The Heretic Land (43 page)

He heard the blade descending and fell to one side, kicking the Skythian’s bare leg and hearing a satisfying crunch as his knee bent back at an unnatural angle.

His enemy shouted and fell to his uninjured knee, and then several ving wasps buzzed around Sol’s head. He tensed, but the wasps smelled the repulsive gel smeared across his skin. As intended, it drove them away, and they stung the Skythian’s hand and shoulder. As his eyes opened in shock, Sol swiped the sword across the bridge of his nose and blinded him.

The enemy dropped his weapon and pressed his hands to his leaking eyes, keening quietly. Sol cut his throat.

The lyon, meanwhile, had been struck by a spear, the weapon piercing its side and emerging behind one back leg.

‘It’s gone,’ Tamma said, standing and falling against Sol. Blood loss had weakened her, but he felt her rage. ‘I can’t talk to it any more. Pain has deafened it, and death closes.’

‘It’ll go well,’ Sol said, reassuring her. The battle here was almost done, so he backed away with Tamma to help her to safety. His soldiers were driving the enemy from both ends of the bridge. The snow around their feet was a muddy red, a sea of writhing bodies, and Sol made a rapid assessment of how things had gone. At least thirty dead or dying Skythians, and six Spike down.

‘I can feel the fire,’ Tamma said softly.

Sol watched the lyon close on a group of Skythians. They circled it, taking turns to slash and stab when its back was turned. They were being cautious, working together, but it would do them no good. They had no idea what they were fighting.

Sol
felt almost sorry for them, and he smiled as he imagined what Leki would say.
A soldier going soft?
He could almost hear her voice.

The lyon slumped to the ground and then erupted in flames. Limbs of fire lashed out from it as it died, catching two of its attackers across the midriff and settling into their clothing, their flesh. They fell to the ground and rolled in the snow, screaming. But this was not any fire that water could so easily extinguish. Its flames burned deep.

Sol left Tamma slumped down and ran back to the centre of the bridge. Several bodies lay in the snow close to the parapet, all of them Skythian. The Spike who had fallen into a hole had been pulled through, his body given to the river. And at the southern end, Gallan and those around him had performed a perfect defence, and were even now patrolling the battlefield and dispatching enemies who had only been injured.

Sol nodded, grunted. He would have a story for General Cole, and before moving on he would send six Spike back to the beaches with a warning. If they were not already under attack, it was likely that attack would come. If only Leki were with him, she would be able to start racking—

He heard a sparkhawk’s shriek, then saw the dark streak of the creature disappearing into the trees north of the bridge. There was a thudding impact, and a human scream.

‘More,’ Sol said softly. He looked back past Tamma. There was movement across the landscape in that direction as well. The ambush sprung and put down, the real attack was about to begin.

Hundreds of Skythians surged towards the bridge from both sides of the river. They said nothing, and the deepening cover of snow swallowed their footsteps. The silence of their attack was disconcerting.

‘Stand fast!’
Sol shouted. ‘Defensive! Reload the rifles only if you’ve time! Archers, mark your targets!’ His Blade quickly regrouped, dragging the injured behind them onto the bridge. They readied their weapons – sword and bow, spear and knife, heavy rifles hot from use. No lyon, now. And the ving wasps were dispersing.

‘For Alderia!’ a voice shouted, and forty others took up the call, sending a shiver down Sol’s spine.

The battle raged on.

Hanx feels the Engine’s life becoming something more.

He is sitting beside it, high on the beach. They have moved it away from the high-tide mark so that no waves might touch and damage it, but it is easier to dig in sand, so they have placed it amongst the taller, wider dunes. The prashdial generators have been buried deep. They surge and throb in time with the heartbeat of the world – some cannot feel or hear the beat at all, while Hanx has seen others terrified at what they suddenly know – and they are the heart that drives the soul of the Engine.

