Dawn

Chapter 13

WITH NOREELA UNDER attack in so many ways and so many places, one scene appeared serene. It was a haunted serenity, because the endless dusk seemed to suit this place. Darkness had always been comfortable here: dark histories, dark times. Water lapped at the lakeshore a few hundred steps from the building. Usually there were larger waves, but even the waters seemed to have been muted by the stealing of the light. Boats nudged against their moorings as the lake lifted and fell in a gentle, hypnotic rhythm, like the slowing heartbeat of Noreela. Bracken lay slumped to the ground in the darkness, its greenery fading into the soil with the rest of the land’s color. A few birds flitted here and there, but they did not sing. Something splashed, causing a line of ripples to spread from where the mystery creature had decided not to emerge. The darkness, perhaps, had changed its mind.

The building was huge, imposing. But no longer empty.

Beside the building sat a gigantic machine. Its wings were spread across the ground to either side, and several trees that had been uprooted by its landing lay splintered beneath its many feet. Its body swelled and shrank, swelled and shrank, and a mist hung around its various exhausts. Noses, perhaps, or mouths. One wing twitched and stripped the bark from one side of a living tree.

The machine was waiting. Its fleshy parts shivered, its metallic elements shone in the moonlight, its wings of wood and water and skin flexed and shifted, unable to find stillness.

Moonlight slid from the walls of the building and left it in darkness. There were windows, but they were pitch black. There were doors, but they remained closed. A gate in the building’s front facade had been blasted from its hinges and scattered in a thousand charred pieces. Some of them still burned. There was no breeze to disturb the smoke, and perhaps it rose forever.

Inside the entrance hall, something had conjured chaos. A huge timber staircase had been smashed to pieces, and some of the debris still smoldered along with the remains of the gate. Stone walls had been scored as if by giant nails. Tiles had erupted from the floor and been flung against walls, shattering and leaving parts of themselves embedded in the stone or timber. Beneath the tiles and their ancient bedding lay the rock of the land itself, and even this had not escaped the fury of destruction.

The Monastery had stood for a long time, and it would stand for a long time more. But its inside had been burned by unimaginable power. Something had passed through here, eradicating all evidence of the Monastery’s most recent inhabitants: the Red Monks. Robes were shredded, tables and chairs burned, food stores turned to rot, dormitories corrupted with feces and flame, kitchens stomped down as if by giant feet, and scars of the chaos marked every wall, floor and ceiling of the ancient building.

The Mages, in their wrath, could have easily destroyed the building itself. Their magic was rich and new and still being explored, and already they had powers that they had never before experienced. Maybe they could have tumbled walls and brought ceilings crushing down, but this had once been their home, before they were driven out and hounded from the land. The filthy Red Monks had taken it for their own, and perhaps the Mages could have touched the very heart of the Monastery and changed it completely, setting a seed of destruction to melt its stone skeleton, turning it into a lake of unstoppable fire that would spread over time; a year to reach Lake Denyah, five more to turn its waters to steam.

But they had come here for a reason, and their reason lay deep. Past the steps and basements, deep down where tunnels had been dug by unknown things eons ago, that was where their true destruction would be wrought.

And that was where they would have their first real taste of revenge.

“CAN WE KILL fledge demons?” Angel said. “Oh, I think we can!”

The Mages stood at the junction of several tunnels, clothed in fire. Blue flames licked from their mouths, their crotches, their ears and eyes, and as Angel spoke, her words singed the air. The phrase became a distinct ball of fire, bouncing along the tunnels and disappearing into their depths.

She laughed, and coughed another fireball to follow her challenge.

S’Hivez was smiling, as he had been since their return to the Monastery. “We’ll make our own demons to kill them,” he said. “We can make a hundred!”

They had sent a sea of fire pouring along each tunnel they found, letting it find its own level. They listened for shrieks of pain but heard nothing. They melted the air, adding a magical slick of acid from their tongues that expanded and multiplied, flowing through paths of scorched air and disappearing along tunnels faster than a crossbow bolt. The Mages closed their eyes and waited for the psychic waves of agony, but none came. They were not concerned; not yet. Time was theirs. An easy victory would feel like no victory at all.

Angel and S’Hivez formed a machine from the rock of the tunnel walls, giving it drops of their blood and gasps of their fiery breath. It was more powerful than anything the shade had formed in Conbarma. Here they were using their newfound magic to its full, richer and far more potent than the taste they had left with the shade. A mockery of the things they sought to destroy, the machine tumbled down the deepest tunnel, scoring walls with molten blades and parting the thin skein of reality as it went. Its exhaust was a miasma of nonexistence that would wipe any living thing it touched from history and memory. A small tunnel rodent, blind and albino, was caught in the machine’s breath. Elsewhere in the caves, a thousand more rats ceased to exist. Droppings disappeared from corners never touched by light.

