“Why didn't you say anything?”
Mina came over to join Rachel. “Sometimes our minds play tricks on us. I didn't dwell on it at the time.” She picked up the arrow and turned it over in her hands. Then she shrugged, and turned her attention to the view outside.
“What must we look like?” Rachel said. “The settlement militia is going to attack the very moment we heave into view.”
Mina smiled. “Just look at us poor women,” she said, “held hostage inside a demon's mouth, our hapless friend, Hasp, imprisoned and hideously tortured by a gang of ruthless mercenaries.”
“Ruthless mercenaries?”
“They look like mercenaries to me,” she said. “Don't you think? I mean, just look at all this gold. The Mesmerists must have paid them well.”
Rachel turned slowly to face her. “Oh, Mina…”
“It explains why this ghastly automaton is cradling them so gently, and why it shows them so much respect. Clearly these woods-men are leading Menoa's assault against this land.” She gave an abrupt nod. “Local knowledge, you see—that's what conquerors pay for. You knock out the scouts and the watchtowers before you attack. I'll bet this arconite attempts to keep those traitorous dogs out of harm's way once the settlement defenders begin firing arrows.”
“Firing arrows at them.”
“Yellow Sea pirates used to do the same thing. They'd fly the flags of their enemies during attacks on merchant vessels. The merchants blamed the attacks on the pirates' enemies.”
“That's terrorism.”
She grunted. “We've little choice. Oran knows us too well. If he killed Hasp, would we crush his people in a bloody act of revenge? Murder all those women and children? He doesn't regard that as much of a gamble. But if he found himself caught amongst an angry mob, thousands of people who would readily kill him to protect their town… then the ensuing violence no longer becomes our responsibility. Our position changes from one of potential avenger to potential saviour. In such a situation, he might be more amenable to bargaining.”
Rachel smiled. “You're really quite fiendish, Mina.”
“You have to be,” the thaumaturge replied, “when you have a devil for a master.”
If this was Hell, as she suspected it might be, then she found it satisfying to think that the gods might well have created this realm with her in mind.
A river of blood.
Carnival waded onwards through the thick red waters. Her rage felt like a cold fist in her gut. It had reached an extreme where it could no longer remain in conflict with her soul. Hatred, pure and simple, controlled her every thought. She was going to kill a lot of people.
She thought she recognized the dark-skinned giant up ahead, but couldn't remember where she'd seen him before. He wore a cumbersome wooden harness attached to a heavy rope that floated limply in the river behind him. The line seemed to have been previously connected to the vessel now scattered across this bloody landscape.
A pale, red-haired woman in a grey uniform was held in the big man's arms. Carnival studied her, but nothing stirred in her memory. The woman had a small wand tucked behind her ear that emitted harsh white light, and she held a bottle in the crook of her arm while she manipulated a silvery device with both hands.
As Carnival walked towards the couple, she felt odd currents tugging at her legs. It was almost as if the river was examining her. She heard a splash, and turned sharply.
The boy from the airship was following a short distance behind. Realizing he had been noticed, he ducked behind a mass of broken timbers. Carnival ignored him. She strode up out of the water, across one of the low banks between channels, and then back down the other side. The river embraced her again her like a lover.
“I do not wish to fight you,” the tethered man shouted. “Choose another path, angel.”
Carnival continued straight for him.
“You are free of the Rotsward,” the man said in a steady voice. “But you are not free of Hell, eh? We are here to fight the Lord of the Maze… to save our world… your world. Come with us. We'll leave this place together.”
Carnival made no reply. She was within twenty paces of him now.
“I am not afraid of you,” he said. “You hate me, yes? But I do not hate you. Violence between us makes no sense.”
She heard the boy splashing through the river behind her, but she didn't turn around this time. Her full attention remained fixed on the huge warrior. He was now urging the red-haired woman away from him.
