Dawn

Chapter 17

THE REMAINS OF the Shantasi army-those who had listened to O’Gan Pentle’s rallying cry rather than fleeing east-now traveled southwest toward the foothills of Kang Kang, and war.

They moved quickly, many of them using their Pace and others riding beasts of the desert after feeding them Pace beetles. They maintained almost complete silence save for thehushing of thousands of feet. Here and there came the occasional clink of metals knocking together, but mostly the warriors had packed their armory perfectly, wrapping and tying and strapping it so that no weapon touched another. Those that did make a noise were probably the untrained Shantasi, the two thousand civilians who had remained with the intention of fighting rather than fleeing.

The desert was a sea of dashing shapes and glinting metals. The life moon reflected from thousands of pale faces, and the death moon caught freshly sharpened blades and the tips of arrows and bolts. A desert beast died here and there, ridden to the end of its time by the determined Shantasi, and amongst the great swathe of footprints they left in the sand were the occasional humps of dead creatures. The Shantasi that dismounted would use their own Pace and run, or perhaps head off at angles from the army and catch fresh beasts.

The smell of Pace beetles seemed to permeate the air around the army, and Kosar realized that it was the breath of the Shantasi. He did not recognize the aroma-A’Meer had never smelled like this-and he could only assume that they had eaten fresh beetles to provide them with the boost they needed to travel so far.

Kosar rode the same species of desert beast he and the Monk had ridden in on. Lucien sat behind him, bent low over the creature’s back. Kosar was not sure whether or not he was asleep, and he had no interest in finding out.

Two Shantasi warriors-a man and a woman-held leather lines tied around the animal’s neck shield to guide it onward.

Kosar was as amazed now as he had been five hours ago when they departed. It had taken an incredibly short time for the army to amass, and soon the desert between his resting place and the failing swathes of desert spice was filled with Shantasi, resting after their run from Hess or helping with the gathering of Pace beetles and other things. Even then they had been quiet, their subdued talking amounting to a background murmur that fought the slight breeze for greater volume.

“These are all warriors?” he had asked.

“Most of them,” O’Gan said. “There are many more, but they went east when the Elders…”

“Panicked?”

O’Gan had not replied.

With the Shantasi still coming in from the east, O’Gan Pentle had stood on a rock on the hillside and issued a rallying call that had Kosar in tears. Here was a man, he realized, who had been forced into being a general. A man who, though he was a Mystic and a seer, had always relied on those above him to make such monumental decisions of life and death as he now faced. The fate of Noreela was on his shoulders, and it was a heavy weight indeed.

As Kosar had watched him climb onto the rock, he thought, He looks so weak. Slow. Beaten already. But then O’Gan stood, lifted his head and smiled. And in that one expression Kosar saw no consideration of failure at all.

He had told his people of the threat they knew, and the many likely dangers they did not. He beseeched them to stand firm and strong. They were the slave race, he said, and the greatest vow any Shantasi could make-to the people, or to him- or herself-was to never be a slave again. The Mages were enslaving Noreela and its people. They would imprison their bodies and steal their minds, kill their children and destroy the culture the Shantasi had built up for thousands of years. And in the end, they would wipe their history from New Shanti.

We are the triumph of our ancestors, he said, and the memory of our descendants. Let us make it a proud memory. One of forbearance and determination, rather than submission and slavery. Today, fight for tomorrow, and make tomorrow thankful.

The assembled Shantasi had cheered-one long, loud exhalation that echoed from the low hills and seemed to set the dying spice farms swaying on their massive frames. And then they had begun their journey, with O’Gan and senior members of his army planning as they moved.

Kosar was becoming travel weary. He had been on the move for so long that he craved a day and a night in the same place. Though it had been a comparatively short time since the Red Monks had invaded Trengborne and set everything in motion, the period between then and now seemed even longer than those decades he had spent wandering Noreela as a thief. I’ve done so much more in the past few days, he thought. Lost a lover, lost my friends. Lost so much. What drives me on? Why is this so much to me? It disturbed him that he could not answer, but he did not dwell on the question lest the true answer distress him even more.