And as one rat inhaled, the bite scar on its ear mended itself, a scratch on a protruding knob of fledge smoothed over, and a million lice, worms, spiders and beetles existed again, suddenly uneaten.

The strange machine went on, carrying its new molten body around it, seeking the Nax and preparing to exhale again.

“And more!” S’Hivez said, conjuring chaos from the ground before him. Angel laughed. The air danced with things that should not be. They were back in their old home, more powerful than ever, chasing down the bastard Nax that had driven them out three hundred years ago.

The tunnels were illuminated with the sick light of dark magic.

The Mages paused and listened, touching the rock walls, sniffing the air, searching for the dying agonies of Nax. Still they heard none. They made yet more machines and sent them into the depths. One turned rock to ice, another made fledge unreal, yet another froze moments in time, halting history in small pockets of timelessness.

And then, tired of waiting, the Mages started to descend farther, moving deep on constructs of stone and water. They passed through tunnels cauterized smooth by the machines they had sent before them. Angel pressed against rock and summoned her dark magic, melting her hand inside to feel the beat of the land. She closed her eyes and sought the machines they had sent down, placing them all in a multidimensional map in her mind’s eye. Some had gone so deep that they had almost disappeared from Noreela entirely, while others had stayed shallow but traveled far. One machine-shredding the future and leavings shards of timeless vacuum in its wake-had passed beneath Lake Denyah, probing up and out in case the Nax had tried to escape that way.

“There’s nothing,” Angel said.

S’Hivez spread his hands and crunched his knuckles. “Then we go deeper.”

They felt the weight of the land weighing down upon them. The pressures were great, but the Mages reveled in them. Blue flames danced about them as they moved. The stone around them came alive and died again with each breath, and their dark magic filled them, brimming from their eyes as tears.

They found a fledge seam that had been opened and destroyed by one of the machines. Angel paused and listened at its entrance, sniffing, smelling the peculiar taint of unmade fledge. That was all. No echoes of a Nax’s dying sigh. She frowned-something about the ruined fledge did not seem right. She shook her head and they moved on.

They reached another fledge seam, this one untouched by their machines. Angel saw why: the exposed fledge was stale and rank. She scratched at the drug, snorting a flame so that she could see, and the heart of the fledge was also stale. She cut deeper, stepping on chunks of the drug and cooking it to nothing with the heat from her heels. S’Hivez stood back and watched, still listening for messages from the machines they had sent deep and far. None of them returned; their tasks remained undone.

Angel stepped back and turned to her old lover. “They’ve truly gone,” she said.

“No.” S’Hivez shook his head and blue flame trickled from his eyes.

“Yes. They’re not here anymore. The fledge is stale, and they’ve gone. But wewill find them again.”

S’Hivez closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It came out as iced air. “They’ve denied us our vengeance.”

“Only for now,” Angel said, looking around, trying to convince herself. “We’ve got forever to track them down.”

“They’re the Nax. They could go deep.”

“We’ve more to do than this. There’ll be time. There’salways time. And besides…” Angel touched the rock of the land and let magic flow, turning stone to glass, illuminating it, letting visions flicker within its cloudy embrace. “…we have this. And we can always go deeper.”

The Mages left the machines to stalk and haunt the tunnels forever.

THEY MADE THEIR way back up into the Monastery, emerging into its basements and pressing shadows aside as they climbed up to its ruined heart. There they found a shade cowering in a corner, invisible to those who did not know how to look. Angel conjured it to manifest before them, a silent void of potential.

It came, and Angel frowned. “This shade has something to show us,” she said.

OUTSIDE THE MONASTERY, the Mages’ flying machine flexed its wings and knocked over another tree. It shifted its body across the ground, and the movement caused ripples to rise at the edge of Lake Denyah a few hundred steps away. Eyes flickered open and shut across its torso, and mouths gaped to utter deep, piteous groans.

The first time the machine fell completely still and silent was when it heard the land-shattering screams of rage.

“SO TELL ME,” Lenora said.

They were sitting beside Lenora’s machine, cooking meat over a hastily prepared fire while a thousand Krotes did the same around them. Her force had swept through a village that afternoon, slaughtering almost everyone there and stealing their livestock for food. Lenora had granted an hour’s pause to eat and drink. To her left she heard warriors drinking stolen rotwine from stolen tankards, but she knew that they would not drink enough to dull their senses. War was a sober business.

Ducianne smiled, jerking her head slightly to set her braided hair jangling. The sound was as much a part of her as her voice. “It was easy,” she said.

“So I see.” Lenora took another swig of liberated rotwine and looked into the dead eyes staring up at her.

