Dawn (37 page)

There was much banter between Krotes, pledges made and wagers placed, and Lenora rode amongst them to give encouragement. And she in turn took encouragement. Many of Ducianne’s Krotes were blooded from their victims in Long Marrakash, and they looked terrifying.
Is it really going to be this easy?
Lenora thought again. She ordered them to move out, and a thousand machines began their relentless march southward.

Lenora rode at the head of her army. She sat astride her machine and urged it on, faster and faster until she had to strap herself to its back to avoid being thrown. They emerged from the mouth of a large valley and entered an area of sparse woodland, most of the trees shedding their leaves now that sunlight was absent. Animals scattered before them, some escaping into holes or climbing trees, others being crushed beneath machine feet. The noise of the Krote advance was relentless: the pounding of metal, stone and timber feet, the gasping and grunting of machines drawing air or venting steam and other gases, the occasional shout of a warrior calling to a friend. The army was a storm front scoring across the ground, sweeping before it any pretense at normality or peace. Lenora shouted out, holding the leather straps tied to her machine as she stood and spun a slideshock around her head.

This is good,
she thought.
This is what I’m here for. This is why Angel made me live!

Make
me
live,
that voice said.

Lenora nodded.
Soon.

TWO HOURS AFTER
leaving camp, Lenora heard a rumbling sound from above and behind. She turned in her seat, thinking,
It’s them!
Most Krotes were looking back, weapons drawn, ready for battle.

Lenora saw the dozen shadows dipping from above, silhouetted against the death moon to the north. No two shapes were alike. A few seemed huge, others were quite small. Wings waved, while some seemed to fly by more arcane means. On the back of every shape rode an upright figure, clasping on to leather reins or waving a weapon around their head when they saw the stain of the Krote army beneath them.

The shade at Conbarma had been busy. Lenora had seen it take five times as long to make a flying machine than a walker.

She had left orders for the second wave to bypass Noreela City and head for the wilder places to the south, taking towns, villages and farmsteads wherever they discovered them still occupied. Once the city had fallen, their two forces would combine and head for New Shanti, where they expected to fight their fiercest battle.

“For a moment there…” Ducianne said. She had ridden her machine alongside Lenora’s, sitting upright and still clasping a small crossbow in one hand.

“Scared?” Lenora asked. Her friend glanced at her and looked away again, and Lenora laughed. “I’m fucking with you, Ducianne. For a heartbeat, I thought it was them as well.”

“But what a sight,” her friend said. “I’ve seen hawks flying overhead a thousand times, but never anything like that. Never anything so
strange.
”

“Everything’s strange now,” Lenora said.

Ducianne rode beside her for a while, staring after the shadows fading into the distance. The Krotes on the ground were riding hard and fast; those that had just passed overhead must have been flying at twice the speed of any hawk.

“We’ll be at Noreela City in a few hours,” Lenora said.

Ducianne smiled. “Then the fun begins!”

“I’m the first in.”

“Of course, Mistress,” Ducianne said, but Lenora saw the hint of disappointment in her friend’s eyes.

“Ducianne? You had Long Marrakash.” She nudged the Duke’s head with her foot. She had speared it on a metallic horn on her machine’s back, positioned so that it looked forward toward what they had come to destroy.

Ducianne nodded.

“Noreela City is five times the size of Long Marrakash. There’s plenty for us all. But I’m the first in, Ducianne. I’ve been here before, and I have my own forms of revenge to find in this war.”

“In the city?”

“That’s where it begins,” Lenora said.
And then it rolls on, and on.
She imagined her route south from the city to New Shanti, where they would kill some Shantasi, then west to Robenna. The time she had there would be long and wonderful. Ducianne had sliced off the Duke’s head slowly so that he knew exactly what was happening. Lenora imagined doing the same to a whole village.

“By the Black, this is a fine time,” she said, but Ducianne had already steered away.

THE HILLS TO
the north of Noreela City were high, offering a fine vantage across the capital. And there was much to see. The city was ablaze with contained fires and lamps, its inhabitants doing their best to see away the dark and live out a normal day. The sky above the city was bright, and there was no sign of the flying machines that Lenora knew were there, waiting.

It must have been such a temptation. The city shone like a jewel in the land, a huge place beginning in foothills to the east and ending in a long, flat plain to the west. South of Noreela City were the Widow’s Peaks, though they were too far away to see from here. The flood of firelight seemed to make the land around the city darker than ever before.

Lenora gave her orders, then rode down the hillside on her machine, a dozen Krotes following close behind. The rest of her force would wait for several minutes before commencing their own march down the slopes toward the city walls. By then, Lenora would already be fighting in the streets. More symbolism, which Lenora was growing to like: thirteen Krotes, challenging the whole of Noreela City. And the thousand machines that followed would make the defenders’ hearts sink with dread.

The anticipation of the violence to come thrilled her. She hoped that they faced a real fight here, something more involved than the skirmish at Conbarma and the minor clashes they had fought between then and now. She was a warrior who welcomed a fight, but it was more than that setting her muscles aflame and her heart racing: for the first time, this really felt like Noreela. She was riding against the largest city in the land with the Duke’s head speared on the front of her machine, and she knew that the only outcome could be victory. Right now, it was the process of winning that excited her.

