A scream of rage tears itself loose from her throat, as she punches down into the dark earth. Panic rattles in her heart as her brave, battered army surges forwards. Less than a third of them left, flensed down by steel and sorcery. They think she has done this. They think shemeantthis.
She screams as she straightens a crooked arm in its socket, and mutters a prayer to Slickwalker under her breath. ‘Don’t let me down.’
The mountain answers in smoke and black fire. Rock thunders loose, and with it, something else. The dead writhing to the surface, likes worms after rain. Rushing to the Emperor, that golden traitor roiling in the body of the composite. Calling to them, pulling them into the mountain. She flexes the fingers of her twisted arm.
Let them come, she has killed gods before.
But she’s not alone this time. She can’t let her people pay the toll for her mistake, which means she has to move fast, faster than the dead. She needs to call the crows.
She sighs. This is going to hurt. Even as the thought crosses her mind, her spine bucks. She shudders, retches, sprouting feathersand blackness before she leaps into the air, into the between spaces. The colours and sounds of the world wash away as the weight of her body leaves her, draining into a hundred beating wings, a hundred hammering hearts. Distributed, she moves with speed and purpose. The between spaces hum and click, like static, like shell, like bone. They eat at the edges of her. She wants to fall into them, to stop being, but her people need her. She finds Slickwalker by the sound of his heart and tumbles towards him on a hundred small wings. Under her flurrying bodies, she sees the remains of her army helping each other towards the sundered gate, with arms around waists, shields interlocked, singing. Thell’s soldiers mounting a defence, but reeling backwards, stunned by the shock of it all, the smoke, the riven god. Astic’s army collides with them in a grey wave, pushing them back into the mountain, at terrible cost, death thick on both sides.
As the body of Crowkisser’s army charges the gate, she watches long men, brave long men, shin up the cliff face like spiders, into the first breaches on the battlements, heedless of the danger, terrified in their hearts, but deadly. They slide around spear-points, taking off fingers, toes, slipping blades into arrogant throats.
As the first blood falls from those brief exchanges Crowkisser finally sees the dead clearly, as they slip over the shoulders of her army like a bright shroud; the lost souls of the Empire, numberless, liquid. She can’t give a shape to them, just a sensation of teeth, nails and hunger. When they reach the gate, they pause briefly, spilling up against the black stone like water from a spilt cup.
She circles them curiously, sends bits of herself towards the wall to harry eyes and tongues. The dead clot and swirl. The side of the Stump flickers with angular magics in a brief hint at Skinpainter’s skill, the sheer scale of their wards, black and red geometries as tall as a house flashing in stark patterns against the mountain’s flanks. The disembodied horde nips at their edges, yowling as they’re cast back. Then, from deep within the mountain, something pushes outwards, a seething wave of rage and purpose. The protective angles fail and power pulses against the flock. Crows scatter, wards shatter and the Empire’s unboundsouls scream in elation. Crowkisser feels their joy buffet her and shares it for a second, until she sees what they intend to do.
The speed at which the dead move is incredible, pouring forwards towards the frontline of the battle, towards the blades and the blood. The first few carom off the tattooed bodies of Thell’s soldiers, before Crowkisser sees a blade flash, breaking a black line stitched across an upraised arm. The injured woman staggers back, but the dead are on her in seconds, worrying at the rent like dogs. When they slip inside her ragged body, Crowkisser realises that she’s no longer party to a liberation. This is an infestation, and it spreads with horrific speed. A few heartbeats of writhing flesh and contorted muscle and the battle-wounded light with a feral energy, their bodies fired and moved by the dead.
That ridden woman turns her raised spear on the fisherboy set against her, slides spread fingers along the haft, down into his guts and pulls. Crowkisser watches as she takes the fallen man’s knife and hacks into the shocked warrior next to her. With every cut, every rip, the dead pour into opened veins and make them dance. Thell’s frontlines collapse in on themselves until Crowkisser’s army are left facing only the red teeth of the ridden dead. The ghosts of the Empire are choosing their targets.
If she doesn’t do something, no one is leaving this mountain alive. A litany of curses roll through her head. She’s so sick of this. She can’t believe there’s another one, another tyrant, anotherthingtrying to rule by taking free will from ordinary folk. Not again.Not again.
