Dawn

Chapter 21

LENORA RODE THROUGH the battle, dealing death here, avoiding it there, and something was happening to her. An ache in her groin; a feeling in her long-barren womb that she had not felt since her dead child was born in Kang Kang’s foothills hundreds of miles to the west. It was a hollowness aching to be filled, and though she could not accept that feeling, neither could she deny it.

Mother, her daughter’s shade whispered, and Lenora asked, “Are you talking to me?”Mother, it said again, why do you deny me?

“I don’t deny you!” Lenora ducked below a hail of arrows and rode away, rather than taking on those who had fired them.

Then come for me.

“I always said I would, but I have something-”

Something to finish, the shade said. Mother…you have a part in its ending.

“I do!” Lenora threw a star and watched it slice through a Shantasi’s exposed throat. She felt nothing; no glee, no sorrow. Her machine seemed to be looking at her, but when she glanced down she could see nothing in its eyes.

Her womb ached with wanting, and Lenora shook her head, angry. “Onmy terms,” she said. She rode on, and her daughter whispered, and a sudden splash of blood across her chest made her retch.

WHEN THE MACHINES came, everything changed. Until then the Shantasi had been fighting well, cutting down the shambling dead and making sure they stayed down. It was demanding physically and mentally, but they were up to the task, and even Kosar had sensed a change in the Shantasi. Whereas before they had been resigned to defeat, they had now started to believe they stood a chance.

The machines and their Krote riders changed that. They stormed in from the north, still fending off a few rogue tumblers that had managed to avoid destruction, and when they hit the first lines of Shantasi they cut the warriors down almost without breaking their pace. The tumblers rolled at the machines and bounced away again. Shantasi darted left and right, using Pace to try to keep out of reach. And the lead machines drove on, bypassing the first of the Shantasi to fight those farther uphill.

When the first machines reached the last line of defense they turned around and started battling their way back down.

Their lines shattered, the Shantasi took on the machines in a free-for-all that had only one possible outcome.

Kosar and Lucien emerged from behind their sheltering rock and entered into the fray. Down the slope to their left, a small machine lay on its side, several legs torn away by Shantasi slideshocks. The Krote still sat astride his mount’s back, and its remaining limbs whipped at the air, decapitating one woman and slicing a man across the thighs. A warrior drew an arrow against the Krote, but a fist-sized chunk of metal flew from the machine and crushed his chest before he could fire. He fell, the bow and arrow trapped beneath him.

“I’ll go for that!” Kosar said, pointing. “You try to keep this bastard thing distracted.” Without waiting for a reply, Kosar ran. He kept low, skirting far around the machine to keep out of range of its limbs. He checked left and right, making sure that no other Krote was closing on him. If that happened he would have little hope; he did not even have the Shantasi Pace to enable him to outrun some of the machines. He clutched A’Meer’s sword and wished she were here with him. Stop thinking and start fighting, she would say. So he ran, attention focused on the fallen Shantasi with the bow and arrows.

Behind him, he heard Lucien roar. He did not turn to see why.

He reached the fallen man and tugged the bow from his grasp, trying not to look at the ruin of his chest. Then he rolled the body onto its side and grabbed a handful of arrows from the quiver. The man let out a groan.

Kosar fell back and pushed himself away, shouting out in surprise.

He sensed the Krote’s attention move on to him. He ducked just in time to avoid being struck across the head by one of the machine’s spinning limbs. He rolled backward, rolled again and came up into a kneeling position.

Lucien was hacking his way closer to the machine. A limb struck him on the arm and knocked him sideways, but he stood again and swung his sword. It met a metal whip and sparks flew.

Kosar strung an arrow and aimed at the Krote. The Krote turned back to him and raised his hand, fisted and pointing at Kosar.

Crossbow on his wrist, Kosar thought, but he could not let it upset his aim. He took a deep breath, let it out and loosed the arrow.

The Krote’s bolt scored his cheek as Kosar’s arrow found its mark. The Krote fell back, dying, and the machine paused in its fight, slumping down onto its belly as if relieved of a burden.

