The Red Winter

by Henry H. Neff

  Prusias hurried to another screen, swatting aside his guests until he found one that was trained on Grael. The rakshasa was leading the column on the left, leaning forward in his saddle with his lance leveled. He didn’t seem to find anything amiss. Prusias gazed out at the battlefield. Grael’s forces were within several hundred yards of their target, the wedges coming together like two great fists.

  Dropping his lance, Lord Grael blew his horn.

  Like a flock of birds changing course, Grael’s wedge suddenly—inexplicably—veered sharply to the right.

  Toward his own troops.

  Prusias’s guests’ cries and shrieks coincided with a jolting crash as one column collided with the other. Steel crumpled, horses and riders flew high in the air as Grael’s troops plowed a bloody furrow through their comrades.

  As Prusias scanned the unfolding carnage, it became clear that this was no accident. The troops in Grael’s column were attacking the others—spearing, hacking, and trampling in a determined, vicious assault. The victims were trying to regroup—Prusias saw Lord Rhugal making a valiant attempt to rally his men—but most were so disoriented they could muster but a pitiful defense as their attackers closed in about them. It was not a battle but a slaughter.

  Swallowing his shock, Prusias wheeled to find Grael’s secretary—that albino imp who had been such a willing conspirator against his master. He had seen the insect conversing earlier with Lady Praav. The king seized Mr. Bonn by the collar.

  “Where’s Grael’s imp?” Prusias demanded.

  “His secretary?”

  “Yes, his secretary. Where is he?”

  “H-he left five minutes ago, Your Majesty,” stammered Mr. Bonn. “But he did make his apologies. He even left a note.” He handed the king a letter.

  Prusias tore open the little envelope.

  Grael died months ago.

  An imposter is leading your cavalry.

  There may be others in your midst.

  Perhaps on that very terrace …

  Regards,

  David Menlo, Director

  p.s. Caligula’s own guards murdered him on this very day in January. Coincidence? Or does Fate have a sense of humor?

  Prusias crumpled the paper.

  “Your Majesty, what’s happening?” asked a panicked voice. Prusias turned to see Coros, that corpulent sneak with a finger in every pie.

  “I’m not certain, friend Coros. Have a look and report back.”

  Seizing the merchant by his ermine collar, the king flung him twenty feet over the railing. Coros seemed to hover a moment, his stunned face staring at the king while he clutched and snatched at the empty air. Prusias watched him fall. A long, somersaulting plunge that ended abruptly on a spired dome.

  Prusias ignored his guests, ignored their appalled expressions. Instead, he gazed out upon the battlefield. As he feared, Rowan’s forces were advancing upon what remained of Grael’s legions, even as they continued to fight one another. The Hound was leading them, riding ahead of his captains and screaming like some savage from another age. A blinding brilliance burst forth from the lad as he struck Grael’s legions like a thunderbolt. The king shut his eyes.

  “Your Majesty.”

  The voice was Mr. Bonn’s. Prusias gazed down. The imp was standing at his side, trembling but dutiful.

  “My king, the situation in the worker districts is escalating.”

  It was true. The city’s lowest level was ablaze as thousands of tiny figures surged through the twisting streets. Through the torrents of black smoke, Prusias could make out figures carrying makeshift ladders to try and scale the walls that separated them from the wealthier districts.

  He was not going to panic. Searching among his guests, Prusias found Dr. Wyle trying to disappear behind a statue of Venus. He gestured for the man to approach.

  “Dr. Wyle,” he said calmly, “how many gargoyles are in commission?”

  “Five hundred and eighty-nine, sir.”

  “Very good. We have a situation in the worker districts. I want every gargoyle not already on the outer walls deployed to snuff that disturbance. This riot is to end within thirty minutes. If that means I need to replace every single worker, so be it. And if our enemies venture within range, we’ll show them what the gargoyles can do. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” said Dr. Wyle.

  Recalling David Menlo’s note, Prusias held up his hand. While the note was obviously intended to make him paranoid, he could not discount the fact that it might be true.

  “Bring that one here.”

