A Blade of Black Steel

by Alex Marshall

  “Already?” Captain Bang sounded disappointed in him, but her hand settled on his lower back instead of his bottom. The palm felt burning hot under his skin, and as the fingers walked up his still-arched back she said, “Such a shame, if you held out for five more I was going to give you a reward, but now—what the shit is that?”

  Bang’s voice went from husky to hard in a trice, and Maroto didn’t have to look away from the sight below to know that she had seen it, too. “Well, Captain, it looks like… it looks like what we thought was a lake is actually a giant fucking army in shiny black armor and tight formation, and now they’re on the march, aren’t they?”

  “I can see that, Useless, why didn’t you say something!”

  “They just started moving out on the road,” said Maroto defensively. “And besides, you told me not to speak until spoken to.”

  Bang softened a little, and stepped up on a rock to give him a peck on the cheek. “Good boy. But whatever orders you have, next time tell me when something this crazy happens.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Maroto, the magnitude of this development finally sinking in as the fog of strange euphoria left his skull, leaving only a dreadful pain in his posterior and painful dread in his heart. “Who are they? What are they? There’s ten thousand of ’em down there, assuming they’re the same size as normal folk, and they’ve got the look of an army heading off to make somebody sorry.”

  “But who, but who?” Bang tugged on her ear as she thought out loud. “We know that road doesn’t lead to any of the beaches or coves we’ve found, but it’s heading southeast, so they’ll hit the sea before long. It must take them out somewhere on the other side of that headland you were tossed off.”

  “Or under it,” said Maroto, remembering the sea-caves those simian monsters had carried him through his first day on the Unsunk Kingdom.

  “Either way, the road has to lead them to the southern shore of Jex Toth.” Bang tugged harder at her earlobe. “What does an army want at the southern shore?”

  “A day at the beach?” When Bang gave him a harsh swat on his sensitive arse, he said, “Well, what do I know about it? Maybe they’ve got a harbor there.”

  “And an obviously well-trained army of Jex Toth marching to a secret harbor on their southern shore can only mean one thing, right?” Bang didn’t look away from the glossy black river of troops moving out from the assembly at the edge of the city’s fallen walls. “They mean to invade the Immaculate Isles.”

  “What? No! I mean… maybe?” The more he thought about it the more plausible it seemed—here was a marching army, be it composed of normal folk or something weirder, and the one thing all the legends agreed about was that Jex Toth was a downright wicked place before their war with Emeritus led to both empires meeting mysterious disasters. Stood to reason that as soon as they were resurrected they’d start up with their old ways again. Ancient evils were always doing that, weren’t they, in epic songs and plays? Getting banished for ages and then creeping back in to make another go of it? “So… what do we do?”

  “Now we run,” hissed Bang, and finally averting his gaze from the valley he saw his captain hopping on one foot, trying to pull on her other boot. “We run fast, and we run far, and we think all the while. Once we’re back to camp we’re bound to have a plan, though I’m thinking we build a raft and head for Hwabun—that’s the closest Isle.”

  “Warn the Immaculates?” Maroto nodded. “Smart.”

  “Lucrative,” said Bang. “They’ll owe us big if we can tip them off before the invasion starts. Now move it, Useful, before…”

  “Before what?” asked Maroto, giving the black army a final scowl.

  “Before something stupid happens,” said Bang, grabbing Maroto’s arm and pointing down the ridge that led from their vantage point toward the city. “Like that.”

  “Oh,” said Maroto, seeing the problem and feeling his stomach drop down into his sizzling bottom. “Yeah, we definitely want to leave before something like that goes down.”

  They had only previously seen one great white flying horror—presuming the one that had swooped down on them their first night was the same beast Maroto had baited into attacking the egg-laying monster from the sea-caves—and it had only ever seemed to come out after dark. The four horrors that flapped their way up along the ridge toward Maroto and Bang looked even scarier by day, their pale, greasy skin somewhat translucent in the sunlight so that purple organs and black bones could be glimpsed as they winged ever closer, their wavering tendrils almost dragging on the ground. The creatures must not be able to fly as high with the ebon-armored riders on their backs, each white, droopy-winged monster saddled with a pair of the hulking humanoids. The squadron was not a hundred yards down the ridge from Bang and Maroto, but made no sound at all as they flew straight up the saddle toward them with dread purpose.

