Last First Snow (42 page)

The angels gave their fleeing enemies chase.

Temoc held back at first, and Elayne saw why. The Couatl fled north in a single narrow stream. If this was a true rout they would flee in all directions at once. The gods, flush with sacrificial souls, were being tempted by a target. They took the bait, humanoid weapons darting forth blood-hungry, rejoicing in the strength with which they put their foe to flight.

Then the Wardens folded their wings at once and dived, and the sky before the Quechal angels rippled, twisted, inverted, and went black with spreading scaly wings, a battleship-broad back, tail long as a highway and thick as a magisterium tree, cavernous jaws with teeth three times the height of a man. Even the eyes were enormous. A ruby glared from the creature's forehead, supernova bright, and in state at the root of its neck stood the King in Red.

In her shock, Elayne almost let the Skittersill ignite.

It was not a dragon.

Well. It was not a dragon anymore.

Dragons, in their age, and wisdom, and might, rarely meddled in human affairs. They took sides in the God Wars, when after long decades the struggle finally threatened to crack the egg of the world—lent aid to Craftsmen, then retired once again to their quiet slow empires and millennial games. Some, young and curious, hired themselves out as carriers for air freight, but the elders kept apart.

But dragons were not sentimental for their dead. The dead were landscape, the dead were for devouring. Humans had some atavistic reluctance to transform their corpses into weapons; dragons had no such qualms, and did not flinch at Craftsmen's first careful question as to whether they would mind, so much, if humans ran a few experiments with their bodies. And so in death they were reborn—the dead ones lacked the living's supernatural cleverness, but their immense frame and unique biology, their polymer scales no artificial process could duplicate, their muscles stronger and more durable than any hydraulic system, the bones from which an enterprising engineer could hang a fortune's worth of weaponry, their colossal lift, and of course the atomic forge within that could power much more than mere fiery breath, Craftsmen could find use for these.

Expensive to operate. A thousand souls or so to fund a minute's combat. But then, war always had been a chance for great powers to play with their most exquisite toys.

Elayne closed her eyes, and within, between, beneath the scales of the King in Red's dragon, she saw Craftwork weapons spin to absurd heights of power. And, as the Skittersill angels broke for cover, the guns spoke.

*   *   *

Chel did not wait to understand the shape that emerged from nothing in the sky. Immense, claws, teeth, fangs, nightmare eyes, swallowing up the sun: that was enough. She dove, twisting, forward and down. The godsong split into cacophony as divine minds realigned. She ignored them, and let herself fall.

A cloud of cold iron fl
é
chettes erupted from the dragon's wings and filled the air where she'd just been: hundreds of thousands of metal slivers flying at the speed of sound. The others had no time to guard themselves; the gods did that for them by instinct, forging magnetic shields in the air around their servants. But the fl
é
chettes did not ricochet. Glancing off the shields, they darted out, turned, and sped back for a second pass, a third, a fourth. A cloud of tiny knives surrounded her comrades, and some pierced their shields to draw shining blood.

Chel cut her dive, and began to climb.

*   *   *

Temoc saw the dragon, heard the gods scramble to respond, a dozen different concepts rippling through divine minds that understood the contours of the physical world but barely. Their voices pulsed through his scars, their minds through his:

—attack—turn—parry—preserve—

Time, for gods always a confusing and imprecise parameter, dilated out, and they swatted each fl
é
chette away: easy to do when they all came from one direction, but on the second pass—

—
many—hunger—resolve—turn—charge—adjust—iron—

He ran toward the dragon, trailing footsteps of shadow through ozone-charged air. Gods did not deal well with small things moving quickly, and especially not with cold iron. Swatting each sliver aside would strain their powers and attention. Instead, they charged the angels themselves. The iron shards burst away from the winged lights, straight out in all directions. The risen of Chakal Square flew toward the King in Red atop his war beast, laughing.

Laughing, as was the King in Red himself.

The storm of iron lost its animating life, and fell.

Temoc ran faster.