  Dr. Wyle beckoned at the twitching, mechanized monster on the nearby wall. Like an obedient spider, the gargoyle scuttled down from its perch on the neighboring parapet and made a disconcerting leap onto the terrace, landing heavily on its eight legs. The king’s guests screamed, backing against a marble fountain. He couldn’t entirely blame them. The monster’s head resembled a cross between a spider and a squid with numerous luminous eyes the size of soup plates. A beaked mouth was flanked by two large fangs and fringed with tentacle-like feelers that writhed and probed the frigid air. Upon its bulbous back, two humans operated controls in a protected cockpit, their visored faces illuminated by the instrument panel. As the monster rose to its full height, there was a faint whirring of machinery as its guns recalibrated.

  “What would you like it to do, Your Majesty?” asked Dr. Wyle nervously.

  Prusias gestured absently at his guests. “Keep them where they are. If anyone moves, turn them into jelly.”

  “Shall I join them?” asked Madam Petra coldly.

  “No, my dear,” said Prusias, taking up the champagne bottle. “You will sit there and look pretty. Dr. Barrett will make the pictures work. And Dr. Wyle will communicate with my monsters. The excitement’s just beginning.” Sipping the champagne, he grimaced and tossed it over the railing. “Open another bottle, Mr. Bonn. That one’s flat.”

  A fresh bottle was opened and the king seized it before Mr. Bonn could pour it into a flute. Ridiculous things, champagne flutes. Swigging deeply, Prusias gazed down at his city and watched as hundreds of gargoyles responded to his orders, hardly breaking stride as they left their posts along the higher battlements to scuttle across gardens, clamber over mansions, and leap down to snowy rooftops in a breakneck descent. Blys’s citizens scattered as they came, ducking into shops or houses as the monsters shambled past toward the gates.

  Beyond those gates, Rowan’s forces had finished the last of Grael’s legions. They were advancing now, forming ranks as they marched toward the bridges that spanned the river. The Hound was still leading them, no longer blinding but radiant as he rode ahead of a quarter million footmen, archers, and knights. High above the army, wheeling in the snowy skies, hundreds of Raszna were mounted upon wyverns. Prusias wondered at their purpose. They were far too high to attack. Surveillance possibly, but he assumed David Menlo would have more sophisticated means. He longed to send sorties of Stygian crows after them, but the creatures could not abide extreme cold and the brutal winter had decimated their ranks.

  No matter. If the wyverns swooped too low, the gargoyles would blast them out of the sky. Gulping more champagne, Prusias watched as his enemies advanced steadily toward the bridges. Once his enemies stepped upon them, once they began to cross the snow-gorged Tiber, they would be within the gargoyles’ range.

  The Hound was getting wonderfully close. Prusias turned to Dr. Wyle. “Forget the rioters,” he snapped. “I want the gargoyles focused on the bridges. The fools are about to cross.”

  Dr. Wyle relayed the order on his device. Prusias watched as the gargoyles altered course, leaving the burning slums and taking positions instead along the massive outer walls. Stationed by the gates, and nearly as tall as the wall itself, were the king’s five remaining dreadnoughts. The creatures swayed like sleeping elephants, dormant until they might be needed.

  The Hound was approaching the central bridge. He halted just before the broad span, resting h
is spear across his saddle to gaze up at the gargoyles poised upon the distant battlements. At his signal, a platoon of soldiers came forward from Rowan’s ranks. Prusias could not see their faces, for they wore heavy cowls and bowed their heads like a file of monks. Trotting past their captain, they stepped upon the bridge and raised their hoods in unison.

  The soldiers had no faces.

  No, that wasn’t correct. The soldiers were wearing masks—blank masks akin to a fencer’s except these seemed to flicker and blur with subtle distortions. Prusias thought he saw an image—the suggestion of a face, but it was gone too quickly to be certain. Another face—or a vague hint of one—suggested itself before vanishing. The masks weren’t blank at all; they were simply changing too quickly for his eye to follow.

  Prusias watched in stupefied silence as the soldiers reached the bridge’s midpoint. Nearby, he heard Dr. Wyle whispering urgently into his device. The king turned slowly toward him.

