Tim Lebbon - Dawn

Kosar shoved against Schiff but stumbled over his own ankles, falling down again. He remembered fighting the Monk in the square in Pavisse. Now he did not even have a sword.

Schiff stood his ground. Kosar had a fleeting sense of respect for this Breaker, hefting a strange sword and planting his feet on the narrow cliff path in readiness to take on a Red Monk. But then the demon strode in, grunting as Schiff buried the sword in its shoulder, pushing itself further onto the blade until it was close enough to strike out and bury its own in Schiff’s gut.

The Breaker screamed. His hands went to the wound, leaving Kosar’s sword protruding from the Red Monk, and the Monk glared down at Kosar.

“I know you,” it said. Its voice was deep, and belonged to this darkness.

The Monk lifted Schiff and jerked its arms, tearing the blade up through the Breaker’s stomach until it reached his ribs, and all the time Schiff was screaming and crying, thrashing at the Monk standing just beyond his reach. He was hanging out over space now, with the demon standing at the edge of the path seemingly unafraid of the drop before it.

Kosar pushed himself up, ran at the Red Monk and shouldered into it. For a terrible instant he imagined that nothing would happen. He would bounce from the Monk just as his foot had rebounded from Schiff’s metallic leg; the Monk would drop Schiff after his companions, turn around, place the point of the bloody sword against Kosar’s throat and push.

I know you, it had said.

The Monk toppled over the edge of the narrow path. It held on to its sword lodged in Schiff ’s stomach, so the two of them fell together. The Breaker screamed. The Monk made no sound at all.

Kosar watched them bounce from rocks and hit the ground, their impact illuminated by the giant fires. The Monk lay with arms and legs outstretched, its robe settling around it like a dead bird’s wings. The Breaker’s back was broken. The sword glistened in his belly. Beside them, the remains of the other two fallen seemed to shift in the echo of flames.

Kosar looked along the ravine and saw movement there, shapes darting between buildings, several more gathered in the heart of what must once have been a giant machine. It rose around them, ribs or struts or limbs curving up out of the ground as though the machine had died emerging, or trying to bury itself. It framed the Breakers against the fire. They had spent untold years gutting and deconstructing it, and now they hid behind it.

More shapes were slipping from shadow to shadow, coming closer to the foot of the path. Even if they did try to chase him down, Kosar was confident he could make it out of the ravine before the Breakers reached him. But he had lost his sword. He had a long way to go before he reached Hess, and between here and there were untold dangers. He had never been a fighter, but that metal had made him feel safer-perhaps because it had been given to him by A’Meer.

The first Breaker reached the foot of the path and started up, and Kosar turned to flee.

But then he saw more movement below. The Monk had shifted, brought in its arms and legs and was slowly rising to its feet.

I know you, it had said.

It reached out and prised its weapon from the dead Breaker’s gut, before tugging A’Meer’s sword from its own shoulder. It looked up directly at Kosar. From this distance he could not see the thing’s eyes, but flickering light from the fires seemed to make some connections between the two of them. And when the Monk started limping toward the village and those hiding there, Kosar found himself silently urging it on.

The Breaker at the foot of the path spotted the Red Monk coming toward him. He obviously knew what he was seeing, and sprinted back to the small village, ducking in behind the big machine and adding his shadow to the others hiding there. Above the roar of the giant fires, Kosar could hear shouting from the houses, echoing back into caves that were invisible from this angle. They sounded like the calls of an injured, cornered animal, terrified yet filled with fury.

The Monk reached the village. Kosar heard a crossbow being fired, and immediately he was taken back to Trengborne, watching a Red Monk ride into the village and slaughter every person there in its relentless search for Rafe Baburn.

The Monk grunted, then walked on.

It fell a hundred steps!

It met the first Breaker and killed her with one swipe of its sword.

When it came to the harvested machine, the Monk paused, as if waiting for magic to erupt and set the machine upon it. And then, when nothing happened, the Monk entered into battle.

Kosar sat on the path and watched the slaughter. He felt bad for the Breakers-especially when he saw several small shapes dart from a house straight into the Monk’s path-but he could not forget that they had been readying to kill him. They had been brainwashed by their ancestors into believing that they could gain magic by breaking. They were, he supposed, as much victims of the Mages as anyone in Noreela. And now their harsh world had turned harsher.

The Monk fought past the machine, leaving dead and dying in its wake. Shadows emerged from houses and tried to flee, but the Monk ran them down and killed them. It crossed the stream, pushing through the waist-high water. It knocked aside crossbow bolts with the two swords, taking several hits in its torso and limbs, and then attacked those on the other side. The ones who fought back, it killed quickly; those who fled, the Monk seemed to take its time over. It was a demon, a monster, a killer risen from the ashes of dead magic, and now it fought in a world where new magic had made it redundant.

Kosar wondered what the thing was feeling and thinking right now. Was this revenge killing, a rage-filled slaughter? Or was it simply killing out of habit?

He knew he should have left. The fighting went on for half an hour, the final few minutes punctuated only by a single, mournful scream. But he sat and watched. And when the Monk emerged from the Breaker village, strode past the old machine and ran to the foot of the cliff path, Kosar found that he could barely stand. The wound on his back was sticky with blood, and his crunched nose meant that he could only breathe through his mouth. He swayed, trying to retain the knowledge of which way was up and down, as the Red Monk ran up the path toward him.

Both swords raised.

Kosar tumbled forward. In his delirium, he decided that a quick fall and death on the rocks would be better than being hacked to pieces. I know you, the Monk had said. So Kosar fell into space. He heard the Monk panting and wheezing, bloody bubbles bursting on its lips.

A hand closed around his ankle and pulled. Kosar pivoted flat against the cliff face, staring down at the dead Breakers spread on the rocks below, and was jerked over rough rock.

As he was turned onto his back, he stared into the face of the demon.

Tim Lebbon

Dawn

TIME LOST MEANING. It had started when day and night were stolen away, and now their bodies had begun to rebel. Hope would sit and mutter to herself when they paused to rest, cross-legged and staring southward like a figurehead on a long-lost ship, arms jerking with muscular spasms every time she tried to lie down. She cursed and spat and spoke in languages Trey could never know. But sometimes a sense of calm came over her and she watched Alishia. Always Alishia.

The girl would wake into confusion and disorientation, blinking in the dusk like a cave rat that had never seen the light. She ate a little, drank less and found it difficult to stand unaided. She said that her bones ached and her joints felt as though they were grinding together, and when Trey went to lift her she would cry out in pain.