Chapter 72 #6
In Thell’s ranks, a veteran eyes the lad opposite her, as a swung club skitters off her shield.
Her bones ache from the impact of the charge.
She’s been a soldier since the fall of the Empire, but she hasn’t seen a war for as long, and she’d forgotten the shape of it, forgotten what it feels like when the bones in your arm near break because your shield’s braced wrong.
The panic is harsh in her stomach, lit like old coals, rattling out her ribs in panicked gasps.
She can barely breathe, and she has to kill this boy in front of her, who could be her son, if his hair were blonde.
She’s not alone. All down the line, the two armies lock, heaving. Grace and tactics gone, nothing but a mess of bodies pushing against one another, sweating, screaming and bleeding into the mud.
Crowkisser’s distantly aware of the dying at her back, but her mind’s elsewhere, up in the storm, watching Skinpainter’s fingers dance as he pulls red-lit death down on her people.
She’s trying to sense the shape of their magic, to find her moment to strike back. They’re all relying on her. She’s the only one in this army that can match Skinpainter, Belltoller, or Shroudweaver. And she will. She won’t let them down. She’s going to show them all why the south burnt.
That storm’s the problem. Mountain magic, but on a scale she’s never seen.
This is no weather witching, calling a squall down over the fields, or twisting rain towards the brave crops that grow on the rock-side.
She has no idea where Skinpainter found the power for something like this, but there’s a taste to it that’s familiar.
Slick as burnt sugar, like honey on the back of the throat.
God magic. And she knows how to deal with the dregs of the gods.
Her people need cover, need shelter from that red murder tearing down out of the sky.
And there’s nobody to protect them but her.
She swerves to avoid another lightning strike.
The earth near her toes chars, rocks and grass fountaining up.
That bastard’s after her. She can feel them in the storm, directing the lightning like a whip.
Wearily, she turns to the long men that are left.
‘Cover me!’
They nod wordlessly, moving to defensive positions around the barrow-top. The body of Thell’s army is still snarled up on her front line. She has time.
Crowkisser balances on the peak of the barrow, her hands wrapped around the cairn flag, its wet wood rough against her fingers.
She lets her mind follow its path, speared down into the soil, reaches for the sorcery lingering on her skin, and calls out.
It feels like nothing at first, a shiver across her shoulders, like a door left open to a cold room.
She stretches deeper, further down, seeking the power she needs, the shadow that lurks under the earth.
She pulls it to her, an electric blossoming on her bones, her skin alive with feathers, and something darker, coiling and smoking against the storm.
Crowkisser throws back her head and coats her tongue with rain, calling out into the teeth of the gale. Barely heard above the lashing wind, but loud enough to carry a vibration of counter-magic, sliding like a dagger up into the heart of the storm.
When the crows come, they come quickly, black motes silhouetted against the pulsing ground.
She watches as they push through the storm in ones and twos.
High above, Skinpainter’s no fool. They’ve sensed her attempts at sabotage.
Thunderheads wheel towards the gathering birds, but the storm is an unwieldy weapon, listing like an overloaded cart as their arms strain and pull.
Still the crows come. Crowkisser flinches as lightning picks at the edges of the growing flock.
Feathers pinwheel in small explosions as the storm fights for space in the sky.
Every strike punches against her heart. She grits her teeth and reaches deep inside herself, wrenching the darkness under the earth upwards, hurling it into the storm, filling the air with crows.
The effort drives her to her knees. She chokes, coughing clots of blackness up into the clouds, watches as they grow feathers, talons, beaks. Little black tongues.
The sky grows noisy with wings. The light fades from the day as the sun is pulled behind a thronging mass of birds, the storm muzzled behind their bodies.
There are distant flashes of blood and feather as the lightning pounds against the flock like a muffled drum.
Crowkisser shakes with each impact, her head tilted to the clouds.
A writhing cord of black power shudders from her throat, blossoming into a thousand squalling bodies.
A few of Thell’s warriors come for her. The long men meet them on the slope of the barrow, bending around spear hafts like ship spars and driving blades deep under ribs. She has time.
Holding the storm at bay isn’t enough. She feels it shaking the flock like a wild dog in a hen house. She has to destroy it.