Old wounds ached. Her shoulders and neck, stomach, right thigh and left ankle, her deformed scalp and pitted cheeks and left breast, all of them sang with the memories of how their scars had been formed. She thought back to the final few hours she had spent on Noreela three centuries before, and how vicious the fighting had been. Noreelans had been throwing themselves against the Krote army, driving it into the sea and using their own war machines to trample the Mages’ failing magic beneath their feet.

“Things change,” Lenora said into the wind. Her machine was running fast now, leaping down the hillside and sprinting for the long, open area that led to the city’s large north gate. The gate was shut, and there were signs that a series of defenses had been erected before the walls.

She drew a sword, strapped a crossbow to her left forearm, checked the weapons on her belt, the braces crossing her chest and the quivers tied across her back. “Good! Fight for your land, you cowards. Give me something to dream about in the future.”
Something to dream about as I make my way to you,
she thought, sending her words out and hoping they were heard.

She turned to check the Krotes charging with her. As instructed they were a hundred steps behind, driving their own machines hard to keep up. Some of their mounts gasped fire; others breathed ice. Blue sparks splashed from their rides’ feet where they connected with the land.

They closed on the city and Lenora began to make out the individual defenses. Several rows of sharpened stakes faced outward, their tips fresh and pale. There were trenches—perhaps filled with oil—and large rocks, and a few humps that might have been trenches fronted by earthen bunds. She hoped that there were militia in those holes. That would bring blood a few heartbeats closer to her sword.

A hail of arrows greeted her as her machine crashed over the first line of stakes. The sound of splintering timber was deafening. An arrow sliced across her shoulder, another stuck her hip and shattered on the knives sheathed there, and then the men who had fired them leapt from a trench and ran for the gates.

She rode them down, leaning sideways to swipe at one with her sword. The others fell beneath the machine’s legs.

The machine vaulted a trench which erupted into flames. Lenora closed her eyes against the heat and enjoyed the brief touch on her skin; it had been cold for so long that it felt like sunlight.

More arrows came and Lenora sent an order to her machine. It rose on its hind legs and presented its underbelly, and the arrows snapped and shattered there. She slipped from her mount’s back, darted between its legs and jumped into a trench filled with several terrified militia.

“Please,” one of them said, and Lenora laughed. By the time they gathered their wits, there were only two left standing, and Lenora dodged their clumsy attacks and felled them both. They were wallowing in their own guts as she climbed from the trench and mounted her ride once more.

She glanced back and saw the other dozen Krotes ride their machines through the wall of flames, and Lenora shrieked as she rode on, the cry beginning in the very heart of her.

This
is
life!
she thought.
This is what you missed, my daughter.

She stopped a hundred steps from the city wall. The fires lit the whole scene, yet something slipped over the wall and slicked to the ground, hunkering down against the ancient stone structure to blend with the background.

Shade?
Lenora thought.

Guards of the gate peered at her from atop the high wall. They were petrified. She could instruct her machine to kill them and it would, but this was a symbolic moment that she could not let pass. She knew that the best way to defeat an enemy was to soften their minds before slitting their throats.

“I have something for you!” she called. “A final message from your Duke.” She stood on her machine’s back, tugged the Duke’s head from its mount and held it up by the hair. “He says he’s sorry, he’s been busy fucking and taking drugs in Long Marrakash, but now he’s back and so you have nothing to fear. Do you hear me, Noreela?”

A flight of arrows came her way, and her Krotes launched several fireballs from their machines. Something flared, someone screamed and the day was growing brighter with every beat of her heart.

A shadow shifted away from the city wall and crossed the ground toward Lenora. She frowned, disturbed, but she could show no fear.

“So who wants him?” she called. Silence was her response. “Here’s a deal: Whoever catches the Duke, I’ll kill quickly.” She leaned back and prepared to throw the head toward the city wall.

The shadow rose before her, and she knew it for sure.
Shade!
The Mages had been here already…and they left something behind. It smothered the firelight for a few heartbeats, then passed around and through her, cold as the ice of Dana’Man, redolent of an emptiness she never imagined could exist.

Lenora gasped and swayed, and the shade disappeared behind her machine.

For a moment I was nothing…

Something shifted in her hand. The Duke’s eyes had opened wide and his mouth was working, dry tongue protruding between lips like a fattened grub. His eyes turned to her and held her gaze.

She threw the head as far as she could.

What is this?

It sailed through the air, spinning toward the city wall.

Nobody caught the head. It disappeared over the wall, and a few seconds later screams rose from beyond.

She rode her machine toward the city gate. Arrows and bolts zipped down from left and right, liquid flame poured from above as they tipped burning oil, but her Krotes protected her. The machines launched a blistering attack on the defenders with discs and bolts, fireballs and something less fiery, but more destructive. One of them leapt onto the wall and hung there like a spider, its rider standing on its head and firing arrows up at the Noreelans. The machine plucked several militia from the wall and dropped them into their own burning oil.