The daemon that erupted from the fireball there expanded rapidly in flame, clawing, wreathed in black smoke, taking a vaguely human form. It rushed up the killing field, a moving furnace fire, pouring heat into the air, burning off the mist of the Grenthvar. Ruman soldiers fired upon it, adding their own feeble puffs to the infernal presence. Optios screamed, ‘Hold your fire, fellators! Hold your Ia-damned fire!’ The daemon lost cohesion in its rush toward the Ruman line, becoming amorphous, indistinct, like tallow in a firepit. Soon it was just black smoke. And then nothing except a memory and soot caught on wind.
‘That is not good,’ one of Fisk’s secretaries said.
Fisk turned to the boy, and said, ‘You are relieved of duty, sir. Go to the praetorium and make yourself useful to my wife and her maid.’
The boy’s face blanched and he began to quaver, until Fisk yelled, ‘Now!’
He ran.
‘Samantha! Donald! Sapientia!’ Fisk yelled. His voice was already hoarse, and it was just the first volley. The engineers approached, hastily. ‘What was that thing?’
‘An archdaemon, I’m assuming,’ Sapientia said. ‘Nothing we haven’t seen before. Except—’
‘Except what?’ Fisk demanded.
‘Its permanence is distressing,’ Samantha said. ‘You don’t see that very often. Except with Harbour Town. Or Rume, possibly.’
‘Aye,’ Black Donald agreed.
Up the gullet of the Grenthvar came a booming sound and then another star rose from the earth toward the sky, blinding.
‘We don’t have the time for mincing words. Is there a way to stop them?’ Fisk said, face illuminated and his gaze on the rising missile.
‘I spent last night warding stones and platforms on the battlefield,’ Sapientia said. ‘To protect the men from daemon-gripped. Those might hold against these munitions.’
‘The precium,’ Samantha said. ‘Now we know why there were no refugees.’
‘What?’ Fisk asked. He turned away from the rising star.
‘The blood price. The more blood, the stronger the daemon,’ she said. ‘With each missile, the Medierans are slaughtering people, sacrificing their blood. And the daemon summoned can remain on this plane longer.’
‘Ia-damn,’ Fisk said. ‘Ia-damn it all to Hell. Tell the men to take cover on the wards. Any flat space you can prepare wardings, from here to the Eldvatch, do so now. With all haste. Do you understand?’
‘But every warding takes time—’ Sapientia began.
‘Do it,’ Fisk said.
The Medieran shell fell to earth with a titanic impact only paces from the front Ruman embankment. The fireball cast burning earth and stone into the sky in a great eruption, falling in a hard rain on the soldiers there. Bits of slag and stone and brown earth rained on us where we stood. Down range, the daemon raged in flame and smoke. It lurched up and forward, over the embankment to meet screaming men who suddenly found themselves aflame. Sweeping what loosely resembled an arm forward, it cast flames like a serpent spewing venom. The legionnaires in its path fell out, some burning, others firing. As the daemon moved, it seemed to gain strength from the death it caused.
‘Yes,’ Samantha said, face furious at the turn of events. She moved away, half-crouching as if any moment a daemon could fall on her head, bellowing at her engineering assistants. Sapientia and Black Donald followed at a hustle.
Far down the slope, bounding figures appeared, loping into the far end of the killing fields. Behind them, shadows.
‘Cannons!’ Fisk bellowed. ‘Mark and fire!’
Percussive belches of brimstone erupted from the Ruman line of cannons – each one rolling backward from the recoil. Down range, the earth churned. Whistling sounds came from overhead – bullets cutting through the air. Men screamed. One of Fisk’s attendants pitched over – a boy by the name of Marius – his jaw gone. His hands frantically pawed at the ruin of his face.
‘Open fire!’ Fisk screamed. ‘All men, open fire!’
I raised my carbine, sighted down range, and fired.
Another thunderous crackle of explosions sounded – and slag and earth began to sizzle and cast up ejecta as if the valley was a skillet and the earth, oil. The sound of carbine-fire – ours or theirs, I could not tell – filled all perception, reeking of Hellfire and dismay and sounding like bacon crackling. I caught a glance of Sumner and two of his men huddled around Fisk, tugging at him to take cover.
