The dead are a bare few feet from the front line.
His vision shifts as Dropdancer hauls him up. They’re mouthing something at him, but the pain has filled his head like water.
Then the world shifts.
A bell tolls out, light and fierce. Shroudweaver can feel the vibrations lift the hair on his head and run down his spine. That iron-haired woman gestures, and a building in front of their line shears apart, stone and tile thundering down on the advancing dead.
In the same moment, that massive brute unslings his hammer, and calls out: ‘For the Republic!’ A voice like an unexpected landslide.
Shroudweaver feels Dropdancer’s hand on his wrist, their voice urgent. ‘What the fuck, Weaver?! What the actual fuck?’
He turns to them and smiles through the pain. ‘Turns out I’ve friends in unexpected places, Drop.’
In front of them the hammer swings like judgement and the dead it meets splinter into fragments. Its wielder laughs with every blow, savage and wild. At his back, the living soldiers of Thell lower spears and charge into the unsuspecting ranks of the dead.
The Gem’s head whips around, and immediately the pressure on Shroudweaver’s stomach ceases.
It’s almost too late. The charging dead are only partially halted, hundreds of them still only a heartbeat or two from thundering into Hesper’s line again.
Behind them, the rebellious soldiers are fighting hard, clinically, their spears puncturing skulls and severing sinew.
Their new allies’ front rank kneels, and the soldiers behind springboard off outstretched shields to rain down metal upon the dead. That hammer still swings. The iron-haired woman has drawn a slim sword, wielding it and the bell with shattering precision.
For a moment, the momentum is with the living, and before Shroudweaver knows why or how, he’s climbing over the rubble, and someone’s calling for the charge, and it’s him.
Dropdancer follows him laughing, and then like grains of sand tipped down a hill, the marines charge, over the broken building and into the oncoming dead.
Shroudweaver ducks the first incoming blow, reaches with his red right hand and pulls indiscriminately. The worst possible thing to do. Artless. Dangerous. This deep in the press though, there’s nothing but the dead in front of him, and he rips their souls from them like meat from a bone.
When they take root inside him, those souls are screaming. There’s nothing but bodies pressing on bodies after that. The brutal hack of the marines’ blades, Dropdancer’s curved sword and the matching arc of their smile.
Somehow, Hesper is gaining ground. Forcing the dead back against Thell’s spears.
It’s then that the Gem comes for him. That black horse changes, manifesting new joints which pop and twist, angling itself in impossible ways to traverse the rubble and masonry.
Shroudweaver turns to face it, and for a second, he feels the return of that shredding pain in his chest, before his eyes catch sight of a hooded figure in neat robes of red and yellow, battling through the press. The dead claw at their sleeves. Shreds of cloth spin loose, but the grasping hands and swinging maces always seem to miss the bone.
The Gem sees the figure coming at the last moment, rears its twisting, chittering horse and charges, that black sword of rough metal in its hand, studded with the same crystal that hides its face.
The dead try to scramble from its path, some curious terror filling them, but the horse rides over and through them, snapping bone, rib and spine.
As its gaze shifts, Shroudweaver feels the pain fade. He watches with hitched breath as the Gem’s sword swings down towards the hooded figure like a talon and somehow, misses. The robed figure leans back briefly behind the shields of the soldiers to either side, and emerges again like a striking snake, a leaf-blade spear in its right hand, haft writhing with markings black as ink.
The Gem raises its blade to intercept, guiding the horse to one side, its multiplied, flexing hooves thundering in the soft soil.
A twitch of the hooded figure’s inked fingers, and the spear jukes slightly in mid-air, skims the blade of the sword, and strikes the side of the quartz mask with force, an inch shy of exposed flesh.
Horse and rider stagger sideways as cracks spread in that implacable façade. The Gem unleashes a scream that’s more animal than man, turns and runs. Its mount scuttles up the side of the nearest building, its laboured lungs lurching with a wet, bubbling whine. A few bolts whizz after it, peppering the stone.
With the departure of their leader, the dead are lost for a moment, reeling like dreamers half-awakened.
Slowly, methodically, they are cut down.
Soon, there’s enough space for the two standing sides to regard each other. They’re tattered, war-ragged, bloody.
The hooded figure picks their way across the detritus, towards Hesper’s chewed lines.
Shroudweaver is stitching a cut on Dropdancer’s cheek. Thread just as thread, for once. He turns as they approach.
