From Hell's Heart

by K. T. Davies

  The thoasa squatted on the edge of the clearing opposite the wagon. Due to a mutual loathing he stayed well away from his angry jac, which was grazing by the stream. Ziphen made a cursory patrol of the camp, hacked at undergrowth that encroached upon some arbitrary boundary before checking the mounts. A light rain began to fall. Although I was grateful for the gentle, spattering drumbeat, I hoped that it didn’t wash off my muddy carapace. The cannoneer, Thero, and the twins ate some food and shared a bottle of something that made them grimace.

  “Is anyone taking a watch?” Thero asked.

  The thoasa stalked into the undergrowth. “Just go to sleep, tert. That’s what you want.”

  The twins and Ziphen reacted angrily to the word ‘tert’, which only stoked the thoasa’s ire. He spun, tail swishing angrily. “You can all shut up.” His throat swelled. “It’s the same bullshit every time. He knows I don’t rest when we’re working. ‘Take a watch’.” He spat into the grass. “I always watch, and you all know this.”

  Ziphen jumped to her feet, planted her hands on her hips and waist. “You spend all your time ‘on watch’ beating your little lizard. You’re not watching anything then, are you?”

  The thoasa marched over to Ziphen like a prizefighter. She squared up, narrowed her eyes, and held her ground. I was momentarily caught up in the drama and because he was a monumental prick and had beaten the child, I wanted Ziphen to give him a kicking. Then I remembered I was going to kill them all and regained my perspective.

  “Has anyone seen where I put my zanth crystals?” The cannoneer piped up.

  “No, Crane. No one has seen your crystals,” Ziphen answered wearily, as though it was a regular occurrence. The others ignored him.

  “I had them earlier. They’re in a little yellow— Ah, no worries. I’ve found them.”

  The twins threw an oilskin over themselves and watched the show while sharing some bread and sausage.

  “Don’t start this again, Tallackan,” said Thero, but there was no force behind his words, and I didn’t blame him. No one would want to get between the thoasa and a cove with four arms and a bad attitude.

  “Start what? I’m not starting anything,” the thoasa raged. “It’s always the same. Whenever we’re out of the city, you always start with the, ‘who’s going to take watch?’ and you damn well know I’m going to do the watching while you do the snoring.”

  “Oi, now.” He pointed a claw at the thoasa. “I’m the chief of this crew—”

  “—And I’m second in command,” Ziphen interjected.

  “Ziph, please,” Thero begged wearily before turning his attention back to the thoasa. “Tallackan, as long as I’m chief, we will organize watches. If you choose to watch, that’s up to you, but no one’s asking you to shoulder the burden alone. Eye’s sake, we’re only stopping for a couple of hours. It’s not important.”

  Tallackan curled his lip at Thero but kept his eyes on Ziphen. She met his gaze unflinchingly, and matched his cold stare. The thoasa broke first and stomped back to wherever he was going for a crap. No one batted an eye as though this scene had played out before. They reminded me of my comrades in the Guild.

  Ziphen loosened her scabbards and lay half in the stream, upwind of the dozing urjacs. Thero stretched out on a patchwork quilt on the wagon driver’s seat and cleaned his beak with a twig.

  By now, darkness had claimed starless sovereignty over the night, and the rain tried to hammer the heat from the hissing fire where the cannoneer was drying his boots. In another life, I might have worked with these coves, might have shared a laugh and a drink in the Mouse’s Nest with one or more of them. But not in this life.

  The twins huddled by the fire with their back to the stream, the urjacs, and Ziphen. Tallackan was in the bushes to the right. Crane was sitting beside the twins, and Thero huddled on the wagon out of the rain. I slowly crawled towards the camp and through the stream behind Ziphen. When I was in position, I lobbed a clump of mud at the feet of the furthest urjac. Startled, the animal snorted and tugged on the picket, but as it didn’t smell anything more dangerous than mud, it didn’t panic. However, the noise it made was loud enough to mask the sound of me stabbing Ziphen in the base of the skull. Because I’m not a monster, I made it quick, and she was dead before she knew she’d been stabbed. I plastered a handful of mud into and over the wound to smother the smell of sweet iron before it could bloom in the air and alert the others. That done, I drew her back, propped her against a half-submerged rock in the stream, and took her knife from her belt.