Lucien had not spoken since setting off. He had settled down, resting forward on the creature’s back, and a couple of times Kosar wondered whether the Red Monk was dead. But when he turned around he could see the Monk’s hands moving, fingers fisting and unfisting as though trying to grasp something from the air as they moved.

We’re running toward a battle, Kosar thought. He had A’Meer’s sword strapped once again to his side, but what could that do against the Mages and their army? What was a sword against magic? He was terrified. He did not understand what still drove him on, and the idea of dying in the foothills of Kang Kang was terrible to him. Not there, he thought. I don’t need to die there. He needed to save his death for somewhere else.

He had seen the Mages without their dark magic, and they had been terrible. With magic? He could hardly bear to imagine.

Several groups of Shantasi parted from the main army and headed north into the desert. Each group comprised half a dozen men and women, and they ran as fast as they could out across the sand. They disappeared quickly into the dusk. Kosar watched them go, and jumped as a voice spoke up beside him.

“We’ll be within sight of Kang Kang soon,” O’Gan Pentle said. “We’ve been making plans, but it’s difficult without knowing where the Krote army will arrive. We can’t dig in. We can’t sit and wait. We have to maintain mobility.”

“Take the fight to them,” Kosar said.

“And what if they pass us by?”

“I know where they will enter Kang Kang,” Lucien said. Kosar and O’Gan exchanged glances; neither of them wanted to look at the Monk.

“Where?” O’Gan asked.

“North of the Womb, of course. That’s where the witch and the girl will be going, and that’s where the Mages will send their army to follow.”

“I can’t trust you,” O’Gan said. “You’re a Red Monk.”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” Lucien said, lifting his head and sitting up for the first time. “Do with it what you will.”

“Let him speak,” Kosar said. “His cause is our cause right now, you know that.”

“He killed A’Meer,” O’Gan said. That was cruel. He held Kosar’s gaze.

“He killed her when our causes were conflicting,” Kosar said.

“You trust the Monk?”

“No, but I trust in his obsession. And he’s never told me a lie.”

O’Gan steered his creature away for a while, conversing with several running Shantasi in their clear, clipped language. Then he moved back alongside their mount. “So tell us,” he said, looking ahead.

“I know only of where the Womb is supposed to be: in the southern reaches of Kang Kang, but close to this end. North of there is where the Krote army will try to enter, if they know of the girl by now, that is. If not-if their cause is still the destruction of New Shanti-then we’re going the wrong way.”

Kosar turned and searched for a glimmer of humor in the Monk’s face. He found none.

“We have our scouts,” O’Gan said. “We’ll know soon enough.”

More Shantasi veered away and headed north. “So what are they harvesting?” Kosar asked again.

O’Gan rode ahead and called over his shoulder, “I told you: weapons.”

LATER, WHEN THE first hills of Kang Kang appeared in the gloom to the south, they paused for a rest. Kosar and Lucien sat beside their ride, watching the Shantasi slumping to the ground, glugging water, chewing on dried meats and panting at the cool air. Some of them steamed. No fires were lit and no camps were set, because they all knew that they would be moving on again soon. A few glanced at Kosar and the Monk, but they looked away quickly. Most of the warriors seemed absorbed in their own thoughts.

So like A’Meer, Kosar thought. He was watching a female warrior, taller than A’Meer had been but possessing the same long hair and sharp features. She checked her weapons while she ate; drew her sword, pricked her finger and resheathed it. She was unaware of Kosar’s observation and he felt like an intruder, but there was something about the unconscious grace of her movements that gave him comfort. She was confident and assured, at ease with her weapons and unquestioning of the task they had been set. Kosar looked down at his hands and gave the warrior her brief privacy.

O’Gan came to them, flanked by several Shantasi, who glared at Lucien with barely disguised hatred. Have they come to kill him? Kosar thought, and he was surprised at the panic he felt.

O’Gan knelt beside Kosar. “How do you feel?” he asked.

Kosar shrugged, trying not to wince at the pains from across his body. “Fine,” he said. “Never better.”

