Amaranthe ducked behind the seat. “Down, Yara,” she almost had time to shout. In the middle of her words that paw smashed through the glass.
Claws slashed, tearing through the air, groping for Amaranthe. She was aware of bullets firing, but more aware that they weren’t effective. The paw tore off the head of the dead man and the back of the chair as well. Both items flew out the door, slamming into the wall of the hollow.
Yara cursed and yanked out her pistol. Amaranthe, flat on her back now, trying to avoid that swiping claw, did the same, though she feared the weapons would be useless. She fired anyway, trying to hit the beast in the eye. The top of the cab blocked the target, though, and her round disappeared into the fur of its shoulder. If it hurt the creature at all, she couldn’t tell.
Then it grunted, moist saliva flying from its mouth, as its head was thrown forward. It cracked against the roof of the cab, and hot droplets of spittle flew through the broken window, spattering Amaranthe and Yara.
A black knife snaked around the creature’s neck, and she realized the reason for its grunt. Sicarius had climbed onto his back. His blade plunged into fur, seeking a vital vein.
Amaranthe thought that might be the end, but the makarovi reared up, gyrating in the air, and did a clumsy but effective somersault. It landed beside the drill head and charged back into the tunnel, batting aside rifles shooting in its direction. The wild move had flung Sicarius free, but he dropped feet-first to the earth and raced back into the fray.
“Even these fancy new Forge cartridges don’t do a cursed thing,” Yara snarled, checking the rounds, as if they’d betrayed her somehow.
“No, we need a bigger weapon.” Amaranthe found the control she’d been looking for and shouted, “Watch out for the drill,” over the chaos.
“Don’t skewer our own people.”
“No, it’ll have to be just right…” But Amaranthe couldn’t see much of what was in front of her with the massive cone in the way. This vehicle must typically employ ground guides to drill. She leaned out of the cab. “Trap it in the tunnel, right in front of us!”
Only gunshots answered her.
“Yara, would you risk…?” Amaranthe jerked her chin toward the space between the machine and the wall.
“Oh, sure, I’d love to. Never mind that there’s a dead man’s head right down there.” Her voice had grown squeaky and loud, but she clamped down on her terror and gave a quick enforcer’s salute before jumping to the ground.
“Get it,” Sespian cried. “Yes, the eye, the eye!”
Amaranthe couldn’t tell if they were working to follow her order or not. Maybe they hadn’t heard her over the screeches of the beast and their own gunshots. She was about to lean out of the cab and see for herself, but Yara shouted at her.
“Now, Amaranthe, now!”
Trusting her, Amaranthe shoved the accelerator to maximum. The vehicle lurched forward with a surge of power. She gritted her teeth, tenser than a bowstring. If one of the men got in the way…
With an even greater lurch, the borer slammed to a halt. For a second, she could hear the sheering of flesh and the grinding of bone as the drill spun, but a high-pitched squeal drowned it out.
“Hold,” Sicarius shouted. “I’ll finish it.”
The gunshots Amaranthe had been aware of halted. Unwilling to remain blind, she jumped out of the cab on the opposite side from Yara so she could see. She wished she hadn’t. The drill was still going—worried more about ramming the creature, she’d forgotten about it—and blood and fur spattered the walls and continued to fly through the air. Sicarius, his dagger sunken hilt-deep in that rubbery sheath of flesh, finally found the jugular. More blood spurted, and Amaranthe shrank back from the macabre sight.
“Uh, I think you can turn it off now,” Akstyr said.
Glad for the excuse to climb back into the cab, where she couldn’t see the pulverized beast, Amaranthe cut off the drill and backed the vehicle into the hollow again.
“Yup,” Akstyr said a moment later. “It’s dead. Real dead.”
Someone vomited.
Amaranthe supposed she couldn’t escape the tunnel without walking past that mess again. She wondered how long she could delay the unpleasantness. No, she needed to check and see if anyone was wounded.
Before she summoned the fortitude to walk back into the carnage, Sicarius hopped up beside her.
