by Angus Watson
Over to the west, the mysterious creatures that had torn down from the Badlands at great pace turned out to be dagger-tooth cats with people riding them, for the love of Innowak.
They galloped along the leading edge of her army, some swooping in with melee weapons to kill archers and slingers, but mostly keeping their distance. She couldn’t see clearly, but the way they were holding their hands to their mouths and her warriors were falling, it looked as if they were using blowpipes and poisoned darts. That is underhand, she thought.
And now, coming directly from the road down the Badlands massif—the road she’d expected to walk up following her triumphant forces—came yet more monstrous mounted animals. The next wave of the Badlands sally was hundreds of moose, all carrying warriors.
The lizard monsters waded on towards her, killing and killing. She expected to see one of the beasts fall, some brave captain to shout out by what clever method he’d killed it, then the rest of the nightmare creatures to go down. But it didn’t happen. They kept coming. They weren’t eating people, they weren’t killing for food as you’d expect from an animal. They were rampaging and slaying. The beasts were basically stamping her army to death.
She shook her head. What a grim, honourless way to die and how ignoble its perpetrators.
The nearest creature was a hundred paces away now, dripping with blood, kicking and crushing and sweeping its tail to knock down swathes of brave men and women. There was a dead Calnian impaled on its lower rack of foot-long teeth.
Behind the giant creatures came yet more mounted animals. If she wasn’t mistaken, they were bald children riding goats, or possibly bighorn sheep. Suddenly, everything was just too fucked up and the urge to flee nearly overwhelmed her. But, no, she would stay and die. Calnian, however, must live.
Ayanna turned to her new young warlock. “Chippaminka, find Calnian and get him out of here.”
“No.”
“No?” She looked down at the girl.
“He’ll die, too.” Chippaminka grinned back at her.
Realisation hit Ayanna like a giant hand slapping her on the forehead.
How had she been so stupid?
The girl was a Badlander warlock. All of this, from the very start, was her doing. Ayanna had been her enchanted stooge.
She swung a punch at her enchantress and hit her full force on the jaw.
Pain exploded in her hand. Stars danced, tears stung her eyes as she blinked them open. The girl was still smiling, face unmarked.
“You were very proud of your Owsla, weren’t you?” she said. Nearby a monster paused from killing to raise its head and scream-roar into the sky. “But where do you think the knowledge of how to make an Owsla came from? Your warlock Pakanda was a Badlander who left to pursue glory in the gold pyramid city of the tawdry, pompous Calnians. He returned when you exiled him. While you showed off your creations to the world, we kept ours under a blanket.”
“Until now.”
“No. They will remain secret. No Calnian will survive the day to tell anyone about our animals, nor about the old magic that revived them.”
“Revived?” Despite her burning desire to kill Chippaminka, Ayanna was interested.
“They are an ancient species that roamed the earth long, long before people. We brought them back with magic and mixed in some alchemy to make them even tougher and angrier than they were.”
“Why?”
“For our amusement. And your destruction.”
“Will you let my son live? I’ve shown kindness to you from the moment you arrived in Calnia and the only person you knew was killed.”
“Who do you think killed Chamberlain Hatho? And I enchanted you. You wouldn’t have done anything for me otherwise, so I owe you nothing. I’m going to kill you now, then head back for Calnian. I’ll keep him for a while. I’ve been looking forward to giving him a real reason to cry.”
“No, wait, I—”
The girl moved in a blur and swept Ayanna’s feet from under her. The empress fell hard and her head cracked onto rock.
When her gaze cleared, Chippaminka was straddling her, as she’d done so often of late, but now those strong hands, once so wonderfully soothing and arousing, were clamped around her neck. They squeezed.
Fire, thought Ayanna, as consciousness slipped away, I wonder if fire would work against the monsters?
Tansy Burna ground her hips into the galloping cat’s back, blowpipe at the ready, looking for living Calnians, lifting her pipe and per-chooing darts into them. She never held the pipe to her lips as she galloped, in case there was a bump that made her swallow the dart. The pipes were designed so that you couldn’t do that, in theory, but Tansy liked to be safe as she could be while galloping around on a gigantic predator with crazily long fangs.
