There’s a shout at her side as her father lifts a woman by the throat, and dashes her against the wall. Icecaller throws open-armed over his shoulder, piercing a tall knife-wielding man above the hip and kicks his blade clear, crushing his jaw with her boot.
The air thickens with chattering as the dead are drawn to the battle, to the blood and cutting. She slides through a susurrus, eyes locked on her father’s back. Soldiers in familiar armour begin to flock towards them. Not far now, a few more curves to the sleeping chambers and Nigh. They’ve delved deep, fast. Then she can save the little snot and they’ll drive these grey rat-fuckers out of her home.
As they push forwards, something skirts Icecaller’s spine and she flinches reflexively, ducks low on an ankle and pivots. A spear flicking back. It’s a soldier she recognises – Marktamer, young and blonde. She laughs in shock, spreads her arms reflexively, grins. ‘It’s me, you dumb cunt.’
Marktamer’s thrown shield takes her in the mouth. She feels a tooth rattle loose as she staggers backwards. Something grabs her ankles and pulls her down. She scrabbles furiously away from fallen bodies and broken blades, lashes out and connects with a skull, another familiar face, half-pinned to the floor by a spear through the spine and animated by some feverish light. The glow of the dead licks across their skin, their broken tattoos.
A thin whine slides out of Icecaller’s lips. She can feel the pieces sliding together in her brain, but it hurts, and she doesn’t, doesn’t want to think. So, she acts instead. Brings her left heel down like a hammer until she feels the fingers clutching her leg break. Rolls to the left as a blood-wet spear hammers into the ground next to her. Staggers to her feet. ‘Fuck you.’
She grits her teeth, straightens her aching spine. Circles, studies the soldiers facing them. All her people. All alight with something wild and hungry in the eyes. The dead hovering at their shoulders, plunging in and out of their broken skin. Icecaller scuffs out space with her spear, loops it in front of their snarling faces as she reaches backwards for her shield and slips an arm through the straps. ‘Fuck. You.’
They laugh at her, yipping, loose-jawed, shoulders jutting. She sees ragged cuts in their bodies, the geometrics split, hanging loosely. Knife marks, and spear marks and something worse at the edges, a ragged tearing. Their throats and temples pulse hungrily. She steadies her breathing, lets herself feel her diaphragm rise and fall. Adjusts her weight, calls out, low and easy. ‘Dad?’
She feels his back come to rest against hers. ‘I see them, love. Steady.’
She is, somehow. She can feel the breath through his body, smell the stink of him, the warm rock of his ribs, the slow shift as the hammer swings back and forth. She leans into him, watching the soldiers. Nottheirsoldiers anymore but the dead of the Empire, wearing new bodies; all Skinpainter’s old folktales come to life. Faces she knows, pulled into strange angles, sharpened and bloody. They pace outside the range of her spear. ‘What’s the plan Dad?’ Her voice comes out steadier than she feels.
He lashes out, batting a questing blade aside. ‘Follow me, foot for foot. We’ll hit the sleeping chambers and hold there until the Singers or Painter arrive.’
Icecaller purses her lips, jabs warningly at a questing hand. ‘Wish Painter was here right now.’
Her dad hums consolingly. ‘It’s just us, little eagle. But that’s not new.’
They start to move slowly backwards and down, surrounded by a circle of steel and shredded flesh, their former friends, wide-eyed and hungry. Icecaller presses herself into the sway of her father’s back and follows his rhythm. Above them, the Stump erupts in a flurry of noise. The cawing of crows tumbles down the tunnels, over the screams and ring of steel.
‘Crowkisser’s here then.’
‘Later,’ Kinghammer says. ‘We kill her later.’
They shuffle onwards. Below them, echoes of violence swill through the mountain, but stronger still, she hears the sound of singing, tunes she feels in her bones. The Deadsingers, a few storeys beneath her feet, dry lips lifted to the roof, seamed faces held in soft light, voices rising to fill the council chamber with echoes. As they send their song out into the mountain, pushing back the chaos of battle, Icecaller can see them in her mind, hand in hand, harmonising. Twin sisters, always there at the binding of things; barely seen otherwise. Icecaller’s never missed them like this.