“You’ll note,” Amaranthe said, “that I did obey your order to stay in the cabin.” Actually, Maldynado had barked that blunt, “Stay,” but she was certain Sicarius would have agreed with it.
“So you did.” He gripped her arm gently. “Good work.”
“Thank you.”
He was contemplating her with… admiration? Satisfaction? As usual, he was hard to read, but enough warmth seeped through the expression to please her.
“Just so you know,” Amaranthe said, “I’d be happy to kiss you at a moment like this, but you have makarovi guts in your hair and a tuft of fur stuck to your jaw.”
“This is a problem for you?”
“I prefer my lovers to be clean and gore-free. It puts one in the proper mood to express physical endearments.”
“I shall remember your preferences.” Sicarius lifted a finger and scraped ichor off her jaw. Right, she must look as bad as he. And he didn’t care. He sounded… disappointed.
You almost died, girl, she thought, again. And the night was young. They could both end up dead. So why was she making jokes? Idiot.
“I changed my mind.” Amaranthe placed a hand on either of his shoulders, rose on tiptoes, and pressed her mouth to his. She had a sense that an I’m-glad-we-didn’t-die-and-there’s-still-work-to-do kiss shouldn’t be overly passionate or involved, but she found herself breathless when someone spoke in the tunnel, and they drew apart. Sicarius’s hand, she noted, had found its way to her back, and she fancied she felt the warmth of his flesh even through her jacket.
“One down, eleven to go,” Maldynado was saying.
It didn’t sound like anyone had noticed their leaders smooching in the cabin. A good thing, most likely.
Sicarius drew back, though he let his hand linger on the small of her back. Yes, she preferred that faintly pleased expression on his face to the disappointed one, even if, she was certain, nobody else could tell the difference.
He hopped out of the vehicle and offered her a hand, as if they were disembarking from a steam carriage or trolley and heading in for a night of fine dining. Amused, she accepted the help down.
Up front, Akstyr was kneeling by the creature’s head. He lifted a tuft of fur, revealing a silver chain around its neck.
Amaranthe groaned. “Sometimes I hate it when I’m right; I’m guessing those are similar to the ones the makarovi at the dam were wearing?”
“Not similar, the same,” Akstyr said. “If not the same pieces, they were made by the same Maker.”
“These aren’t the same makarovi, are they?” Books asked. “Could someone have found them wandering around the mountains at some point this last year and recaptured them?”
“I know a way to tell,” Maldynado said. “Lift up his leg and see if he has a big old scar in his nether regions. That’s how we hooked them and slung them off the dam.”
Books eyed the mangled, fur-coated groin area, considered his hands, then clasped them behind his back. “No, thank you.”
“It’s not important,” Amaranthe said. “They’re here. We have to deal with them.”
“Anyone else think we should take the monster-grinder with us?” Maldynado tapped the gore-slick drill bit.
Amaranthe grimaced. So much for the earlier cleaning of the blades. It’d take a lot more than her kerchief to duplicate the feat now. At least her team had survived the fight without any serious injuries. Blood streamed from a gash on Basilard’s arm and a cut on Books’s jaw, but both men were still standing, swords and rifles at the ready.
“It would take time to drill a new tunnel at an angle sufficiently
slight enough for the borer to climb into the courtyard,” Sicarius said.
A boom sounded somewhere above them—a cannon.
“I don’t know if those people up there have time,” Amaranthe said. Not to mention that another makarovi might catch her scent and hop into the tunnel. It might be more than one next time.
“This way,” Sicarius said, taking the lead again.
“Leave the canister,” Amaranthe told the men. “We’ll come back for it once we see how things are going up there.”
They didn’t need to walk far before the blackness ahead faded, and the caved-in hole in the ceiling came into view. Enough lamps burned in the courtyard that some of the light seeped below.
Sicarius made everyone wait while he hopped up, catching tufts of grass near the ragged edge, and checked the courtyard. When he dropped down, he waved them forward.
“Only one makarovi is in sight now, and it’s up on the parapet. Continue to the root cellar.” He waited for the others to pass, clearly intending to guard their backs.