A Calnian woman staggered to her feet. Wap! Tansy’s dart was in her neck. She’d be out for a few hours. When she came round, she’d be tied up wearing a spider box, or nailed to a rock wall in the Badlands with her blood draining into the warlocks’ next project.
She looked for the next survivor, but couldn’t see any nearby. Rappa Hoga had dismounted and was walking amongst the smashed Calnians, blowing darts left and right. She didn’t want to do that. A cousin of hers had been killed by a knife to the groin from a man she’d thought was dead after a skirmish.
She pulled her dagger-tooth to a halt and it stood, panting gently. Screams rang from the south where the lizard kings raged, hurling limbs and blood into the blue. They hadn’t slowed a jot.
Dead and dying Calnians stretched for hundreds of paces in every direction across the plain. The moose riders arrived at the Calnian lines. The proud beasts picked their way between corpses as their riders blew darts into the living.
Overtaking the moose riders came Beaver Man and his Owsla, all naked, all unarmed, sprinting and leaping to catch up to the lizard kings and find people to kill.
To the north, more people were running from the Badlands followed by large buffalo-drawn sledges and several Empty Children on bighorn sheep. The darted living would be piled onto the sledges and taken away. The dead would be piled into heaps and burned.
There were so many dead. The remaining dregs of Tansy’s battle lust evaporated to be replaced by a feeling not far from despair. She saw a Calnian woman stagger to her feet, scream—possibly trying to put weight onto a broken leg—then fall. Another man was trying to push himself up and failing. Another did manage to get to his feet, looked about, spotted something—a fallen comrade presumably—and fell sobbing to his knees.
There were similar small scenes of misery all over the battlefield. Battlefield? Slaughterfield more like. Tansy realised that they may have looked like small moments of misery to her, sitting happily on her dagger-tooth, but to the people involved they were huge, terrible, final scenes.
She rode on and saw a doomed man sitting and staring at his own eviscerated guts. She put a dart in his neck. They were meant to dart only those who’d live—no point in knocking someone out if they weren’t going to come round—but easing Calnian pain seemed to her like the right thing to do now.
Luby Zephyr nipped between the ranks of the Calnian army, sowing a row of confusion. She was headed for the Badlands massif. Flummoxed troops in her wake thought they’d seen someone, but couldn’t be sure.
I am stealthy, she thought as she tripped along. For the first time in a long time, she had a plan. She was going to rescue the Owsla.
She was almost clear of the enemy lines when she made the mistake of looking back. She’d expected that the monsters would be beaten by now, at least some of them taken down, but they were all still raging deep into the army, slaying everyone in their path, apparently unscathed despite the attacks of hundreds of warriors. At this rate there would be no army for the Owsla to save.
She spotted Ayanna, standing with Chippaminka on the pink and yellow hillock. The empress punched Chippaminka in the face. The girl didn’t budge. The monsters were heading directly for the hillock. I
f Chippaminka didn’t kill Ayanna first, then the giant lizards were sure to get her.
Luby loved the empress, not because she was a brown noser, but because she believed that, prior to Chippaminka’s enchantment, Ayanna had been a good, noble leader who’d improved the lives of pretty much all Calnians after the ravages of the previous emperor Zaltan. Improved the lives of all Calnians apart from the dickheads who’d colluded with Zaltan’s depravity, anyway.
She had to save her.
With that thought, terror welled. The idea of taking even a step towards the empress made Luby cry out and shake her head. The monsters didn’t scare her. She could avoid them. It was Chippaminka’s cursed enchantment. They said that knowing you were under alchemical enchantment was the first and most important step towards breaking it. “They” had clearly been talking bollocks.
Or had they? She took a pace towards the empress. Her mind moaned, her limbs were heavy and aching. She took another step, then another. Forcing herself to take every pace was like mustering the courage to launch herself off a cliff.
After a dozen steps, however, it was easier. Suddenly, as if she’d burst out of the choking woods and into a bright clearing, she was running towards Ayanna’s mound.
On the hillock, Chippaminka felled the empress and jumped on her.
