by Anthony Ryan
Sirus used a spy-glass to track the progress of the ships they had sent into the approaches. There were twelve in all, two for each of the forts. The force had been split into pairs consisting of a freighter and a warship. Catheline had been reluctant to commit their few military vessels to a mission of this nature but the combined faith of Morradin and Sirus convinced her to grant assent, albeit with a dark warning, “Lose me this battle and I won’t punish you,” she said. “He will.”
Sirus could sense the hungry anticipation of the Spoiled on the ships. They had all been selected for their enjoyment of their new lives and unreasoning loyalty to the White. Many had barely been sane before their conversion and some driven mad by the horrors witnessed since, revelling in slaughter and destruction with a sadistic glee that was painful to share. The need to use such fanatical soldiers was easily explained to Catheline, Sirus managing to conceal his gratification at removing so many maddened souls from the army.
Hearing the echoing boom of cannon, Sirus shifted the spy-glass to one of the forts, seeing several horizontal plumes of smoke erupting from its gun-ports. He tracked the fall of shot, watching the shells raise waterspouts in front of their ships but falling far too short to score any hits.
“Firing too soon,” Morradin grunted with a note of satisfaction. “Nervous. All to the good. The Corvantine commander at Aben Mael made a similar error, wasting much of his ammunition before Racksmith’s stratagem began to play out.”
The ships maintained formation as they drew closer to the forts, the warships limiting their speed to enable the freighters to keep up. They began to return fire as soon as the forts came within range, firing smoke shells rather than explosives. Soon each of the island forts was wreathed in a grey blanket of smoke, but not before their gunners had managed to take a toll on the attackers. One of the warships, the Null and Void, took a direct hit to the bridge, which killed most of the Spoiled in the upper works. This would have been critical damage for a ship with a human crew but not the Null and Void, which continued to steam a true course towards its objective. Guided by the look-outs in the Malign Influence’s crow’s nest, the Spoiled belowdecks steered the tiller by hand, whilst the undaunted gunners on the upper decks kept up a steady barrage.
Two hundred yards east of the Null and Void, the Fatal Indulgence was less fortunate. An expertly aimed Corvantine salvo wrecked her forward gun and port paddle, sending her into an untidy spin. Sirus ordered the starboard paddle halted and set the crew rushing to conduct rapid repairs. But such a conspicuously maimed target soon drew fire from every fort in range and a concentrated barrage tore her apart minutes later.
“Couldn’t be helped,” Morradin sniffed. “Did her job anyway, the freighter’s almost there.”
Sirus felt the marshal’s anticipation swell as the freighter steamed through the smoking debris left by the demise of her escort, making straight for the fort beyond. Shells struck her repeatedly as she swept forward, laying waste to her upper deck and holing her hull in several places, but scoring only one hit below the water-line. Despite the sudden inrush of water, the freighter possessed enough momentum to bring her crashing into the island fort’s rocky shore-line. She settled as her lower decks flooded, shuddering like a great dying monster as the fort’s cannon fired into her at point-blank range.
“I see little point in any delay, do you?” Morradin said.
Sirus nodded and sent a mental command to the five Spoiled in the freighter’s hold, who immediately set about lighting the fuses connected to the massed barrels of powder. The arsenals at Feros, Melkorin and Sairvek had yielded an impressive tonnage of explosive but comparatively few cannon with which to fire it. Morradin’s greatly expanded version of the plan so famously used by Commodore Racksmith provided a fine opportunity to use this surplus. Fully four-fifths of their entire powder stocks had been crammed onto the freighters. The fuses were set for thirty seconds, giving the Spoiled allotted the task of lighting them an opportunity to escape. Even when dealing with deluded monsters such as these the human instinct against suicide could be a barrier to obedience so Sirus was careful to allow them the hope of survival, however illusory.
