The Guns of Empire (34 page)

Winter took the opportunity for a strategic withdrawal, running for the tree the black lines were coming from. Another volley of ice knives slashed out,
and she dove to put the thick trunk between her and her opponent. The tree shivered again, losing more branches.

“Winter!” a voice said from above. Winter looked up to see Alex clinging to the trunk of the tree, eyes wide. “Are you all right?”

“Think so,” Winter said.

“She just shrugged off the best I can do,” Alex said. “You've killed these things before, haven't you? How do we hurt her?”

Another volley of knives, this one curving around the side of the tree like a flock of birds. Winter threw herself flat to avoid them, then struggled to her feet.

“For now, I think we run,” she said.
Then maybe come back here with a goddamn cannon.

She broke from cover, zigzagging to the next tree, and Alex swung past overhead. Behind her, the Penitent's laughter boomed.

“I really can't believe that's
all
,” she shouted. “
You
are the Winter Ihernglass the pontifex is so terrified of? What a joke.”

Winter threw herself against another tree and risked a look back. “She's not coming after us.”

“Maybe she's got better things to do,” Alex said, lowering herself on a dark line until she was beside Winter's head.

Think,
Winter commanded herself. “Maybe she can't. That armor must weigh half a ton. It can't be easy to move around in. She didn't have it up when I got here.”

“I knew I should have speared her first thing,” Alex said. “I thought I would follow your lead, you being the general and all.”

“In the future, feel free to kill any Penitents we run across without asking permission.”

“Noted,” Alex said. “What now?”

“We get help.” Maybe a cannon
would
do it.
If she can't dodge well, we might be able to hit her.
“At the very least, we need Bobby—”

A new sound cut her off, a keening, wailing noise like a rising windstorm. Winter peeked around the tree and found the Penitent still in place, both her hands in the air, as though calling for applause.

Snow exploded all around them. A dozen individual bursts, rising into columns of swirling, freezing mist. They coalesced into roughly man-shaped figures, headless, featureless torsos with rudimentary legs and arms that ended in long, white blades. They glided lightly over the packed snow as they came forward.

“You've got to be kidding me,” Alex said. She fired a line of darkness from one hand, punching right through one of the advancing wraiths. It didn't even seem to notice. Another rushed at Winter, swinging its blade-arms in clumsy arcs. She danced away, then ducked under a slash from another behind her. She came up inside its guard, sword curving around to cut neatly through it from armpit to shoulder. There was little resistance, as though she'd swung into lightly packed snow, and the wraith exploded into flurries of white.

Winter spun, panting, her breath hanging in the air like smoke. Her left hand was starting to hurt, and she hadn't dared look at it yet. Another wraith came at her, and she dodged one swing and parried the other, steel blade meeting ice with that same hair-raising squeal. Her riposte punched through it, shattering it to fragments, but there were two more closing in behind.

Alex dropped off the tree with a
thump
in the midst of the lumbering wraiths. Darkness shot out of her palm, not a single spear this time but a broad whip, shattering the wraith into its component ice. She turned gleefully and slashed another and another, flying snow hanging in the air like powder smoke.

“Behind you!” Winter shouted, fending off four ice swords. The creatures weren't skilled, but they were strong and relentless. She cut through another and saw Alex spin just in time, taking a thrust along her shoulder instead of through her ribs. The girl swore and chopped the wraith down, retreating toward Winter, who hacked a path to her.

“Keep them off me,” Alex said. “I can handle these things, at least.”

Winter clenched her off hand. Her fingers moved, but the pain made her squeeze her eyes shut for a moment. When her vision cleared of tears, more columns of white mist were rising all around them, more wraiths building themselves out of wind and snow.

“How
many
can you handle?” Winter said.

“Probably not this many,” Alex admitted.

“Can you get us both out of here?”

Alex looked down at her hands. “Maybe. I've only lifted other people a couple of times.”

“This would be a really good opportunity to find out.”

“Right.” Alex put her arm around Winter's waist. “Here goes.”

