Forged in Blood I

Chapter 20

Sicarius couldn’t feel his fingers or his feet. Numbness made him stumble as he ran through the snow along the lake. Blood dotted the tracks he left, but he barely noticed. He didn’t care. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the dark horizon.

There should have been lights, fires, sparks from weapons, but blackness lay ahead. In the aftermath of the Behemoth’s crash, the night had grown utterly silent. Not so much as an owl hooted from the bare icicle-draped branches of the trees lining the running path. The air stank of more kinds of smoke than his nose could identify-burning trees, and coal, and black powder, but more alien scents too. And blood. The scent of blood lingered amongst it all.

Through no conscious awareness of his own, Sicarius’s pace slowed when he reached the end of the trees, the scant trees that remained standing. The Behemoth had mowed down all the ones by the lake on its inbound trajectory; the closest ones had been topped, such as a logger might do, with only the tips of the trunks torn off, but the ones farther in had been knocked to the snow in their entirety. Wreckage, wood, and bodies littered the white fields. The tents that had housed the invaders were all flattened. And the fort…

Sicarius stumbled to a stop, his legs numb from more than the icy cold that encroached upon his extremities. Aside from one crumbling corner of the wall, Fort Urgot was gone. It had been completely and utterly flattened beneath the massive black dome of the Behemoth. One side of the craft was buried meters into the earth, while the far side merely lay upon the snow, but that great weight… There was no sign of the buildings, the defenses, or the people who had been inside the fort when it hit.

Images of Maldynado and Basilard and Sespian flashed through his mind, with Sespian being in the forefront. Sespian shooting down the cable into the enemy camp. Sespian smiling and explaining how to encourage a girl. Sespian sleeping in his bed as a boy, charcoal sticks and a sketchpad scattered all about the blankets.

Sicarius closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He willed his legs to carry him forward. There was a chance…

Maybe Sespian had been out on the field, fighting hand-to-hand with the invaders, or maybe he’d seen the Behemoth coming and there’d been time to run away.

Sicarius scoffed. Run away. Right. Once it had risen from the lake, the craft had taken less than five seconds to plummet across the water and crash.

He ran to its side anyway, his legs carrying him over and around countless bodies in the snow. Some had died from the fighting, but others must have been flung through the air as a result of the crash, mangled like the tents and like so many of those trees.

As he passed, Sicarius glanced at each face, checking to make sure. He didn’t recognize any of them as soldiers from within the fort. These men all wore blue armbands. He ran a full circle around the crashed vessel, just in case… but, no. Nobody inside the fort had made it out.

Sespian was gone.

He halted, shoulders slumping, and stared at the ground. He’d never gotten a chance to… They’d barely started to… His chin drooped to his chest. How was he supposed to-

Someone coughed, the noise loud against the silence that had descended upon the battleground. Sicarius located the source. A man had appeared in the side of the Behemoth, seemingly stepping out of the hull of the ship ten feet above the ground. He slid down the side to land in a ridge of snow pushed up around the bottom. A second person, a woman this time, stuck her head out of the black wall, hiked up her skirts and followed the same route.

Sicarius pulled out his black dagger and strode toward the invisible escape hatch. The tangled thoughts that stampeded into his mind were hard to follow, and it was more some buried primitive instinct that guided him than intellect. That monstrosity had killed Sespian, and he was going to kill those who had brought it here. And if Amaranthe was in there, he’d find her.

She must be in there, he realized. Her plan… this was because of her plan.

He shied away from the idea of blaming her for this, for Sespian’s death. She hadn’t brought this abomination to Stumps. Whatever plan she’d enacted, she’d been trying to help Sespian. He’d find her in there and bring her out. If he’d lost Sespian… Sicarius’s fingers tightened on the hilt of his dagger. Amaranthe was all he had left.

