Ten Arrows of Iron, page 30
“That was mine!” Yria protested.
“I need it more,” I replied, regarding her evenly. “And I shot the guy who had it last, if you really want to fight for it.” She fell silent and I grunted. “Wait for us. You’ll see us coming.”
“Right.” Yria snorted, crossing her arms. “Guess I’ll just look for the half-naked crazy bitch.” She waved a hand. “Well, go on, get out there. But don’t think I’m going to be dawdling here if this shit goes any more screw-wise than it is.”
I wasn’t going to think about what that meant. I wasn’t going to think about anything, if I could help it. If I started thinking, I’d start realizing what a stupid idea this was, how hopelessly outnumbered and outmuscled I was, how even if I got out of this, Two Lonely Old Men still hadn’t told me everything and that meant—
Ah, but there I went again.
Thinking when I should be out there getting horribly murdered.
TWENTY-TWO
LITTLE HAVEN
I slid out the door, keeping low to the ground as I swept across the courtyard. The reek of the Firelung hammered itself against my makeshift mask, trying to seep past the cloth and into my nose. Even now, I could feel a twitching in my brain, ashes burning on my tongue.
But the Haveners didn’t notice me as I crept around the outer edge of their gathering. Their attentions were locked upon the effigy looming over them.
“The hour is nigh!”
And the deranged woman at its feet.
“The fire paints the sky a bloody hue, brothers!” the Sister screeched. “The Seeing God’s eternal eye is upon us! Prepare! Prepare!”
The Haveners roared in reply, their screams like feral beasts clawing their way out of their throats. To the effigy, they raised glimmering steel. And there was a whole fucking lot of it.
Be real fucking nice if I had a magic gun right about now.
Spear—too bulky. Sword—no, too short. I searched the raised weapons, looking for something more suitable than the feeble knife I carried. Whip—who the fuck still uses those? Glaive… or is that a halberd? Shit, I always get them confused. I shook my head. Focus. Need something heavier than…
My thoughts trailed off as my eyes settled upon the broad, jagged-edged head of an axe, bright and shining like a big, ugly moon.
A smile crept across my face.
Hello, beautiful.
I came up behind the Havener at the edge of the gathering, waving the axe around like a party favor. He was too lost in his fervor to notice me coming up behind him. His mouth gaped open wide, a formless howl tearing its way out of his throat.
For as long as it took me to jam the knife into it, anyway.
Throat. Lung. Kidney. It had been a while since I took care of someone this way, but I knew the old one-two-three rule of fighting Haveners. Vital organs, take them down quick, don’t trust them to bleed out. So long as a fanatic is still breathing, he’s fighting.
Even this one took a feeble swing at me as he crumpled to the ground. I glanced up; no one seemed to think one of their friends being murdered was more interesting than the Sister’s lunatic ravings, but that wouldn’t last.
I took the axe up, smiled at its heft. This little lady and I were going to do a lot of damage. All I had to do was find the quickest route through the human crowd, wait for an opening, then move swiftly, but carefully, sparing not even a single moment for—
“LET THE SACRIFICE BE MADE!”
Or I guess I could just do it right the fuck now.
I looked up. I saw the dagger raised in the Sister’s hand. I saw Jero’s chest heave, waiting for the blow.
I started running.
They roared, they howled, they shrieked at the promise of violence.
None of them even noticed the screaming until I was already halfway through the crowd.
I swung, hacked, hewed. Blood spattered the stones, my dress, my face. Everywhere I struck, a leg went out, an agonized scream rose, a Havener went down, clutching an axe wound in his side. The drugged-up ones barely seemed to notice until they looked down and saw themselves seeping out onto the street. The sober ones…
“HERETIC!”
Less so.
Haveners lashed out, with flesh and with steel, clawing their way over each other in a bid to be the one to kill me. I flicked my wrist, felt the shock of blows as the shield absorbed them and smashed against chins. Swords flashed, painting the edge of my vision with blood as they nicked at my flesh. Hands reached, tore at my dress, pulled at my hair.
