Chapter 74 #2
He’s at her side in seconds. One massive arm around her shoulders, his fingers mussing her hair. ‘Not quite to plan, little eagle.’
She watches his face and feels five years old again. ‘What now, Dad?’
He straightens her spear, kisses her forehead. ‘Now we go get your sister, we bottle up the dead and we throw these whelk-fuckers out our mountain.’
She wants to believe him. No, she wants to curl into the crook of his arm and smell the sweat and warmth of him.
She wants to fall asleep to his shit jokes and his boozy breath.
But before that, she wants to believe him.
She has to ask though, and hates herself for asking, ‘What about the dead, Dad?’
Kinghammer grins. ‘They never got me the first time.’ He squeezes her tight.
‘And that was before I had you. Now, let’s go get your sister, and then we’ll be unstoppable.
’ He turns, bellows over his shoulder. ‘Painter, hold the wall as long as you can, then take the rest to the council chamber. We’ll make a stand there. ’
Skinpainter’s hands wave broadly, reassuringly.
Icecaller follows her father and the army into the heart of the mountain in a cacophony of hammering feet, shouted orders, dust and blood.
The first clashes with Astic come near the gate, a few hundred of them clambering over the smoking ruins, piling out of the burning haze, tongues alight with curses.
In response, Thell spits warriors out of stone sluices, culverts, quick-cut passageways.
This isn’t the first time the Stump’s weathered a war.
The city’s spears work well down here, filling every corner with blades, taking out eyes, kidneys, throats with snake-quick strikes.
It’s bloody work, slick with torn guts and stopped breaths, but it seems to be blunting Astic’s advance.
Icecaller leaves them to it, heading for the sleeping chambers, for Steelfinder and Nigh.
They’ve talked this over. If anything ever happened, that’s where they’re supposed to go.
And things have definitely happened. The chambers are the safest place in the mountain, down in the guts.
Big old doors and all the guards already down there on off-shift.
Getting there’s a challenge, though. Astic’s little cutters don’t make it easy.
One of the grey-clad fucks staggers into her path and swipes, wide-eyed.
She ducks, rips him up the middle, doesn’t stop to see whether he still looks shocked.
On her left, her father barrels into a clot of scared looking fishermen, his hammer crushing shields, arms, driving rims and shards into shuddering ribcages.
Crowkisser’s army fold back from their advance.
They don’t give up though. As they push downwards, lanky men emerge from the press, circling like sharks, their faces grim, large blades loose in their hands.
Icecaller catches their thrusts on the haft of her spear, twists the butt to break ribs and knees, stomping down on weakened joints and wrenching the spear-tip deep into startled hearts.
Her father doesn’t bother with even these small ceremonies.
The first few knives simply graze his thick hide as he grabs over-extended wrists, pulls them close, and snaps.
Broken bodies are cast into the next charging wave, which crumples under the unexpected weight, before the hammer swings down, to make space and silence amid the blood and chaos.
It gets trickier as they go. There’s a lot of Crowkisser’s brood, mad for blood.
Amateurs, the lot of them, but all they need is luck.
Icecaller can sense something worse in the offing too.
The dead are thick in the air, calling to her blood.
She can feel their pulse in her ears, whispering thinly, touching her neck, her back, her thighs.
Her tattoos itch. Whenever it gets too much, her father reaches a thick-fingered hand back for her, guiding her past broken bodies, through whirling knots of violence.
The hammer swings in low, brutal arcs and the corridors empty before them.
Icecaller follows behind, shield held high, spear darting in fast, economical movements.
Her feet move in dancer’s patterns, her mind loose.
Most of her thoughts are with her sister …
her sister, who’ll be somewhere below, scared, pretending to be brave.
Her fierce-faced, fuzz-haired little shit of a sister.
Icecaller smiles at the thought even as a gangly ship-boy charges, yelling.
She punches a neat hole in his throat, sidesteps, pushes his falling body aside with her shield.
Icecaller wonders if Crowkisser’s inside yet, if she’s here to see her precious army die.
