The Trials of Trass Kathra (27 page)

That was it.

Pim unfolded himself from his crouched position so that he was standing directly behind his victim. His preferred method of despatching him would have been a clean blade across the throat, but as his weapons – along with those of his men – had been removed on the mainland he was forced to use an unarmed though no less effective technique.

Pim slid one hand onto the side of the guard’s neck and another onto the side of his forehead, locking his head in place. At various positions below him, he knew, his men would have done exactly the same. And in the same moment that Pim snapped the guard’s head sharply to the right, so too were snapped the heads of all of the guards lining the steps. As one they fell to the rocks below them, their necks broken.

Pim grinned and scooped up his victim’s weapons.

Miss Hooper
, he thought.
You’re on
.

S
OME QUARTER OF
a league out to sea, having swung in on an accelerating course that had skirted the swirlpools and brought her into a trajectory heading directly for the island, Kali watched the distant shapes drop and gunned the scuttlebarge on which she rode. The machine kicked beneath her, far more violently than the last time she had ridden it thanks to the extra two engines that Brundle had installed. The controls of the device fought against her grip and her knuckles whitened as she struggled to keep the scuttlebarge on course, because she knew that the slightest deviation from her target would end in disaster.

That target loomed ever closer ahead of her; a section of hull that had been sheared away from the Black Ship to be slammed into the rocks of Trass Kattra, where it now rested, thrust up against the cliffs. What Kali knew she needed to do in order not to endanger the hostages was generate as much of an element of surprise as possible, and to that end the section of hull suited her needs perfectly.

She gunned the engines of the scuttlebarge until they began to smoke and whine in protest, and the dwarven machine slapped and bounced across the waves towards its destination.

Kali felt the scuttlebarge jerk violently and then tip sideways as it parted company with the sea and crashed down on the shattered section of Black Ship. Kali leaned hard in the opposite direction to maintain equilibrium, and while the engines no longer had anything to work against, the sheer momentum of the scuttlebarge propelled it up the hull, aided in its passage by the slithery accumulation of seaweed it gathered as it went. Sparks flying where it stripped away the growth, its own metal shearing away in chunks, the scuttlebarge reached the top of the hull and, looking like some airborne sea monster, took off. For the briefest of moments Kali caught sight of Brundle below her, the dwarf looking up and shaking his head in some envy, and then of Pim and his men, giving her the thumbs up, and the sense that her plan was coming together was reflected in her own long and drawn out cry.

“
Ohhhhhhh yeeeeaaaaahhhhh
...”

The fact that Kali cried out so loudly was no longer a matter of concern to her, for the fact was that the ‘stealth’ part of her plan was over. Considering the method of her arrival onto the island, it really couldn’t be anything
but
over.

Rising higher and higher into the air, above the rocks that had formed Redigor’s first line of defence, the airborne scuttlebarge and its trailing fronds of seaweed came into view of the soldiers the elf had left in charge of the prisoners. As it did, they gaped upwards to a man. It was exactly the reaction that Kali had wanted, for as long as they were gaping they would not be harming those she had come to liberate, who were doing a considerable amount of gaping themselves. Kali winked as, down below, she spotted the cheering forms of Red Deadnettle and Hetty Scrubb, the latter having become so excited that she was attempting to punch the air despite her chains, the action making her repeatedly fall to the ground.

Speaking of which, as memorable as Kali’s arrival had been, what went up had to come down, and in that respect she had little control over what happened next.

The scuttlebarge’s nose began to dip a second after it passed over the main group of soldiers and prisoners, and Kali saw she was heading directly for a ridge from which four more soldiers overlooked the rest of the group. Two of these ceased to be a problem the moment the nose of the dwarven machine slammed into them, and they departed their duties in an explosion of blood, while the third was sent fleeing in a desperate attempt to escape the spinning chunk of metal that broke away from the hull on impact. The last of the guards was the only one to offer a challenge, standing his ground with sword drawn, ready to knock Kali from her seat, but sadly he had failed to take the scuttlebarge’s continuing momentum into account. Kali yanked the controls around so that the rear end of the scuttlebarge span in a half circle, and as the soldier yelled in protest, holding his sword uselessly to block its approach, the hull slammed him off the ridge to fall screaming onto the sharp rocks below.