Ducianne had ridden into their camp with the Duke’s head impaled on the front of her machine. She towed his body behind, though by then it was little more than a hunk of meat and bone. Flies and flying beetles had landed on it as soon as she stopped, eating away the last of the Duke’s flesh. Ducianne had jumped from the machine, prized the Duke’s head from the spike and handed it to Lenora.

Lenora had accepted the offering of war with a smile. Ducianne always had been one of the most bloodthirsty Krotes she knew, reveling in slaughter rather than viewing it as a duty.

Now they sat eating and drinking while the Duke’s eyes reflected firelight. As fiery as he’s been in years, Lenora thought. Lucky for us.

“There were hardly any defenses at all,” Ducianne said. “It was disappointing. Yet Krotes will be talking of the sacking of Long Marrakash for decades. I’ll be in a song, Lenora.” The Krote lieutenant grinned. “They’ll write songs about me!”

The Duke had an unkempt beard, scars across his nose from some old disease, and his teeth were black from a lifetime of rotwine. His eyes were open, cloudy and bloodshot, and Lenora was sure they’d been like that even before Ducianne sliced his head from his body. “I’m sure you had your share of pleasures in Long Marrakash,” she said.

“Oh you should have been there…”

“So tell, don’t tease. The defenses? The opposition?”

Ducianne drained her bottle of rotwine and leaned an elbow on the Duke’s skull. “Few defenses,” she said. “Little opposition. They were totally unprepared, and their fight was nothing to speak of. I sent a scout by air as we approached, and he came back with news of a few small embankments on the approaches to the city. Some militia hiding in holes, like rats. Most of them appeared drunk and unconscious. There were some road traps-holes dug and covered over again. But only on the roads, as though they expected us to march on them in line. In one or two places the scout saw more-determined preparations: fire pits, trip ropes, stores of arrows and bolts in firing stations in the trees. Just a few hard places in a belt around the city filled with hollows.

“We went straight through them. I took on a firing post myself, and the militia there couldn’t even shoot straight! I rode in on my machine and their arrows fell around us, and none of them hit, not one. My machine took down the tree and I finished them hand to hand. There were three of them; one dead from the fall, the other two ready to fight because that was their only choice. No soldiers, these. They wore the uniforms of Noreelan militia but they were fat and slow and confused. Probably spent their time drinking and eating and fucking the whores in Long Marrakash. I killed them quickly and mounted again, and we rode on.

“It didn’t take long to break the defenses and reach the city gates. We lost one Krote in that time, though I don’t know how he died. His machine came on with us. Strange. It seemed aimless, as if the Krote had been its brain.” Ducianne bit the cork from a fresh bottle of rotwine and took a long draft. “By the Black, this stuff is fucking evil.”

“The city?” Lenora asked. She was eager to know, but also somewhat deflated. If Long Marrakash-home of the Duke, the supposed ruler of Noreela-had been this easy, then what of the rest of the land? Would there be any real fighting? Would the Krotes have a chance to prove themselves? Lenora could remember the rout during the Cataclysmic War, vicious and brutal and costly-areal fight. Back then, though, magic had been available to both sides, not only one.

She was a soldier; she did not want to feel like a farmer slaughtering cattle.

“The city,” Ducianne said. “What city? Not much left of Long Marrakash now. A few arrows, a few crossbow bolts were fired at us, about as troublesome as flies to a hawk. The flying machines had landed inside, and their riders were already causing chaos, attacking militia buildings and spreading panic. I’d told them to decapitate as many as they could: there’s nothing like a headless body or a bodiless head to send the fear of the Black into someone.” Ducianne tapped her fingers on the Duke’s forehead and laughed.

“The gates didn’t take very long, though we lost a machine there. The militia had set up a fire curtain, and when the first Krote rode to the gate and started taking it down, the oil fell and ignited. One dead Krote, and the machine was made largely of wood. It ran away on fire. I never saw it stop, so perhaps it’s still running, somewhere.

“Once inside, my force split up. I’d instructed them to stay in groups of ten and cause as much panic as they could. The whole city was echoing with screams, and I could hear the thud of heads parted from bodies. I took a few militia prisoner and tortured them. Asked them where the Duke was hiding.”

“How did you torture them?” Lenora asked. She was enjoying the story; Ducianne always had been one for bloody detail, and right now Lenora could think of nothing better. The whole of Noreela will swim in blood, she thought, remembering the vision Angel had given her. But then there was a sigh in her mind-not her own-and the thought, And with everything in Noreela gone, what of the victors?

“With these,” Ducianne said, pulling two thin, curved knives from her belt. “Had no time for pleasantries like acid, or spider venom, or crushing their balls with hot coals.”

“I’m sure you made do.”

