Tim Lebbon - Dusk

Kosar shivered, his skin prickling all over, and he turned the horse around, ready to nudge Alishia off and gallop up the slope to the ridge. And what then? Down into the woods, sword drawn, ready to sacrifice himself to the Monks?

“Kosar,” Hope said. He looked at her, momentarily furious that she had drawn him back. “Kosar, help me with Rafe! He’s burning.”

Kosar steadied his horse and slipped from the saddle, easing Alishia down and laying her flat in the low ferns. She moaned slightly, eyes flickering, limbs twitching at the change of position. Later, he thought, I’ll tend to you later.

Rafe was scorching. He grabbed the boy beneath the arms as Hope lowered him down and laid him out next to Alishia. Already the boy’s clothes were soaked through with sweat, his face beaded with moisture, and his skin seemed to radiate heat so violently that Kosar actually looked for flames, expecting the boy to ignite at any moment. And why not? he thought. The magic within has to release itself at some point, once he’s served his purpose. Why not purge itself through fire?

“We need to cool him down,” Hope said. “Mage shit, I had medicines back home, things that would have helped.” She ripped at his clothes, loosing buttons and ties and exposing his chest and stomach, blowing on his slick skin to cool him. He started shivering instantly, so violently that his teeth chattered together.

“Is it happening now?” Kosar wondered aloud.

“Whatever, it had better happen soon. If he brought us here to show us some miracle, we’re in dire need of it. Look.” She nodded up the slope, Kosar looked, and there stood the first of the Red Monks.

It was a bloody red blot on the landscape, a wound to the skyline, a rent in the perfect world through which a dread wind howled, its mouth wide, hooded head thrown back as it sighted its quarry. There were several arrows and bolts stuck in its body; one through each thigh, a snapped shaft protruding from its face, one pinning its voluminous cloak tightly to its chest. Yet it stood strong and defiant, like a standing stone that has seen ages pass. It was close enough for them to make out its woman’s face, and the skin was red. Blood, perhaps. But rage as well. This thing was at its most dangerous. Flushed with the fury of the hunt, enraged by the wounds it already endured.

“A’Meer,” Kosar muttered, because he could not avoid thinking of her body ruptured and spilling its precious insides across that forest floor. Perhaps even now her blood was fading to gray, eager to become a part of that wrong place.

The Monk staggered down the slope toward them. It was only two hundred paces away. Its sword was extended, bloody and glinting in the sun. It would be on them soon.

“Come on!” Hope cried. She shook Rafe brutally. “Fuck you, come on! Do it, do whatever it is you brought us here for!”

Trey had returned from his exploring. Instead of hiding himself away, he stood beside Kosar and held his disc-sword in both hands.

“We take it from two angles,” Kosar said, walking forward a few paces to take the fight away from Rafe and Alishia. “It’s resilient, shrugs off wounds like a splash of water, but it’s not that fast. And its swordplay isn’t the best.”

“Neither is mine,” Trey muttered.

“You have that disc-sword,” Kosar said. “It has a long reach. As long as you don’t let the Monk knock it out of your hands, you can hold the bastard away.”

“And you have that apple-picker?” Trey said, nodding at the sword in Kosar’s hand.

The blade thrummed, the handle was hot and steady in his grasp. “It’s tasted Monk blood before,” he said. “It’ll do.”

“Until the others come from the woods to join their friend,” Trey said.

Kosar did not answer.

“Come on!” Hope screamed behind them, slapping Rafe across the face. The unconscious boy’s fingers were fisted into the soil, delving into hidden roots and routes, holding him there as if the world was about to up-end.

A’Meer, Kosar thought, you must have fought hard. The Monk was close now, and there were several large areas of its cloak that gleamed with fresh blood.

“Not like this,” Hope said, her voice changing from challenging to forlorn. “Not like this, it can’t all end like this! It’s so pointless !”

The Monk was twenty heartbeats away.

Something began to growl. Kosar thought it was the Monk, but then he noticed the thing’s head turning slightly as it too searched for the source of this noise. It was a high, screeching whine, like two huge swords being ground together.

“What’s that?” Trey said.

From behind them, Hope gasped and whispered, “It’s happening.”

A few paces ahead, from where a flat machine lay all but smothered in a rich purple moss, a long limb slowly extended out across the ground. The movement was accompanied by a metallic growl as hinges, junctions and elbows that had been stiffened by three centuries of inactivity, rain, frost and sun began to move once more. It lifted painfully from the ground, rust the color of dried blood dropping away in a shower to speckle the moss below.

The Red Monk had paused in its advance and stood swaying unsteadily a few paces away from this new, strange, wondrous thing.

“Magic!” Hope called out, laughing viciously. “Magic! Do you like that, you red bastard?”

The Monk hissed at her words, stepped forward and struck out at the long metal appendage. Its sword glanced from the limb, throwing sparks and rust specks into the air, and it staggered back with its arm held tightly to its side. The thing continued to rise, bending in the middle like a human arm preparing to throw. And it seemed to be growing thicker.

“It’s changing,” Kosar said in disbelief. “Expanding. It’s-”

“Magic,” Hope said. She turned to Rafe, bent down and put her hand to his face. “He’s holding on to the ground as if he’s afraid he’ll fall off, but at least he’s cooled down. No fever. Whatever was building in him has been let loose.”

The Monk roared again, and Kosar and Trey raised their weapons in readiness. The rejuvenated metal arm of the dead machine might intimidate the Monk, but it would not hold it off forever. Their fight was still to come.

The arm lashed out. It seemed slow and ponderous, too old to move swiftly, too heavy to shift with any speed. Yet still the machine snatched out at lightning speed. Its metal end-a club more than a hand, a fat knot of rusted metal as big as a man’s head-struck the Monk in the chest. An explosion of blood and spittle spattered the metal, and the impact threw the Monk back the way it had come. Its arms waved, its cloak billowing, and when it struck the ground the arm fell across its chest. Kosar felt the vibration through his feet as the heavy metal dented the ground. The Monk gurgled and reached for the sword where it had fallen into the bushes. But it could not shift the weight.

Behind Kosar, Rafe mumbled something, then shouted, and then screamed, a cry filled with fury. His fists delved deeper into the ground and his arms shook, lifting his back and shoulders so that he was supported only on his fists and the balls of his feet. His shoulders vibrated with the effort of holding himself up. His eyes had rolled back to show their whites, lips were drawn away from his teeth, muscles standing out in stark relief on his thin neck and forearms. And his fists kept working, opening and closing, fingering downward into the ground to improve that contact.

Something happened to his wrists. Sparks, Kosar thought, yet a cool, pale blue, powerful and full of energy but cold as the nothing beyond death and before life; cold as the Black.

Rafe screamed again. The metal arm crushing the Monk sparkled and shimmered with cool light and then lifted up, curling in the air and fixing around the Monk as it tried to rise. The arm was not as solid as it had seemed before, its edges less defined. And as it tightened around the figure, its length rippled.