And then the lightning spoke.

*   *   *

Elayne watched. Elegant. The fl
é
chettes first, too fast for the gods to turn aside one by one, and enchanted to seek their target. The easiest response to which, if you were a god, was to apply a single, powerful charge to the entire field of combat, fl
é
chettes and divine wings and armor alike, so the King in Red's iron splinters could never come close enough to hurt the angels. Which, of course, left the angels charged.

So now you have a fl
é
chette storm, positively charged, and a number of angels whose wings are as well. Drop the fl
é
chettes, and you're left with a field of charged targets. Which means, no matter where they run, no matter how fast they move, you can find them, and hit them.

And so as the angels flew toward the King in Red, dragonwing antennae sparked and popped. Lightning lanced across empty air.

The angels burned.

*   *   *

Chel was behind and beneath the dragon when the lightning hit.

She was aware only of a discontinuity, of flying toward the dragon and then of falling a hundred feet or so beneath, below, every muscle clenched at once, blood in her mouth and ozone in her nose. Ground approaching, fast, faster—she tried to spread wings but the wings did not spread, she spun and fell and flailed as the gods' voices clashed in disarray, but there, her fingers twitched, and the tips of her wings, and out they flared, arresting her in mid-fall, slowing so fast the world went gray but at least she rose.

Above, the others hung in brilliant webs, arrayed in a ring around the dragon's vast head. She must have dodged the worst of it.

Her fellows were not so lucky. They writhed, a twitching agony of seconds that stretched for years. Hooks and beams and instruments of torture manifested in the sky, pierced their wings and pulled, and tore.

The gods' song faltered and grew faint.

She flew faster, a rising spark, a streak to embrace the sun, toward the dragon.

*   *   *

—
adjust—scramble—pain—pain—escape—fly—

Temoc, running, heard the gods recoil as the King in Red tore their emissaries. The dragon threw its defenses against him: shields manifested in his path and he broke them. His distance to the dragon doubled and doubled again with every micrometer of space he crossed, and yet still he crossed the space. Demonic claws glanced off his shining scars.

Divine voices clashed discordant in his mind.

Lose the wings, he prayed, fervently. They're too much—gives him something to grab and tear. He knows you want them, so he tries to take them from you. It's only a matter of time before your power runs out.

—
perhaps—

With a roar of tearing paper, the risen of Chakal Square burst from their plasma wings and leapt forth, fingers grown claw-long, teeth sharpened to points. The dragon's wards sparked and flashed; two dropped insensate to the city far below, but eight more landed, three on the dragon's skull, three on the left wing, two on the right.

Temoc himself touched down above the creature's ruby forehead. The head twisted; the dragon screamed an iron scream. Around, beneath, to all sides Dresediel Lex wheeled, one with its sky. The shadows that clad Temoc's feet gripped the dragon's scales, held him in place. One more of the risen fell, contorted with insensate rage; the rest dropped to all fours and scampered down the long neck toward the King in Red and his Warden captain.

On the wings, more Wardens ran to intercept the risen, weapons shining in their hands. Fast, so fast, but not fast enough; claws tore silver masks and teeth ripped silver throats. The three from the skull leapt down the neck, from scale to massive scale toward the King in Red. Grinning still, grinning always, the Craftsman stretched out his hand. Invisible knives flensed the fire from the risen, but it rekindled and they advanced—slower, though, a bare but perceptible change, and still the knives spun and skinned. The second of the risen fell: her own body sprouted thorns that grew inward, piercing flesh and bone. Still she advanced, spurred by divine fervor. On the wings, Wardens recovered their footing, ringed the risen and stabbed them with spears as if baiting bears.

He's playing an attrition game, Temoc prayed. Forcing you to spend power you don't have, power you can't recover. Spreading you between obligations until you break.

—
our city—our power—

Not now. Not after forty years. You can retreat, but that doesn't mean you can win.

—
no retreat—too long asleep—

He thought, at the last, of Caleb, and of Mina, and of the family he'd given up for it to end here, on dragonback.

