Eir joined him and surveyed the view. 'Rika's still the same,' she fretted.
It seemed Eir could not let up on how much her sister had changed. Randur kept telling her she was probably now safer under Artemisia's protection than they could manage for her themselves. It made his own life easier, anyway – this was what he wanted to say, but instead he dutifully listened to her complaints.
'Doesn't look good out there,' he observed, trying to change the subject.
'I'm still not sure how we're going to go about this.'
'I'm sure she'll have it all planned.'
'She has schemes for everything, I'd wager,' Eir said. 'I still don't trust her.'
Just then Artemisia strolled up to them, dressed in full battle gear.
'I think the city's seen better days,' Randur said, gesturing over the edge of the ship.
'It probably has. But it stands, which is an achievement. Your military is rather useful, it seems, and this bodes well.'
'So what's the plan?' Randur asked.
'We ourselves shall enter the city, while the Exmachina continues onwards. I plan to have it destroy the gateways through which this invasion originated. I guarantee it will disrupt the sentience of the enemy.'
'How?'
'They relay their inter-communications via the gateways and my own dimension.'
Relay their inter-communications? Randur didn't understand the terms, the definitions. 'Which means?'
'They can't talk to each other unless they are communicating through the interface. If it's disrupted, they won't understand each other. Temporarily, that means they will be on equal terms with your own military forces.'
'Can understand that, more or less,' Randur mumbled.
As the ship glided above the city, the devastation below was clear to see. The southern and eastern sections seemed largely unscathed. But as they progressed further most of the city was in ruins. At least the huge fortified Citadel was still standing, he noticed.
*
Plummeting, they fell from the skies about an hour after dawn, the cold wind buffeting and tugging them to extremes. Their descent seemed to last a lifetime, and it was Artemisia who touched down first, the others being more reluctant to let go of the ropes.
As Artemisia stared upwards, Randur followed her gaze.
For a moment the Exmachina seemed to adopt a new texture entirely, as if now made up of tiny squares, then it shuddered and shot off in a streak of light towards the north. The sky above was suddenly vacant, but Hanuman fluttered down like ticker tape, drifting and flapping earthwards before perching on what remained of the city's rooftops. A distant thunder was heard. Randur wondered if the ship had already done what Artemisia promised.
The warrior woman unsheathed both massive sabres from over her shoulder and strode into the warzone.
*
Randur had never been to Villiren. He was stunned: the city had been crippled in a way he could not comprehend. Buildings leaned at bizarre angles, many now a haphazard lattice of timbers. Some streets were utterly silent save for the sea breeze rattling through them. Human and rumel remains nestled at the bases of walls, feral dogs or cats picking at the decomposing flesh. Across the accumulating snow, the red spray of death was everywhere. To one side, a rumel woman lay face down and naked, her throat slashed, and a crossbow bolt through the back of her skull. Randur half-expected Eir to show distress at the sight, but she had become hardened of late, and remained impassive.
The small group followed Artemisia through this apocalyptic nightmare, stepping over tiny gutters filled with bloodstained debris and ice. Groups of men with machetes lingered everywhere, whether civilian soldiers or looters, he couldn't tell.
A cacophony of sounds and voices could be heard in the distance.
Eventually they came across a sector of the city packed with Imperial soldiers. A church spire had collapsed down on to its side, now covered in snow, and troops lined up either side of it. Some men at the rear turned towards Artemisia, and tried to stop her from advancing, but she easily brushed them aside. When she drew her sword Rika leapt in-between.
'Who the fuck are you lot?' one soldier demanded.
'I am Jamur Rika,' she replied.
He searched his mind for the correct protocol then gave up and stood back.
Artemisia pressed on through the military lines, which parted as if by her will; she was a good head taller than most of them.
Suddenly, a unit at the front were dispatched, peeling off then disappearing around a corner. In the distance, the sounds of combat continued.
They followed Artemisia as she went after them, preparing to launch herself into the fighting, and found line upon line of soldiers getting mown down as they pushed forward.
Randur could see the enemy for the first time, the Okun and red-skinned rumel, about seventy of them ranged ahead. Every one of them now turned in uniform motion to face Artemisia. There was a brief exchange between them in an alien language, after which there was a profound silence.
Then a deep explosion sounded in the distance, and everyone looked upwards as if seeking an explanation, And then, a few moments later, they felt a back-draught of warm air.
Suddenly the precise coordination of the enemy was visibly reduced to confusion. Their uniform thinking had been disrupted, and in frustration, red-skinned rumel in elaborate uniforms paraded up and down the lines, shouting orders, livid at this new state of play.
Artemisia smiled, the first time Randur had noticed a change of expression on her face.
And why is it suddenly getting warmer?
Artemisia darted forward into the thick of the enemy and soon she was engulfed in their mass. Soon he couldn't see much, merely heard grunts and metal connecting with metal, and now and then a piece of severed flesh would flip out from the scrum of bodies.
Eir glanced at him questioningly, but he merely shrugged. Rika stood aloof and watched with a neutral expression – as if she, too, had been infected with Artemisia's impassivity.
