by Anthony Ryan
“Heave you fuckers!” Atalina yelled, pressing her own bulk against the door, the others all following suit. The huge barrier bowed under the weight of so many bodies, but once again failed to break.
“Move back!” Lizanne shouted, shouldering her way through the crowd. “I need room.”
“Hoped you were dead by now,” the Electress said, stepping back from the gate. Lizanne noted she had one hand firmly clamped onto Tinkerer’s arm. A prize not to be given up lightly. She also noted that Anatol still had his cross-bow. “She played her part,” he said, moving to the side and unslinging the cross-bow, blocky features hard with grief and a deep desire for retribution.
Seeing little point in discussion, Lizanne used Black to force the weapon up so that the bolt jabbed into the underside of Anatol’s chin. His slab-like features twitched as he glowered at her, a thin trickle of blood staining the steel tip of the cross-bow bolt. “I’m sorry about Melina,” Lizanne told him, hoping he could hear the sincerity in her voice. “But we have no time for this.”
From outside came a tumult of gun-shots and raised voices, indicating that the Brotherhood had finally arrived to launch their assault. Judging by the intensity of the cacophony, it appeared they were facing much stiffer resistance than expected.
We’re running out of time, she thought, releasing Anatol and retreating a few steps. Too big to shatter or burn, she decided, raising her gaze to the giant cross-bar above then reaching once more for Julesin’s vials. She drank all but a small drop of the remaining Black, gritting her teeth against the queasy growl it birthed in her gut, then focused her gaze on the cross-bar. The first controlled release of power raised the bar barely a foot before it slammed back into place. Lizanne focused on one end of the bar and unleashed all the Black at once, the huge slab of timber tilting to the left then slowly sliding through the massive iron brackets before falling away, inmates scurrying clear as it tumbled to earth, scattering dust and rubble.
For a moment no one moved, all staring at Lizanne or the unbarred gate as if unable to comprehend the simple and obvious fact of their liberation.
Lizanne drew her revolver and strode forward, pressing her shoulder to the gate. “Best if you tell your people to gather all the rifles they can,” she told the Electress. “There’ll be more fighting to do outside.”
CHAPTER 33
Sirus
“Dinish-kahr,” Sirus repeated the name aloud, enjoying the novelty of hearing his own voice after such a long period of silence. “And the literal meaning?”
The Spoiled warrior regarded him with a flat gaze, not exactly hostile, but hardly welcoming either. Even within this army of joined minds differences persisted, social and cultural loyalties lingering among the transformed, and none more so than the tribal contingent. Sirus could share their memories at will, as they could share his, save for those he had learned to hide deep within himself. Despite this connection the indigenous Arradsians remained largely an enigma. Without context or a more fundamental understanding of their language and customs, the memories he took from them were often little more than a mish-mash of image and sensation containing no clue as to their significance.
“I know you understand me,” Sirus reminded the warrior when he failed to respond verbally, instead conveying another enigmatic image from his memory, dark, capering figures silhouetted against a roaring fire. “Speak.” Sirus underlined the command with a mental reminder of his authority. It was only a brief image of the White in flight but it tended to have a dramatic effect on the tribals.
The warrior spoke Varsal in slow deliberate tones, as if worried he might mispronounce the words, even though they were near perfect, albeit coloured by a lower-class Morsvale accent.
“Flame-dancer.”
“This is your name?”
The warrior’s thoughts betrayed fearful confusion, indicating the question was beyond his understanding. “Sirus is my name.” Sirus patted his chest then pointed to the tribal. “Your name is Dinish-kahr? You are Flame-dancer?”
“Dinish-kahr.” A glimmer of understanding rose in the warrior’s mind as he mimicked Sirus’s gesture then pointed at a group of fellow tribals standing near by. They all wore similar clothing, garishly decorated armour of hardened leather Sirus knew to be typical of the plains tribes, another example of cultural distinctiveness that continued to resist the unifying effects of their transformation. “Dinish-kahr,” the warrior repeated as he pointed. “They are Flame-dancer.” He stopped pointing then patted his chest again. “I am Flame-dancer.”