“Good. I want you and the Monk to go south with a complement of Shantasi into Kang Kang. We’re splitting in two: two thousand will remain here, awaiting the word of scouts and ready to move wherever necessary to ambush the Krotes. The other two thousand will go into the foothills, spread out and hide. If they get through us, they’ll have another surprise awaiting them when they enter the mountains.”

“How do you know we’re at the right place?”

“I don’t,” O’Gan said. “But the going ahead is tough. A scout returned and said that twenty miles from here, the land has been stripped bare as far as she could see. Down to the bedrock. Not an easy route for whatever machines the Krotes may have.”

Kosar nodded. “You’re staying here?”

“I will lead the First Army. I assumed you and the Monk would want to accompany the Second. And if he…” O’Gan looked at Lucien and started speaking to him. “If you really know the location of the Womb, it would be best for you to be with the Second Army.” The Mystic shook his head and looked down at the ground. “Who knows what may happen if they break through to Kang Kang? There are so many factors unknown: we don’t know where the girl is, whether she’s still alive, whether she and the witch even know where the Womb is. We know so little.”

One of his commanders spoke in Shantasi, and O’Gan looked up again. “He’s asking whether you can fight.”

Kosar nodded. “I’ve learned a lot.”

“Good. Well…” He raised one corner of his mouth in a sad smile.

“Thank you for believing me,” Kosar said. “It doesn’t feel quite so hopeless.”

“You’re a liar,” O’Gan said, but his voice was light. He looked up at the darkened sky, then north toward where the Krotes might soon emerge from the night. “I never thought it would come to this,” he said. “The bulk of the Shantasi fleeing. We were always the strong ones. If only we’d stayed together…if the Elders had faced their fears…” He looked away, shook his head, perhaps embarrassed at saying so much in front of this stranger. Then he looked directly at Kosar, and fear and doubt were obvious in his eyes. “We have absolutely no idea what we’re about to face,” he said quietly.

“You have your ways and means.”

O’Gan nodded. “We do. You’re right. And you’ll see more of them soon. Good luck, Kosar.”

Kosar nodded. O’Gan stood and walked away without looking back, and Kosar sensed that the Monk was about to speak.

“Silence,” the thief said. “Can’t you hear that silence? It means the land is dying, but for now it’s just…peaceful.”

A few minutes later the order came to rise, and the Shantasi army split in two.

SOUTH OF MARETON, Lenora sent scouts ahead of the Krote army. Several flew, several rode their machines hard across the landscape, and she told them to return upon first sighting of any Shantasi.

She was happy to admit her nervousness to Ducianne. The Mol’Steria Desert was to their left, a looming presence that wafted the scent of spice and the feel of great wilderness, and out there might be the Shantasi. Angel had dismissed them as pale-faced freaks, but Lenora knew that they were true fighters, and the most likely to offer any real resistance against the Krotes. But with her nervousness came a sense of keen anticipation. A real fight, she thought. Not just a slaughter. Something worthy of what we’ve trained for.

Don’t forget me, a voice reminded her. But Lenora shook it off, saying, Of course I can’t forget you.

In the midst of the Krote army rolled the great constructs that transported the dead from Noreela City. Their bodies had started to stink already, yet still they moved and squirmed, eager to fulfill the unnatural killing desires that had been instilled in them.

After a day’s fast travel, the desert smells began to fade, and Kang Kang loomed like a massive hollowness ahead of them. This was when the first and last of the scouts returned. His machine limped on three legs; where the fourth had been was a gaping hole, dribbling foul innards that could have been blood or molten rock. The Krote upon its back was spiky with arrows, and his head was missing a great slab of scalp and flesh, exposing his skull to the cold.

“Shantasi…and…” he said as Lenora rode to him, and then he died and fell across the machine’s back.

Ducianne appeared at Lenora’s side. “Must have been a good fight,” she said, glaring at the dead Krote.

“He’s the only one to return. The flyers would have been here before him if they were coming back. But the Shantasi made an error letting him escape; they’ve lost their surprise. Whatever ambush they plan, we can be ready.”

“They have something that can kill our flyers?” Ducianne asked.

“We can never think of ourselves as unbeatable.”

“I do!” Ducianne laughed, then looked at the dead scout again. “So, we ride straight in?”

