Alan Campbell - Iron Angel

But John Anchor moved to help his friend.

To see him in battle was to see nothing. Wherever his veil of fog moved through the army, it left corpses in its wake. And as it reached the last Heshette survivors, Harper turned away.

“It’s a slaughter.”

A young woman was standing beside Harper, gaunt and dressed in battered leathers. “Rachel Hael,” she announced herself.

“Alice Harper.”

“It’s not often I meet another as pale as me,” Rachel said.

The engineer drained the last mist from her bulb. “I’m dead,” she said. “And by all accounts I should be down there with the rest of Menoa’s freaks.”

Rachel shrugged. “We’re just as freakish on this side of the battlefield, too, only prettier.” She smiled. “And we’re winning.”

Harper squeezed her empty bulb. “Out of blood,” she said. “When the battle’s over, I’ll have to wander through the butchered corpses to feed my soul.” She expected a look of shock or horror from the other woman, but what she got was an even broader smile.

“Sounds pleasant,” Rachel said. “I think I’ll join you. A friend of mine is down there now, someone I haven’t spoken to in a long time. He’s grown since I last saw him.”

“Dill?”

She nodded.

“It won’t be long before it’s over now.”

Rys’s Northmen had driven the remnants of Menoa’s army back into the waters of LakeLarnaig. Trench, finding room around him, had lowered his shiftblade. He was breathing hard, his sackcloth shirt drenched in gore. Down on the western fringes, Anchor’s cloud of fog moved away from another field of corpses. And Dill now stood alone in the center of the battlefield, gazing down at the destruction. Fresh blood plastered his shins; his monstrous club was dented and missing most of its wheels.

Rachel and Harper set off together down the slope.

Severed limbs and shards of metal littered the ground for half a league in every direction. Red steam rose from wet mounds of unidentifiable remains. The landscape had been battered and scarred, pocked with great holes and trenches where Dill’s club had fallen. In places they were forced to wade through the crimson mire.

But Harper felt her strength return. “They bloodied the Larnaig Field,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Menoa saturated the ground all the way to the gates of Coreollis,” she explained. “After the arconite-Dill-had turned, he couldn’t hope to win this battle. He sacrificed his entire army in vain.” She shrugged. “It seems so senseless.”

“Simple rage?” Rachel asked.

She shook her head. “That isn’t like him. He plans everything in perfect detail. All his plans have plans within them. It’s his nature to adapt to changing circumstances. He thrives upon it.”

Rachel dragged her heel out of a sucking pit. She shook blood from her boots. “Perhaps he just couldn’t adapt to face this threat. He had every living god against him here, the most powerful warriors I’ve ever seen together in one place.”

Harper stopped suddenly. She swung her gaze around the battlefield, and the thousands upon thousands of dead, both human and demons, all piled together. Crows had already come out from the city to feed. They squawked and tore at strips of flesh, then fluttered away with their prizes. Crimson vapors rose from the newly slaughtered, so heady and sweet and rich that it made Harper shudder.

“All together in one place,” she whispered. “Rys, Cospinol, Mirith, and Hafe, the living gods. Hasp and his champion, both of the First Citadel. Human mercenaries and the Army of Flowers and Knives. A thaumaturge from Deepgate and her Penny Devil.

Everyone who could have stopped Menoa made it to this battlefield.” Now she gazed up at Dill. “And the only arconite who could have turned…Gods help us.”

“What do you mean?”

“The thaumaturge put a splinter of her soul in Dill. That’s how she was able to reach him. But Menoa knew about the splinter.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Menoa made twelve arconites. His Icarates have been feeding them all of these years, persuading them, torturing them into submission. But not Dill.” She threw her arms out. “Don’t you see? Dill was different. He was the only one who could betray Menoa. The King of Hell expected him to defect.”

“But why?”

“Because of all this,” Harper cried. “This killing field! This graveyard! Enough blood has been shed here to open another portal.”

And even as she uttered the words, Harper felt a tremor run through the battlefield. The ground began to sink under her. Heaps of corpses tumbled inwards, consumed by the now pliant earth.

Dill stumbled and then staggered back from the collapsing field as flesh and bone and armour slid towards a widening depression. A new lake was forming between Larnaig and the walls of Coreollis, a pool of foul red water. Crows rose, shrieking, and flapped back towards the city. Harper recognized the stench of the Maze.

Hemispheres of bone appeared in the bubbling waters, rising as large as islands. They rose slowly to reveal scarred brows and deep depressions where Harper knew their eyes would be, and then jaws and teeth. Twelve sets of grinning teeth.