Fierce Gods

by Col Buchanan

  Creed was ruminating on something and looking south towards the distant city wall, where anyone making a run for it along the bank was being hit by concentrated gunfire or blown up by more buried mines. He turned northwards, taking in the nearer rise of Beacon Heights and the fighters already streaming that way along the bank, more and more of them as they tried to flee the worst of the gunfire, following the river in their efforts to stay clear of the mined and deserted encampment.

  Again Creed shouted his orders to the signallers. ‘Flash another message to the ships. Tell them we’re heading for Beacon Heights. We’ll make a stand there while they lift us back to the city.’

  Major Bolt wasn’t happy with the idea. The man looked northwards to the Heights, frowning at the fighters being picked off as they ran along the bank.

  ‘You think we can make it that far?’

  ‘Some of us might. What choice do we have, man?’

  *

  Beacon Heights was a small ridge of limestone cliffs that rose from the plain like the serrated edge of a knife. A Khosian watchtower straddled its highest point, though the tower now lay in the hands of the enemy, as seen by the white imperial flags flying from its top sporting the red hand of Mann.

  Even so, the hill looked like sanctuary to the remnants of General Creed’s forces, shot and cut to pieces during their desperate flight along the river bank, for all that the skyships had laid down their cover of smoke. Out of the thinning violet clouds, five hundred survivors staggered onto the base of Beacon Heights just ahead of the imperial cavalry hot in pursuit, struggling upwards onto its steepening flanks as the enemy zels began to falter on the rocks.

  No one was looking at anyone else now, each person intent only on the ground ahead through the tunnel vision of their exhaustion. On Bahn’s right a tall Volunteer was carrying a comrade over his shoulders, talking to him as he surged upwards with great gasps of strength born of fear. But his wounded friend was missing most of the back of his skull, and clearly dead. To Bahn’s left, a storm-haired Redeemer yelled out in sudden pain and pitched over, a quarrel bolt sticking out from the furs on his back.

  Bahn didn’t even think to return fire with the gun that he carried. He was intent only on General Creed ahead of him, who had stopped on an out-thrust of stone to survey their chances above, ringed loosely by his four surviving bodyguards and blasted by gusts that were brushing patterns through the furs of his thick bearskin coat.

  Shouting out commands even now, Creed was somehow maintaining the sheerest thread of order through his remaining officers and his own towering presence. Somewhere along the way his young standard-bearer had fallen, replaced by another fresh-faced soldier just as teary-eyed as the last one, the standard itself a flapping torn rag by then. Next to Creed crouched one of the signallers with the Sun Writer, flashing again to the pair of skyships circling overhead, which were heavily engaged with two enemy Birds-Of-War.

  ‘Major Bolt,’ Creed was saying as Bahn caught up with him at last, almost reeling from his lack of breath. Fighters kept on scrambling past him headed for the top. Others fired back down at the enemy forces giving chase, or threw rocks and grenades, forcing them into cover.

  ‘Major, we’ll need that watchtower for ourselves,’ shouted the general to Bolt with a gesture to the ridge above them. ‘Take some Specials and rangers up ahead with you. See if you can take the garrison.’

  He spotted Bahn bent over gasping for air. But Creed only looked away to the city behind him, more visible now that they were above the plain.

  ‘Can’t tell if they’re holding them back or not,’ he said, with the emotions barely suppressed in his voice, or perhaps it was only Bahn hearing it that way, five years of knowing this man as his field aide, knowing how he must be raging within.

  You can do this!

  Gunfire could be heard from further up. A few squads of Specials were making their way onto the ridge in crouched runs, tossing smoke grenades ahead of them and braving the enemy shots from the watchtower, while a line of rangers provided them with covering fire.

  In the brief moment of respite, Bahn gazed at Bar-Khos smoking on the plain, wondering how he was meant to save his family now.

  What of the promises that they would be spared?

