The Heretic Land Part 28

They carried Aeon's message with them.

For a people supposedly denuded of civilisation and existing as savages, the Skythians launched a staggeringly effective attack.

We are so wrong about them, Sol thought, but he had no time to dwell on the mistake. Every moment, every ounce of his experience and determination and will to survive, was given to his command. His soldier's mind took over completely, and Sol Merry became a machine of war.

As the fighting began, he a.s.sessed their enemy's numbers. Perhaps a score had risen from the snowscape beyond the other end of the bridge, squat shapes that shrugged off their snowy camouflage and came straight for the bridge. Others had been hiding below, their numbers unknown. They slung spiked grappling hooks on the ends of ropes, the twisted, sharp metal impacting the snow-covered bridge and sc.r.a.ping across the stone surface. And behind them, closing on Gallan and the soldiers defending the bridge's southern end, perhaps twenty more attackers.

Tamma crouched down not far from Sol, screeching her orders at the lyon.

He remembered what they'd been told of the Skythians. Once a proud, advanced, civilised people, they were now little more than savages, less advanced than most of the Outer tribes. The cause of such regression a the lies, the truths a were a moot point right now. There was no industry on Skythe, and society was feudal, consisting of small communities spa.r.s.ely scattered across the vast southern plains. The northern lands were barren and uninhabited, so they were told. The Skythians lived in caves and basic reed huts, sc.r.a.ped a living from the land and died young. So they were told.

They're very little threat to us, General Cove had announced to a thousand Spike soldiers on their last briefing before the fleet departed. It's the b.a.s.t.a.r.d thing they wors.h.i.+p that we sail to destroy once again, and once and for all.

The familiar coughs of steam weapons discharging sounded all around. Several Skythians on the north bank fell, blood blooming around them as they caught rifle shot. Two more climbing over the bridge's crumbling parapet flipped back into the river. Shot ricocheted from stone, whining and hissing as if upset at missing its intended home of flesh and bone.

A Spike screamed as a grappling hook arced down and buried itself in her shoulder. She grabbed the rope and tugged, but then whoever had thrown it out from beneath the bridge swung from cover, and the rope thrummed as it tensed. The soldier slipped and slid across the snow, cras.h.i.+ng against the parapet. She growled in pain and frustration. Her blood speckled the snow.

Sol stepped forward and swung his sword, slicing through the rope as he felt an arrow flit past his ear, parting his hair. A splash below, and he looked down in time to see the attacker carried away by the river.

'Can you fight?' he asked, and the woman did not even answer. She stood and nodded her thanks, then rushed along the bridge towards the Skythians coming their way. She trailed rope and blood behind her, and the grappling hook clung like an ugly parasite, still stuck in her shoulder.

The lyon was standing its ground towards the northern end of the bridge. It had one enemy already beneath its heavy front claws, and the victim's ruined head still bubbled and spat from the fire the lyon had breathed upon it. Several Skythians stood beyond the range of its flames, firing arrows which the creature ducked and twisted to deflect from its thick hide, or batted from the air with a big paw. Sol had seen lyons in battle many times, and they never ceased to amaze him.

He looked away from the furious, fiery animal.

Spike soldiers had s.p.a.ced themselves along both sides of the bridge and were hacking at ropes as they appeared. A couple were stabbing at attackers who had managed to gain the bridge parapet, and who soon fell bleeding into the river. One Spike had fallen part-way through a damaged section of the bridge and hung there, trapped. He screamed. Something was happening to him below, out of sight, and he jerked back and forth in the hole as he was attacked, spent pistol clasped in one hand. He spat blood. When the screaming stopped, the movement did not.

'Tamma!' Sol shouted.

She turned to him, wild-eyed and breathless from screeching instructions to the lyon.

'Launch the ving wasps!' Sol called.

Tamma nodded, then signalled with both hands back along the bridge.

