Chapter 42 #8
Shroudweaver turns his shoulder to it as it falls, hears its ribs creak. Its head rolls madly, jaws gnashing, hollow, shrivelled eyes lining its sockets. He catches a faint smell of the perfume it must once have worn. Mouths an apology as he drives his head into the bridge of its sunken nose.
Too close, too frantic to get a grip on its soul.
But he’d learnt a thing or two in Hesper, and in the Aestering before that.
As its head lolls back, he swings a fist in from the side and cracks its skull against a cobblestone.
It goes limp, and he staggers upright to see the small redhead dusting themself off.
‘Bit tardy, Weaver.’
‘Sorry,’ he smiles.
‘Still alive to complain,’ they grin, a slight shake in their voice. ‘Maybe not for much longer though, eh?’
He follows their gaze as Hesper’s diminished line reforms and contracts around the lip of the pit.
Another squadron of the dead are marshalling to move down the street.
Perhaps a hundred. And behind them, the living warriors of Thell, at least a hundred again, their bright armour and tall spears ready, their blonde hair incongruously beautiful in the mid-afternoon sun.
He imagines there must be around the same number on the other side of the square and curses under his breath.
The red-haired soldier nods. ‘That’s about the size of it.’
The Empire’s army advances. At the head of the living soldiers stands a brute of man, heavy-shouldered as if carved from stone, half as wide again as the others, a hammer on his hip like it belongs there.
More worryingly, by his side, a tall woman, iron hair bound back behind her brow, arms festooned with carved wooden charms. Something in the shake of her soul reminds Shroudweaver of the singer who had collapsed the square. A vibration, deep and strong. A bell in her left hand.
He points. ‘We take her out first.’
His short-haired companion nods. ‘I’m Dropdancer, by the way. Thanks for asking.’
He opens his mouth to apologise and they nudge him playfully.
‘It’s OK, you idiot. Just want someone to know my name before I die.’
He grimaces. ‘You’re not going to die, Drop.’
They put a hand on his wrist, hold his gaze for a second. ‘Optimism. I like that. Cute.’
Shroudweaver scans the enemy lines. Something’s held them up. The dead are shuffling incrementally forwards, the living soldiers casting around nervously.
Then it arrives. That lean black horse shouldering its way through the ranks of the dead. Atop its back, the Gem, its faceless white stone mask scanning their lines, the quartz gleaming in the sun that filters through the drifting ash.
He feels its gaze alight on him and watches as it slowly unsheathes a black sword.
A shout from behind them. ‘Ladders down!’
Shroudweaver risks a glance over his shoulder. Those long ladders and poles they brought to breach the walls have found a better use now, threading down into the pit, forming a web of wood for the injured to scramble up.
Arissa and Shipwright are at the edge, co-ordinating the effort. Slowly, too slowly, the wounded start to wend their way to safety, like dragonflies on a river stem.
Dropdancer follows his gaze. ‘We just need to hold long enough to get them out, Weaver. Long enough to get them out.’
They eye the slowly advancing line. ‘Can you buy us time?’
Shroudweaver counts the dead, ten upon ten again. More than anyone has ever tried to unbind. In a rush, in the midst of battle. He can hear the dry soft laughter of his teachers. An arrogant boy. A stupid, overconfident, arrogant boy.
He flashes Dropdancer what he hopes is a winning smile. ‘Of course. Just keep me alive a bit longer.’
They run a whetstone along the curve of their sword, glancing up from beneath their brows. ‘You got it, Weaver.’
As if it’s heard his lie, the Gem drops its sword and howls, a thin screech like a vulture pulled from a kill.
As the black sword falls, the dead begin to run.
Hesper’s shield-wall locks with a shout once more. Tired. Quieter. Barely echoed on the other side of the pit.
Shroudweaver tries to calm his churning stomach. He’d thought the second charge might be easier, somehow. It’s not.
If anything, they’re faster than last time.
Fifty yards away, then forty, then twenty.
He tries to clear his breathing, flush out his body and mind.
Find the threads to pull the souls from as many as he can.
He can hear shouts from behind him; hear Dropdancer’s harsh breath to his right, the muttered curses of the man who has moved forwards to fill the gap on his left. They’re depending on him.
He clears his mind, breathes deep and reaches out.
Something hits him like a fist in the gut.
Cold, flinty. He looks down. There’s nothing there, but he can feel it driving into his stomach, like a stone slowly forced into his intestines, ragged edges tearing.
