Tim Akers: The Horns of Ruin

We stumbled into an empty square and the Fratriarch stopped by the dry fountain at its center. He leaned against the concrete and hunched over. His breathing sounded bad. The girl stood next to him with her hand on his shoulder, looking for all the world as if she cared. He couldn't go on, though he would try if I asked him.

"We aren't going to make it like this," I said. Barnabas didn't answer, his thick shoulders heaving as he tried to get his breath. I looked at the girl. "Where's the nearest post now?"

"Same post. It's just twice as far away now."

"There's got to be one closer. Why the hell am I asking an Amonite where I should go to hide from another Amonite?" I started to pace around the fountain. The buildings surrounding us were part of the old district, tired and stone and settling into themselves. Faces in the windows quickly disappeared. "This is ridiculous."

"There have been a series of post closings in the last six months, mostly for maintenance issues," Cassandra said, again as if she were reciting holy writ. "The southern horn of Ash has been particularly hard hit, as the base level of that part of the city has been settling into the lake at an unusual-"

"Stop it. You don't say two words together all the way here, and now you're giving a lecture. I don't need a lecture on city infrastructure. What I need-"

There was a roar that filled the square, and the ground shook. I dropped to one knee and aimed my bully before I realized it was just the monotrain line. Tracks ran across the northern edge of the square, the elevated rails held up by rusty iron trestles that seemed to grow out of the brick of the surrounding buildings. The train rumbled past, filling the square with clattering noise and a wind that smelled of hot metal and burning grease. When it was gone I looked at the girl.

"The nearest mono station?" I asked. She nodded, and we helped the old man to his feet.

* * *

The mono lines of Ash travel the city in wide, sweeping arcs, like the cogs of a giant clock. Riding one is never the most direct way to your destination, but it is certainly the fastest. I ran up the stairs at the nearest station while Cassandra and Barnabas struggled to keep up. I caught the car just before it was leaving, kicking everyone out of the forward compartment and holding the door while the Fratriarch got on. Some of the passengers grumbled and then got on one of the other cars. A lot of them took one look at my bully and just waited for the next line. I watched everyone who got on the other car after us, then pulled the compartment shut. We rolled out of the station with a groan.

"I used to ride the train, when I was a boy," Barnabas said. He sat with his eyes closed, his head leaning gently against the car window as we bumped up to our full speed. "My mother and I would take it to the northern horn, to visit the docks. She made a brilliant fish chowder, every Sunday."

"They had trains back then, old man?" I asked. "I always pictured you growing up in a cave, maybe with a mule or something to carry you down to the rock store."

"We had trains, Eva. And revolvers and elevators and hot water." He smiled, and his face filled with wrinkles. "We were very civilized people back then."

"These lines were laid by Amon the Scholar, in the hundredth year of the Fraterdom," the girl said. She was standing, leaning against the wooden frame of the window, one hand on a leather loop that hung from the ceiling. "He laid the lines and built the centrifugal impellors that power them with his own hands."

"Was this before or after he murdered his brother Morgan on the Fields of Erathis?" I asked. "Oh, right, it must have been before. Because afterward we hunted him down, chained him into a boat, and burned him alive. So it must have been before that, right?"

She didn't answer at first, swaying with the movement of the train, her eyes on the city as it ripped past.

"Yes," she said eventually. "It was before all of that. But not much before."

We rode in silence for a while, the Fratriarch breathing quietly in his seat, the girl watching the window. I paced the length of the car, my boots wearing down the already heavily worn carpet. It had probably been nice carpet, once. I cancelled the invokations of the bullistic revolver and just paced. I kept looking back at the other passengers in their cars, but they made a point of not raising their eyes from their newspapers. I was glancing back when the light hit, so at least I still had my eyes when it happened.

It was a fast shot, traveling from my left and going toward the front of the car. It came in through the windows like a lightning flash, first behind us, then keeping pace, then ahead of us and nearly gone. I was just glancing over my shoulder to see what it was when the sound came. Tearing, like ripped cloth. The tracks shook and then everything was washed in red and gold and a terrible, terrible sound.

We fell. I hit the carpet hard and slid all the way to the front of the car, slamming to a stop with my shoulder against the wall. The girl slid into me, screaming. Barnabas ended up against the benches. He was the first to his feet. I pushed the girl away and stood. Cassandra lay on the floor, burbling and wailing. When she rolled over I saw that her right hand was a mangle of skin. There was no blood, but the bones were broken, and there were long, angry friction burns across the palm and back. Her thumb was pointing in several wrong directions.

Outside the car, there was smoke and metal. Something had hit the track. The creosote-smeared wooden spars of the tracks were burning with chemical brilliance, thick black plumes of smoke rolling off in heavy waves to the street below. The rails themselves were as tangled as the girl's hand. We were off the tracks and leaning in dangerous ways. The other passengers were screaming. I was screaming, too.

"Get up and away from the windows. Get off the car!" I yelled. In the cars behind us, people were slapping open the emergency hatches and riding the telescoping chutes to the ground. I started toward our own chute just as the car torqued under some unseen force. All the windows popped, then the ceiling peeled open like a scroll. Fat coils of rope, three of them, landed on the floor around us.

They landed in a rough semicircle. I turned my back to the Fratriarch, pushing the whimpering Cassandra behind me. The girl stumbled to the ground, cradling her limp hand against her chest. I hurriedly invoked armor and strength, sketchy bindings that I could snap out without thinking. I didn't have time to think. Gold lines traced the edges of my greaves and pauldrons, and the air around me tightened. The runes of my noetic armor settled down to a warm glow. As invokations went, they were weak, but there wasn't time for anything fancy.

Our assailants wore armor, actual armor, though it was roughly formed. Their faceplates were flat and plain, two bulbous gogglelike eyes over a voxorator grate. The metal of their breastplates and pauldrons was dull gray, sheened like oil on water. Wickedly barbed blades snapped out from their armguards. They attacked without saying a word.

I laid into them. My opening strike was to the left, scything past the first brute's guard with the weight of my attack. The blade struck his shoulder, denting metal and drawing a staticky shriek from his vox. He collapsed to the floor, and I followed the force of the blow, letting my sword swing low. My momentum rolled me over the fallen warrior. I came to my feet. This separated me from the Fratriarch, but their attention was fully on me. That's right, watch the dangerous bitch. Don't worry about the old man. The two remaining guys were nicely lined up. I turned the flat of my blade toward them and invoked.

"Morgan stood at the gates of Orgentha, broken city, broken wall. He stood in the stones and bones of the defenders; he stood before the spears of the invader." My voice was flat and quiet, grinding like stone in the grist. This was a new invokation for me, and I had to focus to draw into the past and pull out the power of Morgan's story. Hard lines of energy danced around my legs, light cutting in spirals through the train's dusty interior. The attackers stared at me impassively with their glassy eyes. I hurried, binding the invokation as quickly as I could. "Three days he stood against them, alone, shield as a wall, sword as an army. The city stood. He stood. The Wall of Orgentha."