A lantern in hand, Amaranthe hustled forward. The stench of the makarovi grew thicker, and she chose not to breathe through her nose. “If anyone invited me to a dinner at the Imperial Barracks right now, I’d have to pass, if the potatoes came from this cellar anyway.”
“Agreed,” Books said, his voice altered, as if he, too, was trying not to breathe through his nose. “What a dreadful place to house a cage.”
You wouldn’t think so from their strong smell, but with the proper seasoning, Makarovi steaks are quite edible, Basilard signed. Or so they say. The rarity of the beasts means I’ve never partaken personally, only heard from old warriors.
“They’re not nearly as rare as I’d like for them to be,” Amaranthe said.
“Agreed,” Books repeated. He’d given up on his earlier method of avoiding the scent and had pinched his nostrils shut.
There wasn’t a source of illumination in the root cellar, and Amaranthe almost missed where the tunnel ended and it began until her light played across steel bars. Her first thought was that they wouldn’t be able to get out this way, having entered into the cage itself, but she realized she could turn sideways and slip through the widely spaced bars. They might hold a makarovi in, but most people could squeeze through.
Maldynado cleared his throat. “Anyone have a key?”
He’d slipped an arm and his head through, but the chest proved a sticking point.
Footsteps thundered past overhead, the echo changing as they passed from earth to the wooden cellar door back to earth again. A shout of terror followed after them.
“Look for the key,” Amaranthe told the others, already moving toward the door, hoping a hook might hold a ring. Though she didn’t know yet how she might help those in the courtyard, their obvious distress filled her with urgency.
“We could simply pull him through,” Books gripped Maldynado’s arm. “If he can suck in that belly.”
“My belly isn’t the problem. It’s my well-developed pectoral area.”
“Oh, please,” Yara said.
“At least he didn’t say it was his third leg that was too big to pass through.” Akstyr snickered.
Just when Amaranthe thought the boy was growing up…
“Ouch—oomph!” A thud followed this unmanly cry.
Amaranthe abandoned her key search. Books and Basilard had succeeded in pulling Maldynado through.
Sicarius jogged out of the tunnel and slid through the bars with much less trouble.
“No belly on him,” Books said.
“It wasn’t my belly,” Maldynado growled.
“The doors and the shutters remain secured,” Sicarius said. “There aren’t many men fighting from the walls. A few snipers are on the roof, but it looks like everyone else has retreated inside, leaving the others to deal with the makarovi.”
“I thought Marblecrest had troops in there with him,” Sespian said. “What are those cowards doing? Why’re they sacrificing my men? I mean men who used to be mine, curse him.”
“If Ravido is the one who brought the makarovi,” Amaranthe said, “he may not want them killed. He may still believe they’ll do their job, if they can escape the Barracks.”
“Some of them have already done so.” Sicarius waved toward the tunnel, indicting the prints they’d first seen. “I saw one more dead in the courtyard, and one living, but no others were in sight, nor were there sounds of a fight coming from the other side of the building.”
“I’m going to flatten Ravido if I see him.” Maldynado clenched a fist. “Even if the collars lead those monsters to Forge people, they’re going to kill tons of other people on their way through the city. And women will get… gar, those things are horrible.”
“There aren’t even that many Forge people left, are there?” Books avoided looking at Sicarius.
“No,” Sicarius said.
“What a mess.” Amaranthe pushed a chunk of loose hair behind her ear and frowned—it was crunchy with dried gore. “In all possible ways.”
“I want Marblecrest out of the Barracks more than ever.” Sespian regarded first Amaranthe, then Sicarius, as if he wondered if he could make it an order and anyone would listen to him.
Amaranthe had never planned to give up, not when Starcrest had explicitly given her this mission, but she was glad to see the others nodding their heads in agreement with Sespian. Sicarius, too, gave a single nod when she glanced his way, though that surprised her least of all. He wouldn’t give up on a Starcrest-assigned mission either.