Sol looked that way as well, and quickly a.s.sessed the attack against their rear. Gallan had pulled the remaining troops on the southern bank back towards the bridge, forming a defensive line which was successfully repelling the a.s.sault. The Spike were engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with Skythians, metal clas.h.i.+ng on metal, and several of the enemy were already down. Spike weaponry was far superior to the uneven arrows, rusted sword and carved spears Sol had seen thus far.

Gallan glanced back at Sol and nodded once. He had the situation there under control.

A handler ripped open a pack and fell to one side. At that, an uneven, pulsing cloud rose from the pack, hovered for a moment over the handler and then dispersed to the air. Ving wasps. They were vicious creatures, only the size of a thumbnail but packing a sting that could paralyse a limb and drive the victim to distraction from the pain. Sol hoped that each Spike soldier had smeared on his or her repellent gel that morning.

As they quickly spread out, the wasps became difficult to make out individually. But then they started stinging.

Skythians cried out and slapped wildly at the stings. Thus distracted, they were easily put down by Sol's troops, with sword or spear. When the fight turned into a slaughter, the Blader turned back to the situation on the bridge.

Another handler had let loose the sparkhawks, and one of them plummeted to strike a target on the northern back. The Skythian's neck snapped with a sound audible to everyone, and he fell to the ground with sparks sizzling out in the snow around him.

Sol ducked another grappling hook and squatted by the parapet, waiting until its thrower had climbed and was reaching up onto the bridge before slicing the man's arm across the elbow. The Skythian shrieked, but hauled himself higher onto the bridge, swinging up a stocky leg and las.h.i.+ng at Sol with a sharpened branch in his other hand. Sol sidestepped the blow and buried his sword in the man's throat. He kicked at his face and held tight, the sword withdrawing in a spray of blood, the dying man falling into the freezing water.

Tamma ran past Sol, screeching her orders to the manic lyon. The creature dashed left and right, gasping fire at shapes that barely jumped out of its way in time. One of them cried out, and as she struck at the fire erupting in her clothes, the lyon pounced. It bit, bone crunching. Sometimes it ate.

But while it chewed, the lyon was a motionless target. Three arrows struck home in its side, and Tamma's cry resembled one of pain. The lyon spun around and raced after the bowmen.

Sol moved forward, wary of arrows and scanning the landscape beyond the immediate area of battle. He moved to the centre of the bridge, feeling forward for loose stones, and looked over the heads of his defending Spike and the Skythians they fought. The enemy had come from out of nowhere, and the fact that they'd laid an ambush meant that the coastal bridgehead might now also be under attack.

But that was not his concern.

He scanned the snowfields on either side of the river. Nothing moved across them. There seemed to be no danger that far out, so he brought his attention back to the battle.

Several soldiers were dealing with the few remaining enemies climbing onto the bridge from below. And so, sword in one hand, knife in the other, Sol ran to join the fight at its northern end.

Tamma was down on one knee, hand clasped around an arrow protruding from her neck. Still she shrieked her orders to the lyon a it had run wild upon being struck itself, but now it moved left and right according to Tamma's calls.

'Tamma?' Sol called, amazed that she could still be functioning. But when she turned slightly towards him, he saw that the arrow had merely pierced a finger's width of her neck. Blood flowed freely, but she would survive.

The woman with the grappling hook buried in her shoulder hacked and stabbed left and right, keeping several Skythians at bay. Other Spike soldiers did the same, forming two curved lines across the bridge and taking it in turns to harry the enemy. Many enemy had fallen, and several Spike were down as well, mostly victims of Skythians archers who hung back from the hand-to-hand fighting.

Sol parried a blow from a long spear, darted into the man's fighting circle and buried his knife in his stomach. The man gasped and spat into Sol's face. The spittle was warm, his breath stank, but this was the real fighting Sol had always trained for. He never concerned himself with the morals of what he was ordered to do. Even now, gutting the man with his sword and then slas.h.i.+ng his throat, he did not consider why he was an enemy, where his family were and whether slaughtering him was right or wrong. It was kill or be killed, and in such an instance there were no such things as morals.

