The Ace of Skulls

Thirty-One

Frey scrambled down a snow-laden bank, bullets clipping the trees behind him. The slope was steeper than it looked beneath the drifts; his heels skidded and he fell on his arse, slithering the rest of the way. He rolled onto his belly as he went, and ended up with his pistol out, aiming back up the slope.

A figure appeared in the flurrying murk. He was wearing a thick coat and furred hood, and was carrying a rifle. Frey shot him before he had a chance to use it.

He heard footsteps rasping in the snow. Two men came running round the side of the bank, having taken a shallower way down. One of them shouted and pointed at him. Frey rose up on his elbow and aimed at them through the stark black trees, but before he touched the trigger, two shotguns fired simultaneously and the men flailed and went down.

Samandra came jogging through the trees. She halted before him and spun her twin lever-action weapons, chambering new shells with a quick jerk of her wrists. Then she holstered them and offered a hand to Frey.

‘Think that’s the last of ’em,’ she said, as she pulled him from the drift.

‘Persistent sons of bitches, weren’t they?’

‘Reckon they got orders saying nobody leaves alive.’

‘Well, I bloody am,’ said Frey. ‘Come on, can’t be far now. Swear I’ve got frostbite.’ He rubbed his hands together. They were numb and aching, but he couldn’t aim worth shit wearing his gloves, so he was forced to endure it.

Samandra was listening to the distant gunfire. ‘Strikes me my talents might be more use back there with them,’ she said.

‘By the time you get back there, there won’t be anything left. We gotta do something about their air superiority, and I need you on the autocannon.’

She didn’t argue the point any further. They hurried onward. Both were tired: ploughing through the snow was hard work. To their right the land rose, busy with the dark bristles of a hibernating forest. To their left there were no trees, just the howling emptiness of the gorge. Frey navigated by that.

As they went, he took his earcuff from his pocket and attached it with some difficulty. The snap of gunfire sounded in his ear, closer now, coming through Malvery’s earcuff.

‘Doc! How we doing?’

‘Ain’t good, Cap’n,’ came the reply. ‘Jez’s gone berserk and the whispermonger’s gone after her. We took down one gunship and the other’s pulled back a bit, but there’s a whole shitload of Awakeners crawlin’ up our arses and we only got five guns.’

Five guns. He did a quick mental count. Ashua, Silo, Malvery, Harkins, Grudge. They were all still fighting, he realised with relief.

‘Help’s on the way,’ he said. ‘Keep your heads down. You heard from Crake?’

‘You’d know if you ever put your bloody earcuff in,’ said Malvery. ‘No, not a peep.’

Frey couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he said ‘Good luck, mate.’

‘Yeah, you too.’

The boom of Malvery’s shotgun made him wince. He pulled out the earcuff and pocketed it again. Samandra was watching him, her eyes keen beneath the snow-specked fur lining of her hood.

‘No news is good news, right?’ he said to her.

Samandra said nothing.

They climbed another bank, and on the far side they found a clearing on the edge of the chasm, where the trees drew back and there was a stony hollow in the land. Looming out of the snow was the Ketty Jay, her blocky form solid and reassuring in the world of ghostly white.

Some of the tension went out of Frey as he saw her. A small part of him had been worrying that the Awakeners might have found her and surrounded her, as they had the Wrath on the landing pad.

There was a keypad on one of the Ketty Jay’s rear landing struts. Frey poked at the keys with trembling fingers. There was a thump inside the craft, and the squeaking of hydraulics as the ramp opened.

It had barely touched the ground before Bess came barrelling out of the darkened interior. She came to a halt at the bottom of the ramp, swinging her body left and right, looking for enemies. She’d been cooped up too long, and the sound of gunfire had made her agitated.

‘That way,’ said Frey, pointing back towards the hamlet. ‘Anyone that isn’t us, kick ’em all the way to the Wrack.’

Bess roared and thundered off into the trees.

‘That’s some precision strategy you got there,’ Samandra commented as they headed up the ramp.

