Forged in Blood II

  More shots fired, farther away this time. Maybe the soldiers were leading them—whoever them was—away from the ship. There weren’t any other lights out on the field, and Amaranthe was conscious of their two lanterns, like beacons against the black hull.

  Three more body-sized lumps in the snow waited ahead of them, and her stomach squirmed. They’d have to walk around them. She wasn’t going to risk stepping on somebody, dead or not. Nor did she want a good look at them—they might have been cut in half by the edge of the Behemoth.

  Except it didn’t look like that, she admitted as they drew closer. The three bodies were crumpled, one half leaning against the hull. It was as if they’d died after the ship landed.

  Tikaya and Mahliki veered to the side to walk around the spot—Amaranthe wondered if it occurred to them what those snow-blanketed bumps were. She started to step to the side, too, but halted.

  “Wait,” she blurted.

  If these people had died after the ship landed, what had killed them? Injuries acquired jumping out of a door? Or maybe they’d been injured during the crash and had fled, but their wounds had been too bad to make it farther than the exit. Enh, that might make sense for one, but for all three?

  “What is it?” The way Tikaya eyed the lumps suggested she’d twigged to what they were.

  “People trying to escape, I think,” Amaranthe said, “implying a door up there perhaps.”

  “Ah?” Tikaya lifted her lantern as high as she could to study the hull.

  “Must be way up there,” Maldynado said, “if they broke their necks falling out.”

  Broken necks? Would that explain it? Maybe they’d been running from some of those cubes—at the thought, Amaranthe gave their surroundings another quick check—and hadn’t realized the door would be so high above ground level.

  “No, I think I see the bottom edge there,” Tikaya said, “about ten feet up. Can someone give me a boost? Maybe there are runes etched in the hull, something that would allow entry from outside.”

  “Allow me to offer my shoulders, my lady.” Maldynado dipped to one knee and laced his fingers together, offering her a leg up.

  As Tikaya removed some of her gear and prepared to scale Mount Maldynado, Basilard knelt next to the bodies and brushed away snow. Amaranthe had thought of doing the same thing, to figure out why these people had succumbed to the afterlife in that particular spot, but she hadn’t wanted to stare into the accusing eyes of the dead.

  Stop it, she told herself. She had to accept the blame for now and deal with the guilt later.

  Basilard knelt back, his pale blue eyes finding hers, a message in them.

  “What is it?” Amaranthe leaned closer.

  A lot of snow still coated the bodies, but the yawning red canyon slashed into the neck of the frozen woman on top of the pile was hard to miss. Arteries severed. A quick death. One that hadn’t been caused by the crash, and not one the cubes had inflicted either.

  One of Basilard’s gloved fingers made his throat-cutting sign, the one he used for Sicarius’s name.

  “I… don’t know,” Amaranthe said. “He’s not the only one in the world who cuts throats.”

  “Just one of the best,” Maldynado muttered then grunted as he hoisted the professor into the air.

  Not the natural athlete her daughter promised to be, Tikaya struggled, slipping and thumping a knee into Maldynado’s ear, but she did finally attain her perch atop his shoulders. “Light, please.”

  Mahliki handed the lantern up to her mother.

  Basilard uncovered the other two bodies, pointing out that they—a man and a second woman—had also been killed by a knife and that none of the three had been appropriately dressed for the sub-freezing temperatures outside.

  “If it was him,” Amaranthe whispered, “what’d he do? Kill these people as they were coming out? Assume they were part of Forge and therefore enemies?”

  Maybe he was looking for you, Basilard signed.

  That was possible. If he’d seen the crash, he would have guessed that she’d be in the Behemoth. “So he killed these three and then ran inside, checking to see if Books, Akstyr, and I were still in there?”

  Mostly you, I’d guess.

  Amaranthe twitched her fingers, to wave that away. She reminded herself that they had no way to know Sicarius had killed these people. It could have been some private with a knife, determined to defend the capital from the invaders who had destroyed Fort Urgot.