  “Damn,” said Maroto sadly as the fiends approached. “I was just getting into that, too.”

  “Oh, you’ll get into it yet,” said Bang, swatting Maroto’s sore arse and bolting back down the way they’d come. “But not if you’re caught!”

  “Right behind you!” Maroto called after her, but this was a lie, because while he knew he should climb onto the quartz boulder and await their coming, knew he should leap from the high ground onto the first horror that reached the peak and buy Bang a little more time to escape, because that was what a real hero would have done for the wonderful girl who had unlocked his heart with the palm of her hand, Maroto had already started running down the ridge, too, and overtook Bang before the words had finished leaving his mouth.

  “Bad move!” she cried. “You don’t want me behind you, Useful!”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” he called back, but in looking over his shoulder to make sure the mounted horrors weren’t too close he tripped straight over the first of the many sharp drops that punctuated the ridge. He landed on his side on the grassy slope, but the pain in his ribs and elbow were nothing compared to that of his rump as he twisted over on it. By the time he’d stopped rolling and resumed his flight, Bang was back in front of him, but that was okay, too, since he’d decided it was probably all right to start checking out her butt. Not the worst day he’d ever had, then, not by a country league.

  They had almost made it to the treeline when one of their winged pursuers soared down and around out of the sky, hovering at the bottom of the narrow ridge and cutting off their escape. Up close and seen in the daylight, it looked something like a cross between an owlbat and a giant, fleshy jellyfish. Dong-won’s description of the first one as a squid-dragon wasn’t too far off point.

  So not the best day Maroto had ever had, either, but he knew a thing or two about making the best of a bad situation. As Bang slid to a stop rather than run underneath the mounted squid-dragon, Maroto dashed past, giving her a light swat on the rump as he went by. He’d be paying for that later, with any luck, but for now he charged even faster at the enormous monster. Its black-armored riders were a blur on its back, fast as Maroto was coming down the slope at them, but he clearly saw them hoisting what looked rather a lot like a net. But while they were clearly waiting for him to try to feint around the hovering horror at the last moment, Maroto had other ideas.

  Taking advantage of his wild descent, the steepness of the grade, and a slight hump just before the base of the slope, he leaped into the air, leading not with a fist or an elbow but both his heels. He felt graceful as a cliff diver pirouetting through the air, and then his feet smashed into the gnarly sky-beast’s face. He couldn’t say how effective this move was other than as a distraction, because the next thing he knew he’d slammed down on his back in those lovely little flowers and warm little blades of grass. A wide black net drifted lazily down out of the blue, blue sky and settled on his limp body, the wind knocked clean out of him. Woof.

  An appealing red-haired streak crossed his vision, but when he tried to throw off the net to follow her he found it was more of an incredibly heavy
web, sticky to the touch and actually a little caustic, now that the sensation was returning to his rattled brains. The gross monster drifted over him, its cluster of pachyderm-like trunks unspooling from its underside, but Maroto let his head loll to the side, looking down the ridge to where Bang was running away without a backward glance, running to the trees, and then running through the trees, running on and on and on.

  Maroto had but one hope left in him, and it was that she would never stop.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Don’t sulk,” Zosia told Boris as they slogged their way through the increasingly chaotic camp, word apparently spreading like… well, like bad news through a mercenary camp. “You know, people are usually excited when their benefactor offers to buy them a nice new weapon. You need to be able to defend yourself.”

  “Told you, I’m a lover, not a fighter,” said Boris gloomily.

  “Say, there’s an idea!” said Zosia. “Since we both might die on the morrow and all that, what say after we get equipped we make a quick stop off at one of the brothel tents? My treat.”

  “You got a queer sense of humor,” said Boris, and Choplicker barked in agreement.

