Siege of Rage and Ruin

by Django Wexler

  I snort a laugh, then hurriedly close my eyes again, because the gates are coming up.

  The Red Sashes at the Second Ward wall, warned via the Blues, have opened the gate well ahead of us. Past that, we’re in Imperial territory. I keep the dog-angel moving at top speed, a couple of bounds taking us across the no-man’s-land to the siege lines. A wall of wooden stakes rises up, and I cringe instinctively, but we land among them with a splintering crash and they have as little effect on the angel as all those crossbow bolts did. I get a glimpse of militia soldiers fleeing in all directions, and then we’re bounding off again.

  The Second Ward flashes past, its mansions set amongst willow and bamboo. All too quickly, the First Ward wall comes into view. The gate is still open—we’ve outrun news of our arrival, and that speed is our best protection. Ward Guard on the walls have time to do little more than gape as the dog-angel gallops past, their shouts fading in the slipstream behind us. I hear a few crossbows go off, far too late. Here the military highway is lined with the vast estates of the greatest nobles of the Empire, giving me blurred glimpses of elegant gardens and gilded luxury. Then the red-and-gold palace wall comes into view, and this gate is firmly closed.

  “Young Tori!” Jack shouts. “Perhaps a reduction in speed is in order—the gate—”

  Don’t slow down. Angel or no angel, if they catch up with us, eventually bowmen will pick Jack and me off. Speed is our best defense. No doubt the angel could smash through the thick wooden gates, but I wouldn’t want to be on its back at the time. Instead, I look to the wall itself. It’s much lower than the stone walls of the wards, more decorative—no one really anticipates defending the Royal Ward from the First. Fantastic beasts, picked out in gold, crouch and snarl atop the wall-walk along with colorfully uniformed palace guards.

  I feed instructions to the dog-angel, and it gathers itself, then leaps.

  Eddica power, drawn up from Soliton, drives tons of stone into the air. The dog-angel’s front legs hit the wall-walk hard enough to shatter the boards, while its hind legs scrape away huge swathes of the wall’s red enamel. Stone claws dig into the wood, powering it over, destroying an eagle-headed statue with a casual blow. Jack and I experience a moment of weightlessness in mid-leap, then come crashing down again, hard enough to make my teeth crack painfully together.

  At the base of the wall, I can see the courtyard where Isoka confronted Naga. Palace guards are rushing about in a panic, but no black-armored figures in chain-veils emerge to start pelting us with Myrkai fire. My hope is that Naga has his Immortals close by, at the battle. The angel leaps into the courtyard, and this time I remember to clench my jaw.

  The palace is a maze, but fortunately the Imperial residence offers a polestar to navigate by, the huge gilded roof of its private temple rising over the lesser buildings clustered around it. Using that as a reference point, I guess roughly where the Pear Wing ought to be, and keep moving in that direction. Fences divide the grounds into meandering pathways, gardens, and courtyards, but I just plow through them, delicate carved wood exploding into splinters under the angel’s paws.

  “I always wanted to see the palace!” Jack shouts, as another fence shatters.

  The angel skids to a halt, tearing a considerable furrow in a century-old lawn. I recognize this one from my time in captivity. My room was over there, and the kitchen over there. So the library—

  There’s shouting in our wake. Not much time. I duck my head as the angel crashes through a corridor, in one side and out the other, leaving bamboo-and-paper screens in tatters. Jack whoops again as we bound over an ornamental stream and splash through a tiny lake, scattering decorative fish. The library is up ahead, on the other side of another thin wall. I bring the angel to a halt, and have it tear a door-size hole with one swipe.

  “He might be here,” I tell Jack as I slide off the angel. “Or we might have to go further. Stay close.”

  I’m hoping Avyn is here. I’ve never been inside the Imperial residence, so if we have to go and find him in his bedroom it might take some searching. And, somewhere, the guards are rallying, telling Naga what’s happened. Kadi could be coming, running with Rhema speed—

  “What in the name of the Blessed One is going on?”

