by Tim Akers
"The Betrayer's invokations are proscribed," she answered. "They are not recorded, they are not practiced. They are not known, to me or any of my brethren."
"Sure, honey. Everyone believes that. You're all innocence and knowledge. We get it." I turned to Barnabas. "What do we do?"
"There won't be any more. The Amonites' shadowkin work alone, or in small teams. If those are truly Amonites of the Betrayer…" He trailed off. "We should find a Justicar's post. Get an escort."
"What happened to not causing a scene?"
"That was to avoid attention." He gathered himself up, holding the staff in front of him like a plow. "We seem to have attracted attention."
"Nearest post is five blocks. North, north, west, follow the iron stairs," Cassandra said, as though reciting scripture. "We can be there in two minutes."
"You just happen to know that?" I asked.
"We maintain the city. We know the streets."
"Very well," Barnabas said. I put a hand on his shoulder, then made my second mistake.
"North is out of our way," I said. "The Strength is east and south."
"The nearest post-" Cassandra began.
I interrupted her. "We're going south and east. There are posts along the way."
Barnabas shrugged. I unholstered my bully and quickly invoked the Long Reach, the Iron Teeth, and Balance of the Songbird. The cylinder hummed as the etched rounds in the revolver glowed with power. Weaker invokations, but they were the only bullistic rites I had. I was a girl of the blade, but this wasn't the place for that much steel.
"We'll move fast. Elder Frat, you and the girl move side by side. Stay ahead of me. If I yell, you drop. Unless I yell something about running. Then you run."
"Shouldn't you be in front?" Cassandra asked. "Leading us, or something?"
"Bitch Betrayers come from behind. If I can see them, I can shoot them. It's a pretty simple system, really," I said, then crossed the bullistic over my chest and nodded. "Let's get going."
We moved out into the crowd, which was rapidly dispersing. Crowds smell trouble. In this case, maybe the crowd saw a heavily armed Paladin of Morgan with her bully out, escorting an old man and an angry girl, all of them looking nervous and a little trigger-happy. Barnabas invoked as we went, something I didn't know. An almost invisible force washed out in front of us, lapping around our legs and trailing in our wake. I had no idea what he was doing, but it made me feel better to hear the old man chant and see the blessing of Morgan around us. It made the crowd nervous, but that was okay.
Four blocks, six, then ten. The old man's voice was faltering. There really should have been a Justicar's post by now. Barnabas finally stopped invoking and just moved, taking long, deep breaths that shuddered as we walked. I hadn't seen any more of the Betrayers, but I didn't expect to. The crowds were pretty much gone. I kept looking up at the buildings we passed. Betrayers were blade-men, but what if they hired help? What if they hired a sniper? I was jumping at shadows now, and the empty streets were not calming me down.
We stumbled into an empty square and the Fratriarch stopped by the dry fountain at its center. He leaned against the concrete and hunched over. His breathing sounded bad. The girl stood next to him with her hand on his shoulder, looking for all the world as if she cared. He couldn't go on, though he would try if I asked him.
"We aren't going to make it like this," I said. Barnabas didn't answer, his thick shoulders heaving as he tried to get his breath. I looked at the girl. "Where's the nearest post now?"
"Same post. It's just twice as far away now."
"There's got to be one closer. Why the hell am I asking an Amonite where I should go to hide from another Amonite?" I started to pace around the fountain. The buildings surrounding us were part of the old district, tired and stone and settling into themselves. Faces in the windows quickly disappeared. "This is ridiculous."
"There have been a series of post closings in the last six months, mostly for maintenance issues," Cassandra said, again as if she were reciting holy writ. "The southern horn of Ash has been particularly hard hit, as the base level of that part of the city has been settling into the lake at an unusual-"
"Stop it. You don't say two words together all the way here, and now you're giving a lecture. I don't need a lecture on city infrastructure. What I need-"
There was a roar that filled the square, and the ground shook. I dropped to one knee and aimed my bully before I realized it was just the monotrain line. Tracks ran across the northern edge of the square, the elevated rails held up by rusty iron trestles that seemed to grow out of the brick of the surrounding buildings. The train rumbled past, filling the square with clattering noise and a wind that smelled of hot metal and burning grease. When it was gone I looked at the girl.
