Path of Bones (28 page)

“Interesting,” he said with a smile.  There was little about the Veil he didn’t know, but aside from a few powerful Bloodspeakers Chairos had never heard of someone being able to recover from severe injuries so quickly.  Repairing wounds was something beyond the capacity of even the most accomplished Veilwardens. 

It must be some Jlantrian experiment
, he thought,
some new attempt in their insane drive to push the Veil to its limits.  Or maybe your Vossian companion somehow gifted you with this little trick. 

Chairos intended to learn what was happening inside Dane’s body, even if he had to cut him into a dozen pieces.

But first thing was first.  Chairos had no idea how well-protected the Dream Witch was, and the last thing he wanted was to come even closer to capturing her than Harrick had only for the ground to fall out from under him.  Also like Harrick, he was completely on his own.  Chairos had served Mez’zah Chorg faithfully for years, but to request aid was a sign of weakness in her eyes, and to seek help from Cranos Thane would have been even worse.

I don’t need either of them
, he thought smugly.  Mazrek Chairos was confident in his abilities.  He had enormous resources at his disposal.  Unlike that upstart Harrick, he would not fail.

He nodded to Drakanna and left her alone with Dane while he went to plan the hunt.

Thirty-Four

Wolves.  They surround him, a wall of razor fur and pulsing flesh.  He hears their breathing, smells their musk.  They give him strength and purpose. 

He can’t join them.  Not yet.  Being so close yet unable to touch them pains him.  His whimpers echo through the dawn sky, and his breath steams in the brittle cold. 

The world is white and vast.  There are dark mountains in the distance.  The black sun floats like an absence. 

The wolves must keep themselves at bay.  There’s some rite he has yet to perform, some test he must pass.  He’s growing stronger. 

He lifts his head to sky and howls. 

Soon….

Thirty-Five

They finally cleared away the last remains of the battle a week after it was over.  The conflict under Ebonmark had taken the lives of many White Dragon soldiers and Black Eagles, but it had also rid the city of dozens of criminal scum from the Black Guild, the Phage...and Wolf Brigade, the mercenary outfit which had reported to the dour and infamous General Karthas of The Thirteen. 

Colonal Aaric Blackhall, Grand Marshall of Ebonmark, was largely responsible for how the battle for the fate of the city had been won, and he was still having nightmares about it.

In the wake of Blackhall’s success Empress Azaean approved the deployment of a second Company of White Dragon soldiers to help maintain control and provide additional manpower for excavating the ruins of Black Sun.  The abandoned Vossian complex had sat relatively undiscovered beneath Ebonmark for years, and clearing it out proved to be vile work.  Toran Gess had recovered enough of his strength to provide some magical aid to the workers and soldiers by creating wards which allowed them to breathe clean air and not catch any diseases while they cleared away scores of bodies, many of which were little more than smelted husks thanks to the magical plague called
Serpentheart. 
More Veilwardens from Ral Tanneth would have helped, but Blackhall was just thankful to have Toran back on his feet. 

It was mid-morning by the time the rain stopped, but the sky was still dark with clouds.  It had been pouring for days, which made hauling the wrecked Vossian war machine from the river an all but impossible task.  Not only had the weather strongly impeded their attempts to even locate the vehicle, hidden as it was amongst thick drifts of black mud and debris at the bottom of the river, but removing it from the water required the use of a complex and bulky Galladorian crane, a clunky contraption made of planks, ropes, pulleys and winches attached to a magically reinforced net.  The Iron Egg, as Gess referred to it, was a monstrosity of Vossian war engineering, a perfect sphere that stood twice as tall as a man.  The damn thing weighed a ton, and since it was shielded from magic they had little choice but to rely on the largely ineffective crane.

Blackhall looked at the tunnel under the docks where the vehicle had crashed into the River Black.  Rank odors rose from the passage to Black Sun.  It was a slaughterhouse under the city, a ruin of charnel filth and bodily muck; Blackhall had visited the scene where the Black Guild had unleashed
Serpentheart
, and the walls were paved with the molten remains of the dead.  The stench from below permeated the area over the tunnels, and Blackhall ordered every entrance sealed until Gess could come up with some Veilcrafted means to fix the problem, though that would have to wait since the mage was busy hunting down the Bloodspeaker Ijanna Taivorkan.  Other Veilwardens from House Blue had secured the Cauldron and seized the remaining canisters of
Serpentheart
to keep it out of the Iron Count’s hands.  In the meantime, Slayne and the Black Eagles had rid the city of the last pockets of Black Guild and Phage soldiers.  It was dirty work, but thankfully it was almost done.

It would have been better if Marros could have finished cleaning up around here before Argus whisked him off on his damned fool’s errand.

Thunder tore across the sky.  The air was leaden with moisture, and thick banks of fog crept across the riverbank.  The River Black was low at that point in the city, a good twenty feet below street level.  Two small sailing crafts,
Storm
and
Sting,
floated near the enormous river barge
Atlas
,
which was loaded down with the crane.  Pulleys strained under the weight of iron cables and thickly knotted ropes which supported the netted prize as it was drawn up from the water. 

Blackhall stood on
Storm’s
deck as it violently rocked back and forth in the wind.  Water whipped across his face.  He gripped the railing, and the wood was slick under his boots.  Sailors moved about frantically.

He could just make out the dark bulb of iron in the water as the men operating the crane struggled to draw the Egg to the surface.  They’d only located the Vossian vehicle two days ago, but like everything else involving the Jlantrian occupation of Ebonmark its retrieval was taking entirely too long. 