  “Sure, that, too, but why the hell not, eh?” Now that she had brought up the possibility under the auspices of altruism, Zosia couldn’t even remember why she’d been so opposed to the idea of just heading over there by herself—Singh was right, she needed to get something, anything, and fast. “Could be our last chance to have a few fun minutes with a comely wench or lad or what have you.”

  “And since we’ll probably be dead soon we won’t have to worry about any poxes, right?” said Boris, not sounding any keener on it, but now that she’d let herself suggest it out loud there was no going back—she was going to fucking get it, albeit briefly, since they had an imminent appointment to keep with Hoartrap. Perhaps mistaking Zosia’s excited flush for embarrassment, Boris said, “Not that having a pox is the end of the world, I mean, or saying all whores is dirty. Like, my own brother’s a whore, and he’s, uh… well, he’s got a few different poxes, so that’s a bad example.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment, Boris, but I’m clean as the driven snow,” said Zosia, then amended herself as Choplicker lifted a leg over a drift. “Well, not that patch of it, but you get the point. Ever since Hoartrap set me up right the only thing I’ve picked up in a brothel is my husband!”

  And shit. Fast as she’d felt the winds of passion blowing her toward certain relief, she becalmed herself with that little reminder of why she hadn’t hired any lustworkers over the past year, and her shoulders slumped like limp sails.

  “My, but that’s clever,” said Boris. “Certainly haven’t heard that one a hundred times before. Or let me guess, you actually came up with that punch line back in the day before anybody else did, another of your many contributions to Samothan culture.”

  “No, I didn’t mean he… just, never mind,” said Zosia, feeling her chest get all tight at the memory of first laying eyes on Leib in that bordello in Rawg. He’d been winsomely sprawled on a paisley daybed in the common area of the Sixty-nine Eyes. Oh, how she had wanted that towheaded hunk with his boy-next-farm charm. And for a good long while, she had had him, too, and as so much more than just a favorite lustworker… but they could have lived for a hundred lifetimes in that cabin above Kypck and she never, ever would have had enough. Nobody knew her as well as Leib had, she’d never allowed anyone to get that close… but even seeing just how dark she was inside, even learning of every crime in her downright evil life, even then he loved her, and his love had been worth more to Zosia than empires or treasure hoards, more than living, if it meant living without him. When she was with him she felt… she felt okay, like as much bad as she’d done, she couldn’t be totally irredeemable, if someone as good as Leib cared for her.

  During the happy years in the mountains playing peasant and eventually mayoress, the cold, sinister blackness that had always squirmed and plotted inside Zosia’s heart, inside her thoughts, that ugliness that had always driven her, it all went away. And if they sometimes quarreled or came down sick and had to tend the other or she sometimes found herself looking out across the valley and daydreaming of heading off for one last adventure, well, those were the little things that proved what they had was real and true, that they weren’t both just dreaming of a perfect life, but actually living one, or as close as things came in the waking world…

  “Hey, look, I didn’t mean anything by it,” said Boris, sounding a little rueful, and Zosia realized she’d stopped walking, was just standing there between the grim frozen tents, on the verge of tears. “I give everyone a hard time, it’s what I do?”

  “I…” Zosia cleared the lump out of her throat with a rumble and spat out all the grief… or as much as she could pack into a bit of phlegm, but it would have to do for now. “I was just thinking that we’re not going to have time for any brothel tents. Day’s getting on.”

  “Suits me,” said Boris, falling in beside her as they resumed walking. “To each their own, but I don’t know how you’d be of a mood for it, at a time like this.”

  “Neither do I,” said Zosia, picking up the pace so they’d have no more wind to waste on talking until they reached the smith’s tent. They must be getting close, because the rills of snowmelt that trickled down between the tents were flowing faster and wider, and this late in a cold-ass day the likely culprit was a forge… and then they could hear the clanging of metal, and followed it to its source.

