by Ian Irvine
Nish crept along the top of the wall, pouring the thin, volatile oil onto the damp peat and fretting that there wouldn’t be enough to set it alight. He could hear boots scrabbling on the peat, the soldier coming up rapidly. Too rapidly. Nish dropped the bladder at the other end of the wall, allowing the remaining oil to drain out. There wasn’t time to light it; the soldier was halfway up. He should have cut the rope at once.
Heaving out his sword, he slashed wildly at the rope, burying the blade deep in the peat. The rope parted but the soldier, lightning fast, threw a brawny arm onto the top of the wall and swung from it. Before Nish’s sluggish reflexes could wrench the embedded blade free, the man had the other arm over and was pulling himself up.
There was no choice; no time to think. Nish had to clear the wall before he could fire it. He wrenched, twisted and the blade came free in a cascade of peat chunks as the soldier rolled over and onto the wall.
‘He’s on the wall. Get another grapple up there,’ roared the sergeant.
Nish slashed at the soldier’s head. The soldier ducked then flung his sword up, the blade sliding along Nish’s and striking the hilt so hard that it nearly tore the sword out of his hand. Nish’s blade went sideways with a clang and a drifting spark. His arms wheeled as he tried to avoid going over the edge onto the swords of the troops below. By the time he’d recovered, the soldier was on his feet and the advantage had been lost.
Nish had been a skilled swordsman, once. He’d single-handedly slain a number of the alien lyrinx, which were much bigger and faster than men. His muscles remembered the moves but he was too slow for this crack soldier.
Nish went backwards, parrying for his life, the soldier thrusting and cutting like the expert he was. Nish stumbled; the soldier swung his blade out then prepared to bring it back in a blow that would take Nish’s head off his shoulders. He couldn’t get out of the way, nor get his blade into defensive position in time. He stumbled backwards, the moonlight shone on his face and the soldier stopped his blade in mid-air with a wrench that went all the way up to his shoulder.
‘Surr!’ he cried to the sergeant. ‘It’s the son of the God-Emperor.’
The sergeant let out a whoop. ‘Bring him down, but don’t harm a hair of his head. Signaller, signal for the luminal.’
Nish had no idea what a luminal was and didn’t wait to find out. While the soldier was still off-balance he thrust his own blade up into the man’s groin. It burst with a spray of fluid and the soldier doubled over, dropping his blade on the wall. He slid sideways, landed on the edge and fell onto the soldiers below.
The sergeant was roaring and bellowing at his men. Another grappling iron flew up and over the far end of the wall. Nish fumbled the flint striker out of his pocket, touched it to the peat and struck it. A feeble spark jumped but went out.
The iron caught hold on the back of the wall and the rope was jerked tight. Nish snapped the flint striker again and again, with no success. A soldier was already coming up the rope; another was close behind. Nish ran along the wall, hacked the line apart and snapped his striker a few more times, fruitlessly. The drifting sparks did not catch.
The troops now hit on a better approach. Four of them had hammered spikes into the peat and hung onto them, allowing other soldiers to scramble onto their shoulders and reach up to grab the top of the wall at the same time. If he attacked one, the others could spring onto the wall. Nish raised his blade high and hacked down at the fallen blade on the wall with all his strength. There was a mighty clang; a flurry of sparks landed on the oil-soaked peat and it caught. As the soldiers tried to scramble onto the wall, the oil blazed up beneath their fingers.
It gave Nish his chance. He dashed through the growing flames, slashing at the soldiers’ arms, and the combination of fire and attack proved too much. Two lost their grip and fell back. A third leapt to safety. The fourth made it onto the wall, sleeves blazing, but before he could come to his feet or beat the fire out Nish swept down on him, swung his blade hard and took the soldier’s round head off his stubby neck. Blood fountained all over him.
Nish sheathed his red sword. Flames were swirling around his wet boots and pants as he scrambled down the back of the barrier and began to climb the knotted rope. By the time he looked down again the whole of the wall was on fire and the troops could be seen as a cluster of shadows a few spans below it. He must have been clearly visible climbing the rope but they had no way to bring him down without harming him.