  “If he did go in there, looking for us, where is he now? It’s been a couple of days, long enough to search even that massive craft.” Assuming he hadn’t gotten lost—somehow she doubted it. She’d never seen him lose his way in woods, tunnels, or anywhere else. “Why didn’t he come back to the factory to see if we were there?”

  Basilard hesitated, then shrugged.

  Because he was injured or killed was probably what he thought, but wouldn’t say. Not to Amaranthe. As if she didn’t know how deadly some of the things inside the Behemoth were.

  Her eyes widened as she spotted movement out on the field, or rather, floating above the field. There were, she reminded herself, deadly things out here too.

  “Any luck with that door?” she asked, “because we may have a visitor coming.”

  Mahliki groaned. “Not again.”

  “I haven’t found any writing up here,” Tikaya said. “It’s possible though… hm.”

  The black cube, blending with the dark night, wouldn’t have been visible if not for the snow, but everyone spotted it easily against all that white. It hadn’t turned toward them yet—it was drifting along, parallel to the hull of the Behemoth. It stopped here and there to shoot a crimson beam out, incinerating some stick or branch. It paused at one point and melted a hump of snow. At first, Amaranthe thought a body lay underneath it, but the cube simply seemed to be burning snow into water. Because it saw the white stuff as debris to be removed? Or because it was broken? Whatever Retta’s assistant had done to change the cubes hadn’t been that well thought out. Understandable, given the rush she’d been in….

  “It’s open. We can go in by thrusting ourselves through the membrane here.” Tikaya pushed her hand through a section of the hull to demonstrate. “We just have to climb up.”

  Oh, right, Amaranthe should have mentioned that. She’d walked out a door like that during her escape.

  “Let’s get to climbing then,” Maldynado said. “That black butt sniffer is getting closer.”

  Butt sniffer? Basilard signed.

  “That’s not quite how the original word translates.” Tikaya’s fingers disappeared into the hull as she gripped something behind the barrier—membrane, that’s what she’d called it. “Give me a boost, please, Mister Maldynado.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Maldynado grabbed the bottoms of her feet and hoisted her up, perhaps with more vigor than expected, for a startled squawk floated down.

  Tikaya made it inside though, her body disappearing in segments as she squirmed over the ledge.

  “That looks so odd,” Maldynado said.

  “Hoist her daughter up next,” Amaranthe said. “We should—”

  “My bow!” came Tikaya’s voice from above. “Throw up my bow and my rucksack.”

  Mahliki hissed. Maldynado snatched the longbow from where it leaned against the hull, threw it at the membrane, then reached for the pack. But Mahliki had it between her knees as she pawed through the contents.

  “Here, we’ll throw the whole thing up.” Maldynado reached for it.

  “No.” Mahliki pulled it back. “I know what she needs.” She yanked out a ceramic jar. “Mother, I have it. Can you catch it?”

  A beam of red streaked out of the hull, out of the door-membrane.

  Mahliki spat a Kyattese curse.

  Basilard grabbed the jar in one arm and scrambled up a surprised Maldynado, launching himself from the bigger man’s shoulders. The force sent Maldynado tumbling backward into the snow, but Basilard reached the door and hauled himself insi
de.

  “Me next,” Amaranthe barked, waving for Maldynado to hurry up and stand so he could give her a boost. Though curved, the Behemoth’s hull was too sheer for her to climb.

  “Look out!” a man cried from the edge of the field. A rifle cracked.

  Amaranthe crouched, her back to the Behemoth. She spotted two soldiers—two of the men who’d accompanied her team over here—one with a lantern, one holding a smoking rifle.

  She assumed he was firing at the cube, but, no, it had drifted off to her left, toward the lake. There were more men in the shadows at the edge of the field, and something bulky with a—

  “Down,” Maldynado barked, grabbing her leg.

  In the same second that he yanked her from her feet, a thunderous boom sounded. Something head-sized hammered into the hull a few feet above them. Not head-sized, Amaranthe realized, cannonball-sized. Some idiots were trying to blow their way into the Behemoth.

  The cannonball clanged off with as much force as it’d struck, taking off at an angle and sailing toward the lake, landing with a distant crack-splash. Amaranthe rolled from her back to her belly, pulling out her pistol again.