Two more arcing stars lit up the morning. In their light, the Medieran host stood revealed. They carpeted the land at the opening of the Grenthvar. At their head, they had mechanised wagons with great iron-clad shields and behind them came Medieran soldiers, hiding in the lee. I fired, worked the carbine’s action, fired again.
The noise was deafening, the light shifting with the falling Medieran shells as if the earth had been pitched up on end. The shock of the explosion ripped at my clothes and hair, blasting me half-way down the slag slope I’d taken cover behind. The force of the blow saved me. The heat grew unbearable. I heard a high-pitched whine – like a gear in an infernal machine about to fail – and the sound ripped and distressed the air. I scrambled back and down the slag heap, away as the daemon broached its peak above me.
I found my feet.
Small arms fire erupted all around, the earth pitched up to meet me as I fled backward. The daemon screeched and flowed toward me.
And then I was moving; moving not of my own volition, but caught up in some wild force I could not make sense of. I saw a blur of white and the earth passing below. For an instant, from on high, my eye framed the whole of the battlefield. Thousands of Medierans rushing onto the killing floor from the shelter of their iron-clad shields, like grey water being poured from a flawed bucket. Flashes of light from Hellfire, billows of smoke from muzzles. Two massive daemons casting about with fire and fury, one with wings, one tentacled and foreign. Daemon-gripped men biting and clawing at legionnaires and dvergar. Cannons belching flame. A blooming of cannon-fire impacts. Bodies tossed into the air like flotsam on the surf.
All things slowed (or maybe I was caught up in the glamour of the vaettir’s preternatural speed) and I looked up into Ellva’s face like a babe held in the arms of his mother as we hung suspended in the air. Her hair caught in a clotted tangle whipped by wind. Her skin shining, flawless and white. No vein traced its way there, no pore to vent sweat and shed heat. She was almost filled with light, a pure thing, untainted by the corrupt desires of the low, mankind and dvergar alike.
The stretchers – Oh why did we call them that? Why would we hang that name upon them? – were just a stepping stone on the way to becoming this pure thing, this elemental force.
With world enough, and time, even Agrippina would have achieved this alabaster, permanent state. Incorruptible.
It was then I apprehended the vaettir. Not indigenes, not low things, but gods, placed here on earth as seeds to grow and war against the infernal. Maybe. As stewards of the field, and fern, and fen. Not for human or dvergar’s sake. Not for civilisation. But for continuity. For the earth.
Vaettir are the old gods. The numen.
‘You are needed,’ she said, in dvergar.
‘Matve,’ was all I could respond. The weight of our speed pressed me to her bosom. I felt as though I was in some powerful vice.
‘A moment,’ Ellva said.
We touched the earth far from the front line, among the daemon-gripped. Her spear flashed out, once, twice, more times than I could see and with each movement, an infernal died. She moved faster than any horse could run, any bird could fly – I had the distinct sensation that I was falling, even as we rose.
Down range she sped, holding me to her breast. Slaying all within reach, her spear moving faster than thought could travel. Her flesh was a decay running through a garden, her hands death; blood blossomed from her and spattered on my lips. It felt as a benediction. The sound of tearing flesh and gunfire, monumental. Hellfire rounds found her, pierced her incorruptible flesh,
pulling a comet’s tail of gore from that pure integument. Those traceries were mirrored by her: she was a comet streaking through the ranks of Medierans, pulling her tail of destruction and death with her. But the flesh closed behind, her skin became whole once more, even as we moved and her spear took Medieran life.
It was as if some immortal trawler fished the seas of men, leaving blood in its wake.
And then we were at the Pactum Wall and I was falling now, in truth, spilling out on the ground.
Fisk was there, and Sumner. Sapientia pulling a wounded Samantha away from the front.
‘Black Donald?’ Fisk asked, his voice full of pain.
Sapientia shook her head.
Lina said, ‘Burned by daemonfire. Along with Ringold. And many others.’
Samantha was in a bad way – blood darkened her shirt and trousers, thick and wet. She shook with tremors and was as white as parchment. My heart fell as I looked at her. There was no coming back from that.
Screaming and smoke and the jumbled sensory impressions of war. More whistling bullets cut through the air. Junior legates and optios rallied fleeing legionnaires. Desperate pleas and curses peppered the air of the valley. The smoke of Hellfire and stench of brimstone hung over it all. A munitions wagon erupted with a sound that knocked grown men and dvergar alike to the ground. My mouth was full of dirt, and slag, and blood, and I could smell nothing but brimstone.