Luby Zephyr sprinted. All around, injured Calnians clamoured for help. A dozen or so who’d somehow escaped the monsters were fighting a naked Badlander, and losing. The Badlander, clearly alchemically enhanced, was enjoying it. He snapped the arm of a Calnian and laughed.
It was a deviation from Luby’s path, but only a few heartbeats, and she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t take it.
She ran in, stealthy as her namesake zephyr. The Badlander gripped a Calnian by the neck and squeezed. Attacking from behind was not exactly noble, but then again neither was using alchemical strength against an unenhanced enemy. Luby slashed her obsidian moon blades through the backs of the Badlander’s knees. His skin was tough, but she’d expected it to be and struck with all her own alchemical might. Skin opened, muscle and chords sprang apart. He fell back, arms waggling. She plunged the pointed end of her moon blade into his eye, whipped it out and was running on before he hit the ground.
Luby reached the hillock, moon blades in her hands, and bounded up it. Her mind was screaming at her, louder than the freaky roars of the monsters and the screams of eviscerated Calnians, urging her to turn back, to leave Chippaminka to her business.
“La la la!” she sang at her mind.
Chippaminka saw her, even though she shouldn’t have done, and sprang off the prone empress: “You are strong to overcome your enchantment, Luby. I could make it stronger. I could make you kill yourself with those pretty weapons. Are they obsidian?”
“They are.”
“Lovely. I’m not going to make you kill yourself though. I like a fight every now and then, and it’s a while since I killed an alchemical warrior. I’ll free you. Come at me.”
Chippaminka lifted her hand and pulled something invisible. The enchantment snaked out of Luby’s mind like a slimy chord being pulled through her brain and out of her nostrils. It was not a pleasant feeling, but the relief was extraordinary.
Luby faced her foe, feeling stronger and happier than she had in a long time.
The warlock was lithe and well muscled, but compared to Luby’s enhanced, acrobatic warrior’s frame, she was slight. Luby was twice the warlock’s weight although she carried almost no fat, a head taller, and she’d spent ten years learning how to fight.
Still, she advanced cautiously, wary of tricks and traps that a warlock might use. She slashed with her right blade. Chippaminka dodged, as expected, and Luby swung in the left, killer blow.
The girl dropped to the ground, avoiding the slash, and came bouncing back up with an uppercut to Luby’s jaw.
The Owsla woman staggered, world reeling.
Chippaminka followed, driving hard little fists into her stomach again and again with the speed of a woodpecker head-banging a tree and the power of a kicking buffalo.
“It’s so annoying,” said the girl as she punched, “but I’ve always been like this. I tell myself to spread the fight out, make it last, really enjoy it, but I can never make myself do it. Every time! I’m the same with food. It’s gone before I remember to taste it.”
Luby flailed at the girl, all tactics gone, desperate to stop the horrible assault on her gut. Finally, the warlock stopped punching her, but the attack was far from over. She saw Chippaminka leap. She was too winded and stunned to do anything apart from stand and watch.
A foot smashed into the side of her head, her eyes crossed, she was down and everything faded to black.
She came to and lifted herself onto her elbows, shaking her head.
Chippaminka was facing away from her on the far side of the hillock, holding the unconscious Ayanna above her head. She was a lot stronger than she looked, that girl.
A lizard monster stopped and looked down at them with a benign expression on its face. Through the fog of her recent unconsciousness, Luby imagined it looked like a dutiful son on the way to his parents’ house who’s spotted a flower that he knows his mother will like.
The beast opened its mouth. There was a severed leg stuck between two lower teeth.
“Come! Come!” shouted Chippaminka, straining up onto tiptoes, flipping Ayanna round so she was holding her upright by her hips, offering her headfirst to the hideous animal.
Luby jumped to her feet.
The monster’s head lowered.
Luby ran, silently.
The beast opened its mouth wide, to snap shut on Ayanna.
Luby grabbed Chippaminka two-handed by the waist, so hard that her fingertips almost punctured flesh. The girl squawked, dropped the empress and half turned. Luby heaved with all her strength, hurling the girl upwards.
Ayanna fell to the rock, Chippaminka flew into the great mouth. The beast snapped its teeth shut and munched, blood squirting between its cracked lips.