  The smithy was the only structure they’d passed on the way up that was completely denuded of snow and icicles. As they entered the wide ring of mud surrounding the rectangular tent at the front of the works, Zosia said, “Now Ji-hyeon told me the smith was grouchy, so let me do the talking—the last person you want to piss off is the guy you’re counting on to sell you a decent weapon. One smart word out of you and he might give us gear that looks reliable but shatters like glass the first time we need it to save our lives.”

  “No smart talk, got it.”

  “No talk, smart or otherwise,” said Zosia, lowering her voice as she approached the pinned-up flap at the entrance and the clanging stopped, replaced by furious cursing. This was shaping up to be just bloody typical. “I’ll get a hammer, we’ll get you something simple yet intimidating, and then we’re out of here before you have the chance to say the wrong thing.”

  “Got it,” said Boris, eagerly rubbing his bandaged hands together as the pleasant warmth from the forge wafted out of the tent. For all his whinging about how bad they hurt during archery practice he still had all his fingers, the frostbite only taking off a few layers of skin here and there, but just the same Zosia decided to get him something he could hold on to with both hands. But first, a hammer for her, though whatever she picked up here was guaranteed to be garbage so there was no cause to waste much time on it.

  “Greetings, friend,” Zosia announced as she led the way into the close, smoky front of the tent. A long table of northern oak barred their way, covered with junk—some of it was scrap and some of it looked to be finished weaponry or bits of armor, but junk it surely was. Might not be the fault of the big man who now turned away from his anvil and stalked over to them; smithing in a mobile army meant banging out quantity over quality, trying to fix armor and salvage weapons that were already rubbish to begin with, and so—

  But then Zosia got a good look at the clearly irate wildborn smith on the other side of the table, took in his catfish whiskers and great big black eyes, and said, “Well, damn. I’ve seen ugly and I know stupid, but I didn’t know they had a baby.”

  The smith was too taken aback to speak, his already enormous eyes seeming to swell from within, and Boris quietly sucked in through his teeth. Then the great, sweaty man swung on Zosia, his meaty fist easily reaching across the table, and swatted her on the shoulder so hard she felt the vibration in her eyeballs.

  “Zosia girl!” he cried. “Good to see you, though you’re looking old
er than you already are. Which is old as hell! Heard you were in camp, wondered if you’d come and see me.”

  “Nobody told me you were here! Why didn’t you come find me?”

  “I got time to chase ghosts?” Ulver shook his big bald head, just in case she needed an answer to the rhetorical question. “I knew if it was really you you’d show up eventually. That’s how bad news usually works.”

  “Damn, Ulver,” said Zosia, feeling even more annoyed at herself for not asking around to see if anyone else from the old days had shown up to follow the Cobalt flag. “How long have you been in company?”

  “Close to the beginning?” said Ulver, tugging thoughtfully on one of his dangling pink barbels. “I lit out to the Dominions a few years back, once the Chain started rounding up wildies again. Had a shop in Gorgoro, and did all right, mostly tools and armor since I never took to Raniputri weaponry, but soon as I heard the Cobalts were tearing it up in the next Dominion over I packed my bags and my kid, and that was it. Still hoping for a Cobalt revolution to knock the Chain out of the Empire, so that shows I ain’t got any smarter with age.”

  “How about that,” said Zosia, marveling anew at how much hope and devotion she still inspired, even in those who’d known her well. Especially in them. “So how long did it take you to figure out it wasn’t me in charge?”

  “Ha! I knew that much before I even signed on,” said Ulver. “No way I would’ve joined up if I thought you were back in the general’s saddle, not after the mess you made last time. But I figure, maybe someone young, someone who really seems to get it this time… well, that’s what’s up.”

  “That is indeed what is up,” said Zosia, not hurt by his candor so much as by the truth behind it.

  “So listen, Zosia girl, I need to pull some blades in a minute here,” said Ulver, wiping a moist hand on the front of his leather apron. “But make yourself at home, and—say, who’s the runt? He with you?”

  “Yessir, I am,” said Boris, looking up from the knives at the end of the table he’d been intently inspecting, or at least pretending to. “I’m Cobalt Zosia’s wisecracking sidekick.”