Iron Angel

24

Rachel left John Anchor laughing and drinking with one of Rys’s commanders and walked through the streets of Coreollis along with Trench and Ramnir. They had arrived two days ago-and just in time, for the Mesmerist reinforcements had been spotted approaching via the Red Road on the western shores of Lake Larnaig. But something else had unnerved the populace of Rys’s city-something vast and terrible-and it was this that she had set off to see.

Coreollis was now preparing for battle and Rys’s Northmen were everywhere. Trained veterans well used to repelling attacks from the Mesmerist hordes, they filled the streets of the city. As Rachel and her companions walked down a narrow lane, they passed a unit of mounted soldiers. Like the god they followed, these men wore silver plate forged here in Coreollis. They were tall and golden-haired and broad of shoulder-a race descended from the Skarraf Northerners who had claimed this handsome city a thousand years ago. And yet Rachel had noticed an edge of cruelty to their ways. They were quick to show disapproval, and quicker to inflict punishment on the hapless locals.

Coreollis lay in the shadow of the Mesmerists and yet it had never come under siege. Menoa’s hordes, it seemed, required blooded ground to sustain them as they crept from one battlefield to the next, and Rys’s soldiers had exploited this weakness to their advantage, keeping the threat away from supply lines open north of the city. They had effectively corralled the enemy to an area that had seen intense conflict over the last decade, refusing to let the Mesmerists encircle the city.

Now a sense of urgency filled the streets. Rachel, Trench, and Ramnir passed a quadrangle full of shouting warriors engaged in combat practice, almost colliding with a runner who had been distracted by this melee. Wide steps led them down to an esplanade before the city GateTowers, where soldiers formed ranks before marching out to positions outside the city walls. Commoners hurried about them, carrying supplies to the archers and pike-men on the battlements. As they reached the base of the steps, the trio passed two soldiers of the Flower Guard who were untying their horses’ reins from a post.

“Hey, donkey man,” the first guard said to Ramnir. “Fetch me some hay for my beast.”

His companion laughed.

The Heshette leader made no reply, but his hand went to the knife at his waist. Trench stopped him.

“That’s a threat,” the guard said. He was a foot taller than the Heshette and was twice his width. Sunlight blazed on his breastplate. “You don’t reach for a weapon in the presence of the Flower Guard. Someone needs to teach you fucking heathens a lesson.”

The other guard was older. He grunted. “I think Anchor brought those bastards in to work in the stables. Have you seen their women? I’d rather sleep with my horse.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Ramnir said.

The older guard paused, then straightened, frowning.

Rachel had already pulled Ramnir out of one fight since they’d arrived, and she didn’t like the look of these two.

“Please, gentlemen,” she said. “We’re guests here. We mean no offense.” She pulled the Heshette leader past the men and out between the GateTowers. “They’re just nervous,” she said as the city walls fell behind and the landscape opened before them. “Because they know they have to face that.”

They stood at the edge of the Larnaig Field, a gently sloping bank leading down to the lakeshore about half a league distant. Soldiers of the Flower Guard, the Knife Guard, and the City Guard had gathered on several of the dirt embankments before the walls of Coreollis. To the west Rys’s ballistae squatted on the rolling landscape. The city stables lay to the east, from where Rachel could hear the rhythmic metal clanks of a farrier working at his anvil.

King Menoa’s armies waited on blooded ground by the water’s edge: a mass of queerly shaped figures and machines. There were ten thousand or more, and very few of them resembled men. Half a league away, a force ten times this size was moving north along Red Road to join them. From this legion rose a pall of greasy smoke.

But the giant in the lake took Rachel’s breath away.

“The arconite?”

Trench nodded.

Ramnir remained silent.

The skeletal figure towered over the ship floating close to its shins, which listed badly, black smoke pouring from its toppled funnels. A few of Menoa’s troops had launched boats to rendezvous with the automaton and the ship. The sleek black craft plowed through the still waters of the lake without oars or sails, leaving dark trails behind them.

