Iron Angel

14

With his rope and harness, his night-hued skin, and arms and shoulders that looked powerful enough to crush an ox, he was certainly the strangest man Rachel had ever seen. Yet he beamed at Trench and herself with such open delight that she felt herself relaxing, despite the crowd of mounted Heshette warriors hovering in his wake.

“The very people I look for,” the giant boomed. “Yes? The boy angel and his assassin friend from Sandport. Good, good-we have much to discuss.”

Rachel frowned. The very people he was looking for? Her unease began to creep back. She clutched the puppeteer’s dog to her breast. It gave a gentle growl.

Trench clasped hands with the big man. “I must speak with Cospinol at once,” he said. “I have an urgent message to deliver.”

Now Anchor’s brow creased. “You have the right body, but the wrong soul,” he remarked, staring down at the angel. “Very strange.” He flicked his eyes to Rachel and studied her dog for a moment, before returning his attention to Trench. “It is just you with the wrong-shape soul. Wrong-shape sword, too-a shiftblade, yes?”

“That’s not important,” Trench replied. “Tell Cospinol-”

“It is important,” Anchor persisted. “You were dead, yes? Dead souls should not be moving the living like puppets. Dead souls should not carry demons with them.” He turned to Rachel and pointed at the pup she carried. “And you…where did you find this creature?”

“The dog?”

“It is not just a dog.”

Rachel hesitated. “It belonged to a thaumaturge.”

Anchor grinned. “Belonged? No, I think it is the other way around. Basilis is much older than he appears. Older than John Anchor, even.”

A soft sound came from the animal’s throat.

Rachel looked closely at the pup. It nuzzled her fingers. She could feel its heart beating, the warmth of its tiny body against her palm. It weighed nothing, a harmless ball of fur.

Basilis?

Trench was becoming agitated. He quickly told the giant all about his ascent from Hell, his possession of Dill’s body, and their escape from Deepgate. As his story unfolded, the Heshette edged their horses nearer. Soon Rachel felt their dark eyes slide to her Spine armour. She held the puppy close to her chest. Quietly she began to note their various weapons.

As Trench and Anchor continued to converse, Rachel learned that the giant had come here in response to the Mesmerist threat against his own land. At Anchor’s talk of gods and skyships, the assassin found her eyes lift in awe to follow that huge rope up into the foggy skies. The god of brine and fog? Trench refused to relay his message to Cospinol via Anchor, insisting instead on an audience with this sea god himself. The tethered giant thought about this for a long moment, then agreed. “Cospinol will hear you,” he said. “But you must leave the shiftblade down here. He fears assassination.”

Behind him, the rope trembled.

“He does not fear assassination,” Anchor corrected himself. “But leave the shiftblade anyway.” His gaze lingered on Mina Greene’s dog, but then he peered up and studied the poisonous canopy. “I fear to bring Cospinol’s ship all the way down through these branches,” he announced. “But there are gaps between the trees through which it may be possible to lower a rope, if the ship is near enough to the ground.”

He reached behind his back and began to heave the rope down towards him.

Rachel, it seemed, was not the only one here to be witnessing this spectacle for the first time, for all the Heshette turned their gazes upwards and began to mutter among themselves and point at the heavens in nervous expectation. She wondered how Anchor had come to travel with such a ragged crew, but then her attention snapped quickly to the sky. The shadow of something massive was descending upon Cinderbark Wood.

As Anchor pulled the rope down hand over fist he called out, “You stay with your friend’s body, Rachel Hael? Even though his soul is gone to Hell.”

Rachel realized he had spoken to her. “I…” she began. The object above seemed impossibly vast; it was difficult to pull her eyes away from it. “We made a deal. I help Trench deliver his message, and he gives up Dill’s body.”

“And where is your other companion? The scarred one.”

“She…” Rachel’s instincts shouted a warning. How did this stranger know about Carnival? How did he know how to find them? The very people I look for. The answer dawned on her at once. Cospinol was Ulcis’s brother.

Oh, shit.

“I haven’t seen her in weeks,” she replied quickly. “She abandoned us before we reached Sandport.” Rachel dared not tell the man about her suspicions that Carnival had been shadowing them. A clash between the scarred angel and this stranger would not help their situation.