She has no idea how to fight this. The gods and their hosts had been clear targets, solid and real. The dead are spreading through the mountain like a cancer, like slime across a pond, threading the veins of the living, drawn to the blood of Thell. The flocking spirits are seemingly uninterested in her grey-cloaked warriors, but the things they raise inside those broken bodies are a different story, tearing into anything that crosses their path. Still, she might have time to salvage this. She doesn’t feel the dead in the between spaces, yet. But she can hear Slickwalker’s heartbeat somewhere below, and she remembers that he has veins, and blood and aheart. Crows arrow downwards towards the battlements where he waits. She veers into herself with a suddenness that makes her stagger and throws herself into his arms.
He pulls her close, his fingers light on the back of her head, small kisses on her temples, ‘Did you see the gate?’ His voice is afire. ‘Did you see it? I wasn’t sure it would work. But it did! Every single shiver like a struck match. We did it.’
Crowkisser stays in his arms as the colour, sound and pain of the world floods back in. She can hear screaming and the clash of blades, mingled with strange, long howls which can only be the dead. The battle sounds like the south, right before it burnt. She stiffens against Slickwalker, and he realises in a heartbeat that something is wrong. One gloved hand rests lightly on her jaw. ‘What is it, Kiss? We’re winning.’
She beckons him to the lip of the ledge, closer to the storm. ‘Look.’ Below them, the battle rages. The dead continue to stream into the Stump, and Thell’s injured continue to rise and dance. Her own army steadily driven back in confusion. Her finger is a weight, down into the heart of the mountain, into the slick of killing.
Slickwalker’s fingers grip the stone, her wrist. ‘What is this, Kiss?’ He sounds young and afraid.
She shakes her head. No time to coddle him. Presses her lips together, runs a hand through her hair, picking out scraps of feather. ‘We’ve been betrayed. I made a deal. To free Thell’s dead. To use them against our enemies.’
Slickwalker’s face is confused, naïve. ‘A deal with who?’
She watches him carefully, decides to risk a little truth. ‘With the last ruler of the mountain. With the Emperor.’
From below them comes a welter of screams as another knot of Thell’s soldiers collapses in on itself. She’s stunned to see some of her own people diving into the morass, pulling the uninjured clear. Shepherding them back behind a hastily formed shield-wall. What is happening here? What can she make from it?
There’s a stilted pause as she runs the angles, before she takes Slickwalker’s hands, presses her head against his hammeringchest. ‘I didn’t know this would happen. I had to do something. You’ve seen what my father’s capable of.’ She waves her hand in exasperation. ‘He can raisegods.’
Here on the ledge, Slickwalker’s not coping. Crowkisser watches the blunt lines of his face process the situation and despairs a little. Predictably, he squeezes her fingers, runs a thumb over her knuckles. ‘This isn’t your fault. It can’t be.’
She refrains from rolling her eyes, barely, but it’s hard to keep the frustration from her voice. ‘It is. I did this. I made a bad choice, and now we’re paying for it.’ His eyes are wide, uncomprehending, so she steps forwards, takes his jaw in her hands. ‘The sooner you realise I’m not perfect, the better off we’ll all be.’
Under their feet, a few storeys down, the tides have changed. Grey cloaks stand next to tall tower shields and levelled spears. Loud, methodical shouts guide the living away from the dead, who roil in snarling masses, still too cowardly to attack the steadier lines forming in front of them. They charge in yapping packs and are cast back by nets, boathooks, leaf-bladed spears. Thell and Astic, working shoulder to shoulder.
Crowkisser watches the lines with narrowed eyes, and a plan begins to form. There’s potential here. Nothing unifies like terror. The south had taught her that.
She turns back to Slickwalker, widens her eyes a little, slipping just the hint of a tremor into her voice. ‘We have to help them, Slick. I’m not letting my people die to this. I won’t let their “Emperor” do this to me. That old ghost doesn’t know who he’s messing with.’
He winces. ‘I’ll sound the retreat.’
‘No!’ Her fingers lace into his armour, pull him close, off-balance. ‘We have to helpallof them. I’ve no use for a mountain full of corpses.’ She starts towards the nearest ramp winding down from the battlements, turns, arms outstretched. ‘Please. We can’t leave them to this. We have to be better than that.’
‘They’ll kill you.’ His voice is flat. More resolute than usual. Irritating. He needs a push.