Rachel hissed. “How do we kill it?”

“With swords and axes,” Ramnir said.

Trench shook his head. “The first arconite could not be killed. It still lies trapped in sapperbane chains below the drowned city of Skirl. More than one hundred thousand warriors died trying to subdue the beast. I think this one…” He inclined his head towards the giant. “…is bigger.”

“Look!” Ramnir said. “Something is happening.”

The arconite stooped and picked up the entire ship in one hand. Then it strode towards the shores of Lake Larnaig, as if to meet the Mesmerist craft.

It moved slowly, its bony legs propelling high waves before it. The afternoon sun glimmered on the lake behind it, and the vast expanse of water shone like silver. In the far distance rose the cliffs and misty mountains of the Moine Massif, appearing as thin as vapors.

Three of the five Mesmerist boats had drawn near to the approaching giant, but now hesitated, keeping a short distance back.

“Something is wrong,” Trench said.

Rachel sensed it, too. Figures were moving hurriedly aboard the Mesmerist craft. She could imagine frantic orders given. The boats began to retreat.

A warning horn sounded somewhere behind Rachel. Evidently the guards on the city walls had spotted the Mesmerists’ unusual behavior in the lake. She turned to see Rys’s soldiers racing across the top of the city battlements, shouting down orders to their comrades within.

“It has begun,” Trench said.

Harper stood on the hurricane deck, battered by the wind and three hundred feet above the surface of the lake, as Dill smashed his way through a flotilla of Mesmerist boats. The giant automaton did not require a weapon. His passage through the waters swamped the craft on either side. He stomped on those immediately ahead of him, reducing their living hulls to bleeding shards. Icarates fell into the lake, their weird armour pulsing with vivid blue flashes as they sank from sight.

But some of the craft fought back. Directed by Icarate priests, the boats began to change shape. Their gunwales flowed into new forms: metal contraptions with barbed spinning discs, multijoined insectlike arms with claws, clusters of pipes and arm-thick whips designed to expel poisons. Clanks and whispers and whoomphs of air heralded these assaults. Fiery blue and red arcs of spitting fluid soared high above the lake and exploded against Dill’s chest. The missiles screamed on contact, for these had been souls ingrained into the fabric of the boats.

Dill barely appeared to notice the assaults. He shrugged them off and kicked the boats aside, leaving a bloody wake behind him.

Now Menoa’s encamped force was massing on the lakeshore. Driven by their Icarate priests and witchspheres, the demons swarmed over the bloody ground. A group of heavy armoured boar-like beasts made up the vanguard. They gouged their tusks into the ground and bellowed, and threw up clods of wet red earth. Their segmented-plate hides bristled with spines and steamed in the sunshine like hot lead.

Dill reached the shore and crushed the first of them underfoot. Engines thundering in his chest, he kicked at a pack of the hapless beasts. Their broken corpses flew far across the Larnaig Field.

The shadow of the steamer now fell across ranks of seemingly more human figures-the brawlers, murderers, and gladiators Menoa had left mostly unchanged but for sharpened metal limbs or patches of steel and iron skin. These attacked with hatchets, spears, knives, and long curved blades. But Dill’s ankles did not linger to receive their blows, and he left the field unscathed.

War machines continued to spit fire at the arconite, and at the steamship he carried over the heads of Menoa’s forces. But Dill cleared the long thin battlefield in less than a dozen strides and set out across the upwardly sloping ground to meet Rys’s waiting forces at Coreollis. Hunting horns sounded among the horde, but they did not pursue the giant.

Hasp watched grimly. “They’ll wait for all the reinforcements to arrive before marching forth,” he said to Harper. “They must first butcher slaves to bloody the battlefield in preparation for the assault, and they must steep themselves in the living earth. But the attack will come soon.”

