Showdown
The ruins of the Houses of the Holy burned behind me, a conflagration of assholes howling while their flesh melted. Normally, I'd feel something. Not a twinge of guilt. Not a flash of conscience this time. But in this place, with their victims huddled beneath the streets like common rats, stripped of dignity, bearing the scars of wounds emotional and physical, I only felt cold. Maybe it was the spirit of Fela, whispering in my ear. Maybe it was simpler, the rage I felt when I thought back on the little girl's face in that makeshift infirmary.
Before me, the High Harrower's House stood, an ivory tower of white stone stained red and orange with the reflection of the flames behind. My shadow stretched out like a reaper come, painting the steps ahead black. I paused for only a moment, to catch my breath. Something in me took stock. Sticky with blood—not all of it mine—numerous aches and pains, burns. Rage. I tightened my grip on the blades, the hilts digging into my palms. Ahead, the tower. From a distance, the white pristine, and near, a monument to debauchery. Bodies stretched and flowed into one another, flesh moldable, bone the scaffold for horror.
I opened my mouth and screamed.
"NEMAN."
The doors to the High House opened, and a wizened man emerged, two burly men at his sides. Short scythes hung from their belts, wicked hand-held hooks that could catch a blade or rip a person's guts out like unspinning a skein of twine. Normally, I'd feel bad cutting the heart from a wrinkled testicle. I thought I could make an exception in this case.
The man to my left moved, and I went right. For a moment, the councilor's bodyguard wore an expression of surprise, like a cat who's just been surprised by a finger in the ass. He tugged at the weapon on his belt, but the problem with hooks is they get caught. I solved his problem by opening his throat with one knife, the other ripping into a kidney and shredding it like old paper.
I kicked him off my blade, the body tumbling down the stairs, and feinted left. The bodyguard there had managed to unhook his scythe and raised it. Instead, I swung around, the councilor gaping. I looped an arm around his throat, pressing one knife against his heart, the other into his spine.
"Let him go," the bodyguard ordered.
"Surely you want something?" the old man wheedled.
"I do," I said.
He huffed a sigh of relief, relaxed a little. "Money, then? Power? Maybe something more... visceral? You like boys? Girls? Young?"
His bodyguard crept closer, and I shot him a look. "No," I said.
The big man paused.
"Good. Good. We can negotiate now," Neman said. "What is it you want?"
"How would I get a man's heart?" I asked.
He paused for a moment.
"Oh, I know," I said.
I rammed a blade home, severing his spinal cord. He went limp, and I laid him down, then looked up at his bodyguard.
"You're about to be unemployed. Live or dead, your choice."
He looked at me, shrugged, and stomped, then jogged down the steps. I turned back to Neman. He looked up with rheumy eyes, breath coming in harsh hitches.
"You feel that?" I asked. "That's your body shutting down. Now, I only cut above your ass, so your legs are already gone, but you're gonna leak fluids like a punctured fruit. Fortunately," and I straddled him, "you'll feel this just fine."
I pressed the tip of a long blade against his chest, watched his mouth work. His eyes wept. Maybe he was crying. Maybe it was genuine remorse. I didn't give a fuck. I leaned into the knife and felt the first crack as it pierced the sternum. He screamed, as much as anyone with a severed spine can, like a teakettle too long on the fire.
I took my time cutting his heart out.
I slipped my gory prize into a pouch I’d pulled off the dead guard. Behind me, the fighting had spilled from the House, more guards joining the melee from the High Harrower’s tower. Kina had ignored us, or changed her mind, and her people had fought through the smoke and fire to join us.
Cord had liberated a couple of stabswords from corpses and spun and kicked, chopping anyone who decided I was an easier target than the newly liberated mob. A commotion at the back sounded, and Rek and Lux joined, the Aunties not far behind. Someone had thrown up half-burned furniture as a narrow barricade on the steps, and with the new arrivals, they managed to hold off the influx of guards.
Cord made his way to my side.
“Any sign of the High Harrower?”
I shook my head and gestured to the House above us. “Probably holed up in there.”