We were routed. And even still, white stars rose into the sky, making shadows shift, casting all notion of time and place into doubt.
More daemons. More shells falling.
‘Fall back!’ Fisk screamed. He bled from multiple ejecta cuts and his arm was charred where daemonfire had scorched him. Under his arm, he clutched the box holding the daemon hand.
We ran, toward camp. The sounds of dying reached my ears. I moved to help Sapientia and Samantha groaned as I slipped under her arm. Gynth bounded into view, bearing a wounded soldier.
Illva and Ellva gave Gynth a considered look, and sprang away, high into the air, and Gynth followed. He’d found a gladius to wield, and he was red from sword-tip to crown, a bloody spectre moving through the remaining trees, a crimson blur upon the face of the earth. Illva had his great sword drawn, terrible to behold. They moved downhill, faster than the eye could follow, like angels shorn of wings, wrathful and proud. Cries and screams of pain, moans of despair met their approach. In their wake, silence.
We rallied together as a group, moving as fast as possible. Camp was a shambles, all personnel in absolute disarray. Legionnaires fired at random. Tents blazed into flame. The wild whistle of bullets whipped the air. At the praetorium tent, Livia appeared, shotgun in one hand, Fiscelion in the other. ‘You’re hurt!’ she said to Fisk.
‘We’ll all be hurt if we don’t flee, right now,’ he said.
‘To the Pactum Wall,’ I said. A crackle of Hellfire punctuated my words. I felt a tug at my shirt and then I was bleeding. Bright pain in the meat of my arm.
Legionnaires moved around us, firing. Lupina emerged from the praetorium, brandishing a naked cleaver in one fist and a bundle half as big as herself in the other.
‘The wall!’ I said. ‘Lina will guide us. She’s waiting!’
It was madness. My breath caught in my chest and I felt dizzy and centred all at once. I could not think, I could not reason. But running – fleeing – made sense. It was all I wanted to do. With all my soul.
There are those who age and value their own life less, as if by dint of having so much of it, the remainder is not important. But I am old and find my remaining time precious. I would not give it up easily.
We moved as a group. It was slow, and the legions around us kept up small arms fire, scenting the air with brimstone, praying loud to Mithras. At times, Fisk would give frustrated grunts, either from pain or the loss of men, I could not tell. Livia kept him moving.
‘Come, we can make it,’ Livia said. Her voice was like music upon my ears. Something I could focus on. ‘Once we get to the wall, then beyond. Up. They will not catch us.’
At the wall, Neruda stood weeping over the body of Praeverta, who’d been charred almost beyond recognition. Only her silver hair and defiance were still recognisable.
‘Come,’ I said, pulling him away. ‘All is lost.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I cannot leave her like this.’
‘You must,’ I said. ‘Your people need you. They will destroy the mines and flee into the mountains. You must go with them.’
Winfried appeared from the smoke, coughing. She was bloodied and her arm, in the sling, seemed to have been reinjured. But there was a fierce determination in her face, and her jaw was set at a dangerous and stubborn angle.
Despite the cough and her wounds, she came forward quickly and went to her knees by Neruda and Praeverta. To the west, a chatter of Hellfire sounded and the air filled again with whistling projectiles. Sounds of wails from dying men and women threaded the smoke-filled air. The booms of guns echoed all around.
‘Come, Neruda,’ Winfried said. ‘We must pull down the mine entrances and flee into the mountains.’ She gripped his arm. ‘We need you.’
‘We must honour Praeverta,’ he said. A tremor ran through his hands and shook his shoulders. ‘Bring her body. We can’t leave her here.’
‘There is no time and there are living to attend to!’ Winfried rose, bracing herself. ‘The people of the Breadbasket gather at the mines for safety! Come!’
He tried to linger, but in the end, she forced him, pulling him upright. There was a fine mist, like oil, falling all around them. Blood. He looked at Winfried with a stricken expression, mouth open, as if trying to catch his breath. As he turned, I could see the remains of his neck, where some errant piece of shrapnel had clipped him. He fell.
A forlorn sound came from Winfried, a sharp inhalation followed by a sob. She looked around to us, her bloodied gaze passing as though she did not recognise us.