Lucien grinned at Kosar, his red face lit by fires springing up across the hillside. Kosar smiled back and breathed deeply. He could smell the fleshy fuel of those flames.

The Monk backed away from the machine and came to Kosar’s side. “Where now?” he said.

There were fights all around them. Up the slope Kosar saw a group of Shantasi harrying a machine while another warrior closed in from behind. She carried something in her arms-it looked like a rock-and she dodged several of the machine’s flailing limbs to place it against the construct’s side. The Shantasi turned and fled, leaving the Krote swinging his sword and raging at their cowardice.

The rock came to life. It glowed, like molten stone, and quickly ate its way into the machine, spitting a hail of bloody stone dust above it. The Krote looked down just as his ride reared up, and as it fell on its side the Krote was trapped beneath its stiffening limbs. Three Shantasi darted in and finished the Mages’ warrior, and the glowing stone ate its way fully inside the stricken machine.

“A young grinder,” Lucien said. “I wonder how they took it from its parent.”

“O’Lam said there was more, but not much.” The darting shapes of Shantasi using Pace caused smoke to swirl and eddy across the hillside. Another explosion blossomed around a machine as a swarm of flies was ignited. A yellow wolf-Kosar had heard of the pallid wolves, but never seen them-loped across the hill and leapt at a Krote astride a machine, spitting acid and showering her with venomous blood as the machine sliced the creature in two. The Krote screamed and died on her mount as it ran rogue.

He thought of Trey, Hope and Alishia, and closed his eyes in a brief plea to the Black. Let them be all right.

Someone screamed close by, a long, loud wail that ended suddenly with the sound of metal cleaving meat. Kosar did not look for the source of the cry. “It’s hopeless,” he said.

“It always was,” Lucien said.

Around them, the battle played out across the lower slopes of darkest Kang Kang. Perhaps the mountains watched and smiled, enjoying the fresh blood spilled and sucked down into its soil. There could have been eyes on its higher slopes observing the explosions, ears listening to the screams of dying men and women, noses breathing in the stench of blood and soil, cooking meat and insides. Or maybe they had no awareness of the fight at all; the most important battle for three hundred years, meaningless to a range of mountains that defied eternity.

A group of Shantasi joined Kosar and Lucien, several experienced archers among them, and they set on a machine. The Shantasi used their Pace to distract the Krote, while the archers drew a line and brought him down with arrows to the chest and back. The Krote slumped over and shouted, giving his machine one final order, which it obeyed without hesitation. The resulting blue-flamed explosion, fueled by dark magic, melted everything it touched.

Lucien grasped Kosar’s arm and pulled him down behind a dead man, falling on him and screaming as the blue fire rolled overhead.

As the explosion subsided it was replaced by the screams of the injured. Kosar shoved Lucien from him and stood. The Monk sat up slowly, shaking, and then Kosar saw his back. The red robe had been burned away, along with much of his skin and flesh. The white of bones was visible here and there, pale and stark in the moonlight. No blood; the wounds were already cauterized.

“Lucien…”

“I can fight!” the Monk spat. He stood, screamed and ran at a machine coming their way, brandishing his sword, ducking at the last moment and hacking at one of the machine’s thick legs.

Kosar went to fight with him. Any moment could be his last, and soon one moment would. But he was enraged now, encouraged by Lucien’s strength, inspired by the ferocious Shantasi fighting and dying all around. And just when things became hopeless, the land rose up one more time.

THE SOLDIERS EMERGED from the ground. Three of them to start with, manifesting as blank, black shadows, flexing to form individual features, taking in moonlight and giving out a sense of power that sent a chill down Kosar’s sweaty back.

“Mimics,” he whispered, thinking of the last time he had seen them. They had changed his course of action, encouraging him not to flee and leave the fate of Trey, Alishia and Hope to chance. Now they were here again, and he could hope once more.

“Lucien, step aside!” he shouted. The Red Monk glanced back, saw what was forming out of the ground and moved away from the machine. A Krote stood on its back, a battle-axe held in both hands, mouth open in a challenging shout. When she saw the new soldiers, her jaw fell, and she brandished the axe at them.

