Stranger of Tempest: Book One of The God Fragments (44 page)

It’s past dusk
, Lynx realised,
most of the bats will be hunting. Gods, it must be deafening when they’re all in here.

A huge arched doorway opposite them was half-obscured by fallen rock, but there were several open exits left and right on top of a series of squared openings high above ground level. Almost obscured by the sound of their feet on the stone floor, Lynx heard some tiny noise away to the left. Before he could identify it some buried instinct was turning his gun that way. He was already pulling the trigger as he caught a faint flash of movement and orange flame exploded out across the room.

Angular limbs seemed to freeze in the burner’s brief light, dark grey carapaces and eyeless heads. One was caught in the full force of the explosion and was hurled backwards, a whitened underbelly showing briefly as it pitched into the rock face behind, crumpled and broken. Up above the dark shapes of bats exploded into shrieks and clicks of alarm, corkscrewing trails of greenish fire winking up through the air from the piled guano.

Exposed and reeling in the light, the other maspids were peppered by shots. Lynx saw the nearest punched through, head and body, and fall immediately dead. Another two were winged and turned away, chittering frantically, while one more ducked low and surged forwards to attack. Pairs of legs drove it forward while its forelimbs hauled at the ground. A dark, blunt head jutted from its pony-sized body, interlocking sets of mandibles unfurling as it closed the ground and snatched with its forelimbs.

Toil leaped back from its darting attack, mage-gun held out in her left hand and a short-sword in her right. The maspid seized the gun, forelimbs hooking around each end and tearing it from her grasp. Its mandibles clacked down around the body of the weapon as Toil twisted and chopped into the side of the blade-like forelimb. The maspid flinched and tried to release the gun, but before it could disentangle itself Reft slashed at the other forelimb and almost chopped it in two. The creature wrenched itself around away from the steel bite, only to have Anatin shoot it point-blank with his second pistol.

The cold breath of ice brushed Lynx’s cheek as the maspid’s carapace crumpled under the impact and the rank smell of its insides followed a moment later. He was already tracking another target, sending an icer streaking past another maspid that had scrabbled halfway up the rock wall in search of cover. A moment later Kas sent an arrow into the creature’s rear that seemed to catch a nerve and it held still, back legs shuddering, for a moment until Ashis hit it full on with a sparker. Bright lines crackled across the rock, snatching a second maspid in their jaws. They both fell, stone dead, and suddenly everything was still.

The light of the sparker faded and the last flames of the burner vanished, but even as he reloaded Lynx knew they were dead or gone.

‘Gods,’ Sitain gasped, ‘where did they come from?’

‘Reload,’ Lynx barked at her.

With shaking hands Sitain did so, though it was a struggle for her to slide the new cartridge in and Lynx saw she didn’t even stop to check what she was loading. It was an icer so he said nothing, but knew she’d not be loading by feel like the rest of them.

‘You didn’t see them?’ Anatin asked.

‘No! Lynx? How did you?’

‘I didn’t. Just seemed a good place for an ambush. Maybe I heard that damn clicking sound too.’

Toil exhaled heavily and clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Good work, you probably saved us there. Calm yourself, Sitain – they’re damn hard to spot at the best of times. Just fade into the rock when they’re still.’

‘But I—’

‘You’re alive,’ Toil interrupted, ‘so keep moving and stay that way.’

Before anyone could speak a distant booming rumbled up the tunnel behind them from the rift. Lynx turned and cocked his ear. It wasn’t just a few remaining shots, there was a tiny tremble running through the stone as crash after crash echoed out. They all stood stock-still until the detonations petered out, trying to make sense of what they were hearing.

‘Gods, that’s grenades,’ he said. ‘Lots of ’em. Most o’ the rift could be on fire after that.’

‘More than you’d use to flush us out,’ Teshen added. ‘And too far away.’

‘Reckon they got ambushed too?’

The cold-eyed man nodded. ‘Hopefully they’ll wipe each other out. Either way, let’s get moving.’

‘What about the pack that attacked us? Can we go on?’

‘We got most of them,’ Toil said. ‘They’re hunters, not mad killers. However many are left, at worst they’ll just track us.’