I pushed through the pain. I pulled away from their grips. I kept moving. I kept swinging.
The Firelung was clawing its way into my mouth. My chest burned with every ragged breath. My head throbbed, torn between the drug making my brain boil and the sound of the Haveners’ fanatical cries filling my ears as more and more of them came flooding toward me.
I couldn’t see their faces beyond the lunatic grins and animal snarls beneath their blindfolds. I couldn’t feel their blades, my arms gone numb from the shock of the axe cutting through so many people. I didn’t look. I didn’t think. I didn’t stop.
My eyes, my thoughts, my blade were all on him.
I tore free from the throng in a burst of red and silver. The Sightless Sister’s neck craned as she turned toward me, her mouth twisting into a gnarled frown just in time to catch the rim of my shield smashing against her chin.
I seized her withered form, pulled her against me as I pressed the axe’s blade against her throat. I whirled, backing up against the effigy’s legs as the tide of red-painted flesh came swarming toward me. I beheld a hundred gaping mouths, a hundred flashing weapons, a hundred blood-hungry bodies swarming up toward me, screaming, shouting, laughing, praying, bleeding…
And then… stopping.
The screams went silent. The weapons lowered. The tide of sinew and blood came close enough to drown me before stopping and slowly receding. The Haveners stood taut, every one of their blindfolded gazes locked upon me. Or rather, upon the crone I held against me, and the gnarled hand she held up, bidding them stop.
I didn’t know what magic the Seeing God gave his followers. I didn’t know how they knew, blind as they were, what was happening or how the Sister commanded a horde like that to stop. And I didn’t know how the fuck Jero and I were going to get out of here alive.
“I sense a lack of foresight from you, child.”
Neither did she, apparently.
“Why come to this hallowed place?” she rasped, mirth in her voice even as my axe drew blood across her throat. “Why profane the sacrosanct? The Seeing God would come for you, eventually, as he comes for all.”
“And you’re welcome to go meet him in whatever hell he happens to be,” I replied, my eyes searching the crowd for anyone who might get inconveniently brave. “But you won’t be taking us with you.”
“Sal…” Jero’s voice was thin with pain, his breath ragged as he spoke to me. “You… need to…”
“Shut up,” I growled. I pressed the axe a little closer to the Sister’s throat. “Tell them once we’re free and clear of your little festival here, I’ll be happy to return you. In how many pieces depends on how reasonable we’re all willing to be.”
Not to brag, but I’ve killed a lot of people. So many that I thought I’d seen every face a person can show before being sent to the black table. I’d seen the simpering pleas, the defiant cursing, the depraved cackling—and I’ve put a sword through each and every one of them without batting an eye.
I guess I should count myself lucky that I’d never felt the same chill run down my back as I did when the Sightless Sister just let out a long, slow sigh, as though she were talking to a dim-witted child and not a woman with an axe.
“I can tell them nothing, girl,” she rasped. “For it is not my place to speak.”
“Birdshit,” I snarled, pressing my axe tighter against her throat. “Tell them your god wills it or something. They love that shit.”
“Do you not see?” she chuckled. “It is beyond our will. Theirs. Mine. Yours.”
“Lady, I’m the one with the fucking axe. I’ll be making the rules.”
“The omens led us here, child.” She spoke breathlessly, awe dripping from her mouth. “One by one, they came to us. One by one, we came to this place. We were beckoned to this den of kindling filth, the sparks that will light the fire to set this entire world ablaze.”
“What?” I screwed up my face—it was tough to understand what the fuck these lunatics said, but they usually weren’t this coherent. “What fire are you—”
“Sal!”
I glanced over my shoulder. Jero stared at me with one good eye, an urgency on his face that he didn’t have the strength to voice. What was that in his wrinkles? I wondered. A command? A plea?
No… an apology.