In the event not a single Spoiled escaped the freighter before it exploded, Sirus feeling their confused, oddly gleeful minds blink out as the ship disappeared in a massive ball of fire. The shock wave reached them before the sound, Catheline letting out an exultant laugh as she staggered in the gale of displaced air. The roar of the blast came next, loud enough to pain the ears sufficiently for Catheline’s laughter to transform into a painful wince.
The fire-ball ascended to at least two hundred feet, dissipating into a thick column of black smoke that towered over the island. Debris fell in a thick rain that made the surrounding water roil until the smoke started to clear and reveal the damage. The freighter had disintegrated completely and for a brief second Sirus concluded the fort had somehow survived the blast, its south-facing wall seeming to be mostly intact. Then he saw the rubble covering the west side of the island and registered the absence of the structure’s domed roof. Flames rose from within the blackened ruin and soon there came the crump of exploding powder as they reached the fort’s magazine.
“Satisfactory,” Morradin concluded, peering through his spy-glass at the carnage. “Though I believe Racksmith managed to destroy Aben Mael completely. Of course, he had only one to contend with.” He shifted his spy-glass to the right where a pair of ships were bearing down on another fort. “I do believe I am about to outdo him by a factor of five.”
* * *
• • •
“Twenty-five thousand, eight hundred and ninety-six Spoiled confirmed dead,” Veilmist reported with her customary precision. “Six thousand one hundred and thirty-two wounded, of whom approximately half are expected to survive.”
“Approximately?” Catheline asked her, one eyebrow arched in mock surprise.
“It’s impossible to provide an accurate figure for recovery rates . . .” Veilmist trailed off into puzzled silence as Catheline laughed and pressed a kiss to her scaled forehead.
“Don’t worry, my dear,” she said. “Approximately will do perfectly well.”
From the centre of the square came a familiar scream, rich in terror but mercifully brief. Sirus glanced over to see the juvenile Whites squabbling over the remains of a captured Blood-blessed, another Cadre agent who proved a stark contrast to the heroic woman at Sairvek. The portly fellow had been dragged from an attic hideaway during the post-conquest search and taken to the White for what had become a grim ritual. The administrative district of Subarisk was dominated by a broad plaza of fountains and statues commemorating various Imperial heroes, the largest of which was a recently completed marble rendition of Emperor Caranis himself. It lay in several pieces at the base of the tall column rising from the centre of the square, having been toppled by the White, which had chosen to perch its massive form in the emperor’s place.
The Blood Cadre agent begged and pleaded as he was dragged through the surrounding ranks of Spoiled and captives. When confronted with the White he collapsed, gibbering on the paving-slabs and soiling himself. Judging by the satisfaction leaking from the minds of recently converted captives Sirus concluded this man had been something of a terror in the city, both before and after the revolution. His grisly and frenzied demise was therefore greeted with much less horror and dismay than might otherwise have been expected.
Beyond the squabbling juvenile Whites a continual line of captives were being paraded in front of the Blue crystal. The conversion wouldn’t take long, just a moment or two and the terrified prisoner would fall into a dead faint and be carried away, their features already showing the deformities to come. The Blue crystal would occasionally flicker, its light becoming dim whereupon the White would lean down from its perch to bathe it in an intense stream of fire.
Energy, Sirus had concluded when first witnessing this spectacle b
ack in Morsvale. It needs energy to work, like any machine.
“A stiff price to pay for victory, Marshal,” he heard Catheline say, turning back to see Morradin meeting her critical gaze with an expression that wasn’t exactly defiant, but neither was it contrite.
“Our casualties were only marginally greater than the estimate,” he replied. “And the capture rate means our losses will be made good within the day.”
Catheline turned a questioning glance to Veilmist, who nodded. “We currently have over eighty thousand captives,” the Island girl said. “Given the success of our sweeps in the outlying districts and surrounding country-side the army should exceed two hundred thousand within six days.”
“Enough to take Varestia, wouldn’t you say, General?” Catheline enquired of Sirus.
