Alan Campbell - Iron Angel

Dill reached the shore and crushed the first of them underfoot. Engines thundering in his chest, he kicked at a pack of the hapless beasts. Their broken corpses flew far across the Larnaig Field.

The shadow of the steamer now fell across ranks of seemingly more human figures-the brawlers, murderers, and gladiators Menoa had left mostly unchanged but for sharpened metal limbs or patches of steel and iron skin. These attacked with hatchets, spears, knives, and long curved blades. But Dill’s ankles did not linger to receive their blows, and he left the field unscathed.

War machines continued to spit fire at the arconite, and at the steamship he carried over the heads of Menoa’s forces. But Dill cleared the long thin battlefield in less than a dozen strides and set out across the upwardly sloping ground to meet Rys’s waiting forces at Coreollis. Hunting horns sounded among the horde, but they did not pursue the giant.

Hasp watched grimly. “They’ll wait for all the reinforcements to arrive before marching forth,” he said to Harper. “They must first butcher slaves to bloody the battlefield in preparation for the assault, and they must steep themselves in the living earth. But the attack will come soon.”

Menoa’s main force was already pouring into the encampment on the lakeshore. Harper had never seen such vast numbers arrayed against mortal men before. The ranks of adapted warriors and beasts stretched in a long dark curve around the eastern shore of the lake. Countless twisted metal weapons glinted in the late-morning sun. A vast pall of red vapor enshrouded them-the breath from their dead lungs, she realized. She heard their bones and armour clicking, and felt the ground tremble as boots and hooves and wheels churned the Red Road to bloody mud.

“So many,” she said. “Can Dill possibly defeat them all?”

“Easily,” Hasp said.

“Then why would Menoa attack?”

“Because to flee now would be madness. The arconite would simply crush them on the Red Road . He must try to cripple Rys while he still can, sacrificing his Mesmerists to slay as many as possible of my brother’s soldiers. Menoa cares nothing for these demons. He has all of Hell to harvest a new horde.”

Dill halted outside the city gates and set the steamship down upon the green grass. The Sally Broom sank partly into the earth, listed, and came to rest with a groan.

The vision of this giant had stunned the Northmen on the battlements to silence. But then, from within the city came a soft, thick fog; pushing through the gates and over the thick granite walls.

Jack Caulker felt that his moment was near. As an outsider, he’d found no solace among these cruel northern men, who jeered and spat at him. And despite his demands, Rys and the other gods had not seen fit to grant him an audience. Indeed, he’d spent most of the journey here cooped up like an animal belowdecks along with the Heshette hags and their livestock.

The nights had been tortuous, for whenever the cutthroat slept, his nightmare returned. Night after night he would become that same old woman in her flimsy gown, standing on the battlements of Rockwall Fortress. And night after night he would plummet to his death in the valley below, pushed by John Anchor. Caulker slept in fits and bouts, always waking to the sound of his own screaming. His eyes were constantly red and sore. He itched and twitched and felt insects crawling over his skin.

But he kept close to Anchor’s side. The Adamantine Man remained jovial, laughing loudly at the news of the arconite’s defection from Hell’s armies. Caulker had been watching him carefully, keeping one eye always on the pouch of soulpearls tied to the giant’s belt. Anchor consumed one soul each day at noon when the sun had risen to its zenith. After examining the glass beads to find the strongest and most pure, he would swallow the imprisoned ghost and then slap his huge fists together and bull at the mighty rope to test his strength. Caulker had noticed that Anchor’s great strength ebbed and flowed around these repasts. He was weakest just before he feasted.

The leather pouch of soulpearls never left the big man’s side, and yet he made no effort to hide this treasure from the eyes of others. And Caulker’s eyes feasted upon it. How many furious spirits resided within that bag? It would be so easy to smash their tiny glass prisons and release them. With the armies of the King of Hell so close by, it was time now, he decided, to make his move.

“These Northmen seem capable,” he remarked to Anchor as they passed between the Coreollis Gate Towers. Archers in light, stripped-down plate and boiled leathers patrolled the city walls above them.

“Capable, yes,” Anchor replied. “Veterans of many battles with Hell, these men. But they are not good men. The poison they drink to wear such cruel armour…it makes them cruel also.” His expression wrinkled into one of distaste. “I killed one of Rys’s soldiers once, but the soul was tainted. Very bad.”

“What do you mean cruel armour?” By pretending to avoid a rut in the ground, Caulker moved to a position where he might best be able to reach the pouch of soulpearls at the big man’s side.

“The breastplates,” Anchor said. “Wait, I’ll show you.”

They were outside the city walls now, close beside the grounded steamship. Fog obscured the field sloping down to the lake, but Caulker could hear the howls and cries of King Menoa’s army nearby. So close! He gazed up at the dented hull, and back along the length of the ship. Her rear gangway had been lowered and now soldiers of the Flower Guard were inspecting her interior. A small group had assembled beside the vessel: various nobles in odd rich raiment, an official-looking couple in matching grey uniforms, and a strange old man and a young woman-both wearing what appeared to be red glass armour.

A unit of cavalry thundering past distracted him. The horsemen disappeared into the mists to the west, heading in the direction of Rys’s ballistae. Caulker could not imagine how such ranged weapons could be effective in this visibility, but he assumed they had acted as a line of defense long before the arrival of Cospinol’s skyship. He looked for the arconite but saw nothing.

How could something so vast remain hidden from view?

“You!” Anchor boomed at one of the Flower Guard. “Yes you, man. Come here, please. I wish to show my friend how Rys makes such good warriors. You will help me, yes?”

The man grinned and came over to join them, clearly pleased to demonstrate whatever superiority Anchor had perceived him to have. He was tall and handsome, with cropped fair hair and an angular jaw. He wore the same silvered breastplate and bracers as his fellows. As he approached, he loosened the leather straps at his side that held the metal plate across his chest. “Has this heathen not heard of knife armour?”

Anchor shook his head. “No, he is from another land. They do not know Menoa’s forces like you.”

The soldier snorted. “A soft breed, then? Not trained to resist the Deceiver’s persuasion as we have been.” He peeled away the breastplate and shuddered.

Caulker felt sick.

Beneath the soldier’s armour, the man’s chest was a red mess of scars. His skin had been punctured in half a hundred places. The metal plate, Caulker saw, was lined with four-inch knives, each pointing inwards.

“You see?” Anchor said to Caulker. “Rys’s soldiers wear such armour from the age of seven years. The knives start small, then as the child grows, the armour plates are changed for ones with longer blades. The body adapts around the metal.”

Caulker turned away.

“Many die,” Anchor said.

The soldier laughed. “But the survivors grow stronger.”