Worldsoul

Fifty

All the way across the snowfield, Mercy expected to feel the plunge of talons into her back. She struggled through the thick drifts, occasionally hauling Shadow along, occasionally being hauled in turn. The demon and Perra ran lightly across; Gremory with impatience, Perra with a ka’s usual impassivity. The Duke made no attempt to help. Mercy suspected that it simply did not occur to her.

When they reached the rocks, Mercy pushed Shadow ahead of her and dived into the stony clefts. Something shrieked overhead. She looked up to see a shadow moving fast above them. It was enormous, perhaps forty feet long. A hammer-head snaked down to a serpent’s tail and as they cowered between the rocks, a stinging lash shot down, raking through the cleft. Mercy felt it whistle past her hair. The thing shrieked in frustration and turned. The sky above the rocks grew dark as it veered and shot back, its small ball-bearing eyes glittering with malice. Mercy ducked. A black-and-scarlet shadow leaped onto the rocky ledge ahead of her. There was a thin hissing sound as a lash whipped overhead, was flung upwards to tangle itself around the storm demon’s throat. The Duke, knocked off balance, fell into the rocks in a tangle of metal; the whip blazed up, a bright necklace around its throat, and its head fell severed to the snowy ground. A moment later, Gremory was back, red eyes alight.

“I can’t take all of them.”

“Aren’t they your kin?” Mercy asked. The demon bared her teeth.

“No kin of mine.”

They fled up into the mountain wall. Once, Mercy glanced back and saw the storm demons falling on the disir. The shamans were plucked from their mounts and carried kicking into the sky. Mercy saw a demon drop one of them onto the rocks, splitting armour and carapace as a thrush beats a snail against a stone. Then another demon whisked down out of the heavens. They cowered down between the rocks, Shadow’s veil billowing out across their heads. Mercy felt rather than saw it rip; it felt as though something had scratched her own soul. She heard Shadow cry out in pain and understood at last what the veil was: part of Shadow herself, a visible part of her spirit. Mercy whispered an incantation, flung it upwards at the writhing white form. Grooves of bloody fire appeared on the thing’s flank, but although the demon shrieked it did not fall. But then, as if something had summoned it back, it wheeled away and flew towards the river.

They hurried on through the rocks, emerging onto another plateau of snow. This was much wider, with the black rock wall rearing jagged at its further side. To Mercy, the monochrome landscape was a nightmare fairy tale. What had Nerren said, the day the monorail blew up? White as snow, black as night. Red as blood. There was no blood there now, at least, not yet.

She looked back. The disir army was a struggling mass at the river’s edge, with the storm a locust cloud above it. When the demons had finished with the disir, they would come after straggling prey. The only reason, Mercy knew, that they had not yet been devoured had been accident, and that only a couple of demons could be bothered. That situation would not last. She shouted to Shadow, “We’ve got to get across the snowline now. In a minute it will be too late.”

But in this she was wrong.