Anchor grinned as he continued to drag span after span of rope down from the sky. “Not such a good friend, then, eh?” The stench of brine intensified as the fog above the canopy grew ever darker. “A friend does not leave her companions behind.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call her a friend.” Rachel could hear chilling sounds issuing from above now. Distant howling? She kept her gaze pinned to the heavens. The dog in her arms barked, and she stroked its coat to calm the little thing. “What do you want with her?”

The big man beamed. “I bear her no grudge.”

Great spars of timber appeared through the gloom over their heads, thousands of them. Like the upturned masts and yards of a whole flotilla of ships, they formed a vast, cluttered mass of wood which stretched as far as Rachel could see. There were armoured figures hanging everywhere among this construction-the source, the assassin now realized, of the growing clamour. She gave an involuntary gasp.

The horses reared in panic. Curses went up as their riders struggled to control them. Anchor kept pulling on the rope, inching the whole skyship earthwards. “If her death can save the world,” he said to Rachel, “would you give her up?”

“I don’t think very much of Carnival,” Rachel said. “But then I don’t think much of the world, either.”

Anchor laughed, but then a mighty crash came from somewhere nearby as the lowest parts of descending gallows collided with the canopy of Cinderbark Wood. A short distance to the east, several wooden beams had sliced down through the poisoned trees. Stone branches fell in bright showers, raising puffs of sand where they struck the ground. The howling in the skies grew suddenly louder as Anchor’s captives fought against their nooses-an entire army of dead men.

“Sorry,” Anchor boomed. “I was not paying attention. Cospinol’s ship is low enough, I think.” He stopped hauling on the rope, leaving the bulk of the skyship floating a few yards above the canopy.

Rachel felt as though she had been trapped between two worlds. Cospinol’s incredible vessel and Cinderbark Wood had clamped together like the teeth of Heaven and earth, and now, impossibly, the assassin found herself staring up at an army of damned souls. Hundreds of warriors hung from their nooses, moaning, crying out in unknown languages. Their voices echoed through the fog.

“Always complaining,” Anchor muttered with irritation. He pinned the rope under his foot, then turned to Trench. “Cospinol sends down a rope now. You hold on tight, they pull you up. Is better to ascend this way.” He nodded. “The other way is…eh…not so good for living bodies.”

“I’m going with him,” Rachel announced. She had looked after Dill’s body since Deepgate, and she wasn’t about to let it out of her sight now.

Anchor shrugged. “As you wish. You go up, you come back down later. Afterwards we speak about your scarred friend. I have many questions.”

A derisive snort came from somewhere close behind Rachel. “Then put them to me, assassin.” Rachel recognized the voice at once-the very sound of it filled her with a sense of impending violence.

Carnival moved quickly out of the fog, her wings half outstretched as though ready for battle, her dark eyes fixed on the tethered giant. “You are an assassin, aren’t you?”

“It is not personal,” Anchor said. “Cospinol needs your blood.”

Rachel’s thoughts raced. She had seen Carnival fight. She had witnessed the scarred angel cut through an army and murder a god, and she knew that Anchor stood no chance against this foe. Yet if the giant had come here to fight the Mesmerists, then Rachel could not afford to let Carnival kill him. She looked at Trench for support, but was dismayed to see the hatred boiling in his eyes. His fist tightened on his strange demon-blade, and it let loose a pitiful wail in response.

Carnival murdered me. I trained every day for twenty years, yet she still defeated me. Silister Trench had been another of the scarred angel’s victims. But now it was Dill’s fist clutching the sword, and Dill’s blood that would be spilled in a fight.

“Get out of here,” Rachel hissed at Carnival. “Please…just go.”

The scarred angel growled, “You didn’t complain when I cut you loose from a Spine trap in Deepgate. I didn’t hear you complain when I brought down a fleet of airships to aid your escape.”

Carnival had remained hidden all this time, watching and listening from afar. And now she was about to ruin everything. Cinderbark Wood was about to become a battlefield. The Heshette were urging their horses into a semicircle behind Anchor. Steel rasped as blades were unsheathed. Bowstrings tightened.