  The rain and the darkness were my partners in crime as I crawled upstream through the silken mud. Loathe as I was to leave the protection of the muck, I got out of the stream when I was about twenty feet beyond the camp. Slivers of firelight cut through the darkness and tapped rain-slicked shrubs with glittering fingers.

  The sound of the twins murmuring created a distinct cone of noise that wove together the high and low tones of what might have been the same voice. The sound was eerily reminiscent of Ludo’s dulcet tones, inclining me to end them with all haste. Tallackan was naturally the most dangerous cove in the crew unless Thero had something more than a handcannon up his sleeve. I’d done for Ziphen first because she was the easiest to get at. Tallackan was less easy to reach but still more accessible than any of the others as he was squatting out of camp.

  I felt exposed as I crawled towards him. Even before I was able to use sorcery, I was always tooled up with the right equipment for the job and as many charms as I could buy from sell-spells. I changed my grip on the borrowed knife and exhaled a little too hard as I prepared to attack. In an instant, the thoasa spun, his tail lashing towards me as he drew blades from his belt.

  “Intruders!” Tallackan bellowed as he dived towards me, knife and sword swinging. I sprang back and put a tree between him and me. It was a slender thing, not enough to hide me but enough to block his tail, which whipped out and splintered the trunk. I leaped, grabbed a low hanging branch of a more robust tree, and climbed like my life depended on it.

  The camp erupted in a frenzy of activity. Crane’s voice rose above the clamor. “Where are they?” he shouted.

  “In the fucking trees!” Tallackan shouted. “There! Up there!” Torches flared. A lantern threw a frantic beam across the canopy. I was out on a limb in more ways than one when I heard the gut-wrenching sound of a handcannon being cocked. I looked down and saw Crane. He was by the fire, calmly aiming up on me. I jumped and let the spring of the branch propel me towards the twins who were trying to guide their torchlight onto me. The next moment the night vanished as the cannon spoke and tore a flaming rent in the enshrouding darkness. Heat burned my thigh, and something sharp stabbed me in the back, but the tree bore the brunt of the damage.

  “What the?” Thero climbed from the wagon. I landed a couple of feet to the right of the twins who were brandishing a pair of notched and rusted cleavers.

  “Get out of the way!” Thero shouted.

  “Ziphen!” Tallackan bellowed. “Ziph, get up!”

  It was chaos, thank the gods. A cleaver came whistling towards my head and another at my chest. I sidestepped the one and parried the other. The twins’ eyes widened at something they saw behind me and then they hit the dirt. I did the same. Not one to waste an opportunity, I stabbed at their chest. As I was trying to skewer them, the night once again turned briefly into day as another muzzle flash burned the darkness. The shot tore overhead like a comet and smashed into a tree on the other side of the road cracking branches. The leaves and boughs didn’t burn, but the green wood smoked and smoldered fouling the air. The ground shook behind me under the heavy tread of the thoasa. I rolled towards the twins and took a chop to the forearm. I threw myself over their flailing body and had a couple of quick stabs at Fuck Off’s neck before Tallackan launched himself at me.

  I twisted and managed to raise Volund’s sword as the shadow descended. Everyone was shouting and screaming. Light was flashing wildly through the gun smoke that
was rolling through the clearing. The twins turned, hacking and slashing, their tarnished cleavers winking gold in the firelight.

  Bollocks.

  It had been a fair attempt, but I’d fucked it up, and now I was going to die. I didn’t mind dying, I’d done it several times, and it really wasn’t a bother. It was that I hadn’t slotted Ludo and avenged Mother that bit my arse. With a heart full of rage, I roared at the sky. Something inside me woke. Heat uncoiled in my gut and fired through my bones. Smoke darkened the ground around me and rose in dusky wreaths. Wrath awakened and burned in my blood, outmatching my ability to contain it. Fire burst from me, tormented the air, dislodged the darkness, and emboweled the screaming night.