“Kill me, if you like,” the Sister rasped. “Save him, if you can. Run as far as you want into whatever shadows remain.” Her smile spread like an ugly wound across her face. Her commanding hand trembled. “But when the great flame swallows every den of filth and heresy and there are no more shadows left to skulk in, remember this…”
She turned toward me. The bones and skin of her neck popped and creaked painfully as she looked at me. The lights in her eyes glowed, illuminating the sheer, terrifying joy in her smile.
“You will be the one to bring the fire,” she said, “Cacophony.”
I stared at her, into those lights in her sockets, for only a moment. Because in another, I saw her hand fall.
And behind her, I heard them scream.
The Haveners’ howls tore into my skull, the thunder of their feet upon the street rattling my bones in my skin. They came surging forward, screaming and shaking their steel, pointedly not giving a shit about my hostage.
I spat out a curse, planted my boot in her back and kicked her forward. She struck the horde, causing them to recoil for as long as it took to keep her from falling before rushing toward me again.
My mind raced along with my eyes, searching the plumes of Firelung and tides of flesh for any escape. But all around me, they closed in, the tide rising. I looked to Jero, who regarded me with bloodied resignation. I looked to the sky and saw only the effigy: the timber of its legs, the skull that crowned its body…
And the ropes that held it upright.
I had no idea if it would work. I had no idea what would happen. I had nothing but an axe.
And that’s what I used.
I hacked at the ropes. One by one, they snapped like whips across the sky, frayed by the tension of holding the colossus up. Over the sound of the fanatics’ cries growing louder in my ears, I could just barely hear it: the snapping of rope, the whistle of wind.
And the creak of timber.
“NO!” The Sightless Sister’s wail rang out as she reached with a gnarled hand, both gestures impotent. “HIS BLESSED VESSEL!”
The Haveners’ blinded stares turned upward. And their bloodthirsty voices turned to screams of despair.
The effigy started to sway. Without the ropes to hold it upright, its colossal body started to lean backward. The remaining supports snapped and broke, leaving me barely enough time to cut Jero free from it before the mess of timber and bone started to plummet.
The Haveners came rushing toward us, over us, past us in a desperate bid to save the effigy from collapsing. No one raised so much as a word as I draped Jero’s arm across my shoulders and started hauling him away toward Yria’s hiding spot.
“I don’t know how it happened,” he rasped in my ear. “My disguise, they’d always fallen for it before… I can’t… I don’t…”
“Spend your breath moving, not talking, asshole,” I snarled in reply as I pulled him toward the house. “They aren’t going to keep ignoring us once they realize they can’t… save… the…”
My words drifted off as I glanced over my shoulder and saw the effigy’s massive body smashing into a house.
The same house they kept the Firelung in.
Okay, so maybe that was pretty stupid.
A burst of fire. Shattered timbers. A hundred voices screaming over the sound of wood groaning. And a great big fucking cloud the color of blood washing over everything.
The house erupted in a spray of cinders and splinters of wood. And like blood gushing from a wound, the Firelung caught aflame and spewed a great, roiling cloud over the square.
The Haveners vanished beneath it and, within the haze of the drug’s smoke, I could see them beginning to change. Their lunatic grins almost split their faces in two. They clawed at their bodies, writhing with pleasure over the blood they drew. Their screaming twisted to laughing, shrieking, sobbing, cackling, vomiting, a grotesque and twisted symphony of bodily functions that tore its way out of the cloud like a newborn from a red womb.
A whiff of Firelung could make a man fearless.
I don’t know what inhaling a whole fucking stock of it would do, but I bet it probably ended with me dead.
If I were a less humble woman, I might have taken a moment to marvel at my ability to take something like human sacrifice and somehow make it worse. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not very humble.
“Fucking MOVE!”
I just didn’t have the moment to spare.
I wrapped an arm around Jero’s torso, holding him close as I stopped dragging him and started carrying him. The Haveners had lost all thought of pursuing us, but they didn’t need to. The cloud of Firelung did that for them, chasing us like a predator chases wounded prey, leisurely reaching out with crimson vapor claws.