Carnival’s full attention remained fixed on Anchor. “Your master wants my blood?”

“He does,” Anchor replied.

“Then let him try and take it.”

But it was Trench who attacked first. Rachel caught movement at the edge of her vision, and she wheeled to see the wingless archon charge. He was muttering something under his breath. The shiftblade thrust forward, aimed at Carnival’s neck.

“Wait!” Rachel cried.

The scarred angel danced back from the blow. She would have avoided it easily had the shiftblade not changed form. Halfway through Trench’s strike, his sword turned into a pike. This sudden alteration caught Carnival by surprise, but not Trench, who wielded the iron-sheathed weapon with consummate ease. The pike had a much longer reach; its curved iron blade had nicked the scarred angel’s larynx, drawing blood.

Carnival clutched her bloody neck and backed away.

Trench swung the pike in a circle over his head, his hands turning the shaft, then brought the point down to bear on his opponent. Still whispering to himself, he thrust the weapon forward.

Carnival lashed a fist out to grab the shaft, but her fingers closed on nothing but air. The shiftblade had altered its shape again, from a pike into a rapier. Its steel tip pierced Carnival’s hand behind her thumb.

She shrieked in fury and leapt back, turning to face the archon once more. Her eyes thinned to murderous slits.

Trench came at her fast-in a series of rapid strikes. Handling the rapier with as much mastery as the pike, he strove forward, shifting his hind foot with each lunge to keep each blow just in reach.

Carnival was forced to retreat again.

Now Trench moved to a broadward stance, seemingly leaving himself open to attack. He waited, the rapier tip aimed at a point above his opponent’s heart.

Anchor had folded his arms across his huge chest and was watching the battle with interest.

Carnival pounced with frightening speed, her body flexing under the projected path of the blade, her hands reaching for the other angel’s neck.

The shiftblade changed again. Trench’s rapier became an iron shield, which he smashed into the scarred angel’s face. She tumbled backwards, blood sluicing from her nose, as a metallic clang resounded through the stone forest.

“Raw fury cannot match skill,” Anchor commented to the Heshette leader, a thin man with black hair and cynical eyes. “The First Citadel champion has some experience, I think.” He paused. “But maybe not so much stamina. The fight ends soon, eh?”

Trench was already breathing hard, clearly struggling with the weight of the shield. Evidently Dill’s untrained muscles were not used to such exertions.

The scarred angel’s rage, meanwhile, gave her almost limitless endurance. She was snarling and spitting blood, already crouching in order to hurl herself back into the battle.

“Carnival!” Rachel cried.

But the scarred angel ignored her. She flung herself at Trench’s shield like a force of nature, a storm of teeth and fists intent on ripping him apart.

Trench was driven back by the concentrated fury of her attack. He staggered and fell, but as he dropped to the ground he hissed another frantic word. Razor-sharp spikes burst out of his shield, shredding his opponent’s hands. Blood flew in arcs from Carnival’s flailing fists, but she did not stop.

“Too much blood,” Anchor said. “I stop this now.” He looped a coil of loose rope around his huge bicep and strode forward, cracking his knuckles.

Trench was pinned under his shield, desperately trying to keep it between him and the scarred angel’s frenzied blows. Carnival, seemingly oblivious to her own wounds, continued her assault without pause. Skin now hung in shreds from her lacerated fists.

“Angel,” Anchor roared. “Leave the poor boy. It is time for you to face me now.”

Carnival wheeled, her face riven with blood and scars and strands of her own black hair. The lights of Cinderbark Wood glimmered faintly in her eyes. “Assassins,” she hissed. “I’ve killed so many now.”

“Don’t do this,” Rachel warned. “Carnival, please.”

The giant gave Rachel a sad smile. “I make the end painless for your friend. You must not fear for her.”

Carnival rose slowly from Trench’s battered and cowering body. The rage seemed to have drained out of her abruptly. She glanced at Rachel, then back at Anchor. “You’re unarmed,” she said.

“I prefer fists and feet to steel. It is best for both of us, eh?”

Carnival nodded. “Then I’ll kill you quickly.”

