “You killed Oalicomn!”

  “It attacked me,” I said, and banking on my fragmentary understanding of Cielcin culture added, “and it was only a servant. I need to protect you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I can return you to your father I might be able to stop us all fighting,” I said. I did not say that the Cielcin were doomed anyhow, did not explain that the xenobites had no home and nothing to return to, that they were trapped on this ship with nowhere to run and nothing to do but revenge. I was scrambling blindly for chess pieces, for control of as much of the board as I could manage.

  Just beyond the pavilion, a Cielcin threw itself on two Imperial legionnaires, ceramic blade cutting into one man at the base of the neck before it threw itself bodily at the other. Behind them, I saw the shine and violet declaration of plasma fire from our lances cutting into the Cielcin horde, and I heard Sir William Crossflane’s voice—amplified by speakers in his armor—ring out. “Back to the gate! Everyone back to the gate!”

  “Come one!” I urged Nobuta. “It isn’t safe here.” I pulled it to its feet, pushed it roughly ahead. Following it—keeping one hand firmly against the small of its back—I marched us from the pavilion. If I could just get it back to the soldiers, they would be able to hold it. I wouldn’t be responsible for it for long.

  I nearly tripped over something in the dark, and before I looked I knew it was a body. Looking down, I saw the shape of the slave girl lying face down in the grass. She’d tried to run. There was a red hole in her neck, and in the firelit gloom I cannot say if it was the shot of one of our weapons or the drill-wound from one of theirs that had killed her. But I saw the mutilated ruin of her hands and feet, and the glitter of silver on her and the shimmer of her pale scars. Negotiations were over. Perhaps they ought never to have begun. I only tarried there a moment, but the image of those broken hands has never left me—though much else more important has in time. I felt a black fury well up in me, and my stomach turn.

  I pushed on down the hill, pushing Nobuta on ahead of me.

  We hurried past knots of soldiers fighting. Our legionnaires stood back-to-back in knots of three—their triases—and battled the encircling Pale. I did not stop to aid them, for to draw my sword would be to frighten Nobuta, and I needed the creature quiescent, compliant until I could hand it over to our soldiers.

  “Where’s my father?” Nobuta asked, stumbling a little on the uneven ground ahead of me.

  “I don’t know,” I told it. “But we’ll find her.”

  “Marlowe!” a harsh voice snapped, tone amplified by her suit. A fully armored trooper in white and bearing the marks of a lieutenant on her visor called out. In my panic and mad scramble, a name was a moment coming.

  “Greenlaw!” It was Bassander Lin’s iron-jawed lieutenant. “Where’s Smythe? Where’s Lin?”

  She shook her head, pointed back over the meadow to the line of trees that served to mask the perimeter wall. “Gone on toward the gate. What’s this?” She jerked her head at Nobuta.

  “And did Varro and Jinan—and Lieutenant Azhar? Are they clear?”

  “Clear out, them and the witch!” she said. Valka. Earth and Emperor, I’d been so focused on the task at hand that I’d forgotten Valka for a moment. I resolved never to mention it to her or anyone there on the spot, and so buried my shame. “What’s this?”

  “Prince Aranata’s son!” I said, and hurried on, leaving the lieutenant and her men to hold the way behind me.

  The way ahead was clear, and I half-pushed, half-dragged Nobuta in turns across it, resisting the urge to duck the plasma fire that whizzed past us. Twice I had to put myself between the child and the charge of one or more of our soldiers.

  At last we made the treeline. The slumped forms of Sagara’s SOM army lay all around, useless and quiescent without their master’s will to animate them. I wondered if they had died, if without Kharn’s consciousness to drive them they had all forgotten to breathe. I thought not; the light still shone blood-gold and greenly through their faces, though their arms were all a tangle. Nobuta cowered as we came in among them, and I shared its fear, recalling in that moment the awful fight with The Painted Man in that cafe on Rustam. Ahead I saw the judder and shake of spotlights, and knew the machine-men lived again. But it was only the suit lights of two triases of Imperial soldiers, and one other.

  “There he is!” Valka exclaimed.

  She’d come back for me.

  In my surprise, all I could manage to say was, “I thought I told you to go!”

  “And leave you here?” she demanded, and for a moment I thought she’d strike me. Only then did she mark my companion, and her golden eyes widened in the dark. “How did this happen?”

  “Not now!” I said, thinking of the dead Oalicomn. “We need to get it secure! Back to the Schiavona, then maybe we’ll be able to get Aranata to calm down.”

  Valka’s face darkened. “A hostag
e?” The disapproval in her tone was palpable.

  “Yes!” I insisted. “Yes, a hostage. Valka, there are more than five hundred Cielcin screamers on this ship. We need whatever help we can get!” I moved past her, gesturing to the soldiers to advance. Turning to Nobuta, I said, “These men are going to help take you to our ship, all right?” Nobuta didn’t answer, it was already shying away. I wondered how old it was, how mature. “Do you understand?”

  The soldiers’ hands rendered the question moot the instant after, for they seized Nobuta by the arms. It flailed, and one of the group triasters—a tall man with his visor painted half red—raised his lance to strike the Pale. I caught the man by the wrist. “Don’t hurt it! Go!”

  “What about you, sir?” The man’s voice came out muffled by his suit.

  “Where’s Smythe?”

  CHAPTER 68

  THE NARROW WAY

  WE FOUND THEM IN the shadow of the gate leading from the Garden back to the Schiavona, Smythe and Crossflane and Bassander Lin holding the line.

  “There you are!” Smythe called out as the soldiers shuffled past with Nobuta. “Where have you been?”

  An explosion rang out behind me, and I heard men yell and the cracking of timbers as a tree fell toward us. The Cielcin had brought something heavier than explosives. I thrust Valka ahead of me, ducking on reflex. “Is everyone out?” I asked, ignoring the tribune’s question.

  “Except for Greenlaw and the rear guard,” Crossflane answered.

  “Jinan?” I asked. “Tor Varro and the children?”

  “The children?” Bassander echoed, confused.

  Valka interjected, “Ren and Suzuha.” When Captain Lin did not show any signs of deeper understanding, she added, “Sagara’s children.”

  Blank faces met mine, and for a moment all there was was firelight on the black walls and the noise of battle behind. One legionnaire spoke up from the shadow of a column patterned in human faces. “Aye, m’lord. I saw the scholiast head on with that girl on his back. She were putting up a mean fight.”