Chapter 42 #7
She shakes her head. ‘Still not convinced.’
The square rapidly fills with the body of Hesper’s army, Arissa at the head, still on that horse.
Shipwright eyes her. ‘She’s got style, I’ll give her that.’
Shroudweaver makes a noncommittal noise. ‘A stylish target.’
His head’s racing, trying to find a trace of the Empire’s army. Something keeps pinging his consciousness, like drops in a well, but the ripples and echoes are just too refracted for him to do anything about it.
And she’s right. He’s not well. Bindings held too long. The shake in his muscles threading his nerves. His ribs jittering with the run of small souls trying to find a way out. He clamps down, hard. It’s not the time for it.
Where the hell are they? Where is the Gem, if nothing else?
The marines continue to take up position, working their way slowly outwards, building by building. They don’t have the bodies to cover a city this size. It’ll slow them down. Perhaps that’s the plan. He laughs to himself. How would he know? This isn’t his world.
Shipwright’s hand on his shoulder makes him start. She smiles. ‘Sorry. Deep in thought?’
He nods. ‘If I don’t find them …’
She hunkers down next to him. ‘Do you always pile everything on yourself like this?’ She gestures. ‘There are hundreds of people out there. We’ll find them.’
‘None of them are me,’ he mutters.
She snorts. ‘Wow. That’s a nice ego.’
He smiles. ‘It’s not that, it’s just this magic, it’s … familiar.’
A thunderous noise interrupts him as the ground shakes. Brimlicker’s curse peels from above, loud and violent, followed by screams.
He rushes to the door in time to see the remains of the square melt and fall into a widening sinkhole. The men and women inside tumble one upon another, Arissa’s horse reeling back from the edge as the stones shudder into the ground.
A shimmer like a heatwave and the first thing he hears are the harsh harmonies hauling the earth down into the pit.
Another stark singing woman, half-twin to the one on the field, but older, a flare of silver in her hair where age hasn’t brought it down to salt.
And in front of her, suddenly, the ranks of the Empire, roaring down the spokes of the square, the dead at the front, the living with those wicked spears bringing up the rear.
One of Brimlicker’s crew curses, and his crossbow twangs. The bolt takes the silver-haired woman in the throat and her song gurgles into blood. The ground stabilises.
The remaining marines form up around the edge of the pit and take the brunt of the first charge. Shields and bones splinter. Their line buckles, holds, barely.
Shipwright is already moving, a blur as her spinners whine into action.
Shroudweaver follows her, for lack of a better plan, reaching a hand towards the distant body of the silver-haired woman.
Her soul is just loose enough for him to snag it, sliding it free past the slick bolt.
He lets it shudder down his forearm and releases it to take shape inside the front lines of the advancing dead.
It forms a figure, for the barest moment. Made of light and fury. A new god, that exists for a second amid a tangle of limbs and teeth, before it dies in a detonation of gold light. Limbs rain down upon the marines who flinch backwards. A little slice of Shroudweaver’s heart yelps with glee.
Then, for some stupid reason, his legs are taking him towards the front line.
He sees Shipwright arrow off towards another breach, and briefly wants to follow her, until the momentum of hammering feet pulls them apart.
He’s thrown into a gap in the shield-wall and suddenly he’s among the press.
A hand pulls him forwards, a face yells for help, and he’s in the middle of it all.
Bodies thick on either side him. His movement completely bound to the shift of their muscles, the ragged push of their breath.
Men and women cursing, spitting and gouging.
The space he stands in was created by the woman at his feet. She’s holding her guts in, barely. Her wet eyes meet his for a second before her comrades drag her back behind their lines. He chokes down a rising panic that tastes like bile.
The man to his left is bleeding from a cut above his eye, the stink of his sweat still mixed with the wet of the sea.
He grins madly at Shroudweaver. ‘They’re coming again!’
He’s not wrong. There’s a ringing in Shroudweaver’s ears as he sees the dead of the Empire charge down the street once more, trying to force the survivors back and over into the pit.
Time slick as butter. He can feel the hammer of his own heart, a hundred times faster than the feet rushing towards him. Terror flicks his neck like a rope.
‘Shields up!’ shouts one of the captains, a brute of a man, silver hair bright against his dark-skin, his voice rolling like a shore tide. The shields lock with a shout.