Rachel cried out.

But the scarred angel moved like the shadow of gale-torn cloud, a dark shape across the white sands.

Rachel focused. She had no clear idea of how to stop this bloodshed, but she needed a chance to try. Time expanded around her. The warriors hanging from Cospinol’s skyship settled silently into their nooses. The Heshette horsemen froze in their saddles. Trench’s ragged breaths stopped.

But Carnival did not. Moving as fast as any focused Spine, the scarred angel reached for Anchor’s throat. Had Rachel’s senses not been pushed beyond their normal limits, she might have missed the attack altogether.

But then John Anchor did something astonishing.

He seized Carnival’s outstretched hand and jerked it aside. Even at this increased speed, his fist had been a blur. Rachel knew that she’d just seen something impossible-the force of air alone should have shattered the big man’s bones.

Yet Anchor now lifted his other fist and punched Carnival hard against the side of her head. The scarred angel went limp, slowly, and began to collapse at the giant’s feet.

Rachel dragged herself back to her normal state, her muscles already cramping from that one focused instant. Her heart felt like it was racing, although it was actually slowing. She watched Anchor pick up Carnival’s body and sling it over his shoulder.

“It is done,” he said wearily. “Another warrior for the Rotsward’s gins.” Then he plucked a reed from his breeches and blew into it.

The Heshette were hard-pressed to keep their mounts from bolting when the clattering, clicking mass of shells and pincers descended from Cospinol’s ship. The crabs surged over the scarred angel, and then bore her body up Anchor’s rope. Rachel stared at the spectacle like a woman observing her own nightmare from the fringes of sleep. Was Carnival still alive?

Conflicting emotions plucked at her. She had been through so much with the scarred angel-as bitter opponents, and then allies. Carnival had saved Rachel and tried to kill her. Now watching her former companion’s body ascending to the skyship, Rachel could not totally reconcile her divided feelings.

High above her, the disparate warriors suspended from the Rotsward’s yards suddenly howled and roared with greater agitation. To Rachel’s ears, these cries evinced a profound madness. Was this what awaited the scarred angel?

Carnival had disappeared now, borne rapidly up the great rope. Trench turned his eyes from the skyship, a look of grim satisfaction on his face, then addressed Anchor. “If I’m to meet your master,” he remarked, “I’d rather reach his skyship in a more traditional way.”

Anchor laughed. “Rope and basket,” he said. “Same way we lift the fish and grain and fowl. Only John Anchor stays down here.” He stamped a foot on the ground. “John Anchor stays with the beasts.”

Evidently the basket had carried a great deal more fish than grain and fowl, for the stench brought tears to Rachel’s eyes. Supported by a much thinner and frailer rope than the one Anchor used to pull the skyship, the wicker container plummeted quickly out of the fog and thumped against the sandy ground. Trench climbed in first and was hoisted up out of sight by unknown handlers.

Several minutes later, the basket creaked down again out of the fog. It was empty. Rachel placed the puppy into the sour-smelling lift, and then hopped in beside it. She brushed her greasy hands on her breeches and wondered if the god she was about to meet would be likely to offer her a bath.

The rope drew taut, and with a jerk the basket began to ascend into the fog, up among the moaning warriors in their nooses. Basilis sniffed around her feet and then peed against the wicker side. The softly glowing colours of Cinderbark Wood receded below, the branches blurring into streaks of purple, green, and yellow. From up here Rachel could see the hanging figures more clearly. They were dressed in queerly exotic armour, and while each of their suits was different from the next, they all shared the same pallid complexion of men long dead. Howling stares turned to follow Rachel as she rose among them. These warriors were suspended from a matrix of damp spars and masts, like a vast scaffold built from the bones of ships. It seemed endless.

Up through the fog the basket climbed, wicker lattice creaking under Rachel’s boots. She could smell the brine strongly now; the taste of salt lingered on her lips. White crusts, like hoarfrost, laced the yards and ropes in places. Overhead loomed a shadow, denser than the surrounding network of timbers.

