“I wouldn’t exactly call her a friend.” Rachel could hear chilling sounds issuing from above now. Distant howling? She kept her gaze pinned to the heavens. The dog in her arms barked, and she stroked its coat to calm the little thing. “What do you want with her?”
The big man beamed. “I bear her no grudge.”
Great spars of timber appeared through the gloom over their heads, thousands of them. Like the upturned masts and yards of a whole flotilla of ships, they formed a vast, cluttered mass of wood which stretched as far as Rachel could see. There were armoured figures hanging everywhere among this construction—the source, the assassin now realized, of the growing clamour. She gave an involuntary gasp.
The horses reared in panic. Curses went up as their riders struggled to control them. Anchor kept pulling on the rope, inching the whole skyship earthwards. “If her death can save the world,” he said to Rachel, “would you give her up?”
“I don’t think very much of Carnival,” Rachel said. “But then I don’t think much of the world, either.”
Anchor laughed, but then a mighty crash came from somewhere nearby as the lowest parts of descending gallows collided with the canopy of Cinderbark Wood. A short distance to the east, several wooden beams had sliced down through the poisoned trees. Stone branches fell in bright showers, raising puffs of sand where they struck the ground. The howling in the skies grew suddenly louder as Anchor’s captives fought against their nooses—an entire army of dead men.
“Sorry,” Anchor boomed. “I was not paying attention. Cospinol’s ship is low enough, I think.” He stopped hauling on the rope, leaving the bulk of the skyship floating a few yards above the canopy.
Rachel felt as though she had been trapped between two worlds. Cospinol’s incredible vessel and Cinderbark Wood had clamped together like the teeth of Heaven and earth, and now, impossibly, the assassin found herself staring up at an army of damned souls. Hundreds of warriors hung from their nooses, moaning, crying out in unknown languages. Their voices echoed through the fog.
“Always complaining,” Anchor muttered with irritation. He pinned the rope under his foot, then turned to Trench. “Cospinol sends down a rope now. You hold on tight, they pull you up. Is better to ascend this way.” He nodded. “The other way is…eh…not so good for living bodies.”
“I’m going with him,” Rachel announced. She had looked after Dill’s body since Deepgate, and she wasn’t about to let it out of her sight now.
Anchor shrugged. “As you wish. You go up, you come back down later. Afterwards we speak about your scarred friend. I have many questions.”
A derisive snort came from somewhere close behind Rachel. “Then put them to me, assassin.” Rachel recognized the voice at once—the very sound of it filled her with a sense of impending violence.
Carnival moved quickly out of the fog, her wings half outstretched as though ready for battle, her dark eyes fixed on the tethered giant. “You are an assassin, aren’t you?”
“It is not personal,” Anchor said. “Cospinol needs your blood.”
Rachel’s thoughts raced. She had seen Carnival fight. She had witnessed the scarred angel cut through an army and murder a god, and she knew that Anchor stood no chance against this foe. Yet if the giant had come here to fight the Mesmerists, then Rachel could not afford to let Carnival kill him. She looked at Trench for support, but was dismayed to see the hatred boiling in his eyes. His fist tightened on his strange demon-blade, and it let loose a pitiful wail in response.
Carnival murdered me. I trained every day for twenty years, yet she still defeated me. Silister Trench had been another of the scarred angel’s victims. But now it was Dill’s fist clutching the sword, and Dill’s blood that would be spilled in a fight.
“Get out of here,” Rachel hissed at Carnival. “Please…just go.”
The scarred angel growled, “You didn’t complain when I cut you loose from a Spine trap in Deepgate. I didn’t hear you complain when I brought down a fleet of airships to aid your escape.”
Carnival had remained hidden all this time, watching and listening from afar. And now she was about to ruin everything. Cinderbark Wood was about to become a battlefield. The Heshette were urging their horses into a semicircle behind Anchor. Steel rasped as blades were unsheathed. Bowstrings tightened.
Carnival’s full attention remained fixed on Anchor. “Your master wants my blood?”
“He does,” Anchor replied.
“Then let him try and take it.”