Sirus glanced at the other tribals who all stood with heads tilted as they viewed the conversation, spined brows creasing in puzzlement. “You are all Flame-dancer,” he realised. “You do not have individual names.”
He sensed a new understanding take hold in the warrior’s mind at that moment, the fellow issuing a grunt and stepping back, his slitted eyes narrowing. You didn’t know there was such a thing as an individual name? Sirus enquired, slipping into non-verbal communication. Did you?
The warrior grunted again, his hand tightening on his war-club. His fellow tribals stirred in concert, hostility flaring in their minds.
The gift of knowledge is not always welcome, boy.
Sirus turned as Morradin strolled clear of the trees, a rifle slung over his shoulder as he dragged the corpse of a small deer behind him. Best leave the savages alone, lest you attract the ire of our White god. I think he prefers them as they are, don’t you?
Sirus withdrew his thoughts from the warrior with a pulse of gratitude. The tribal failed to reciprocate, Sirus feeling him striving to close his mind as he returned to his companions. The group of tribals cast uneasy glances at Sirus as they retreated into the jungle. Like most of the indigenous contingent they preferred to live in their own groups at a remove from the main camps.
Might be the last one of these buggers left on this rock, Morradin commented, dumping the deer carcass next to his camp-fire. It had been a familiar story with every island they took, an abundance of game quickly denuded by so many hungry mouths. Since the fall of the King’s Cradle they had begun a westward expansion of the White’s dominions, taking six large islands in quick succession. The loss of their Blood-blessed king seemed to have had a demoralising and divisive effect on the Islanders. Individual settlements still resisted fiercely, many with modern arms provided by the Ironship Protectorate. But the disciplined and well-organised opposition they had faced at the Cradle was gone. Without appropriate training and tactics to make the best use of their weapons they could only delay the inevitable. Consequently, the White’s army had soon made good its losses and begun to swell its ranks, despite the efforts of the Maritime Protectorate.
“Another bombardment this morning,” he told Morradin, speaking in Varsal as a deliberate jab at the marshal’s undiminished snobbery. “A sortie by three frigates against the encampments on the northern shore, all blood-burners. We lost nearly a hundred Spoiled until the Blues chased them off.”
“I’m aware,” Morradin replied in pointed Eutherian. “Nuisance raids only. If they were smart they’d cram every soldier in the Protectorate onto their fleet and send them to crush us. Instead they seek to moderate their expenses in the vain hope the Islanders will do the job for them. Typical corporate thinking.”
Sirus detected an undercurrent of unease in the marshal’s thoughts. Since his conversion Morradin had developed an ability to shield his mind from all but the most persistent intrusion, employing the mental discipline and rigidly organised mind of a career soldier to impressive effect. But even he couldn’t suppress every emotion, especially his fears which Sirus found to be surprisingly potent for such a celebrated hero of the empire. Latching onto the unease, Sirus tried to probe further, stripping away the surface feelings of undimmed hatred of his continued enslavement to catch a glimpse of the deeper sensations beneath. He managed to capture only one image before Morradin
clamped down on his thoughts with a snarl of rage.
“Who do you imagine you are, boy?” he grated, Sirus finding himself staring into the barrel of a revolver. Morradin’s voice quivered with anger but his arm, and the pistol, remained steady. The marshal’s emotions were raging now, ego-stoked fires of indignation burning so bright Sirus almost expected smoke to start pouring from his flared nostrils. “I have flogged men to death with my own hand for the merest flicker of insolence,” Morradin continued in a strangled whisper. “And yet you paw at me with your filthy, vulgarian mind and expect no punishment . . .”
That’s enough now, Mr. Marshal.