He pushed the dead man aside and squatted just as a heavy, rusted sword pa.s.sed over his head. The Skythians were bent and malformed echoes of their ancestors, but their strength was surprising. Sol took three steps and, as the Skythian backed away to swing again, stabbed at his stomach.

The man tensed back and avoided the blade. Sol drove onward, letting his own weight carry him forward as he stabbed out again and again.

He heard the blade descending and fell to one side, kicking the Skythian's bare leg and hearing a satisfying crunch as his knee bent back at an unnatural angle.

His enemy shouted and fell to his uninjured knee, and then several ving wasps buzzed around Sol's head. He tensed, but the wasps smelled the repulsive gel smeared across his skin. As intended, it drove them away, and they stung the Skythian's hand and shoulder. As his eyes opened in shock, Sol swiped the sword across the bridge of his nose and blinded him.

The enemy dropped his weapon and pressed his hands to his leaking eyes, keening quietly. Sol cut his throat.

The lyon, meanwhile, had been struck by a spear, the weapon piercing its side and emerging behind one back leg.

'It's gone,' Tamma said, standing and falling against Sol. Blood loss had weakened her, but he felt her rage. 'I can't talk to it any more. Pain has deafened it, and death closes.'

'It'll go well,' Sol said, rea.s.suring her. The battle here was almost done, so he backed away with Tamma to help her to safety. His soldiers were driving the enemy from both ends of the bridge. The snow around their feet was a muddy red, a sea of writhing bodies, and Sol made a rapid a.s.sessment of how things had gone. At least thirty dead or dying Skythians, and six Spike down.

'I can feel the fire,' Tamma said softly.

Sol watched the lyon close on a group of Skythians. They circled it, taking turns to slash and stab when its back was turned. They were being cautious, working together, but it would do them no good. They had no idea what they were fighting.

Sol felt almost sorry for them, and he smiled as he imagined what Leki would say. A soldier going soft? He could almost hear her voice.

The lyon slumped to the ground and then erupted in flames. Limbs of fire lashed out from it as it died, catching two of its attackers across the midriff and settling into their clothing, their flesh. They fell to the ground and rolled in the snow, screaming. But this was not any fire that water could so easily extinguish. Its flames burned deep.

Sol left Tamma slumped down and ran back to the centre of the bridge. Several bodies lay in the snow close to the parapet, all of them Skythian. The Spike who had fallen into a hole had been pulled through, his body given to the river. And at the southern end, Gallan and those around him had performed a perfect defence, and were even now patrolling the battlefield and dispatching enemies who had only been injured.

Sol nodded, grunted. He would have a story for General Cole, and before moving on he would send six Spike back to the beaches with a warning. If they were not already under attack, it was likely that attack would come. If only Leki were with him, she would be able to start racking- He heard a sparkhawk's shriek, then saw the dark streak of the creature disappearing into the trees north of the bridge. There was a thudding impact, and a human scream.

'More,' Sol said softly. He looked back past Tamma. There was movement across the landscape in that direction as well. The ambush sprung and put down, the real attack was about to begin.

Hundreds of Skythians surged towards the bridge from both sides of the river. They said nothing, and the deepening cover of snow swallowed their footsteps. The silence of their attack was disconcerting.

'Stand fast!' Sol shouted. 'Defensive! Reload the rifles only if you've time! Archers, mark your targets!' His Blade quickly regrouped, dragging the injured behind them onto the bridge. They readied their weapons a sword and bow, spear and knife, heavy rifles hot from use. No lyon, now. And the ving wasps were dispersing.

'For Alderia!' a voice shouted, and forty others took up the call, sending a s.h.i.+ver down Sol's spine.

The battle raged on.

Hanx feels the Engine's life becoming something more.

He is sitting beside it, high on the beach. They have moved it away from the high-tide mark so that no waves might touch and damage it, but it is easier to dig in sand, so they have placed it amongst the taller, wider dunes. The prashdial generators have been buried deep. They surge and throb in time with the heartbeat of the world a some cannot feel or hear the beat at all, while Hanx has seen others terrified at what they suddenly know a and they are the heart that drives the soul of the Engine.