Finally, the entire street was littered with dismembered corpses. Artemisia came towards them, glistening with fresh blood. 'Now would be a good time for the Jamur troops to mount a surge,' she declared. 'How many of your soldiers are left?'
'Eight thousand, approximately.' An officer shuffled towards her, a sudden respect evident in his manner.
She loomed over him. 'How many did you begin with?'
'About sixty-five thousand in military service. Civilian casualties are as yet unaccounted for.'
'So be it,' she replied nonchalantly. 'You will find that your enemy has now been disabled significantly. Purge as many as you can, and I shall assist in finishing them off. Meanwhile, someone will take us to your commander.'
FIFTY-THREE
This was the first time in years there had been gang unification, of sorts. Beneath the official war had meanwhile run another. Turf brawls had become all-out combat to splice districts into enclaves of unofficial rule. Autonomous zones had been raided by others, new front lines coming and going by the hour, and it was only this morning that some kind of weird law had been laid down. Verbal treaties exchanged, confirmed with a sly handshake and a nod of the head. Things were made clear.
Malum went looking for the BanHe, but he was dead. Someone accused Malum of killing the creature – it wasn't true. They found what was left of Dannan's body in one of the underground strongholds. The room reeked. It seemed he had exploded from his throat and chest, and men gaped from behind their masks at the mess splattered on the surrounding walls. Someone pointed out that Dannan had died a few days ago, when the death count within the city reached a level where the scream-impotent BanHe had vomited bile for hours at a time, coughing and retching as the body count mounted up. He had crawled down here to try to avoid the escalating pain, and died alone.
Something had now happened that changed everything in the city.
Dark shapes in the sky, out of the sky, then a change in temperature. It was suggested that th
e enemy were suddenly weakened, that there were now few of them left, and that those remaining were unable to fight as efficiently as before. Malum didn't understand what these specific changes were all about, but he realized the final hunt was on.
Malum marched somewhere near the front of the mob. The Bloods had now aggregated with the other gangs again in a quest for all-out slaughter. They spread rapidly across Villiren like a virus. Somewhere on the way he'd succumbed to his primal instincts, and allowed his fangs to breach permanently. He had become utterly savage, and so had the others. Even battle-hardened soldiers looked upon their work with disgust.
Joining in behind the citizen militia, which in turn merged with several Dragoon regiments, more of a vicious mob than a disciplined army, they pushed westwards across the city, thousands of men and hundreds of women scooping up any kind of weapon out of the melting snow. Sunlight peeled back from behind clouds till the slick city glimmered.
Confident and violent, this mob-army came across small clusters of remaining Okun. Cornered in twos or threes, with nowhere to flee, the now seemingly confused invaders burst into the crowd of their assailants only to be hacked down with axe and mace and sword. Citizens took out their frustrations by ripping apart the shells and leaving little but pulp soon mashed into the snow. With confidence that the invasion was being reduced to nothing, and no more ships appearing on the horizon, the gangs took a manic pleasure in their work. They were in the grip of a death fetish.
Surprisingly, the red-skinned rumels were the more difficult to kill – they seemed more skilful in these embers of combat, more cunning in their methods of escape. Some even offered surrender, but no such bargaining was accepted. Tails were ripped off and stuffed into their screaming mouths; they were beaten into a bloody pulp or then stoned to death with rubble. Such savage methods appealed to Malum for some reason, and violence bred violence. Perhaps it was a confirmation of his own reason for existence.
This business continued for most of the day. What surprised Malum was that there was no definite end to this, no clear finale. Everything petered out. The city was too decimated for its people to understand that they had won this conflict. Though maybe 'won' wasn't quite the right word. It had more or less survived.
What next, though? The city needed rebuilding, reconstructing.
About an hour after the final killings, people began ambling around the city, cutting paths through the aftermath. Civilian soldiers sat on the remnants of shattered structures, utterly depleted. Even children began to emerge from hiding, gazing up at the red sun as if they'd never seen it before.
In his meanderings, Malum at one point came across a shattered mask lying on the ground. He took off his own and suddenly wondered why he always hid behind it. What benefit had it given to his life? And, now that the one woman who sustained his sense of normality with the world had walked away, what did he care for hiding any more?
Malum dropped his own mask in the rubble and walked away.
He was what he was, a vampyr, and he would now make himself king of the new city.
*
'But quit the Night Guard? That's your life… everything.' Beami lay on the bed next to him, her eyes aching with tiredness. 'It's what you do, it's who you are. You're a hero to the people, after you helped save so many lives.'
'This city isn't a place for heroes,' Lupus replied flatly.
All he had done, since they had returned, was stare at the ceiling. So it was over, and that was something. Yet it didn't really feel like an ending.
'There's so much death. That's all there is here. That's all this fucking world brings us, isn't it? You see these creatures invade our land, but that's what the Empire has been doing to other nations for centuries. We tread on them with no regard for their lives, or the way they already fit into the world. I've now seen it from the other side… I used to have a sense of pride in what I did, but there's no honour in any of this.' He paused, breathing deeply. 'I just want to step outside of it all. With you.'