  He pictured Marlee and his son, running for their lives through the northern streets of the city; little Ariale in her mother’s arms, crying in fright at all the noise.

  Even as he thought of young Ariale, his precious daughter, Bahn turned to the sound of an infant child crying nearby, just beyond another out-thrust of limestone. He thought he must be imagining it, but then a group of ragged Khosian women hurried into view, and he saw that one of them was bearing a bawling babe in her arms.

  Bahn frowned, wondering what they were doing here.

  ‘Bahn, you bloody bastard!’

  A figure was stepping out from behind the group of Khosian women, looming over them in his massive bulk. For a moment Bahn was distracted by the fellow’s Contrarè skins and beads, but then he saw that it was Bull, his old Red Guard companion from the earliest days of the siege. A man he had considered to be dead.

  Bahn almost smiled at seeing his old friend alive again. But then he looked at Bull’s troubled expression, and a chill ran through his spine.

  He knows! He knows what I am about!

  Of course Bull knew, how could he not when he’d been a prisoner of the Mannians too; had been there when the priests had messed with their minds.

  The Lord Protector was moving again, working his way up the slope with his men towards rangers waving them on from the ridge above. Bahn started moving too, not looking back as Bull called after him.

  The last time he’d seen the giant of a man, they had just broken free from the pit in which the Mannians had imprisoned them after the battle of Chey-Wes. It had been raining hard, in the middle of the night, and Bull had held off the enemy while the other prisoners made their escape. A truly heroic act, in Bahn’s eyes, one which most likely had saved their lives.

  Yet now he fled from the man.

  ‘Bahn!’

  White smoke from a grenade obscured Bahn’s world for a moment, changing the tone of the sounds about him. He lost sight of Creed and then he tripped on something on the slope – a dead Red Guard lying across his path.

  As Bahn staggered to his feet he looked down to see Bull appearing through the pouring mist, fixing him with a dangerous frown.

  He knows!

  He tried to yell at him. Tried to tell him to keep back. But then Bull jerked to a stop, frowning in pain. The big fellow looked down at his stomach which had suddenly ruptured in a splash of red, reaching splayed fingers towards the wound there. Bull looked up again in shock, in betrayal, as he took in the smoking barrel of the gun in Bahn’s hand, aimed directly at him.

  Bull toppled to the ground and rolled back down the slope, his great body scattering figures left and right.

  What remained of Bahn swirled around and surged onwards up the slope, not daring to look back at what he had done as he reloaded the gun.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Nico

  Nico knew that when you found too much happening at once, it was always best to surrender to the natural instincts of the body; to simplify everything down to the next step you were taking, the next breath.

  So he ran behind his father doing only what needed to be done and nothing more, existing only in the vibrations of the moment.

  They had rescued his mother, draped now over Cole’s back, and they weren’t stopping for anyone.

  Back there on the opposite bank of the river, where Nico had held off the imperial soldiers on the slippery grass while his father bore Reese across to the other side, Nico had fought with the same speed and recklessness as he had at the slaver camp, as though swordplay came naturally to him now, something he had been born to do. His blade had snaked hissing through the air, following moves that were drawn from the Rōshun blade discipline of Cali, a super-aggressive fighting st
yle favouring lightning-fast kills against multiple opponents. Before he’d known it, four soldiers were sprawled on the bank either dead or dying, giving Nico the chance to leap into the freezing river so he could swim for the other side, desperate to catch up with his father and mother.

  By then, all kinds of havoc had broken out further down the river. Explosions threw fountains of earth high into the air above a rising chorus of yells and gunfire. Clouds of drifting smoke from the many tents on fire down there obscured their view, but Nico glimpsed a skyship falling from the sky, and two more climbing away from it, dropping barrels over their sides trailing a yellow mist.