He reached the top and rolled onto the plateau, noting with grim pleasure the glows coming from the north-western and north-eastern clefts. However he’d only gone a few steps when a flare ignited high above the centre of the plateau, brighter than any light he’d ever seen.
A brilliantly sparking and sputtering sphere of uncanny force, the luminal lit up the surface of the plateau as brightly as daylight. It had to be a creation of the tears – no other Art could have focussed such power – and since the God-Emperor held the tears tightly to him and allowed no one else to use them, Nish knew that his father had taken personal charge. The real battle was about to begin.
The attack by the main force must be swarming up the south-eastern cleft not far from the hut, and that way lay undefended. What if he’d left it too late? The clapper-boards could have been going for ten minutes and there would have been no one to hear them. How long had he spent here? Nish couldn’t tell. Ten or fifteen minutes, plus another ten coming across. If he sprinted all the way back, heedless of the dangers of the cliff track, it would take at least five minutes to reach the main cleft. That could be too late.
He bolted, pounding along the muddy track Flydd had worn in nine years of nightly wandering, splashing through puddles, skidding on mossy rocks and leaping over broader pools fringed with stubby rushes.
He kept glancing over his shoulder at the sky. He didn’t think the luminal could have been conjured from a vast distance – no, Jal-Nish was up there somewhere, probably hanging silently in the night sky from his favoured air-dreadnought, shielded from view by his Arts until the moment when he burst upon them in an overwhelming display of power.
That was the one thing Nish could be sure of. When his father finally came to the attack it would be at the moment when victory was assured, and he would make a display of it that the whole world would talk about. It wasn’t just the victory that mattered; the display of power was equally important. His father had learned that lesson from the scrutators at an early age.
Nish skidded to a stop beside the hut, before realising that there was no point going in to check on Flydd yet again. He ran on, looking fearfully down the cliff whenever the path skirted the edge, expecting to see lights everywhere. There were none, not even where the camp fires had been at the base of the pinnacle, earlier.
Surely that could only mean one thing – that the entire army was on the way up after all. He reached the cleft just ahead of Zham, who was charging along the rim path like a buffalo, and almost as unstoppable. There was no sign of Colm but he’d had a much longer run, on a winding, treacherous path between the bogs and stink-snapper pools.
‘Surr!’ cried Zham, staring in horror.
Nish looked down. He was drenched in the blood of the soldier he’d killed. ‘It’s not mine. Come on.’
He hurled Flydd’s moss-covered timbers off the small stack of barrels on the right side of the cleft. Zham began to do the same to the left. Nish had just heaved the first barrel above his head when Zham, who was already at the edge with his, stifled a cry.
Stumbling under the weight, Nish looked over. Down where the cleft opened out before the last precipitous ascent stood hundreds of soldiers clad in the distinctive beetle-shell armour of the God-Emperor’s Imperial Militia. More soldiers were forming up below them, as far as he could see, but they weren’t looking up. They were watching a man who had his back to the plateau and was speaking in a thick, hissing voice that cut through the howling wind. It was Seneschal Vomix, alive and seemingly unharmed by the earli
er crash.
A soldier in the front ranks raised his right arm. Vomix broke off, turning slowly and deliberately, and the light of the luminal was so bright that, even from this distance, Nish could see every detail of his face, ravaged from the time Timfy had innocently placed the taphloid in his hand.
Vomix’s nose was a flattened blob, several front teeth were missing and long, ragged scars ran around and across his cheeks, as if his face had been torn off with a giant hand, ripped into three pieces and rudely sewn back on again. His right arm ended in a knobbly stump.
Vomix saw Nish standing at the edge of the cliff and his burst mouth peeled open in the most sickening travesty of a smile. He snapped his stump towards Nish, three times.
Dozens of soldiers rose from concealment against the upper slopes above Vomix, clad in dark grey uniforms that blended perfectly into the black rocks and deep shadows formed by the luminal. They began to move up the cliff-bound slope, the only way onto the plateau, and two people couldn’t defend it.
