The Legion of Flame

by Anthony Ryan

  Lizanne heard Hyran give a sharp intake of breath and saw the veteran’s eyes widen in alarm. She depressed the third button on the Spider, injecting a half-second burst of Black and reached out to clamp the soldier in place just as he opened his mouth to call out a warning. She rose to her haunches, looking left and right to check on the position of the other pickets. Fortunately, both had just completed their regular turns and were moving in opposite directions.

  Lizanne nudged Hyran to his feet and led him around the frozen veteran in a huddled run. She saw the man’s eyes track her as she moved past him, full of frustration and fury, but also the knowledge of his impending fate. She turned around and back-pedalled, keeping her gaze on the unmoving sentry until they were safely concealed by shadow cast by a large tent. She waited a moment, crouching in the dark until satisfied no other pickets had witnessed their intrusion, then unleashed the last of her Black in a concentrated burst to snap the veteran’s neck. She watched him collapse into the grass then turned and tugged on Hyran’s sleeve, leading him deeper into the camp.

  “We don’t have long,” she said, depressing the Spider’s second button. “Drink half your Green and be ready with your Red.”

  Lizanne reasoned her quarry would most likely be found close to the centre of the camp. Accordingly she led Hyran in a series of rushes from one shadow to another. It was vital they get as close as possible to their objective before the inevitable hue and cry resulting from the discovery of the sentry’s body. It came just as she found the correct tent. It was large but otherwise nondescript and she might well have passed it by but for the man who stood outside the open flap smoking a cigarillo. A man wearing plain dark clothes instead of a uniform, with a silver pin on the lapel of his jacket. Thanks to the Green the Imperial crest was easy to make out. The man stiffened as the alarm sounded from the southern pickets, frowning and peering into the dark before turning to call to his companions in the tent. Lizanne hoped they were few in number.

  “Red,” she told Hyran, pointing him to the rear of the tent. “Set it aflame as soon as you can.”

  “What about you?” he asked.

  Lizanne drew her revolver and pressed the other two buttons on the Spider, closing her eyes to steady herself against the rush of product. “I’ll take care of this,” she said. “If I die, I leave it to your conscience as to whether to continue with this unwise escapade.”

  He gaped at her for a second then gave a jerky nod before crawling away. Lizanne crouched lower and watched as two more Blood Cadre operatives emerged from the tent, a man and a woman. She saw that all three were young, several years her junior in fact. She remembered the fiercely skilled and deadly Blood Cadre agents she had faced at Carvenport, concluding that misadventure must have cost the Blood Imperial many of his most capable children. At least I’ll have the advantage of experience, she thought, trying to quell her impatience as she waited for Hyran to do his part.

  The flames blossomed as the three agents began a lively discussion regarding their response to the continuing alarm. Bugles were sounding throughout the camp and soldiers running to retrieve their rifles from neat conical stacks. The woman evidently wanted to investigate immediately whilst her two male companions were decidedly more cautious. It was therefore an easy decision as to which one to shoot when Hyran lit their tent on fire.

  All three turned to look as the flames rose, engulfing the rear of the tent and providing a back-drop that rendered them easy targets. The woman dropped as Lizanne put a bullet into the centre of her back. The two men whirled, their inexperience evident in the fact that neither began to reach for their product. Lizanne shot the taller of the two then switched her aim to his companion. This one, however, managed to recover from his shock in time to dive to one side, rolling away with unnatural swiftness as Lizanne’s bullets tore at the earth around him. He didn’t drink, she realised. He has a Spider.

  Voicing a soft curse at the many betrayals of Madame Bondersil, Lizanne leapt high as the Cadre agent let loose with a blast of Black. It was a hasty and poorly aimed response, but the wave of force was wide enough to catch her foot before she managed to get clear. She spun end over end, landing hard amidst the flaming remnants of the tent. She used Green to spring to her feet, blasting the encroaching flames away with Black then leaping aside as the Cadre agent opened fire with his revolver.