Menoa’s main force was already pouring into the encampment on the lakeshore. Harper had never seen such vast numbers arrayed against mortal men before. The ranks of adapted warriors and beasts stretched in a long dark curve around the eastern shore of the lake. Countless twisted metal weapons glinted in the late-morning sun. A vast pall of red vapor enshrouded them-the breath from their dead lungs, she realized. She heard their bones and armour clicking, and felt the ground tremble as boots and hooves and wheels churned the Red Road to bloody mud.

“So many,” she said. “Can Dill possibly defeat them all?”

“Easily,” Hasp said.

“Then why would Menoa attack?”

“Because to flee now would be madness. The arconite would simply crush them on the Red Road. He must try to cripple Rys while he still can, sacrificing his Mesmerists to slay as many as possible of my brother’s soldiers. Menoa cares nothing for these demons. He has all of Hell to harvest a new horde.”

Dill halted outside the city gates and set the steamship down upon the green grass. The Sally Broom sank partly into the earth, listed, and came to rest with a groan.

The vision of this giant had stunned the Northmen on the battlements to silence. But then, from within the city came a soft, thick fog; pushing through the gates and over the thick granite walls.

Jack Caulker felt that his moment was near. As an outsider, he’d found no solace among these cruel northern men, who jeered and spat at him. And despite his demands, Rys and the other gods had not seen fit to grant him an audience. Indeed, he’d spent most of the journey here cooped up like an animal belowdecks along with the Heshette hags and their livestock.

The nights had been tortuous, for whenever the cutthroat slept, his nightmare returned. Night after night he would become that same old woman in her flimsy gown, standing on the battlements of Rockwall Fortress. And night after night he would plummet to his death in the valley below, pushed by John Anchor. Caulker slept in fits and bouts, always waking to the sound of his own screaming. His eyes were constantly red and sore. He itched and twitched and felt insects crawling over his skin.

But he kept close to Anchor’s side. The Adamantine Man remained jovial, laughing loudly at the news of the arconite’s defection from Hell’s armies. Caulker had been watching him carefully, keeping one eye always on the pouch of soulpearls tied to the giant’s belt. Anchor consumed one soul each day at noon when the sun had risen to its zenith. After examining the glass beads to find the strongest and most pure, he would swallow the imprisoned ghost and then slap his huge fists together and bull at the mighty rope to test his strength. Caulker had noticed that Anchor’s great strength ebbed and flowed around these repasts. He was weakest just before he feasted.

The leather pouch of soulpearls never left the big man’s side, and yet he made no effort to hide this treasure from the eyes of others. And Caulker’s eyes feasted upon it. How many furious spirits resided within that bag? It would be so easy to smash their tiny glass prisons and release them. With the armies of the King of Hell so close by, it was time now, he decided, to make his move.

“These Northmen seem capable,” he remarked to Anchor as they passed between the Coreollis Gate Towers. Archers in light, stripped-down plate and boiled leathers patrolled the city walls above them.

“Capable, yes,” Anchor replied. “Veterans of many battles with Hell, these men. But they are not good men. The poison they drink to wear such cruel armour…it makes them cruel also.” His expression wrinkled into one of distaste. “I killed one of Rys’s soldiers once, but the soul was tainted. Very bad.”

“What do you mean cruel armour?” By pretending to avoid a rut in the ground, Caulker moved to a position where he might best be able to reach the pouch of soulpearls at the big man’s side.

“The breastplates,” Anchor said. “Wait, I’ll show you.”

They were outside the city walls now, close beside the grounded steamship. Fog obscured the field sloping down to the lake, but Caulker could hear the howls and cries of King Menoa’s army nearby. So close! He gazed up at the dented hull, and back along the length of the ship. Her rear gangway had been lowered and now soldiers of the Flower Guard were inspecting her interior. A small group had assembled beside the vessel: various nobles in odd rich raiment, an official-looking couple in matching grey uniforms, and a strange old man and a young woman-both wearing what appeared to be red glass armour.

A unit of cavalry thundering past distracted him. The horsemen disappeared into the mists to the west, heading in the direction of Rys’s ballistae. Caulker could not imagine how such ranged weapons could be effective in this visibility, but he assumed they had acted as a line of defense long before the arrival of Cospinol’s skyship. He looked for the arconite but saw nothing.