“No. Hold position here. Three hours, that should be long enough.”

“The flyers?”

Lenora called the flyers’ captain through the voice box, and they brought their machines down to land in a semicircle before Lenora. There were about thirty flying machines in all, some with wings, others with hollow appendages that gushed flame and gas when they were airborne. They clicked and creaked as their Krote masters awaited Lenora’s orders.

“There are Shantasi south of here,” she said. “Probably scouting parties, but strong.” She waved her hand, dividing her force in half. “You, fly low and fast and take them on. Clear our way through to the main force. You, fly high for Kang Kang. You know your aim once you’re there: the witch and the girl. Find them and kill them, and then we can fight the Shantasi at our leisure. But right now, that girl and witch are the priority. I know I’m sending you south on your own…and Kang Kang is no place to be. But we will be joining you there soon. Questions?”

A few warriors glanced at the dead Krote and his battered machine, and their own machines jittered like nervous horses. Some exchanged glances. But none of them spoke.

“Good,” Lenora said. She watched sternly as her Krotes took off.

“Don’t worry,” Ducianne said. “Even among Krotes there are the strong, and the weak.”

“It’s not weak to be scared,” Lenora said. An edgy silence had descended across the bulk of the Krote ground force. Some of them looked at the dead man spiked with arrows, while others made it obvious they did not want to see.

“Then what is it?” Ducianne asked.

“Sane.”

“Ha!” Ducianne rode to the damaged machine, leaned across and pushed the dead Krote from its back. The machine wandered away, aimless and leaking fluids.

“You think the Shantasi know about the girl?” Ducianne said, talking to Lenora with the dead warrior on the ground between them.

“Of course. No other reason to come this far out of Hess, other than to try to keep us away from Kang Kang.”

“Unless they’re drawing us away from New Shanti. Or sending an advance force against us. Or trying to keep the fight from their Mystic city.”

Lenora shook her head. “If they thought we were coming for them, they’d dig in at Hess. It’s the gateway to New Shanti, and it has a hundred miles of desert before it. No. They know what our target is today.”

“So now we hold back?” Ducianne’s despondency at this idea was palpable.

Lenora watched the flying machines fading into the darkness, one group climbing high, the other disappearing across the scrubland toward the Shantasi waiting in the distance. “I think not,” she said. “Let’s ride hard and fast now. What do you say?”

“I say I’ll get sick of waiting.”

The order was given and spread through the ranks, and the machines formed three attack lines. The faster machines-those with longer legs or sleeker bodies-took the outside of the front line, ready to sprint forward and enclose the enemy. The second line consisted of the heavier, slower machines, and behind them came the new transports, groaning with the mass of Noreelan dead. The army moved out with Lenora at the head, brandishing a sword in each hand, proudly displaying the wounds of every one of her three hundred years, whispering to a voice that nobody else could hear.

Sometimes, that voice spoke too loud. Is this it? it said. Is this the life I missed? Killing and blood? Mother, maybe they were right to purge me from your body. Maybe they knew what you would become.

Lenora shouted to drown out the voice, but nothing could silence her thoughts.

O’GAN PENTLE STOOD within a circle of small rocks and, in an effort to calm himself, breathed in Janne pollen from the crumpled bloom in his pocket. He already knew the Krotes were on their way; the lookouts he had sent north had engaged an advance force and returned with the news. It was the manner of the Krotes’ destruction that caused O’Gan’s nerves to fray.

The lookouts had hardly been touched. They lost one of their number when a Krote machine fell on her, but other than that, their involvement had been merely to ensure the Krotes were all dead. Serpenthals had done the rest.

“Huge!” one of the Shantasi had said when describing them. “The largest I have ever heard of, let alone seen.”

They must have come out of the desert, O’Gan thought, feeling the Janne pollen settle his nerves. He opened his mind to visions, but none came. He was not surprised; the plant had been on the verge of death when he picked its bloom. Followed us, perhaps. Or led the way. But he had never heard of a serpenthal appearing outside the Mol’Steria Desert, certainly not one of the size his warriors had reported.