'If you're sure,' Beami replied thoughtfully. 'You realize that if we ever come back it will be exactly the same moment in time as we leave?.'
'Skilled archers aren't all that useful in the construction business, and that's what this city needs now, builders and craftsmen or nurses. Afterwards, destroy your relic, if you want to. Or just hide it, whatever. I'll take my chances in that other place, and even if we can't communicate with anyone else, so be it. I don't bloody care. We've nothing here. Bring all your equipment, whatever you want, and let's make a new start – away from everything.'
*
Beami balanced the legs of the Heimr, twisting the ball at the top. It had been a while since she'd used it, and she felt a sudden inexplicable fear that she'd forgotten how it worked.
They had already gathered their belongings. Lupus didn't have that much, and he mocked Beami for bringing so much. Where was she going to put it all anyway? They had no home to look forward to, so how reckless were they being?
Holding each other tightly, his head on her shoulder, they stood in her desolate chamber in the Citadel. He was much recovered now, and he hugged her more gently than he'd ever done. Every touch was exploratory, as if he was deeply grateful to be holding anyone.
They heaped their possessions in a neat pile around the relic.
'This might be the most ridiculous decision we've ever made,' she observed.
'No, that was when I cleared off to the army. Now I'm leaving the army for you. Think about how we could have saved ourselves so much time and effort.'
She smiled. 'Well, now we've all the time we could want.'
One hand to the relic, one to him, and the Heimr began to pulse.
Time suddenly stretched o-u-t-
FIFTY-FOUR
An end.
But could you call it a victory if around a hundred thousand people had died? Was it really called winning when your own army was nearly destroyed?
Overwhelmed with exhaustion, Brynd had been sitting alone in the darkness of the obsidian chamber for hours. His muscles shivered as a spasm of pain flickered through his body, soon to be overridden by whatever trickery the cultists had developed. Sometimes a messenger would enter to update him, when Brynd hunched forward in his chair and stared at the floor as he listened to them. The few surviving garudas were still flying reconnaissance missions along the coast, but for now, it seemed Villiren held firm. Just then, Brug entered the room, and whispered that Haal had haemorrhaged in the hospital, and died.
'When will it stop?' Brynd sighed.
Brug left the room with a vacant expression, leaving Brynd alone again.
A breeze blew through the open window, disturbing his strategy papers and maps. He let them drift to the floor. No need for maps now. This city would have new streets, and new lines would need to be drawn. Lutto hadn't been seen for days – the cowardly portreeve had probably fled the city long ago. Reconstruction was Brynd's task for the time being.
Images of horror still burned into his mind's eye: severed flesh, pools of blood, the tide of aliens clamouring over their dead… He had heard that other soldiers were experiencing fits as the ghosts of terror haunted their skulls. Grown men reduced to tears. There was nothing in the Empire's military manuals to guide them on this point.
A lack of sleep had dulled his reactions, which was why it took him a while to notice the arrival of Jamur Rika, the former Empress. An immense figure beside her loomed over him, but if this was to be his fate, he was too exhausted to challenge it. A clamour of military indignation behind them confirmed that they had forced their way in.
Brynd did a mental roll-call of the muscles in his body, then sat up. He was more interested in the massive, weird-looking stranger beside the ex-Empress. What is it? He regarded Rika once again. 'Shouldn't you be dead?'
'Shouldn't you, after all that fighting?' Rika replied.
'Probably,' Brynd said. 'So how can I help you?' Looking from Rika to the presence beside her, he noticed a slender youn
g man with ridiculous hair shuffle in. He was accompanied by Rika's younger sister, who looked considerably hardened since the last time he had seen her. She smiled at him, and he mumbled a greeting.
'Who's this then?' A nod of the head indicated the odd figure. The creature must have been at least seven feet tall, wearing a uniform of some kind he'd never seen before. Its material seemed to be bolted together rather than stitched, and those blades she sported looked superbly crafted.
'I am Artemisia,' the giant figure replied.
And it was what came next that shocked him.
*
Context at last, or at least reasoning and understanding.
Artemisia explained that she was one of the Dawnir, though she didn't look much like Jurro. She boldly declared she was one of the god-race. So began a narration of thousands of years of history, and Brynd was not used to being made to feel so ignorant.
*
Randur and Eir had found a room together, nothing fancy, but at least containing a bed. They lay down alongside each other. Randur was still reeling from what he'd seen today. The world was a dark place, but he still had a life to lead, still wanted to get Eir away from all this.
'It's not yet over, is it?' he whispered.
She stirred beside him. Her fingers brushed his chin. 'I wanted to stay alongside my sister.'
'Do you still?' He paused. 'She's not even the same person.'
But by now Eir was asleep, and he didn't blame her.
*
Later still, seated around a table with Rika's entourage and the female god-thing, Brynd finally composed his thoughts. As commander of the military, he still had a job to do, and forces to command. Whether or not he followed Imperial law, he could see himself writing a history of his own. The weight of decisions burdened him – his mind had already been taken to breaking point because of the war, but now… now was a time for rebuilding.
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