But it was Trench who attacked first. Rachel caught movement at the edge of her vision, and she wheeled to see the wingless archon charge. He was muttering something under his breath. The shiftblade thrust forward, aimed at Carnival’s neck.
“Wait!” Rachel cried.
The scarred angel danced back from the blow. She would have avoided it easily had the shiftblade not changed form. Halfway through Trench’s strike, his sword turned into a pike. This sudden alteration caught Carnival by surprise, but not Trench, who wielded the iron-sheathed weapon with consummate ease. The pike had a much longer reach; its curved iron blade had nicked the scarred angel’s larynx, drawing blood.
Carnival clutched her bloody neck and backed away.
Trench swung the pike in a circle over his head, his hands turning the shaft, then brought the point down to bear on his opponent. Still whispering to himself, he thrust the weapon forward.
Carnival lashed a fist out to grab the shaft, but her fingers closed on nothing but air. The shiftblade had altered its shape again, from a pike into a rapier. Its steel tip pierced Carnival’s hand behind her thumb.
She shrieked in fury and leapt back, turning to face the archon once more. Her eyes thinned to murderous slits.
Trench came at her fast—in a series of rapid strikes. Handling the rapier with as much mastery as the pike, he strove forward, shifting his hind foot with each lunge to keep each blow just in reach.
Carnival was forced to retreat again.
Now Trench moved to a broadward stance, seemingly leaving himself open to attack. He waited, the rapier tip aimed at a point above his opponent’s heart.
Anchor had folded his arms across his huge chest and was watching the battle with interest.
Carnival pounced with frightening speed, her body flexing under the projected path of the blade, her hands reaching for the other angel’s neck.
The shiftblade changed again. Trench’s rapier became an iron shield, which he smashed into the scarred angel’s face. She tumbled backwards, blood sluicing from her nose, as a metallic clang resounded through the stone forest.
“Raw fury cannot match skill,” Anchor commented to the Heshette leader, a thin man with black hair and cynical eyes. “The First Citadel champion has some experience, I think.” He paused. “But maybe not so much stamina. The fight ends soon, eh?”
Trench was already breathing hard, clearly struggling with the weight of the shield. Evidently Dill’s untrained muscles were not used to such exertions.
The scarred angel’s rage, meanwhile, gave her almost limitless endurance. She was snarling and spitting blood, already crouching in order to hurl herself back into the battle.
“Carnival!” Rachel cried.
But the scarred angel ignored her. She flung herself at Trench’s shield like a force of nature, a storm of teeth and fists intent on ripping him apart.
Trench was driven back by the concentrated fury of her attack. He staggered and fell, but as he dropped to the ground he hissed another frantic word. Razor-sharp spikes burst out of his shield, shredding his opponent’s hands. Blood flew in arcs from Carnival’s flailing fists, but she did not stop.
“Too much blood,” Anchor said. “I stop this now.” He looped a coil of loose rope around his huge bicep and strode forward, cracking his knuckles.
Trench was pinned under his shield, desperately trying to keep it between him and the scarred angel’s frenzied blows. Carnival, seemingly oblivious to her own wounds, continued h
er assault without pause. Skin now hung in shreds from her lacerated fists.
“Angel,” Anchor roared. “Leave the poor boy. It is time for you to face me now.”
Carnival wheeled, her face riven with blood and scars and strands of her own black hair. The lights of Cinderbark Wood glimmered faintly in her eyes. “Assassins,” she hissed. “I’ve killed so many now.”
“Don’t do this,” Rachel warned. “Carnival, please.”
The giant gave Rachel a sad smile. “I make the end painless for your friend. You must not fear for her.”
Carnival rose slowly from Trench’s battered and cowering body. The rage seemed to have drained out of her abruptly. She glanced at Rachel, then back at Anchor. “You’re unarmed,” she said.
“I prefer fists and feet to steel. It is best for both of us, eh?”
Carnival nodded. “Then I’ll kill you quickly.”
Rachel cried out.
But the scarred angel moved like the shadow of gale-torn cloud, a dark shape across the white sands.