How could something so vast remain hidden from view?

“You!” Anchor boomed at one of the Flower Guard. “Yes you, man. Come here, please. I wish to show my friend how Rys makes such good warriors. You will help me, yes?”

The man grinned and came over to join them, clearly pleased to demonstrate whatever superiority Anchor had perceived him to have. He was tall and handsome, with cropped fair hair and an angular jaw. He wore the same silvered breastplate and bracers as his fellows. As he approached, he loosened the leather straps at his side that held the metal plate across his chest. “Has this heathen not heard of knife armour?”

Anchor shook his head. “No, he is from another land. They do not know Menoa’s forces like you.”

The soldier snorted. “A soft breed, then? Not trained to resist the Deceiver’s persuasion as we have been.” He peeled away the breastplate and shuddered.

Caulker felt sick.

Beneath the soldier’s armour, the man’s chest was a red mess of scars. His skin had been punctured in half a hundred places. The metal plate, Caulker saw, was lined with four-inch knives, each pointing inwards.

“You see?” Anchor said to Caulker. “Rys’s soldiers wear such armour from the age of seven years. The knives start small, then as the child grows, the armour plates are changed for ones with longer blades. The body adapts around the metal.”

Caulker turned away.

“Many die,” Anchor said.

The soldier laughed. “But the survivors grow stronger.”

They left the soldier and walked west around the city walls, passing legions of assembled men preparing for battle behind earth and timber palisades. Caulker stared at their silver armour with dread, imagining the torsos within.

“The suffering makes them resilient,” Anchor said. “King Menoa finds it hard to sway men like this. It takes many years in Hell to break them. Ah, look, here is the iron angel now.”

It was vaster than Caulker expected. From where he stood he could see nothing but a pair of monstrous skeletal feet and leg bones which disappeared high into the fog. A shadow filled the sky overhead.

“Big, yes?” Anchor chuckled. “And strong. It has found a weapon.”

Caulker looked again. Something huge and metal hung in the mists above his head. He peered harder. He could just make out a long, bulky iron object with a funnel and rows of metal wheels connected by couplings. It moved suddenly, and a shower of black stones fell from it.

Coal?

“Perhaps we should return to the city,” he said to Anchor. “The soldiers will not thank you for bringing this fog.”

“I help them in the fight,” Anchor replied, still staring up at the arconite. “They put up with Cospinol’s fog. Fair trade, eh?”

“I don’t believe it,” Trench hissed.

Rachel turned to see the group of passengers who had disembarked from the steamship outside the city walls. Now Silister Trench, the archon who had accompanied her all the way from Deepgate, rushed over to greet one of them.

The old man clad in queer glass armour looked up as Trench approached, and grinned. “You made it, then? And without wings, I see.”

“You appear to have lost more than a few feathers yourself.”

They clasped arms.

“Rachel, this is Hasp,” Trench said, “the Lord of the First Citadel and commander of the Maze Archons. Ulcis’s brother. Hasp, this is Rachel Hael, a friend of the angel who gave up this body.”

Rachel swallowed. How many more brothers of Ulcis was she likely to meet?

Hasp said to her, “You knew Dill?”

She nodded. “Trench told me you would search for him in Hell. I…” She hesitated. “Did you find him?”

Hasp studied her for a moment. “He exists still.”

Relief flooded her heart. If Dill’s soul had not been destroyed then there remained a chance to return it to his body. Trench had promised her as much. But then she had a sudden thought. What did it mean that the Lord of the First Citadel was here on earth? Who, then, was looking after the young angel in the Maze?

“Menoa got to him,” Hasp said bluntly. “I tried to protect him but I failed.”

“What do you mean? What’s happened to him? Where is he?”

And Hasp explained.

“We go to look at the enemy now.”

“What?”