  Excited chatter came from the direction of what she now recognized as a mobile field cannon.

  “…why’d you shoot, dolt… they found a way in.”

  “Can’t let others get in first… treasure…”

  “Watch out for the…”

  The pair of soldiers were charging toward the people manning the cannon. The snow slowed them down, and they didn’t cross the distance as quickly as they would have liked. A couple of the dark figures turned toward them. Nobody over there was holding a lamp, though someone held a burning brand, ready to load and light the cannon again. Amaranthe cut out their own remaining lantern and aimed her pistol at the brand. She didn’t want to hit anyone, but she did want to keep them from shooting at her allies.

  “Owph,” Maldynado grunted, enduring a slap from Mahliki.

  “Get up, and throw me up there. Mother’s in trouble, and your friend too.”

  “Do it,” Amaranthe said, though she didn’t take her eye from her target. She fired.

  The short-barreled pistol lacked the accuracy of the rifles, and there must have been fifty, sixty meters between them and the cannon, but the brand flew to the snow behind the shadowy figures. She’d either struck true or surprised the man enough for him to drop it.

  Someone over there fired anyway, not at her, but at the approaching soldiers.

  The two men dropped to their bellies in the snow. They were controlled drops, Amaranthe thought, not like one might see if a man received a rifle ball to the chest.

  “Get rid of your lantern,” she called to the soldiers. The light made them easy to target.

  The soldiers must have been thinking the same thing, for the lantern was extinguished immediately.

  Another shot fired from the group by the cannon—they’d crouched down and were now using the big artillery piece for cover. The bullet clanged off the hull high overhead. Maldynado swore. It must have come close to hitting him. He was standing, having lifted Mahliki into the ship.

  Amaranthe pulled ammo and powder out of her belt pouches, wondering how she hadn’t managed to retain any of Forge’s repeating firearms for herself.

  A shot boomed not far from her ear, Maldynado unleashing a round at the relic raiders or whatever they were. For all she knew, they were some of Ravido’s soldiers, trying to recover tools or devices from within the Behemoth for his allies. No, the Forge people would have known enough to instruct those men on the proper way to enter the ship. A cannon. What idiots.

  They continued to exchange fire with the pair of soldiers, who continued to shoot from their bellies. One of the men by the cannon cried out and flopped to his back. His fall didn’t stop his comrades from shooting.

  “We might want to find better cover, boss,” Maldynado said, “if we’re staying out here.”

  Amaranthe didn’t want to stay out there. She wanted to fling herself into the Behemoth and help the others with what had to be more of those cubes, cubes that might not be as defective as the one roaming about out here. A cannon could kill her just as dead as a beam of energy though.

  As if to remind her of the fact, someone fired in their direction. She ducked her head. The rifle ball skimmed across the snow six inches to her right and ricocheted off the hull. She didn’t know where it went, but heard it whistle by her ear. Far too close for her tastes.

  “Cover, where?” Amaranthe tried to wriggle deeper into the snow. “There aren’t any trees left around—there isn’t any anything left around.”

  “Uhm—oh, those’ll be frozen solid.”

  Without rising from his stomach, Maldynado grabbed one of the corpses and dragged it toward them. Amaranthe couldn’t squelch her grimace—or her squeamish repulsion at the idea of using dead human beings for cover.

  Less squeamish, Maldynado did the work, piling the three corpses up in front of them. Before he’d finished, a rifle ball slammed into one, proving his words true. Frozen solid, indeed.

  “Gruesome, but effective,” Maldynado said.

  “I’ll say. All we’ve bought ourselves is a stand-off though. Those people probably brought tons of ammo to lay siege to the ship.”

  “I could thump them all into the nearest snow drift if I could make it over there without being shot.” Maldynado pounded a fist into his gloved hand for emphasis.

  He probably could if given the opportunity to hurl himself into the middle of the pack.

  “So you need a distraction,” Amaranthe mused. “Where’d that cube go?”

  Maldynado pointed far to their left, toward a couple of trees by the lake with the tops shorn off. “It’s been incinerating the fallen needles, one at a time, around the base of that pine.”