“Took the first machine apart,” the Shantasi said. “The Krote on its back was sliced in two. And then the rest…”

And now O’Gan breathed in stale pollen and prayed to absent visions that the serpenthals would act again. The Krotes they had destroyed were a small advance party, nothing more. There would be hundreds more on their tails. Perhaps thousands. And now surprise had gone.

“One escaped,” a warrior had said. “The serpenthals seemed unconcerned. We put arrow after arrow into him, but he rode away upright.”

The Krotes knew that the Shantasi were here, waiting for them, in exactly the right place. And O’Gan had little doubt that the full force of their attack would come soon.

He closed his eyes, reached out and pulled the circle of stones closer to him. They were meant to represent the unity of thought-back at the Temple they’d had the Janne plants themselves-but they were not working. “Because I’m the only one.” He suddenly felt more alone than ever before.

“MYSTIC,” A VOICE whispered. “They’re coming.”

O’Gan opened his eyes and stared into the frightened face of a young warrior. She bowed her head slightly, glancing down at the rocks set around his knees.

“How many?”

“Maybe fifteen, by air.”

“High or low?”

“Low. The spartlets?”

“Yes, the spartlets.” O’Gan stood quickly, brushed himself down and followed the young Shantasi out onto the plain. He passed dozens of Shantasi, all of them hunkered down on the ground, hiding themselves within its natural folds and creases. Some of them were gathered around piles of dried wood, nursing flame-sticks. The Krotes knew that they were coming up against an army. What O’Gan could only hope is that they did not know what this army had at its disposal.

“Let them make one pass,” O’Gan shouted. “Give them confidence. That way they’ll come much lower the second time.”

“Mystic,” the warrior said, looking away. She knew what the first pass would entail, and so did O’Gan. War is sacrifice, he thought. One of the Elder Mystics had told him that, before sacrificing himself at the first sign of war.

The warrior cupped her hands to her mouth. “Spartlets!” To their left and right a hundred fires came alight, and soon after the first small flames licked skyward there came a frantic clicking sound, like a thousand sticks being whipped at the air and broken at the same time.

O’Gan drew his sword and knelt. The fires made the darkness before them more complete. He did not see the flying machines until they were almost upon them.

“Not yet!” he shouted. The whistling, crackling sounds continued, louder than before, and more frenzied. After this first run, he thought. And the Krotes’ attack began.

The Mages’ fifteen warriors flew their machines low across the plain. They had already passed over the first few hundred Shantasi before they realized they were there, but then the shooting began. Arrows sleeked down in the dark, fired by the Krotes and ejected from holes and slits in their machines. Many wasted themselves on the ground, but a few found targets, and grunts and screams rose up across the plain. Discs whistled through the air. One machine gushed fire, a long slick that lit up the scene, flames dancing as Shantasi ran with hair and clothing burning. Their screams melted away with their lungs. Another came lower than the rest, trailing a dozen long chains adorned with hooks that bounced from rocks and stuck in soft bodies. Three Shantasi were picked up and carried away, their bodies jarring along the ground and leaving smears of blood. Others jumped out of their way, many using Pace to make sure they were not knocked aside by their own dead or dying friends.

The Shantasi returned fire, launching arrows and bolts skyward at the undersides of the intimidating machines. They had never seen anything like this. They had all read of magic, what it could do and how it aided the land before the Cataclysmic War. And they had all seen dead machines, before and after the Breakers had their time with them. But this was all new. Leathery wings flapped; metallic appendages swiped and cut; stone bodies deflected arrows; fleshy organs expelled gases as the machines passed overhead and turned for a rapid second approach.

“Spartlets in five heartbeats!” O’Gan shouted. He had turned to watch the Krotes’ return, lying flat on the ground with his sword resting before him on a sprig of dead bracken. Almost as soon as he shouted, the spartlets were released.

These were vicious creatures. Having spent decades as chrysalides beneath the sand, the touch of fire would burst their shell and set free the winged serpents within. Newly hatched spartlets were jealous things; any other species they encountered within their own airspace for several hours following birth would be set upon with claws and poisoned fangs. Though only the size of a man’s hand, they had the fury of a desert wolf.