Black strands lashed out, wrapping around a nearby tree, and they rose into the air, swinging above the headless wraiths. Ice blades reached for them, inches from Winter's feet, and the rush of freezing air stung her eyes. Alex hit the tree, grunting with effort, and immediately swung again.

Something flashed from the direction of the Penitent. Winter shouted, and Alex changed course, getting them out of the way of a barrage of ice knives that screamed past. The blades slammed into the tree Alex had roped herself to, a slim pine whose trunk exploded into shards under the impact. It began to topple, momentum dragging their swing off course and slamming them into a snowdrift. Winter's ears were ringing. She raised her head and saw wraiths in every direction, moving in for the kill. Alex groaned.

Two of the wraiths exploded, and Bobby strode through the clouds of snow. Her sword was still in her belt, but she carried a six-foot-long tree branch, which she swung as easily as an ordinary man might have wielded a truncheon. The next wraith raised its swords to block, but it made no difference at all; the impact of the wood blasted it to pieces. Winter hauled Alex to her feet and retreated to meet Bobby's advance.

“Sir!” Bobby said. “What the hell is going on? What are these things?”

“Penitent,” Winter gasped. “Just up ahead.”

“There's fighting all along the line,” Bobby said. “White riders.”

“It's a distraction,” Winter said. “She's here for me.”

“Then let's get out of here.”

“No!” Winter pointed at the now-distant Penitent with her sword. “We're the only ones who stand a chance against her. We have to stop her here or God knows how many she'll kill. Alex, are you all right?”

“Just a little bruised,” Alex said. “What's the plan?”

“She's got ice all over her,” Winter said. “Bobby, I need you to break that off and then try to hold her in place so Alex and I can finish her.”

“I'll give it a shot, sir,” Bobby said, hefting her tree branch. “Stay behind me.”

She cleared a path through the advancing wraiths, Winter and Alex taking care of any that tried to slip around the scythe-like strokes of her tree branch.

“I didn't know she was one of us,” Alex said. “I can't sense her at all.”

“It's complicated.” Winter grunted, blocking a strike and cutting the wraith down. “Remind me to explain when we have a minute.”

The wraiths thinned out quickly, no new ones rising to replace those they cut down.
She wants us to come back and fight,
Winter thought. Soon enough they broke into the clear and were back among the snow-caked bodies of the Girls' Own sentries, where the Penitent stood sheathed in her transparent armor.

“Ah, you've brought a new friend,” the woman said. Snow swirled around her, condensing into another fan of ice knives. “Splendid.”

“Let Bobby go first,” Winter hissed. “She's hard to hurt.”

Bobby charged, and the ice knives lanced out. One of them buried itself in her gut and the other opened a cut on her shoulder, but she absorbed the impacts with barely a grunt. Winter ducked and started running, circling to Bobby's left as Alex dodged to the right. The Penitent frowned, more snow forming long, thin blades on both of her gauntlets. Bobby swung the tree branch against the woman's ribs, and it struck with enough force that the wood exploded into flying splinters. Concentric rings of cracks shot through the ice armor as it fractured.

“Now,
that
is more like it!” the woman roared. She slashed down with her swords, and Bobby slipped aside. Before the Penitent could turn, Alex's lances of darkness slammed into her, aiming for the side where Bobby's blow had landed. A piece of ice the size of a dinner plate flew off amid a spray of powder.

The Penitent snarled, and snow coiled around her. Bobby reached out and grabbed one of the woman's swords, slicking the blade with red where it cut into her hand. She pulled the Penitent forward and rammed an elbow into the woman's gut with a sound like a box full of crockery breaking. Chunks and lumps of ice fell away, but the Penitent brought her other sword around, impaling Bobby near the collarbone. Instead of trying to break free, Bobby stepped closer, her hand closing on the Penitent's shoulder.

A patch of the armor was completely gone, Winter could see. Bobby and the Penitent stumbled, turning slowly. Snow rose all around them, more wraiths forming, ready to hack Bobby to pieces.

“Alex!” Winter shouted. “The stomach! Hit her now!”