“Given the ships we captured, yes,” he replied. “We were fortunate the city authorities had forbidden the harbour doors to be opened since the fall of Corvus.”
The harbour had yielded sixty-three ships in all, together with three Imperial warships, all captured during the massed rush of Spoiled following the destruction of the island forts. True to Morradin’s prediction the sight of so much destruction had unnerved the defenders. When thousands of Spoiled came streaming up the ropes from the barges and ships clustered along the length of the wall, resistance had been patchy. Some Imperial units fought with dogged determination whilst others fled almost immediately. Securing the wall took an hour of hard fighting by which time the waters both within and without the harbour were stained red and littered with bobbing corpses.
Resistance grew fiercer once they had swept over the docks and into the town itself. The garrison commander here was evidently a more able officer than his counterpart in Sairvek. Having correctly deduced that efforts to hold the harbour wall would prove fruitless, he drew his remaining forces back into a series of defensive lines, barricading interlocking streets and making good use of his remaining cannon to blast apart the repeated assaults Morradin launched against them. Sirus felt the man must have known the city would fall and the desperate struggle put up by his soldiers was intended to buy time for the residents to flee. Consequently, he had advised Catheline to forbid further assaults on the barricades, allowing the defenders the illusion of success. Thousands of people fled into the hills to the north, only to be confronted by packs of Greens and Reds who herded them back into the suburbs. Meanwhile Morradin led ten thousand Spoiled in a flanking move through the city’s outskirts, cutting the defending soldiers off from the refugees. It took another two days of vicious fighting to subdue organised resistance, and even now occasional reports would come in of Spoiled patrols being ambushed in the more constricted streets. Despite this the city effectively now belonged to the White.
“How long before we can strike south?” Catheline asked Sirus. “He wishes this matter resolved.”
“We’ll need at least two weeks to prepare the ships,” he replied. “The Varestians will prove fearsome opponents at sea and the more arms and armour we can add to our own vessels the better. Luckily, this port has excellent facilities and a skilled work-force to draw upon.”
“Very good. And where do we strike first?”
Sirus exchanged a barely perceptible glance with Morradin. They had expected this question and knew the answer would be a key factor in any design aimed at breaking the White’s control. “The Seven Walls,” he said, allowing a modicum of heightened concern to colour his thoughts. She would expect some degree of uncertainty. “The Varestian Ruling Council resides there, and it’s the most important port in the region. Varestian resistance will be most likely to concentrate there and around the neighbouring Iskamir Island, meaning we will be able to destroy the bulk of their forces in the first engagement.”
“Destroying their forces is a secondary concern,” she said. “Finding and killing Lizanne Lethridge is our priority, along with anyone she has been in close contact with. Gear all your efforts towards that end.”
Sirus and the other Spoiled present replied with a thought-pulse of subservient agreement, which brought a smile to her lips. “See to your fleet, General,” she told Sirus, moving closer to brush his hand with hers before she strode off towards the White. “I shall expect you for dinner tonight.”
* * *
• • •
“You take too many risks for my liking,” she told him, tracing a finger along the recently healed scar on his cheek. He had earned it leading a charge atop the harbour wall. It was the legacy of a final bayonet thrust from a wounded Corvantine regular, the needle-pointed triangular blade having come within a fraction of piercing Sirus’s eye and skewering his brain. Forest Spear pushed him aside at the last instant, saving his life and dispatching the doughty regular with a blow from his war-club.
“A commander unwilling to share the risks of his soldiers will lose their respect,” he replied. “Even in this army.”
This was true, at least to a certain extent. He sensed a definite warm regard for him amongst many of the other Spoiled, especially amongst the Islanders and, for reasons he hadn’t been able to divine, the Arradsian tribals. When the time came to move against the White he suspected such a depth of feeling might be useful.
“Morradin takes risks too,” Catheline pointed out, her hand broadening into a caress. “And they all hate him.”