Once we get that damned amulet my job here is finished. 
Retrieving the Veilcrafted artifact known as the Bloodheart Stone – he’d only learned its name after Gess had reported to Argus how they’d failed to acquire it – was the last part of Blackhall’s assignment in securing control over Ebonmark.  Even though the Iron Count and Vellexa had both escaped and the Phage were bound to try and re-establish a foothold in the city, the local criminal element had been all but eliminated, at least for the time being. 
With any luck I may actually get out of this pit and back home to my family.

But first thing was first: they had to find the Bloodheart Stone, and they still weren’t entirely certain it was even in the Iron Egg.  All of the clues indicated it was – Harrick had likely kept the item close, and from what intelligence they’d gathered the Phage leader had been piloting the Egg when it plowed through the tunnel and plummeted into the river – but Blackhall still had his men searching every known Phage safe house in the city looking for the item, just in case.

One of the ropes snapped.  The net sank deeper in the water, and the massive bulb of dark iron dropped with it.  Blackhall couldn’t tell how far it fell, but the men scrambled.  Additional lines were cast down.  One of the iron pulleys strained and snapped free of its mooring with a loud metal clang.  The
Atlas
visibly lurched and curses rang out as men tried to secure the remaining lines. 

“
Get that damn thing up!” the
Storm’s
captain shouted.  Blackhall held tight to the railing and watched – as much as he wanted to add his own curses and commands to the mix, he knew it would do little good.  Best to let the men do their jobs.

But I swear to the One Goddess, if we lose this damn Egg and have to dig it up all over again…

The wind was heavy, blasting river water across the decks.  The storm was building again.  Waves crashed against the ships and twisted them about, and all three vessels shifted precariously as
Atlas
’s lines held fast to the net and the Egg. 

“
Get closer!” the captain shouted. 
Storm
and
Sting
closed in on
Atlas
’s flanks, a risky maneuver given the winds and tight confines of the river, but it was the only way the other crews could move in to lend any help.  Men on the
Atlas
threw securing lines and tried to repair the broken winch even as others worked the wheels frantically, shifting counterweights to slowly but surely pull the net up.  Blackhall saw the dark outline of the Iron Egg just under the water’s surface, a black moon beneath the waves.

The next few minutes felt like hours as the Iron Egg was lifted from the river. 
Storm
and
Sting
had teams of men with additional lines ready, and they secured the vehicle the moment the net was out of the water.  The winch and crane slowly rotated towards the shore.  Blackhall kept waiting for the lines to snap and for the sphere to drop back into the river, but thankfully that didn’t happen.  The molten slag and Veilcrafted steel was pitted, dented and torn. 

Once they had the vehicle up on the rocky shore the crews from the smaller ships went to work.  Iron spikes were wedged into where Gess had informed them the access hatch should be.  Wooden stops were set to prevent the monstrous sphere from rolling back into the water, and men climbed ladders and lines and pounded on the device with heavy hammers. 

The work was tedious and time consuming, and eventually – as much out of sheer boredom as a desire to see the task completed – Blackhall found himself in there with the rest of the men, working pry bars and ramming home the spikes as they tried to break into the dark device.  After a while his muscles ached and his face was covered with sweat, but even with his subordinates insisting  that he rest Blackhall kept at it.

Eventually, mercifully, they broke through the slag and ripped off the access hatch.  Blackhall was on the stony shore a hundred paces away when that happened, but even from a distance he smelled the miasma coming from the war machine.  The inside of the orb was red and thick with human remains, and the stench of melted skin poured out in a cloud. 

Blackhall climbed up the ladder, one hand over his mouth, and peered inside.  The levers and strange tentacle-like tubing had all been smashed and covered with blood and filth.  A body was trapped in a heavy iron seat, the ruins of the half-melted face barely recognizable.

Harrick.  Goddess, what a sorry sight.

What was left of the Phage leader’s face was pulled back in an oddly serene expression, and several of his personal items had been strewn across the gore-stained floor.

They cut Harrick’s remains out of the dark vessel.  Captain Tyburn directed the effort with his usual keen efficiency, and within a few minutes the body was on the shore, charred and molten and missing most of its fingers and toes, the skin baked and shorn along the back and legs.  The stench was mortifying.  Maggots had bred over the corpse, crawling in and out the soggy flesh and blistered muscle.

“Goddess,” Tyburn said.  “That
Serpentheart
was some nasty business.”

Poor bastard
, Blackhall thought.  Harrick may have double-crossed them, but Blackhall still felt a pang of guilt over how he’d died.  The notion of using the Black Guild’s arcane chemical weapons had never settled well with him, even if at the time it had proved the most expeditious way to deal with all of their enemies at once.  The Black Guild, the Phage, and Bordrec Kleiderhorn and his men had all been eliminated in one fell swoop…as had General Karthas’ Wolf Brigade. 
It was treason to have killed them like that
, he reminded himself,
even if they weren’t real soldiers. 
The alternative would have been much worse: the men of Wolf Brigade were lawless mercenaries, all of the same kill-happy mindset as Karthas, and they would have caused tremendous collateral damage to Ebonmark and its populace had they been allowed to do things the General’s way. 

Blackhall had nightmares about that night.  Some of Wolf Brigade had died in combat with Tuscars and Black Guild mercenaries…and a few he and his most trusted soldiers had dealt with themselves in the Cauldron.  Strangely, even those men of Wolf Brigade he’d killed with his own blade didn’t plague his dreams as much as those he
hadn’t
seen die, the men who’d perished in Black Sun when the Guild released
Serpentheart. 
They chased him through his dreams, sometimes, the flesh still dripping from their bones.