Frey turned on the lights in the hold and closed the ramp behind them. ‘Every toolkit needs a hammer.’

They went quickly through the cargo hold, their breath steaming the air, and made their way up the stairs to the main passageway. Frey indicated the ladder leading up to the gunnery cupola as he went by.

‘Up there,’ he told her, already halfway to the cockpit.

Samandra slowed and looked up. ‘I ain’t got a clue how to work an autocannon,’ she said.

‘Just point it and pull the trigger,’ Frey called over his shoulder. He jumped in the pilot seat and began flicking switches, beginning with the heaters.

‘Why are there so many rum bottles up here?’ Samandra’s voice drifted through the cockpit door. He ignored her, tapped in the ignition code and hit the engines.

Nothing happened.

He tried again. This time the engines gave an asthmatic wheeze. Frey swore and started pumping the choke.

‘Can’t help noticing a distinct lack of any damn thing happenin’, Frey,’ Samandra shouted down. ‘Why ain’t we takin’ off?’

‘She’s frozen up!’ he yelled back. ‘Gotta let the internals heat through, get the anti-freeze going.’ He cursed himself. He should have had Silo out here keeping her warm. He never thought they’d need a quick launch.

‘How long’s that gonna take? Our guys ain’t exactly got a surplus of time.’

‘Not long!’ he called back confidently. Then, under his breath: ‘I hope.’

Crake went quietly through the mansion, listening as best he could through the ringing in his ears. There was an Imperator somewhere nearby. He felt it.

His hands were ready on the control panel of the sonic flux emitter. He’d fixed the broken connections, and now he was confident it would work as it should. Reasonably confident, anyway. There was no way of telling how much damage the device had suffered by being bashed about. No way except turning it on, anyway. And he wouldn’t do that yet.

Before, he’d been scared. He hadn’t been thinking straight. Turning on the device would likely have drawn the Imperators to him; he was lucky it hadn’t worked. But now he’d killed one of his opponents, and the fight was back in him.

He’d reclaimed his earcuff from where it had fallen, but he hadn’t put it in. He didn’t need help from the crew. He could do this. He could take down the Imperators.

Every muscle was stiff, every movement painful. The skin of his face felt blasted and scoured. A dozen tiny cuts stretched and opened beneath the slashes in his clothes. He bore it all with a stoicism he’d never imagined he possessed.

He crept up to a doorway and looked through. The room beyond was lit by a fire in the grate. A harpsichord stood askew, a settee out of place, a card table on its side. This was the parlour where the Imperators had first attacked them. He’d come back to find his companions.

Nothing moved, but for the lunge and swing of the firelight. He crept into the room, walking softly. From here, he could see past the harpsichord. Behind it, in the corner, a dark lump lay.

A faint nausea trickled into his stomach. Plome. Oh, no, Plome. I didn’t want to drag you into this.

But he’d done it anyway. He’d known the risks of asking his friend to be bait for the Imperators and he’d still gone ahead. Because the Awakeners had to be stopped.

He checked the room again and crept closer, crossing in front of the fire. Once the light was behind him, he could see a little better. He frowned. The lump was too small for Plome, and twisted in a strange way. Another step nearer, and he saw. A rug. A bunched-up rug, that had skidded into the corner, sent there by a running foot.

Plome was nowhere to be seen.

He let out a slow breath of relief. A quick check round the room found no sign of Kyne, either. They hadn’t been killed here. They’d escaped, as he had.

That’s good. That’s great. Now all I need to do is find them.

He slipped out of the parlour and into a corridor. The fight was still in full swing outside. Once in a while, faint screams came to him on the skirling wind. Still he felt the crawling sense of a daemonic presence, somewhere in the dark, somewhere close.

He looked round a corner. A long corridor stretched away from him, with windows all along one side, looking out across the chasm at the white valley slopes. He was on the far side of the mansion from the hamlet, and out there was nothing. Bleak light struggled in, casting the shadow of the panes onto the polished floor.

Where are you? he thought, as he crept onward. His senses were on edge now, suspicion gnawing at him. The Imperator was close. Should he go back instead? But what if it was sneaking up behind him?