And then, because he saw no other way, he opened himself to the gods. He pulled their power into him. Light surged through his scars. He sprinted up the dragon's neck. Demons barred his path; he shattered one with a punch and threw himself into the second's chest, breaking crystal with his weight. Close now, so close. More shields, easily sidestepped. Disregard the captain. Focus on the King in Red.

Kill him and this ends. You don't win, nobody wins this kind of war, but at least it ends.

The dragon swooped toward Chakal Square. Another risen tumbled off. The Wardens pressed the attack.

And the King in Red stood before him, undefended, his eyes twin red stars in the black of his skull. Temoc swept his arm around, fast—

And the King in Red raised his staff in a blur and blocked.

*   *   *

Chel was airborne when her wings failed and the fire of her flesh changed shape. New animal instincts rushed in, mixed a cocktail with the fear in her blood. Even without the wings, momentum carried her up, up, don't think about the drop, the hundreds of feet give or take a death or two she'd fall to solid rock. Focus on the dragon, reach with your claws, never mind how you got claws exactly, just
reach
—

She caught the edge of a knife-sharp scale. As the dragon dove and lurched she pulled herself up, one hand at a time, forcing her feet between the beast-machine's immense scales, and she climbed and climbed until she stood atop the back.

Gods called her to battle, but she splayed flat. The gods had not made good decisions so far. A Warden approached over the swell of the dragon's body: mistook her for a corpse. She did not disabuse him of the notion, not until he was close enough, gods, until
she
was close enough for Chel to grab her ankle and throw her off into the void.

Screaming, she fell.

Distractions: who was that Warden? How old? What family? Was she young? Married? Children? Happy? What path brought her here?

Below, the Square was dead. And that woman, too.

She crawled across the dragon's back.

*   *   *

Captain Chimalli felt the wind as Temoc sprinted past him. He turned in time to see the King in Red defend himself, war-glyphs shining from his bones. No time for Chimalli to help: the monsters of Chakal Square had almost reached him, climbing up the neck.

The first, still pressing through a squall of knives, its flesh stripped to bare bone, would be the easiest. It pounced and he sidestepped, struck with both hands on the back of its neck, heard the spine snap. Fallen, it spasmed, started to slide off the dragon's neck. Bones wriggled and realigned. He'd have to kill it again in a minute. Fine.

The second, the one that had been female, with the thorns growing through it, was slower, and more difficult. Pain made it canny. A feint forward with a claw, from which he retreated a step. He drew his truncheon. Another feint, another step back. It knelt and growled, as behind it the third approached.

Two against one were not odds Chimalli liked.

He lurched back. Hungry, the monster struck with a claw. Chimalli did not need to recover his footing, had never lost it, faking only—he grabbed the clawed hand, twisted and pulled and hoped these things' joints still worked like those of men.

Yes. The wrist popped, and the elbow and shoulder when he twisted his waist. A blow with the truncheon to the side of the skull sent that one sliding down the slope of the dragon's neck, clawing with one arm to halt its fall. Which left the third—

The third hit him in the back. Claws dug through his uniform jacket, through his armor plates, through slick silver into skin. He grunted, no screams yet. Teeth on his neck, not through the mask. He fell forward, pushed up with his legs and arms. Bad idea, this, but no better ones with claws in your back. He jumped, and for a sickening moment was airborne over the dragon's neck—then the monster hit scale, and he hit the monster, hard enough to break its grip and roll to one side, his arms weaving around its arm and tightening to dislocate the joint. He stood, hands empty, truncheon fallen. The King in Red and Temoc were a tempest of red and black and silver and brass, but he had no time to help, with the first monster recovered almost already and standing.

Chimalli hit it in the face, and it dropped again. He turned to the second, and hoped.

*   *   *

The fires of the Skittersill were not dead, but they banked low. The gripfire was two parts, fuel and spark, the plan being that the fuel would last the spark long enough for it to catch. Elayne had broken the cycle, and the fuel was almost gone.