When the fire pots were uncovered, several thousand spartlets rushed skyward in screaming, whistling clouds.

The Shantasi hugged the ground and watched. They had never used spartlets on this scale before, and they had no idea what to expect.

The winged serpents spread out, ignoring one another and expanding across the sky. And as the Krote machines powered in a dozen steps above the ground, the spartlets converged on them, attacking machines and riders alike. Arrows vented groundward, and the fire-shitting machine gushed more flames. But in seconds the Krotes became too concerned with their own exposed flesh to think about engaging the Shantasi below.

A machine passed directly above O’Gan, the Krote on its back slashing at the air. O’Gan rose and hacked with his sword, catching a trailing tentacle and parting it from its home. The flapping thing fell to the ground, a spartlet attached and jabbing again and again with its freshly exposed fangs.

“At them!” O’Gan shouted, but the call was not needed. The Shantasi were on their feet, loosing arrows and bolts at the confused shapes. The sustained firepower of almost two thousand weapons gave the Krotes plenty more to worry about.

The fire-shitting machine collided with another, and they impacted heavily into a copse of dead trees. Fire rolled along the ground as the machine ruptured, and its thrashing limbs were blasted across the battlefield as huge, flickering shadows. The survivor from the other machine dashed from the fire and took on several Shantasi, cutting them down with a slideshock and several throwing stars before more came to their aid. They drove him down with sheer volume of numbers, and O’Gan saw glittering swords dulled as blood smeared their blades.

Another machine fell farther away, rolling over the ground with the crumple of folding metal. Its rider was crushed beneath it, but the machine rose on unsteady legs, thrashing out with blades as long as five men. Several warriors ducked beneath the blades and went in close, their own swords at the ready. The machine glowed blue, light burst from it in a pulse and O’Gan saw the skeletons of the Shantasi crumple as the strange fire faded again.

He ran toward the machine with other warriors, sword and other weapons at the ready.

There were a dozen machines still circling above them. Several still poured hails of arrows or fireballs down at the Shantasi, but mostly they seemed more concerned with the spartlets attacking in droves. Another machine fell, its wings tattered, its rider drifting away and striking the ground a few steps from his mount. Neither rose again.

“Use poison sacs!” O’Gan shouted as he approached the heavily bladed construct. It was starting to glow again, a blue umber that cast strange shadows beneath its low stomach. “Don’t get too close! See if the poison will do it!” He stood back while three Shantasi lobbed poison sacs in carefully judged arcs. One of them burst on the machine’s slashing blades, but the other two struck its body, spraying across several globes that could have been eyes. It dipped as it tried to wipe the affected area against the ground. The Shantasi darted in with blades drawn.

O’Gan readied himself to be wiped out. Magic did that, he thought, running past the scattered bones of the original attackers. But though the machine still glowed, the pulse did not come. O’Gan and the warriors hacked at its underbelly, keeping close so that they stayed within its killing circle, using Pace now and then to move out of the way of its rolling body. One of them leapt onto its back and buried a spear to its full depth.

The machine grew still, and they thought they might have won.

But then it went mad. As its end closed in, the machine began to roll and thrash in a final venting of fury. The Shantasi on its back was cut in two by a swinging blade, her head and shoulders tumbling to the ground and being kicked toward O’Gan by the machine’s thrashing legs.

“Back!” O’Gan shouted, unable to take his eyes from the surprised expression on the dead woman’s face. She ran a fruit shop not far from the Temple in Hess. Not even a trained warrior, and look what she did. Disgusted, terrified and shocked, still in that moment O’Gan believed that they could win.

They withdrew and left the machine to its death throes.

Where are the serpenthals? O’Gan thought. Have they left us so soon?

Across the battlefield, similar engagements were taking place. More machines had fallen, victims of the spartlets, and those still flying were doing so erratically. As O’Gan ran from the dying machine and the decapitated woman, he saw three more enemies tumble to the ground. They cut down Shantasi as they fell, and one machine exploded and cast a hail of deadly shrapnel before its blossom of fire. The Krotes who had survived the spartlets and the crashing of their machines took on Shantasi hand to hand, and several vicious fights were taking place. O’Gan went to join one of them.