  A knot loosens in my chest as we push through the library doors and Avyn gets up from his usual spot at the reading table. Dust sparkles and dances in shafts of sunlight, and the pile of books beside him is toppled over. He pulls up short at the sight of Jack—not unreasonably, since she’s quite piratical-looking with her purple hair and leather armor—and takes a moment to recognize me standing beside her.

  “Hello, Avyn,” I say. “It’s kind of a long story.”

  18

  ISOKA

  Once again, I find myself atop the double-humped angel, riding into battle.

  This time, there’s no army of Red Sashes following in my wake, just Zarun hanging from the harness beside me. The only army I’m going to need is streaming along the shore in a mass of stone and blue crystal eyes, scattering the Imperial pickets in what used to be the Sixteenth Ward. I’m going to meet them, following the military highway south from rebel headquarters and then turning west to thunder along the packed earth toward the gate opposite the Legion.

  My awareness of my physical body is only a vague blur of jolting motion. Most of my attention is focused on the angel, seeing through its monochrome vision and keeping its off-kilter gait steady. When I have a spare moment, I touch the threads of Eddica and Kindre power connecting me to all the other volunteers, and to Tori.

  The volunteers are back at headquarters, their bodies laid out in rows on the main floor, watched by a few anxious Red Sashes. Like mine, their minds are with their angels, which have now reached the outer wall at the western end of the Sixteenth Ward. This is the spot where Tori and the Red Sashes made their stand against the Imperials, soaking the cobbles in the blood of both sides before the Navy and the Immortals drove them back. The gate in the wall is a bottleneck, allowing only one or two angels through at a time, but fortunately the Imperials on the other side are keeping well back from the growing horde of bizarre stony creatures emerging onto the plain.

  Tori, in the meantime, has nearly reached the palace. I send a flutter of anxiety her way, and receive a pulse of reassurance. I force myself not to interfere further. She doesn’t need me looking over her shoulder. And Jack is with her, if anything goes wrong.

  By the time I catch up with the rest of the angels, nearly all of them have passed through the gate. I join the queue, and I get the Kindre equivalent of a cheer from everyone whose crystal eye can see me. A few stragglers hurry through or move aside, and the double-humped angel carries me and Zarun through the gate and onto the flatlands outside the city. Behind us, the wall is thick with Red Sashes feverishly loading crossbows. If the Legion comes, it won’t be enough, but I won’t stop them from trying.

  The Legion, for its part, is deployed on the plain a few hundred yards ahead of us. It’s an impressive sight, an unbroken battle line of soldiers in full armor. Unit flags flap in the breeze at regular intervals, and officers marked out with silver helms wait a few steps behind the main line, ready to relay the orders of their superiors. On the flanks are the cavalry, formed up in disciplined wedges, each with its own colorful battle flag streaming from the tip of a long lance.

  At the center of the line, a knot of officers and aides congregate around the Legion’s battle standard. Lord General Gymoto, the commanding officer, is over there somewhere. And—as I’d both hoped and feared—there’s a couple of dozen men and women in dark armor and chain-veils, too. It’s a safe bet that Naga is over there. If having the Legion here worries him, he’ll be on hand to make sure he stays in control.

  That means less of a chance that there are any Immortals close to the Emperor to interfere with Tori’s mission. On the other hand, it means Kadi is probably somewhere over there as well.

  In accordance with the plan I’d pressed into their mi
nds, the volunteers have driven their angels to the north, spreading out along the base of the wall until we make a line roughly as wide as the Legion’s, with the gate at our backs. I pilot the double-humped angel to a spot in the center, and let it settle back on its haunches, opening my real eyes to take in the scene in color.

  “Now what?” Zarun says. Apart from the flapping of the battle flags, the Imperial line is motionless.

  “Now we wait,” I tell him, letting the words roll out through the Kindre network, too. “Remember, we’re trying to buy as much time as we can with as little bloodshed as possible. If they don’t want to move, we shouldn’t rush them.”

  The volunteers send me a collective ripple of assent. A human army might get tired, waiting all day in the sun, but not this strange agglomeration of stone and sorcery. Eddica energy flows into me from Soliton’s reserves—the ship soaks up the energy of life and death wherever it travels, like a sponge. It passes through me, and breaks into hundreds of tiny threads, one per angel, each coordinated by one of the minds linked by Kindre to my own. Soliton’s power is nowhere near full, but there’s more than enough to drive the angels as far as we need them to go.

