Alan Campbell - Iron Angel

The demons advanced. They marched, crawled, or slithered up the incline. Before them they drove a group of twenty or so chained humans. It had become a true killing field. Slaves cried out as Menoa’s warriors cut them down to soak the earth before them. Wheeled machines belched smoke from hot pipes and crushed their bones. Savage howling things set about the flesh with claw and fang. The twenty slaves became ten, and then five.

Caulker swallowed another soulpearl for strength, and then another.

Grinning faces leered up towards him. Huge men in bronze armour clicked metal fingers together. Steel grated steel. Teeth chattered and axes fell. Five slaves became four, and then three. Their bones crunched and their blood flew, soaking the advancing horde. Witchspheres rolled among the throng, whispering, gouging shallow trenches in the fresh red earth.

“A gift for your master,” Caulker cried. “I seek an audience with him. I have important news.”

Nobody would answer him.

Somewhere distant he heard a hag scream and cackle. Caulker reached for another soulpearl, but the bag was empty. How many had he eaten? Twenty? Fifty? He could feel their power soaring inside him. It gave him confidence.

The king’s army marched closer, glaring at the cutthroat the way a predator inspects food. The last slave fell before them, his scream echoing across the sunlit slope. Swords and spikes were raised. Mouths drooled and salivated.

“I demand an audience with your king,” he said. “I demand-”

But the army had reached him now, and they had no more slaves left with which to bloody the ground.

From the fringes of Cospinol’s fog, Harper watched the reinforcements join the main bulk of Menoa’s army. And now she could see the human slaves among them. They had been harvesting the lands of Pandemeria en route to bloody the ground before Coreollis.

Part of Harper’s heart urged her to abandon these humans and join the demon hordes. Her bulb of mist had almost dried up and her strength would soon fade. She was not one of the living and she could not survive for long among them. Hell waited for her inevitably at the end of this day.

“There must be a hundred thousand souls in that army,” Jones muttered, “without even counting the slaves.”

“More,” she said. “Menoa uses souls as ammunition. Each acid bolt and ball of flame is someone’s life. These weapons feel as much pain as the victims they burn.” She turned to face him. “Why did Edith Bainbridge betray the Mesmerists? What did Rys offer her that Menoa couldn’t?”

He smiled. “The god of flowers and knives is very handsome.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” He gave a shrug. “She’s vain and foolish, rich and arrogant and selfish. But she’s still a woman.”

“How would Rys feel, I wonder, to know that his looks helped to turn the war?”

“It would appeal to him greatly,” Jones mused. “But if Menoa unleashes the remainder of his arconites, this turn of events would seem to make little difference. We have only one giant.”

The reservist was right. Dill might slay every demon on the field down there, but he would be hard-pressed to stand against even one of Menoa’s twelve remaining arconites. She said, “Can we hope for more aid from the thaumaturge?”

The old man shook his head. “Mina Greene has been reunited with her pet. But the hound is nothing more than a Penny Devil. Basilis is crippled and debased, but I fear he has already overstretched his powers.”

“Then we’re doomed to fail.”

“I think so, yes,” he replied. “But not today.”

Horns blared suddenly down by the lakeshore. Menoa’s armies began to stir. Now they herded hundreds of their human slaves onto the battlefield, slaughtering the stragglers even as they urged the remainder forward. The king’s war machines, more resilient to untainted earth, rolled out to flank the main force.

An answering trumpet came from Rys’s Northmen. His army bellowed and clashed swords against their shields. Then they marched on, a tide of silver flowing down the incline to meet the threat. Banners of yellow and white streamed over their heads. The sound of their boots resounded like the beat of a metal heart.

And Dill moved. He opened his wings to blanket the whole of the northern sky, disturbing low clouds. In one hand he gripped The Pride of Eleanor Damask like a club, the old locomotive shedding coal and oil upon the grass. He stooped to pick up the Sally Broom with his other hand. The empty steamship gave a mighty groan. Her hull buckled under his grip and her single remaining funnel collapsed.

Hasp stood alone on the city battlements, watching grimly. He had demanded that Rys allow him to fight, but his very skill as a warrior stood against him. Even the weakest of Menoa’s advancing hordes could have ordered the Lord of the First Citadel to turn against his fellows. And Rys would not risk that.

John Anchor’s laughter could be heard above the sound of the marching troops. He clapped his big hands together and dragged his master’s skyship down the hill where his fog lapped the heels of Rys’s Northmen.

Armed with bows and axes, Ramnir and his Heshette warriors urged their tough little horses down the western flank.

And the battle began.

Dill hurled the Sally Broom.

That great iron steamship plowed a furrow through Menoa’s warriors. It sliced through the wet earth, throwing up a vast spray of red soil and corpses and machines. And then the hull struck a mound in the landscape and rolled, tumbling funnel over keel. Whole decks peeled away and spun out across the enemy forces. Metal debris rained down. Its superstructure now torn apart, the bulk of the hull jumped and crashed down again, burst into flames, and settled close to the lakeshore in a cloud of grit and smoke.

The king’s dogcatchers set upon Rys’s Northmen. They moved like wild beasts, seeking to tear at exposed flesh, but Rys’s warriors formed phalanxes. Spears shot out of the metal huddles, again and again, slaying demons on all sides. Once the attacks had been quelled, they lifted their shields and charged as one wall into a mass of Menoa’s gladiators. Bronze-clad warriors fell under them, but the wall of Northmen pushed on, leaving the wounded to the swordsmen following behind the vanguard.

A pall of bloodmist had risen over the killing field. And now Harper watched as the king’s war machines sent screaming missiles hurtling into the thick of the battle. Bright explosions flashed among the ranks of Coreollis troops, shredding whole units of them. A witchsphere burst into a cloud of pus. Hellish cries and moans pierced the air.

Silister Trench fought alone against seven Non Morai, his shiftblade changing constantly as it blurred between forms. The winged demons spun and howled around him. The Champion of the First Citadel made shields to protect himself from their claws, then altered the weapon to hack or cut or jab at their leathery wings. Corpses fell around him and he moved on to fresh pasture for his demonic weapon.

Dill’s great skeletal body towered over the battlefield. He still wielded The Pride of Eleanor Damask. None of Menoa’s forces were a match for his size and strength; he slaughtered them like insects. He raised the iron locomotive and then brought it down, pounding the ground, crushing Icarates and dogcatchers and war machines and everything to mulch. The pistons in his joints hissed and leaked thin vapors. His engines growled like a forest of wolves. The very ground shook under him.

The Heshette were in trouble. Their mounts, unaccustomed to facing such creatures, reared and panicked. The horsemen struggled to control them while firing arrows into a pack of fang-toothed giants. These creatures had been pushing the war machines, the spinning, shrilling wheels of knives and nests of flesh and chains. Two-thirds of Ramnir’s men had already fallen, while the others were hard-pressed to retreat. Menoa’s armoured giants seemed impervious to arrows. They tore the horses to shreds and feasted on the meat.