As if in confirmation, a keening wail sounded from the windows of the tower, and the guards howled in answer. Their flesh twisted and warped as the Harrower magic took hold, bending them into new impossible shapes. They melted and flowed, merging into great hulks with bone claws and glowering brows. As soon as the transformations finished, the beasts charged the barricades, smashing them aside easily, laying into the crowd.
A sound of misery and dismay echoed in the stone corridor as lives bled away by the score. Blood soon slicked the steps, mingling with the contents of voided bowels, bodies tumbling back into the ruins of the burning House behind us.
Lux spoke a word, arcane and guttural, and my stomach clenched as the air was sucked from the immediate vicinity. For a moment, everyone held their breath, unsure where the next would come from. Then it returned, in a sudden rush, striking downward like a hammer and blasting the golems to paste.
More spilled from the House before us, and I cursed.
“How many does he have in there? It’s like a fucking clown carriage.”
The others came to stand at my shoulders as I slipped two new blades from their sheathes. My right arm ached, but Cord had bound it in the brief interlude, and now the blood soaked into the strips of cloth rather than the stones below. A great roar went up behind us as the dissidents broke the barricades, eager to meet their oppressors on the field.
I charged along with them, my blood up. Rek and Lux laid waste around them, bodies severed, burst or burnt in an unfailing line toward the door. Cord was more subtle, slipping blades into spines and cutting throats.
I dodged a massive paw and slid between a beast’s legs, blade coming up as I did. My left slipped into his thigh, severing the femoral and sticking on the bone, the other opening his dangling sack, testicles unravelling like a skein of dropped yarn. He howled and clutched his nethers, and Rek stepped in and removed his head.
“Another kill for Fuckbringer!” Rek shouted.
I paused mid-fight. “Fuckbringer?”
He lopped the head off yet another guard, gore arcing out like a disturbing rainbow. He swung to me and shrugged.
“It’s my axe’s name.”
“I would’ve gone with Mr. Choppington,” I said.
“That is better,” he said. “I knew it.”
The fight resumed, and another beast made for me, collapsing as its ribs imploded inward, bones piercing organ and splitting veins from the inside. It rolled down the stairs, leaking fluid, and I looked to Lux, who threw me a wink. I grinned and charged forward again. The door was within reach.
It blew off its hinges, blasting me back and sending my ears to ringing. The man who stepped out was of a height with Cord, with curly hair and two mismatched eyes. Something was wrong with him, however. His flesh crawled, as if infested with a thousand worms, and his mouth twitched, from grimace to grin and back.
“Yenn!” Cord shouted.
Rek had knelt beside me to help me to my feet.
“Yenn?” I asked.
“Last of the Seven. He doesn’t look so good.”
Yenn laughed as if he’d heard us. “All the power of a god!” he screamed, and raised a hand, palm out. His face contorted with rage. “Die,” he hissed.
Behind us, two score of rebels dropped, lives blown away like leaves on the wind.
“Fuck,” I muttered, staggering to my feet.
Rek and Lux were already moving forward. Contempt filled Yenn’s face, replaced by a moment of shock as
a brown and white blur launched itself at him, followed closely by a spectral goose.
“MR. MEOWINGTON?” Rek shouted.
“Fucking Casper?!” Cord echoed.
The cat slammed into the Harrower, the goose passing through him and fading away.
“Hey you asshole, you discorporated my goose!” Cord shouted.
Mr. Meowington had already raised himself to a fury, scratching and clawing, angry yowls filling the air. Yenn ripped it from his face, and Rek charged with a burst of rage, Lux close behind. Yenn swept his hand toward them.
“Die!”
And two of my best friends in the world and their cat ceased to be. Grief and anger rippled across Cord’s features, and he flung himself forward, blades extended.
“Die!”
The first blast did nothing, and Cord kept coming.
“Die!”
The second stripped flesh from my father’s body as easily as a breeze moves snow. And still he advanced.
“DIE!”