Soon there was only one machine still circling, its rider hanging dead amongst its confusion of spidery legs, with spartlets pecking at his face. The machine seemed trapped in an ever-decreasing spiral, drifting lower and lower and casting globules of molten metal in a spray as it came down. A Shantasi screeched as he was caught in one spray, bringing his hands to a face that was no longer there. Another warrior dashed in and pulled him away, holding his hand tightly as he drew his knife across the mortally wounded man’s throat.

The machine eventually crashed to the ground and thrashed its limbs for a time, but the Shantasi were content to stay away and let it die.

Fires raged where machines had come apart. Another exploded, a thumping detonation that knocked O’Gan from his feet even though he was several hundred steps away. A cloud of boiling gas was blasted out, searing and scorching everything and everyone in its path. Shantasi lay scattered around the destroyed machine, many dead, many more injured, and O’Gan turned away because he knew that he could not help.

Fifteen machines and their riders, he thought, and how many have we lost? Two hundred? Three?

After a while the sounds of combat ceased, and the moans of the dying began.

O’GAN HAD NOT killed for thirty years. Now he stood with Krote blood on his sword. He wiped the blade on a dead Krote’s leathers, blood gathering and flowing and catching the moons, and in it he saw the reflected shadows of spartlets still flitting above their heads.

Medics and Mourners moved here and there, helping injured Shantasi where they could, slitting their throats and chanting them down where they could not. O’Gan tried to shut the chanting from his mind.

“To me!” he called, and the Shantasi turned to face him. He climbed atop a dead machine, more than aware of the symbolism of his act as he rested his sword’s point on the thing’s ruptured back. A stink rose from within, curiously sweet and unpleasant. He breathed deeply and wondered whether all dead magic stank like this.

“This was only an advance force,” he shouted. “The spartlets will spread and hopefully disrupt any more attacks from above, but the Krote ground army will be here soon. An hour, or a heartbeat, but they’ll be here.” He looked north, saw nothing moving in the deeper darkness beyond the burning machines. “We’ll form two lines of defense. The first there, behind the largest burning machine. Its fires will blind them until they’re on top of you. The second five hundred steps back. Use the dead as shields. The Krotes see a dead warrior, they won’t expect a living one to rise behind it. We have more to send against them, and I hope that the land will aid us, and the serpenthals will rise again.” He looked around at the faces before him, grim and pale, dirtied and splashed with blood. And he wondered whether they knew what he had already realized: this was suicide. They were gaining time, that was all, precious hours or heartbeats for the witch and the girl.

None of them even knew whether those two were still alive.

“I’ve led you here,” he said, his voice falling on the last word. Most of the warriors probably did not even hear him.

“At least we’re fighting!” someone shouted. A sword waved, then another. There were no cheers-they were too tired and frightened for that-but O’Gan looked out at his army, and everyone he could see in this poor light was looking back at him. Not down at the ground, or east, where temporary safety may lie: at him. He nodded and jumped down from the dead machine.

The Shantasi regrouped, arranging themselves in two defensive lines with little discussion. Whichever line they were in, they knew that they would be fighting Krotes again soon. Krotes on foot, or on machines, or maybe those flying monsters again, swooping down through the spartlets and launching arrows or fireballs or stranger weapons yet.

O’Gan went to the forward line, approaching the blazing machine that had exploded with such devastating force. He passed by dozens of Shantasi bodies without looking. He did not wish to see the burns. The warmth grew and it felt good; eased his tensed muscles, tempered his tiredness, and he shrugged so that his cloak sat easier on his shoulders. A hundred steps from the burning machine he paused, looked around and knelt down. To his left he could see warriors fading into the distance, thirty steps between them in any direction, the line ten warriors deep. Their faces were lit by the flaming construct. To his right, the same view. The Shantasi-warriors, and those untrained in battle-staggered their positions, some heading farther forward as though keen to be the first to engage the Mages’ army, others hanging back. They all faced the same direction. Their faces were sweaty and grubby, determined, and none of them had sheathed their swords. There was movement here and there where other weapons harvested from the Mol’Steria Desert were prepared, but mostly the Shantasi sat alone. Crossbows were primed, quivers fixed tightly, hair tied back so that it did not get in the way. They checked the equipment strapping across their chests and around their waists, and some took weapons from dead bodies, careful not to look at the corpses’ faces. None of them wished to see a dead brother, sister or friend.

