City Of Ruin (51 page)

He had never risen above that day his life was smashed, where his dearest hopes had died. Eventually, after the witch had helped him, in his new-found bitterness, he turned his young trading empire into a criminal enterprise, channelling his anger.

His cadre had built up around him. They became his family and, eventually, they shared his blood. They stood by him without question, would carve open any enemy on his behalf.

After you see your son killed in such a way, and you find your wife dead from despair, you don’t care about much else other than doing whatever you can to capture whatever satisfaction you can from the world.

*

The city was beginning another day.

Traders headed to the irens rolling their carts along by hand. Citizens were moving about their routines, some in masks, bustling about, getting on with their own lives. Bitterly, he noticed a unit of Dragoons trotting past the end of the street. He looked up at the house one last time and then turned to disappear into the fog, wishing that he might be lost forever in its mass.

Few people were blessed or cursed enough to have their own moment in life, a window of time in which they were the centre of the world and everything revolved around them. Tonight Brynd had a whole city waiting on his every word and, no matter what he said, there would be bodies littering the streets on a scale no one would comprehend.

The mute bombs had changed the texture of the city, the spirit, the geography. Now thousands of people were gathering around the barracks and the Citadel demanding action and protection. Portreeve Lutto had vanished completely. Villiren was Brynd’s to control.

With the Night Guard lined up behind him, Brynd addressed the citizens of Villiren at regular intervals for half a day, from a platform high up on the Citadel walls, one that offered too much grandeur for his liking. The crowd huddled below, or amid the thick stone arches and pillars. His throat was raw from repeating his message into the cold wind:

‘There is no need for you to panic,’ he lied.

‘But what do we do?’ came the reply. ‘Tell us what to do.’

Years of yielding to the will of the portreeve had left these people with no self-sufficiency. He issued instructions for those unwilling to fight to head underground, into the escape tunnels. ‘We are to roll the city out past the Wasteland district and into the wilderness, establishing temporary villages beyond Wych-Forest, the other side of the Spoil Tower and Vanr Tundra, or sheltering in disused mining networks. We have ensured basic supplies to cater for this temporary solution. The military stationed on the perimeter of the city are now being brought in, unit by unit, tens of thousands of soldiers, most of the Empire’s available resources. We will ensure the stability of the city within.’

Out of this city of several hundred thousand residents, the citizen militias just managed to match the official military presence. There were forty thousand extra people willing to fight, and a total force of, he estimated, eighty thousand. Over the past few weeks, Brynd had ensured the blacksmiths were developing enough weaponry for them. Citizens only now signing up were attached to their own regiments based on the streets they lived in, neighbourhood comrades, with military personnel to guide them through their basic training. Sadly, hardly any of the gangs had opted to join, and none of them were the most violent sort, the few thousand truly skilled civilian fighters in the Bloods or the Screams.

Ten cultists had enlisted, which surprised Brynd because they rarely cared for anything other than their own arcane practices. He herded them in a room together with Blavat to try to discover what might explain the nature of the bombs, then to develop useful technology to help them fight the enemy as equals. He was quickly impressed with Beami, who had taken charge of the group, and a meeting was organized for the morning, so that they could brief him on their findings. She warned him that he might not understand the sheer complexity of techniques on offer. Miffed by the usual arrogance of these people, he decided he would never properly understand what cultists got up to anyway.

That same evening Brynd leaned against the ice-cold battlement, and necked a shot of vodka for warmth, to relax. And with one eye fixed on the horizon in case . . . just in case. In this bleak weather, there wasn’t much to see.

Just what was the enemy’s motivation? Assuming these Okun had come from somewhere not part of the Boreal Archipelago, why had they needed to invade and wipe out the population of Tineag’l?

*

A key piece of information came to Brynd, just after dawn.

Marine vehicles of an unknown variety had been spotted by garuda surveillance. They were not longships, and were thought not to be constructed of wood. No sails or visible crew either, merely a dull humming sound as they thundered their way across the narrow channel towards the city. Garudas confirmed that the vessels were moving slowly, even pausing mid-crossing so that more of them could gather. They massed like a school of titan sharks, twenty by the beginning of the missives, then fifty by mid-morning. But they had not yet reached the city, and that was the main thing. It meant he still had time.

Brynd ordered his elite troops to assemble within the hour, and dispatched messengers and criers to all the northerly districts of the city.

Bells tolled across Villiren.

Randur stood on the deck, wincing into the light. To his surprise, he did this a lot, staring into the red sun. There were vague comforts to be discovered in deep contemplation, and up here he felt he had found time to slow himself down and grow up a little. How his life had turned so bizarre and out of context, he didn’t know, and he vowed to seek out a quieter existence in future. All he needed was a place by the coast, maybe a decent local tavern in which to lose the years.
Enough of the constant pressure
;
maybe those people in that tavern back on Folke weren’t so wrong in their attitude after all.

Under the dying rays of the sun, the
Exmachina
continued drifting above the cloud base, heading towards the mountains soaring up through it from the southern coast of Y’iren. They pierced the cumulus, icebergs in the sky.

Then Randur noticed something different from the panorama: one of the taller peaks appeared to be peeling fragments from its highest ridge. Vast clumps of earth were breaking off and hanging in the sky alongside. And some impossible force was keeping them afloat.

‘Artemisia,’ Randur called out to the empty deck.

A moment later, a hatch burst open and the woman-warrior came up to him. He didn’t even need to say anything. She tilted the end of her telescope and sighed. ‘This is something to cause concern,’ she decided, then dashed back along the deck.