John Anchor beamed. “Cospinol’s fog makes it difficult to see. Come…” He beckoned to Caulker. “We will go and see what type of demons we are facing.” He started walking down the slope towards the hidden horde.

“Shouldn’t you wait for the soldiers?” Caulker called after him.

Anchor glanced back over his shoulder. “What for?” Then he laughed and set off again, dragging his massive rope behind him.

Caulker hesitated. He’d seen Anchor fight, and knew that the big man was probably more than a match for whatever pickets the demons had placed around their encampment. And he realized that this might be the one chance he’d have to betray the tethered giant to his enemies. But the thought of walking into that terrible unknown made him pause.

Anchor had almost disappeared into the fog ahead. It was now or never. He bolted after the big man.

“Jack Caulker,” Anchor said as the cutthroat drew alongside him. There was a hint of sadness in his tone. “You once asked Cospinol to tell you how you die. He did not know the answer then, but he knows it now.”

Caulker was stupefied. Now he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know the answer to that question. He eyed the big man warily.

“You die trying to betray a friend,” Anchor said.

Caulker said nothing. A feeling of unease crept over him. How could Anchor possibly know his intentions? The big man was trying to trick him again, the same way he had tricked Caulker into swallowing the tainted soulpearl. And there was the truth of it, Caulker realized. The soul had somehow been rotten-that’s why it gave such horrible visions of death. As they marched on through the fog, down towards Menoa’s horde, the cutthroat became angry.

“You betrayed me,” he said. “You fed me a poisoned soul.”

“No.”

“You cursed me! Every night you return to murder me in my dreams.”

Anchor shrugged. “It is the nature of Cospinol’s soulpearls. These ghosts are angry. They live inside us, and give us strength, but they will try to hurt us, too.”

“But you don’t suffer.”

Anchor stopped. Dark shapes were shuffling at the limits of the fog ahead, while vague shadows sagged in the grey gloom behind. Tents or banners? Caulker smelled the dense odors of beasts and charnel. He heard the rasp of steel, the creak and rumble of an axle turning, and a thousand other low grunts and snuffles.

The tethered man whispered, “I have the same dreams, Jack Caulker.”

“Liar!” He reached for the leather pouch at Anchor’s side, but the big man grabbed his wrist, stopping him.

“All of these souls are angry, rotten, and bitter,” Anchor said quietly. “The one you chose was more benevolent than most.”

“No.” Caulker hissed through his teeth. This damned giant was lying to him again. Had Anchor brought him here to betray him? Did he hope to gain King Menoa’s favor first?

Anchor untied the pouch from his belt. “If you don’t believe me, then choose another. It will only add to your suffering.”

Caulker eyed the bag of pearls. How many dozens had the giant consumed since the Deadsands without suffering any ill effects? The souls of warriors from a hundred distant lands, battle-archons and demigods. And yet Anchor had tricked Caulker into consuming the rotting essence of a madwoman.

The cutthroat snatched the bag and ran.

He ran towards the armies of the King of Hell, and as he ran he gorged himself, stuffing the glass beads into his mouth. The shadows in the fog ahead became clearer. He sprinted past a barricade of bones and wicked crystal-tipped spears. Hobbled shapes flinched and grunted in the gloom all around, but still Caulker ran. And then suddenly he was past the pickets and leaving Anchor’s fog. He could see the whole encampment spread out before him, the horde amassing on the crimson lakeshore. He glanced back, and noticed that the fog was flowing quickly back up the incline towards Coreollis. Anchor had decided not to pursue him.

Caulker grinned and ate more pearls. These were not rotten, for he was already growing stronger. With each new soul he consumed, he felt his fatigue lift. All of the hard years he had spent on Missionary cogs and in the streets of Sandport simply peeled away. He could have run forever.

He could make out individual groups now among the throng: chained human slaves urged forward at spear point; tall figures on stilts and warriors in white armour following behind; red flayed things which crawled like beasts? Machines with human skin and faces crowded among the gears and chains?

Caulker slowed his step.