She sees a true enemy, Kosar thought. And she’s scared.

The mimics flowed at the machine. The construct formed a massive scythe from a molten limb and swung, but the weapon passed through the mimics with a splash, and they went on as though untouched. When they reached the machine’s hips they melted, poured upward and re-formed on its back.

The Krote faced up to the three strange soldiers, and though there was defiance on her face, Kosar saw that she was already prepared for defeat.

The mimics pressed in, merging with her so that she looked like a freak with three half brothers. When they came away, the Krote’s face and chest disintegrated into a flow of dissolving flesh.

More shadows were rising. The ground was crawling around Kosar’s feet, every speck shifting in a different direction. He felt dislocated. He looked at Lucien to gather his bearings and the Red Monk was swaying, hood still sheltering his face. Kosar walked to him, glancing down to see mimics part around each footfall. He nudged the Monk.

“Lucien!”

The Monk looked up. His face was red, eyes glowing with some inner light that Kosar had no wish to dwell upon. What anger, to produce such a look. Whatrage.

“Let’s go,” Kosar said. “This can’t be happening everywhere, and others will need our help.”

They started making their way out from the forest of shadow soldiers. The mimicked soldiers did not walk, theyflowed, moving over grass, stones and bodies. And whatever unfathomable minds worked inside these things were focused on one thing: finding Krotes and killing them.

A mimic shape rose beside Kosar, forming faster than any he had yet seen, and he recognized its face. It was O’Lam, her features altered by the vicious impact of the spinning disc that had killed her. Kosar paused while the mimic moved off, then looked around until he spied the body of the dead Shantasi. He went to her, knelt and touched the back of the woman’s shattered skull, and closed his eyes to offer a brief chant. He had only ever chanted a wraith down once before.

“There’s no time for that,” Lucien said.

“You leave me to do what I have to do!” Kosar replied, angry that the Monk had intervened. “We need a Mourner here.”

“And if there’s any victory in the next few hours, we’ll get many. In the meantime, it’s those that are still alive we should be helping, not the lost wraiths of those growing cold.”

“You’re all heart.”

“I’m a Red Monk.”

They moved on together, and mimic soldiershushed past them whenever another machine was spied. They passed one construct sprouting half a body where a Krote was melting away. The machine itself was under attack as well, bindings tearing, the arcane building blocks of its form failing. Limbs fell, stone disintegrated and brief fires erupted at its heart until the mimics starved the flames of air. Not only was this a slaughter, it was a very precise, clean slaughter. For some reason that made Kosar uneasy.

At last they emerged onto grassland not crawling with mimics, and here they found the true battle still under way. Kosar glanced back, wondering at the extent of the mimic help, and it was like looking at reality unbecoming: machines were melting, their Krote riders already coming apart, and blue fire disappeared in a flash. The whole landscape was blurred and uncertain.

“I don’t see how this can go on,” Lucien said.

“What do you mean? Noreela is helping us! The serpenthals, and the tumblers, and now the mimics. What do you mean?”

“Look,” Lucien said. He pointed across the hillside with his bloodied sword.

The ground was covered with the dead and dying. Machines stalked here and there, dishing out more death and, occasionally, finding it themselves. Several machines stood dead in a circle, the result of some unknown attack, but their Krote riders had escaped their fate and were now fighting the Shantasi on foot. The clang of swords, the spark of metal meeting metal, drifted across the hill. And from one extreme of the battlefield to the other, the dead were rising again.

“Mimics,” Kosar said, but he knew immediately that he was wrong. These were the dead readying to bear arms against their Shantasi kin. Among them, oozing like a slippery memory, a stain on the hillside.

“That’s a shade,” Lucien said. “The Mages have given it something, and for every Shantasi killed we have a new enemy.”

“That’s unreal,” Kosar said. “That’sunfair!”

Lucien laughed. It was a strange sound, so unexpected and unusual on this field of death and undeath. The Monk actually bent over and held his stomach, his burnt back exposed to the air and glistening in the moonlight where the cauterized flesh had started breaking down. “We’re all going to die,” he said. “And you…thinkthat’s unfair?”