“I worked on a different organ with each until one of them told me what I needed to know. Didn’t take long. The Duke was living in a whorehouse run by the Cantrass Angels.” She sliced meat from the cooking sheebok and ate, smacking her lips and washing it down with more rotwine. “There were fires all over by then! Machines spitting arrows and blades. Corpses in the streets. Heads pinned above doors. I took a few myself, but I had an aim now: the Duke. And I trusted my Krotes to do what had to be done.”

“By the Black, I can’t wait to reach Noreela City!” Lenora said. She eyed her friend’s second rotwine bottle, half-empty. She did not need a drunken lieutenant when they rode again soon…but this was Ducianne’s hour.

“That will be a joy,” Ducianne agreed. “I’m glad I’ll be there with you. It’ll make Long Marrakash look like a spit in a lake.”

“I hope so,” Lenora said, and from afar she heard the shade voice echo, I hope so.

“So I found the whorehouse at the center of the city. Those Cantrass Angels, Lenora…”

“They’re a strange breed.”

“Strange? One of them came out naked and started to worship a machine! The Krote cut her in two and both parts kept moving. Not conscious, notdoing anything, but they shifted in the dust like two halves of a sea snake. I’ve never seen anything like it. Even the snow tribes on Dana’Man weren’t that strange.”

“The Cantrass Angels have a history that disappears in time,” Lenora said.

“Well, they’re extinct now. At least those who were in Long Marrakash. We killed them as they came out, and soon the ground was crawling with bits of them. Arms. Legs. Even with their heads off, their mouths and eyes moved for a while.”

“The Duke?”

“I went for him myself. Took three Krotes with me. We killed the few militia inside; they were doped up on rhellim, fighting with hard-ons. How pathetic is that? So we went through them, and I carried a head in each hand when I entered the room where the Duke was hiding. He was a fat, naked, stinking old man. His sweat stank of rhellim, but even then his cock was limp as a landed fish. He was covered in welts. I think the Cantrass Angels had been whipping him.”

“Did you talk to him?”

Ducianne smiled, stroking the Duke’s cheek. “To begin with I was just going to kill him, but I came over all poetic. You’d have been proud. You’re wont to poetic musings yourself, on occasion.”

“What shit are you talking?”

“I’ve seen you.” Ducianne’s eyes glittered with humor. “You go into some other place in your head, more so since we’ve landed here. Poetic musings. Justice for Noreela. That’s what you’re imagining, I know.”

“That and other things,” Lenora said. That lake of blood…nothing left…a victory with no rewards but revenge…

Ducianne laughed and swigged some more rotwine. “So! There he was, this fat, stinking excuse for a man, his whores cut to pieces and his cock trying to hide from me. I dropped a head and drew my sword, but he couldn’t take his eyes from my face. I smiled at him. He smiled back. He actually believed…well, perhaps it was the rhellim still in his system.”

“Dispense with the buildup and tell me what he said!” Lenora sliced a chunk of meat from the roasting sheebok and took a bite. Hot, juicy, fresh; after so long on the barren Dana’Man, she might never get used to Noreelan food again.

“I asked him what he’d give me for his life,” Ducianne said. “I told him who my masters were, though he already knew. And I told him I’d been sent by them to negotiate a surrender. I said that his militia were fighting fiercely and bravely all across Noreela, and that we were willing to accept capitulation rather than see endless bloodshed and slaughter. So…I asked him what he’d give for his life.”

“And?”

“‘Take Noreela,’ he said.” Ducianne spat. “So I took his head. Slowly. He screamed until I hit his spine, then he just hissed. I held up his head and showed him his fat, repugnant body. Then I went outside and stuck it on the front of my machine. By the Black, I wish I could have found his crown!”

Lenora laughed, spitting meat into the fire and hearing it sizzle away to nothing. “Now, that would have been poetry,” she said. “So, what then?”

“We stayed in the city for a few hours and enjoyed ourselves. Killed some more, let some escape to spread the word. We marked them all. From some we took a whole limb, from others a finger. Everyone that escaped bears the evidence of our visit. We met a little more resistance-a few bands of militia who gave us some sport-but they were no match for the machines. In total, we lost the wooden machine at the city gates and four Krotes.”

“That’s good, Ducianne,” Lenora said. She looked around at the warriors celebrating by firelight, some dancing, other sitting and swapping stories as they drank. “I only hope we’re up to the challenge.”

“Of course we are! How can you doubt it?”

Lenora shrugged, instantly regretting her show of uncertainty. “Krotes are trained to fight, but this is a slaughter. They’ve experienced skirmishes, but this will be a sustained war.” Someone laughed, someone else shouted. Lenora hoped the time would not come when she heard sobs or-worse-loaded silences mixed in with the celebrations of some future victory.