Where was the King of Hell? But, of course, these were minions, foot soldiers, slaves. No doubt the leader would be directing the battle from the rear. All Caulker had to do was find a way to get to speak to him.

He must offer a gift.

Alone at the encampment border, the cutthroat held up his stolen pouch. “A gift!” he cried. “Souls for your King Menoa. Let me speak to him.”

The demons advanced. They marched, crawled, or slithered up the incline. Before them they drove a group of twenty or so chained humans. It had become a true killing field. Slaves cried out as Menoa’s warriors cut them down to soak the earth before them. Wheeled machines belched smoke from hot pipes and crushed their bones. Savage howling things set about the flesh with claw and fang. The twenty slaves became ten, and then five.

Caulker swallowed another soulpearl for strength, and then another.

Grinning faces leered up towards him. Huge men in bronze armour clicked metal fingers together. Steel grated steel. Teeth chattered and axes fell. Five slaves became four, and then three. Their bones crunched and their blood flew, soaking the advancing horde. Witchspheres rolled among the throng, whispering, gouging shallow trenches in the fresh red earth.

“A gift for your master,” Caulker cried. “I seek an audience with him. I have important news.”

Nobody would answer him.

Somewhere distant he heard a hag scream and cackle. Caulker reached for another soulpearl, but the bag was empty. How many had he eaten? Twenty? Fifty? He could feel their power soaring inside him. It gave him confidence.

The king’s army marched closer, glaring at the cutthroat the way a predator inspects food. The last slave fell before them, his scream echoing across the sunlit slope. Swords and spikes were raised. Mouths drooled and salivated.

“I demand an audience with your king,” he said. “I demand-”

But the army had reached him now, and they had no more slaves left with which to bloody the ground.

From the fringes of Cospinol’s fog, Harper watched the reinforcements join the main bulk of Menoa’s army. And now she could see the human slaves among them. They had been harvesting the lands of Pandemeria en route to bloody the ground before Coreollis.

Part of Harper’s heart urged her to abandon these humans and join the demon hordes. Her bulb of mist had almost dried up and her strength would soon fade. She was not one of the living and she could not survive for long among them. Hell waited for her inevitably at the end of this day.

“There must be a hundred thousand souls in that army,” Jones muttered, “without even counting the slaves.”

“More,” she said. “Menoa uses souls as ammunition. Each acid bolt and ball of flame is someone’s life. These weapons feel as much pain as the victims they burn.” She turned to face him. “Why did Edith Bainbridge betray the Mesmerists? What did Rys offer her that Menoa couldn’t?”

He smiled. “The god of flowers and knives is very handsome.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” He gave a shrug. “She’s vain and foolish, rich and arrogant and selfish. But she’s still a woman.”

“How would Rys feel, I wonder, to know that his looks helped to turn the war?”

“It would appeal to him greatly,” Jones mused. “But if Menoa unleashes the remainder of his arconites, this turn of events would seem to make little difference. We have only one giant.”

The reservist was right. Dill might slay every demon on the field down there, but he would be hard-pressed to stand against even one of Menoa’s twelve remaining arconites. She said, “Can we hope for more aid from the thaumaturge?”

The old man shook his head. “Mina Greene has been reunited with her pet. But the hound is nothing more than a Penny Devil. Basilis is crippled and debased, but I fear he has already overstretched his powers.”

“Then we’re doomed to fail.”

“I think so, yes,” he replied. “But not today.”

Horns blared suddenly down by the lakeshore. Menoa’s armies began to stir. Now they herded hundreds of their human slaves onto the battlefield, slaughtering the stragglers even as they urged the remainder forward. The king’s war machines, more resilient to untainted earth, rolled out to flank the main force.

An answering trumpet came from Rys’s Northmen. His army bellowed and clashed swords against their shields. Then they marched on, a tide of silver flowing down the incline to meet the threat. Banners of yellow and white streamed over their heads. The sound of their boots resounded like the beat of a metal heart.