‘And pick us off if they get the chance?’

She gave him a wolfish grin. ‘Not if I get them first.’

Exalted Uvrel clattered into the huge hall she’d entered the city through, gun ready and a squad of dragoons on her heels. This time she didn’t pause to marvel at the great constellation dome. Screams and explosions echoed across the empty stone hall. At the far edge where steps led up to the open sky she paused, bringing her gun up to sight for a target. Her troops charged up behind her a moment later and adopted a similar position, but there was nothing to see.

She pressed on, running lightly on the weaving grassy path until she had rounded the crumpled shell of a stone building, where she dropped to one knee. The others fanned out around her, but even the experienced dragoons faltered at what they saw. For a few seconds it was hard to make out, such was the chaos of the scene. Fires raged, flame coating the huge hollowed-out boulders that lined the road and casting a dirty smoke up into the darkened sky. Shapes moved in the jagged shadows; large angular bodies, while the great steps that led up to the enclosed pasture were washed in blood.

As they watched, a grey horror backed down the steps, a shrieking and kicking horse clasped firmly in its jaws. More of the monsters appeared, framed at the top of the steps, while the last cries of human voices were snuffed out. The maspids had their dead too – at least a dozen humped waves in a lake of fire, some still twitching. A knot of torn limbs and torsos lay at the base of the steps and a crater at the base of a fissured wall told its own tale.

‘Grenades did their work,’ said one of the soldiers behind her in a hoarse voice.

‘Not enough,’ whispered another.

Uvrel sensed heads turn her way as another two appeared at the top of the steps, feasting on the flesh of all they’d killed. That meant there were at least five left – most likely more, given the sounds emanating from further inside. What to do now she wasn’t sure, there was likely no one left to save and most likely no horses either – certainly none by the time Uvrel could reach them.

It changes nothing
, a voice whispered at the back of her mind.
The assassin is all that matters. The Hanese mercenary, the mage – neither matters in comparison.

‘Sir?’ prompted the man beside her, a trusted sergeant.

Uvrel suppressed the urge to shoot the man and tried to take a breath despite the tightness in her chest.

‘It changes nothing,’ she said at last, willing herself to sound stronger than she felt. ‘We came to find the assassin and avenge our brethren, now the walk home will just take a little longer.’

‘You want …’

She turned to face him and the man’s question went unfinished. ‘We are the Knights-Charnel of the Long Dusk,’ she said, speaking quietly, but the soldier’s face made it clear her restrained rage was visible. ‘Servants of the Gods and Custodians of Insar’s Sacred Shards. These creatures of Banesh will not deter us from our sworn duty.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the man said, paling. ‘What about the maspids?’

‘Sir,’ said one of the others – the young grenadier she’d kept beside her throughout the day.

‘What?’

‘There were two grenadiers up there,’ she said, pulling from her belt a slim length of steel that looked like a broken club. ‘Most likely on the stairs given there’s no fire there.’

‘And?’

‘Dead man’s pyre. If I drop a crackler on them, it’ll set off any grenades they’ve got left.’ The young woman’s face betrayed no emotion despite the fact she was talking about her friends. ‘We take as many as we can with us, that’s our way. If we need help from our friends to do it, fine.’

Uvrel grunted in acknowledgement. ‘Do it.’

The grenadier pulled a spark-grenade from her bag, priming it and fitting it into her thrower while the dragoons stepped back to give her room. With a calculating look and one step forward she hurled the crackler through the gloom of night.

‘Come on,’ Uvrel said, not bothering to watch it land. She turned and headed back to the rift, a great crack splitting the night behind her. More explosions followed, two huge roars that made the ground shudder underfoot as Uvrel broke into a run. She had seen a grenadier explode before; the eruption of fire and pain that resulted was a terror no professional soldier forgot. Uvrel bit down the bile that rose in her throat and ran as hard as she could to the steps leading to the gallery where one detachment of her dragoons waited.

‘Move out!’ Uvrel roared, shoving men out of her path, not wanting anyone to have time to think. ‘Get across the bridge, all of you. Follow me!’