  8

  Wiser coves than me have said that the worst pain affects the tender, feeling parts of the heart. I have little understanding of the organ, save how to stop it working. I am however an expert when it comes to physical pain, both giving and receiving. In my opinion, the worst of that kind of pain was derived from fire.

  When I say fire, I don’t mean the almost instantaneous destruction of falling into a volcano or a vat of liquid star steel. I mean the slow, roasting kind. Being ‘put to the fire’ as it is termed in politely sadistic circles, is excruciating, worse by far than drowning in a sea of acid or being torn apart by demons.

  I opened my blistered eyes onto a grey morning. The sky was grey, the filigree canopy of branches snowing ashes was grey, I was grey, and the glassed ground beneath me that cracked and groaned like ice was also grey. Reluctant to move, I turned my head to the left, came eye-to-dead-eye with the charred faces of the twins. Reduced to fragile, life-denuded charcoal, their heads collapsed, finally becoming as one in all particulars.

  As I rolled away, I discovered that some skin and scales on my back had welded themselves to the vitrified ground. The pain was a sharpener. In a fit of pique, I smashed my fist into the glazed earth, putting a cluster of stoneback beetles to flight. It appeared that they’d been feasting on Tallackan’s roasted corpse for a few hours, either that or they’d been particularly hungry. A couple of the urjacs had been similarly broiled. The other urjacs were nowhere to be seen. The thick-skinned urux had been lightly scorched, but was now contentedly grazing just beyond the edge of the clearing oblivious to anything but what was under its snout. The ash-dusted wagon’s tin shell was starred and flash-burned but had escaped the worst of the destructive maelstrom.

  “Sakura?” I croaked. My throat was bladed, my mouth full of ash. I coughed, tried to sit up, but my arms wouldn’t support me. There was no answer from the wagon, but something underneath it coughed. I hoped it was the kinch, but then Thero crawled into the light holding a handcannon in his blistered hands. Our eyes met, and we saw each other, acknowledged in a glance that one of us would kill the other. He raised the cannon. I grabbed Volund’s sword and felt its hunger— its desire for the power it had recently known. Or perhaps it was my desire that I felt. Either way, it was shit out of luck. I was drained.

  While my noodle began chewing over how what had happened, had happened, my body hurled itself into the fire pit beside Crane’s partially cremated remains, and more importantly, the handcannon that was clutched in his partially melted hands. I burrowed into the cinders, heard the hammer crack of Thero’s weapon. Instead of the roar of the shot, the sound of the hammer hitting the striker was followed by the sound of cursing and it being cocked again. It hit the striker again, and again the only sound was a leaden snap. While Thero came to terms with what must have been a depressing turn of events, I tried to wrest Crane’s gun from his overcooked hands. Skin sloughed, but the finger bones and fire-hardened tendons remained locked in place. In my weakened state, I couldn’t tear the weapon from his death grip and only succeeded in dragging the corpse towards me, adding to my woes. While I wrestled with the corpse, who, much to my shame was getting the better of me, Thero was having equally rotten luck attempting to make his barker work. Sensing an opportunity to gain the upper hand, I gave up on the handcannon and grabbed my sword before staggering over to the wagon.

  “Fuck!” Thero exclaimed when he saw me coming and scuttled under the wagon. I was tempted to ask him if we could call it a draw. I was knackered, and just wanted to lie down, but as I’d just killed his crew I didn’t bother wasting my breath.

  I crawled under the wagon and took a swing at him. He kicked out, I lurched back and cracked my head on the axle. Furious at my clumsiness, I thrust wildly at him. It was a pathetic attempt and only succeeded in scoring the sole of his boot. Cursing, he shuffled further back. I dragged myself after him. The sharp stab of footsteps above distracted me momentarily. I glanced up. Lights exploded before my eyes, a moment later blood ran down my face. The cheating bastard had thrown his handcannon at me. Pressing his advantage, he drew a knife and threw himself at me. Almost by accident, I caught him by the throat and the wrist of his knife hand. Ash stung my eyes as we rolled in the dirt. He raked the side of my head with his claws and groped for my throat with his free hand. I was sorely out of practice in the art of dirty fighting. Unfortunately for me, he wasn’t, and he was almost as strong as I was. I picked up my sword and tried to stab him, but a sword was not the right weapon in such close quarters, and I hacked into the underside of the wagon. Someone screamed. My grip slipped on his wrist, and he stabbed me in the bicep.