Though he strode toward the Behemoth without worrying about stealth, the man and woman never saw him coming. Sicarius slit their throats and ran up the smooth, curved wall, a feat some would have found impossible. He didn’t think about it. His eyes were focused on his targets, nothing else. He slashed the throat of another man trying to escape the vessel, a guard in a black uniform that reminded him of Pike. The thought filled him with cold fury that propelled him through the intangible wall and into a cargo bay.

Numerous guards were inside, rushing to evacuate. Sicarius cut down several before the others knew he was there, but then rifles were being brought to bear. In another situation, any other situation, he would have spied before crashing inside, made sure no one would spot him, but he was too numb to care about his own safety. Now his only defense was to sprint, slashing and cutting and ducking and somersaulting to throw off his opponents and draw closer to his enemies.

Rifles fired, and crossbows twanged. A bullet slammed into his side. He threw a dagger, taking the shooter in the throat. Another bullet clipped his temple before he finished off the room. He paused only long enough to collect his thrown knives, then ran for the corridor. He was being reckless, ridiculously so, but he didn’t know how much time he had. What if Amaranthe had been captured and some maniac held a knife to her throat, ready to kill her for causing the Behemoth to rise from the lake?

He couldn’t lose her and Sespian. He couldn’t.

As he’d long ago been trained to do, Sicarius shunted off the part of his mind that acknowledged pain, locking it away to deal with later. He had never been inside the craft before, and wouldn’t have had any idea of which way to go in the maze, but he used the fleeing people and the shouts and calls to evacuate to lead him deeper inside. Wherever they were coming from… it was where he wanted to go.

At the end of a long corridor, two women turned around a corner and came into his sight. Sicarius kept running, though he recognized the significance of one’s buckskin dress and tattoos. He threw a knife, hoping to distract the shaman, but the long hallway gave her time to react. She raised a hand, and an invisible force deflected the blade into a wall before it reached her. Her hand remained up, and her eyes narrowed with focus. The other woman didn’t carry an obvious weapon, but she stopped behind the shaman, uttering a command.

A side corridor opened up halfway between him and them, and he sprinted for it even as he braced himself for an attack. If it was a mental assault, he might be able to block it.

As soon as the first flame sparked into existence, Sicarius knew he couldn’t fight it; he had no way to defend against physical Science, except by avoiding it. He sprinted and dove into a roll for the intersection. As he twisted to angle around the corner, he loosed a second throwing knife. The impudence cost him, and fire engulfed his arm. A split second later, he rounded the corner, the wall blocking him from further damage, and he raced off, batted out the flames on his sleeve. The scent of seared flesh rose from the burned fabric and blackened skin. Another wound to worry about later. He threw himself around the next nearest intersection, but stopped there, peering back the way he’d come to see if the women followed.

They charged past without more than a glance down his corridor. Abandon the mission, abandon this craft, their harried expressions said. Sicarius wondered, not for the first time since he’d run in, if the crew feared the Behemoth was going to explode, much like that lorry had earlier in the night.

Sicarius ran back toward the main corridor, intending to return to his earlier route-if those women were amongst those in charge, they might have come from dealing with Amaranthe. He gritted his teeth, hating the images that came to mind at the words “dealing with.”

Before he reached the main corridor again, a black cube floated into view. Between one step and the next, Sicarius halted, dropping into a crouch. No wonder the women had looked harried.

Poised on the balls of his feet, he waited, ready to flee again if needed. The cube continued on after its original prey. After a few seconds passed, Sicarius ventured back into the intersection. He was in time to see the cube disappear around the corner back the way he’d come. For a moment, he imagined a fleet of those things floating into the city, incinerating every man, woman, and child they came across, but his concern for Amaranthe leaped back to the forefront of his mind.

Still following the women’s route of origin, he turned into a dead-end corridor. He’d seen a few of those dead ends twenty years earlier, in those ancient tunnels, and he knew there could be doors even in spots where they weren’t apparent. He touched the wall when he reached it, and symbols flared to life. He’d seen them before, too-had watched Professor Komitopis open numerous doors. Though years had passed, many of those events from that strange mission were indelibly imprinted on his mind, and he found the right combination on the first try.

