Dawn (12 page)

Flage probed outside and knew only darkness.

The tumbler moved north into Kang Kang.

LENORA SAT ALONE
on a cliff east of Conbarma, watching for the first Krote ship. Looking down and west she could make out the town along the coast. The Krotes down there were preparing for the arrival of the main force, clearing buildings and making sure the harbor was not blocked by sunken ships or dead hawks. They were using their machines, and Lenora was delighted at how quickly the warriors had adapted. She had seen machines before, during the Cataclysmic War, but the rest of the Krotes had only stories to go by. Trained though they were—bred to fight and loyal to the Mages and their cause—they had never seen anything quite like this. True, there were the snow demons on Dana’Man, the foxlions that grew far larger in cold climates, and a century earlier the Krotes had fought a brief, bloody war with an army of creatures that rose out of the seas north of Dana’Man on icy chariots. But the machines were different because they represented the very thing that the Krotes had spent their whole life waiting for: magic. And while snow demons and creatures from the deep were living things that could be beheaded with a slideshock or stabbed with a sword, magic was unknown to them.

The machines had given the Krotes purpose. They cleaned and talked to them. In truth, it was magic that made and maintained them, but the Krotes had all developed attachments which Lenora did nothing to discourage. If fear was still present—and Lenora suspected that it was, however brave a face the Krotes wore—then it was a healthy fear. It made them stronger.

For the last two nights, Lenora had dreamed of the whole Krote army riding south on such machines.

Her own ride stood beside her, silent and motionless. Its eyes stared at her unblinking, and its limbs were tucked in to its sides. It would rise to her command the instant she touched it, and that gave her an awesome sense of power. What blood those limbs would taste! What slaughter those eyes would see!

And yet…the Mages had gone. That troubled her, even though they had left her as mistress of their entire army. She was humbled by their trust. The responsibility was immense, and if she conducted herself well and succeeded in her charge—taking Noreela, and destroying any resistance without mercy—then she would quite possibly be as powerful as the Mages themselves. If she was lax in her duties and the rout became bogged down in a costly war, then the sole responsibility would lie with her. There would be no pleading, no begging for mercy, no appealing to the Mages’ more understanding side. They would kill her, and over three centuries of exile they’d had plenty of time to invent some terrible ways to kill. Lenora knew that her survival was in the balance for the foreseeable future. She had nothing to fear from Noreela, but the Mages terrified her.

They had left her without a hint of magic. Instead they had left an aborted shade, imbued with a touch of their magic, and it was down there now at the harbor, sitting between the fire and flesh pits and waiting for the first of the Krote ships to arrive.

Lenora had never seen a shade, and she found this one terrifying. Not only because of what it was but what it had. The Mages trusted it more than her.

She was not jealous; she was too loyal to the Mages for that. But she was unsettled.

She sighed and looked north. The twilight gave the sea a whole new texture, skimming the heads of waves with reflected light from the moons and hiding the troughs in shadows deeper than ever before. She had sent Krotes north on hawks to keep watch for the first of the ships, telling them to instruct the captains to light lanterns so that Conbarma would see them coming in. She had sent hawks instead of a flying machine because she did not wish to startle the incoming Krotes. Best that they catch their first glimpse of magic on land.

The sea was a soporific whisper against the foot of the cliffs, and Lenora had caught herself nodding off several times. Each time her eyes closed she saw daylight, and when she opened them she heard the echo of a dream voice.

When she saw the first hint of light on the horizon her old heart skipped a beat.
So soon!
she thought. She stood, climbed aboard her machine and ordered it to stand. The added height gave her a better viewpoint, and she could definitely make out a splash of light far out on the ocean, blinking on and off as the sea swelled and dipped.

“Back to Conbarma,” she said, and the machine began the journey down. Already it felt natural beneath her, though its speed unsettled her so close to the cliff. The ride back to Conbarma was fast, and she passed the perimeter guards with a nod.

“First ship’s coming in,” she said. The guards sat up, and their machines twitched beneath them. “I’ll send relief after it arrives. There’ll be plenty for you to see.”

“Yes, Mistress.”
Mistress.
It would take her a while to get used to that.

At the harbor the shade was still sitting between the two pits, but the flesh pit seemed to be glowing.

“There’s a ship coming in,” she told one of her captains. “What’s been happening down here?”

The captain rode his machine—a tall, spidery construct—to her side. He sat higher than her, and he seemed almost embarrassed looking down. “That…thing plucked some animals from the sea,” he said. “They came up like a living wave, splashed across the harbor, and it gathered them into the flesh pit.”

“Gathered them how?”

“It pushed with its shadows.”

Lenora nodded. “Good. It knows the ship’s coming and it’s preparing.”

The captain stared out to sea, obviously pleased to have something else to draw his attention.

