Tim Lebbon - Dusk

The witch looked down at the boy, moved her hand across his body from forehead to the tips of his toes, closed her eyes. When she opened them again that menace had returned, but it faded into a deep, dark sadness.

“I have nothing,” she said.

“Maybe the magic will help us until the end,” Trey said. “It stands to reason. Whatever Rafe is doing to make all this possible would be pointless if one Monk got through and killed us all.”

Kosar wished he could share the miner’s sudden optimism.

As daylight waned, it seemed that the magic was finding its feet with greater relish. The rusted and rotten bones of dead machines continued to lift themselves from the loam, and within seconds they were clothed in a thin layer of flesh or a liquid covering of molten stone. Fluid flowed in from all around, appearing from nowhere to give the machine back its blood, enclose its old skeleton even as the skeleton itself was solidifying once more. Layer upon layer was built up and around the remains, shifting with new movement, and not always blood and flesh. Wood and stone in one place, water and flexible glass in another, magical new forms of machines arising from the sad remnants of old.

Kosar hefted his sword and kept watch for shadows that should not move. He thought of A’Meer in the forest and tried to imagine her remains, what they would look like, gray forest creatures darting across gray leaves and making away with moist pickings to feed their colorless broods. There had been such pride in A’Meer’s life, and there should have been more purpose to her death.

He hated the fact that she was dead, and he hated the reason more. Glancing back at the boy lying on the ground Kosar caught the witch’s gaze and held it for a second before glancing away. There was something about her eyes that he had never liked.

“It just better be worth it, that’s all,” he said. Hope did not reply.

“Oh, what in the Black…?” Trey whispered. “Look. Up there, on the ridge, the sun’s still just kissing it. Look!” He pointed with his disc-sword, but Kosar had seen them already.

Monks. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. Perhaps they had been lagging behind the forward group, running from farther afield in answer to whatever call had brought them here. Now they formed an almost solid red line across the ridge between the valley and the forest, bloodred and ready to pour down and flood the machine graveyard.

“If your magic’s still got something up its sleeve, now is the time,” Kosar said, directing his comment to Rafe without turning around. Across the valley the sounds of fighting continued, though they were more sporadic now, metal on stone and the cries of Monks being killed by the magic they so despised. Breathing in, Kosar smelled red.

As the wave of enemy began to flow down from the ridge, the first Monk broke through the barrier of reanimated machines and lunged for Kosar and Trey. Steel clashed. And three dark shapes high up caught the setting sun.

LUCIEN MALINI WASbloodied and torn, yet not all of the blood was his own. As he entered the valley, the Shantasi bitch already drying on his sword, he sensed the stink of magic being wrought. It was not something he had smelled before, but the way it pricked at his nostrils, ran in bloody rivulets down the back of his throat, made him sick to the stomach. Yes, this was magic.

When the first machine appeared and engaged him in battle he was not surprised. Its several long, thin arms rose, creaking and whining as they twisted and turned slowly in the air before him, clothing themselves in flesh and blood and more unnatural fluids, and Lucien lashed out with his singing sword. It bit into one limb and chopped it clean through. The amputated appendage spun in the air but it did not fall. It waited. And then, after dodging Lucien’s second parry, it reattached itself to the growing machine and struck back.

Wounds opened in Lucien’s face, his chest, his stomach and arms. The machine curled itself around every thrust of his sword, and those rare instants when he did make contact caused little damage. As he put a slash into the machine’s new flesh, it healed again before his next strike. He aimed at the more stony protuberances, but his sword raised nothing but sparks, seeming only to add more energy to the magical monstrosity.

Lucien raged inside. He had lived, breathed and worked all his life against this ever happening, and now he felt the magic he so hated thrumming through the ground beneath his feet. The air stank of it, the dusk shone with its reemergence, and all across the valley he heard evidence of magic’s success: screams, the sound of Monks being cleaved in two, stone and metal hacking through the brave, strong flesh of his brethren. So he raged and fought back, but as each second passed by he felt victory slipping farther away. It was being eaten by these unnatural things, sucked into their new veins and arcane power routes, subsumed beneath the dirty magic that had cast so much damage across the land all those decades ago. They had not arrived here in time. An hour earlier, two, and maybe, maybe…

Lucien fought long and hard, taking many hits. He meted out strikes too, hacking chunks from the machine, but its suffering seemed only to increase its strength. It had no mind, of that he was sure. It had no soul, no compassion, it had no place in this world. But each wound it bore made it more real.

Still fighting, Lucien sensed a shadow fall across the valley. And looking up, seeing the shapes circling way above the battle, for the first time he truly believed that the Monks would finally lose.

LENORA RODE HERhawk hard, diving toward the battle, scenting blood and realizing that this was the most important moment of her life. The creature spat and bubbled beneath her, the sudden rapid descent rupturing its side and sending spurts of blood and fluid into the air. Its tentacles folded in to her command. Its head hunkered down. It had turned itself from a gliding shape into an arrowhead, slicing through the air and moving so fast that splashes of its own torn insides were left behind in bloody red clouds. It screeched and screamed but it was essentially a dumb creature, and it obeyed this command that would take it to its death.

Lenora clung tightly to the hawk’s back, knees tucked in and hands twisted several times around the steering harness. She squinted against the buffeting winds. Yet even above this roar she heard the sound of the Mages finally sensing their quarry, the magic they had sought to regain for three hundred years, and which had driven them both completely mad. It was a sound that Lenora, seasoned warrior and soldier in the Mages’ army, hoped that she would never hear again.

Angel sat upright on her hawk’s back. Air tore around her and clapped behind her back, casting wispy vapor trails in her wake. Her eyes were wide-open. She had seen the object of her desire, and there was no way now that she would lose sight of that again.

To Lenora’s left, a few wingspans away, S’Hivez held on to his mount, digging his heels in so hard that they penetrated the creature’s side and encouraged its inevitable demise. Blood flew back from the wounds in a fine spray, though Lenora could not tell whether all of it was from the hawk.

Neither Mage carried any weapons. That did not worry Lenora. She had seen them in action before.

Less than a mile beneath them, the battle raged below the setting sun’s rays. The glitter of sparks from steel striking steel was visible at this altitude, and even though the air was ripping past at an incredible rate, still the scent of blood found its way up to them. And not only blood-Red Monk blood! A sliver of fear slipped into her mind past the bombardment on her senses, and the fear gave her a thrill. A real fight, she thought. A real enemy. She was as conscious of the weapons pinned and strapped around her body as she had ever been, ready to employ them instantly upon landing. They were a part of her life and soul, as much a part of her as her own limbs. Extensions of her body rather than mere tools. And soon they would be blooded again.