  He was almost on top of me. Running out of options, I tugged my blade from the plank and managed to slash him across the calf. A shiver of pain ran through him, and the downward force he was exerting faltered. I took advantage, dug my claws into his wrist. He yelled. I yelled. His knife slipped from nerveless claws and stuck in the ground beside my head. He reached for it. I head-butted him in his beak. He spat blood at me. I dropped the sword and clamped my hands around his scrawny, blistered neck and squeezed. He kicked and kneed me. I raked him with my clawed feet in a bid to disembowel the bastard.

  He lunged for my sword. I shoved him back. He changed his angle of attack and tried to gouge my eyes out. I held him off, smashed his head against the cross braces. He made a desperate lunge for his knife and snagged it, forcing me to release him as the blade flicked past my face. I grabbed his wrist and guided the blade into his chest. He gasped. A lesser cove might have given up at this point, but even though he was leaking claret, there was still some fight left in him. His hand shot forwards, and he clamped my jaw in his claws and tried to force my head back with, I assumed, a view to breaking my neck. One of his long, leathery fingers strayed too close to my mouth. I bit down as hard as I could, took it off at the knuckle, and spat it back in his face. He jerked away. I lost my grip on the blood-slicked knife, which he tore from his chest and thrust at me. The tip caught the crossbeam. There was a sharp crack and the blade snapped at the hilt and spun away. I groped in the ashen earth for my sword, but even with two sets of eyelids I could see fuck all through the dust and blood. Thero fell sideways and scrambled from under the wagon. I followed after. He was slowing now. Although in truth, and even without a sucking chest wound, so was I. He stood up, staggered a few feet before collapsing.

  The acid stink of his fear bloomed. He rolled onto his back, the burst blood vessels in his eyes colored his tears crimson. He raised his claws and tried to ward me off. I thrust, tried to skewer him in the chest but only succeeded in slashing his arm.

  I tried again. Took another of his birdish fingers. “Fuck’s sake…Just…give up.”

  “No…cunt.” The words bubbled in his throat.

  “You know, in another life I think we could have been friends,” I said, to myself as much as to him. I liked this cove. I liked his fire, his passion for breath. He had something to live for. A part of me admired that as much as I hated him for it. All I had was a reason to kill. I feigned, he swatted at my blade, leaving himself open. I thrust the tip into the hollow of his neck and leaned upon it until I felt it bite into the cindered ground.

  The wind gusted, caught the hot, red mist that was spraying from Thero’s t
hroat. It mixed with ash, became one with the poisoned veil before being whipped across the glade. The air tasted of acid and stung my face like a thousand tiny needles.

  I sank to my knees, stared hard at the black, glassed ground, the fire-frozen trees, the twisted bodies… I had done this. Much like Tobias, who had wreaked glorious havoc with his sorcery, I had not been in control, but I had done this.

  “It’s not my fault.” Hoarse, I cast the words into the sickened air, and drew scant comfort from the old mantra.

  Before exhaustion claimed me, the wagon rocked, and the door burst open. Sakura leaped out and set off at a run until she saw me. Surprised, she exclaimed, and skidded to a halt, her claws scraping on the hardened ground. Two of her eyes were swollen, and a livid bruise shaded the right side of her face.

  “Give me a hand,” I said.

  It took her a moment to gather her courage, but eventually, she came over and offered her hand. She was young, but she was an arrachid and strong enough to help me to my feet. I retrieved my sword.

  “When the firestorm came, I thought I was going to die,” she whispered.

  “You thought you were going to die? I was the one fighting.” I slid down beside the wagon. My breeches had been cut to ribbons, my legs were a bloody mess. “Bastard used me like a scratching post.”

  She touched her cheek. “Why does the air sting?” I looked up; a yellow haze veiled the patch of cloudy sky above the now somewhat wider clearing.

  “We need to go, now.”

  “But you’re hurt.”

  “I’m fine. Get the urux.” I used the wagon for support and climbed to my feet. My stomach began to heave. I clenched my teeth.