FORTY-EIGHT
‘It’d take a shipload of burning oil to hold that force back,’ Zham said wearily. Nonetheless, he hurled his barrel towards the rocks above the camouflaged soldiers and ran back for another.
Nish wasn’t hopeful either, especially when Zham’s barrel struck the rocks and burst open, splattering its contents everywhere. It wasn’t oil, but something thick and sticky that looked no use at all. But as the clots of red-brown gunk, connected by stretching strands, wheeled through the air, they left yellow fuming trails behind. A small clot landed on the wrist of one of the soldiers, who tried to wipe it away with his other hand but began to scream as his skin came off in red strips.
Another soldier, walking through a wavering yellow band of fumes, stopped as if he’d walked into a wall then began to vomit uncontrollably. Soon others were doing the same. Nish hastily hurled his barrel to shatter on the sharp rocks above the leading group of armoured soldiers, and ran for another.
By the time he returned, Vomix was scrabbling up the slope, surrounded by a flickering green nimbus, presumably some kind of defensive shield, and roaring at his troops.
‘Go at them. Any dog who falters in courage will die at my hand, while those who win through to capture the son of the God-Emperor will be rewarded beyond their dreams.’
There was something odd about him though. The nimbus drew right in and for a fleeting instant he looked haggard and sunken-cheeked. The climb, on top of his previous injuries, must have been too much for him.
Many of the camouflaged troops had fallen but the armoured ones were lowering their visors and scrambling purposefully up the steep climb. Nish and Zham hurled another two barrels. The burning mucilage, which Nish suspected had been made from the goo inside the stink-snappers, mixed with some reeking substance of unknown source, had little effect on the armoured troops, but the yellow miasma was bringing them down.
A burly soldier strode boldly into a hanging yellow cloud and came out the other side, seemingly unharmed. However his footsteps became slower and slower until he stopped with one foot in the air. He abruptly doubled over, straightened up again and tried to tear off his helm, but didn’t manage it in time. Streams of vomit burst out through the mouth, nose and eye holes, to ooze down his iridescent chest plate.
‘On, you cowardly cur!’ roared Vomix, standing in the yellow cloud but evidently protected by his green nimbus.
The soldier ripped his helm off, wiped his face and tried to struggle on, but doubled over again and began to bring up green and black muck from the pit of his stomach. He cast a fearful glance over his shoulder at Vomix, took another step but stumbled, fell to his knees and could not go on.
Vomix snapped his fingers at a sergeant, then pointed to the soldier. The sergeant shook his head. Vomix swelled with rage; the nimbus flickered in and out, creating an illusion that his body was stretching and contracting, then he smashed the sergeant down with a mailed fist and with his sword carved the stricken soldier’s head from his body.
Seneschal Vomix held the head up, still pouring blood, urging the troops on with threats and curses. On they climbed into the spreading yellow murk, spewing and vomiting blood, and falling down.
Oh for a crossbow. Nish, shocked by Vomix’s casual viciousness to the proud Imperial Militia, would have shot him without a qualm. If he could treat them so badly, the horrors he must have visited on ordinary folk would be unimaginable.
Vomix looked up and they locked eyes. He gave a sick leer, thrust his forefinger into the head’s windpipe, rotated it to face Nish and held it high, taunting him. Again the nimbus flickered, and Vomix appeared to stretch and contract, but there was something else odd about him. What was it? Nish tried to see with clearsight but it couldn’t penetrate the nimbus.
Nish swayed; Zham jerked him away from the edge. Zham had two barrels under his other arm and passed one across. ‘You might just get him from over there, surr.’
He indicated the cliffed edge of the cleft further out. Zham carefully tapped in the end of his own barrel with a stone, then hastily poured the mucilaginous mess along the edge of the cleft until he’d treated the entire length of the way up. Within seconds, in contact with the air, yellow fumes began to issue forth.
Nish crept out along the rim where the cliff fell away, moss-covered and unclimbable, for hundreds of spans into the darkness, to a point where it overlooked the wider part of the cleft where the troops had gathered. Vomix was keeping well back so he couldn’t be targeted, though Nish thought that, with a little luck, he might splatter some of the contents of his barrel on him from here.