There’s a shout at her side as her father lifts a woman by the throat, and dashes her against the wall. Icecaller throws open-armed over his shoulder, piercing a tall knife-wielding man above the hip and kicks his blade clear, crushing his jaw with her boot.
The air thickens with chattering as the dead are drawn to the battle, to the blood and cutting.
She slides through a susurrus, eyes locked on her father’s back.
Soldiers in familiar armour begin to flock towards them.
Not far now, a few more curves to the sleeping chambers and Nigh.
They’ve delved deep, fast. Then she can save the little snot and they’ll drive these grey rat-fuckers out of her home.
As they push forwards, something skirts Icecaller’s spine and she flinches reflexively, ducks low on an ankle and pivots. A spear flicking back. It’s a soldier she recognises – Marktamer, young and blonde. She laughs in shock, spreads her arms reflexively, grins. ‘It’s me, you dumb cunt.’
Marktamer’s thrown shield takes her in the mouth.
She feels a tooth rattle loose as she staggers backwards.
Something grabs her ankles and pulls her down.
She scrabbles furiously away from fallen bodies and broken blades, lashes out and connects with a skull, another familiar face, half-pinned to the floor by a spear through the spine and animated by some feverish light.
The glow of the dead licks across their skin, their broken tattoos.
A thin whine slides out of Icecaller’s lips.
She can feel the pieces sliding together in her brain, but it hurts, and she doesn’t, doesn’t want to think.
So, she acts instead. Brings her left heel down like a hammer until she feels the fingers clutching her leg break.
Rolls to the left as a blood-wet spear hammers into the ground next to her. Staggers to her feet. ‘Fuck you.’
She grits her teeth, straightens her aching spine.
Circles, studies the soldiers facing them.
All her people. All alight with something wild and hungry in the eyes.
The dead hovering at their shoulders, plunging in and out of their broken skin.
Icecaller scuffs out space with her spear, loops it in front of their snarling faces as she reaches backwards for her shield and slips an arm through the straps. ‘Fuck. You.’
They laugh at her, yipping, loose-jawed, shoulders jutting.
She sees ragged cuts in their bodies, the geometrics split, hanging loosely.
Knife marks, and spear marks and something worse at the edges, a ragged tearing.
Their throats and temples pulse hungrily.
She steadies her breathing, lets herself feel her diaphragm rise and fall.
Adjusts her weight, calls out, low and easy. ‘Dad?’
She feels his back come to rest against hers. ‘I see them, love. Steady.’
She is, somehow. She can feel the breath through his body, smell the stink of him, the warm rock of his ribs, the slow shift as the hammer swings back and forth.
She leans into him, watching the soldiers.
Not their soldiers anymore but the dead of the Empire, wearing new bodies; all Skinpainter’s old folktales come to life.
Faces she knows, pulled into strange angles, sharpened and bloody.
They pace outside the range of her spear.
‘What’s the plan Dad?’ Her voice comes out steadier than she feels.
He lashes out, batting a questing blade aside. ‘Follow me, foot for foot. We’ll hit the sleeping chambers and hold there until the Singers or Painter arrive.’
Icecaller purses her lips, jabs warningly at a questing hand. ‘Wish Painter was here right now.’
Her dad hums consolingly. ‘It’s just us, little eagle. But that’s not new.’
They start to move slowly backwards and down, surrounded by a circle of steel and shredded flesh, their former friends, wide-eyed and hungry.
Icecaller presses herself into the sway of her father’s back and follows his rhythm.
Above them, the Stump erupts in a flurry of noise.
The cawing of crows tumbles down the tunnels, over the screams and ring of steel.
‘Crowkisser’s here then.’
‘Later,’ Kinghammer says. ‘We kill her later.’
They shuffle onwards. Below them, echoes of violence swill through the mountain, but stronger still, she hears the sound of singing, tunes she feels in her bones.
The Deadsingers, a few storeys beneath her feet, dry lips lifted to the roof, seamed faces held in soft light, voices rising to fill the council chamber with echoes.
As they send their song out into the mountain, pushing back the chaos of battle, Icecaller can see them in her mind, hand in hand, harmonising.
Twin sisters, always there at the binding of things; barely seen otherwise.
Icecaller’s never missed them like this.