His whole life has been a rehearsal for this moment. From the time he was born he was introduced into the influence of the Engines, and from an early age he knew that he wanted to be associated with them. His rise to priesthood was already certain – it ran in his family, and such a vocation followed generations – but he had to strive hard to be attached to the Engines. The posting came early. Now he is sitting beside an Engine that is about to be initiated. Such an act has not occurred for six centuries, and the remnants of those older, larger, less refined Engines must lie somewhere on or beneath this landscape, ruined testaments to Alderia’s terrible war with this place, and the monsters it made.

Now, with the bastard, heretical god returned from wherever
it had been driven by Alderia’s brief summoning of magic, the danger is greater than ever.

Hanx watches the engineer going about his work. To him, the Engine is a construct to work on, a machine to tend, to lubricate, polish, maintain and marvel over when he meets fellow engineers in taverns and restaurants. Theirs is a job, and the Engines are something their ancestors built.

But Hanx knows the truth. The Engines are far more than machines, and the engineers’ ancestors did far more than simply build them. They
created
them.

You have strange dreams?
he is fond of asking engineers. They frequently complain about his analysing them, but he is a Fade priest, and thus superior to them. The complaints remain informal and whispered, and Hanx pretends not to hear. Few of them answer, but he knows from the looks they give him that it is the truth.

They have strange dreams.

Preparations continue around him, and Hanx closes his eyes once again in prayer. He exhorts the gods of the Fade to smile upon their endeavours here. He feels their attention, their scrutiny, and in the ground beneath him, the air around him, the snow blowing in again and the heat radiating from the Engine and warming his hands, he senses their approval, and their blessing. It is a sense of the Fade he has always had, since when he was a young child, and he takes even more comfort from it now than ever before. The gods are smiling on them, and the Engine is a machine of the gods.

If he told the engineers that the dreams they had were messages from the gods of the Fade, some would think him mad. Others might be terrified. So he keeps the truth to himself, and feels the Fade’s touch even as he touches the Engine.

‘Almost ready,’ the engineer says.

Hanx
opens his eyes. ‘I know.’ Around them is arrayed a protective guard of Spike soldiers. General Cove is there, representing the three generals who have come on this expedition, and he is busy talking with his commanders, strategising and preparing for war. He glances at the Engine occasionally, but his is a look of ownership. He sees the Engine as a weapon, and that assumption disgusts Hanx. It is as much a weapon as Cove’s heart is a dead lump of meat. Both are home to the Fade, and Hanx will have words with Cove about his beliefs. He knows the general is devout, but the business of war must never become something that usurps fear of the Fade.

Cove catches Hanx’s eye and smiles, nods towards the Engine. Hanx does not acknowledge the look.

‘Almost ready!’ the engineer says again, this time directing his words to the general.

‘Fire it up when you’re done,’ the general says.

The engineer glances at Hanx, a wry smile. He steps back from the Engine, hands on hips, and examines his charge.

‘Does it feel ready to you?’ Hanx says.

‘It looks ready. I’ve checked the capacitors, connected the prashdial generators, made sure the sumps are deep and solid. Other things, too.’ He waves a hand, as if the priest might not understand.

‘All that is good,’ Hanx says. ‘It all sounds very … thorough, and interesting. You have always been one of the more caring engineers. One who almost knows.’ The Engine throbs beneath his hand, and he feels a corresponding sensation in his groin. ‘But does it
feel
ready?’

For a moment Hanx sees a flash of understanding in the man’s face. He knows this is not simply a construct. It is something more, of this world and another. Magic is the stuff of the gods, from the home of the Fade, and they are honoured indeed to be able to tap into that realm, however slightly.

‘It
does,’ the engineer says. ‘It feels ready.’

Another pulse beneath Hanx’s hand, warm, intimate, and he closes his eyes.

‘Then let us touch the gods,’ Hanx whispers.

He only hears what happens next, because he cannot open his eyes. The world inside is too precious and wonderful. He sees everything he has ever believed played out across the darkness behind his eyelids, and as the engineer turns levers and pushes one heavy button, the Engine hums to life.

It grumbles, shifts, roars.

It’s beautiful
, Hanx tries to say, but he is not sure whether his mouth works.

He opens his eyes just as warm wetness bursts against his robes, groaning aloud at the wonderful, terrible intimacy of the touch of his hand against the heating, heating metal.

