Twig

by wildbow

  “I’m flinching a bit,” I said. “I got shot a little. I’m afraid for your well being. For Jamie’s. I don’t know if that makes me easier to understand.”

  She didn’t have an immediate answer for me.

  “Part of the reason I came back. I was worried,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Jamie said. “It’s frustrating, being stuck like this, waiting for you. Can’t go far, can’t do much. But I understand it’s… you.”

  “It’s me,” I said. “Sorry.”

  The smoke was clearing now. The sources of the smoke had dried up and been washed away, and while the second giant dying had made for a renewed source of the stuff, it was no longer enough to stall the enemy lines.

  It was a weakness on the part of the Crown. That they put forth these great creations, and failed to account for what happened when one died.

  But as weaknesses went, it was a small one. Stalled, key pieces knocked down, their front ranks thrown into disarray and mauled by the initial attack and the disorganization I’d helped promote, they were still a rank and file. The smoke rolled past some of their rows and columns of men, but I could make out the general shape of them. Two or three companies, extending down the street. Three or four hundred men, women, and stitched.

  That didn’t count the others, the ones who had entered buildings to clear them of rebels and secure the flanks. It didn’t count the innumerable men that had been taken out of action in the rolling explosions and detonating ammunition carts, from my methane stitched.

  “How many of them are there?” I asked. “Three, four hundred, then another three or four—”

  “Six hundred, coming from the other side,” Jamie said. “Not counting the one or two regiments waiting out in the wings. Depends if the Infante wanted to keep one closer to home in case this was all a ploy to distract, or if he really wanted to get Mauer.”

  “How many in a regiment?”

  “Close to a thousand, mixed number of soldier and stitched.”

  I looked at the scene, and saw how the soldiers were gathering together. Stitched pushed mobile forms of cover, covered wagons with raised walls provided shelter for the commanding officers.

  It was as if no damage had been done, no losses sustained. The army marched on, over the bodies, and into the square, diverting fifty or more people to break into each building the greater army moved past, troops sweeping through.

  An allegory for the Crown, for the seeming immunity of it. They could be made to bleed, but the consequences… so rarely felt. Kill fifty or a hundred men, and another fifty or a hundred advanced to take their place. Deal with one set of nobles, and the Crown sent a smattering of young nobles, the Infante, and the Infante’s favored two young nobles overseas to handle matters.

  “Mauer lost,” I said.

  “As grim as it might look in the here and now, Mauer does have others in other neighborhoods and blocks. Flanking, attacking the Crown’s battalions in the rear. They have weapons, and some will be chemical. There are people in the buildings with cannons and grapeshot,” Jamie said.

  I looked at it all. There were a thousand experiments and rebels in the square. Mauer was in the midst of it all, organizing them. His soldiers and lieutenants were managing things in much the same way the stitched overseer had been commanding the stitched. Keeping people pointed in the right direction.

  “It’s not as one sided as you’re saying,” Jamie said.

  “He lost,” I said, again, “Back when he faced down Augustus. Augustus challenged him to a contest, and he failed to place the bullet. Lieutenants saw that, and I think it might have affected Mauer too.”

  Jamie and Shirley were quiet.

  The Academy forces I’d been interfering with were starting to move again. We double checked we had sufficient cover along the sides of the street, and ducked away, leading Shirley away and around a corner.

  “Maybe,” Jamie said. A single word, as the result of a solid minute of consideration about what I’d said.

  “He’ll fight, but he fights because he has no other choice. This doesn’t end well, Jamie.”

  “There’s other cards to play,” Jamie said.

  But his hand moved in a gesture, negating part of what he said.

  Brave words for Shirley, but he was uncertain, his feelings echoed my own.

  At the far end of the square, the column was advancing, shooting and fighting their way in.

  The regiment was supported by three giant stitched, much like the one I had felled. Each carried a shield, only these shields were less wood, more metal. Never intended to be disguised as part of a wagon.

  They hurled objects, and those objects exploded on impact, in the midst of the throng—and there was no better word than throng for Mauer’s assembled army-, sending bodies of human, stitched, and beast flying from the epicenter of each blast.

  Three more.

  More than just Augustus’ pets, then. Or less than. They weren’t a rare thing, here.

  One of the three stumbled, knees buckling, before it fell, dropping dead where it stood.

  The explosives it carried didn’t go off like the smoke had for the other giants, sadly.

  The other two raised their shields, protecting themselves while they stampeded into Mauer’s lines, scattering people and making room for the Crown to advance unimpeded.

  Jamie’s head turned, and he pulled Shirley and I deeper into cover.

  Leaping down from a higher vantage point, the Falconer had made her appearance.

  She had a hood up, protecting her hair from the rain, wore a jacket, skirt, and high boots, and even without her raptor’s company, she wore the falconer’s glove on one hand, carried the saber in the other.

  People at the fringes saw her, and people fired.

  Each bullet that struck home made her move, by the sheer weight of impact, but it didn’t stop her. She crossed the short distance to the edge of the enemy group, and then she began cutting the rebel forces down.