Cord staggered forward. The blades in his hand drooped, then fell, an inch short of scoring the man’s flesh. My father, my best friend, cracked and flaked. He looked at me, anguish on his face.
“Ah, fucknuggets1,” he said.
Then his body blew away like ash on the wind. Silence echoed in the wake of steel on stone. Like that, my family had been snuffed like errant flames.
I thought I’d feel more. Maybe I would, later. If there was a later. I stepped forward, Yenn glaring at me with broken eyes. He raised a hand, and I flinched. I hadn’t meant to, but when someone is aiming an arrow at your heart, it just kind of happens.
“Die,” he said.
A wind, mild as a summer day.
He tried again.
“Die!”
Still nothing. Whatever Fela had done for me, whatever I had done for her, our bargain was fulfilled. In the end, she had protected me.
Yenn screamed in rage, and lifted his arms to the sky. Great chunks of stone and earth tore themselves free, floating upward as he pulled life and power from the earth. Grass and flowers and trees withered and died. He thrust his arms forward, as if pushing a heavy cart toward me.
“DIE!” His voice was the cracking of the earth, thunder in a clear sky.
I walked through his assault as if he had only suggested I enjoy the day, while even the corpses littering the steps decayed into carrion meat. Rage twisted his visage, showcasing a glimpse of the horrors beneath. I ignored them and continued to approach, taking the steps one by one. His face contorted further and further into a parody of humanity. His flesh stretched and tore as the god within him threatened to break free. I got up close. Close enough to smell his fetid breath and look in his eyes. What I saw there was fear.
“What are you?” he asked.
“Pissed,” I said.
My blades pierced him, one in the ribs, the other in his chest. He gurgled and fell back. For a moment, the world was quiet, not a single thing daring to move, to cry, to speak. And then a squeal broke the air, a warbling call from the last of the Seven’s throat, rising and rising.
The Eager Dead
Kina grabbed my elbow. My brain whirled. Everyone dead. The city in flames. I couldn’t process my grief. Who was she again? She was shouting something into my ear, and I lashed out, as one would with a fly. She danced back and dealt me a slap. The world rang, and I blinked it away. Once it settled, her voice made sense again. Oh, yeah, the rebel leader.
“They’re at the walls!”
“Who?” I asked.
“The Hestians!”
“Fuck.” Cord stirring up a hornet’s nest was coming back to burn us in the ass.
I rushed with her through a narrow alley in the Harrower gardens that led to the streets. Chaos still ruled, but someone had organized a fire brigade, and citizens were busy passing buckets of water from the canals to the burning buildings. We rushed through the streets, Kina’s people watching our backs, cutting down any stragglers left who would impede us.
One man, naked and greased, ran screaming by, followed a beat later by a massive ape, its erection the size of my arm. I shuddered. Kina drew my attention, and we ran on, pressing through the gathering crowd of survivors and freed slaves.
We found the stairs leading to the walls, and I paused before them. A dirty young woman with her arm in a makeshift sling was doing her best to hold a short blade. I took it from her and pressed the pouch holding the heart into her hand.
“There is a girl. Young. Sick. One leg. You know her?”
She’d been one of those beneath the streets and nodded.
“Take this to her and get both of you out of the city.”
The woman nodded and sprinted away, looking relieved to be free of the burden of killing. I turned back to the stairs and took them two at a time, gaining the top. The field before the city teemed with soldiers in silver and red. Fortunately whatever air troop they’d brought had been grounded by the ravens that held the parapets, a black line. As I watched, one attempted to gain the sky, and with a raw cry, two launched themselves to intercept. They threw themselves into his engine, a black and red mass of feather and bone. Smoke erupted, and the man fell, spiraling into the ground with a bone-shattering crunch. Cord had somehow found an ally.
Still, the others came on. A regiment raised arquebuses, firing into the defenders on the wall in a cloud of smoke. Lead balls smashed into brain and bone and ribs, and a score of the men and women standing with us fell. Still others wielded bows and pikes and swords, and they advanced inexorably.
I looked down and saw others had already met the wall and threw makeshift ladders up.