And Dill moved. He opened his wings to blanket the whole of the northern sky, disturbing low clouds. In one hand he gripped The Pride of Eleanor Damask like a club, the old locomotive shedding coal and oil upon the grass. He stooped to pick up the Sally Broom with his other hand. The empty steamship gave a mighty groan. Her hull buckled under his grip and her single remaining funnel collapsed.

Hasp stood alone on the city battlements, watching grimly. He had demanded that Rys allow him to fight, but his very skill as a warrior stood against him. Even the weakest of Menoa’s advancing hordes could have ordered the Lord of the First Citadel to turn against his fellows. And Rys would not risk that.

John Anchor’s laughter could be heard above the sound of the marching troops. He clapped his big hands together and dragged his master’s skyship down the hill where his fog lapped the heels of Rys’s Northmen.

Armed with bows and axes, Ramnir and his Heshette warriors urged their tough little horses down the western flank.

And the battle began.

Dill hurled the Sally Broom.

That great iron steamship plowed a furrow through Menoa’s warriors. It sliced through the wet earth, throwing up a vast spray of red soil and corpses and machines. And then the hull struck a mound in the landscape and rolled, tumbling funnel over keel. Whole decks peeled away and spun out across the enemy forces. Metal debris rained down. Its superstructure now torn apart, the bulk of the hull jumped and crashed down again, burst into flames, and settled close to the lakeshore in a cloud of grit and smoke.

The king’s dogcatchers set upon Rys’s Northmen. They moved like wild beasts, seeking to tear at exposed flesh, but Rys’s warriors formed phalanxes. Spears shot out of the metal huddles, again and again, slaying demons on all sides. Once the attacks had been quelled, they lifted their shields and charged as one wall into a mass of Menoa’s gladiators. Bronze-clad warriors fell under them, but the wall of Northmen pushed on, leaving the wounded to the swordsmen following behind the vanguard.

A pall of bloodmist had risen over the killing field. And now Harper watched as the king’s war machines sent screaming missiles hurtling into the thick of the battle. Bright explosions flashed among the ranks of Coreollis troops, shredding whole units of them. A witchsphere burst into a cloud of pus. Hellish cries and moans pierced the air.

Silister Trench fought alone against seven Non Morai, his shiftblade changing constantly as it blurred between forms. The winged demons spun and howled around him. The Champion of the First Citadel made shields to protect himself from their claws, then altered the weapon to hack or cut or jab at their leathery wings. Corpses fell around him and he moved on to fresh pasture for his demonic weapon.

Dill’s great skeletal body towered over the battlefield. He still wielded The Pride of Eleanor Damask. None of Menoa’s forces were a match for his size and strength; he slaughtered them like insects. He raised the iron locomotive and then brought it down, pounding the ground, crushing Icarates and dogcatchers and war machines and everything to mulch. The pistons in his joints hissed and leaked thin vapors. His engines growled like a forest of wolves. The very ground shook under him.

The Heshette were in trouble. Their mounts, unaccustomed to facing such creatures, reared and panicked. The horsemen struggled to control them while firing arrows into a pack of fang-toothed giants. These creatures had been pushing the war machines, the spinning, shrilling wheels of knives and nests of flesh and chains. Two-thirds of Ramnir’s men had already fallen, while the others were hard-pressed to retreat. Menoa’s armoured giants seemed impervious to arrows. They tore the horses to shreds and feasted on the meat.

But John Anchor moved to help his friend.

To see him in battle was to see nothing. Wherever his veil of fog moved through the army, it left corpses in its wake. And as it reached the last Heshette survivors, Harper turned away.

“It’s a slaughter.”

A young woman was standing beside Harper, gaunt and dressed in battered leathers. “Rachel Hael,” she announced herself.

“Alice Harper.”

“It’s not often I meet another as pale as me,” Rachel said.

The engineer drained the last mist from her bulb. “I’m dead,” she said. “And by all accounts I should be down there with the rest of Menoa’s freaks.”