He falls backwards, vision blurring and catches sight of the Gem as he does, its implacable mask focused directly on him even as that black horse thunders forwards.
The dead are a bare few feet from the front line.
His vision shifts as Dropdancer hauls him up. They’re mouthing something at him, but the pain has filled his head like water.
Then the world shifts.
A bell tolls out, light and fierce. Shroudweaver can feel the vibrations lift the hair on his head and run down his spine. That iron-haired woman gestures, and a building in front of their line shears apart, stone and tile thundering down on the advancing dead.
In the same moment, that massive brute unslings his hammer, and calls out: ‘For the Republic!’ A voice like an unexpected landslide.
Shroudweaver feels Dropdancer’s hand on his wrist, their voice urgent. ‘What the fuck, Weaver?! What the actual fuck?’
He turns to them and smiles through the pain. ‘Turns out I’ve friends in unexpected places, Drop.’
In front of them the hammer swings like judgement and the dead it meets splinter into fragments. Its wielder laughs with every blow, savage and wild. At his back, the living soldiers of Thell lower spears and charge into the unsuspecting ranks of the dead.
The Gem’s head whips around, and immediately the pressure on Shroudweaver’s stomach ceases.
It’s almost too late. The charging dead are only partially halted, hundreds of them still only a heartbeat or two from thundering into Hesper’s line again.
Behind them, the rebellious soldiers are fighting hard, clinically, their spears puncturing skulls and severing sinew.
Their new allies’ front rank kneels, and the soldiers behind springboard off outstretched shields to rain down metal upon the dead. That hammer still swings. The iron-haired woman has drawn a slim sword, wielding it and the bell with shattering precision.
For a moment, the momentum is with the living, and before Shroudweaver knows why or how, he’s climbing over the rubble, and someone’s calling for the charge, and it’s him.
Dropdancer follows him laughing, and then like grains of sand tipped down a hill, the marines charge, over the broken building and into the oncoming dead.
Shroudweaver ducks the first incoming blow, reaches with his red right hand and pulls indiscriminately. The worst possible thing to do. Artless. Dangerous. This deep in the press though, there’s nothing but the dead in front of him, and he rips their souls from them like meat from a bone.
When they take root inside him, those souls are screaming. There’s nothing but bodies pressing on bodies after that. The brutal hack of the marines’ blades, Dropdancer’s curved sword and the matching arc of their smile.
Somehow, Hesper is gaining ground. Forcing the dead back against Thell’s spears.
It’s then that the Gem comes for him. That black horse changes, manifesting new joints which pop and twist, angling itself in impossible ways to traverse the rubble and masonry.
Shroudweaver turns to face it, and for a second, he feels the return of that shredding pain in his chest, before his eyes catch sight of a hooded figure in neat robes of red and yellow, battling through the press.
The dead claw at their sleeves. Shreds of cloth spin loose, but the grasping hands and swinging maces always seem to miss the bone.
The Gem sees the figure coming at the last moment, rears its twisting, chittering horse and charges, that black sword of rough metal in its hand, studded with the same crystal that hides its face.
The dead try to scramble from its path, some curious terror filling them, but the horse rides over and through them, snapping bone, rib and spine.
As its gaze shifts, Shroudweaver feels the pain fade.
He watches with hitched breath as the Gem’s sword swings down towards the hooded figure like a talon and somehow, misses.
The robed figure leans back briefly behind the shields of the soldiers to either side, and emerges again like a striking snake, a leaf-blade spear in its right hand, haft writhing with markings black as ink.
The Gem raises its blade to intercept, guiding the horse to one side, its multiplied, flexing hooves thundering in the soft soil.
A twitch of the hooded figure’s inked fingers, and the spear jukes slightly in mid-air, skims the blade of the sword, and strikes the side of the quartz mask with force, an inch shy of exposed flesh.
Horse and rider stagger sideways as cracks spread in that implacable facade.
The Gem unleashes a scream that’s more animal than man, turns and runs.
Its mount scuttles up the side of the nearest building, its laboured lungs lurching with a wet, bubbling whine.
A few bolts whizz after it, peppering the stone.
With the departure of their leader, the dead are lost for a moment, reeling like dreamers half-awakened.
Slowly, methodically, they are cut down.
Soon, there’s enough space for the two standing sides to regard each other. They’re tattered, war-ragged, bloody.
The hooded figure picks their way across the detritus, towards Hesper’s chewed lines.