His whole life has been a rehearsal for this moment. From the time he was born he was introduced into the influence of the Engines, and from an early age he knew that he wanted to be a.s.sociated with them. His rise to priesthood was already certain a it ran in his family, and such a vocation followed generations a but he had to strive hard to be attached to the Engines. The posting came early. Now he is sitting beside an Engine that is about to be initiated. Such an act has not occurred for six centuries, and the remnants of those older, larger, less refined Engines must lie somewhere on or beneath this landscape, ruined testaments to Alderia's terrible war with this place, and the monsters it made.

Now, with the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, heretical G.o.d returned from wherever it had been driven by Alderia's brief summoning of magic, the danger is greater than ever.

Hanx watches the engineer going about his work. To him, the Engine is a construct to work on, a machine to tend, to lubricate, polish, maintain and marvel over when he meets fellow engineers in taverns and restaurants. Theirs is a job, and the Engines are something their ancestors built.

But Hanx knows the truth. The Engines are far more than machines, and the engineers' ancestors did far more than simply build them. They created them.

You have strange dreams? he is fond of asking engineers. They frequently complain about his a.n.a.lysing them, but he is a Fade priest, and thus superior to them. The complaints remain informal and whispered, and Hanx pretends not to hear. Few of them answer, but he knows from the looks they give him that it is the truth.

They have strange dreams.

Preparations continue around him, and Hanx closes his eyes once again in prayer. He exhorts the G.o.ds of the Fade to smile upon their endeavours here. He feels their attention, their scrutiny, and in the ground beneath him, the air around him, the snow blowing in again and the heat radiating from the Engine and warming his hands, he senses their approval, and their blessing. It is a sense of the Fade he has always had, since when he was a young child, and he takes even more comfort from it now than ever before. The G.o.ds are smiling on them, and the Engine is a machine of the G.o.ds.

If he told the engineers that the dreams they had were messages from the G.o.ds of the Fade, some would think him mad. Others might be terrified. So he keeps the truth to himself, and feels the Fade's touch even as he touches the Engine.

'Almost ready,' the engineer says.

Hanx opens his eyes. 'I know.' Around them is arrayed a protective guard of Spike soldiers. General Cove is there, representing the three generals who have come on this expedition, and he is busy talking with his commanders, strategising and preparing for war. He glances at the Engine occasionally, but his is a look of owners.h.i.+p. He sees the Engine as a weapon, and that a.s.sumption disgusts Hanx. It is as much a weapon as Cove's heart is a dead lump of meat. Both are home to the Fade, and Hanx will have words with Cove about his beliefs. He knows the general is devout, but the business of war must never become something that usurps fear of the Fade.

Cove catches Hanx's eye and smiles, nods towards the Engine. Hanx does not acknowledge the look.

'Almost ready!' the engineer says again, this time directing his words to the general.

'Fire it up when you're done,' the general says.

The engineer glances at Hanx, a wry smile. He steps back from the Engine, hands on hips, and examines his charge.

'Does it feel ready to you?' Hanx says.

'It looks ready. I've checked the capacitors, connected the prashdial generators, made sure the sumps are deep and solid. Other things, too.' He waves a hand, as if the priest might not understand.

'All that is good,' Hanx says. 'It all sounds very ... thorough, and interesting. You have always been one of the more caring engineers. One who almost knows.' The Engine throbs beneath his hand, and he feels a corresponding sensation in his groin. 'But does it feel ready?'

For a moment Hanx sees a flash of understanding in the man's face. He knows this is not simply a construct. It is something more, of this world and another. Magic is the stuff of the G.o.ds, from the home of the Fade, and they are honoured indeed to be able to tap into that realm, however slightly.

'It does,' the engineer says. 'It feels ready.'

Another pulse beneath Hanx's hand, warm, intimate, and he closes his eyes.