“I concur,” Books said. “Maldynado, why don’t we go back and fetch that canister? I imagine some stealthy assassin can find a route into the basement furnace room from here.”
“You’ll have to lift that barrel up through the hole in the roof back there,” Amaranthe said. “We haven’t found keys for this gate.”
“We’ll have to go through the courtyard to reach the door anyway,” Sicarius said. “There are shadows. And the soldiers are busy.”
“Maldynado.” Books slipped back through the bars, heading for the tunnel.
“Perhaps Sespian would like to go with you. He’s a slighter fellow with less substantially developed pectoral muscles.”
“Yes,” Books called back, “no belly either.”
Sespian lifted a hand in acknowledgment, then jogged after Books.
Maldynado propped his fists on his hips. “Yara, you’ve seen me naked. Do I have a belly?”
“Not at all,” Yara said. Before Maldynado could appear too mollified, she added, “I assumed it was your fat head that got stuck between the bars.”
Books was the one to smile.
Sicarius and Basilard, too professional to be drawn into the debate, had scouted the root cellar and, apparently finding nothing more insidious on this side of the bars than potatoes with eyes, headed up the stairs for the door in the ceiling. Crouching, Sicarius lifted it a few inches.
After a moment’s observation, he said, “It’s relatively quiet now. The makarovi who came up in the courtyard have either escaped or been killed. We’ll still want to use caution, as we have to cross two dozen meters to reach the basement and dungeon entrance.”
Amaranthe didn’t want to think about the dungeon entrance. Her time spent there had been only slightly less unpleasant than her days with Pike on the Behemoth. Maybe there was some justice in using insects again, or an insect-derived product, on her return visit.
“We’re ready,” came Sespian’s soft call from the tunnel.
Sicarius led the way into the courtyard.
Blood spattered the churned snow beneath their feet. Not for the first time, Amaranthe wondered how Maldynado could be related to Ravido. What a monster, to think up such a plan. Though she’d been guessing as to his intentions so far; they didn’t have proof that he was behind the makarovi.
Sicarius pointed most of the team toward the basement entrance around the back of the building, while he and Basilard jogged to the gaping hole a fe
w meters away. Amaranthe went with them, keeping an eye on the walls and the courtyard as they bent to pull up the heavy canister from below. Shadows, Sicarius had said, but the courtyard was too well lit for her tastes. The guards would have to be wounded and unconscious not to notice a knot of strange men pulling up a—
“You there,” someone called from the auto-cannon station on the nearest wall—the gun was pointed into the courtyard instead of away. “What are you men doing?”
Basilard and Sicarius had already lifted the canister out of the hole. Books jumped, caught the lip, and pulled himself up at the same time as he knocked a small avalanche of dirt and snow inside. Ignoring the guard for the moment, Amaranthe grabbed his arm and helped him over the side.
Though he was having trouble—more earth crumbled away as he rolled toward her—Books was the one to respond to the soldier. “We got the makarovi poison the captain asked for.”
Amaranthe snorted. She didn’t know if that would work, but it wasn’t any worse than anything she would have come up with.
Sespian scrambled out of the hole with less trouble. He and Sicarius lugged the canister toward the basement door.
“Poison?” the guard responded. “What poison? And which captain?”
“Intelligence,” Books called back. Not a bad try. Most of the regular soldiers kept a wary eye on the supposedly sly officers who worked in that department.
“If you’ve got poison,” someone else from the wall called, “bring it up here. We need it.”
“Gotta report in first,” Books called. He and Amaranthe were jogging after Sespian and Sicarius. A few more meters and they’d round the corner of the building and be out of sight, at least to those on that particular wall.
“How come you’re not in uniform?” the first man called.
The second jogged over and nudged him.
“Hurry,” Amaranthe urged, though the men couldn’t go any faster while carrying that heavy load.
The auto cannon shifted, away from melee in one corner of the courtyard and toward her team.
“Get close to the building,” Sespian said. “They won’t risk shooting a hole in the first floor.”
When makarovi were involved, Amaranthe wasn’t so certain.