With a scream, she drives the crows inside the thunderheads. A thousand little black bodies riding the lightning, pulling it with their wings. Burning as they fly.
The Barrowland rings to the sound of a skyful of birds on fire. The day grows shadowed. The storm swells like an overfilled waterskin, billowing like a torn sail, writhing with wings and lightning.
Its belly is a mass of beaks and wings and thundering hearts, a clot in the throat of the storm, pulling the lightning inwards, threading it back into the heart of the clouds. Weaving a mesh of static and electricity and bone that hums and screeches.
Crowkisser screams with it. Her own throat chokes with darkness, lightning burning along her veins.
Each tiny hammering crow heart igniting inside her own.
Skinpainter battles frantically against her, but they’re too slow, too cautious, too old.
She closes her eyes, thinks of her mother and pushes.
The effort nearly finishes her. Dark bruises blossom under her skin.
Miles above, she feels Skinpainter stagger; feels the storm stagger with them.
Overhead, the clouds shift, and realign, turning their lightning inwards.
Each jagged stroke dragged back into the heart of the storm on burning black wings.
The whole mass glows red as a fired coal.
The air is thick as an unstruck match. The armies below reel under its weight.
The grass driven flat as cat ears. Every flag on every cairn bowing and splintering as the detonation builds.
Pressure, such pressure. Ears bleed. Noses.
Soldiers on both sides fall moaning to their knees.
The lines waver, too heavy to fight. The weight of storm and sky pressing down into the land.
The clouds swell. Wings batter them from the inside.
thousands of small bodies filling the space, crows upon crows until the sky is a thing of black and moving wings.
The belly of the storm stretches, distended.
The sky howls in pain and Skinpainter howls with it.
Staggering back, clutching their side, where blood flows fresh under their robes.
They lash out with a hand. The air is tattooed red and black and red again, geometric lines of control.
Too late, too late. Crowkisser’s heart surges with fierce elation.
The pressure builds. On skulls and temples.
Crowkisser feels Skinpainter falter. She has them. She has them all.
She reaches, tries to twist the neck of the storm, to detonate it in the sky.
And just as she holds the thunderheads pulsing in her fist, a tone rings out.
A clear bell, light and sharp. She feels it shiver the field, cutting the sweating air like a cold knife, striking like the flat of a great blade.
It catches her on the temple, lifts her, rolls her down the side of the barrow.
Her head cracks loosely against a rock. Dazed, she loses control of the storm, control of the flock. The sky spins.
Her head lolls to where she can groggily see the two armies locked against one another, straining like tired horses, almost too exhausted to move.
She hears that rolling knell again, and her gaze is pulled back to the battlements. Where Skinpainter had stood, a woman leans into the storm, tall as mountain ash. In her hand, a thick iron bell. Her gaze locks on Crowkisser’s crumpled form far below.
Belltoller, stiff-backed, grey-haired, the flat planes of her brow unmoved by the storm.
Her eyes are as still as the mountain. Her ribs move in slow, easy exhalations.
Crowkisser can feel the steady shudder of her breath from a mile away.
She tries to rise, but her head is swimming with chimes, bursting into purple and yellow light behind her eyes.
She stands, staggers, falls against the side of a barrow. The world is tilted, singing, slipping under her feet.
One of the few remaining long men helps her rise. He’s mouthing something, but his lips move uselessly in the wet, thick air. He points urgently towards the mountain, and her head turns, just in time to see Belltoller’s brown arm swing the bell towards her with a resounding crack.
Belltoller’s wrist snaps like whipcord. Her whole body reeling back from the lash of the stroke. A faint smile on her lips. Her eyes locked on Crowkisser.
The sound of the bell travels down the mountain with the speed of a galloping horse. Ice and rock follow in its wake.
When it hits the Barrowlands, the land splits.
The earth fleeing a deep cleft ravine, which tears across the ground with a snarl, the ring of the bell at its back, driving the debris onwards and upwards. Shards of stone flung skywards, fountaining the air.
Crowkisser is trying to run, but her legs are weak, twisted by the bell’s echoes, still sick from battling the storm.
The long men haul on her arms desperately. She feels her shoulders pop. Her legs won’t work.