"The nearest mono station?" I asked. She nodded, and we helped the old man to his feet.
* * *
The mono lines of Ash travel the city in wide, sweeping arcs, like the cogs of a giant clock. Riding one is never the most direct way to your destination, but it is certainly the fastest. I ran up the stairs at the nearest station while Cassandra and Barnabas struggled to keep up. I caught the car just before it was leaving, kicking everyone out of the forward compartment and holding the door while the Fratriarch got on. Some of the passengers grumbled and then got on one of the other cars. A lot of them took one look at my bully and just waited for the next line. I watched everyone who got on the other car after us, then pulled the compartment shut. We rolled out of the station with a groan.
"I used to ride the train, when I was a boy," Barnabas said. He sat with his eyes closed, his head leaning gently against the car window as we bumped up to our full speed. "My mother and I would take it to the northern horn, to visit the docks. She made a brilliant fish chowder, every Sunday."
"They had trains back then, old man?" I asked. "I always pictured you growing up in a cave, maybe with a mule or something to carry you down to the rock store."
"We had trains, Eva. And revolvers and elevators and hot water." He smiled, and his face filled with wrinkles. "We were very civilized people back then."
"These lines were laid by Amon the Scholar, in the hundredth year of the Fraterdom," the girl said. She was standing, leaning against the wooden frame of the window, one hand on a leather loop that hung from the ceiling. "He laid the lines and built the centrifugal impellors that power them with his own hands."
"Was this before or after he murdered his brother Morgan on the Fields of Erathis?" I asked. "Oh, right, it must have been before. Because afterward we hunted him down, chained him into a boat, and burned him alive. So it must have been before that, right?"
She didn't answer at first, swaying with the movement of the train, her eyes on the city as it ripped past.
"Yes," she said eventually. "It was before all of that. But not much before."
We rode in silence for a while, the Fratriarch breathing quietly in his seat, the girl watching the window. I paced the length of the car, my boots wearing down the already heavily worn carpet. It had probably been nice carpet, once. I cancelled the invokations of the bullistic revolver and just paced. I kept looking back at the other passengers in their cars, but they made a point of not raising their eyes from their newspapers. I was glancing back when the light hit, so at least I still had my eyes when it happened.
It was a fast shot, traveling from my left and going toward the front of the car. It came in through the windows like a lightning flash, first behind us, then keeping pace, then ahead of us and nearly gone. I was just glancing over my shoulder to see what it was when the sound came. Tearing, like ripped cloth. The tracks shook and then everything was washed in red and gold and a terrible, terrible sound.
We fell. I hit the carpet hard and slid all the way to the front of the car, slamming to a stop with my shoulder against the wall. The girl slid into me, screaming. Barnabas ended up against the benches. He was the first to his feet. I pushed the girl away and stood. Cassandra lay on the floor
, burbling and wailing. When she rolled over I saw that her right hand was a mangle of skin. There was no blood, but the bones were broken, and there were long, angry friction burns across the palm and back. Her thumb was pointing in several wrong directions.
Outside the car, there was smoke and metal. Something had hit the track. The creosote-smeared wooden spars of the tracks were burning with chemical brilliance, thick black plumes of smoke rolling off in heavy waves to the street below. The rails themselves were as tangled as the girl's hand. We were off the tracks and leaning in dangerous ways. The other passengers were screaming. I was screaming, too.
"Get up and away from the windows. Get off the car!" I yelled. In the cars behind us, people were slapping open the emergency hatches and riding the telescoping chutes to the ground. I started toward our own chute just as the car torqued under some unseen force. All the windows popped, then the ceiling peeled open like a scroll. Fat coils of rope, three of them, landed on the floor around us.