  “Miss Gelmei!” Naga’s voice echoes across the soon-to-be-battlefield. I can see him now, a tiny figure trotting forward on a white horse. He’s an indifferent rider, and looks awkward compared to the Legion officers beside him. “I admit to being surprised. I had thought your threat to employ the angels entirely a bluff.”

  I cup my hands to my lips and shout, “You always did underestimate me.”

  “I think you are the one who has underestimated your opponent.” Naga’s voice is unstrained, augmented by some sorcerous trick. “The Legions are no strangers to battling monsters. But I would hate to damage the fighting power of the Navy’s new flagship, so I give you this chance to stand aside.”

  “Likewise,” I shout back. “I don’t want to kill men and women who are only doing their duty to the Empire. Order them to retreat, and we can negotiate.”

  “I offered you a chance to negotiate, on quite generous terms,” Naga says. “You chose to betray my trust. I will not make the same mistake a second time.” He turns to the man riding beside him. “Lord General, destroy them.”

  Gymoto’s response is lost to the distance, but the Legion starts moving all at once, as though every man were a small part of some monstrous clockwork engine. The front ranks of infantry lower their spears, presenting a dense thicket of wood and steel, and begin marching forward at an unhurried pace. Shouts drift on the breeze, ordering the soldiers to stay level and straighten up, but from where I’m standing they already look as regular as squares on a checkerboard.

  We have to attack. I send my thoughts to the volunteers. If they get too close to the wall, they can try to break through with Myrkai or Tartak. Let them come a little bit farther, then charge. But if they pull back or run, disengage.

  Another wave of assent. The unbroken phalanx keeps coming, closer and closer, until I send the command rippling out. Now!

  The angels charge.

  It’s a strange sight, nothing like the lockstep perfection of the Legion. Each of the stone constructs is different, and the volunteers controlling them are hardly experts. Some of them wobble as they lurch into motion, or collide with their neighbors with a grinding crunch of stone. But the line moves forward, hundreds of stone feet coming down in a cavalcade that sounds like continuous thunder. Their blue crystal eyes flash as they crush the grass and weeds underfoot, half army and half avalanche.

  I cringe, anticipating the moment of impact. The Legion troops are packed shoulder-to-shoulder, confronting the angels as if they were an army of barbarian horsemen. But spears will avail them little against tons of stone. If they don’t break and flee, it’s going to be a slaughter—

  But Naga isn’t wrong about the Legions.

  At a barked command from their sergeants, a few men in each unit halt and throw up their hands. Bands of pale blue take shape, up and down the line, Tartak force forming in the air and rushing out to wrap around the limbs of the charging angels. No Tartak adept is strong enough to stop an angel, not alone, but here there are dozens of them, working together with the ease of long practice. They wrench one angel to a halt, leaving it sprawling in the dirt, and move on to the next. The front line is suddenly a mess, the monstrous constructs toppling and colliding with one another, stone chips flying.

  At another command, more Legion soldiers start glowing with the orange-red shades of Myrkai. They work in small groups, concentrating their fire into a tightly packed orb, then hurling it like a sling-stone over the heads of the front ranks to explode among their enemies. Concussive blasts ring out, licking flames washing over the angels and drowning the blue of their eyes in a mass of crimson.

  I hear panic in the minds of the volunteers, and I push my own thoughts out as forcefully as I can, the mental equivalent of shouting at the top of my lungs.

  They can’t hurt you!

  That gets their attention. I sense sheepishness, even a little laughter.

  Remember that you’re safe, back in headquarters, I tell them. And the angels are made of stone. They’ll have to do better than this to stop us. Push them back!