“It wasn’t going to be like this,” Jero groaned. “They weren’t supposed to know… stupid… stupid…”
Maybe the Firelung was making him babble stupid shit. Or maybe the pain from his wounds. Or maybe he had always been this stupid and I hadn’t noticed. Either way, if he didn’t cut it out, I was going to leave him here.
The door to Yria’s hiding spot loomed before us. I picked up speed, lowering my body as much as I could and smashing it open with my shoulder. I shifted Jero to one arm, turned and slammed it shut as the cloud of red smoke splayed against the window.
Yria looked up from scratching her ass to cast a confused look at us.
“The fuck happened out there?” she grunted.
“Get to the portal,” I rasped, breathless, as I dragged Jero’s limp form to it.
“What was all that fucking noise?” She stalked toward the window, squinted out it. “What’s all this fucking red stuff?” She turned and scowled at me. “Where’s my fucking knife?”
“Portal,” I snarled.
“What? In his condition?” She eyed Jero warily. “I don’t know. Portals are tricky things. If you ain’t hale enough, they can—”
Glass shattered behind her. All eyes looked up toward the Havener, lodged in the window he had just broken with his head. He looked up, shards of glass embedded in his skin, and hissed.
“I want to lick your rib cage.”
Yria blinked. Snorted. Spat.
“Yeah, all right,” she grunted. “Let’s go.”
I stepped forward and jammed the axe’s head into the fanatic’s skull. Yria rushed to the back of the room, beckoning the portal to life. The Lady’s song rose in my ears, the tranquility drowning out the sounds of people screaming, the sight of clouds roiling, the feel of the street shaking…
Wait.
I paused, listened. A faint sound, like a thunder crack, punched through the air. Again. And again. Louder each time until I felt the floorboards rattle under my feet.
“Hurry,” I said to Yria, backing toward her. “Hurry.”
“You want it done quick or you want it done right?” she spat spitefully, shaking her head. “Fucking amateurs think shitting on the laws of time and space happens with a word.”
She held her hands out. Upon the wall, a pinprick of purple light blossomed into a portal, stretching across the wood like a living thing. She studied it for a moment before looking back to me.
“Looks stable,” she grunted, turning toward me. “I’ll go through first to make sure. Then you ease Jero through and I’ll be on the other side to gently—”
I couldn’t hear the rest of what she said, seeing as the wind was knocked out of her when I shoved Jero into her and forced both of them through the portal. The purple light rippled like water as they vanished through it, leaving me alone.
Right up until the roof exploded, anyway.
Timbers splintered. Fire erupted. Shards of flaming wood rained down, forcing me to duck away as something huge punched its way through the ceiling. I glanced up, saw a colossal fist of timber and flame pull itself free, leaving behind a gaping hole.
And looming high overhead, a shadow painted black across the red mist, something immense stared down at me.
When you do this job as long as I have, you start to develop a certain instinct for recognizing when a situation has become incredibly, thoroughly, and irrevocably fucked. It feels like a heaviness at the base of your head, like an axe resting on your neck.
I looked up into that great shadow looming large over me. I felt that heaviness in my head.
I let it carry me as I fell backward, into the portal, and disappeared.
TWENTY-THREE
YUN ATTORO ESTATE
Understand, we’re talking about changing the world here,” Jero finally said at last, his breath heavy with pain. “This isn’t some pedestrian heist of gold and silken underthings. The need for secrecy demands a certain independence in operations.”
He paused to search my face for signs that my anger had abated.
Seeing that it hadn’t, he cleared his throat.
“And though Two Lonely Old Men has no doubts about our intellects or loyalties, he suspected it would be wiser to have everyone know only part of the plan,” he continued, “so that if any one of us were captured, tortured, or otherwise bribed, spilling our knowledge couldn’t ruin the operation. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”
He waited for me to nod.