  “Dr. Wyle, are the gargoyles in position?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “And are those enemies within range?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then explain why the gargoyles aren’t firing.”

  “Th-that’s what I’m trying to ascertain, Your Majesty,” sputtered the engineer. “It seems the creatures—their targeting systems—are confused. They can’t decide whether they should open fire.”

  “Of course they should open fire!”

  The engineer tried to answer but hyperventilated. Gasping for breath, he urged Dr. Barrett to take over. Taking his colleague’s device, the young man tried to meet the king’s angry gaze.

  “The gargoyles are programmed to fire at anything within range that isn’t a high-value target. Right now, they can’t decide whether those soldiers are fair game. The masks are confusing them. To bypass this issue, the drivers would have to operate the weapons manually.”

  “Then do that,” Prusias snapped.

  “That will mean slower, less accurate fire.”

  Prusias leaned close to the young man and whispered, “Dr. Barrett, if they’re not shooting in five seconds, I’ll swallow you whole!”

  The engineer issued the command. Within three seconds, several gargoyles opened fire. A hail of bullets struck the bridge, wounding two of the masked soldiers while the rest scattered, leaping off the bridge to plunge toward the icy river.

  The wyverns plunged at the first sign of fire. Hundreds came screeching out of the sky, diving at the gargoyles like vast birds of prey. The gargoyle operators tried to react, to retrain their guns upon their assailants, but few could do so in time. The collisions were tremendous. Wyverns struck the gargoyles at full speed with their splayed talons, knocking them clear off the wall or taking hold of their flesh and maiming them in a frenzy of talons, teeth, and stingers.

  The wyverns had been carrying Raszna and some of these could now be seen upon the wall—huge vyes that fell upon downed gargoyles, obliterating the cockpits and their occupants with heavy blows from their halberds. There must have been a hundred running free now upon the outer wall, racing across the broad parapet to blockade stairways before the king’s soldiers could arrive. Within the worker districts, there was an explosion and a roaring cheer as a fireball rose into the sky.

  Events were occurring so quickly, Prusias strained to make sense of them. He willed himself to focus. His gargoyles were no more, enemies were on his walls, and a riot threatened to consume the most populous tier of his city. The riot, he realized, had been a planned event, orchestrated with the same care and cunning as the destruction of his cavalry and gargoyles. One by one, his defenses were being peeled away, excised with surgical precision. Blys was being dissected.

  Still, all was not lost. The rioters were walled in, his gate was unbreakable, and he still had half a million troops to defend his city. His enemies had landed a punch or two, but he was still on his feet and there were many rounds to go. He turned to Mr. Bonn.

  “Send General Braiden’s troops out the postern gates to engage the enemy outside the walls. Deploy half my Imperial Guard to enclose the worker districts. The archers shall fire from the surrounding walls and towers; footmen will defend and reinforce the gates to Tier Two. This riot must be contained. I want Laetho’s forces to reclaim the outer wall from those vyes. His people should be equal to the task.”

  The king turned to the engineers. “Do we still have any of those mortars we replaced?”

  “Less than half,” said a recovered Dr. Wyle. “Most were melted down for their metal—the gargoyles rendered them obsolete—but there are still several hundred in the armories.”

  “Have the ogres bring them to those batteries,” he added, pointing to a series of squat fortifications built into mountains above the outer walls.

  “That will take time, Your Majesty. They have to wheel them up the ramps.”

  “Then get started,” growled the king.

  While his subordinates relayed his orders, Prusias returned his attention to the bridges. He had not bothered rigging the bridges with explosives because he had wanted his enemies to venture within range of his gargoyles. He regretted that decision now. His enemies were now flowing over the spans like army ants. Until his forces regained control of the massive walls, there was little he could do but watch as Rowan’s Mystics and siege engines converged upon the great gates.