“Burn those down!” I shouted.
Men raced to my order as the enemy climbed. I caught the eyes of one and he grinned. Oros had given nothing up. He fell without a sound as burning pitch poured onto the dry wood, and it burst into flame.
“Fuck fuck fuckity fuck,” I muttered.
“Any ideas?” Kina asked.
“Yeah, one,” I said. “But it’s gonna suck. Buy me some time.”
She nodded and issued orders. A group of the freed charged from the sally port, hammering into the attackers. Men screamed and died on both sides as the battle raged with new intensity.
I looked at my arm. A gift from my mother, the goddess of death. I ran to the steps, then out the port, standing at the edge of the battle. The defenders fell faster than we could supply them. These were ordinary men and women, despite the uprising. They were up against a superior force. Professional soldiers. I glanced back at Vignon, city of mercenaries, and had an idea.
I slammed the palm of my dead arm against the ground. I desperately wished for Tug’s advice about now.
“Okay, you bitch,” I growled. “Do your thing.”
For a moment, nothing happened. I growled in frustration and dug the fingers of that hand into the soft loam. I gathered every bit of rage, every bit of that gift Cord had claimed was my edge and imagined it rushing into the dirt.
Cold. Cold like I’d never felt wracked my bones, poured through me, as if I was an open door winter blew through. And it delved. Wrapped itself around bone and old sinew. Around fleshless bodies and ones still rotting.
One by one the dead rose, bursting free from earthly grave and prison. From inside the city they came, risen from the beds of the hospice in squalor, from proud biers on the plain. They crawled and shambled, walked with proud heads as they shook the dirt of centuries. All the spent lives of Vignon’s wars.
Tattered battle standards rose. A tarnished horn blew, and Oros’ men were engaged. I collapsed, the cold still blowing through me. It had sapped me, drawn on my own life to give life. I closed my eyes, just for a moment, and hoped it was enough.
The dark closed in, eager.
Camor’s Third Rule
The space between the worlds cracked, broken and spiderwebbed, and here in it, the great wyrm Oros. He coiled, alabaster scales shining, red eyes leaking rage. I stood before him on
a featureless plain. We wasted no time on words.
The dragon struck, and I barely avoided it, though my blades ripped from my hands with his passage. He came on again, and I held up a hand—my left. The dead hand. It struck the dragon in the chest, and he recoiled, bellowing and retreating, a smoking scar on his chest where I’d touched him.
My victory was short lived. I didn’t understand the vagaries of the place between worlds, and he appeared beneath me, seizing me in vast jaws. I felt teeth like daggers pierce my guts, shatter my pelvis. It was all I could do to force him away with the dead hand, Oros spitting me out upon the plain, half his face blackened.
He rolled himself up then, a massive spiral of coils, and I knew this was it. He would devour me whole, pain be damned. I lay in the space, unable to move.
And of course, that’s when Cord showed up.
He stood defiant over my body, and as I watched, rippled and changed, becoming taller, leaner. Indistinct, in a way. His skin darkened, his eyes golden. Camor stood in his place then, and They looked back and grinned. I gaped, a practice I’d lambasted in the past as only appropriate when stunned tremendously or slapped with a mackerel. A golden glow surrounded them, suffused their skin until they looked bronze.
They leapt from the black plain, and the two giants smashed into one another. Stars in the firmament winked out at their collision, fires lit in the Frozen Hells, thawing those hoary souls for one brief minute.
The gods wrestled, Camor now a golden giant struggling with an alabaster serpent straining to pierce their flesh, a second later a massive fox with its jaws around Oros’ throat. The dragon coiled around Cord and squeezed, coils moving in a peristaltic wave. Cord gasped, grunted with effort, and grew brighter.
They freed an arm, and from Their breast, drew a burning sun. With a final grunt of effort, They rammed it down Oros’ throat. The god screamed and fell to earth, fire burning him from the inside. As the dragon plummeted, its scales took on the glow of a shooting star, and soon he was incandescent with flame.
Thieves' War Page 22