  Bullets didn’t stop her. At best, they carved away half of a handful of flesh.

  She didn’t have as much flesh to spare as Augustus or the Infante might, but she didn’t need it. Once she was in the midst of the rebel forces, she was shot far less. They needed to use knives, axes, shovels, and bayonets instead, and in every case, they failed.

  Every swing in her direction was deftly evaded, frequently punished by death.

  She had no less than twenty fresh corpses behind her before nerve started breaking. People saw her coming, backed away and backed into others, and they aimed and shot. They didn’t care anymore that there were people on the far side. That every miss was liable to kill one of their own.

  They cared that a number of others before them had tried to match the young woman in melee and failed. She was a reaper, death imminent, and they were using the most lethal means they had at their disposal to try to postpone or gamble against that death.

  She was cutting a swathe through the crowd, heading for Mauer and the rest of the rebel leadership.

  As heavier munitions were turned her way, she ducked low, hiding among the people she was killing. Smoke billowed in her wake as she used canisters of gas or something like the stitched giants had been deploying.

  She was getting harder and harder to track as she built up steam.

  I saw, through the crowd, at a distance, only a glimpse of her face. Through the rain and residual smoke, there was only a general sense of her expression. Serious, grim, determined.

  “Sy,” Jamie said.

  I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  “I can see why you said you were captivated by her,” he said.

  I nodded, trying to process.

  I could see the Lambs in the crowd. As if they were waiting for us to join them.

  We had to follow, had to stop her. Mauer had lost, in my estimation, yet there was a chance, and if this wasn’t to be a complete rout, a loss that would be another mark in the nobles’ favor, another
reason for people to never ever strike out against the Crown, we had to stop this. Scare her off, if nothing else.

  Everything about the scenario demanded we move forward, yet Jamie and I remained rooted to the spot.

  “Jamie,” I said. “She—”

  “You saw it too?” he asked. His hands clutched the rifle he held in much the same way that Jamie the first used to clutch his journals to his chest. Insecurity. Regression of a sort.

  “I think,” I said. letting out another one of those heavy exhalations. It was as if I’d forgotten how to breathe automatically.

  “It’s my first good look at her,” Jamie said. “Sy, if this is what—”

  Shirley interrupted, breaking the spell. “She’s going to kill Mauer!”

  A belated realization. She didn’t have the sense of the battlefield, where the key players were. To her, this was only madness and violence.

  But she’d realized, and in speaking it aloud, she gave us a push.

  We ran, my hand reaching out for and pulling at Shirley’s. We ducked low as we crossed open space to reach the fringes of the group, and we reached the trail of bodies she had left behind her.

  With Shirley in tow, it was slower to weave through the crowd, chasing. The Falconer wasn’t slow, either. She was graceful as she killed, her economy of actions efficient.

  If she killed or even hurt Mauer, then it would be a devastating blow to everyone present. They would know that even the greatest of them, in the midst of an army, would be vulnerable. That the enemy was that dangerous, that relentless and hard to stop.

  I let go of Shirley’s hand, leaving her to Jamie as I ran ahead, accelerating my pace, dodging past people and experiments to close the distance, striving to catch up.

  More bodies. And people were retreating from her and from Mauer, to better save their own skin, which meant there were areas I was free to run forward without having to pause, without having to duck left or right or keep my head down to keep from braining myself on the butt end of a rifle someone was holding.

  The increments were small, but I was gaining ground on her.

  I saw snippets of her through the crowd, moving in the midst of rain and mob and sprays of blood. Her wounds were superficial, her eyes wide, entirely the eyes of a predator and killer. She didn’t look directly at those she killed, but, airborne in a leap, saber held high, she spared a moment’s glance at me, meeting my eyes.

  As if to let me know that she had seen me. She had seen my efforts, and the actions that followed would prove them vain.

  Mauer led his army, and was yet unaware of what was tearing his way.

  The moment ended. The Falconer swooped down. Three people died in that swing of a saber, by my estimation.

  Mauer was perhaps fifty paces ahead of me. Thirty paces ahead of her.

  Black smoke billowed here and there. The same stuff the giants had used. I could tell by the size of the clouds how fresh they were.

  I could tell, as I came across the latest, that it was only two or three seconds old.

  She should have been further ahead of me.

  She’d stopped.

  I turned around, looking, my first thought being that she’d seen me, she’d ducked through the crowd to circle around, and she would be coming at me now, from an unexpected angle.

  An unexpected angle, yes.

  I looked past the people who were scattering. I saw Jamie and Shirley, running toward me. Confusion on Jamie’s face as he saw that I’d stopped.

  The Falconer practically materialized behind them. Stepping out of the crowd, silently killing two people as she did it.

  Black haired, black garbed, with eyes like a hawk, spelling only cold death, she loomed behind them. I saw Jamie’s expression change, as he registered my expression.

  Jamie couldn’t react in time. Let alone me.

  With all of the Lambs but one standing in the crowd, watching, I cried out.

  “Mary Cobourn!”

  The Falconer heard me, and she hesitated.