They landed in a rough semicircle. I turned my back to the Fratriarch, pushing the whimpering Cassandra behind me. The girl stumbled to the ground, cradling her limp hand against her chest. I hurriedly invoked armor and strength, sketchy bindings that I could snap out without thinking. I didn't have time to think. Gold lines traced the edges of my greaves and pauldrons, and the air around me tightened. The runes of my noetic armor settled down to a warm glow. As invokations went, they were weak, but there wasn't time for anything fancy.
Our assailants wore armor, actual armor, though it was roughly formed. Their faceplates were flat and plain, two bulbous gogglelike eyes over a voxorator grate. The metal of their breastplates and pauldrons was dull gray, sheened like oil on water. Wickedly barbed blades snapped out from their armguards. They attacked without saying a word.
I laid into them. My opening strike was to the left, scything past the first brute's guard with the weight of my attack. The blade struck his shoulder, denting metal and drawing a staticky shriek from his vox. He collapsed to the floor, and I followed the force of the blow, letting my sword swing low. My momentum rolled me over the fallen warrior. I came to my feet. This separated me from the Fratriarch, but their attention was fully on me. That's right, watch the dangerous bitch. Don't worry about the old man. The two remaining guys were nicely lined up. I turned the flat of my blade toward them and invoked.
"Morgan stood at the gates of Orgentha, broken city, broken wall. He stood in the stones and bones of the defenders; he stood before the spears of the invader." My voice was flat and quiet, grinding like stone in the grist. This was a new invokation for me, and I had to focus to draw into the past and pull out the power of Morgan's story. Hard lines of energy danced around my legs, light cutting in spirals through the train's dusty interior. The attackers stared at me impassively with their glassy eyes. I hurried, binding the invokation as quickly as I could. "Three days he stood against them, alone, shield as a wall, sword as an army. The city stood. He stood. The Wall of Orgentha."
The long, complicated length of my sword flashed, the power springing from the floor and coalescing against the blade. I swept it down and a brickwork of light traveled across the train, cutting the Fratriarch and Cassandra off from the attackers. The bug-eyed men looked the wall up and down, its light winking brightly off their lenses. When they looked back in my direction I had moved. I stood at the rough opening that had been torn in the car, swinging my sword in the slow circles of a balanced guard.
"Wall behind you, sword before you," I snarled and smiled. "Nowhere to go, boys."
The fallen attacker stood slowly. He moved his arm sparingly, and the dents around his shoulder leaked blood. He watched me warily. Odd curls of cold fog wisped out from under his mask.
"Three to one?" I asked. Their absolute silence was getting to me. "I am comfortable with those odds, now that I don't have to worry about the Fratriarch." I slid from balanced guard into a more aggressive stance. "Let us settle our differences, as warriors do."
The air filled with the roaring drone of engines. Behind the shimmering wall, Cassandra's eyes went wide, even around the shock. The Fratriarch grimaced, then put a hand on the girl's shoulder and began invoking. Reluctantly, I glanced behind me.
A dozen more, their bulbous green eyes bright as they arced toward the train from the ground on columns of black smoke. These men wore two barrel-wide burners on their backs, flame flickering around the turbine blades as they whined forward. Couldn't hold off this many. I looked back at the Fratriarch.
"Go!" he yelled. His voice was muffled behind the wall of light.
"If I leave you, the invokation will unravel."
"Girl, I have my own tricks." He planted his staff and leaves of metal began to tear through the ruined carpet from the car and swirl around him like a tornado on an autumn day. The leaves slapped together into a rough, hollow column around the Fratriarch. He drew the girl close to him. "Morgan on the Fields of Erathis, Eva Forge. Remember."
The last metal flake fell in place, and I dropped the wall. Light continued to flash from the column. Other invokations, other wards. The Fratriarch was Morgan's First Sword, his greatest scion in the world, I reminded myself. One of the framework towers that held the monotracks up over the city was nearby, and I jumped to it from the car, leaving the old man to take care of himself. Third mistake. That was probably the big one.
I clambered down as the flying goggle-men adjusted their trajectories to intercept me, jumping the last twenty feet. The arcane strength of my legs cratered the cobblestone street when I landed.