  Back on the western bank the tents were just as empty as before. But when they had heard the shouts of men approaching, Nico and Cole had quickly hidden inside one, sheltering down out of the gusts. Frantic figures had run past them following the bank of the river – Khosians, they realized, hearing their voices shouting out in desperation. Quickly they ditched their imperial cloaks. When they stepped outside again they saw they were in the midst of a full-scale retreat of friendly forces, all of them headed north for Beacon Heights.

  There was nothing else they could do but join them, for all that these friendly troops were under fire and surrounded. At least the surviving pair of skyships were throwing down smoke and fire for cover. Through the yellow mist, Nico and his father made it to the slope of Beacon Heights, and struggled up it like everyone else towards the watchtower on its ridge, Cole heaving from the weight of Reese on his bent back, raining sweat. Shots and arrows pursued them, along with the distant horns from the city wall calling out in alarm.

  Nico lost sight of his father for a few moments beyond an outcropping of rock, and when he rounded it he grunted in surprise. There up ahead, in a cloud of thinning smoke, were the women they had rescued from the slavers, Chira and Shandras and the rest of them, hurrying up the slope towards a man rolling to a stop on the ground.

  His father came to a halt above the fallen figure, surrounded by gasping women. He crouched down to check the man’s pulse.

  It was Bull, lying there on the ground in their midst with a bloody, ragged hole in his midriff, his dead eyes staring wide with shock.

  Oh no.

  ‘Hecheney-naz-hai!’ shouted Bull’s Contrarè companion, Sky In His Eyes, kneeling beside him, leaning on his bow like a staff. The native was trembling with anger. He looked up the slope as though towards the source of his outrage, then took off at a running lope.

  ‘It was Bahn,’ said his father to Nico with a sick look on his face. ‘I saw it myself. He shot Bull dead.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Cole glanced up at his son, snarling. ‘You don’t think I know my own brother when I see him. Here, take your mother. Get her to the top.’

  ‘It’s true then? Bahn’s a traitor?’

  ‘Take her I said!’

  His mother was lighter than Nico expected when he hoisted her over his back. All skin and bones, it seemed.

  ‘Get to the top,’ Cole repeated before setting off with his longrifle, darting up the slope close on the heels of the Contrarè.

  Already the women were scrambling upwards again, helping each other over the rocks. Shots were still coming in from the enemy forces below, slowly working their way onto the Heights behind the retreating forces. For all his new-found strength, Nico was still gasping for air as they neared the top. His feet slipped on loose shale and his mother groaned.

  Up on the ridge the wind was howling. It tore at the cloaks of the surviving Mercians as they ran towards the stone watchtower, tossing the black smoke that poured from its shattered gateway. High above the battlements a Khosian flag was being hoisted.

  In a flow of fighters Nico jogged along the narrow ridge until he entered the fallen gate of the watchtower. The wind was screaming through the gloomy passage. It pushed him into an inner courtyard enclosed by a high arching roof, speared through by shafts of light from arrow slits around its walls. Already the space was crowded with fighters and the echoes of their voices, men dragging the bodies of dead enemy soldiers out of the way while medicos tended to their own wounded.

  In the throng, he caught a glimpse of his father ducking past the Contrarè man and running for some nearby steps. Huffing and puffing, Nico hurried after him.

  *

  Daylight washed Nico’s eyes again as he stepped up onto the battlements of the watchtower.

  It was getting crowded up here too. Nico hefted his mother on his shoulder and coughed from all the yellow smoke drifting on the wind. Through its winding tendrils he spotted a few dead imperial soldiers lying on the flagging of the roof, and then he noticed that everyone was gaping at the sky. He followed their collective gaze to the skyship diving fast towards the Heights, dropping more smoke barrels for cover as it came.

  Rockets shot up from the Mannian encampment below, streaking wildly this way and that, though missing it entirely. Along the vessel’s port side cannon fired at the camp, even as the skyship levelled out with its skul-sails flaring against the headwind, forward thrusters burning hard to slow its descent, the ship drifting down like a leaf onto the narrow ridge.

  These skymen really knew how to fly under pressure.

