by Anthony Ryan
Katarias angled his wings and began to slowly circle the isthmus below, the other Reds all following his lead. They maintained their current altitude lest any vigilant Protectorate sentry spot their approach, although Sirus thought it unlikely. Who would think to seek a threat from above this far north?
Transporting so many to within flying range of the Tyrell Islands had been a difficult and costly task. The animals clearly detested having to perch on barges and ships in such close proximity to so many Spoiled. During the voyage the White’s army had lost almost a hundred soldiers to sudden lunging bites or tail-strikes as drakes, both Red and Green, vented their irritation. The fleet moved in tight formation to lessen the chance of detection, their four captured Protectorate frigates in front followed by the civilian craft captured in Morsvale, each one towing at least two barges laden with Spoiled or drakes. Blues proceeded ahead of them in a broad mass covering several miles of ocean, reporting any sightings of enemy craft to the White. It had made a nest for itself atop the bridge of the Harbinger and seemed to take little interest in the intense activity all around, instead spending the voyage fussing over its clutch of juveniles.
Sirus was struck by how large the infant Whites had grown in a relatively short time, each one now possessing similar bulk to a full-grown Green. They had also begun to fly with greater regularity and soon adopted a favourite sport of swooping low over the fleet and selecting a meal at random from the close-packed ranks of Spoiled. Two or three of the beasts would descend on the unfortunate and pluck them from the deck of a barge or ship, sometimes tearing their prey apart in mid air and tossing the pieces to each other in an obscene game of catch. On other occasions they preferred to carry the victim back to their nest, stripping the flesh from the carcass in a frenzy before dismembering the skeleton. They would then weld the bones into the growing stack in the centre of their nest, coughing up bile to cement the remains in place. Sirus found he had to give full vent to his fear whenever this happened, lest his simmering rage boil high enough to draw the White’s gaze. Somehow the whole ghastly ritual was made worse by the absence of screams. The victim and onlooking Spoiled alike remained completely silent throughout every ordeal.
They had encountered two Protectorate vessels during the journey, one a small coal-burning patrol boat easily overwhelmed by the Blues. The second had been a much more formidable enemy, an old but fearsomely armed cruiser. The White communicated the sighting to Sirus, who immediately ordered the four frigates to increase speed, sending one on a north-westerly course and another north-east to catch the lumbering vessel in the event she tried to escape. The ship, named as the IPV Rate of Return by the elegant Mandinorian script embossed on her hull, obligingly hove to and reduced speed upon sighting the approach of two friendly vessels. However, some keen pair of eyes in her crow’s nest evidently spotted the White Drake perched atop the Harbinger. Sirens sounded the length of the cruiser and a full complement of heavy guns sprang to life, her paddles churning the sea white as she attempted to gain speed. Pity, Sirus thought as plummeting shells raised tall spires of water all around. It would have been nice to capture her.
Either due to hasty gunnery or sheer luck, none of the cruiser’s shells found a target. The Blues, suddenly loosed from their restraint by a command from the White, surged from the sea surrounding the Rate of Return, bathing her in flame from bow to stern. The old ship continued to fight on despite terrible damage, the repeating guns on her upper works claiming four Blues before she was finally borne under by sheer weight of drake flesh, leaving a slick of mingled blood and oil to mark her passing. Night followed soon after and they enjoyed an uninterrupted approach to the southern shore of Crowsloft Island.
Another Red swooped closer to Katarias as they continued to circle, Sirus seeing Katrya waving atop its back. He had wanted to leave her behind in deference to her condition but she reacted to the notion with violent defiance, keen as ever to do the White’s bidding. He had come to realise that her attitude was far from unique in the army. With every passing day this host of remade souls grew more willing to accept its lot. Some, especially the Islanders, continued to rage inwardly at their enslavement but the mood amongst the less recently converted was gradually subsiding into one of unreasoning loyalty. There were even some who seemed to rejoice in their inhuman state, mainly those of dull intellect or inherent cruelty.