  Over-eager, she judged, ducking under the salvo of bullets as the agent blazed away with more enthusiasm than skill. Red would have been a better choice.

  She watched as he managed to assert some measure of control over his actions. Resisting the impulse to fire his final round as his fingers twitched over the buttons of his Spider. Lizanne didn’t allow him the time, reaching out with Black to bend his arm, doubling it over so that the revolver pointed at his face. A final flare of power compressed the bones in his hand with sufficient force to squeeze the trigger, the bullet transforming the agent’s features into a bloody pulp.

  Lizanne rushed towards the body of the woman she had shot, keen to retrieve her product, then ducked as a fresh volley of bullets tore the air around her. The speed afforded by the Green in her system was enough to evade the rifle fire, Lizanne dropping and scuttling to the side as dust plumes rose around her. A harsh tumult of shouts sounded and four of the Emperor’s Ravens came charging out of the gloom, rifles lowered, each one tipped with a gleaming bayonet. Lizanne began to summon her Black but stopped as a series of high-pitched whines sounded above her head. All four charging soldiers dropped immediately, jerking as blood erupted from small holes in their tunics. She turned to find Hyran emerging from a cloud of cinders rising from the remnants of the tent. “Smaller is better,” he said, grinning as he held up a thumb-sized stone.

  “Come here,” Lizanne instructed, turning back to the female agent’s body. “Roll up your sleeve.”

  She quickly removed the Spider from the woman’s limp arm and strapped it onto Hyran’s outstretched limb, all the time casting wary glances around for more soldiers. A steady crackle of rifle fire could be heard from the southern perimeter, indicating Arberus’s mounted skirmishers were busy compelling the Imperial troops into their disciplined ranks. It’s working, she thought. So far.

  She tightened the straps fixing the Spider onto Hyran’s arm and pointed to each button in turn. “Red, Green, Black, Blue. The vials are full. The longer you depress the button the more product it delivers.”

  She turned back to the Cadre agent’s corpse, rummaging through her jacket pockets until she found the wallet containing the rest of her product. “Here,” she said, handing it to Hyran before running to the body of the first man she had shot. His wallet proved equally rich in product, as did the vials of his Spider. She managed to consign it all to her own pockets before a fresh bout of shouting sounded near by. She recognised the source of the voice, if not the name of the owner. A sergeant, whipping his squad into shape.

  “Time to go,” she told Hyran, rising and running towards where she expected to find the Corvantine artillery. “Now’s the time for some Green.”

  They moved through the camp in a blur, tearing through canvas and camp-fires. Fortunately, most of the Ravens had already answered the call to muster in ranks so there were only a few stragglers about, none of whom reacted swiftly enough to do more than cast a few useless shots in their wake. The artillery-park was busy with movement as Lizanne brought them to a halt on its fringes. Gunners were hard at work readying the cannon for line deployment whilst others carried powder and ammunition to the wagons. However, most of the powder barrels were still piled in three separate stacks in the centre of the formation.

  “Red, I assume?” Hyran asked, flexing his fingers over the buttons of his Spider.

  “Not just yet.” Lizanne’s gaze quickly found a squad of gunners heaving powder-bags onto the back of a wagon. “There,” she said, pointing. “Feel free to use your revolver from now on.”

  L
izanne eliminated three of the gunners around the wagon by the simple expedient of freezing them in place before shooting them in the head. Hyran dealt with the remaining two in less tidy fashion, managing to hold one still long enough to shoot him in the chest but allowing sufficient time for his companion to sprint off into the darkness.

  “Leave that,” Lizanne told him as he sent a flurry of shots after the fleeing gunner. She turned her attention to the wagon, using Black to lift one of the powder-bags clear. She raised it a good twenty feet into the air before injecting a small amount of Red and setting a very small fire burning on the corner of the cotton sacking. She waited for the flame to lick along the bag’s seams then gave it a precisely judged shove, sending it in a high arc towards one of the stacked barrels of powder. The bag detonated a split-second after impacting on the stack, birthing an instant fire-ball and a blast wave of sufficient force to kill any gunners in a thirty-foot radius. Flaming debris landed on the neighbouring stacks resulting in near-simultaneous explosions of equal size and ferocity. Gunners fled in panic as flames spread to the wagons and further explosions added yet more thunder to the general din.

