Tim Lebbon - Dawn

“That’s a fucking abomination,” Ducianne said as she walked alongside Lenora.

“It’s the Mages’,” Lenora snapped. “And it’s magic.”

“So they truly have it? They really did get it back for themselves?”

“Of course. It was easy.” Lenora thought back to the fight with the Monks and machines, the attack on the huge flying machine that had tried to protect the boy, the ferocity of his protectors’ defense. “Easy.”

LATER, LENORA AND Ducianne sat alone in one of Conbarma’s taverns, drinking rotwine and listening to the shade making machines. Some of the braver, less exhausted Krotes from Ducianne’s ship had seen the machines of war around Conbarma, and shunning rest they had approached the shade to be equipped with their own. Lenora had watched the first construct melded and merged from the pits, then she dragged Ducianne away from the spectacle. There was talking to be done, and planning, and it felt good having a friend with her once again. Though Noreela had always been their aim, still she felt a thousand miles from home.

They could hear the gasps of amazement from outside, the sound of flesh being ripped from the pit and magical fire melding it with stone and metal, and then the unnatural footfalls as the machines took their first, confident steps. The sounds from the Krotes changed slowly from astonishment to triumph as each of them was given their own weapon of war: flying, crawling, running, stepping, crushing and spitting-all of them knew that they were being granted more power than they had ever possessed before.

Walls fell, and explosions of noxious gas parted the air. The Krotes were already in training.

Lenora sat with her back to the window and Ducianne kept glancing over her shoulder. Her eyes reflected the fiery truth of what was happening outside.

“It feels strange,” Ducianne said. “Good, but…”

“Unnatural?” Lenora asked. She shrugged. “We’ve been used to doing everything for ourselves. We mine and refine and cast metal to make swords, raid the islands south of Dana’Man for timber to make our arrows, clear the ground of snow and ice, dig the soil, plants crops, watch them mostly freeze and rot in the ground. Life is harsh for every Krote. Has been ever since we left this land three hundred years ago.”

“You were there,” Ducianne said. “What does it feel like coming back?”

Lenora stirred her rotwine with one finger. “It feels like revenge.”

“But those things out there,” Ducianne said, and again she could not finish her sentence.

“Very soon, they’ll feel right,” Lenora said. “I never rode a machine during the Cataclysmic War, but I saw them, and I knew them. And these are so muchmore! Back then they were tools, but now they have more than a spark of life. I know for sure once the Krotes ride them into battle they’ll feel as comfortable with them as with one another. They’ll be an extension of your arm. Or in your case, your foot.”

Ducianne lifted the stump of her right foot and thudded it down on the table. “If magic could grow this back for me, then I’d be impressed!”

“I’m sure it could,” Lenora said. “But when you have your machine, you won’t need it anymore.”

Ducianne drained her cup of rotwine and poured more. “I look forward to it.”

“There’s plenty of time. Let’s sit and talk, let your Krotes get theirs first. We’ve got some planning to do.”

“And a war to fight!” Ducianne said, grinning. “I can still hardly believe we’re here. No fucking snow demons stalking the perimeter, no icicles hanging from my nose. There was a time on the way here when the ice floes disappeared. I can’t remember passing the last one: one moment they were there, the next time I looked there was only open sea. That’s what brought it home to me the most, Lenora. The change in the sea.”

“And the sky growing dark.”

Ducianne’s grin faltered. “That too. It scared a lot of us, but we knew what it had to be. It was a victory. It shouldn’t have made us feel like that.”

“A lot of what happens over the next few days will affect us in different ways,” Lenora said.

Ducianne nodded. “So where have they gone?” she asked quietly, as though the Mages were listening from the shadows in the unlit fireplace.

Lenora shrugged. “I have no idea. They raised themselves a huge flying machine and took off. They left me in charge of the army and told me to take Noreela.”

“A minor responsibility, then.” Ducianne covered her smile with another draft of rotwine.

“Something I never expected,” Lenora said. “I thought after all this time that they’d want to lead the army themselves. They have so much anger inside, so much hate.” She looked around the deserted tavern and closed her eyes. I have to stop talking about them like this, she thought. They’ll know. They’ll see.

“And so do we,” Ducianne said. “This is the reason we’ve lived our lives, all of us. This is the finest day ever!” She drained her rotwine and threw the mug at the bar. It shattered against the wall and spilled its dregs like a splash of dark blood. “First blood to the Krotes!” she shouted.

“First blood,” Lenora said.

“So, tell me about the battle to take this place. I saw an old church earlier, looked like there’d been a bastard of a siege there. Defenders? Villagers? Tell me, Lenora.”

Lenora smiled and thought back to their landing at Conbarma. But then she looked forward, and something sighed deep down in her mind. “Let’s talk of the future, not the past. There are battles to come that will make this one look like a fart in a storm. And now that you’re here, it’s time to organize. The Mages made each of my Krotes a captain, but you’re to be my lieutenant, Ducianne.”

“So what are you giving me?” the short woman said. Her voice was low, filled with anticipation.

Lenora stood and walked slowly to the bar. She smiled. She could feel Ducianne simmering behind her.

“Damn it all to Black, Lenora!”

Lenora laughed and turned around, holding another bottle of rotwine. “I’m giving you Long Marrakash,” she said.

Ducianne gasped. “The Duke?”

“The Duke, and whatever armies remain around him. Find them and destroy them. Bring me his head, Ducianne. Kill the Duke of this shitting land, and stick his head on the front of your machine.”

“My machine…”

Lenora nodded. “I think it’s your turn.”

THEY WALKED TO the pits together. Lenora left her machine squatting outside the tavern, venting hazy gas from several stumpy horns. She felt its eyes follow her as she walked to the harbor with Ducianne.

The limping Krote lieutenant went forward until she was within twenty steps of the shade. It spun and flexed in the air, existing within its own set of laws. One moment it looked like a giant heart, bare and beating to the rhythm of the land; the next it was a glass ball, its insides bottomless, outside opaque and mysterious. As Ducianne paused before it, the shade was barely there at all.

“So show me,” Ducianne said.

The shade sunk into the ground and rose again in the flesh pit. It brought with it a stew of living stuff: blood and brains, bone and skin, flesh and cartilage, rising as though forced upward by a slow explosion of gas from the stinking mass of dead-but-living flesh. The shade was a space between this stuff, filled only by shadow.

Ducianne took only one step back. Most Krotes withdrew several steps, and some had fallen to their knees, but Ducianne was brave. Lenora could see her old friend’s shoulders shaking and her bad foot tapping at the ground in a reflex motion, but the lieutenant remained facing forward.

It knows she’s my lieutenant, Lenora thought. It’s making her something special.