They could pass us by, five miles away, O’Gan thought. They could avoid the fires. But he did not believe that would happen. His best hope was that they would not be able to resist the flames of battle.

He rested his sword on his knee, turning it this way and that so that it picked up the fire and reflected moonlight.

“Mystic, can you help us?” a woman said. O’Gan glanced to his left at where she lay on the ground, propped on her elbows and staring at him. She had wide eyes, and the pale skin of her face was smeared with blood from a head wound. She was no warrior. She held a single sword, and there was a pile of throwing stars by her left hand.

“I can offer you hope,” he said.

She looked down at the dead grass, averting her gaze.

“I can tell you that what we do here is important.”

“Suicide is important?”

O’Gan nodded at the burning machine. “We did well against them.”

“No we didn’t,” the woman said, but there was no anger in her voice, and no embarrassment at talking to a Mystic like this. “I can see a hundred dead even from where I lie. When their real army gets here…”

O’Gan looked at the shadowy humps scattered around them. “I can’t pretend you’re wrong,” he said, “but I can tell you that there’s meaning to all of this. There’s hope, and we’ll fight for it every second it still exists.”

“If it’s that important, why did the Elders run? Why didn’t they stay and fight? I saw them in the streets. I saw one of them dead by his own hand, and you expect me to believe there’s hope?”

O’Gan nodded, holding the woman’s gaze. She was strong, he realized, perhaps stronger than he. But equally, she saw no valor in sacrifice for an empty cause. “It’snot an empty cause,” he said quietly.

She glanced away again. “You saw those words in my mind.”

“I read them on your face.”

“So can you help us, Mystic?”

He hefted his sword. “I have this.” He nodded up at the spartlets. “We have those, and more. And perhaps the serpenthals will deign to help again.”

“Perhaps.”

He fell silent, the woman smiled and they heard thunder from the north.

O’GAN’S PLAN HAD been to hide behind the glare of the massive fire. It was a good plan, but it stole sight from the first Shantasi line. They heard the advancing army, but they could not see it. They felt the ground shaking beneath them, but as much as they squinted or shielded their eyes, they could not make out anything. The burning machine turned the dusk beyond the battlefield into midnight.

The noise grew quickly. A rumble in the distance to begin with, like the sound of a storm rolling into Hess across the waters of Sordon Sound. Lightning scratched the sky, arcing from one point on the ground to another. The rumble soon turned into a roar, and the ground thumped to its beat. It grew louder and louder, assaulting the Shantasi’s ears, vibrating through their chests, punching at them where they lay or knelt.

O’Gan gripped his sword tightly, eyes closed as he tried to judge distance. If their machines are small, then they’re almost upon us. If they are large, then perhaps they are still a mile away. He had no way of knowing. The flying machines had surprised them all, and now he feared they would be equally surprised by what came across the land.

“Flyers!” someone shouted in the distance. O’Gan glanced up and saw the illuminated bellies of several more flying things, spartlets darting in, fire glinting from metal, bluish explosions ripping spartlets apart, the huge shapes ducking and weaving and fighting their way groundward.

The roar grew louder still, and O’Gan laid his hand flat against the ground. Small stones spiked at his palm as they vibrated from the massive impacts. He closed his eyes. “They’re close,” he said.

“They’re here!” someone shouted.

O’Gan looked. Just beyond the influence of the firelight, the whole darkened horizon began to shift. More lightning sparkled from shadow to shadow, leaving bluish impressions on his eyes. Metal glinted, stone glowed pale and the Krote army rode in.

Several Shantasi charged the advancing army, firing arrows and flinging stars, whirling slideshocks around their heads and screaming defiance at the dark.

Suicide, O’Gan thought. He looked to the woman at his left. She smiled and stood, and he knew that he would follow.

Tim Lebbon

Dawn