  “That will do,” Lizanne commented as the inferno spread throughout the camp. “Now for the hard part.”

  • • •

  They resumed a stealthy approach towards the rear of the Corvantine battle-line. The bulk of the Emperor’s Ravens and the Iron Watch were drawn up in three rigidly ordered lines, unwavering despite the continuing chaos at their backs which would surely have sent conscripted troops into a panicked rout. Lizanne and Hyran concealed themselves beneath a wagon and watched as sergeants and officers paced along the line of troops, calling out stern exhortations. The words “traitorous scum” seemed to be most favoured, along with promises that any captives would be available for “sport” in the aftermath of inevitable victory.

  After a short interval a series of orders swept along the line followed by the sound of thousands of rifles being cocked at once. A ripple went through the formation as the first rank knelt and the second switched their rifles to port arms, indicating the first volley was imminent. Lizanne raised her gaze to the dark sky above, injecting Green to enhance her vision as she searched for the first of Tinkerer’s new toys to make an appearance.

  She saw it just as the Corvantine officers called out the aim order, a rapidly growing cluster of sparks in the night sky. It rose to a height well over a hundred feet before beginning a downward plunge. Lizanne judged its trajectory would bring it to earth well to the rear of the Corvantine line. She waited until it had descended to less than fifty feet then unleashed a concentrated wave of Black. Unfortunately, the fact that she hadn’t had the opportunity to practice this manoeuvre made this first attempt a clumsy one, the force wave proving too powerful and causing the device to explode in mid air some ten feet above the point where the Ravens’ line joined that of the Iron Watch. Despite this lack of success, the effect was still impressive. Her Green-boosted eyes afforded a clear view of the rocket just before it exploded. It was far larger than the signal rockets used at sea, the case fashioned from iron tubes and packed with small metal shards around a core of black powder. Tinkerer had formulated a propellant capable of projecting such a heavy object through the air to a range of half a mile, but the means of guiding it to a target with any accuracy still apparently eluded him, hence Arberus’s decision to send her on this less-than-palatable mission.

  The rocket exploded with a thunderous boom, louder than any cannon shell, sending its deadly cargo down onto the neat ranks of Corvantine soldiery below. Lizanne estimated at least a whole platoon were killed instantly, with double the number wounded. The line rippled in response to the blow, but didn’t break. Sergeants swiftly hauled the dead and maimed away and hounded the survivors into a semblance of order. The middle of the Corvantine line had thinned, but not broken.

  Lizanne had more success with the second rocket, reaching out to push it with a series of gentle shoves rather than a single application of force. The results were somewhat spectacular, the rocket exploding just as the tip of the warhead made contact with the earth barely a foot in front of the centre of the Corvantine line. This time it broke, hacked in two by the blast that left a smoking red mound of sundered men in its wake. The complete destruction of almost an entire company in less than two minutes was bound to disorder even the most elite soldiers and Lizanne saw a number of Ravens turn and run. They were quickly shot down by pistol-wielding officers but it was still an encouraging sign.

  She brought the next two rockets down on either side of the bloody mound, and within seconds the two regiments stood separated by a gap at least thirty feet wide. A tumult of shouts and discordant bugle cries sounded in the gloom beyond the now-wavering Corvantine line, indicating Arberus had no intention of passing up this opportunity. She could see the charging horde through the gap in the Corvantine ranks, a dense mass of people rushing from the dark, those in front firing their rifles as they ran. She recognised them as a mix of recently recruited townsfolk and ex–Scorazin inmates from the lesser gangs. Apparently Arberus didn’t want to commit his best troops to the first assault.