He passed an open doorway, and looked inside. Nothing. He walked on, and a moment later was seized from behind.

A hand clamped around his mouth. He was pulled backwards into the doorway, tottering on his heels. He tried to struggle, but suddenly he was grabbed and turned, and found himself face to face with

an Imperator.

Morben Kyne, his green eyes shining beneath his hood, one finger held up to his mouth-grille in an urgent demand for silence. Crake’s cry of alarm died in his throat. Slowly, Kyne pointed off through the wall, in the direction Crake had come from.

There’s one of them following me.

Kyne had turned his head away from Crake, and was staring at the blank wall. Looking through it.

He can see them. He really can. Spit and blood, what knowledge he must have, what resources! A daemonist sanctioned by the Archduke! The things I could do, if I didn’t have to hide away like a criminal. The things I could learn from him!

Kyne drew his large-bore pistol and stepped out into the corridor. Crake peered round the edge of the doorway. He could sense the presence of the approaching Imperator, the dread of it. Kyne aimed down the corridor, his arm out straight.

‘Kyne!’ Crake whispered. ‘What are you doing? They’ll bring down the terror on us before you get line of sight.’

Kyne didn’t appear to have heard him. He was impassive, still as a statue. The dark at the end of the corridor began to curl and clot. Crake watched helplessly, half in hope and half in fear, because if the Imperator laid eyes on them it would all be over.

The bullet ignited as it left the chamber. A streak of blue flame shot down the corridor in an arc, slanting left towards the windows until, impossibly, it curved in its flight, swung the other way, bent round the corner. There was a dull explosion. Body parts and chunks of smoking flesh wheeled through the air, thumped onto the floor, smashed a window.

Kyne turned his head towards Crake, regarding him coldly with those mechanical eyes. ‘I don’t need line of sight,’ he said.

Crake’s face was slack with amazement. Thralled bullets. A weapon that sought out daemons. He’d never imagined such a thing. To make a bullet move like that! It was laughing in the face of physics!

Just around the corner, they found the rest of the Imperator. It wasn’t much more than a pair of legs and a pelvis now. The corridor stank of burning meat.

Kyne looked down at the body. ‘They caught me by surprise the first time,’ he said. ‘It won’t happen again.’ Then he raised his head and turned his masked face to Crake. ‘Let’s find Plome. We need to take the last one alive.’

Crake grinned.

In the whiteness she moved between them. She sensed them before they saw her. She anticipated the gunshots and was gone before the bullets arrived. She flickered in the whirling snow, a trick of the eye.

But when she reached them, oh, then she was all too real. Then they felt her, a hurricane of inhuman strength and flashing fangs. She bit and tore and took them apart, leaving them dismembered in the snow, lying in a blast-pattern of their own insides.

Jez’s hair had come loose and it whipped around her face in wet lashes. Her eyes were wild, her arms bloodied to the elbows, her teeth and chin and cheeks sodden with gore.

The howling of the Manes was loud in her head, rejoicing in her, celebrating her. The song of her brothers and sisters throbbed through her, beating in her ears as her heart once had.

This was freedom. To be, and nothing more.

‘Jez?’

He called for her in a human voice. This strange one, this denier. He had the gift but he wouldn’t open the box. He kept it closed and hidden away, and pretended it wasn’t there. But look at him, coming through the snow! How fast he moved, how easily he evaded the enemy as he tracked her by the trail of dead. He was more than human now, and he could be more still; but he was afraid. Afraid to be what he was.

She loved him. She couldn’t help but love her own. But she pitied him too, like the runt of the litter.

‘Jez! Come back! You can’t fight them all!’

But she didn’t want to come back. There were more men on the way, a dozen of them, a concerted force sent against her. These were organised and determined men, not panicked prey. They found their courage in unity.

She recognised the danger, but it did nothing to deter her. She was drunk with slaughter, giddy with abandon. She was Mane, and only that. She’d chosen them and she embraced them entirely.

