The Horns of Ruin (11 page)

Squinting, I felt my way to the rope and gave it a tug. It
pulled down loosely in my hand. A pulley, or something. The end of the rope on
the ground was heavily weighted. So it was some kind of escape route. One end
of the rope was tied to the ground, the rest hooked over a pulley high above
with the weight dangling from it. Run up to it, cut the rope, and hold on as
the weight dragged you up. Simple, and completely oneway. I tugged the rope
once more, hard, and the other end of it cleared the pulley high above and fell
heavily to the ground. It was a lot of rope. She could be anywhere up there.
Sighing, I felt my way to the nearest platform, then reluctantly put away the
blade and started to climb.

The way was tough. It might have been easier with more
light, but even then the handholds were irregular and ramshackle. The Fellwater
was very difficult to power up once it had been snuffed. There was something in
the story about spies dousing the spare torches in swamp water, so that the
army had been blinded when they tried to switch the blazes out. Details of
history could be inconvenient sometimes. I cut my hands on raw iron, and
scraped my cheek and shins on loose stone that slid free when I put my weight
on it. The framework tower creaked and shifted around me.

Thirty feet up, I paused. I sat cross-legged on a platform,
my tired hands resting on an iron pipe that served as the bottom rung of a
rickety ladder. Still trying to convince myself that this ladder was worth
climbing, that this was the way Cassandra had come. She could have cut the rope
and then hidden, and how would I know? A false path, maybe? Or did the Amonites
have some sort of technology that deadened the sound of a stack of lead smashing
into the ground? Who knew? Who knew what those bastards were actually capable
of doing?

At the very least, I was curious where all this structure
had come from, and where it led to. Curiosity was losing out to grim
practicality, though. The girl could be anywhere by now. She could have kept
running straight through the alley, past the false path of the elevator. She
could have just hidden, waiting for me to get high enough before dashing back
out into the street and away. Even if she was up here, if she had taken the
makeshift elevator she could have gotten awfully high awfully fast. It just
didn't seem likely I would catch up with her. I sighed and started preparing
myself for the descent. Owen would be along soon, with his patrol and his wagon
with its spotlights. We could surround the building and conduct a tedious,
pointless search. Maybe even find some evidence that Cassandra had been here,
hours ago. It was the best I could hope for, once the quarry had been lost.

I was considering if it would just be easier to shield up
and jump when the girl's face resolved out of the shadows across the way like a
half-moon sliding from behind the clouds. She was sitting on an intersection of
iron braces, her legs tangled in the crossbars, her arms looping casually over
her head. I jumped up into a low squat and went for the bully.

It was the fastest I had ever heard the Cant of Unmaking
invoked. The girl whispered a heavy chant that rolled across the chasm in waves
of power. The pistol began to come apart in my fingers even as it cleared the
holster. Bolts shivered free of the weapon, jangling like loose change as they
were joined by the cycling rod, the hammer, finally the cylinder itself. The
barrel followed the quick trajectory of my draw, spinning like a knife across
the alley and smacking into the girl's shoulder. Cassandra winced and stopped
her cant, but all that I held was a loose collection of familiar pieces that
wouldn't jigsaw back into a bullistic, no matter how tightly I gripped them.
Let them go and drew the blade, yelling.

My first step found the weakness in the tower, my boot
kicking free a bar of metal, quickly followed by an avalanche of metal pilings
that shuffled into the yawning darkness below. I gasped, trying to steady
myself, but everything I touched loosened and slid away. Across from me the
girl looked terrified, her wide eyes watching each piece fall. Cassandra's own
perch began to falter, and she scrambled higher. I was too busy with my own
gravity issues to watch her go.

The Cant of Unmaking must have clipped the tower, because
the structure that had supported me all the way up here now folded away like a
magician's trick knot. My platform tipped and I was falling, dropping a few
feet before I slapped against another platform which in turn clattered free.
Soon I would be swallowed by an avalanche of loose boards and spinning pipes. I
looked across the alley and saw that the other structure was still standing,
its platforms and struts loose but in much better shape than my own tower. A
long way, but no other choice. I screamed and jumped and fell and closed my
eyes as the air whipped past my head and I was falling, falling, crunch.

My teeth sang with the impact of the tower. I crashed
through a thin wooden railing and onto a platform several levels below where
Cassandra had been sitting. Blood filled my mouth and the air left my lungs,
but I pushed myself up to a kneeling position. Across the alley my former tower
collapsed like a castle of dust, the roar of metal and wood deafening in the
tight canyon between the two buildings. A cloud of debris swirled up from the
ground, choking me and stinging my eyes. I covered my face and spat. The
platform under my feet swayed but did not give way. I looked up for the girl.

