Forged in Blood I (40 page)

“Where’s Neeth?” someone asked from the side.

The submarine body had blocked the view of a control station set into the wall and the person who sat at it. The woman stood and joined them, peering at Reeta, then studying Amaranthe. Tight gray curls cupped her head, and spectacles thicker than bottle bottoms framed inquiring brown eyes. She must have been in her seventies, but her step was springy, her curiosity almost palpable.

“We waited for her, but she hadn’t arrived yet, so I decided to make two trips,” Retta said. “Ah, Suan? This is Mia, my assistant.”

“Your assistant?”

Mia’s lips quirked with wry amusement. “You retire from your old career and begin a new one, and they make you start all over at the bottom. I do not, however, fetch her tea or flatcakes.”

“I’ll remember that,” Amaranthe said, instantly liking the woman and hoping she wouldn’t be forced to do anything untoward to her.

“She’s a fast learner and is almost as adept as deciphering the runes as I am.” Retta sighed, and Amaranthe sensed more bitterness than fondness in the exhalation.

Mia didn’t seem to notice. She grasped Amaranthe’s forearm. “Suan, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve heard much about you.”

Uh oh. Amaranthe hoped there wouldn’t be further tests. At least this wasn’t an old colleague.

One of the men at the door murmured something to the other.

“Perhaps we can share a meal later?” Amaranthe asked. “I’m weary from my weeks of travel. Retta, can you show me to a room before leaving to take these fellows back up?” More precisely, Amaranthe wanted a tour of the
Behemoth
, a better one than she’d had last time, including the navigation room or engine room or whatever the equivalent was.

“Who are you two?” one of the guards in the first squad asked.

Amaranthe stifled a wince, knowing before she turned that someone was addressing Books and Akstyr.

“Cafron and Vinks,” Books said. “We’re new.”

“New? And you got this assignment? Nobody but Lettodjot’s most trusted men have gotten to come down here. There’s no chance you’d—”

Amaranthe was trying to decide if she should attempt to talk her way out of the situation or simply accept that they’d have to fight when the speaker’s belt unclasped and his trousers descended. In fact, that happened to every man standing in the squads. Still lurking in the shadows, Akstyr had his eyes shut, grinning like a boy pawing open Winterfest gifts.

His distraction wouldn’t startle the guards for long. Amaranthe had to act. She rejected the idea of using Mia for a shield and lunged for the closest of the startled guards instead.

“What happened?” one was blurting, bent over and yanking up his trousers.

“It’s magic, you idiots,” came a yell from the door. “Get them!”

A rifle fired. If Amaranthe hadn’t already been moving, the bullet might have slammed into her chest. As it was, it ricocheted off the hull. Retta and Mia lunged between the control station and the submarine, hiding behind its bulk.

Amaranthe snatched the crossbow off the back of the closest man who was struggling with his trousers, elbowing him in the gut to buy a second to pluck out bolts as well, then jumped behind the nose of the submarine with the other two women. More shots fired from the soldiers, all aimed in her direction. She didn’t know whether to take it personally or assume they weren’t shooting at Books and Akstyr because their own men were in the way. Either way, the submarine and the wall behind her took the brutality for her, though one bullet did ricochet off the control station and bounce into their cove. Retta screamed. She’d been hit. Cursed ancestors, this wasn’t how things were supposed to go.

Amaranthe leaned out and loosed a quarrel toward the doorway. It skipped harmlessly off the wall. The two soldiers had moved. They’d run into the room, each dropping to one knee, rifles pressed into their shoulders. They fired as soon as they saw her.

She ducked behind the submarine again. Metal clashed to her right, near the open hatch. In her peripheral vision, she’d glimpsed the mass of green security uniforms descending on the submarine. Books and Akstyr had retreated inside. Given that only one person could attack at a time through the narrow entryway, they ought to be able to hold their own. Amaranthe on the other hand… Those soldiers were definitely after her.

“Stop drawing their fire,” Retta snarled, her voice thick with pain. She was clenching her shoulder. Blood soaked her blouse and seeped between her fingers.

“Emperor’s warts, I’m sorry,” Amaranthe said, reloading her crossbow. It could hold two quarrels at a time. She’d pay all the money in Sespian’s secret stash for one of those repeating rifles just then. “Where’d your assistant go?”

