Chapter 2
Good Soldiers
Hot night in the city, even if temperature differences largely stopped mattering once a Son had the mark. The expression could also mean a certain amount of shadowbeast activity; Nigel had no time for semantics, because his Elder had gone down under a knot of nthlei.
“Eddie!” Michael screamed, combat sorcery giving the word a basso thunder very like the battle-roar any Son of Ymre could produce. The curly-haired Younger may have also temporarily forgotten tactical discipline, simply flinging himself at the snarling, somersaulting mass.
“Michael!” Nigel had no time to wince, his broadsword singing as it clove a jana-spider in twain before he kicked one half away with brutal efficiency. “Stop!”
Once a battle degenerated past a certain early point, very little could halt momentum.
High nasty ultrasonic whistles sounded north and east, neither too close but it was only a matter of time.
Boise was deeply infested, and the other two trios they’d been sent with no doubt had their hands full as well.
Advance duty only took volunteers, and a lirai examined each one to make certain they were merely dedicated, not actively suicidal.
Especially after the late revelations of highly placed treachery—one even featuring a Dreamer gone crazy with despair, which any Son would shrug and admit was eminently understandable.
A single instance in several millennia simply showed their mettle.
The only wonder was that more lirai didn’t withdraw their grace, now that it was known to be possible.
In any case, with the corruption rooted out it had suddenly become more feasible—or slightly easier, perhaps it could be said—to expand past a spine-chain of mountains, the extreme boundary of the Sons’ territory on this continent since the mid-nineteenth century.
At least, of the current calendar.
Michael descended upon the tentacle-infested helldogs like a spirit of vengeance, a clatter of gunfire and deep thrum of battle-roar bouncing off concrete walls and floor.
The lower levels of this particular parking structure were prime breeding grounds for both taik flowers and nthlei; if they had a lirai and another trio they could cleanse the entire concrete pile and a few blocks in every direction as a matter of course.
But no civilian or even a potential would survive this shadowbeast-infested mess. This third of the country was underwater, Nigel and his lads swarmed by crazed sharks.
“Pour les Reveurs!” An ancient battlecry, rarely used nowadays.
The rage had him, move and countermove standing out with stark chessboard clarity; Nigel waded through spore-puffing vegetable horrors and scuttling fungal-infested giant spiders, his blade a solid streak of silver and each move calculated with the instinct of countless losing battles.
The creatures cowered before that fury, and he sheared through the spine of a nthlei leaping for Michael’s back just as the Younger managed to free the Elder from their slithering, crunching press.
In fact, Michael was so enthusiastic he nearly went over backward while hauling lean blond Edward from the fray, and it was up to Nigel to save them both.
A red curtain fell over his vision. Dangerous—the watchword was control, not berserker—but when his vision cleared, his back was propped against concrete and Edward was crouched a short distance away, ragged breathing filling echoing silence.
Michael leaned against the wall on Nigel’s other side, coughing hard before politely spitting a bright red gobbet to the side.
It landed with a splat, followed by the sound of ribs popping back into place, and Nigel winced in sympathy.
His own internal scaffolding had taken a bit of battering as well.
“Do not,” Edward rasped, “want to do that again.”
“Gave me a scare, you bastard.” Michael cleared his throat, grimacing. Huntshine shimmered in his pupils, tiny dots of blue light. He was well-daubed with blood and hellhound ichor alike; Nigel’s own gear was soaked in both substances.
His throat was afire and the caustic goop dripping in his eyes a distraction he could have done without, but they were all three breathing and nobody had an amputated limb; good enough.
He hated regrowth.
“Well done, lads.” The high ultrasonic trill-thrill of hunting-horns underlaid his words, closer now, and accompanied by a thread of dark, unhealthy glee whispering inside his skull.
A short, stunned silence—Nigel found both Elder and Younger staring at him, both with a variety of unconcealed shock. Surely he did not compliment them so rarely?
Fathers were to be strict, but also just.
“Expected you to yell at me for getting caught like that. Rookie move.” But Edward grinned, the slashes on his face sealing into angry pink lines. Those across his torso, visible under torn shirt and jacket—he had narrowly avoided evisceration—were much more vivid, dark red.
At least his guts were still packed where they should be. All they had lost was some few ounces of claret.
“And assign me drills for jumping in,” Michael chimed in, dark eyes dancing.
“I will have to forego the pleasure.” It was not quite a humorous observation; Nigel had not assigned drills for a few weeks only because their actual combat time was well past sufficient for practice. “Now we must move.”
“Anyone close by?” Edward’s brow was creased, his cheek striped with dots of drying blood. He scrubbed at his forehead with hard, stiff fingertips, a semi-nervous tic.
At least in fierce combat the voice of the Mad God could often be shut out. Not entirely, but enough.
Of course the Elder wanted to know if backup was a possibility. The temptation to lie was near overwhelming, but unworthy of such good soldiers and beneath a Father as well. Nigel’s thumb rubbed the band of his signet, snug against his filthy palm.
“No.” He did not glance down to see the heavy, dark gem set in an alloy unsurpassed by modern metallurgy, the mark of one burdened with command.
There was neither need nor point to such a look.
The lads exchanged another look, and Nigel almost wished he hadn’t lived long enough to reach this stage.
Death might be easier, but only if the cursed souls of those bearing the mark were not consigned to the Mad God afterward.
In the end, fear of that prospect—rather than the iron will his kind were supposed to possess—kept him going.