Sirus followed Morradin’s gaze as it flicked to the right, finding Katrya standing with a rifle at her shoulder, the barrel levelled at the marshal’s head. Sirus’s entire company of two hundred Spoiled were falling in on either side of her, all raising their rifles to aim at the same target. Sirus felt a murmur ripple through the camp as the sudden discord spread from mind to mind. For a moment there was a swirl of uncertainty as each individual calculated their allegiance. Some former soldiers retained an ingrained sense of loyalty towards their one-time commander, but it was a grudging, resentful attachment to servile custom many were quick to discount. Amongst the Morsvale townspeople there was no such sentiment, long-held grievances and detestation of the Imperial yoke bubbling to the fore with rising heat. The Islanders, of course, had no sympathy of any kind for the marshal whilst the tribals regarded the whole episode with a confused indifference. Despite the joining of thousands of minds, it took less than a second for the decision to be reached and the decision was unambiguous. The army had chosen a new general.
Morradin staggered as the collective will bore down, groaning in pain as he slumped to his knees, the pistol slipping from his grip.
Kill him, darling, Katrya told Sirus, her mind shining with pride and exultation. She came to his side, proffering her rifle. What use is he now, anyway?
A shadow fell on them then, large enough to blot the sun as great wings beat the air to raise dust into a dense fog. As one the army subsided to its knees, forced into subservience by a will far greater than their own, bodies and minds seized by a vise of all-consuming fear. To his surprise Sirus found he had been spared and so stood staring up at the hovering form of the White, rendered black against the midday sun. Although the White had somehow contrived to exclude him from the wave of terror that laid his comrades low, Sirus was not immune to fear. The intoxicating rush of alarm that had seized him during his confrontation with the Shaman King returned now to birth a tremble in his limbs, though he managed to keep his eyes raised, unwilling to succumb to any craven inclination in what he fully expected to be his last moments.
He could feel the White’s displeasure, poised like an executioner’s blade, but coloured once again by the familiar sense of frustration. The small creatures under its sway were once again proving troublesome and it didn’t understand why. Sirus grunted in disgust as the beast’s mind touched his own, rummaging through memory and sensation with clumsy violence, soon fixating on his various interactions with Morradin, each one soured by mutual antagonism. The White issued a faint hiss that might have been a sigh, or another expression of annoyance, before withdrawing its intrusion from Sirus’s mind. It paused for a moment and Sirus experienced a wave of confusion as it forced its thoughts into a comprehensible query, its attention now firmly fixed on Morradin’s cowering form.
Still . . . useful?
The temptation to provide a negative reply was strong. Morradin was not a man who improved upon prolonged acquaintance and if this situation had been in any way normal Sirus would have felt scant regret at the man’s death. But then, for all his faults, he and Morradin shared the same ignominy, and slaves could not revolt if they succumbed to disunity. He buried the rebellious notion by summoning a fresh wave of fear. Of all the various tricks he used to shield his mind, the Shaman’s final gift was proving the most effective.
Useful, he confirmed to the White. His mind is . . . unique. Feeling the White’s anger rise as it failed to grasp the unfamiliar concept Sirus went on quickly. He has strategies, knowledge that will bring victory.
The White hung in the air a moment longer, its wings maintaining a steady, majestic rhythm as its eyes glowed bright in the blank silhouette of its form. Victory, its voice repeated in Sirus’s mind, accompanying the word with an image, the same image Sirus had plucked from Morradin’s mind only moments before: an archipelago, the islands small clusters of green amid a vast blue sea, as if viewed from a great distance and considerable height. Sirus had never visited these islands but they were familiar to anyone who had ever viewed a map of the world. The Tyrell Islands, where the entire might of the Ironship Maritime Protectorate has gathered to oppose us.
Victory, the White repeated a final time before twisting its huge body about and flying away.
• • •
“Trying to break through the Protectorate fleet will be suicide.” Since his loss of status Morradin insisted on communicating verbally, and then only in Eutherian. He kept his thoughts under tight control, allowing only rare bursts of outright hatred to escape his shields, much of it directed at Sirus. “Those confounded repeating guns of theirs will cut us to pieces,” he went on. “And you can bet they’ve been busily manufacturing as many as possible since they lost their Arradsian holdings.”