Kosar was angry at first, but then he smiled.

Neither of them heard the machine rush them from out of a haze of smoke. It stomped Lucien to the ground, pressed down on his throat with one heavy stone leg, and on its back the fearsome Krote stood and smiled. “Glad to see you think war is so amusing,” she said. “You could almost be one of us.” She touched the machine’s back and it balanced all its weight on one leg, crushing Lucien’s chest and neck, parting his head from his body, squeezing out his final breath in a haze of blood and spit.

THAT FELT GOOD, Lenora thought. Red Monk fighting with the Shantasi! she sent to her machine, and it ground its foot some more, turning its stone heel until it met mud wetted with blood.

“You’re no Shantasi,” Lenora said, looking at the man cowering before her. She frowned. Something about his features, his hair, the smell of him…“I know you,” she said.

“Last time I saw you, I made you fall,” the man said. “I’m Kosar. And you’ve just killed another friend of mine.”

“You were friends with a Monk?”

Kosar glanced down at the mess beneath the machine’s legs, up again at Lenora. “He was against you. That makes him my friend.”

Lenora slid from the machine’s back and landed astride the Monk’s remains. She drew a sword and thrust it down into his chest-these Monks were tenacious, and she wanted to take no chances-and then stood and faced the defiant man. She felt those eyes behind her, watching. “Do you recognize my machine? See any familiar features?”

Kosar did not glance away from her face. “It’s a monster,” he said. “As are you.”

Lenora shrugged, and she bled. She had gathered several more wounds to wear alongside those from so long ago, and even her old scars were aching again, singing with the memory of their creation. “You were traveling with monsters,” she said. “That witch, with betrayal in her eyes. That boy, carrying something awful. That girl…” She frowned, but tried not to show her doubt.

“Rafe had magic. It would have beengood for the land.” Kosar spat on his sword. “And why thefuck am I even talking with you?” He darted at her, sword swinging up toward her stomach.

Lenora sidestepped and cracked him on the temple with her sword handle. He groaned and fell, fingers splayed in the bloody muck around the dead Monk.

Kosar stood and turned on her, and in his eyes Lenora saw pride, and determination, and a confidence that belied his situation. She had seen the tumblers and fought one off. She had ridden through the gray haze rising from the ground, and it came apart before her machine. The swirling sand demons were still fighting the Krote’s rear guard back on the plain, and ahead of them lay Kang Kang and the girl with her brains crushed into the dirt. But for a moment, this man unsettled her more than anything she had yet seen of Noreela. For a moment, he made her feel mortal.

“What surprises do you have left?” Lenora said. Come with me, the voice of her daughter whispered, and Lenora closed her eyes for an instant, trying to put the voice back down.

Kosar laughed. He saw that she had a weakness. Lenora tried to grin, but a pang of pain in her womb turned it into a grimace.

“Are you hurting?” he asked.

Lenora had been asked that recently, by Ducianne. And as she went at Kosar she realized that, yes, she was hurting. Soon, perhaps, she would find out why.

HOPE COULD NOT move. To her left, Alishia had disappeared in the grasp of the tumbler, rolling downhill and into the smoke that was drifting across the valley from the ruined machine. The female Mage, reclothed in flesh and rage, had gone in pursuit of the tumblers. Her screams still echoed around the valley. Before Hope, the male Mage was fighting the Nax. And Hope was trapped between them all, apart from the action, unable to do anything but watch.

Though grotesquely burnt, the Mage still possessed enormous strength. The Nax circled him like wisps of red smoke, gushing fiery breaths, lashing out with bladed appendages and spiked wings, bounding from the ground and trying to confuse him with their rapid twists and turns. But the Mage fended off every attack, his own limbs moving faster than Hope could see. The fight was vicious and brutal, every move a death strike, every counter a desperate defense.

Hope felt useless. In this clash of monsters she was nothing, a human smear on a battlefield the likes of which Noreela had never seen before. The Cataclysmic War had been humans against the Mages and their Krotes. No tumblers, no Nax. Just the humans, as though the land had been content to leave them to clear up their own mess.

Something had changed this time, and Hope was glad.