And then she saw Cospinol’s great skyship: the huge tattered hull of dark oak, the sleek tapered bow, and the sheer bulk of the stern rising like the ramparts of a castle. Amidst this impossible scaffold, the vessel reminded Rachel of a spider at the center of its web.

The basket rose until it clunked against the side of the midships balustrade and halted. Four slack-fleshed crewmen rested against their winch handles and fixed their vacant eyes upon the deck. There was no sign of Trench or of Carnival’s body. Warily, Rachel picked up the dog and climbed out of the basket.

No sooner had she set foot upon Cospinol’s deck than a booming voice came from an open doorway in the stern of the vessel. “If this message is truly from Hasp, then my brother Rys is behind it by proxy!”

“Rys knows nothing, I swear.”

The second voice Rachel recognized as Trench’s. She ducked through the open doorway.

Trench was pleading with an ancient battle-archon, a greybeard clad in crab-shell armour. The god of brine and fog? Cospinol was bedraggled, pigeon-winged, and wild of hair, and yet his blue eyes burned with feverish ferocity. “Twelve of them!” he roared, striding across the gloomy cabin. The floor dipped dangerously under his weight. “One arconite was dire news. But twelve…? Where did King Menoa find the power to construct so many?”

“A piece of the shattered god burns within each arconite, thus granting them immortality.” Trench lowered his head. “But the souls inside these creatures were taken from the First Citadel. We have suffered losses during this siege.”

Cospinol hissed. He glanced towards Rachel, but his eye fixed on the pup in her arms. Then he continued to pace his cabin again. “Twelve arconites,” he muttered. “This world is finished if Menoa can spill enough blood to release them all from Hell.”

“He will butcher everything in his path to facilitate their release from the Maze. We must bargain with him, Cospinol.”

“Bargain?” The god snorted. “Oh, Rys will like that.”

Rachel said, “Trench, what’s going on?”

“Who is this woman?” Cospinol cried. His outstretched finger shook as he pointed at the tiny dog. “And why did she bring that bloody hound aboard my vessel?”

The pup growled.

Cospinol eyed the mangy creature warily. “What is your interest in all of this, Basilis? Since when did you meddle in the affairs of the gods?” When the dog made no sound, Cospinol lifted his gaze to Rachel. “Speak for your master, then, thaumaturge.”

Rachel gaped at him. “I’m no thaumaturge,” she replied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This pup belongs to someone else. We…” She had been about to say We rescued it, but in light of these new events, she now began to wonder otherwise.

What exactly was Basilis?

Cospinol regarded her darkly for a long moment. “This is a conspiracy,” he growled. “Rys sends me to the other side of the world-to avenge our brother’s death, he says. To gather power for myself, he says. To seal a portal and halt a second incursion.” His chest rose and fell under the crab-shell plate. “All lies. Now that I’m here, what do I find? A messenger from Hell who insists we must abandon this land to the Mesmerists. And now a demon with his lying thaumaturge.”

“Abandon this land?” Rachel placed a hand on Trench’s arm. “What does he mean? Who are these arconites you spoke of?”

Trench was looking at Basilis, his brow creased in thought, but he now raised his eyes to meet the assassin’s own. “I’m sorry, Rachel. This has always been my message. King Menoa is assembling a new force of warriors: twelve giants who are able to walk on unblooded ground-who can travel freely beyond the Mesmerist Veil.” His shoulders slumped. “Just one of these arconites destroyed the bulk of Rys’s army at Skirl before they managed to subdue it. And even then they could not kill the thing. It was chained in the ruins of a flooded city. But the gods on earth now lack the strength to fight a second arconite. Cospinol and his brothers must surrender to the ruler of Hell and beg for his mercy, or they will perish.”

“But what about Deepgate?”

“There’s no hope for Deepgate,” he replied, “and no hope for Pandemeria, either. The gods must now act to save themselves. I’m afraid there’s no hope for mankind at all.”

The Heshette wouldn’t desert their horses. Caulker had hoped to be rid of at least some of them by now. He had expected them to take up Anchor’s offer of sanctuary aboard Cospinol’s skyship, but they remained down here-as firmly entrenched in the giant’s company as lice in a crone’s scalp.