Rachel focused. She had no clear idea of how to stop this bloodshed, but she needed a chance to try. Time expanded around her. The warriors hanging from Cospinol’s skyship settled silently into their nooses. The Heshette horsemen froze in their saddles. Trench’s ragged breaths stopped.
But Carnival did not. Moving as fast as any focused Spine, the scarred angel reached for Anchor’s throat. Had Rachel’s senses not been pushed beyond their normal limits, she might have missed the attack altogether.
But then John Anchor did something astonishing.
He seized Carnival’s outstretched hand and jerked it aside. Even at this increased speed, his fist had been a blur. Rachel knew that she’d just seen something impossible—the force of air alone should have shattered the big man’s bones.
Yet Anchor now lifted his other fist and punched Carnival hard against the side of her head. The scarred angel went limp, slowly, and began to collapse at the giant’s feet.
Rachel dragged herself back to her normal state, her muscles already cramping from that one focused instant. Her heart felt like it was racing, although it was actually slowing. She watched Anchor pick up Carnival’s body and sling it over his shoulder.
“It is done,” he said wearily. “Another warrior for the Rotsward’s gins.” Then he plucked a reed from his breeches and blew into it.
The Heshette were hard-pressed to keep their mounts from bolting when the clattering, clicking mass of shells and pincers descended from Cospinol’s ship. The crabs surged over the scarred angel, and then bore her body up Anchor’s rope. Rachel stared at the spectacle like a woman observing her own nightmare from the fringes of sleep. Was Carnival still alive?
Conflicting emotions plucked at her. She had been through so much with the scarred angel—as bitter opponents, and then allies. Carnival had saved Rachel and tried to kill her. Now watching her former companion’s body ascending to the skyship, Rachel could not totally reconcile her divided feelings.
High above her, the disparate warriors suspended from the Rotsward’s yards suddenly howled and roared with greater agitation. To Rachel’s ears, these cries evinced a profound madness. Was this what awaited the scarred angel?
Carnival had disappeared now, borne rapidly up the great rope. Trench turned his eyes from the skyship, a look of grim satisfaction on his face, then addressed Anchor. “If I’m to meet your master,” he remarked, “I’d rather reach his skyship in a more traditional way.”
Anchor laughed. “Rope and basket,” he said. “Same way we lift the fish and grain and fowl. Only John Anchor stays down here.” He stamped a foot on the ground. “John Anchor stays with the beasts.”
Evidently the basket had carried a great deal more fish than grain and fowl, for the stench brought tears to Rachel’s eyes. Supported by a much thinner and frailer rope than the one Anchor used to pull the skyship, the wicker container plummeted quickly out of the fog and thumped against the sandy ground. Trench climbed in first and was hoisted up out of sight by unknown handlers.
Several minutes later, the basket creaked down again out of the fog. It was empty. Rachel placed the puppy into the sour-smelling lift, and then hopped in beside it. She brushed her greasy hands on her breeches and wondered if the god she was about to meet would be likely to offer her a bath.
The rope drew taut, and with a jerk the basket began to ascend into the fog, up among the moaning warriors in their nooses. Basilis sniffed around her feet and then peed against the wicker side. The softly glowing colours of Cinderbark Wood receded below, the branches blurring into streaks of purple, green, and yellow. From up here Rachel could see the hanging figures more clearly. They were dressed in queerly exotic armour, and while each of their suits was different from the next, they all shared the same pallid complexion of men long dead. Howling stares turned to follow Rachel as she rose among them. These warriors were suspended from a matrix of damp spars and masts, like a vast scaffold built from the bones of ships. It seemed endless.
Up through the fog the basket climbed, wicker lattice creaking under Rachel’s boots. She could smell the brine strongly now; the taste of salt lingered on her lips. White crusts, like hoarfrost, laced the yards and ropes in places. Overhead loomed a shadow, denser than the surrounding network of timbers.
And then she saw Cospinol’s great skyship: the huge tattered hull of dark oak, the sleek tapered bow, and the sheer bulk of the stern rising like the ramparts of a castle. Amidst this impossible scaffold, the vessel reminded Rachel of a spider at the center of its web.