'Then let us touch the G.o.ds,' Hanx whispers.

He only hears what happens next, because he cannot open his eyes. The world inside is too precious and wonderful. He sees everything he has ever believed played out across the darkness behind his eyelids, and as the engineer turns levers and pushes one heavy b.u.t.ton, the Engine hums to life.

It grumbles, s.h.i.+fts, roars.

It's beautiful, Hanx tries to say, but he is not sure whether his mouth works.

He opens his eyes just as warm wetness bursts against his robes, groaning aloud at the wonderful, terrible intimacy of the touch of his hand against the heating, heating metal.

Away from the Engine, the general and soldiers are watching aghast. They are backing away, and the general seems to be shouting orders. His voice is silent. Everything is silent, and distant, because the Engine suddenly is everything.

The Engine is part of a system, and the other two are still being transported east and north, to the points where they will be dug in and initiated when the time comes. But being established is important. This place will be the fulcrum around which the coming battle against Aeon will be fought.

Like the giant heart of every G.o.d, the Engine starts to beat.

The engineer comes apart. Hanx registers the brief look of surprise on the man's face before he is shattered across the snowy sand, limbs falling aside as his body erupts blood, innards, bones.

Hanx frowns. He cannot remove his hand from the Engine. It is growing hotter, hotter.

G.o.ds of the Fade, he thinks, grant us the ability to ... give us the wisdom to ... But his thinking is no longer clear. His hand is melted to the metal now, flesh flowing and bone searing, and he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es again, the pleasure an agony. The robes at his groin simmer, then catch fire.

The thing in the Engine is no G.o.d he has ever known. It is much more real, and dreadful.

Hanx opens his mouth to scream at this terrible blasphemy, but no sound emerges.

Only blood.

They see the priest come apart, a man-shaped cloud of gas that expands quickly around the Engine and hazes its surfaces a dull red. General Cove orders them to withdraw, and the Blade surrounding the Engine pull back in a widening circle from the initiated device. They can feel the heat emanating from the thing, and see the rapidly melting snow expanding around where it is settled between the dunes, a melting line following their retreat.

The mucky ground starts to change. Sand melts and flows. It glows. The air s.h.i.+mmers, almost on fire itself. Falling snow sparkles and hisses into steam high above.

Further down the beach, the rackers burst naked from their tent and run across the sands, screaming and tearing at their hair. Shoot dust hazes the atmosphere around them, making their presence doubtful. One of them splashes into the sea and continues running, falling eventually, thras.h.i.+ng, drowning in the surf. The other throws herself at the sand and starts to dig.

There is no eruption. The Engine settles. Heat starts to wane, and over the next few hours until sunset, heat haze above the melted sand will form dancing wraiths to haunt the Spike soldiers.

General Cove watches the Engine where it has come to life, and sends no one closer than he is prepared to go himself.

Can we truly control this? he wonders. He quizzes another engineer, but the man is wide-eyed and terrified, shaking his head as if he does not understand a single word. Cove orders everyone to offer a prayer to the G.o.ds of the Fade, and as he himself prays, the Engine looks on. He can almost feel its smile.

Juda awoke to the touch of fresh air against his skin. He was stirred from strange dreams of a man who wandered the land in search of magic. He knew this man was him, but in the dream he had been distant and unknown. Juda had wanted to approach and question his intent, but he had felt frozen in place. The dream had disturbed him. But now he was awake, and reality was returning with a chill.

Water flowed around him within the guts of the ancient Engine. He had fallen asleep leaning against a hard wall of what looked like petrified wood, and as the ice blocking the entrance had melted, it had formed many streams into the Engine's structure. He heard water disappearing into places he might have seen, and those he never would.

The cool breeze came from where his final dreg had rescued him from being trapped in here for ever.

The hole up through the ice was made just for him. It was wide enough to crawl through, and angled so that he would not slip back down into the Engine. Steam or mist hazed the air. He breathed in and it tasted of age.