Change and growth, Sirus remembered his father saying in one of his lectures to archaeology students at the Morsvale Museum. The two constants in the history of human civilisation. As our circumstances change, so do we, and we always prosper in the changing.
As Katarias swept round for the second time Sirus lowered his gaze to gauge the progress of the fleet. He could see the wakes of the frigates separating as they came within a mile of the bay where Morradin had promised a successful landing. Sirus sent the marshal a questioning thought pulse, receiving one of fierce anticipation in return.
The tide is high and not a corporate swine in sight, Morradin reported. The Greens will go ashore first. They’ll be raising an appropriate level of havoc in the outskirts of Feros in the space of a quarter hour. I’ll have the whole army off and advancing towards the isthmus in two hours.
No killing once the Protectorate forces have been dealt with, Sirus reminded him. We’ll need to make good our losses.
Tell that to the drakes, Morradin answered, his thoughts coloured by grim amusement. So many days at sea seems to have riled them a great deal. Can’t you feel it?
Sirus could indeed sense the blood-lust in the surrounding flock of Reds and knew it to be mirrored in the Greens and Blues below. It went beyond just the endless hunger of the natural predator, more a collective feral need shot through with a depth of enmity he might once have imagined beyond a non-human soul. Although their minds remained out of reach, his continual exposure to these creatures left him in no doubt that their mental faculties were far more developed than any naturalist had previously guessed. They do not think like us, but they do think. And they remember. He found he had to summon an upsurge of fear as the knowledge that Feros was about to suffer the full vengeance of the Arradsian drake brought Tekela’s face to mind. Please just sleep on, he implored her silently. Don’t wake up.
He saw the first fires appear in the northern suburbs a few minutes ahead of Morradin’s schedule, blossoming like bright yellow flowers in the dark earth. There would be screams, he knew, and gun-fire. Constables would be sounding the alarm and the Protectorate garrison roused from its slumber. Within minutes companies would be formed and sent towards the scene of chaos, away from the docks.
It’s time, he told Katarias, colouring the thought with an urgent sense of command the beast couldn’t fail to understand. A low, rattling growl emerged from the huge Red’s throat as he dipped his head and drew in his wings. They descended towards the harbour at a near-vertical angle. Only the strength of Sirus’s refashioned body enabled him to stay in place, so fierce was the air-current. He glanced back to ensure the other Reds were following, seeing them all streaking in Katarias’s wake, the flock dense enough to obscure the pale disc of Serphia beyond.
In accordance with the plan the flock split apart after descending to a point some five hundred feet above the docks. A dozen smaller flocks veered off to assault specific gun-positions whilst a dozen more made for the warships anchored within the harbour. Some repeating guns started up as the flock descended the final few hundred feet as shipboard gunners overcame their shock. The smaller guns growled as they cast glowing streams of bullets into the air, soon joined by the more percussive thump of the larger cannon. Sirus saw several drakes tumble into the harbour waters, but not enough to stem the onslaught.
Katarias banked low over the western mole, spewing flame at the sailors positioned atop it, lashing out with both tail and talon as he flared his wings and brought them down on the quayside. Sirus leapt clear of the drake’s back, war-club and knife in hand. He cut
down a dazed Protectorate rifleman who stood staring at him with smoke rising from a half-melted face, then ducked as Katarias’s tail flashed overhead, scything into a squad emerging from a near by blockhouse. The tail spike cut one clean in half and left the other four slumped against the wall of the blockhouse, gaping in shock at the blood leaking from their gashed flesh.
The Red gave a brief squawk of triumph before turning about and launching itself from the quay, wings blurring as it sought the air. Another dozen Reds descended a heart-beat later, rolling over to deposit their riders on the dockside. Forest Spear landed close by, soon joined by Katrya and ten more Spoiled. They were hand-picked fighters, tribals, Islanders and former soldiers, all chosen for their battle prowess.