“I beat you once before, angel,” he said. “And I can do so again—but you need not fight me. You wish an apology? Then I am sorry. My master sent me to fight you and I obeyed him.”
Carnival stopped. A memory surfaced: a glade in a stone forest, a place where every branch and thorn had been coated with colourful poisons. She remembered fog, too. “You,” she said.
He nodded grimly.
She felt the blood rush into her scars. Her muscles tightened, making her rotted leathers creak. Instinctively, her wings angled backwards as she prepared to pounce.
The giant reached around behind his back, where the end of the great rope had been split into strands and woven into the latticed harness. He grabbed a fistful of hemp and tore it free, then repeated the process. He was tearing the rope loose.
Carnival waited.
One strand at a time, the tethered man ripped the mighty rope from his back. When he was finished he rolled his shoulders and stepped forward. “I am ready now,” he said.
She leapt at him.
He sidestepped with remarkable agility, bringing one huge fist round to bear on her like a mast hammer.
Carnival twisted and ducked under the blow. Putting her knee behind his own, she grabbed the rear of his harness to pull him downwards.
He remained standing.
She might as well have just tried to pull down a mountain.
His punch had swung wide, but now he tried to loop the crook of his other arm around her neck. Carnival bowed out of this attempted maneuver. They wrestled for a heartbeat, their shins splashing through the sucking water, until she found an opening and threw a vicious punch at his neck with enough force to kill any normal man.
He released her and backed away.
They faced each other again.
The warrior rubbed his neck, looking at her for a long moment. “You have improved,” he said, nodding. “You are much quicker than before, eh? Much stronger now. That is good.”
His red-haired companion was still studying the silver contraption in her hands. “She isn't an angel,” she announced. “I don't know what she is. The locator won't probe her. It's terrified of her.”
The big man laughed uproariously. “Impressive,” he said. “If she can terrify Mesmerist silver, then she can terrify the walls of Hell itself.” He cricked his neck and then crouched, holding out his arms as though he meant to catch her. “Now let me see that move again.”
She flew straight at him.
His arms closed around her.
She made a savage downwards kick at his knee and vaulted up out of his embrace, lashing her wings to gain height.
He grunted in pain.
Carnival flew up, twisted in midair, and dived down on him.
He was ready. He swung at her.
Her wings snapped out, stopping her descent. She allowed his fist to pass an inch from her face and then wheeled and kicked him in the jaw with the back of her heel.
His head snapped round, but he turned his huge body in time to save his neck from breaking. He groaned and then jerked around again to look up at her. “You are stronger than—”
Thrashing her wings to keep airborne, the scarred angel spun again, aiming her foot at his neck.
The big man ducked, moving his body at incredible speed. It wasn't nearly fast enough. Her heel connected with the side of his mouth, knocking him sideways.
He gasped, his huge chest heaving within its wooden harness. Sweat sluiced down his dark cheeks and mingled with t
he blood now leaking from one corner of his mouth. He backed away from her, pressing two fingers against his swollen lip. Then he withdrew his hand and stared at the blood there.
He gave her a bloody grin. “You are the first one ever to make me bleed.” He slammed his enormous hands together and growled. “Come on, then.”
Carnival flew at him again.
As soon as she was within range, her opponent launched a ferocious flurry of blows at her, aiming at her face, her chest, her neck.
She blocked them all. She saw him reach over her shoulder, grasping for her wing, and punched upwards into the base of his jaw. The blow connected with a loud crack. He grunted, but didn't otherwise react. He had a grip of her wing. Muscles in his shoulders bunched as he pulled.
Carnival sank her teeth into his neck. She tasted blood.
“John!” the red-haired woman screamed.
They were locked together. He huffed and grunted, his huge greasy body engulfing her as he wrenched at her wing. She smelled his sweat, the spicy odour of his skin. His muscles slid across her own. Her shoulder gave a sudden crack, and she felt the bone jerk loose from its socket. A spike of pain. She ignored it, tearing at his flesh with her teeth. Hot blood flowed over her jaw.