“Huh!” Ducianne drank more rotwine and looked away, angry or perturbed.

You don’t know Noreela, Lenora thought. But she would never say it.

And yet, Lenora’s own sword arm ached with the need to fight again. The village they had recently taken had offered nothing but bleating women and pleading men, and the children had died with a whimper. Perhaps it really will be this easy, she thought. And if so…what comes later?

Me, a voice said, softer than her own heartbeat.

Stay away, Lenora thought. Just for a while, please stay away.

“Do you know where they are?” Ducianne asked quietly.

Lenora shook her head. “They have their purposes,” she said. “The Mages’ time will come later.”

“When there’s nothing left of Noreela?”

“There’salways something of Noreela,” Lenora said, disturbed that Ducianne had verbalized her fears. And as she stood ready to order the march on Noreela City, she wondered whether she was only trying to convince herself.

THE KROTES BROKE camp and prepared for their journey to Noreela City. Those with flying machines took off, heading south to reconnoiter. Lenora ordered them not to land in the city until the ground force was visible from the walls and gates. The panic would be widespread then, the fear heavy, and a sudden assault from above would provide the distraction Lenora needed to drive her army through whatever outer defenses there might be.

What are we looking for here? Ducianne had asked.

Destroy the city, Lenora replied. It’s a symbol. We raze it to the ground and whatever backbone Noreela has left is snapped.

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!

Makemelive, 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 sostrange. ”

“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.

Thisislife! 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.

From above came the sudden screams of diving machines. Shadows emerged from the glare over the city and rained fire and metal across its rooftops. Some of them attacked the defenders inside the north wall, while more explosions and screams sounded from deeper within the city. Good, Lenora thought. Confusion for everyone.

She reached the gate. Her machine reared up and battered the thick wood with its front legs. Huge splinters erupted outward, and soon she could hear the massive gate beginning to crack and groan.

In the reveals to either side, shutters snapped open and bowmen began firing. Lenora ducked and shot a crossbow to her left, hearing a man groan as he fell. She spun right, swinging her slideshock and crunching the skull of the Noreelan on that side. She had an arrow through the flesh of her right arm, just above the elbow. She decided to leave it there; it would drive even more terror into her victims.

The gate cracked and fell, and her machine drove forward over its remains. She caught a brief glimpse of two men disappearing beneath the machine, flailing uselessly as its feet crushed them, and she paused for a heartbeat to assess the situation: before her was a wide road leading into Noreela City, barricaded several hundred steps along its length; to her left an alley barely wide enough for her machine, and just within its shadows lay the Duke’s head, chewing air.

She turned right and rode, knowing that she would be met with a hail of arrows. She had to get away from the gate, leaving room to allow more Krotes to enter. And she wanted to spread her own destruction deep into the heart of the city.

I’m here, she thought. I’m in Noreela’s capital!

She would circle around, back onto the wide road that led toward the city center, and attack the barricade from behind. Open up the main artery and watch the city begin to bleed to death.

Oh bleeding, she thought. There’ll be plenty of that. Plenty for us all. And again, that memory of the Mages’ lake of blood came to her, twisting the knife of uncertainty in her heart one more time.

A man jumped from a building and landed on the back of her machine. His sheer stupidity and bravery surprised her for a second, and he swung a heavy axe at her head. She ducked just in time, sprawled on her side and sent a message to her machine to stop. The sudden halt tipped the man forward, and he slid from the machine’s back and became snagged on two of its limbs.

“You’re a brave one!” Lenora shouted.

“You Mages can’t win,” he said.

“You’re not even militia.”

“It’s the normal people of Noreela who’ll beat you, just like before.”

The man was still trying to rise, hefting the axe in one hand and using the other to claw his way back up the side of the machine. He saw something-the machine’s eyes, its mouth?-and froze for a heartbeat in shock. Lenora cleaved his skull in two and kicked him to the ground.

She urged the machine on, turning left into a space between buildings. They rose two stories on either side, and the machine shattered balconies and smashed windows as it went. Whenever Lenora saw a pale face at a window she fired at it with a bolt or throwing star.

The alley opened into a courtyard with a fountain at its center and a group of militia trying to barricade themselves in. Sport, Lenora thought as she halted the machine and jumped from its back.

There were five militia, all men. “Any of you ever fought a woman?” she asked. They stared at her, utterly terrified, not one of them going for his sword. “I bet you have,” she muttered. “After you’ve fucked, I bet you beat them, just to make you feel more like men.”

One of them went for a knife and Lenora jumped forward, opening his chest with her sword.

Something whispered to her left and she turned, but there was no one there. Is that you? she thought.