The basket rose until it clunked against the side of the midships balustrade and halted. Four slack-fleshed crewmen rested against their winch handles and fixed their vacant eyes upon the deck. There was no sign of Trench or of Carnival’s body. Warily, Rachel picked up the dog and climbed out of the basket.
No sooner had she set foot upon Cospinol’s deck than a booming voice came from an open doorway in the stern of the vessel. “If this message is truly from Hasp, then my brother Rys is behind it by proxy!”
“Rys knows nothing, I swear.”
The second voice Rachel recognized as Trench’s. She ducked through the open doorway.
Trench was pleading with an ancient battle-archon, a greybeard clad in crab-shell armour. The god of brine and fog? Cospinol was bedraggled, pigeon-winged, and wild of hair, and yet his blue eyes burned with feverish ferocity. “Twelve of them!” he roared, striding across the gloomy cabin. The floor dipped dangerously under his weight. “One arconite was dire news. But twelve…? Where did King Menoa find the power to construct so many?”
“A piece of the shattered god burns within each arconite, thus granting them immortality.” Trench lowered his head. “But the souls inside these creatures were taken from the First Citadel. We have suffered losses during this siege.”
Cospinol hissed. He glanced towards Rachel, but his eye fixed on the pup in her arms. Then he continued to pace his cabin again. “Twelve arconites,” he muttered. “This world is finished if Menoa can spill enough blood to release them all from Hell.”
“He will butcher everything in his path to facilitate their release from the Maze. We must bargain with him, Cospinol.”
“Bargain?” The god snorted. “Oh, Rys will like that.”
Rachel said, “Trench, what’s going on?”
“Who is this woman?” Cospinol cried. His outstretched finger shook as he pointed at the tiny dog. “And why did she bring that bloody hound aboard my vessel?”
The pup growled.
Cospinol eyed the mangy creature warily. “What is your interest in all of this, Basilis? Since when did you meddle in the affairs of the gods?” When the dog made no sound, Cospinol lifted his gaze to Rachel. “Speak for your master, then, thaumaturge.”
Rachel gaped at him. “I’m no thaumaturge,” she replied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This pup belongs to someone else. We…” She had been about to say We rescued it, but in light of these
new events, she now began to wonder otherwise.
What exactly was Basilis?
Cospinol regarded her darkly for a long moment. “This is a conspiracy,” he growled. “Rys sends me to the other side of the world—to avenge our brother’s death, he says. To gather power for myself, he says. To seal a portal and halt a second incursion.” His chest rose and fell under the crab-shell plate. “All lies. Now that I’m here, what do I find? A messenger from Hell who insists we must abandon this land to the Mesmerists. And now a demon with his lying thaumaturge.”
“Abandon this land?” Rachel placed a hand on Trench’s arm. “What does he mean? Who are these arconites you spoke of?”
Trench was looking at Basilis, his brow creased in thought, but he now raised his eyes to meet the assassin’s own. “I’m sorry, Rachel. This has always been my message. King Menoa is assembling a new force of warriors: twelve giants who are able to walk on unblooded ground—who can travel freely beyond the Mesmerist Veil.” His shoulders slumped. “Just one of these arconites destroyed the bulk of Rys’s army at Skirl before they managed to subdue it. And even then they could not kill the thing. It was chained in the ruins of a flooded city. But the gods on earth now lack the strength to fight a second arconite. Cospinol and his brothers must surrender to the ruler of Hell and beg for his mercy, or they will perish.”
“But what about Deepgate?”
“There’s no hope for Deepgate,” he replied, “and no hope for Pandemeria, either. The gods must now act to save themselves. I’m afraid there’s no hope for mankind at all.”
The Heshette wouldn’t desert their horses. Caulker had hoped to be rid of at least some of them by now. He had expected them to take up Anchor’s offer of sanctuary aboard Cospinol’s skyship, but they remained down here—as firmly entrenched in the giant’s company as lice in a crone’s scalp.