Retta jerked her head to the left, then winced, doubtlessly wishing she hadn’t. If one followed the control wall to the end, there was a tall narrow door there. It was a good fifty feet away. Mia must have trusted that the soldiers wouldn’t shoot her. Amaranthe didn’t have that luxury. She checked to the right, thinking she might run around the submarine and surprise her attackers by appearing on the other side, but it had been parked too close to the hull. That barrier must have become permeable to allow their entry, but it appeared solid now.

“They’re coming,” Books yelled over the twang of crossbows and the screeches of swords.

Amaranthe dropped to her belly, hoping the soldiers would expect her to pop out at her regular height. Crossbow leading, she stuck her head around the corner.

The soldiers must have been racing toward her and stopped at Books’s shout, for they were closer but on one knee again, prepared to shoot. When they saw her, they had to drop their rifles to adjust for her new position. She fired a bolt and ducked back.

A rifle boomed, the bullet clanging off the hull a hair from where Amaranthe’s eyes had been. The noise rang in her ears like a bell. She didn’t know if she’d struck her target or not. A new round of growling and cursing came from behind her. She was glad Retta didn’t have a weapon; at this point, she must be ready to stick a dagger between Amaranthe’s shoulder blades.

Retta could always shove you out into the soldier’s line of sight, Amaranthe thought.

Another shot fired, the bullet caroming off the wall behind them. Neither Retta nor Amaranthe had been exposing any body parts at which to aim, so Amaranthe guessed it was meant as a distraction. She leaped to her feet, the butt of the crossbow jammed into the pit of her shoulder and stepped back.

As another shot fired, causing Retta to bury her head under her arms, a black form somersaulted around the nose of the submarine. She’d expected someone on his feet to charge their hiding spot, but reacted immediately, lowering her aim.

The soldier unfurled, a throwing knife in his hand. Amaranthe pulled the trigger, then dropped to the floor, hoping to evade the blade. It clattered off the hull above her. She grabbed the knife and scrambled to her feet, ready for a close quarters fight if that was what the soldier wanted. But he’d never risen from the floor. Her quarrel protruded from his neck and he only had time to utter one gurgled word.

“What’d you say?” Amaranthe asked.

He pitched sideways and didn’t move again.

“Bitch,” Retta snarled, one hand clamped to her shoulder again.

“Was that his word or are you cursing me?” Amaranthe didn’t have any more quarrels for the crossbow so she eased back to the nose of the submarine with the throwing knife in one hand and her own dagger in the other.

Retta panted, trying to control the pain. “Both.”

“Let me finish dealing with these men, and we’ll take care of your shoulder.”

Amaranthe peeked around the corner, ready to jerk her head back if she caught sight of anyone aiming at her. There was at least one more soldier and all those green-uniformed guards as well. “Or perhaps not,” she murmured, taking in the carnage littering the floor around the submarine hatch. The black-clad man was dead, a crossbow bolt protruding from one eye. She gulped. Her first wild shot from her belly had done that?

Most of the guards were down as well. That hadn’t been her doing. Two of the men had either fled or made it into the submarine, but the clangs and grunts of battle had faded.

Not lowering her weapons, she eased around the nose of the submarine and headed for the hatch. Half of the guards’ trousers were about their ankles. What had been amusing with the gang thugs on the docks failed to stir her humor now, not when the recipients of the pranks were dead with cut throats or bullets in their backs. Somehow Amaranthe doubted the soldiers had intentionally shot their own allies and suspected Akstyr’s hand had been in that as well.

She couldn’t chastise him though; his tactics had saved them all from being captured. Or worse.

Knowing they might not have much time before reinforcements came, she picked her way to the hatch. Books stood inside, cast-aside rifles on the deck, daggers in his hands, the blades dripping blood onto the threshold. A dead guard lay at his feet, and he was staring at the other bodies, his expression somewhere between shock and horror.

Amaranthe gripped his arm. “We have to go.”

Akstyr slipped past Books, bumping his elbow. Books didn’t seem to notice.

“All dead?” Akstyr asked.

“Yes, but I think some got away.” Amaranthe pointed at the doorway. “Can you help Retta, please? We need her to help us figure out… everything, and she’s injured.”

Akstyr shrugged. “Sure.”

Amaranthe rooted about for weapons. There were crossbows and rifles aplenty; ammunition was another matter. The guards must not have anticipated a big battle on their way to shore leave, for nobody was carrying extra, at least in the first few belt pouches she checked.