Anchor himself had become subdued. For a while he kept one ear to the skies above as though eavesdropping upon a secret conversation, but then announced, “We go soon, I think. Bad news.”

“I’ll be glad to get out of this wood,” Caulker muttered. He had already dismounted and was pacing back and forth between the boles of two poisoned trees. “Although the path out of here is likely to be just as treacherous. The skyship must have brought down half a hundred branches from the canopy.”

Yet despite his misgivings, Caulker was beginning to feel more comfortable. Anchor had dispatched the scarred angel with consummate ease. Any Spine they encountered on the road to Deepgate would not pose a threat to him. It seemed to Caulker that they had survived the worst of it.

The tethered man took a soulpearl from his pouch and swallowed it. Then he rolled his huge shoulders and gave a great sigh. “War always benefits Hell,” he said. “Death and bloodshed make it stronger. Menoa knows this. It is why he wants war. The gods know this, too, but they cannot be slaves to Menoa.” He shook his head. “I do not think there will ever be peace between them.”

“You think Hell is bound to win?” Caulker asked.

“It is likely,” Anchor admitted.

Caulker had suspected as much. All souls flowed to the Maze eventually. And with Iril shattered and powerless, no one could stop Menoa from claiming those souls. The King’s Mesmerists would inevitably rise to consume this earth, and all who stood against them would die.

It made no sense to Caulker to be on the losing side.

John Anchor remained distracted. Absently, he consumed another soulpearl. This time, when he swallowed the glass bead, he grimaced and looked like he was about to spit. An incautious choice of soul, perhaps?

The cutthroat eyed the bag of soulpearls. A single strike with the flat of a sword-or even a stick-would shatter most of them, releasing the furious spirits inside. Despite Anchor’s great strength and speed, the wrath of one spectral archon had drawn the big man’s blood. What damage could a horde of such ghosts accomplish? And what if they were released during the heat of battle? King Menoa would surely reward such cunning.

“How do you plan to deal with the Mesmerists?” Caulker asked. “Deepgate must be crawling with them by now.”

“No doubt,” Anchor replied. “But we do not meet Menoa’s forces there.”

“No? But I thought-”

“We go east.”

“East?” Caulker gaped at him. “But Deepgate lies to the west.”

“Cospinol changed plan,” Anchor said. “We leave Deepgate to the Mesmerists and go back across the sea to Pandemeria. All are welcome. Even you, Jack Caulker. There is no more debt between us.”

The ember of Caulker’s own plan faded. If he was to gain favor with the Mesmerists, he needed something with which to bargain. The cutthroat needed to show King Menoa where his loyalties lay. “You mean to abandon Deepgate to the enemy?” he asked.

“Yes. We go to sea.”

A sea journey?

With the Heshette as companions? Muttering curses to himself, Jack Caulker slouched further into his fog-damp jacket. What other choice remained? He could hardly remain here. His vision of plummeting from the Rockwall battlements returned to him, and now it seemed apt-for he felt like a man who had stepped off a precipice, leaving his destiny in the hands of the gods.

Anchor was consulting Ramnir now. Caulker could not hear their hushed conversation, but the big man’s hand gestures were urgent. Finally the pair clasped arms.

And so Caulker found himself once more sharing the saddle with a Heshette horseman as the group picked their way east now through Cinderbark Wood. They reached the edge of the petrified woodland without incident and stopped to camp a short distance out from the colourful boles while they waited for the rest of the original party to bring the livestock down the eastern edge of the wood to join them. The tribesmen built a dismal fire from their supplies of dried dung, boiling strips of tough meat in a small iron pot, which they insisted on sharing with both Anchor and Caulker.

Caulker chewed the meat without tasting it. He was exhausted. Sleep tugged at him, but his fears of reliving that nightmare fall from Rockwall’s battlements forced him to resist.

The tethered giant accepted the meal graciously enough, but he insisted on allowing Cospinol to improve their fare. Again the same basket was lowered from the skyship, now loaded with flagons of water, wine, and salted fish. Anchor and Ramnir continued to converse in hushed tones while they ate. Ramnir seemed disturbed, often shaking his head or gazing thoughtfully into the fire.

