Dawn n-2

by Tim Lebbon

  “You have your ways and means.”

  O’Gan nodded. “We do. You’re right. And you’ll see more of them soon. Good luck, Kosar.”

  Kosar nodded. O’Gan stood and walked away without looking back, and Kosar sensed that the Monk was about to speak.

  “Silence,” the thief said. “Can’t you hear that silence? It means the land is dying, but for now it’s just…peaceful.”

  A few minutes later the order came to rise, and the Shantasi army split in two.

  SOUTH OF MARETON, Lenora sent scouts ahead of the Krote army. Several flew, several rode their machines hard across the landscape, and she told them to return upon first sighting of any Shantasi.

  She was happy to admit her nervousness to Ducianne. The Mol’Steria Desert was to their left, a looming presence that wafted the scent of spice and the feel of great wilderness, and out there might be the Shantasi. Angel had dismissed them as pale-faced freaks, but Lenora knew that they were true fighters, and the most likely to offer any real resistance against the Krotes. But with her nervousness came a sense of keen anticipation. A real fight, she thought. Not just a slaughter. Something worthy of what we’ve trained for.

  Don’t forget me, a voice reminded her. But Lenora shook it off, saying, Of course I can’t forget you.

  In the midst of the Krote army rolled the great constructs that transported the dead from Noreela City. Their bodies had started to stink already, yet still they moved and squirmed, eager to fulfill the unnatural killing desires that had been instilled in them.

  After a day’s fast travel, the desert smells began to fade, and Kang Kang loomed like a massive hollowness ahead of them. This was when the first and last of the scouts returned. His machine limped on three legs; where the fourth had been was a gaping hole, dribbling foul innards that could have been blood or molten rock. The Krote upon its back was spiky with arrows, and his head was missing a great slab of scalp and flesh, exposing his skull to the cold.

  “Shantasi…and…” he said as Lenora rode to him, and then he died and fell across the machine’s back.

  Ducianne appeared at Lenora’s side. “Must have been a good fight,” she said, glaring at the dead Krote.

  “He’s the only one to return. The flyers would have been here before him if they were coming back. But the Shantasi made an error letting him escape; they’ve lost their surprise. Whatever ambush they plan, we can be ready.”

  “They have something that can kill our flyers?” Ducianne asked.

  “We can never think of ourselves as unbeatable.”

  “I do!” Ducianne laughed, then looked at the dead scout again. “So, we ride straight in?”

  “No. Hold position here. Three hours, that should be long enough.”

  “The flyers?”

  Lenora called the flyers’ captain through the voice box, and they brought their machines down to land in a semicircle before Lenora. There were about thirty flying machines in all, some with wings, others with hollow appendages that gushed flame and gas when they were airborne. They clicked and creaked as their Krote masters awaited Lenora’s orders.

  “There are Shantasi south of here,” she said. “Probably scouting parties, but strong.” She waved her hand, dividing her force in half. “You, fly low and fast and take them on. Clear our way through to the main force. You, fly high for Kang Kang. You know your aim once you’re there: the witch and the girl. Find them and kill them, and then we can fight the Shantasi at our leisure. But right now, that girl and witch are the priority. I know I’m sending you south on your own…and Kang Kang is no place to be. But we will be joining you there soon. Questions?”

  A few warriors glanced at the dead Krote and his battered machine, and their own machines jittered like nervous horses. Some exchanged glances. But none of them spoke.

  “Good,” Lenora said. She watched sternly as her Krotes took off.

  “Don’t worry,” Ducianne said. “Even among Krotes there are the strong, and the weak.”

  “It’s not weak to be scared,” Lenora said. An edgy silence had descended across the bulk of the Krote ground force. Some of them looked at the dead man spiked with arrows, while others made it obvious they did not want to see.

  “Then what is it?” Ducianne asked.

  “Sane.”

  “Ha!” Ducianne rode to the damaged machine, leaned across and pushed the dead Krote from its back. The machine wandered away, aimless and leaking fluids.