“Bobby's in the way!” Alex said.

“Do it!” Bobby screamed.

Twin needles of darkness stabbed out. They struck Bobby in the small of the back, slicing clean through her flesh as though it wasn't there to stab into the belly of the Penitent. The armor on the woman's back cracked and exploded outward in a spray of ice. For a moment everything was still—Bobby and the Penitent locked together, impaled on two spears of pure night.

A fragment of ice fell away, letting the Penitent's long black hair flop free. Her wraiths slumped, falling apart into mist and snow, as her armor dropped away from her piece by piece. The blade impaling Bobby snapped as the masked woman's knees buckled. She ended up on her back in the snow, arms outstretched, with Bobby lying spread-eagled on top of her.

“Bobby!” Winter sprinted as best she could through the snow, and Alex came in from the other direction. Winter went to her knees in a spray of white, rolling Bobby off the Penitent. Her uniform was caked with snow and blood-soaked around the holes in her stomach and shoulder, but she was smiling.

“Alex?” Bobby said. Blood flecked her lips and discolored her teeth.

“Y-yeah?” Alex said.

“That . . .” She coughed, spraying blood, and closed her eyes. “That didn't hurt as much as I expected.” The breath went out of her in a long, steamy puff.

“She'll be all right,” Winter said, with more confidence then she felt.
Please, please let her be all right.
“She survived when a Redeemer nearly cut her in half. It just sometimes takes a while.”

“I . . .” Alex's eyes were round as saucers. “
Fuck
. What do we do? Can we help her?”

“We need to get her back to camp. It's probably better if she's somewhere warm.”

“You stay with her,” Alex said. “I'll get help.”

There was a nasty, wet sound. It took Winter a moment to realize that the Penitent was laughing. Winter shuffled to her side and jerked the black mask up, obsidian clicking under her fingers. The face beneath was disappointingly ordinary, a pretty, pale woman with ice-blue eyes. Her lips and cheeks were already stained with blood.

“Serves me . . . right,” the Penitent muttered, then choked another laugh. “Dragging things out too long. Always knew it would get me.”

“You're going to die,” Winter told her.

“Really?” The woman coughed again, spraying red. “Could have . . . fooled me.”

“I just want you to know, before you do, that we're going to take your
fucking
Church apart stone by stone.” Winter gritted her teeth. “Those women you killed, those
rabble
, are each worth a hundred of your goddamned monsters. Your pontifex is going to beg for mercy.”

The Penitent laughed again, wet and bubbling. Her eyes fixed on Winter, disconcertingly calm.

“Good luck doing all that,” she said with a gasp, “without . . . your precious . . . general . . .”

The woman's eyes closed. Winter looked down at her uncertainly, then back at Alex and Bobby.

“It might be a bluff,” Winter said.

“Go,” Alex said. “Make sure. I'll stay with her until help gets here.”

Winter nodded and took off at a run.

—

Raesinia had never seen Marcus so agitated when there wasn't actually shooting going on. He paced the length of her tent, turned, and retraced his steps, ignoring the meal on the table.

“Horses are the real problem,” he said. “With the army in tents, we could cut rations, at least for a while. But we don't have enough fodder to go around, and with everything snowed under, we're not getting any more except from the depots. We need the horses to haul the wagons from the depots to get the fodder to feed the horses! We're using everything we have, and it's still not enough. The weakest are dying already. The more we lose, the harder it'll be to keep up the convoys.

“We've got fevers and coughs spreading fast, and probably flux to follow. The white riders are pouncing on anyone that leaves the camp, and yesterday some idiot chopped a hole in the river ice because he wanted a bath! We're running out of deadwood to burn, and green wood won't dry fast enough. Every general is telling me his men are raising hell. We
can't stay here
. Much longer and the whole army will fall apart.”

“You don't have to tell me,” Raesinia said. “I've seen it.” She'd made a few tours of the camp, trying to keep up morale.

“
He
hasn't,” Marcus said. “He hasn't come down off his hill for days.”

“You've tried to tell him this, I assume?” Raesinia said.