“Leave him alone!”
This cry had come from somewhere else. Carnival recognized the voice of the boy. For a heartbeat she hesitated, relaxing her grip on the giant.
With a roar, the huge warrior pushed her off.
Carnival splashed backwards through the shallow red waters, but remained standing. A dull throb had taken root in her broken shoulder.
Her opponent looked in bad shape, too. He took an awkward step backwards, sucking in great breaths of air through his nose. He had one hand clamped against his bleeding neck.
The boy was standing in the river, ten paces to one side of the giant. Red water coursed around his thin chest. He held his hands clasped together under his chin as if in prayer, the metal hooks splayed outwards like fans. “Please don't kill him,” he said.
Carnival returned her attention to the giant warrior. Her dislocated wing hung slackly against her back, the feathers trailing in the river. She clenched her teeth, reached behind her back, and pushed the bone back into its socket. She barely noticed the pain. Flexing her rapidly healing wing, she strode forward to finish off her enemy.
“No!” The boy rushed over and put himself between Carnival and her opponent.
“Get away from me, lad.” The giant grabbed the boy's upper arm and started to shove him to one side.
The boy changed.
Carnival halted as the child's skin began to flow like tallow from his bones. He closed his eyes and his head seemed to melt down into his shoulders. His flesh was reforming around the thin muscle of his upper arm where the giant held him, shrinking and changing colour. His bones clicked and cracked. In two heartbeats the whole of the boy's body had altered shape, hardened, and taken on a metallic lustre. He had ceased to exist in his previous form.
Instead of a boy, the warrior now clutched a sword.
A humming noise came from the device in the red-haired woman's hands. She glanced down at it. “It's a shiftblade, John,” she explained. “That child is a Mesmerist demon.”
John? Carnival looked at her opponent. They had given him another name in the poison forest, she now recalled. Anchor.
John Anchor frowned at the weapon in his fist. He swung his arm to cast the blade away, but threads of metal spun out from the grip and wrapped themselves around his wrist.
Anchor growled and tried to shake the sword loose. The metal threads tightened. It would not leave his hand.
“For the gods' sake, John,” the woman cried. “Sod your ridiculous principles and just use the damn thing!”
The big man ignored her. He seized the weapon's hilt with his free hand and tried to prise it loose. “Let go of me,” he growled. “This is not the way I fight.”
The shiftblade turned into a spear.
Anchor shook the long weapon furiously. He slammed it down against the water and put his sandaled foot halfway along the shaft and tried to snap it.
The demonic weapon let out a shrill cry. It changed from the spear to a short, fluted mace with elaborate silvered flanges and a grip cord of woven gold that coiled around the warrior's wrist like a serpent.
Anchor roared. “No swords, no spears, no bludgeons! I will not carry you.”
Carnival watched him struggle with the weapon. No matter how hard he thrashed his arm around, it would not release him. It changed shape again and again: to bows and clubs and punching shields. Each new weapon was more elaborate, more beautiful than the last, but Anchor would accept none of them.
He yelled at the red-haired woman, “Why is it doing this? Shiftblades feel pain. Since when do they choose to fight? Since when do they force themselves upon others?”
“Maybe it likes you, John.”
Carnival thought she understood. She recalled the boy's words in the skyship. Maybe John, after my father. The child did not look like the man, but then that child was a shape-shifter.
The shiftblade had stretched itself and become a broad steel shield with a sumptuous floral design in green and blue enamel that seemed to shine in the crimson gloom. In the world of men, such armour would have cost a presbyter's ransom, but Anchor simply beat at it with his fist, denting the brightly coloured metal until the shiftblade finally gave up. It released its hold on him.
The giant let out an angry roar. He wrenched the offending shield from his hand and threw it far across the River of the Failed. It spun away, flashing through the shafts of light descending from above, before disappearing into the distance.