Every soldier had a single pack of belongings that they snatched up. Uvrel had prepared against this eventuality at least and they all carried food, ammunition and torches. The startled soldiers scrambled to obey. Within a minute the troop was making their way up a half-dozen short flights of steps which led to the enclosed stone bridge spanning the rift. Runners had been sent through the network of tunnels, stairways and galleries to the cavalry troop also positioned on this side and they soon merged into one stumbling, dark-stricken mass in the broad tunnel.

This high up the V-shaped rift, not too far from the top of the steeply sloped walls, the bridge was well over two hundred yards in length – long enough to feel constraining despite being ten yards wide. The darkness extended far ahead of them, punctuated by regular smears of ivy-strained moonlight, and even Uvrel felt her trepidation grow. When the pale faces among the sharpshooters appeared suddenly in the gloom, Uvrel felt a jolt of alarm and only just prevented the man beside her from firing on them.

They’d all glimpsed one unit of cavalry stationed on the far side be ambushed by maspids soon after their quarry had come into view. Uvrel had heard it more than anything else, until a cold-hearted dragoon higher up had fired a burner into the enclosed space where their comrades had been positioned. Their remaining icers had exploded and the burner’s flames had washed through the gallery, scouring it of life. How many more maspids were stalking these halls, she couldn’t tell, but Uvrel just had to hope their supply of torches could be rationed long enough to see them to the other side, even if they kept close to the surface.

If we can’t see anything, we can’t keep moving
, Uvrel reminded herself as the sharpshooters snatched up their belongings and fell in.
And if we don’t keep moving, they’ll start to wonder how they’re getting home.

She gritted her teeth and upped the pace, pushing on to the far end as fast as she could. Sauren was positioned close to it with another unit of dragoons. She would push on to the grand avenue they’d identified earlier, a huge thoroughfare that looked like it ran straight across that whole section of the city. Sauren could gather the remaining troops and follow. Uvrel would have to drop the pace but she knew she had to keep moving.

Give them time to think, to ask about the horses or where we’re going, and someone will put an icer in the back of my head.

The realisation added a renewed clarity to Uvrel’s usual sense of purpose. She would catch these mercenaries and secure retribution, information or both before she left this dead place of horrors. If they were forced into the bowels of the earth itself, burning the clothes from their backs as torches while maspids hounded their every step, Uvrel would do whatever it took.

Her god demanded nothing less.

The mercenaries left the cavern as quickly as they dared. Ignoring the corpses of the maspids, they made for the far side where Toil examined what remained of carvings on the wall. Choosing one of the exits, she led them into a low tunnel that set Lynx’s teeth on edge before it opened out into a wider chamber.

A narrow channel cut across their path, most likely once a river since there was a stone bridge spanning it. After a cursory check, Toil crossed and went through a doorway outlined in the faint bluish light that, by now, was the only thing keeping the velvety dark at bay. After a moment she waved the rest forward, Ashis whimpering despite Sitain’s efforts to dull the pain and flow of blood in her foot. The young mercenary struggled on as best she could, her unloaded gun a crutch while Reft all but carried her by her free arm.

They found themselves in a tall, open space dotted with individual stone formations – not dwellings, Lynx guessed, but something deliberately built all the same. The structures were low enough that most of the mercenaries could see over them and they made swift progress across, all of them watching for grey shapes and listening for pursuing footsteps. At the edges of sight they saw hunched creatures no larger than rabbits scrabble out of their path and disappear. The whisper of their feet soon vanished into the bowels of the ruin and as they moved further away from the jungle of the rift the signs of life vanished once more.

Beyond the strange formations they reached what seemed more like streets to Lynx. Toil confirmed as much. The hollowed-out spaces were smaller than most they’d come across, but contained house-sized stone blocks with open doorways, windows and walkways between many. The houses were all shells now. Anything not made of stone had long since rotted away or crumbled to dust.

They varied in size and number. Some chambers contained a dozen or more, but there was a familiarity to the regular, mundane shapes that both eased Lynx’s anxiety at being underground and gave the place a dismal air. Lynx was struck by a sense that he was walking through the bones of some long-dead behemoth, the streets filled with a mausoleum hush.