  The gates. Blys’s scale was designed to awe its visitors, to convey a sense of its ruler’s power. Nothing in the capital—not even the royal palace—reinforced this impression more than the great gates. They were set into the outer walls like sliding blast doors, forty feet thick, thirty stories tall, and sheathed with steel plating several feet thick. In addition to their gargantuan size, the gates utilized the same technology employed in the Humboldt krakens, compounds that absorbed energy with remarkable efficiency. The gates used them to a much greater degree. No one—not the Hound, Menlo, or even Bram—possessed the power to break them.

  As he reflected on this, Prusias felt a flush of pleasure. He sipped his champagne, dimly conscious that the wind and snow were picking up. Let it! It would hamper his attackers far more than it hampered him. Alarms and horns were blaring throughout the city, but he didn’t concern himself with these. They were simply noise. At the moment, he was more interested in patterns of energy and inertia, those subtle shifts of momentum that often defined a prolonged struggle.

  And what he saw pleased him. Many wyverns were dead, their arrow-riddled bodies strewn across the parapets. Their Raszna handlers were still fighting but they were now outnumbered and were being driven back by Laetho’s brutes. That little skirmish would soon be over. His gaze swept down to the worker districts.

  While some enterprising rioters had managed to scale the walls, it was a futile gesture, for they had nowhere to go. Unless the mobs could somehow break out and storm Tier 2 en masse, the workers would remain penned in. In the meantime, their district was a raging inferno that would suffer a withering hail of arrows. Poor fools. Rowan’s spies incited them to riot, had promised them a better life. And what would the humans, vyes, and goblins get? A fiery death trapped in their own slums.

  Brilliant flashes shone from beyond the walls, illuminating the entire landscape. Glancing at the screen, Prusias saw the Hound looking on as hundreds of Rowan and Raszna spellcasters unleashed bolts of raw, iridescent energy at the gates. The air itself was catching fire, sparking and smoking, and the gates began to glow a dull, angry orange as the bolts struck the surface. But the Mystics could not sustain their efforts for more than several seconds, and whenever they halted to regroup and recover, they found they had made no lasting damage. The marvelous gates were good as new.

  The king crowed as enemy siege engines rained their little pebbles on his walls. He laughed as the Mystics tried time and again to put a dent in his gates. Meanwhile, the workers were burning in their slums, taking shelter behind whatever they could as arrows rained upon them. The most desperate massed at the gates to Tier
2. It was almost moving to watch them hammer against them, surging back and forth in a futile effort to force them open. The gates were heavy steel, their locks controlled by Workshop computers. No mere mob—no matter how frenzied or numerous—would succeed in breaking them. They fell by tens and hundreds. The spectacle was like watching bees attempt to escape a blocked and burning hive.

  Things were not yet so grim for the invaders outside his walls, but they soon would be. Braiden’s legions were arriving from the king’s garrisons built into the mountains, tight phalanxes of spear and swordsmen that outnumbered the attackers. Braiden’s shock troops had already fallen upon Rowan’s forces at the southern portion of the wall and were pushing them back, forcing them into range of—

  Boom!

  Even Prusias started at the first explosions—a concussive series of mortars lobbed from his batteries. The shells burst in phosphorescent flashes among his attackers, sending horses, ballistae, and bodies sprawling into broken piles. Glancing at one of Dr. Barrett’s screens, Prusias spied the Hound and almost whooped aloud.

  The Hound had been knocked from his horse. The dying mount lay on its side, while the lad tried to get up. He was bleeding, leaning upon his spear and gazing dazedly at the distant battlements. A woman ran to his side. She was young and surprisingly familiar. Where had he seen her? The memory came to Prusias in a flash—she was the lass who’d slain Gunnir at the siege of Rowan. She’d fought the assassins when they’d cornered the Hound. The girl was his guardian angel.

  And that angel was helping him to his feet, wiping the dirt and blood from his face as the Hound regained his bearings. His aura was growing brighter, a brilliant halo of golden light. More mortars exploded, shattering Rowan and Raszna, Mystics and vyes alike. They were pulling back, away from the murderous hail of explosives and projectiles now raining from the outer walls as Laetho’s forces retook them. Prusias cackled as a heavy stone tumbled five hundred feet to obliterate an enemy trebuchet. Gravity was a wonderful thing.