  The Legions may be used to fighting monsters, but they’ve never met an army of angels. I can’t imagine anything surviving amidst the hellscape of bursting fireballs and surging force just in front of the Legion lines—it makes me wish that we’d had their skill and coordination when we fought a horde of maddened crabs at the Garden—but the angels aren’t alive in the first place. The Myrkai blasts are strong enough to smash chips from their hides, but no more than that. Under the volunteers’ direction, the toppled constructs struggle back to their feet and press forward again. The legionary Tartak users move to stop them, and for a few moments a stalemate prevails, sorcerous force against tons of moving stone. But there are too many angels, and eventually one of them gets through, a six-legged, barrel-bellied thing with a dozen screaming faces. It reaches the line of spears and bulls through, smashing the weapons and sending them flying.

  Even then, though, the Legion doesn’t break and run. That section of the line backs away, leaving a gap, while the Tartak users on the other sides focus on driving the angel back. The same thing happens at another spot, and another. There’s no breakthrough, no wholesale slaughter with men and women crushed underfoot, but slowly and surely we’re driving the Legion backward. Fireballs still burst amid the angels, but the volunteers ignore them, pushing the great constructs onward in the face of everything the Emperor’s soldiers can do to stop them.

  We can do this. I’m grinning, sitting atop the double-humped angel well behind the lines. They’ll wear down, and we won’t. Naga will have to retreat.

  “Isoka!” Zarun’s voice is distant in my ear, my attention far from my physical body. “Look out!”

  I open my real eyes, and catch sight of a figure high overhead, outlined against the morning sky in green and gold. She descends rapidly, and I just have time to throw myself aside, over the edge of the angel, my armor flaring to absorb the fall as I roll in the dirt. A moment later, and Kadi hits the ground in a crouch, her own armor sending arcs of crackling green lightning in all directions. She’s left off her chain-veil, and I can see her twisted grin as she ignites her blades.

  TORI

  “You can’t be here,” the Emperor says. He gives Jack a long, curious look, then turns back to me. “If the guards find you—”

  “The guards will be along soon, so we don’t have much time,” I tell him. “Please, listen to me. We can get you out of here, but we have to go now.”

  “Get me out of here?” He blinks. “You mean out of the palace?”

  I nod. “You helped me escape. I’m here to return the favor.”

  “But…” He waves a hand helplessly. “I’m not a prisoner.”

  “That’s not what you told me last time.”

  He takes a deep breath, and his express
ion settles a little. “Oh, Tori. You don’t understand. It’s different for me. Just leaving wouldn’t mean anything. Naga would still be in command—”

  “I do understand,” I cut him off. By the look on his face, it’s not something that happens to him often. “We have a chance to get rid of Naga for good, but we need your help. He’s brought a Legion to the city, and he’s going to turn it loose against the rebels. Thousands of people are going to die if we don’t stop him. But if you appeal to the Legion, command them…”

  His face changes as he understands. Just for a moment, I see the terror, quickly smoothed away and hidden under a mask. He’s afraid of Naga. And no wonder. The head of the Immortals has been Avyn’s bogeyman since childhood.

  “It won’t work.” He gives an affected sigh. “I’m sorry, Tori. If Naga’s brought a Legion here, he must be certain of their loyalty.”

  “That’s just it. He didn’t want to. He brought them in because we were winning.” I try to suppress my frustration. “Please, Avyn. If we don’t take this chance, we’ll never get another one.”

  “I…” He shakes his head. “I thought about what you said. Emperor Curoa, for example. You’re right that he was criticized at the time for his inaction, but looking from a modern perspective it’s clear that he tried to—”

  “I don’t have time to debate history!” My control slips, my voice rising. “My sister is out there. My friends are out there. They could all die, anytime. They could be dead already.”

  He takes a step back against a bookshelf. I realize I’ve been advancing on him.

  “You don’t understand,” he says again, looking at the ground.

  “I do,” I say quietly. “I told you that. You know my power. There are times I think everyone would have been better off if I’d stayed home, done nothing, pretended it doesn’t exist. Certainly I would have been safer. I thought I had to help Isoka, but she didn’t need me. I did things…” Monster, monster, monster. “But Grandma Tadeka once told me that you do what you can with what you have, even if it means you get covered in shit. I did what I thought was right. What I had to do. I may be sorry about the way it came out, but that doesn’t mean it was wrong to try.” I take a deep breath. “You may end up sorry, too. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to try.”