That particular manoeuvre brought the nose of the scuttlebarge pointing down the slope of the ridge and, taking a deep breath, Kali bucked her body to send it on its way. The machine began to slide down the slope, picking up momentum again. The juddering, bucking mass of metal with its engines whining more than ever was clearly not an object to be in the path of, and soldiers threw themselves left and right as it came, some of them not quite in time. A trail of severed, twitching limbs and screaming victims left in her wake, Kali rode the scuttlebarge across the level of the plain until it finally slewed to a halt, where she leapt out to face the remainder of the soldiers in charge of the prisoners.

They stood before her in a line, twenty or so of them with weapons drawn, sneering at what they thought was a foregone conclusion. None of them seemed eager to make the first move, however, the woman in their midst quite clearly insane. Kali played to that belief, regarding them with determined upturned eyes and a smile of invitation to come try it on. And when at last they did begin to move in on her, it was already too late, because a solid mass of metal had risen between them.

Kali smiled as the Brogmas rose on the freight elevator that Brundle, visible on a nearby rock, had activated with his faraway control. The old mechanism, he had told her, had once serviced the Thunderflux, but, since its capping, had fallen into many centuries of disuse, a situation reflected in the fact that until now it had been totally invisible, buried beneath an overgrowth of grass.

The elevator was not the only thing the faraway control activated, however, and as Brundle fiddled with it once more, the Brogmas repeated the foot stomping, weapon twirling ritual which had so impressed Kali below. ‘Impressed’ was not a word that could be used to describe the reactions of the soldiers for whom they now performed on the other hand, because clearly there was one thing more off-putting than a solid mass of metal between they and their target, and that was a
moving
mass of metal between they and their target. Especially one moving in their direction.

One or two of the men ran away. A few more, who might have heard barrack room tales of the rout at Martak, which only the Anointed Lord herself had survived, froze in their tracks in much the way Kali had when she’d first seen the machines. The majority, however – if only because they were perhaps more fearful of what Redigor might do to them if they did not – raised their weapons to defend themselves.

Kali admired their guts.

No, really.

The soldiers which the Brogmas proceeded to go through like a hot knife through butter were not the only ones that had to be contended with, of course, and as soon as that battle had been joined a further phalanx of Redigor’s troops poured down the slope. As if that were not enough, those soldiers who had been positioned on the ridges around the slopes roared to spur themselves on and then raced at Kali and the Brogmas from two directions, closing on them in a pincer movement.

Thankfully, Kali and the Brogmas no longer had to fight alone. Having activated his machines, Brundle himself waded in with his battleaxe, and one by one, up the top of the steps, brandishing the weapons they had acquired from the sentries, came Pim and the rest of the Grey Brigade. Pim directed a couple of his people to start releasing the prisoners from their chains, and then, with his other men behind him, raced into the furore.

The battle, as all battles do, soon degenerated from an initial, full on clash to a series of smaller skirmishes fought across the slope of Horizon Point. With the aid of the Brogmas especially, the tide soon began to turn their way, though Kali herself had a couple of close calls. The first came when she was bashed on the back of the head by the hilt of a sword and went down, stunned. The soldier responsible stood above her and was about to swing down the weapon’s more lethal component when help arrived from an unexpected source.

Burrowing up through the ground, having made its way to the surface at last, the small sphere that Kali had released from the jack-in-the-box, shot straight up into the air before him and, taking advantage of his momentary distraction, Kali leapt up, grabbed and twisted the soldier’s swordarm, and thrust the blade into his stomach. The soldier doubled over and fell, impaling himself further, and Kali rammed the point home by booting him up the behind.