They were in the sitting-room on the upper floor of the palatial mansion she had taken over. It had belonged to the city’s richest merchant family, all now vanished into the ranks of the Spoiled or slaughtered as being of no use. They ate dinner in a capacious, echoing ball-room of gleaming chandeliers and tall paintings. Throughout the meal Catheline allowed him to share a taste of her thoughts and he was surprised at the deep well of contempt she held for her surroundings. Frippery, luxury, empty art for empty souls. Just like those managerial bastards.
There was a discomfiting heat to these thoughts, a genuine hatred simmering beneath the contempt. Sirus was tempted to ask her about this, seek answers to the mystery of why she so detested her own class, but suspected that such enquiry might well be pointless. It was possible there were no reasons, none that made any rational sense given that she was an essentially irrational soul. He maintained a pall of fear to conceal all this contemplation of her nature, something she seemed to enjoy as she led him from the ball-room to her sitting-room.
“You wonder what I want of you,” she said, baring her elongated canines in a smile, hand smoothing over his scaled face. Sinking down next to him on the couch, she leaned close, letting her perfume assail him with all its terrible allure. “What does any woman want of a man she finds so interesting?”
“I am not a man,” Sirus pointed out. “Even before I . . . became this, most would have called me just a boy . . .”
“Before doesn’t matter.” She leaned closer still, Sirus feeling her breath flutter over his remade skin, the heat of it mingling with the effects of her scent to produce something intoxicating. He turned his face to hers so that their lips almost touched. “Now,” she breathed, “is all that matters . . .”
They both let out a pained gasp as a new thought invaded their minds, Sirus forced to his knees by the pain of it. Punishment? he thought, wondering if the White might harbour some dislike for such intimacy between its servants. But then he recognised the dark, alien stain of Katarias’s thoughts and realised it was a shared memory.
Another aerostat, he thought, seeing the elongated oval shape slipping through a darkened sky. It grew in size as Katarias soared towards it, the beast’s excited hunger swelling at the sight of the figure leaning out of the gondola beneath the bulbous air-bag. Drake eyesight was far keener than any human’s or Spoiled’s and, despite the goggles the woman wore, Katarias recognised her instantly.
Lizanne Lethridge! Catheline exulted, Sirus finding himself choking down a retch at the depth of her blood-lust. KILL HER!
CHAPTER 26
Lizanne
Hyran, it transpired, had company when Lizanne slipped into his mindscape, finding it merged with another. At the mid-point of the spice-shop the cabinets and cases sublimed into a stretch of rocky shore-line, dotted with many pools. She could see him wandering a shingle beach close by, a smaller and more slender figure at his side. Lizanne moved to one of the rock-pools, seeing a swirl of colours in the water, vague shapes forming and breaking apart in what one of her tutors had called “the dance of memory.”
Miss Blood?
Lizanne turned to see Hyran standing close by. At his side was a young woman Lizanne had last seen killing Corvantine Imperial troops at the Sanctum. It was the young woman who had addressed her, this being her mindscape.
Jelna, Lizanne greeted her. Good to see you, and please pardon the interruption.
I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t turn up ten minutes ago, Jelna replied, provoking a blossom of embarrassment from Hyran. I’m guessing you’re here for him, not me, she added.
I am.
Jelna nodded, Lizanne seeing the colour bleach from the surrounding mindscape as she prepared to leave the trance. They still talk about you, she said. Some of us have been arguing for a statue in your honour.
Then please stop.
Jelna let out a pulse of warm amusement before her mindscape vanished completely, leaving her alone with Hyran in the spice-shop. When I met her in Corvus, she was of a . . . fiercer disposition, Lizanne recalled.
She’s still fierce enough, he responded. When the need arises. Do your respective organisations approve? One of the Co-respondent Brotherhood dallying with a member of Republic First.
It has become clear to many of us that holding fast to old allegiances is not in the best interests of our new republic.