THE SHIP SLOWED
as it approached the harbor, the great paddle wheels on either side almost still, turned by the vessel’s momentum rather than the efforts of the Krotes belowdecks. Sails were dropped and tied. Lanterns hung from masts, forming flaming eyes on the carved figurehead: the snarling likeness of a snow demon.
I’ll never see one of those things again,
Lenora thought.

The ship bumped against the harbor. Lines were thrown and secured, and the gangway was eased across the gap and fixed into place. The Krotes on the ship crowded along the gunwale, their faces a uniform yellow in the reflected light from so many lanterns. Some of them cheered, but most merely stood there, staring at the warriors on the harbor then looking around the town itself.

A few saw the pits and thing that stood between them, and Lenora saw their eyes widen.

“Welcome to Noreela!” she shouted. “Where’s your captain?”

“Here.” A shape hobbled from the shadows beneath the forecastle and stood at the head of the boarding ramp. Short and thin, her pure white hair was bound in two plaits that hung to her thighs. The end of each plait shone with a sliver of sharpened metal.

“Ducianne!” Lenora said. “If I’d known you were to captain the first ship I’d have had a barrel of rotwine waiting for you!”

“I haven’t had a drink in days, Lenora,” Ducianne said. “Fuck with me and you lose an eye.”

“You and whose army?” Lenora said. She smiled and made her way up the ramp. Ducianne hobbled down to meet her—she’d lost half her foot to a foxlion ten years before—and they embraced. Lenora felt her old friend’s scars, hard knots of flesh against her own. “It’s good to see you.”

“And you, Lenora. Where are the Mages? Has there been any fighting yet?”

“The Mages have gone and left me in charge.”

“Gone where?”

“You think I’d question their intentions?”

Ducianne grinned. “I suppose not. So you’re the mistress now, eh?” Her eyes shifted briefly, but it could have been a lamp swaying on the ship.

“There’s more,” Lenora said. “Lots more. But let’s get your Krotes off the ship first. And tell me, this darkness: Does it extend far out to sea?”

“It was day, then night, then day again…and at midday, as we passed Land’s End on The Spine, darkness fell quickly. No clouds, no setting sun, just a fading of the light. It spooked us all. Half of our sheebok jumped into the sea.”

“You look hungry,” Lenora said.

Ducianne nodded. “My warriors need food and drink, Lenora. It’s been a hard journey. Storms. Cold. And an attack by sea taints rotted our food and soured the water. But there was always the fight at journey’s end to keep us going.” She flipped her head, sending the barbed hair plaits toward Lenora’s face.

Lenora caught them in both hands and tugged. “You’re a mean one, Ducianne.”

“Why else would I be a captain?”

They walked up onto deck. The Krotes were eager to leave the stinking ship, but they bowed to Lenora.

“Don’t bow to me,” she said. “Soon, others will bow to you.” The warriors rose, and this close Lenora was shocked at their condition. They looked gaunt, their eyes too large for their heads, and old wounds of war glowed pink in the subdued light. “The journey was never that long!”

A big Krote spoke to her, his manner deferential but defensive. “We’ve never undertaken a sea journey like this,” he said. “And there was a bad storm. We’ve all been sick for days.”

“Then you need fattening up,” she said. “Off the ship, now. You first. Go into the town and my captains will take care of you.” She turned to Ducianne. “There are machines,” she said, “and there’ll be one made for every Krote aboard.”

“Machines!” Ducianne said. “How?”

“The Mages left a shade.”

Ducianne’s eyes widened, but she did not deign comment or ask more.

The Krotes left the ship in a long, slow line. Each of them looked at the shade, and skirted as far around it and its factory pits as they could.

“That’s a fucking abomination,” Ducianne said as she walked alongside Lenora.

“It’s the Mages’,” Lenora snapped. “And it’s magic.”

“So they truly have it? They really did get it back for themselves?”

“Of course. It was easy.” Lenora thought back to the fight with the Monks and machines, the attack on the huge flying machine that had tried to protect the boy, the ferocity of his protectors’ defense. “Easy.”

LATER, LENORA AND
Ducianne sat alone in one of Conbarma’s taverns, drinking rotwine and listening to the shade making machines. Some of the braver, less exhausted Krotes from Ducianne’s ship had seen the machines of war around Conbarma, and shunning rest they had approached the shade to be equipped with their own. Lenora had watched the first construct melded and merged from the pits, then she dragged Ducianne away from the spectacle. There was talking to be done, and planning, and it felt good having a friend with her once again. Though Noreela had always been their aim, still she felt a thousand miles from home.

They could hear the gasps of amazement from outside, the sound of flesh being ripped from the pit and magical fire melding it with stone and metal, and then the unnatural footfalls as the machines took their first, confident steps. The sounds from the Krotes changed slowly from astonishment to triumph as each of them was given their own weapon of war: flying, crawling, running, stepping, crushing and spitting—all of them knew that they were being granted more power than they had ever possessed before.