  “You think the Shantasi know about the girl?” Ducianne said, talking to Lenora with the dead warrior on the ground between them.

  “Of course. No other reason to come this far out of Hess, other than to try to keep us away from Kang Kang.”

  “Unless they’re drawing us away from New Shanti. Or sending an advance force against us. Or trying to keep the fight from their Mystic city.”

  Lenora shook her head. “If they thought we were coming for them, they’d dig in at Hess. It’s the gateway to New Shanti, and it has a hundred miles of desert before it. No. They know what our target is today.”

  “So now we hold back?” Ducianne’s despondency at this idea was palpable.

  Lenora watched the flying machines fading into the darkness, one group climbing high, the other disappearing across the scrubland toward the Shantasi waiting in the distance. “I think not,” she said. “Let’s ride hard and fast now. What do you say?”

  “I say I’ll get sick of waiting.”

  The order was given and spread through the ranks, and the machines formed three attack lines. The faster machines-those with longer legs or sleeker bodies-took the outside of the front line, ready to sprint forward and enclose the enemy. The second line consisted of the heavier, slower machines, and behind them came the new transports, groaning with the mass of Noreelan dead. The army moved out with Lenora at the head, brandishing a sword in each hand, proudly displaying the wounds of every one of her three hundred years, whispering to a voice that nobody else could hear.

  Sometimes, that voice spoke too loud. Is this it? it said. Is this the life I missed? Killing and blood? Mother, maybe they were right to purge me from your body. Maybe they knew what you would become.

  Lenora shouted to drown out the voice, but nothing could silence her thoughts.

  O’GAN PENTLE STOOD within a circle of small rocks and, in an effort to calm himself, breathed in Janne pollen from the crumpled bloom in his pocket. He already knew the Krotes were on their way; the lookouts he had sent north had engaged an advance force and returned with the news. It was the manner of the Krotes’ destruction that caused O’Gan’s nerves to fray.

  The lookouts had hardly been touched. They lost one of their number when a Krote machine fell on her, but other than that, their involvement had been merely to ensure the Krotes were all dead. Serpenthals had done the rest.

  “Huge!” one of the Shantasi had said when describing them. “The largest I have ever heard of, let alone seen.”

  They must have come out of the desert, O’Gan thought, feeling the Janne pollen settle his nerves. He opened his mind to visions, but none came. He was not surprised; the plant had been on the verge of death when he picked its bloom. Followed us, perhaps. Or led the way. But he had never heard of a serpenthal appearing outside the Mol’Steria Desert, certainly not one of the size his warriors had reported.

  “Took the first machine apart,” the Shantasi said. “The Krote on its back was sliced in two. And then the rest…”

  And now O’Gan breathed in stale pollen and prayed to absent visions that the serpenthals would act again. The Krotes they had destroyed were a small advance party, nothing more. There would be hundreds more on their tails. Perhaps thousands. And now surprise had gone.

  “One escaped,” a warrior had said. “The serpenthals seemed unconcerned. We put arrow after arrow into him, but he rode away upright.”

  The Krotes knew that the Shantasi were here, waiting for them, in exactly the right place. And O’Gan had little doubt that the full forc
e of their attack would come soon.

  He closed his eyes, reached out and pulled the circle of stones closer to him. They were meant to represent the unity of thought-back at the Temple they’d had the Janne plants themselves-but they were not working. “Because I’m the only one.” He suddenly felt more alone than ever before.

  “MYSTIC,” A VOICE whispered. “They’re coming.”

  O’Gan opened his eyes and stared into the frightened face of a young warrior. She bowed her head slightly, glancing down at the rocks set around his knees.

  “How many?”

  “Maybe fifteen, by air.”

  “High or low?”

  “Low. The spartlets?”

  “Yes, the spartlets.” O’Gan stood quickly, brushed himself down and followed the young Shantasi out onto the plain. He passed dozens of Shantasi, all of them hunkered down on the ground, hiding themselves within its natural folds and creases. Some of them were gathered around piles of dried wood, nursing flame-sticks. The Krotes knew that they were coming up against an army. What O’Gan could only hope is that they did not know what this army had at its disposal.