Finally Caulker could no longer remain awake. He curled up on a foul-smelling Heshette blanket and closed his eyes. And in his dreams he fell a thousand times. Again and again he found himself peering down into that deep, fog-shrouded valley. He smelled the fresh mountain pines and he watched the eagles soaring through the mists below the high battlements. The cutthroat had no wings to save him. Each time Anchor pushed him, he fell screaming to his death.

He woke to the sound of his own cries. Sweat plastered his hair and face, his muscles ached, and for a heartbeat he feared that his plummet from the fortress battlements had been real, that his body now lay broken in the gloom beneath that faraway fortress. But then he became aware of the early-morning sun shining through the fog like beaten gold. Horses were snorting and goat-bells tinkling nearby. He could smell livestock and dung fires.

The whole camp was already full of life. Heshette riders were cinching saddles and tackle, and strapping packs and weapons to their mounts. Women were milking goats, and chattering in their heathen language. Those greybeards and family descendants who had driven their livestock around the northern edge of Cinderbark Wood had finally caught up with the rest of the party.

Ramnir gathered the Heshette together and addressed them: “Most of you have already seen the red mists rising from Deepgate,” he cried. “This pestilence is the breath of Hell, and it has been brought upon us by the chained city’s own priests.” He raised his hands to quell the murmuring crowd. “Iril was shattered in the War Against Heaven, and now Hell has a new king. This bloody Veil heralds the approach of his armies. It is already spreading beyond the abyss, poisoning the lands all around Deepgate.”

One of the older greybeards yelled out, “We’ll pray for rain!”

“Rain will not wash this away,” Ramnir said to the man. “Nor will Ayen lower Heaven’s barricades to help us. We cannot stop this thing. The Deadsands will be consumed.”

“The Heshette do not flee.” The old man spat.

“Hear me out, old man,” Ramnir said. “The abyss below Deepgate is one of two doors into Hell. The other lies across the sea in the lands that border John Anchor’s country, and is already the focus of a great war.” He paused to look at each of the surrounding group in turn. “Who will stand and fight against Hell here? The chained city is in ruins, its people tempered and reduced to slavery. There are no armies to hold back the Maze king’s forces, and those tatters that remain will resist, at every step, our approach to the abyss.”

“We don’t need an army,” the old man said. “We need faith.”

But Ramnir shook his head. “Our friend Anchor has offered us passage across the Yellow Sea to join his own people in the battle against Hell. We have the chance to start again, to fight with those who would welcome our efforts against a common foe. If we remain here, we die.”

The sight of these withered men on their ill-fed beasts considering war almost tore a laugh from Caulker’s gut, but he managed to clench the outburst in his throat as Ramnir’s thin dark eyes turned to him. The Heshette had no choice but to flee. Deepgate’s armies had decimated the tribes in decades of war. King Menoa would crush the survivors like lice.

After some discussion the Heshette came to realize this, just as Caulker knew they would. They would be ferried to Pandemeria, taken in there as refugees, and then pitied and scorned by the locals. Caulker had seen it happen many times before. The beggar cups of nomads clacked around half the street corners in Sandport and Clune. Tribal children raked through refuse heaps like dogs. Anchor must have known this, too. Surely the tethered giant didn’t expect these weak old men to fight?

It was all in the blood, of course. Jack Caulker’s ancestors had been great river men, smugglers, and infamous profiteers, thus he came from good stock. But these heathens were different. They hadn’t crawled very far from the caves their ancestors had burrowed into Hollowhill. To think of them as human required a generous imagination.

But Caulker had little time to consider the matter further, since the group had come to a decision. The Heshette would accompany Anchor to the continent of Pandemeria, abandoning forever the poisoned desert which had been their home.

“Do you expect to carry all of them on your back?” Caulker asked Anchor harshly. “What about the elderly and crippled? And the beasts? Will your master allow his skyship to become a menagerie?”

“All are welcome,” Anchor replied.