It takes him about that long to realise he doesn’t have a shield.
The woman on his right leans in as their bodies press forwards, her short hair red as blood. ‘Duck your skin behind here, weaver.’
He slips behind the curve of her shield, and the man to his left locks the rim of his own against it. ‘We’ve got you.’
The dead are a couple of meters out, close enough for Shroudweaver to feel the drumming of their feet, too many for him to halt completely. But maybe that isn’t necessary.
He tries to hold his nerve as they thunder closer, focuses on the small details. The yellow sheen of their bared teeth, the twitch of flies drinking at their eyes. The faded hint of inked designs, chipped paint on nails.
Shroudweaver feels the bodies either side of him tense. The stink of those last few moments, piss and sweat and blood.
He watches the Empire’s dead tumble forwards towards the shields held protectively in front of him. Reaches out to the ragged souls of their front line, and pulls.
The first line of the dead drop as the life is wrenched from them.
Shroudweaver reels backwards, the silver thread on his wrist burning like fire as unleashed essence thunders into his chest. He falls into the mud with a force that pushes the air from his lungs.
The charging soldiers are nimbler than he expected, vaulting over their fallen comrades.
The man on his left reaches down to help him, and then the lines hit.
The marines stagger back. A dead man’s mace takes his new friend in the side of the skull. The man’s face crumples around the socket, and his body lists sideways, his strong hand going limp.
He lands on Shroudweaver. A mess of muscle and armour and sticky fluids. Shroudweaver flails, rolls clumsily from underneath as the red-haired soldier takes the mace-wielding corpse in the neck with a wicked hook blade.
Its head detaches slowly, suspended on strips of dry flesh. Around them, the line buckles. The weight of bodies is relentless. They don’t lose many, but with every soldier that drops on the Hesper side they’re pushed back towards that terrible pit which used to be the town square.
Shroudweaver can see the remnants of the vanguard scrabbling around down there.
Heaped up on each other in a desperate effort to get out, but the sheared walls of the pit are too sharp.
The stench of their pain is overwhelming.
Silver soul threads fraying and tangling around bodies that yell for help.
Help’s going to be slow in coming. If they turn their backs for a second on the advancing army, they’re all dead.
On the other side of the pit, he can see Shipwright swing like a wrecking ball into the centre of a knot of dead warriors.
Maces shudder into splinters as they arc towards her head.
Her punches drive through ribcages and detonate spines.
The air is cut by the high, thin whine of her spinners, already driven beyond fever pitch.
The marines with her cluster in her wake, back-to-back. She can’t keep them all safe forever.
A chunk and screech from above, as ballistae fire rains down into the ranks of the dead.
The bolt-men have finally, mercifully, managed to take up positions on the twisted battlements.
Most of the dead go down if hit squarely, but enough lumber forwards, pinned through shoulder and legs with hideous black barbs.
Shroudweaver ducks another swipe from his right, dodges low and kicks out, scything the legs from under his attacker. Brings that beautiful mace down to crush a skull. Tries not to dwell on the eggshell sound.
Another sound under that, tremors dancing lightly around the edges of his bones and teeth like the first murmurs of a landslide.
Trumpets on the south side of the pit, and Arissa’s there, still atop the charger, swinging round towards Shipwright’s flank on the east. A cohort of marines with her, javelins arcing out to hit the side of the charging dead.
As they near the press, she rises up in the saddle and shakes her arms. From her silvered gauntlets blades flow downwards like water.
She leans forwards and scythes out. Heads and limbs tumble.
The horse rears, and hooves thunder through shield and bone. For a moment, they have respite.
‘Weaver!’ the red-haired soldier yells and his attention snaps back to their own line. Holding, surprisingly. They might be trained as soldiers, but the men and women here grew up on back-alley squabbles. Shivdancers and blackjack babies the lot of them.
The redhead’s having a time of it though, two howling corpses pressing them hard.
Shouts rise from the pit at Shroudweaver’s back, and part of him thinks about the ready supply of souls just feet away. He could turn the tide right now. His red right hand twitches.
‘Weaver!’ the redhead screams again, and he turns from the pit and runs towards the sound, bodily tackling one of the dead to the ground.