Alan Campbell - God of Clocks

Anchor and Harper swam up to join him.

The uppermost foot or so of the cabin held an air pocket. Anchor broke the surface of the water to see Cospinol's bedraggled face looking back at him. The tethered man's head knocked against a roof joist. There was a splash and then Harper emerged, too, her hair now lank and dripping.

God and slave regarded each other.

“You can breathe if you wish,” Cospinol said. “The air is rank and probably poisonous by now, but I don't suppose that matters much to any of us.” He gave Harper a nod. “More important, it carries sound.”

Anchor coughed and spat out water, then looked around him. “You have really let this place go, eh?” He took a deep breath, and then wished he hadn't. The old sea god was right about the air.

“The Rotsward still exists because we will it to. If it's old and rotten, then what does that say about us?”

Anchor snorted a laugh.

Cospinol smiled. “It's good to see you again after all these years, John, though I wish the circumstances were different. This battle is clearly not one you relish.”

“These cripples lack the brains to know when they're dead,” he grumbled. “This is no battle, Cospinol. It is butchery.”

“And with little purpose,” Cospinol agreed. “I'm not convinced that this enemy can be destroyed, not here at least. If all of them were present, then perhaps, but these few thousand…” He gazed down into the waters under his neck.

Anchor frowned. “What do you mean if all of them were present ?” he said. “There are already thousands down there. That is the problem, yes? Too many foes?”

Harper shook her head. “You can't kill them,” she said, “because they are not individuals. They share a common will, perhaps even a common soul.”

Anchor didn't understand.

“It's like a colony of ants,” she explained. “The group purpose is greater than any of its parts. But in this case, the colony is sentient. The Failed are not an army-they are a single entity, a god if you like. These crippled warriors may not even be aware that they are part of an idea that is larger and more complex than their individual selves. Destroying a handful of ants doesn't much harm the operation of the colony, and it has no effect on the idea of a colony. While any of the Failed remain, the idea that gives them power is unassailable.”

The big man grunted. “So we must kill them all ?” he said heavily.

“That's the problem,” Cospinol said. “They aren't all here. Menoa's Icarates tortured these people until their minds broke. Without minds they could no longer maintain their individual shapes in Hell. Their physical bodies dissipated and dripped down through the Maze, forming a vast subterranean river. But now the River of the Failed has become sentient. It is rising again-a new god with a single mind that is able to give shape to its legion components once more. To destroy the Failed, we must destroy the whole river. But how does one destroy a river?”

Anchor felt somewhat relieved. He had shed enough blood for one day. “So what do we do?”

“Reason with it,” Harper said.

Anchor grunted. “Before or after it finishes slaughtering Cospinol's gallowsmen? It hardly seems capable of listening.”

“This is only a tiny part of it,” she retorted. “A handful of ants separated from the colony. If we reach its source, its mind, we might be able to talk some sense into it. After all, Menoa convinced it to fight for him.”

The god of brine and fog suddenly looked old and weary. “That's what frightens me. What Menoa has done here would seem to be impossible. The Lord of the Maze shouldn't be able to influence the Failed. His own Icarates ruined those people to begin with. The priests damaged them until they simply could not be damaged anymore, and now their Mesmerist techniques are useless. If Menoa has made a bargain with this new god, then he must have tricked it in some way.”

“You think it is still afraid of him?” Anchor said.

“Perhaps,” Cospinol replied. “If it doesn't know Menoa is no longer a threat, then we have a chance. But I'm worried it's more complicated than that.” He shook his head.

A sudden burst of white light flashed under the surface of the waters. Harper lifted out a small silver and crystal device, smeared away water from its face, and then studied the readout. “They're on the decks now,” she said.

“Well?” Anchor turned to Cospinol and raised his eyebrows. “One way or another, this portal is soon going to look like meat broth.”

The god of brine and fog pinched his nose and then sniffed. “I will not continue to harm such a pitiful creation for no good reason,” he declared. “If King Menoa spoke with the source and survived, then so can we.” He looked hard at Anchor. “Break the spine of the portal. We're more than halfway down now. When it collapses the blast should scatter the Failed and throw us all into Hell.”

“You don't know that!” Harper protested. “We might end up back on earth, or…” She wrung her lifeless hands. “… somewhere, anywhere in Hell. A million leagues from Menoa's citadel! Nobody has ever broken a portal before.”

Cospinol looked to Anchor.

The big slave grinned. “I've no wish to kill any more of these cripples,” he said. “If there's still a chance to reach Hell without further bloodshed, then I do not mind a bit of a walk at the other end.”

Cospinol nodded.

This time the tethered man did not attack his foes. He met dozens of them in the Rotsward's passageways and shoved them all aside. And when he finally burst out onto the Rotsward's deck, twenty of the enemy erupted out into the waters ahead of him.

Anchor swam.

The portal spine had already been weakened by the passage of the arconites, so it would have torn apart before long. Now Anchor simply helped that unnatural process along. With hundreds of the Failed clawing at his back and harness, John Anchor grabbed the burning membrane in both his fists and pulled.

White light erupted from the sundered material. Anchor felt the water around him contract, a sudden momentous pressure on his flesh and bones. The force of it would have crushed a normal man.

But John Anchor had not been a normal man for thirty centuries and, when that sudden implosion reversed and then burst outwards again, he merely clenched his teeth and closed his eyes, suffering the blast because he had no choice in the matter. He had long ago decided not to succumb to something as foolish as death.

In that first instant, a thousand tons of debris and bodies battered against him and threw him backwards. He felt the skyship rope slacken behind him, and then snap taut again, slamming him hard against his harness.

He was falling.…

And when at last he opened his eyes, he saw the crimson skies of Hell churning around him. Far below, the Maze stretched to the horizon-an endless labyrinth of gemstone-red canals and rotting black walls. Temples and ziggurats squatted on outcrops of dark stone or in glutinous pools. The scene was hazy with flies and hot gusts of vapour and yet the atmosphere up here remained as cold as frozen blood. He cast his gaze around, hoping to spy the Ninth Citadel or the Processor from where the Icarate Prime controlled their murderous giants.

But those structures eluded him. Menoa's fortress was nowhere in sight. There was nothing below him but a million leagues of Hell.

Dill heard the musket shot, a sudden crack. It rang out over the logging camp and reverberated in the drab grey mists. The body he occupied did not belong to him, and therefore he knew that the pain he felt in his heart could not be a physical reaction to his distress. But it still hurt.