The cutthroat cursed, and then continued to curse throughout the sixteen-day march southeast towards the Pocked Delta. The Heshette led Anchor along an old nomad route long disused since the wells had been poisoned by Deepgate’s armies. Now, at last, with a ready supply of food and water from Cospinol’s skyship, the trail became passable once more. They traveled in haste, for riders brought grim news from beyond their shroud of fog. The Mesmerist Veil was growing with each passing day, staining the western skies like a bloody gauze. Caulker’s bones grated in the saddle. Sand stung his eyes. And the flies! A buzzing cloud of insects kept pace with the party, as if they, too, were fleeing the crimson pall.

Ramnir sent riders far and wide to spread news of the exodus, and soon other tribes came along to join the group. By the time the party reached the sea their numbers had swelled to more than eight hundred: streams of refugees, including women and children, mingled with herds of thin goats and ranks of leather-faced horsemen. Warriors from a score of tribes gathered on Longlizard Point, a long low peninsula stubbled with tough ochre grasses. Beyond here, the Coyle emptied into the Yellow Sea beyond, carving dozens of channels through the Pocked Delta mud. It was low tide, and birds strutted across the grey expanse, plucking at tube worms.

Waves rushed and crashed against the rocks on the seaward side of the peninsula, lifting flecks of spume into the air.

Caulker dismounted on the lower slopes of the peninsula and wandered up the cracked rocks to join Anchor and Ramnir. The two men were staring out across the fog-heavy sea.

“-are you confident?” Ramnir was saying.

“Yes,” Anchor replied. “Easy.”

“Confident?” Caulker inquired. “About what?”

The Heshette leader spat and said nothing.

“Ramnir is interested to see how we will cross,” Anchor said. “It is a long way to Pandemeria from here.”

“And how exactly do we cross?” Caulker asked. “You can hoist all the goats and their keepers up to the skyship, but I fail to see how you’ll manage. You’ve no boat. Don’t tell me you intend to swim?”

“Swim?” The giant shook his head. “John Anchor does not know how to swim.”

“Then how…?”

Anchor beamed. “Confidence!” he exclaimed, striding back towards his followers.

For the rest of that day, the Heshette and their animals were hoisted up into the Rotsward. Humans and livestock traveled up by basket, but stout harnesses had to be fashioned for the horses. The Heshette women wrapped cloth around the animals’ eyes to prevent them panicking-a tactic which was only moderately successful. By dusk only Ramnir and Caulker remained on the ground with Anchor, although the leader’s horse had already been stowed aboard Cospinol’s ship.

Ramnir indicated that the cutthroat should be next in the basket, but Caulker wouldn’t hear of it.

“I’ve been with Anchor since the start,” he said, “and I’ll stay until the end. You have goats waiting.”

The Heshette leader reached for his knife, but Anchor stopped him. “Go and look after your people,” he said. He grinned and slapped his belly. “And we all need goats. Meat is more important than insults, yes?”

The other man smiled. “See you in Pandemeria, John Anchor.”

Once Ramnir had been taken up to the foggy skies, Caulker was left alone with the tethered giant.

“Why do you hate these people so much?” Anchor asked. “It is bad for you. Enemies creep up behind your back with a knife.” He made a stabbing motion. “Friends watch your back. Why make enemies and not friends?”

Caulker snorted. “I know what these people are like. Had you spent more time in Sandport you would have seen them for yourself. They wallow in filth and lethargy, poor as dirt. Their children run through the streets like rats.”

“Rats are clever. They know when to leave a sinking ship.”

“Animal cunning. You shouldn’t have offered to take them with you.” He watched the foaming waves break against the base of the peninsula, inhaling the scent of them. How did Anchor plan to cross? He could only think of one way. “That water’s deep,” he muttered, “and cold.”

“Here is your basket,” Anchor said.

The cutthroat climbed inside the wicker frame and clutched the rope. “Don’t trust them, Anchor,” he called out as he ascended into the fog.

Down below, the giant merely laughed. He rolled his massive shoulders, and then hopped down the rocks towards the shore. Then he leaned back and sucked in a long, long breath.

From up inside his basket, Caulker watched the Adamantine Man leap into the sea. He disappeared beneath the dark blue waters, with only the huge rope above water to reveal his progress.

Till the fog closed under him, Caulker saw that rope cut a path through the waves, moving slowly and steadily away from land.