In order to survive, they needed to not be caught by the unclean tonight. If the other trios were too busy to speak, retreat to safe harbour was the correct tactical move.
Is it the strategic one, though? Nigel had to admit, if only to himself, that he had a very bad feeling about all this. Two scheduled check-ins, flown past without a single word from their fellows. Not entirely out of the ordinary, especially on advance guard, and yet.
The situation was beginning to look very much like a siege, and a well-coordinated one at that.
“They could just be busy,” Edward offered, not quite tentatively. It was an Elder’s job to float such ideas, providing a foil to instinct, gun-shy cowardice, the whispers.
Or all of the above.
“Unlikely,” Nigel was forced to admit. “Time to fall back, all the way to Billings if necessary.”
“Haven’t even found a single potential.” But Michael didn’t say it very loudly.
Dreamers—or even regular psychics without a lirai’s particular constellation of talents—were far rarer than those who had the moral flexibility and physical hardiness to survive a Son’s mark and constant, grinding battle.
In a city this overrun, the lifespan of such delicate creatures had to be incredibly short. Inside his head, the whispers mounted another notch; the Mad God could sense hopelessness, and the feeling was like unto a feast for that terrible, ancient creature.
“We fight the good fight not to win, but to measure ourselves.” He sounded dry and pompous even to himself, Nigel realized, and a dry, barking laugh strangled itself in his throat.
“That Shakespeare?” Edward actually perked up a bit as he peeled himself away from the wall, rolled his shoulders, and checked his guns with blurring-quick motions. Every weapon was already stowed neatly, but it never hurt to be certain.
He must have been rattled.
“Sadly, no.” Nigel allowed himself a grim smile. “But I’m sure he would have said it if he’d had time.”
A few moments later the parking structure held only echoes and shadowbeast corpses, swiftly deliquescing into puddles of rotting ichor. The chill, shrill whistles of hunting-horns mounted, first in one quadrant, then another.
Dawn was a long way off.
* * *
It wasn’t even a proper frontier temple yet—merely a structure Americans would call antique, half renovated and as yet only half stone-clad, no garden or salle, a dormitory instead of separate cells, the armory merely a long room with hastily hardened walls, the outer defenses strong but raw and newly set.
There was no space which could function as a temporary liraim either, since any potential collected must needs be rushed eastward under heavy guard.
It had been home for a few increasingly busy months, and with three trios of Sons the construction work had been proceeding apace.
Now, it was merrily aflame, the just-discovered bodies of the trio left standing guard about to be consumed by sorcery-fueled fire, and Nigel didn’t let loose a torrent of filthy language only because he was too bloody busy at the moment.
“Down!” Michael yelled; both Father and Elder dropped without hesitation. The Younger was choosing his shots, but soon the tide of nthlei, jana-spiders, and junior kthul would lose whatever caution beasts of such appetite could lay claim to.
Certain things could be told from a configuration of murdered bodies, and Nigel had an awful feeling about how both Henri and Joel—Elder and Father—had been sent to whatever awaited their souls. And their Younger, terribly chewed and battered, was past all earthly punishment for treachery.
Not that Nigel would have meted out anything other than swift, painless passage. It was enough that most Sons did not fall prey to the whispers, the slithering perception-tricks, the hopeless attempts to stave off a mad god’s soft, chilling faux-reasonableness.
Those who did were to be pitied—after they were dealt with.
He was up again in less than a heartbeat, sword singing as it clove air and unclean flesh alike. The lads dropped back, Edward now taking the duty of covering fire as Michael reloaded and ensured there would be no flanking maneuver.
Pale smears lingering to the rear of the horde were a pair of moondogs—hunting hounds, larger than stray nthlei, collars dripping with red gems set in tangles of thin dark metal filament.
The beasts snap-snarled, driving other creatures before them yet not quite brave enough to approach.
If their leashes were held by lunn’yie or sarnaki, the accompanying psychic pressure and direction would provide ersatz courage.
These, however, were mere coursers. Perhaps they had tasted human flesh tonight—a few unlucky civilians, a weak psychic unable to hide from the Mad God’s minions in time—but a trio of fully armed Sons was a wholly different matter.
If any sarnaki arrived, however, the battle would shift. Quickly.
“Fall back!” Nigel yelled, and his lads gave a good account of themselves as they did. Foul ichor spattered, unholy flesh made terrible noises as it separated, bones cloven with brittle, nasty snapping sounds. If they could reach the garages…
Just as he considered the prospect, a rumbling roar barreled through the ruined temple and he knew their transport had been rendered inoperable. Petrol was so very flammable, after all.
Be difficult for this to go any worse. Just thinking as much was tempting fate. At least while he was so occupied the Mad God’s taunting could be shoved aside, save for the slow candlewax drip of hopelessness.
“Go!” Edward yelled, a paroxysm of encouragement. “Go go fucking go!”
Apparently Michael was fey with bloodlust as well. “Language,” he growled, the old joke nearly capable of bringing a minor grim amusement-crack to even a Father’s granite-walled calm.
Nigel sheared the head from a junior kthul and heard the hunting-horns—overwhelmingly close now, piercing glass needles stabbing every creature with a single erg of psychic sensitivity in range.
He barked the command to disengage, moving forward to allow both his boys a heartbeat’s worth of lead time.
A fighting retreat, the most difficult maneuver in any tactical or strategic sense, but they were good lads.
The very best, and they would give everything they had.
He knew, with sickening clarity, that he might lose at least one of them tonight.