  Jamie turned, swinging his rifle, and slashed the blade of the bayonet across the Falconer’s eyes, blinding her.

  She swung her saber, blind, and he held up his rifle. Metal cut into metal, almost but not quite severing the rifle in half.

  Jamie and Shirley backed away from the blinded noble, to my side.

  And then, by unspoken agreement, we fled the battlefield.

  This battle could be won, now, and this battle could be lost.

  But what we’d just seen and given evidence to… we couldn’t die and take it to our graves.

  Previous Next

  Thicker than Water—14.18

  The soldiers on the rebellion side backed away from the blinded Falconer, giving her a twenty-foot berth. The very sound of the battlefield had shifted, with the rebellion side watching in a kind of awe, while the Crown forces pushed hard, shouting and urging the front ranks into more of a forward push.

  Striving to get to their noble. Through rain and smoke, someone had seen and passed on the word. Now, belatedly, they were fighting to give her a place to escape to.

  Jamie and I ran, with Jamie taking the lead, my hand holding Shirley’s. I kept one eye on what was going on in front of me and one eye on the Falconer, as we circled around.

  Orders were given, and experiments from the rebel side charged in from all directions. They included several stitched, a modified hound with spines, an oversized insect, a modified human with weapons built into him, and a crude vat-grown man that was seven feet tall. The vat-man looked like he was formed entirely of scar tissue, the details washed out.

  There was some loose degree of coordination. The stitched marched forward, more or less mindless, while the animals shied back, looking to dart in while her back was turned, while she turned this way and that reacting to sounds, her sword moving.

  She must have heard the tramping footsteps of the stitched, because she lunged toward the nearest two, striking out. One beheaded, another slashed across the lower face. She reversed the cut, this time aiming for the throat, and beheaded that one as well.

  She’d been able to figure out what she had cut, and adjust accordingly.

  But as she turned on the third, the spined hound leaped for her. Quieter than the stitched, harder to hear, it got its teeth on her.

  She whirled, moving the sword, not cutting so much as she brought the blade under, sawing along the creature’s head.

  The scar-man clubbed her, making her stagger a few steps, and was killed for the insult.

  She fought blind, with clear mental visualizations of where her enemies were.

  And, as she held the sword out, holding it so it pointed generally in the direction of a third stitched, who had stopped in its tracks after seeing others die.

  Deciding on discretion over valor, she bolted, running in the general direction of the Crown forces—Montgomery’s group.

  She cut a swathe, stumbling here and there as bullets were fired in her direction.

  She didn’t make it out of the clearing. The man with weapon arms flung himself at her, caught her legs, and tripped her.

  Stabbing toward the man who still held her legs, she pierced him in the chest.

  The Falconer—Mary Cobourn—might have been able to escape if she’d managed to start running again, cutting her way through the crowd, but it didn’t get that far. The man with the weapon arms was still alive as someone threw something incendiary at him and the Falconer.

  I saw only a glimpse of the fire that sprang into being around her and the man, and then Jamie and I were too far into the thicker part of the crowd. I couldn’t see what unfolded from that, but I could guess well enough.

  With my focus split as it was, it was Shirley, not me, who spotted another person coming through the crowd, straight for us. I felt her hand tighten, and I looked.

  Mauer.

  Jamie and I stopped, and we wheeled around, facing the man, who had no doubt fought through the crowd from the moment the scene fi
rst unfolded with the Falconer.

  He was tall enough to look past many of the heads in the crowd, tall enough to see the flame where the noble actively burned. The light of that fire burned in his eyes.

  But the rest of him was dark, stained with wet painted gray and black with thick smoke. His clothes, including the heavy coat he wore over his shoulders, looked very heavy, a kind of burden. His face was drawn, the faint lines here and there very visible.

  Only points of fire still alight in those eyes, the rest of him dark and drenched… and he nonetheless was intense. Immense in stature, and in how he conveyed himself.

  As noble as the real nobles had seemed. If they even were real.

  He channeled all of that into his voice as he spoke. One question, two words, enunciated very clearly, leaving no room for compromise.

  “What happened?”

  Eyes were watching us, ears were listening. Ears had probably heard what I’d shouted to the Falconer.

  It was very possible that the words would get back to Mauer, and he would realize what it was. He knew Mary, after all. He’d known Percy.

  It was very possible those words wouldn’t. That my voice had been one among many, among gunfire and shouts and the sound of the rain falling, in a moment when people were trying very hard to get away from the noble that had been cutting down the crowd like a scythe cut through wheat. The voice of one person shouting, it could so easily have been misheard or slip from their minds. Brains under stress didn’t always recollect things perfectly.

  I glanced back at Jamie, and I thought about Mauer’s interaction with Augustus.

  “Jamie blinded her,” I said.

  Mauer was quiet and still, eyes still reflecting that fire, while the crowd moved around us, heads turning to look and to watch. I felt Shirley grip my hand tighter.

  “He did. But you gave him the opportunity. What did you tell her?” Mauer asked me.

  “It wasn’t what I told her,” I lied to Mauer. “It was when. I cracked a jawbone in my hand, so to speak, and she flinched.”