  “Its job is to clean things, I understand.”

  “If we could arrange to lob a few tons of pine needles over to land on top of that cannon, it might drift over and pay those blokes a visit.”

  “Unfortunately, I forgot to pack my pine-needle-launcher,” Amaranthe said.

  “Mercenary leaders are supposed to be prepared for anything, you know.”

  “I’m failing on all sorts of levels lately.” Amaranthe flicked a finger toward the cube. “I wonder if it’d get annoyed and come visit if you shot it.”

  “I’d think that would be a given, but why would you want it to visit?”

  “I wouldn’t, but maybe we could convince our enemies to shoot it.”

  “Uh, yes, and how do you plan to do that?”

  “I noticed that the curving hull of the Behemoth causes projectiles to ricochet off at an angle,” Amaranthe said. “In fact, that first cannonball landed not far from where the cube is now.”

  Maldynado stared at her. “You’re not thinking…”

  “It couldn’t hurt to try. If one of their bullets comes anywhere close, and the cube notices, maybe it’ll drift over there and say hello to them.”

  A long moment passed with Maldynado staring at her before he said, “There are times like this when I wish I’d gone to the military academy and joined the army.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s a soldier axiom about not sharing a foxhole with anyone crazier than yourself. If I’d actually joined, I’d be able to quote it precisely. That would be apt right now.”

  “Ha ha.” Amaranthe considered the curving hull again, then pushed up to her hands and knees. “Don’t worry. I think we need the bullet to strike a few meters in that direction if there’s hope for it to land anywhere close to the cube. I won’t draw fire to our foxhole, such as it is.”

  “I don’t want you to draw fire at all.” Maldynado reached for her.

  Amaranthe sprang away from him—she didn’t want his protectiveness to convince him to volunteer for the drawing-fire assignment. Utter foolery shouldn’t be delegated; one should take the risk and accept the consequences oneself.

  “Wait,” Maldyn
ado blurted as she ran from cover. “They’ve got the brand. They’re going to light the—”

  A cacophonous boom tore across the field, and Amaranthe flung herself into the snow. The cannonball didn’t come anywhere close to hitting her—it wasn’t a weapon meant to fire at a moving target—but it startled all the needles off her branches. Instead of landing in a controlled roll, she face-planted in the snow as the cannonball clanged off the hull. The reverberations thundering against her eardrums made her feel like the clapper in a clock tower bell.

  Ignoring her pulsing eardrums, she jerked her head up, trying to see where the ball landed. It’d already struck its target. The tree next to the one the cube had been working around wobbled, then fell to the snow.

  The cube, lacking any animal instincts, didn’t draw back with a start, but its beam did wink out, and it paused, hovering in place.

  A hand clamped around Amaranthe’s ankle. “Get back here, you fool woman,” Maldynado growled, hauling her back to the barrier of bodies.

  The action sent a barrage of snow down her trousers and she would have cursed his ancestors if she could manage anything so coherent. As soon as he let her go, she scraped handfuls of the cold stuff out of her undergarments. “Not calling me ‘boss,’ anymore?”

  “Not when you—emperor’s teeth, Amaranthe, it’s just as likely to think the attack came from here.”

  She’d thought of that and pointed toward the hull overhead. “We can flee inside if it heads this direction.”

  She lifted her head to see if it was going to head anywhere at all. It’d left its position by the pine tree, and it took her a moment to find it. The dark form was floating across the snow, not toward them but toward the cannon and clump of men around it.

  Amaranthe refrained from a triumphant fist pump and a chortle, instead extending her arm, palm up toward the cube, as if showing off a particularly fine dish she’d delivered to the table.

  “I see it,” Maldynado grumbled. “That doesn’t make you any less crazy.”

  No, probably not, Amaranthe thought, wondering if she’d take such risks if she weren’t feeling like she herself deserved to die after all the carnage she’d wrought. Nonetheless, she took satisfaction in the startled cries and curses from the cannon men. The two soldiers took advantage of their distraction, firing fresh rounds into their midst. Maldynado had reloaded, and he fired again as well. A yelp of pain announced someone’s shot finding flesh.