It wasn’t a door, but a lift, and the floor rose, carrying him to a new level. He waited in a ready stance, a dagger in each hand, but the room he entered was empty of the living. The air smelled of charred flesh and blood, though, and he stepped off the lift and around the bodies of guards. Another body lay facedown on the floor on the opposite side of a room, the skin and clothing burned off, features seared past the point of recognition, though it was a feminine form. Something under its torso glinted, and a sick sense of dread made Sicarius’s belly quiver as he glanced at his own raw arm, remembering the shaman’s power. What if Amaranthe had been trying to control the vessel and that woman with the shaman… had been determined that she not?

Sicarius sheathed his daggers, or maybe he dropped them-he was barely thinking-and walked forward. Slowly. If the craft was about to explode, he wasn’t sure he cared.

He tried to kneel by the form, but his legs gave out-whether from his injures or loss of blood or frostbite, he didn’t know-and he tumbled to the floor. From his knees, he rolled over the body. The flesh was still warm, blood and pus oozing from cracks, but the eyes and face had been burned away, and the chest no longer rose and fell. The garments, too, had fallen to ashes, and the only thing that remained was a silver chain and medallion, the slitted eyes of a Kendorian lizard staring up at him. The medallion Amaranthe had been wearing as part of her costume.

Sicarius didn’t know how long he sat there, but his blood was pooling on the floor, a lot of it. If he wanted to live, he ought to bandage his wounds. He rubbed his face with a shaking hand, not sure he cared any more. About living. For so long Sespian had given him purpose, something to work to protect, a reason to be in the world. And then Amaranthe, though he’d done so little to encourage her, had insinuated herself into his life, and he’d had another reason to be, another reason to think the world might grow more interesting later on. And now…?

He found himself lying on his back, moisture-blood-seeping through his shirt as he stared at the black ceiling high above. He’d long suspected the world would be a better place without him in it. Maybe this was some sort of cosmic fate, finally catching up with him for all he’d done.

A soft whisper of sound reached his ears. More out of reflex than because it mattered, Sicarius turned his head toward the lift. He was too numb to react with surprise or fear or pain when a solitary man walked onto the floor.

Hands clasped behind his back, the silver-haired Nurian practitioner strode across the room, his vibrant robes flowing about him, his weathered face grim. He stopped a few feet away and stared down at Sicarius.

A fitting end, Sicarius thought. His wounds might not have been enough to finish him, but the practitioner could ensure his death.

“You have been nettlesome,” the man said in his native tongue.

Yes, Sicarius thought, I have. “Then end it,” he whispered in Nurian.

A single silver eyebrow rose. “Oh, I don’t think so. You’ve robbed me of my bodyguard and my beast of burden when my mission here is far from complete. I will need another to fill those roles.”

The words percolated slowly through Sicarius’s battered mind, and it wasn’t until the wizard removed his hands from behind his back that their meaning sank in. He lifted an exotic opal between thumb and forefinger, its black, orange, and greens arresting even before he murmured something under his breath, and the stone began to glow. The practitioner lowered it to Sicarius’s temple, pressing it against the skin. It was warm. More, it caused a strange tingle to run straight into his brain.

Sicarius should have lifted his arm, should have knocked that stone away, but either the practitioner or the loss of blood kept his limbs from responding. Instead the tingle grew hotter and more intense, as if the opal were burning its way into the side of his head. Abruptly the fire went out, and a quenching relief flared from the stone.

“It is done.” The practitioner nodded. “You are mine now.”

Through no intent of his own, Sicarius felt his gaze being pulled to the side until he stared into the other man’s deep brown eyes, eyes as dark and inscrutable as his own.

“You will obey me,” the practitioner said. “Understood?”

Against his wishes, Sicarius whispered, “I will obey.”