Two men came at her but they were slow and scared. She moved back from their first sword swings then stepped into their killing circles, taking one with a knife in the eye and pulling the other close, smiling at him, dipping her head and severing the main artery in his throat with one bite. His blood tasted weak.

Is this the living I missed? a voice said. Lenora dropped the man and turned, seeing something flit across her vision as though it existed on the surface of her eyes. She tried to follow but a man ran into her, trying to knock her from her feet. She stumbled and turned, letting him fall then kneeling astride him. As she brought her sword down with both hands she thought she saw something reflected in its blade: a face, young and innocent and so familiar. She twisted the sword mid-swing and struck the man with the flat side. He cried out, nose burst and cheekbones crushed. Lenora looked past her machine, wondering where the vision had gone.

“Is that you?” she asked out loud, and the loaded silence seemed answer enough.

The man beneath her whined and Lenora pushed her sword into his chest.

The final militia man came at her, swinging a heavy mace on a long chain, and she sent a thought to her machine. A limb unfolded from its body and tripped the man, sending him sprawling onto the spiked ball of his own weapon. He screamed, tried to stand, and the machine planted one huge foot on his head.

“Not fair,” he said.

“Fair?” Lenora told her machine to press down.

The courtyard was silent now, but she could hear the sounds of conflict from all around. A building falling, a flying machine expelling fire, a woman screaming, a machine whistling as it ejected a spurt of steam or gas at some unsuspecting enemy. Keen to rejoin the fray, she took an ear from one of the dead, then climbed onto the back of her mount. Her fury was rich, her mouth rank with sour blood, her sword wet with it…and still her unborn daughter was here, being with her and existing within her.“Just a few more days!” Lenora pleaded.

A shadow seeped into the courtyard over one of the makeshift barricades. It passed over and through the five dead men and then left as quickly as it had come, paying Lenora no heed.

The men began to rise. The one with the crushed head stumbled in a continuous tight circle, but the others picked up their weapons and climbed the barricades at the entrances to the courtyard, staring about wide-eyed. One of them saw Lenora and moved on, seeking different prey.

Lenora now knew for sure where the shade had come from, and who had brought it. “By the Black, how can we lose?”

As she rode her machine from the courtyard, sensing several terrified observers watching from higher windows, that voice started in her head once more, and for the first time Lenora heard something other than anger and neglect in its tones.

What is it that you wish for me? How can my unknown life be precious? the voice of her daughter said, and then as it dissolved back into the darkness of her deep subconscious, it left one parting comment: This is not living.

THE FIGHT EXPANDED, intensified and rolled on, and a thousand Krotes took their fill of blood. Soon after smashing her way through Noreela City’s northern gates Lenora stopped thinking of it as the battle she had been hoping for; a battle was when two sides were fighting. This was a slaughter.

The level twilight made time almost impossible to judge. It could have lasted a few hours, or maybe it was a day. Much of the city lay in darkness where inhabitants had extinguished lanterns, but Lenora could smell burnt oil on the air. She and her Krotes lit up these areas, balls of fire cruising the streets and narrow alleys. Timber buildings provided excellent fuel, and Lenora’s machine extended a long, thin limb from its underside and pumped liquid fire through windows, doors and cracks in walls. The buildings’ windows lit up like the eyes of giants surprised awake, and soon the flames moved into their thatched or boarded roofs, heating stone tiles until they exploded, crawling into neighboring properties and catching them unawares. Fires spread as quickly as the killing. They became the signature of places the Krotes had already visited.

Many people fought, and Lenora was glad for that, but they were mostly untrained and resigned to defeat. Few of them came at her with anger or rage in their eyes, fewer still with hope. They blinked uselessly as they died on her sword.

Her machine took its toll of Noreelans. Lenora liked to kill them herself, but on occasion she was rushed by a dozen or more, and she took equal pleasure in guiding her mount through its own killing moves. It could only perform minimally on its own: it was her thoughts, her ideas, her action that drove it. Limbs flicked out and whipped across the chests of attackers. It kicked with one of its legs, spat fist-sized knots of molten stone that left smoking trails in the air, and vents along its sides opened to emit hails of razor discs, thudding into stone, wood and flesh alike. Some people went down fighting the machine, perhaps lost in the belief that this could only be a terrible nightmare. Others turned to flee, and these Lenora gave a slower death.

Her machine took occasional chunks of timber from collapsing buildings or stone from the ground and imbibed it, replenishing itself with its strange magic. It throbbed beneath her, and a bluish light bathed its legs for a few heartbeats at a time. Occasionally two of its eyes turned up to look at her, and though she felt their gaze she ignored it. They’re from him, she thought. From that farm boy. Long gone now.