A moment later there was frenzied activity in the skies above the ship as the Hanuman fluttered manically, unbuckling their excitement, and the
Exmachina
began to slow its pace and veer off-course.

Eir and Rika joined him, and gripped the railing as the ship’s motion readjusted. ‘What’s going on?’ Eir said.

Randur pointed to the huge unfalling clumps of land.

‘What is that?’ Eir whispered. She had a way of showing her apprehension by rubbing her arm above her elbow, as if she felt cold.

The wind accelerated because of the change of direction, sending his hair in tendrils across his face. ‘Whatever it is has sent Artemisia legging it, which doesn’t bode well.’

Artemisia returned with an armful of items.

‘Keep these on and you’ll be fine.’ She offered some masks of red mesh that fitted over their mouths, crafted from no material he knew of, and they dutifully secured them. Randur discovered that his breathing was just as easy.

The looming peaks sailed towards the ship, and small dark objects could be seen above and below, skittering and darting about in ragged patterns of flight.

‘What are those things?’ Randur asked, his voice slightly muffled by the mask.

‘Those vessels, they are called Giasty – literally earth cities, although little lives there. The structures you will see on them are, in fact, largely constructed of human bones, which should, I hope, give an indication of how they view your species. Human bone is valued as a building resource in our world. And those things you see flying about are called Mogilal – they are quite a menace. And, I fear, they have been waiting for us.’

‘Are they the creatures you are fighting?’ Randur asked.

‘My world is, yes.’ She unsheathed her blades with a zing, and Randur took a step back as their arc whipped past his face. If Artemisia herself was anything to go by, these other creatures would probably be violent.

‘Should we be doing anything to help?’ Randur glanced towards the girls, whose gaze was locked on the drifting island. He drew his own sword, and Eir, alert to his gesture, followed suit, but the dismissive glance from Artemisia suggested that such weapons would be of little use.

A fizz across the sky, a high-pitched whistle, and something slapped into the ship below. Artemisia hastily put on her own mask, fabricated from the same red mesh. She seemed to wait for . . .

Two deep thuds, then stillness.

Another object streaked across on an upward trajectory, visible white trails carving up the sky . . . towards the ship, above the ship, then the Hanuman clustered around it and screeched, and something exploded in a smoke-plume. Bits of flesh began to litter the deck.

Artemisia began shouting orders in some unknown language, waving her swords at the Hanuman who seemed utterly stunned by what was going on. A flock of them clustered as one mass, and waited overhead. The next projectile they dealt with better: slowing it significantly, then gently steering it away from the ship till it dropped over the side.

The warrior turned to the three humans. ‘Do not move. Do not inhale when they explode. Do not remove your masks or you will not be able to speak afterwards.’

They nodded in silent affirmation as Artemisia took several big strides towards the centre of the deck. The sun was nearly below the clouds, extending the woman’s shadow bold and long.

Time after time the Hanuman steered the projectiles away from the ship and into harmless oblivion, and occasionally there were explosions from down below, well out of sight.

Both blades drawn, Artemisia waited like a prophet as the Hanuman circled in the air above. Her hair stirred in the wind.

The land masses came close enough so that Randur could perceive settlements on them, weird esoteric homesteads and other structures that cluttered up the rockscape. They seemed too bizarre to be real.

A smaller fragment of land peeled away from this one, then drifted like a bubble towards the
Exmachina
. A shadowy figure stood on top of it.

Across the intervening sky. Then alongside.

The figure banked alongside the large vessel and hopped aboard with a thud as it touched the deck. As tall as Artemisia, white-skinned and gold-armoured, the thing took three steps forward and Artemisia backed away cautiously, enticing it further into the centre.

Then it happened strangely:

The combatants slowed and juddered in and out of time and location, flickered from one part of the deck to another, appearing each time in different fight poses as if racing and grappling with each other through incomprehensible zones of space, a fight spiralling through dimensions that were impossible.

The third pose: blades locked at the far end of the ship, silhouetted against the red sky.

Flicker.

The fourth: amidships, two strokes from the stranger and both connected with the deck; and Artemisia severed its arm, blood pooling all round.

Flicker, the fifth pose: now nearby, her victim screeched as she jumped and kicked out at its chest, sending it sprawling on to its spine. She marched closer and, with its other arm, the intruder raked its sword horizontally. The edge sliced through Artemisia’s thigh.

Rika gasped in concern, and Eir had to hold her back.

Artemisia buckled on one knee, dropping her blade, then the two began to grapple hand to hand. Pinning the enemy’s free arm, Artemisia brought up her remaining sword then stabbed it through the chest, the tip of the metal splintering the deck beneath.

After a moment of violent but silent juddering, the enemy fell still.

Artemisia pushed herself upright, panting, wiping blood from her brow, and gestured with her weapon at the corpse.

‘Earthlanders, come. I shall show you one of those we fight.’

Randur and the girls moved tentatively over to her side and for a moment they watched the warrior rip some material from her clothing then wrap it around her wound.

The body looked inglorious in its wreckage: yet this was something once noble, with a slender face almost human in its features, and something almost deer-like about its bodily form. A muscular white body was encased in golden armour, into which was carved all sorts of intricate designs, making it look too precious for use in combat.

‘It is one of the Pithicus – using your mythological term – who with others make up the nations of the Akhaioí. Another race invented by your early ancestors. These people command a wealth of forces, including the race which has breached into your world, their expendable foot soldiers – the Cirrips. Though no doubt your people would have given it another name by now. These Akhaioí deem themselves superior to other species, and I am surprised to find that they have come through already. Normally the Cirrips do all their fighting in the early stages.’