She looked around the valley, trying to spot the tumbler that had carried Alishia away. She was desperate to believe that the tumblers had come to help, but it was still a stretch of the imagination that she found difficult to make. This was Kang Kang. Bad things happened here, and perhaps this was fate’s final cruel twist in their wretched story: so close to saving the land, then whipped away by a tumbler and never seen again.

But the Mageswanther dead, Hope thought. So why run after her when she’s in the grip of a tumbler? No escape from them. Never. She saw hints of movement between drifting smoke across the valley, and she tried to project its path, looking at a clear spread of hillside and waiting for something to arrive.

She saw them; two tumblers, one with a flash of gray cloth that must have been Alishia’s dress, and the Mage running after them faster than was possible, her feet leaving smoking wounds in the hillside. She must have dealt with another tumbler, Hope thought.

The Nax emitted a horrendous roar, filling the valley with a voice that killed grass and shriveled leaves. They went at the male Mage again, converging from different angles and driving into him. He flexed his chest as they came, as though filling his lungs for a scream to counter their own. But what came from his mouth, eyes and ears was far more than a scream. Hope saw it the instant before she ducked below the trunk once again, a shock wave of solid air that expanded out from the Mage’s head and drove everything before it.

Hope covered her ears and opened her mouth. The shock wave struck the fallen tree, shattering what little remained, sweeping up a cloud of dead insects and wood fragments and adding them to the wave of debris. She glanced up in time to see a flash of red pass directly above her. Its limbs trailed, and it seeped smoke and fire as it went. It landed fifty steps away and rolled in the disturbed soil, burrowing, disappearing below the surface even as the male Mage’s defiant laughter followed the terrible shock wave he had unleashed.

Hope groaned, but barely heard. Her hands were wet with blood from her ears, and something clicked in her chest as she breathed. I’ll die here if I don’t move, she thought, but the only way to move was to stand. The Mage would see her. And old as she was, bitter and mad, she realized that she most definitely did not want to die.

She rolled to her side and peered around the end of the broken log. The Mage was standing to the side of the cave mouth, arms still held wide, head back, mouth open as though sucking in the scent of victory. His body was ruined from the fire, but Hope had never seen anyone appear so strong.

From down the slope Hope heard the female Mage scream again.

The two remaining tumblers rolled uphill into the blazing remains of the flying machine. They jumped and bounced, landing in areas free of fire and machine pieces. The lead tumbler still carried Alishia pinned to its side. Her arms waved, and one leg bent and straightened with each revolution. From this distance she still seemed whole.

The tumblers passed the wreckage, and Hope realized their intention.

They were aiming directly at the cave.

The female Mage appeared from out of the smoke. She screamed and raged, coughing out another burst of blue fire. The tumbler to the rear intercepted the fire before it could strike Alishia, spinning in a circle as the flame melted its way inside. Hope heard distant screams, and she knew they did not come from the Mage.

The final tumbler, Alishia spiked to its side, rolled quickly toward the Womb of the Land.

“S’Hivez!” the female Mage screamed, still running but realizing now that she would not reach Alishia in time.

Hope stood. “Here I am, you piece of shit!”

S’Hivez spun around to look at Hope.

The tumbler flitted behind him, carrying Alishia with it. It entered the darkness of the cave.

Hope closed her eyes.

JOSSUA ELMANTOZ KNEW that the tumbler now carried someone else. Someonealive. But he could no more communicate with them than he could with Flage.

He could sense the tremendous sense of potential present there. He could smell the stink of magic, and there was nothing he could do to purge it from this world.

If he were alive, Jossua could have fought. If he were dead, perhaps he would have attacked from the inside, because the wraith of a Red Monk would be as tenacious as the soul of one still alive. But he was neither. This first Red Monk, one who had seen the Mages from Noreela’s shores three centuries before, refused to give up on life and would not accept death.

When the tumbler went from light to darkness once more, Jossua felt himself plucked away by something more bewildering than anything he had ever encountered. In that thing he found a shadow of acceptance, and a respect for his obsession. Its strange voices chanted him somewhere wholly new.

Tim Lebbon

Dawn