In one shop window, Lenora saw the reflection of a small girl, her face pale and eyes devoid of emotion. Lenora smashed the window with her slideshock and spun around, but there was only a dead tree standing behind her. She rode on and passed a fountain, saw that same girl beneath its surface, mouth hanging open as if in mid-scream. She turned away, thinking, That can’t be you.

The shade had been busy. The dead were rising. She saw one of them as she rounded a corner, a shambling wreck of a woman with only one arm and a spear protruding from her throat. She wore simple clothes and carried a mewling dead child in one arm. She passed Lenora and her machine as though they had always been a part of this street, and disappeared through an open doorway into a small house. The spear banged the door frame on the way in, and as Lenora saw its bloodied tip disappear from view, she heard the first scream.

She drove onward, riding fast and stopping to fight only when there was no way past the enemy. She wanted to push through and cut the great Noreela City in two with her presence. That girl’s face glanced at her from windows lit by the flicker of distant fires, and ponds and fountains reflecting the moons. The shimmer of her sword caught the child’s reflection several times before being buried in warm flesh. That’s not you, she thought, over and over again. That’s not you. You never were. That’s not you. You never were. It became a mantra, a beat by which she judged moments in time. She saw a lone militia slinking through shadows-that’s not you-and took his head from his shoulders-you’re not her. She held the head up but the shade must have been elsewhere. She looked into the man’s vacant eyes and wished she could question his mind, discover where he had been going and whether the shade of an unborn girl haunted this city.

She haunts me and me alone, Lenora thought, but the idea had the voice she had given her daughter.

She killed a small group of fodder protected only by an old woman. “Why?” the woman asked, desperate rather than afraid. “Because you deserve it,” Lenora said. She saw a shadow moving from the corner of her eye, a fire deflected by something that should not be, and she left the old woman alive.

Entering a large park at the center of Noreela City, Lenora found many people seeking shelter there. They were huddled beneath trees or behind bushes, listening to the destruction and gasping as a building collapsed, rocking the ground and sending balls of fire sparkling into the air. Lenora rode in quietly, keeping to shadows and listening to their voices. She found no strength here at all, no wisdom or bravery, only fear and hopelessness. They had already given up.

She passed through a collection of statue pedestals. There were fifteen in total, though none of them retained the statue they had been built to bear. The most that remained were two legs from the knees down, clad in worn stone sandals. Any writing that had once been there had been erased by time and neglect. Whomever these statues honored-heroes or artists, writers or explorers-history had long since forgotten.

Lenora told the machine to crush the pedestals, and the noise caused a stir of activity across the park.

“You’re all cowards!” Lenora roared. She jumped from the machine and ordered it to remain where it was. Strung an arrow in her bow. Felt the weight of weapons on her belt, stars and knives and slideshock still ready to take their fill of this night. “You hide here like cowards, so expect to die like that too.”

“Please don’t hurt us!” a woman said from the darkness. Lenora sent an arrow after the voice and heard a gasp of pain. A body hit the ground, a man screamed in grief and anger, and the fight began.

Lenora knew that she was being foolish. As she ran here and there, ducking sword swipes, making another corpse with her own blade, she knew that she should have forged through this park on her machine, let it do the killing while she thought on ahead. But the absence of that voice in her mind was disturbing her. She would have welcomed the absence were it not for the little girl she saw reflected in windows and ponds. At least here there’s nowhere to see her, she thought, but she was wrong. As she grappled with one man, jamming a knife into his back as he hugged her tight, she saw the girl’s face in his eyes.

The shade passed through the park and bodies rose to continue the killing. Wives gasped their relief at seeing husbands stand, then screamed as they fell together. Children ran toward shambling parents, mothers smothered daughters and the dead soon outnumbered the living.

Lenora stood by her machine, certain that she would see a little girl’s form emerge from between the trees. She would hear her first-there were more leaves dead on the ground than remained on the branches-but the sounds of destruction were drawing nearer every second. The skies to the north were alight, and sparks and burning embers were drifting down all across the park. Lenora could hear the fire’s roar even from this distance.

South, she thought. I should go south out of the city, find the plains again where there is nowhere for her to stare from. But there were always the eyes of dying men and women, and the sheened surface of her sword. Lenora knew that the girl was beyond her control. I said soon, she thought. I said I’d find you and avenge you soon.

Is this living? that voice said again, at last. Is this what I missed?

BEYOND THE PARK Lenora saw a girl darting from door to door, shadow to shadow. She urged her machine after the child, had it pick her up and deposit her on its back.

“Are you her?” Lenora asked. The girl was screaming, her dark skin livid with sweat, eyes wide with terror. “You’re not her.” Lenora threw the girl aside without even bothering to kill her.