The second close call came immediately afterwards. Kali was about to salute the small sphere as it sailed away into the sky, but with her hand half in the air noticed she’d been targeted by three bowmen who had come out of nowhere. Their weapons primed, their arrows aimed directly at her heart, there was no way even she could avoid them. Then, suddenly, all three flew backwards into the air, as if they themselves had been hit in the chest by arrows, and crashed away behind a ridge into oblivion. At first Kali thought Poul Sonpear had been released from his scrambling collar and had despatched her assailants with projectiles of his own summoning, but then she saw that one of Pim’s people was still trying to free him from the restraint and there was no way he could have done what she had thought.

Strange.

Kali turned, wading back into battle, and found herself joining what was effectively an advancing line consisting of Pim and his men, Brundle, the Brogmas and herself. All of the separate skirmishes were over and all that was left was a retreating line of the survivors of Redigor’s forces. Those that put up any resistance were swiftly taken care of by the whirring blades or swinging flails of the Brogmas, and those that didn’t – or decided there and then that they really
shouldn’t
– began to stumble away in shock. Brundle raised his axe to behead one in front of him but Kali stayed his hand. They’d surrendered; let them live.

Unfortunately, Redigor had other ideas. Whether as a demonstration of his dissatisfaction with these men or of his last line of defence, each of them transformed before Kali’s eyes into a cloud of dust, the result of the crackling strands of energy fired from the clifftop by the Pale Lord’s shadowmages. Redigor himself stood, as he had throughout the battle, with his back to them, still engaged in whatever business he was conducting through the Hel’ss Spawn, but it was clear that a part of him was still controlling the proceedings.

Proceedings that, one way or another, were about to come to an end.

The six shadowmages stood steadfast before Kali and the advancing party. Their balled fists crackled with an energy more powerful than she had ever seen. It arced between them, across their line, forming an ever intensifying curtain of blue. It made her brain hurt.

“This could be a problem,” Brundle said.

The shadowmages flipped backwards, as if hit by arrows, disappearing over the cliff.

“Or not.”

“What the hells?” Kali said. She looked behind her for the source of the attack. Nothing.

“Does it matter?” Brundle growled. “We have the bastard now.”

“Not we,” Kali said. “He’s mine.”

Brundle was about to protest when he saw Kali’s expression. He turned and looked at the Brogmas, who were juddering on the spot, ready to advance.

“Stand down, girls,” the dwarf sighed. “Everybody stand down.”

Kali nodded and began to stride up the slope to Horizon Point where Redigor remained with his back to her. The higher she rose, the worse the wind became, and as her clothing slapped against her, she was forced to shout to get his attention.

“Hey, Big Ears!”

At last, Redigor did turn, and Kali saw that her description, although facetious, hadn’t been far off the mark. For what had been occupying the Pale Lord all this time was clearly the Hel’ss Spawn’s – or, more accurately, the Hel’ss – response to the sacrifices it had been offered earlier. Redigor had given it a little, and it, in turn, had given a little back. Jakub Freel didn’t resemble Jakub Freel as much any more. The Pale Lord Kali knew and loved was on his way back.

The process, however, was far from complete. No doubt pending genocide. But if her plan worked, it would be nipped in the bud right now.

“Is there a problem, Miss Hooper?” Redigor asked.

“Yes, there’s a problem, shithead. This island’s my destiny, not yours. And I’ll not have you destroying my world just because you don’t have the sense to know when to die.”

“Brave words, Miss Hooper. But can you back them up? All by yourself?”

“Ah, well,” Kali said. “There’s the thing. Because I’m not all by myself, am I?”

Kali hoped that Redigor would interpret that as meaning Brundle and the others who waited impotently down the slope, but in actual fact that wasn’t what she meant at all. She’d gone up against Redigor before and had only survived the encounter because of Gabriella and the Engines, and in a straight confrontation she knew she had little chance now. No, what she was gambling on was what she had learned
during
that encounter in the Chapel of Screams, when Redigor had revealed a little of the nature of the Hel’ss. If she was right, it could not only be used to her advantage but might even, however fleetingly, bring the Hel’ss onto her side.