Before leading them from the docks Sirus cast his gaze over the harbour. The battle was far from over, rifle fire cracking continually, but most of the repeating guns had been silenced. Fires seemed to be raging on every ship and he saw burning men cast themselves from the decks whilst others attempted to make a stand. Officers hounded groups of riflemen into defensive knots only to suffer a blast of flame as Reds swooped down from above before rolling over to cast their Spoiled riders into the smoking confusion. Despite the apparent success of this attack Sirus also saw the truth in Veilmist’s calculations. Many wounded Spoiled and Reds thrashed in the water, the drakes crying out their death calls as they sank from view. In contrast Sirus felt the final moments of the Spoiled as a silent, sputtering scream.
They encountered a full platoon of Protectorate infantry a few streets from the harbour. They were led by a youthful, pale-faced officer who wasted precious seconds gaping at them in shock rather than ordering his men to open fire. Sirus drew his revolver and shot the officer dead as his chosen Spoiled tore into the troops, knives and war-clubs blurring. It was over in seconds, all but a handful of riflemen lying dead or close to it, the survivors casting their rifles aside as they pelted away in terror.
Just boys, Katrya observed, angling her head to inspect a young soldier who lay on his side, hands feebly attempting to gather his spilled intestines back into his belly. Sirus saw she was right, this fellow couldn’t have been much older than sixteen.
It seems the Protectorate is becoming desperate to fill its ranks, he commented, gathering his Spoiled and leading them on.
Bodes well for victory, Forest Spear added. Like Katrya his mind was perennially lacking in any suggestion of doubt or disloyalty, a common trait amongst the tribals.
The cacophony of multiple repeating guns firing at once erupted as they pressed deeper into the town, intersecting lines of flaming bullets arcing up into the sky. Sirus spied a gun emplacement on a near by roof-top, one of the heavy four-barrelled cannon. As he watched the gun loosed off a burst of fire, the shells streaking upwards to impact on a Red, blasting it apart.
Deal with it, he ordered Forest Spear, the tribal immediately charging off with five Spoiled in tow. Sirus didn’t wait to witness the gun’s destruction, instead making for a broad avenue that sloped up towards the Artisan’s Quarter. The army had plenty of minds with intimate knowledge of Feros and he knew this district was home to one Professor Graysen Lethridge, famed inventor and father of the equally famed Lizanne Lethridge, better known as Miss Blood, Defender of Carvenport.
They encountered numerous fleeing townsfolk upon entering the quarter. They appeared to be from the outlying neighbourhoods, many running past clad in night-clothes, eyes wild in panic. Most were so intent on flight they failed to register the fact that they were running towards greater danger. However, one woman stopped in midstride to stand pointing at the Spoiled, screaming out an incoherent warning that sent her fellow townsfolk scurrying in different directions.
Sirus could see Greens in the streets up ahead, either feasting on their kills or pursuing prey through alley and courtyard. Several fires were raging whilst the boom of artillery to the north indicated the lead elements of Morradin’s army were now engaging the Protectorate garrison.
Sirus found a pack of eight Greens feasting on a body at the wide door to a structure that was part workshop, part house. He could see a large bulbous shape of some kind above the edge of the roof-top, bobbing slightly in the wind. The Greens snarled at him as he drew nearer, then shrank back, revealing their prey as a thin woman of middling years in an ankle-length nightgown. A key lay next to her part-eaten hand, Sirus’s gaze tracking from it to the heavy padlock on the workshop door. The words “Lethridge and Tollermine Manufacturing Company” were emblazoned across the door in fresh white paint.
Sirus turned to the largest of the Greens, assuming it to be pack leader due to its size, and sent it a mental image of melting metal. The Green snarled again, lowering itself in preparation to lunge, as if pained by the intrusion into its mind. Sirus added an image of the White to the thought and the Green stopped snarling, huffing as it turned to the door, an action mimicked by its pack. They opened their jaws at the same instant, eight streams of fire lancing out to engulf the lock, continuing to breathe out flame until it had been transformed into a blob of dripping slag iron, the door smoking but not yet fully aflame.