  A few voices whooped aloud at the sight of such a daring landing, whooping even louder as the ship cracked open its two hull doors for the fighters already running towards it, whilst others grabbed at mooring lines being cast by the crew.

  Nico tore his gaze away from the sight to search out his father.

  Over by the far parapet towered the Lord Protector himself, flanked by shields and with his dark hair flowing past his famous features. General Creed was studying the landed skyship as he snapped instructions to his people, standing there larger than life. Across the way, Nico spotted his father at last. Cole was staring over the heads of the soldiers, alert as a panther focused on its prey.

  Bahn! he thought in surprise as he noticed his uncle at the back of the crowd, leaning against a crenellation.

  He pushed towards him as his father did. For a moment he couldn’t quite fathom what he was seeing, but then it came to him with a jolt – his uncle Bahn was aiming a hand cannon at the back of General Creed’s head.

  ‘Brother!’ he heard his father yell out, and Bahn was visibly rocked to see Cole barging his way through the crowd towards him.

  His uncle was weeping from red-raw eyes, the tears clearing tracks down his grimy features. Bahn opened his mouth wide as though to say something, though it might only have been a silent cry for help.

  ‘Is this a dream?’ Bahn finally managed to shout over the din of the milling soldiers.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is this a dream, brother. Am I dreaming all of this?’

  Cole shook his head slow and forcefully. ‘No, Bahn – this is all happening, believe me.’

  His uncle winced at the words. He turned his attention back to the gun aimed in his shaking hand.

  ‘Bahn!’ yelled his frantic father, unable to get through a group of Volunteers. He aimed his longrifle at his brother over the shoulders of the crowd, shaking his head at him. ‘Don’t, Bahn – what are you doing, man?’

  Around them his voice was drawing the attention of others. Panicked, Bahn gripped the gun with both hands to steady it, his eyes and nose running, his features contorting with pain.

  He fired.

  A second shot crashed out even as everyone was ducking from the first one. Bahn stumbled where he stood, blood blooming on the side of his neck. Shocked, Nico swung his head to his father’s smoking rifle, then round to General Creed, who had disappeared behind a wall of shields and panicking soldiers. Faces yelled back in anger and fright. Someone grabbed Bahn while another knocked the gun from his hand.

  Cole was gasping down at his dying brother when Nico finally squeezed his way through, cradling his brother against the angry clutches of the surrounding soldiers.

  With care, Nico lay his mother down against the parapet, shaking with emotion
from the sight of his father weeping so openly in grief.

  His uncle’s face was draining of colour as he blinked up at his older brother. His mouth was moving. His hand tugged at something in his belt without the energy to draw it free. Nico strained to hear what he was saying.

  ‘Hush,’ said Cole, protecting his brother with his body against the jostle of men. He lay a hand on Bahn’s and helped him pull out a leather tube from his belt.

  Nico stared in dumb surprise. It looked just like the leather tube holding the charts to the Isles of Sky. The charts his father had given to Bahn before they had left the city to fetch his mother, with instructions to pass them on.

  What had Bahn been doing with them all of this time? What was he doing with them out here?

  ‘Stay with us!’ his father hissed, and he clutched the tube between them and clamped his other hand over the bloody wound in his brother’s neck, trying to keep him alive.

  But he was fading fast.

  Bahn gasped and looked up at a Cole for an instant, frightened at what was coming at him headlong in a rush – death itself. And then the air rattled from his lungs, and he seemed to deflate in his brother’s arms, and his gaze faded to nothing.

  Cole dropped his head in silence, drawing his son’s tentative hand to his shoulder.

  ‘He’s killed him!’ men were ranting all around them now, and they started kicking and tearing to be let loose on the assassin, trying to get through the line of cooler heads to stamp on the fallen Bahn. A boot lashed out and connected with Nico’s head, sending him spinning to the flagstones with the senses knocked clear out of him.

  ‘He’s shot the Lord Protector dead!’