  “Let them make one pass,” O’Gan shouted. “Give them confidence. That way they’ll come much lower the second time.”

  “Mystic,” the warrior said, looking away. She knew what the first pass would entail, and so did O’Gan. War is sacrifice, he thought. One of the Elder Mystics had told him that, before sacrificing himself at the first sign of war.

  The warrior cupped her hands to her mouth. “Spartlets!” To their left and right a hundred fires came alight, and soon after the first small flames licked skyward there came a frantic clicking sound, like a thousand sticks being whipped at the air and broken at the same time.

  O’Gan drew his sword and knelt. The fires made the darkness before them more complete. He did not see the flying machines until they were almost upon them.

  “Not yet!” he shouted. The whistling, crackling sounds continued, louder than before, and more frenzied. After this first run, he thought. And the Krotes’ attack began.

  The Mages’ fifteen warriors flew their machines low across the plain. They had already passed over the first few hundred Shantasi before they realized they were there, but then the shooting began. Arrows sleeked down in the dark, fired by the Krotes and ejected from holes and slits in their machines. Many wasted themselves on the ground, but a few found targets, and grunts and screams rose up across the plain. Discs whistled through the air. One machine gushed fire, a long slick that lit up the scene, flames dancing as Shantasi ran with hair and clothing burning. Their screams melted away with their lungs. Another came lower than the rest, trailing a dozen long chains adorned with hooks that bounced from rocks and stuck in soft bodies. Three Shantasi were picked up and carried away, their bodies jarring along the ground and leaving smears of blood. Others jumped out of their way, many using Pace to make sure they were not knocked aside by their own dead or dying friends.

  The Shantasi returned fire, launching arrows and bolts skyward at the undersides of the intimidating machines. They had never seen anything like this. They had all read of magic, what it could do and how it aided the land before the Cataclysmic War. And they had all seen dead machines, before and after the Breakers had their time with them. But this was all new. Leathery wings flapped; metallic appendages swiped and cut; stone bodies deflected arrows; fleshy organs expelled gases as the machines passed overhead and turned for a rapid second approach.

  “Spartlets in five heartbeats!” O’Gan shouted. He had turned to watch the Krotes’ return, lying flat on the ground with his sword resting before him on a sprig of dead bracken. Almost as soon as he shouted, the spartlets were released.

  These were vicious creatures. Having spent decades as chrysalides beneath the sand, the touch of fire would burst their shell and set free the winged serpents within. Newly hatched spartlets were jealous things; any other species they encountered within their own airspace for several hours following birth would be set upon with claws and poisoned fangs. Though only the size of a man’s hand, they had the fury of a desert wolf.

  When the fire pots were uncovered, several thousand spartlets rushed skyward in screaming, whistling clouds.

  The Shantasi hugged the ground and watched. They had never used spartlets on this scale before, and they had no idea what to expect.

  The winged serpents spread out, ignoring one another and expanding across the sky. And as the Krote machines powered in a dozen steps above the ground, the spartlets converged on them, attacking machines and riders alike. Arrows vented groundward, and the fire-shitting machine gushed more flames. But in seconds the Krotes became too concerned with their own exposed flesh to think about engaging the Shantasi below.

  A machine passed directly above O’Gan, the Krote on its back slashing at the air. O’Gan rose and hacked with his sword, catching a trailing tentacle and parting it from its home. The flapping thing fell to the ground, a spartlet attached and jabbing again and again with its freshly exposed fangs.

  “At them!” O’Gan shouted, but the call was not needed. The Shantasi were on their feet, loosing arrows and bolts at the confused shapes. The sustained firepower of almost two thousand weapons gave the Krotes plenty more to worry about.