In the days since his elevation to army commander Sirus had formed the host’s most astute minds into an ad hoc General Staff. His deduction that individuality was not overthrown by conversion had been proved correct. An unprejudiced search through the network of conjoined minds revealed some that shone like stars in a clouded sky. Consequently his staff was a surprisingly disparate group. A junior engineering professor from Morsvale Imperial College sat alongside an artillery sergeant who took evident satisfaction from his former general’s diminished circumstances. The flogging the man had received as a boy soldier was often at the forefront of his thoughts. Next to him sat a robust woman of middling years who had run a dock-side tavern for the previous two decades, amassing a considerable fortune in smuggling revenue in the process. At her side sat a scrawny Islander girl a little over fourteen years in age who had somehow nurtured a remarkable gift for mathematics despite an upbringing devoid of formal education. The final member of this group was the most surprising, a veteran tribal warrior of impressive stature who stood apart from the others with his gaze averted. His sparse garb revealed him to be a member of one of the jungle tribes, all sharing a name which Sirus approximated as meaning Forest Spear. Unlike his indigenous brethren this man exhibited a growing understanding of his new comrades, his thoughts displaying a remarkable facility for language and a keen-eyed perception. However, the fellow’s lifelong attachment to his tribal culture lingered like a dark cloud in his mind and each new insight was accompanied by a flare of guilt, as if enlightenment equated to blasphemy.
“The Blues can keep them bottled up in the harbour,” Sirus said, speaking in Eutherian as a sop to Morradin’s continued pique. It had been tempting to heap yet more humiliation on him, but he suspected it would prove counter-productive. He would need to succour all allies, however vile, if they were ever to escape this curious and terrible bondage. For now, however, the White’s desire for victory was a constant ache, dispelling all other considerations.
And the Reds can attack from the air, the artillery sergeant added, summoning a map of the islands from memory. Whilst our fleet lands the army on the beaches to the west.
“Our mighty fleet,” Morradin rasped, allowing his scorn to colour his thoughts, “is a rag-bag collection of merchant ships and barges. The Protectorate will be bound to have at least one flotilla patrolling the approaches to the islands. The Blues and Reds could see them off, to be sure, but the cost will be high and our White god is jealous of the lives of his fellow drakes. Even assuming we can break through their cordon, by the time it’s
done the full weight of the Protectorate High Seas Fleet will be bearing down on us, all bristling with repeating cannon.”
A new thought crept into their collective, a faint image slipping from the mind of Forest Spear with reluctant insistence: a trio of Green drakes creeping through tall grass towards a solitary Green feasting on the carcass of some unfortunate animal. Sirus watched as the trio moved closer to the Green whereupon they stood up as one, the scaly hides falling away to reveal tribal warriors holding bows. They loosed their arrows in unison, the shafts sinking into the head of the Green, which flailed about for a time, casting flames which set the long grass ablaze.
Forest Spear let the image fade before sharing a final thought: To kill a thing, become that thing.
Sirus replayed the tribal’s memory several times before turning to Morradin once more. “Where would you expect the Protectorate to launch their next raid?”
III
THE GATHERING CALL
FIERY DESTRUCTION ENGULFS SANORAH DOCKS
Many Ships Burned and Sunk at Anchor
Riots Erupt in the Dockside
Identity of “Blessed Demon” Revealed by Our Correspondent
Last night saw our great city of Sanorah subject to a level of destruction not seen since the eruption of civil discord following the collapse of the Blood Bubble some eighty-six years ago. Whilst loyal readers of the Intelligencer will be familiar with this paper’s tireless dedication to honest reporting, the exact series of events which resulted in last night’s calamity have yet to be established and some of the confirmed facts are certain to arouse incredulity. We must, therefore, appeal to our readers’ trust that they are being presented with the unalloyed truth.