SHE WAS STICKY with blood. It coated her from head to foot, settling on old wounds and seeming to burn its way in. New wounds added their immediacy to her pains: the arrow through her arm, crossbow bolt in her ankle, a cut to the side of her neck and a stab wound in her back, deep and painful and in need of attention. You’re immortal! Ducianne had once said to her, many years before. You’re the one who came from Noreela with the Mages. Immortal, just like them. On occasion Lenora wondered just how true this could be-Angel had touched her on that ship and brought her back from the brink of death, after all. But many times since then she had felt mortality closing in, and she often thought that the older she grew, the more difficult her death would be. Such an unnaturally long life must come with a price.

Maybe this is it, she thought. Maybe on Noreela I’ll be haunted into death by the shade of my unborn child. She craved revenge on the people of Robenna more than ever, but as she fought her way through Noreela City she began to wonder whether vengeance could change anything.

The south of the city was more heavily populated than the north. People had fled down here during the fighting, or perhaps some of them had received word of what was to come. Riders from the north, maybe. Or maybe they simply expected the worst when the sun failed to rise.

Lenora lost her mind in a haze of killing. Fires erupted across her vision. Krotes rode by on their machines, red with reflected flames and blood. Some of them decorated machines with the heads of their victims, and one or two bore a dozen heads that still spat, rolled eyes, lolled tongues. The Mages’ shade was everywhere in Noreela City tonight.

The militia were mostly wiped out in the north, but some remained in the south, barricading themselves in thick-walled buildings with hundreds of Noreelans, thinking that perhaps the invaders would pass them by for easier prey. But they did not understand the Krotes. Machines punched holes in walls and pumped in fire, and the interiors of many structures turned into firestorms, windows and walls imploding as the conflagrations raged.

The living dead walked here too. Sometimes they seemed aimless, but when they found a Noreelan they went mad, scratching and tearing with their hands, kicking, crushing, slicing if they carried a weapon. Lenora wondered what drove them, and she thought perhaps it was jealousy. It would suit Angel’s humor to use magic to raise the dead to be jealous of the living.

The Krotes gave them a wide berth and let them continue on their way.

NOREELA CITY HAD many hidden places. Not only did streets and alleys cross and confuse themselves with courtyards and squares, but steps and tunnels led below buildings, entering those unknown areas beneath foundations where walls far older than the city still stood and the languages written on the walls were long forgotten. There were caves and catacombs even deeper, home to dropouts and the dregs of society: fodder, fledge miners driven mad with the fledge rage, Bajuman and criminals. These stretched the length and breadth of Noreela City and perhaps farther, with entrances hidden in the basements of taverns, houses and tumbled temples to ancient gods. Many knew of these places, but few talked about them openly. Some said that there were creatures guarding the entrances, monstrous hybrids of wolf and snake that could move through narrow spaces, yet take off a man’s head with one bite.

When the Krotes found these entrances, they closed them forever. But not before guiding a few of the reanimated dead inside first.

WHEN LENORA FOUND herself at the city’s southern gates there were hundreds of Krotes already out on the plain, resting under the light of the moons. Their machines steamed and clicked where they cooled in the long grass. She passed through the remains of the gates and welcomed the sudden cool breeze flowing in from the west. The smoke was stinging her eyes and the constant stench of blood was making her queasy. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, and when she opened them again there was a little girl watching her from a hundred steps away.

The girl stood still. She was wearing a white dress stained with a spray of blood across one shoulder. She stared, her hands fisted at her sides, her blond hair hanging in loose braids at either side of her face. From this distance Lenora could not see her eyes, but there was no smile. There wasnothing. The girl stared as though she could not even see the burning city. “That’s not you,” Lenora whispered.

She rode on, lowered her machine to the ground and dismounted. She closed her eyes. Not you, she thought. You’re not here. When she looked again the little girl was still there, and still not the thing haunting Lenora.

The old warrior looked around. To her left a Krote sat beside his machine, rubbing his hands with a scrap of cloth. He was breathing so hard that she heard it above the burning city. However hard he rubbed, the blood remained. Farther away, two more Krotes were standing before each other, not talking. One looked down at his feet, one stared up into the strange sky, both of them lost for anything to say.

Breaking through these stunned silences were the victorious calls and cheers of other warriors. Some rode across the fields on their blooded machines, others dismounted and shared stories of the slaughter. But it was the silent Krotes that troubled Lenora the most because she knew that, like her, they were looking inward.

A sudden queasiness hit her, bending her double as her stomach clenched and vomit exploded from her mouth. She spat, vomited some more, wiping away the mess and feeling it burning on her skin. There was blood in there, and perhaps some of it was her own.

And then something else arrived.

They’re here! Lenora thought. And as she stood and wiped her mouth, the death moon was obscured as the Mages flew in.

Tim Lebbon

Dawn