The scarred angel looked at Anchor, and then she turned and gazed out in the direction where the shield had vanished. She tested her wounded wing, thumping it slowly, before she took to the air. And then she left the warrior and his red-haired companion and set out across the red river.
Ahead of her lay all of Hell.
Evidently the escaped rider had been quick to raise the alarm, for the entire local army awaited them when they finally reached the settlement.
From Dill's mouth Rachel watched as they reached the northern fringe of the great forest. The lakeside town appeared out of the fog; a brown ribbon of timber buildings ranged along the shore and was hemmed within banked palisade walls on its three landward sides. Mists hung over the waters like puffs of cotton. A hundred yards out from the harbour, Rachel could see manned barges loaded with mounds of coke and logs. Yet more sailors were steering empty vessels out from their jetties to join them, leaving only a cluster of smaller fishing skiffs at the quayside. It seemed that the merchants had received enough notice to try first to protect their fleet.
Long lines of soldiers stood atop the battlements, while others peered out from watchtowers set at regular intervals around the perimeter. Most of these men were bowmen; it seemed the settlement lacked any of the heavy ordnance—the catapults and scorpions—Rys had employed at Coreollis.
Dill paused, turning his jaw slowly from side to side as he helped them survey the scene before them.
“They don't seem very keen to listen,” Mina observed. “But it's hard to tell with these provincial types. Does Dill know what he has to do?”
“Yes.”
“It has to be convincing.”
“He understands!”
Mina shrugged. “Then let's hope our friend Oran hasn't already killed Hasp.”
“With all that free-flowing drink, they're not exactly on top of things. They haven't even noticed the town yet.”
Mina inclined her head. “That's about to change.”
Dill was moving again, now coming within range of the bowmen. A shower of arrows flew up from the battlements, closely followed by a second, smaller barrage from the streets immediately behind the wall. They whined through the misty air. Most of the missiles clattered harmlessly against Dill's armoured shins, but a score or more thunked into the log wal
ls of the Rusty Saw tavern.
There was a pause.
One of Oran's men appeared at the entrance of the inn. He clung to the edge of the doorway, swung woozily for a moment, and then stared across at the town with its defenders massed upon the walls. He shook his head, and looked again. Then he bolted back inside.
Mina smiled. “Here we go,” she said.
A second volley of arrows lanced up at the arconite. Gripping the cleaver in both hands, Dill raised it—and the entire tavern that rested upon it—high above his head, as if to protect the building. He roared.
“Nice touch,” Mina said to Rachel. “I can imagine how someone would find that menacing.”
Rachel yelled, “Don't overdo it, Dill.”
The huge automaton had reached the palisade. Rachel heard cries from below and yells from Oran's men overhead. She caught glimpses of the woodsmen peering down through Dill's fingers. In the settlement below, defenders scattered in both directions along the spiked embankment. Groups of men began assembling in the adjacent streets.
Dill lifted his foot and brought it crashing down upon the timber defenses. The wooden spikes and part of the embankment collapsed. Arrows pinged off his armour as bowmen attacked from both flanks. He raised his foot again, leaving a deep trench full of crushed wood, and stepped inside the town.
He was standing at the top of a long mud track that continued all the way down to the lakeside wharfs. The air was crisp, and thin lines of smoke rose directly from chimneys above the shingled rooftops. Pale faces gazed up from windows on either side of the street. Had the townsfolk not been given enough opportunity to flee? Didn't they fear for their lives?
Angry voices came from below. Two groups of town soldiers converged on the arconite and attacked his ironclad ankles with long poles.
Dill swung around and inclined his head to look down, causing Rachel to topple against the inside rim of his teeth. She held on to the upper edge of a huge smooth incisor as the automaton lowered the tavern again and now clutched it against his breastplate like a baby. One gable cracked, and two of the Rusty Saw's windows shattered. Dill lifted his foot as if to crush the attackers.