He peered over. Vomix was stalking back and forth, roaring orders, increasingly frustrated at the inability of the Imperial Militia to pass through the miasma. He looked barely in control and his attacks on the stricken troops grew ever more vicious. Three more soldiers now lay headless before him and Vomix had hacked the third to pieces after he fell.
The soldiers at the front were retching and struggling on, and falling. None had yet passed through the yellow murk that hugged the steep ascent and, as Nish watched, Zham pegged another barrel into the defile they’d have to pass through in the final climb.
Putting down his own barrel, Nish carefully tapped in the end. Vomix, almost incoherent with rage, kept casting anxious glances at the sky in the direction of the luminal, and well he might. The God-Emperor’s retribution fell swift and hard on those who failed him, whatever their rank, and Vomix had notably failed once. Another defeat would see him broken to a common soldier, or slave, or even sent to Jal-Nish’s torture chambers. Nish hoped so. It was only fitting that his father’s most vicious lieutenant should die as he had lived.
Vomix broke off from his ranting to raise his sword, intending to decapitate another collapsed soldier, and Nish saw his chance. He stood up, held his breath as he raised the gently fuming barrel and, aiming it with a focus born of cold fury, hurled it hard and high.
A sergeant of the Imperial Militia standing behind Vomix glanced up and saw it coming but, oddly, said not a word. Vomix’s sword hacked through the unfortunate soldier’s neck, then the sergeant stepped smartly out of the way as the tumbling barrel slammed upside down onto the back of Vomix’s head.
He collapsed onto his knees, gasping and gurgling as the mucilage streaming down his head and shoulders began to fume, but not one soldier of the Imperial Militia moved to aid him. The sergeant looked up, his eyes locked with Nish’s, then jerked his head in acknowledgement.
The Imperial Militia were not entirely without honour. The momentary truce was over and they’d be after him the instant they could get past the miasma, though it could be hours before that was possible. And, thankfully, even if Vomix survived, he would be in no shape to lead his men for a very long time.
But Nish was immediately proven wrong. Vomix lurched to his feet, tore the barrel off and with a frantic snap of the fingers, a sound that echoed like a whip crack, forced the green nimbus down until it disappeared into his
skin. His whole head and shoulders were foaming; his ravaged face appeared to be peeling apart in bloody strips. He thrust both hands high and let out a scream of pain and rage, as if calling power into himself from the sky.
The Imperial Militia turned to stare as one, for he was stretching and shrinking again. He drew his clenched fists in, striking himself above the heart, emitted a great roar of agony, then seemed to literally burst apart.
Bloody skin, fuming rags, fragments of armour and boot leather flew in all directions, trailing smoke. What remained of him fell to his knees, clawed at the moss-covered rocks beneath his feet, then, as naked as the day he was born, lunged for the sky again.
Nish nearly fell off the cliff in shock. It was like Flydd’s transformation in reverse, for what had been revealed was not Vomix at all, but a taller and more strongly built man, one whose skin was red, cracked and weeping all over, save where the burning mucilage had etched away the corrugated layers of his face to reveal raw flesh beneath. A man with long dark hair, now falling out in sticky clumps, an arching prow of a nose, and a fanatic, almost maniacal gleam in his dark eyes.
‘It’s Monkshart!’ Zham said in astonishment.
Monkshart had transfigured himself into the very image of Vomix, and the change must have been of astonishing perfection, to fool not just the officers and troops of the army but its accompanying mancers as well.
To perform such a feat after calling down the flappeter would have taken more power than most mancers could summon. But the illusion had been failing under the strain, and that’s why the nimbus had been flickering, almost revealing Monkshart’s true form. Aftersickness must have been hurting him cruelly and only a man of iron will could have endured it for so long.
Monkshart swayed on his feet, wiped a streak of the sloughing skin off his right cheek with the back of a raw hand, shuddered, then directed such a look of rage at Nish that he reeled.
