By the time he reached the machine, the other Shantasi were dead at its feet. He glanced briefly at the battle raging all around: a serpenthal in a frenzy a hundred steps away; a Shantasi warrior releasing a toxic pallid wolf against one machine; Krotes slaughtering anything that crossed their path. A group of Shantasi dead lay to the north, and in the heat of a blazing machine O’Gan was sure he saw movement in their limbs, a flicker in their eyes.
And then he faced the machine and its grinning Krote rider, and he smiled back as he raised his sword.
LENORA RODE THROUGH the battle, buffeted by the screams of the dying and the sound of arrows whipping through the air. The darkness was lit by burning machines and bodies. The air stank of fear and blood. An arrow glanced from a knot of scar tissue on her neck and she laughed, realizing that she felt more at home here than she had for a very long time.
A Shantasi tried to climb onto her machine, and Lenora let him think he had succeeded before turning around and burying her sword in his shoulder. “Meet my machine,” she said, and a dozen mouths opened in the side of her construct, biting into the dying Shantasi as he slid from its back.
Two eyes on the side of her machine stared up at her, pleading, blinking, and she turned away. Haunt me, will you, boy? she thought. Well, no need. I’m already haunted.
Ducianne rode alongside, grinning from ear to ear. “This is the life, eh, Lenora? This is the life we’ve always meant to live!”
“This is only their advance,” Lenora shouted. “The rest will be hiding past that fire to the south.”
“Shall we send the dead against them?”
Lenora looked back at the huge machines bringing up the rear, their cages alive with thousands of dead Noreelans. “Not yet,” she said. “There’ll be much more than this.”
“Do you think so? Do you think the Shantasi have more to throw at us?”
Lenora glanced left at where a huge shadow fought with a machine. The two seemed evenly matched. It was a dark, twisting thing that seemed to part and merge again with every movement. She turned to Ducianne and shrugged. “Whether they do or not, we’re adding to our army all the time.”
The shade was with them somewhere, flowing back and forth across the corpse-strewn battlefield. Lenora had already seen several dead stand and begin walking south.
“This is the life!” Ducianne shouted again, riding toward a small group of Shantasi.
Lenora drove south, keen to take the fight onward. She passed by several dead Krotes and many dead Shantasi, and it was already apparent who was winning this battle. It had started a few hundred heartbeats ago, and the end was in sight.
I see through you, her daughter’s shade whispered. I feel through you, and I hate what I feel.
“You don’t knowhow to feel,” Lenora said, but she regretted her words as soon as they were out.
You teach me everything you know.
“Ifeel.”
For the dead? For the dying?
“Enemy dead, enemy dying!” Lenora launched a hail of blades from her machine, cutting down two Shantasi and the big yellow wolf strung between them. The creature’s blood boiled in the air and sizzled as it struck the ground.
I want my mother, the shade said.
“I am your mother.”
You’re so different from the mother you could have been…Its voice faded, though no distance grew. Lenora felt it sitting in her mind, watching, feeling, and her scream could have been rage, or anguish.
THE BATTLE ENDED quickly. The Shantasi First Army had been determined and vicious, and the Krote machines cut down dozens at a time. Near the end many Krotes dismounted and took on the remaining warriors themselves, enjoying the chance for true swordplay. Fights went on for some time, the Shantasi already filled with the knowledge that they were the final few left alive. Lenora respected their tenacity; none of them dropped their swords and submitted to their fate. They all fought hard and died hard, and one or two even defeated one Krote opponent before being taken down by the next.
By the time the last Shantasi was killed, the transport machines were harvesting the first of the new living dead and dropping them into their cages.
Lenora ordered a brief halt, wanting to take stock of the fight and see how badly her force had been damaged. Ducianne rode back and forth gathering reports, and Lenora slipped from her machine and knelt on the ground, eyes closed.
“Leave me alone,” she said to her daughter’s shade. “For a while, please leave me alone. There’s work to do here, and then I’ll come for you.” But the shade only retreated to brood silently deep within her mind.
“Mistress, we’ve lost thirty machines and fifty warriors. And all the flyers are gone.”
Lenora looked up to her friend. Ducianne was frowning through a crust of drying blood. She knew that something was wrong. “That’s not too bad,” Lenora said. “Gather everyone here. We push for Kang Kang in an hour.”
“Are you hurting, Lenora?”
Strange way to ask, Lenora thought. Hurting, not hurt. She stood and shook her head, sheathing her sword and stretching. Her old joints clicked, several new wounds cooling as blood clotted them shut. “I’m old, Ducianne, you forget that. I’m not a youngster like you.”
Ducianne nodded and rode away. Lenora knew that her friend was not comfortable with Lenora’s unnatural age, how it could be or who had allowed it.
Lenora stretched again and turned to her machine. It watched her, and was that condemnation she saw in those blank eyes, or merely the reflection of her own? “Your night is far from over,” she said. She turned south and walked a few hundred steps in that direction, leaving the hustle of the Krotes behind and facing the true darkness of Kang Kang. That’s no place to be, she thought, and a shimmer of fear passed through her. She was surprised, and pleased. Fear showed that she was truly ready to face whatever they found once they entered that range of mountains. No place at all.
Tim Lebbon
Dawn
Chapter 19
HOPE FOLLOWED ALISHIA, following the path. Sometimes the girl tired and Hope carried her, slung across both arms or resting over a shoulder. Other times the girl seemed to be the strong one, forging barefoot through the thickening snow, climbing ever higher. The path guided them, and Alishia seemed happy to allow that. Whatever she had seen-wherever she had been-Hope had no choice but to let the girl’s trust carry them forward.
Many things in Kang Kang were strange, but the path wended its way between them. It was almost as though the path was outside Kang Kang, a tributary of normality carrying them through this place that should not be. They heard, saw and smelled things that defied explanation-the cries of children where there were none, great trees rooted in nothing, fruit stinking of blood hanging on those same trees’ branches-but the path was always there, true and straight. Even covered with snow it was still the obvious route.
Hope had to tear and tie up Alishia’s dress when it started to tangle in her feet. Her top as well, twisted tighter beneath the coat that could not be so easily adjusted. She became chubby around her stomach and cheeks, even though Hope had not seen her eat anything for some time. Her voice changed, but not the words. Alishia still spoke like an adult, and sometimes she repeated the things Hope had heard her muttering whilst asleep, the language of the land that she pretended not to understand.
She knows so much, Hope thought. I’m due what she knows. It’s coming to me, as I’ve always known it should. She stared at the back of Alishia’s head as they walked higher into the mountains. Occasionally the girl turned and smiled at the witch, and Hope always smiled back. She could feel the tattoos flexing beneath her skin, the coolness of Kang Kang seeping up through her shoes and into her bones, the windchill penetrating her clothing in an attempt to freeze her old woman’s heart. But it had been frozen long before now, and her obsession kept her warm.