Because they sound quiet up here, when all else she can hear is the shuffle and drag of her former friends readying to kill her. The slow scrape of blades. The stumbling weight of broken feet. The quiet drip of clotted blood. And under that, something speaking, moving. Rats in the muscles. Scurrying, burrowing lumps that pulse under stomachs, throats, eyes. Brief shapes in the smoke. Chattering on the edges of her hearing. Forming in breathless, snarling gasps before her face. She taps a hand against her father’s hip. ‘It’s them, isn’t it, Dad? The Empire’s dead.’
He spits. ‘What’s left of them. Left of him.’
She twists the spear, slaps it down on grasping forearms, shatters ribs. ‘The Emperor? I thought you all … dealt with him.’
He puts a hand back to guide her over sprawled bodies. The Deadsingers’ voices swell from somewhere below, and they sprint forwards into a brief gap.
‘The oldest cunts are the hardest to kill,’ her father mutters. He swings the hammer. ‘You can cut.’ Bone breaks. ‘You can burn.’ Blood pools. ‘You can crush.’ Soft wet growling. A raised boot. ‘You can dig it up by the root. But,’ he pauses, his breath heavy. ‘There’s always, always some fuckerplanting.’
He rolls his shoulders wearily, the haft of the hammer sliding slowly over the bone. ‘Look, let’s talk about this once we’re clear. We’re almost there.’
Icecaller believes him. Better, she feels it in her gut. In his calm voice. In the sound of her friends singing below. If she doesn’t notice the dead growing closer, who can blame her? If it takes a moment to mark the straightening of their backs, and the sharpening of their teeth, who could judge?
The loss, like all losses, happens in a moment. One breath to the next. The ridden dead are hard to spot in the shadows. Only the light on their broken skin. So Icecaller watches their eyes, their mouths. They snarl before they leap. The gums peel back, their whole fucking mouth like a box of blades. Terrifying, but it gives the briefest clue of what’s coming.
Three come for her at once. Icecaller dodges the first, kicks out at the ankles. It tumbles, and she’s moving to slide around the blade of the second, her spear down into the calves of the fallen one, using the momentum to vault forwards. Feet into the chest of the third, a sharp blow to its temple with her shield. She can’t bring herself to kill them. Not yet. Not when they might still be saved.
Four more go for her father. His hammer arcs out to meet the first two, a crushing pendulum. The other pair latch on to his arms, pulling him down. His knees buckle. She turns to help him. Loses count of the bastards. And before she knows it, there’s a flicker, and a weight on her, something hot and stinking inches from her face. A tongue against her cheekbones. Teeth scrabbling for purchase. Thighs on her back pinning her down. Fingers inher hair. Blades skittering off her armour and something, something laughing in her head. Her tattoos flare hot.
She can’t lift her spear, there are knees on her elbows, grinding her against the stone. She snaps her head back, yells triumphantly at the crunch of cartilage. She can’t move. She arches her hips, scrabbles futilely with her left hand. She can’t get loose from the shield-straps. She can’t move. Nails start unbuckling her armour with quiet determination. Something wet and heavy snickers above. More of them pile on. She feels teeth skirt her neck and something howls in her own blood in response. She almost wants to bare her throat, to shuck off the weight and let them in. She screams, her voice hoarse as it skitters across the slick stone.
She thinks of Nigh. Pushes herself up hard into the foraging mouth, lets the cusp of her armour crunch their wet teeth. Twists her shoulders till they scream, driving them backwards into wriggling ribs. Spins herself around, somehow. Looks into the face of the thing on top of her. Drives her knees up again and again, until it goes soft and wet and still. Pushes it away with shaking hands.
It pushes back.
It’s still not dead. Wrecked and ruined, but still moving. Broken bones realign and scurry under its skin as it pulls itself onto her writhing body, pinning her down. Its friends laugh like jackals. She screams again. Not here. Please not here. Not with Nigh so far. Not with her dad so close. It’s so strong. She arches her spine. She can’t move.