Luby blinked. That last bit had been easier than expected.
The Swan Empress Ayanna was unconscious but alive. As the giant lizard lifted its head to swallow the chewed warlock, Luby bundled Ayanna to the side of the hillock and tumbled her over the edge, using her own body to cushion the fall. They landed, rolled and came to rest against the monster’s foot. Luckily it wasn’t the most sensitive of beasts and, as Luby dragged the empress away, it searched for them on top of the rock, snorted, looked about some more, roared, then strode away sulkily.
Right, thought Luby. Three more naked men were sprinting with unseemly alchemical pace towards them. Also coming were more monsters, a whole load of dagger-tooth cats with warriors riding them and hundreds of moose, also carrying warriors. There was no way Luby Zephyr was going to smuggle Ayanna off the battlefield.
There was a person-sized crevice at the base of the rock. The Owsla woman checked it for snakes—a snakebite in the middle of a battle against monsters and alchemically charged warriors would have been a really dumb way for the empress to die—then tucked Ayanna into it. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was the best she could do. She was safe from the giant beasts there, and hopefully she’d be found by a Badlander who’d realise what a valuable captive she was.
Empress stowed, Luby ran, blending into the Calnian army and back on track to carry out her first plan of circling them to the west, heading into the Badlands and finding the rest of the Owsla. The only difference was that now it was infinitely harder because she had to dodge attacking monsters, avoid dagger-tooth patrols and keep clear of the moose riders, not to mention the hundreds of Badlanders on foot who were now streaming south out of the Badlands massif.
She ducked and weaved, breaking her movement and slinking about so even those that she ran right past hardly saw her.
As she got back on track she saw three more of the naked men tearing towards a pocket of the Calnian army that had managed to avoid the beasts.
She faltered. She’d beaten one of them with ease, but stealth was her thing. She wasn’t the greatest fighter. She’d win against anyone who wasn’t enhanced, but when they knew she was coming all the rest of the Owsla, even Sitsi Kestrel, would beat her in a fight.
So her chances against three alchemically enhanced Badlanders were slim. But could she leave the Calnians to die?
She jogged stealthily towards them, unsure what she was going to do.
Calnian archers targeted the foremost of the Badlanders. He stopped and stood, arms out, chest proud, and let the salvo strike home. The stone heads bounced off his skin as if he were made of granite. He smiled. He was missing his two front teeth.
Luby stopped.
The hard-skinned man charged. Calnian axe men met him. He chopped a flat hand into the neck of the first and decapitated him as if his hand had been the sharpest blade. The head spiralled upwards, trailing an arc of blood. The two other naked men attacked and Calnians fell.
Luby turned and ran, headed for the massif.
She had to forgive herself. There was nothing to forgive herself for. It would have been pointless to fight the three men. She would certainly have been killed and there was nothing to be gained from that. This way she had a chance of freeing the Owsla and striking back at the now inescapably victorious Badlanders. She had done the right thing.
A hundred paces away a monster crushed a dozen Calnians with one swipe of its fat tail. I’ve got to get out of here, Luby told herself, it’s the only way to help.
And so she fled the battlefield, skirting scenes of horror and misery, headed towards the foreboding red and yellow cliff.
Chapter 9
Reunion, a Story and a Death
Back at their camp hemmed by the crescent of rock, where the Owsla had been held for the entirety of the battle, Sofi Tornado and the other Calnians listened as Wulf the Fat described the destruction of their army. Sofi had heard the roars and the screams and knew what must have taken place, but it was still chilling to learn the details.
Wulf spoke calmly but watching the horrors had clearly upset him. His bronze skin had a grey tinge, the jocular spark in his eye had dimmed and even his curled golden hair seemed flatter and duller. However, he told them what they needed to know in an efficient and matter-of-fact way. He didn’t know the fate of the empress. As far as he knew, the entire army had been killed or captured after being knocked out by the same type of dart that the Badlanders had used against them on the far side of the Ocean of Grass. Some of the Calnian army had fled out of sight, but they’d been pursued by faster Badlanders on cats and moose so he could only assume that they’d been killed or caught.