  A volley crashed out from the Corvantine line, ragged and poorly aimed by the standards of regular infantry, but still potent enough to cut down at least a hundred attackers. Lizanne raised her gaze once more, finding three more rockets in the sky, all descending fast. She managed to bring one down close to where an Iron Watch officer was attempting to rally his unnerved company, vapourising the man and sending most of his troops to flight. The other two rockets landed beyond the line without material effect, though the proximity of their explosions proved sufficient to disorder the entire left wing of the line just before the rebel charge struck home.

  The two sides came together with final sputter of rifle fire, soon swallowed by the chorus of growls and shouts that told of people engaged in savage close-quarter combat. Whilst a good number of Ravens and Watchmen had fled, there were enough stalwart regulars remaining to put up a stiff fight, but not enough to close the gaping rent in their formation.

  As she expected, Arberus was first through the breach, his stallion at full gallop and sabre raised high. His hundred or so mounted troops were close behind, wheeling left and right to assail the Corvantines from the rear. In most engagements of this size an attack by so small a contingent of cavalry would have had little effect, but with the Corvantines stripped of their artillery and beset by determined if inexpert infantry, the charge quickly proved decisive. Soon the Imperial troops had fragmented into a dozen close-packed pockets of resistance, battling desperately against the seemingly unending rebel tide still streaming out of the darkness. The toll on the attackers was high, the Corvantine troops were veterans after all and Lizanne reckoned each accounted for at least three rebels before they fell.

  She turned as Hyran stirred at her side, seeing his gaze fixed on a particularly stubborn knot of Watchmen who had gathered into a defensive circle a hundred yards away. The ground surrounding the Watchmen was continually littered with rebel bodies as they fired disciplined volleys into the ranks of the onrushing horde.

  “Don’t!” she warned, reaching out to grasp Hyran’s sleeve as he began to crawl from beneath the wagon. “We did our part.”

  He shot her a look that was part disgust and part disappointment. “These are my people,” he said, tugging himself free. Lizanne watched him sprint towards the encircled Watchmen, revolver raised and fingers pressing the buttons of his Spider.

  Now would appear to be the time, she concluded, taking in the unfolding carnage beyond her hiding-place. Freed of encumbrances, she could make her way to where Tinkerer tended his infernal devices. Anatol would most likely be guarding him, but the battle would provide ample cover for a well-placed shot. She began to shuffle free of the wagon then paused as a figure caught her eye, a slender figure running through the smoke with a rifle in hand. Makario’s eyes were wide a
nd he yelled as he ran, more she assumed in panic than martial enthusiasm. Even so, he pelted towards the still-battling knot of Corvantines with an unfaltering stride, a cluster of rebels at his back.

  “Sentiment,” Lizanne muttered, checking her revolver and filling her veins with product, “will surely be the death of me.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Clay

  The Red swept around the flank of the mountain, wings angled to catch the air-current. It was full-grown but sickly like the Greens and the White, but still moving too fast for Clay to shift Kriz clear of its talons. She spun as a claw tore into her side, arching her back and casting out a spiral of blood. Kriz issued a brief, convulsive scream as Clay set her down before turning his gaze to the Red.

  The beast fanned its wings and whirled about, tail whipping as it angled its body for a second attack. Clay reached out with the Black to clamp the animal’s head in place. Its body coiled and thrashed as he raised the carbine, centring the glowing circle of the optic on its forehead. His doubts about the power of the weapon’s ammunition proved unfounded as a single bullet between the eyes was enough to render the animal lifeless. He used the last of the Black to throw the sagging corpse against the side of the mountain. It impacted with bone-cracking force and slid to the ground a few yards away, blood streaming in thick rivulets from its pierced skull.

  “Clay!” Loriabeth was at Kriz’s side, pressing a bandage to a bleeding gash in the woman’s side. “She needs Green.”

  Clay crouched next to Kriz’s head, taking a vial from his wallet and holding it to her lips. She gazed up at him, eyes dull as he tipped the contents down her throat. They brightened as the product did its work, banishing a good deal of her pain and adding much-needed vitality to her body, but it couldn’t do anything to stem the blood streaming from her wound.