‘My place is here,’ she said. ‘Never would I have thought my path would have led me to this place.’
Another volley of Hellfire, closer now. Fisk, Sumner, and Livia returned fire.
Winfried, in a crouch, moved away, back to the Pactum Wall. ‘I must go! I have other burdens now. Go!’ she cried.
She was gone, disappeared into the smoke of the burning Grenthvar.
On a spray of shoal grass, as infernal flames and Medieran soldiers came on, we left Neruda’s and Praeverta’s bodies. There was pursuit now. Another arcing white light in the sky. Only a few score feet away, a copse of gambel shivered in a quickly expanding fireball, casting jagged pieces of wood and branch through that space with remarkable speed and sucking all the air out. It was as if the soil and forest had been blown from the ground by an angry earth. Black smoke poured from the crater, coming in acrid billows, and within, a smothered light, choked from the world by the vapours it spewed forth. A daemon.
‘Run!’ Sumner called. ‘Flee!’
Our whole party ran, upslope, toward where the Pactum Wall met the fall line of the Eldvatch ascent. My breath came in hitches, my legs burned with the exertion. Samantha grew heavier with each step. Sapientia grunted and cursed with every footfall. Pausing I turned back, looking downslope.
The fire and smoke was a living thing. Even the Medieran soldiers, now visible near its edges and firing heavily, coughed and moved away from it, for their own safety’s sake. Within the smoke there were flashes of white – I might have thought it some sort of phantasm if I had not known of Illva and Ellva. What damage they could do against such infernal creatures, I did not know and could not say, other than distract it, maybe. Stop its forward momentum. But it incandesced, churning, boiling with anger. Within the smoke, a glowing movement, shifting shadows. Indescribable rage.
The daemon.
I found the strength to keep on, pulling Samantha forward.
At the wall, where the slopes of the Eldvatch began to soar upwards, Lina stood, beckoning frantically. It was still heavily
wooded here, far from the smelt and the rest of the industrial parts of the Grenthvar, and the trees seemed to seethe with anger. A heavy wind bent their backs and whipped their tall, proud heads.
‘Come on, hurry!’ she cried. A barrage of gunfire sounded. Medieran soldiers bellowed in their round, tripping language. Bark flew as bullets pierced trees.
Reaching her, she led us quickly over the Pactum Wall, down a short declivity where a spring made every footfall squelch and suck at our boots, and then up a rise. The chatter and report of Hellfire fell away, momentarily. We stopped, nestled in trees and hidden by great snaggled rocks, twisted gambel and pine roots eating into the stones.
‘Where do we go now? Some secondary mine entrance?’ I said, breathing heavily, when we were close enough to speak.
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The men from Breadbasket will be pulling down the pillars to the main entry now, if they haven’t already. And all the others. It will be a long time before Mediera gets its fucking hands on that silver.’
As if in answer to her words, a crack and rumble came, shivering the earth, cutting through the din of war. To the south, only a few hundred feet away, a bloom of white smoke poured from the mountainside, powdered stone filling the air.
‘And there it is. More will follow.’ She surveyed the valley. We stood at the eastern end of it, where the Grenthvar River emanated from the springs of the mountain. The only way to go now was up. ‘We go up there, below the treeline, and south,’ she said. ‘Over that ridge, yonder.’ She pointed at the southern arm of the Grenthvar valley, on the far side of the village. I had never been there, though I knew legionnaires patrolled and kept watch regularly. ‘Follow me, stay low, don’t draw any attention to us, and we’ll make it out.’
She trotted off, following a path it seemed only she could see, swiftly passing over lichen-covered rock and tree root. Over her shoulder, she called, ‘Step where I step and you’ll be fine.’
We followed. At first it was merely hard, clambering over lichen-drenched rocks and under deadfall. Then it became excruciating. The blood-rush of gunfire and battle gave over to exhaustion. Fisk was sorely burned, and the Medierans (or possibly even one of the fleeing Ruman soldiers) had perforated my arm with an errant shot. Just now the pain of it began to blossom. It had not stopped bleeding. And the scent of Hellfire still followed us. Bullets flicked through the forest growth, snicking through bough and branch, disconnected from any boom of gunfire.
Infernal Machines Page 28