  The fire-shitting machine collided with another, and they impacted heavily into a copse of dead trees. Fire rolled along the ground as the machine ruptured, and its thrashing limbs were blasted across the battlefield as huge, flickering shadows. The survivor from the other machine dashed from the fire and took on several Shantasi, cutting them down with a slideshock and several throwing stars before more came to their aid. They drove him down with sheer volume of numbers, and O’Gan saw glittering swords dulled as blood smeared their blades.

  Another machine fell farther away, rolling over the ground with the crumple of folding metal. Its rider was crushed beneath it, but the machine rose on unsteady legs, thrashing out with blades as long as five men. Several warriors ducked beneath the blades and went in close, their own swords at the ready. The machine glowed blue, light burst from it in a pulse and O’Gan saw the skeletons of the Shantasi crumple as the strange fire faded again.

  He ran toward the machine with other warriors, sword and other weapons at the ready.

  There were a dozen machines still circling above them. Several still poured hails of arrows or fireballs down at the Shantasi, but mostly they seemed more concerned with the spartlets attacking in droves. Another machine fell, its wings tattered, its rider drifting away and striking the ground a few steps from his mount. Neither rose again.

  “Use poison sacs!” O’Gan shouted as he approached the heavily bladed construct. It was starting to glow again, a blue umber that cast strange shadows beneath its low stomach. “Don’t get too close! See if the poison will do it!” He stood back while three Shantasi lobbed poison sacs in carefully judged arcs. One of them burst on the machine’s slashing blades, but the other two struck its body, spraying across several globes that could have been eyes. It dipped as it tried to wipe the affected area against the ground. The Shantasi darted in with blades drawn.

  O’Gan readied himself to be wiped out. Magic did that, he thought, running past the scattered bones of the original attackers. But though the machine still glowed, the pulse did not come. O’Gan and the warriors hacked at its underbelly, keeping close so that they stayed within its killing circle, using Pace now and then to move out of the way of its rolling body. One of them leapt onto its back and buried a spear to its full depth.

  The machine grew still, and they thought they might have won.

  But then it went mad. As its end closed in, the machine began to roll and thrash in a final venting of fury. The Shantasi on its back was cut in two by a swinging blade, her head and shoulders tumbling to the ground and being kicked toward O’Gan by the machine’s thrashing legs.

  “Back!” O’Gan shouted, unable to take his eyes from the surprised expression on the dead woman’s face.
She ran a fruit shop not far from the Temple in Hess. Not even a trained warrior, and look what she did. Disgusted, terrified and shocked, still in that moment O’Gan believed that they could win.

  They withdrew and left the machine to its death throes.

  Where are the serpenthals? O’Gan thought. Have they left us so soon?

  Across the battlefield, similar engagements were taking place. More machines had fallen, victims of the spartlets, and those still flying were doing so erratically. As O’Gan ran from the dying machine and the decapitated woman, he saw three more enemies tumble to the ground. They cut down Shantasi as they fell, and one machine exploded and cast a hail of deadly shrapnel before its blossom of fire. The Krotes who had survived the spartlets and the crashing of their machines took on Shantasi hand to hand, and several vicious fights were taking place. O’Gan went to join one of them.

  Soon there was only one machine still circling, its rider hanging dead amongst its confusion of spidery legs, with spartlets pecking at his face. The machine seemed trapped in an ever-decreasing spiral, drifting lower and lower and casting globules of molten metal in a spray as it came down. A Shantasi screeched as he was caught in one spray, bringing his hands to a face that was no longer there. Another warrior dashed in and pulled him away, holding his hand tightly as he drew his knife across the mortally wounded man’s throat.

  The machine eventually crashed to the ground and thrashed its limbs for a time, but the Shantasi were content to stay away and let it die.

  Fires raged where machines had come apart. Another exploded, a thumping detonation that knocked O’Gan from his feet even though he was several hundred steps away. A cloud of boiling gas was blasted out, searing and scorching everything and everyone in its path. Shantasi lay scattered around the destroyed machine, many dead, many more injured, and O’Gan turned away because he knew that he could not help.