Morgan on the Fields of Erathis. A fateful thing for the Fratriarch to say, I thought as I jogged away from the elevated tracks. There were small crowds of injured civilians still clambering down from the train and dispersing into the city. Trying to get away from the fighting. Lots of screaming, lots of blood, but there were no threats among them. No hidden assassins. It made me think briefly about the Betrayers. This was nothing like their usual attacks, their small teams, their knives in the backs of their enemies. No time for that now. The distant moan of emergency sirens echoed beneath the urgent roar of the burnpacks of the attackers that were even now descending to the ground. They landed in the streets, fire and smoke haloing around them, scattering the already panicked civilians like leaves before a forest fire. I ducked into an alley.
In some ways, Erathis was Morgan's greatest battle. The Rethari horde that had been rolling through the northern provinces spread out when it came to the unpopulated Erathisian grasslands. Morgan led a cadre of Paladins on a monthlong campaign against the horde. They traveled on angelwings, hitting the Rethari in unpredictable places with crippling force and speed. Morgan led his company against the Rethari weaknesses, and also against their strengths. Wagon trains and armored columns fell to Morgan's blade. They even tore down a couple of the Retharis' divine clockwork totem-men. The Rethari gods cracked under Morgan's assault.
I watched the bug-eyed men spread out, searching for me, ignoring the civilians. The three up top called down in strange, static-laced voices from the train above. Outnumbered but mobile, I moved, searching for a weakness to strike. The comparison that the Fratriarch made was apt. As always, there was wisdom in his words.
I circled away from the elevated track, lacing new invokations into the air around me as I went. My armor tightened in memory of Morgan's Hundred Wounds, and my blade gleamed as I bound it with the Sundering. My step lightened as I invoked Morgan's march against the city of Ter-Trudan. When I felt appropriately buffed, I returned to the site of the crash from a different direction. Three of the strange men were standing in the wreckage of the ruined building, glass grinding under their feet. One of them was carrying some sort of heavy bullistic, awkward loops of ammunition twisted around his waist and shoulders. The street was thick with smoke and the sharp smell of idling burners. I came at them low to the ground, running forward in a squat, silent, hiding in the smoke of their burners until I was upon them.
"The Warri
or stands!" I shrieked as I rose from the smoke behind them. I had one in half before he could raise his blades. The second offered feeble resistance, batting away my attack with his bladed gauntlets before he succumbed to a trio of armor-crumpling strikes across his chest.
Thunder rolled between the buildings as the backpedaling gunner slewed his bully around and let tear. Smoke vortexed out in whipping tendrils as the slugs ripped toward me. The hardened air of the armor invokation shuddered, knocking the breath from my lungs. Each shot hammered a little closer, the shell of my protections shimmering in protest. The metal of the noetic armor gleamed with heat as the friction of the attack sluiced off of them, the runes entangled within them failing one by one.
I went to one knee and rolled, buying seconds as the gunner corrected the stream of fire, his shots skimming off the edge of my protective shell. He dug up cobbles, shards of stone cutting my legs as I focused my defense on the impossible torrent of lead and fire. I braced my heels and sprang forward. Slugs hammered across my blade, nearly knocking it from my hands. Only the blessing of Morgan made me strong enough to hold on. The tip of the blade nicked the barrel of the gun and his aim faltered, stitching a line into the building behind me. I brought the sword around, and the backswing struck the firing chamber. The gun exploded, washing away the last of my protective invokation in a wall of fire. The gunner staggered back, windmilling the shredded rags of his arms. I stepped forward and struck him cleanly through the chest.
"Damn unnatural weapons," I spat. My hands and legs were shaking, and curls of smoke wisped up from the tired runes of my pauldrons. I went to one knee. There was blood and ash in my mouth. The air around was a ruin of smoke. The static voices of the fallen man's comrades began to drift from the surrounding alleyways. I struggled up. My chest felt like a trampled wicker basket.
Morgan, on the Fields of Erathis. His greatest victory. The hordes of Rethari undone, the grasslands fed with their dark blood, their gods shattered into wreckage, their armor broken. The Fraterdom saved, all by the hand of Morgan.