A dozen? She could take on twice that.

Behind her, rumbling and steaming in the snow, was the hamlet’s generator. It stood some way apart from the other buildings, a knot of pipes and levers and tanks the size of a small barn. With that at her back, they couldn’t get around her, and they’d be forced to watch their aim or risk blowing themselves up. Hesitation and uncertainty would undo them. She’d go among them like a wolf among sheep, and they’d scatter like their fellows.

‘Jez!’

It was Pelaru, running out of the whipping snow. She ignored him, her eyes on the approaching men. They hadn’t seen her yet; their sight was not as keen as hers. They were still searching.

He grabbed her arm and she turned her head sharply, teeth bared. He didn’t let her go. His fine clothes were sodden, all his poise and elegance gone, but still she softened at the sight of him.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘There are too many. Your friends need you.’

She was unmoved. The words swept past her without meaning. ‘Fight with me,’ she said.

‘They’ll be overrun! We must help defend the hamlet until your captain can-’

Fight with me! This time she used her mind rather than her mouth, thrusting the thought at him like a sword held out for the taking.

But he didn’t take it. He heard, and he recoiled. Mane speech horrified him. He let her go and stepped away, shocked.

She turned from him in disgust. Someone shouted nearby. They’d seen her. It was time.

Bullets flew as she sprang towards them. Some went wild, ringing dangerously off the pipes that surrounded the generator. A voice rose over the wind, barking orders, trying to minimise panic fire. A leader. She went for him first.

She dodged and flickered as she came, zigzagging out of the snow. Despite their discipline, fear seized them: fear of the daemon, fear of the Mane. She darted between them and pounced on their leader. He raised a pistol. Too slow. She had his throat out in an instant, and was gone before he’d even fallen.

‘The sarge! She got the sarge!’

Their formation fell apart as she tore at them from the inside. They stumbled and swore and spun around, trying to catch sight of her. They tried to shoot her but ended up shooting each other instead. She howled with glee as she swept from prey to prey, leaving corpses in her wake, turning the snow red.

Was this the best they had?

And here came another one, waddling through the snow, made ungainly by his heavy backpack. And what was that in his hand?

Jez had fought in many battles, but never in a war. She knew guns, rifles, shotguns and hidden blades, but she’d never seen a flamethrower before. By the time she realised the threat, it was too late. Even for her.

A jet of fire spewed from the nozzle of the flamethrower and into the melee, sweeping across the group. Scared out of his wits, the operator made no distinction between friend and foe. Jez could have evaded a bullet, but this cloud of burning death was beyond her. She leaped, but the fire caught her in mid-air, and suddenly the world turned to pain.

She crashed into the snow, shrieking. Her legs and torso were aflame. Her clothes were on fire, her skin was on fire. It was agony beyond endurance. She was incoherent with it, all thought lost in the blaze.

Men screamed nearby, flailing torches in the snow, trailing black smoke and the reek of cooking flesh. She thrashed wildly among them. Someone was firing a gun, shooting at anyone and anything.

The flamethrower operator spotted her, pointed the nozzle at her again. She saw him, and instinct made her turn away and cover herself. He squeezed the trigger and hit her full on.

Fire consumed her, roaring in her ears. Her hair burned. Her back blackened and bubbled. She tried to scream but drew scorching air into her lungs instead. The pain was everywhere, inside and out, an infinity of suffering, incomprehensible in scope.

Her body gave up control. She fell to her knees and tipped into the snow, which hissed and steamed as she hit it.

The jet of flame turned away from her, and there was Pelaru, beloved Pelaru, in his true form at last. He seized the flamethrower operator’s head and tore it from his body. And as her sight died she saw him, the light within, the symphony of colours that he was. Even through the pain, her heart hurt with the beauty of it.

The headless man toppled, his finger still pressed on the trigger. The jet of fire swung through the air and licked across the skin of the generator, and the fuel tanks that powered it.

Pelaru’s eyes met hers, and in that moment she knew him totally.

Then the fuel tanks exploded, and there was no more.