Books dropped the daggers and wiped his hands on his trousers more times than was necessary. “You should bring Sicarius along when you need people…” He swallowed. “Dispatched. This isn’t… I don’t…”

“I know.” Amaranthe was reluctant to abandon her search before finding ammunition, but she couldn’t let Books fall apart. She guided him out of the hatchway while hoping the size of the
Behemoth
meant it would take a few moments for those men to find help. “I keep waiting to get smart enough to figure out how to avoid killing people on our quest to save the empire. I sense we’re not doing something right.”

It wasn’t an appropriate time to joke—she’d simply meant to distract him—and Books’s scowl informed her of the fact. “Remember our discussion on prudence earlier this year?”

That hadn’t been it, eh? “You’re the one who jumped the guards up there and in the submarine, ensuring we’d run into trouble tonight,” Amaranthe pointed out, then wished she hadn’t.

Books flinched.

“Sorry,” she said. “I know you came to help me. This was all my plan, and it’s all my fault. As usual.”

She picked up the daggers Books had dropped, wiped them off, and handed them to him. She wished he’d say she was being too hard on herself, but he didn’t.

“More men coming,” Retta said through gritted teeth. She’d slumped into the chair at the control station, but rose after making the announcement, nearly tumbling into Akstyr’s arms.

He caught her and they headed for the door Mia had used.

“How soon?” Amaranthe let Books go, thinking to resume her hunt for ammunition.

“Now.”

Amaranthe cursed, abandoning her search. Frustrated, she dropped the empty crossbow she’d been holding and jogged after the others. “That door? The way your assistant went? Are you sure that’s wise?”

“The guards don’t know the back corridors as well,” Retta said, “and we can get to the core from there. It’s a control room of sorts.”

Or Retta could lead them right to Mia and a trap. She had more reason than ever to be annoyed with Amaranthe now.

“I don’t have much choice now but to help you.” Retta hissed when a misstep jarred her shoulder. “Mia will let everyone know I was working with you. I—”

Footfalls pounded the floor in the corridor outside the bay.

“All right,” Amaranthe whispered, hustling her comrades toward the alternate exit—it was their only other choice. “Go, go,” she urged, all too aware that having an injured party member would slow them down.

Retta and Akstyr passed into the corridor first, and Amaranthe and Books lunged over the threshold just as a squad of soldiers burst into the bay. More of Pike’s men.

“There!” one cried, spotting Amaranthe and Books.

“They saw us, Retta,” Amaranthe barked. “Can you shut this door? Lock it?”

Retta stumbled back to them and waved her hand on one side of it, high up. That section of smooth black wall looked no different than any other along the corridor, but four enigmatic runes flared to life, glowing crimson. Amaranthe pulled her dagger out, prepared to throw it at the first soldier who ran into sight. Retta pushed in one of the symbols and twisted it. Two soldiers appeared, rifles raised, ready to shoot. The door slid down. A dozen weapons fired, but the bullets were barely audible, soft
tinks
as they struck.

“It’s locked?” Amaranthe asked as her team ran away.

“For now.”

Amaranthe didn’t find that encouraging.

• • •

Sicarius jogged across the snowy field, following the soul construct’s tracks, staying downwind as much as possible. He left his own tracks in the half foot of fresh powder, something he noted with displeasure, though there was no way to avoid it. As it was, the inches of soft snow were slowing his gait. He thought of places along the western side of the lake where he might acquire snowshoes. It would depend on how much longer he needed to follow the tracks and where they led. He’d slipped through Heroncrest’s camp and out the other side without being seen, partially thanks to his stealth and partially thanks to the death and disarray the creature had left in its wake. It should have made the soldiers more alert, Sicarius thought, chastising them for the ease with which he’d passed unnoticed between tents and under vehicles, even as he accepted that the situation had been advantageous for him.

Now, with night still blanketing the fields, he searched for lights on the horizon, listened for sounds, and sniffed the air for the fresh blood that stained the construct’s paws. Twice it had veered toward farmhouses to kill, not caring whether its victim were man, woman, or child. Sicarius hadn’t caught sight of it yet and didn’t want to—if he drew that close, it would smell him and begin its chase anew. He wanted to follow it to its home, to its master. With dawn only two hours away, it should be heading in that direction now.