At Sirus’s command the Greens quelled their flames and launched themselves at the door, shattering it and streaming through into the workshop with a chorus of hungry screams. He followed close behind, pausing at the sight of a large wooden scaffold in the centre of the workshop, his eye drawn upwards to a raised platform, whereupon he froze.
It wasn’t the sight of the moons through the missing roof or the huge elongated balloon that froze him, but rather the young woman in overalls standing on the edge of the platform and staring down at him in shocked recognition.
Tekela’s eyes were wide, her expression one of sheer amazement rather than dismay or, he saw with a pathetic flare of gratitude, disgust. He wanted to say something but found his mind suddenly void of all words. Instead it was there again, reborn and undeniable, that same all-encompassing devotion to this girl.
The Green pack leader leapt and latched onto the platform. Splinters flew as it started to claw its way up, followed by the rest of its pack. Sirus’s gaze went to Tekela, who, he noticed for the first time, was holding something. It was a squat object with a blocky base from which six narrow cylinders protruded, arranged in a circular cluster. A drum-shaped box was fixed to the side of the object’s base, which, Sirus saw, was throbbing rhythmically in the manner of an engine.
Sirus threw himself aside as Tekela lowered the object and the cylinders began to whir, belching out a flame a yard long and birthing a sound that seemed to rip the air apart. He had time to witness four of his Spoiled being torn apart as he fell, rolling away with all the strength and speed his monstrous form would allow. The sound died for a moment and he looked up to see Tekela adjusting her aim, lowering the device and firing again, moving the whirring barrels back and forth to sweep the Greens from the scaffold. They seemed to fall apart as the stream of bullets met them, scattering the remains across the workshop in bloody chunks.
Sirus watched in grim fascination as the bullet stream snaked towards him across the floor, raising a curtain of shattered stone. He tensed for a leap, knowing he wasn’t fast enough and, despite the compulsion to abide by the White’s will and survive, finding himself content to die at her hands.
The last bullet impacted an inch from his face and the miniature repeating gun fell silent. Sirus looked up to see Tekela lowering the weapon, smoke rising from the barrels. “Out of bullets,” she told him with a shrug.
“You always were a nasty little bitch!”
Katrya stepped from the doorway, her pistol raised, elongated teeth gleaming in a hungry smile. Sirus could feel it shining within her: a deep, joyous sense of triumph. He’s mine and you’re finally dead! I win! I . . .
The pistol jerked in his grip, the bullet shattering Katrya’s skull, silencing any dying thoughts she might have shared. He watched her fall, feeling the last f
luttering of her mind fade like the ripples of a pond after the rain. She sighed, giving a final shudder as life left her. Two lives, he reminded himself, knowing that if his will were his own he would certainly have put the pistol to his own head and pulled the trigger.
“Tekela!”
He returned his gaze to the platform where Tekela still stood, staring down at him. She turned at the sound of her name, looking up at a stocky man hanging from a rope ladder above her head. The ladder was suspended from what appeared to be a row-boat, itself attached to the elongated balloon by a complex net of ropes. Sirus saw another man in the boat, a tall fellow in a long coat busily fiddling with some form of engine fixed to the boat’s stern.
“Tekela!” the stocky man repeated, extending his hand.
She nodded, hefting the repeating gun and placing it in his outstretched hand before taking hold of the ladder. She started to climb up then stopped, turning back to Sirus. “Come with us,” she called to him.
“That thing is not . . .” the stocky man began then fell silent as Tekela turned a fierce glare on him.
“Please,” she said, beckoning to Sirus.
Sirus could feel the White’s will like a fire burning away his resolve. Whether it witnessed or even knew of this encounter didn’t matter. These people were valuable. He needed to capture them, or kill them if he couldn’t. Sirus summoned all the fear within him, unravelling every nightmare he could remember, reliving all those brushes with death, suffering again the attentions of the Cadre’s torturers. It was enough to keep him from raising his pistol. But only just.