Rachel shrugged. “We’re just as freakish on this side of the battlefield, too, only prettier.” She smiled. “And we’re winning.”

Harper squeezed her empty bulb. “Out of blood,” she said. “When the battle’s over, I’ll have to wander through the butchered corpses to feed my soul.” She expected a look of shock or horror from the other woman, but what she got was an even broader smile.

“Sounds pleasant,” Rachel said. “I think I’ll join you. A friend of mine is down there now, someone I haven’t spoken to in a long time. He’s grown since I last saw him.”

“Dill?”

She nodded.

“It won’t be long before it’s over now.”

Rys’s Northmen had driven the remnants of Menoa’s army back into the waters of LakeLarnaig. Trench, finding room around him, had lowered his shiftblade. He was breathing hard, his sackcloth shirt drenched in gore. Down on the western fringes, Anchor’s cloud of fog moved away from another field of corpses. And Dill now stood alone in the center of the battlefield, gazing down at the destruction. Fresh blood plastered his shins; his monstrous club was dented and missing most of its wheels.

Rachel and Harper set off together down the slope.

Severed limbs and shards of metal littered the ground for half a league in every direction. Red steam rose from wet mounds of unidentifiable remains. The landscape had been battered and scarred, pocked with great holes and trenches where Dill’s club had fallen. In places they were forced to wade through the crimson mire.

But Harper felt her strength return. “They bloodied the Larnaig Field,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Menoa saturated the ground all the way to the gates of Coreollis,” she explained. “After the arconite-Dill-had turned, he couldn’t hope to win this battle. He sacrificed his entire army in vain.” She shrugged. “It seems so senseless.”

“Simple rage?” Rachel asked.

She shook her head. “That isn’t like him. He plans everything in perfect detail. All his plans have plans within them. It’s his nature to adapt to changing circumstances. He thrives upon it.”

Rachel dragged her heel out of a sucking pit. She shook blood from her boots. “Perhaps he just couldn’t adapt to face this threat. He had every living god against him here, the most powerful warriors I’ve ever seen together in one place.”

Harper stopped suddenly. She swung her gaze around the battlefield, and the thousands upon thousands of dead, both human and demons, all piled together. Crows had already come out from the city to feed. They squawked and tore at strips of flesh, then fluttered away with their prizes. Crimson vapors rose from the newly slaughtered, so heady and sweet and rich that it made Harper shudder.

“All together in one place,” she whispered. “Rys, Cospinol, Mirith, and Hafe, the living gods. Hasp and his champion, both of the First Citadel. Human mercenaries and the Army of Flowers and Knives. A thaumaturge from Deepgate and her Penny Devil.

Everyone who could have stopped Menoa made it to this battlefield.” Now she gazed up at Dill. “And the only arconite who could have turned…Gods help us.”

“What do you mean?”

“The thaumaturge put a splinter of her soul in Dill. That’s how she was able to reach him. But Menoa knew about the splinter.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Menoa made twelve arconites. His Icarates have been feeding them all of these years, persuading them, torturing them into submission. But not Dill.” She threw her arms out. “Don’t you see? Dill was different. He was the only one who could betray Menoa. The King of Hell expected him to defect.”

“But why?”

“Because of all this,” Harper cried. “This killing field! This graveyard! Enough blood has been shed here to open another portal.”

And even as she uttered the words, Harper felt a tremor run through the battlefield. The ground began to sink under her. Heaps of corpses tumbled inwards, consumed by the now pliant earth.

Dill stumbled and then staggered back from the collapsing field as flesh and bone and armour slid towards a widening depression. A new lake was forming between Larnaig and the walls of Coreollis, a pool of foul red water. Crows rose, shrieking, and flapped back towards the city. Harper recognized the stench of the Maze.

Hemispheres of bone appeared in the bubbling waters, rising as large as islands. They rose slowly to reveal scarred brows and deep depressions where Harper knew their eyes would be, and then jaws and teeth. Twelve sets of grinning teeth.