Away from the Engine, the general and soldiers are watching aghast. They are backing away, and the general seems to be shouting orders. His voice is silent. Everything is silent, and distant, because the Engine suddenly
is
everything.

The Engine is part of a system, and the other two are still being transported east and north, to the points where they will be dug in and initiated when the time comes. But being established is important. This place will be the fulcrum around which the coming battle against Aeon will be fought.

Like the giant heart of every god, the Engine starts to beat.

The engineer comes apart. Hanx registers the brief look of surprise on the man’s face before he is shattered across the snowy sand, limbs falling aside as his body erupts blood, innards, bones.

Hanx frowns. He cannot remove his hand from the Engine. It is growing hotter, hotter.

Gods of the Fade
, he thinks,
grant us the ability to … give us the wisdom to
… But his thinking is no longer clear. His
hand is melted to the metal now, flesh flowing and bone searing, and he ejaculates again, the pleasure an agony. The robes at his groin simmer, then catch fire.

The thing in the Engine is no god he has ever known. It is much more real, and dreadful.

Hanx opens his mouth to scream at this terrible blasphemy, but no sound emerges.

Only blood.

They see the priest come apart, a man-shaped cloud of gas that expands quickly around the Engine and hazes its surfaces a dull red. General Cove orders them to withdraw, and the Blade surrounding the Engine pull back in a widening circle from the initiated device. They can feel the heat emanating from the thing, and see the rapidly melting snow expanding around where it is settled between the dunes, a melting line following their retreat.

The mucky ground starts to change. Sand melts and flows. It
glows
. The air shimmers, almost on fire itself. Falling snow sparkles and hisses into steam high above.

Further down the beach, the rackers burst naked from their tent and run across the sands, screaming and tearing at their hair. Shoot dust hazes the atmosphere around them, making their presence doubtful. One of them splashes into the sea and continues running, falling eventually, thrashing, drowning in the surf. The other throws herself at the sand and starts to dig.

There is no eruption. The Engine settles. Heat starts to wane, and over the next few hours until sunset, heat haze above the melted sand will form dancing wraiths to haunt the Spike soldiers.

General Cove watches the Engine where it has come to life, and sends no one closer than he is prepared to go himself.

Can
we truly control this?
he wonders. He quizzes another engineer, but the man is wide-eyed and terrified, shaking his head as if he does not understand a single word. Cove orders everyone to offer a prayer to the gods of the Fade, and as he himself prays, the Engine looks on. He can almost feel its smile.

Juda awoke to the touch of fresh air against his skin. He was stirred from strange dreams of a man who wandered the land in search of magic. He knew this man was him, but in the dream he had been distant and unknown. Juda had wanted to approach and question his intent, but he had felt frozen in place. The dream had disturbed him. But now he was awake, and reality was returning with a chill.

Water flowed around him within the guts of the ancient Engine. He had fallen asleep leaning against a hard wall of what looked like petrified wood, and as the ice blocking the entrance had melted, it had formed many streams into the Engine’s structure. He heard water disappearing into places he might have seen, and those he never would.

The cool breeze came from where his final dreg had rescued him from being trapped in here for ever.

The hole up through the ice was made just for him. It was wide enough to crawl through, and angled so that he would not slip back down into the Engine. Steam or mist hazed the air. He breathed in and it tasted of age.

‘Magic has freed me,’ Juda said, and he frowned as someone echoed that voice in his mind’s eye. It was the stranger from his dreams. The man acknowledged the truth, nodding from a distant hillside. From this far away Juda could just see his own face. He was urging himself to climb, leave the Engine, shed the foolish dreams of starting it again. He would never know how, and there were other ways to magic.

He
stood and stretched stiffness from his limbs. His clothes were frozen, but slowly loosening. The wound through his left shoulder was heavy with scar tissue, and a little stiffer than the rest of his body. But it would not trouble him.

He started climbing through the ice tunnel. Its surface was close to him, and as hard as rock. He wedged himself against the sides and pulled with his fingers, making steady, slow progress up towards the light.