The structure was starting to lose hold of itself. Bits of
it clattered down into my face. Wooden planks folded and spun as the bolts that
held them shriveled away. Through the rapidly growing openings above me, I
could see a door into the building that had been left open. There was light. A
pale hand slipped out and pulled the door closed, rusty hinges flaking as it
squealed shut. The structure around me groaned and leaned into the open
alleyway.

I scrambled higher, reaching the door in half the time I
thought possible. There was a narrow iron balcony around the door. I stepped
onto it, my fingers grasping the door's round handle. My boot wasn't off the
ramshackle ladder for more than two panicked breaths when the structure
shuddered and shuffled off into the darkness, collapsing in on itself in a
horrible cacophony that roared in my head long after it had joined its fellow
tower in the alley below.

I turned to the rusty door, laying my hand against the
rust-spotted paint, listening. There were voices, many of them, yelling and
arguing and making demands. Asking questions. I heard fear in those voices. I
heard terror.

My hunter's heart roared to life, and I began to invoke the
Rites of the Blade.

I am outside of myself in moments like this. The deeper I
dig into the heart of Morgan, the more of his life and his story I let flow
through my blood, the less Eva I feel. The less ... civilized. There is a raw
fire in it, the invokations wrapping around my bones and burning through my
flesh as the heart of my god flares into me. It's like dying of joy.

I wreathed myself in Everice, the Hundred Wounds, the Rites
of the Winter War. Smoke and sparks of red and hate roiled off me. I chanted
the warrior's dedication, and the steel framework of the balcony sang as the
air collapsed around me, hardening in coils of power. Hunter's Heart grabbed
me, and I howled in perfect happiness. The sword was in my hands, the enemy was
before me. But first, the door.

Steel splintered and brick tore under my boot. The
passageway beyond was narrow and dark. The force of my passage dug runnels in
the walls, and waves of angry light whipped in my wake. The voices had become
... urgent. I pushed through the hall and into the cheap wood-frame door at the
end. It burst like a dry leaf. They were beyond it. Screaming.

Amonites, all of them. They had ditched the robes and
chains, but I could tell. I could smell them. Could smell the grease under
their fingernails, the oily smoke of burnsaws in their hair and clothes. The
fear. Mostly, I could smell the fear.

The room was a tight labyrinth of head-high walls that
ended long before they reached the ceiling. They looked cobbled together, made
from bits of junk that only coupled under an Amonite's careful hand. The air
smelled of sweat and burned food. It smelled like a crowded home, like diapers
and stale sheets. I stood in the foyer of their hovel and flared my shields. A
wave of force puffed out from my core, scattering paper and pottery. The
Scholars were running. As they should.

"I am here for the girl!" I boomed, my voice
distorted and fey through so many invokations. "What runs will be run
down! What hides will be dug out!"

A scattering of shots sparked off my armor, children with
handguns firing from the corners of the trash-built home. I pushed at them,
weaving my sword through an invokation of force that crumpled the walls and
splintered their bones. I was burning it way too hot, but Morgan was on me and
vengeance had taken my heart. All I could think of was the old man, and not
letting him down again. I was a little blood-sick from yesterday's fight, but I
just rode it out.

I stepped over the bodies, scooping up and holstering a
discarded revolver as I went, and shoved through a flimsy wall. It fell into a
kitchen and toppled a pot of boiling liquid, then caught fire against the
heating element. Soup hissed as it steamed away, filling the air with the smell
of fried meat. A pocket of Scholars scampered from cover, crossing the rapidly
burning kitchen and diving through a door across the way. The last one turned
to spit a cant into the room. The stove tumbled open, its tank spilling thick,
heavy flames onto the floor. I laughed and followed, the fire whimpering to a
halt at the edge of my shielding. More shots banged off me from behind, but
they were light caliber. Nothing to worry about. I was on the path, and they
were just trying to distract me.

"The girl, Cassandra! She is all I ask of you,
Betrayers!"

The first real resistance came from a trio of older men,
still wearing the tired remnants of their robes, their belts of service tight
across their chests and jangling with tools. They fell in around me and began
to unmake the room, throwing together half-realized constructs and hurling them
to die at my blade. They dropped a cage of pipes around my shoulders,
tightening it until it clenched the articulated sheath like a lover. My blade
thudded dully into the steel, suddenly harder than any building's conduit had
the right to be. Runes writhed across the surface of the metal as one of the
Amonites chanted a rite of strength.

I rolled against the cage, slipping one shoulder between
the bars, regretting it as the metal pinched closed against my pauldron. A
whirlwind flurry of tiny automatons buzzed across the floor, scampering up my
legs in tiny, razor-barbed steps, cutting their way to my face. I screamed,
flaring a shield that crisped the toys but left my larger defenses weakened.
The cage tightened again, and now I was staring at the tip of my own blade as
it was crushed against my chest. The trio of Betrayers was chanting, tighter and
tighter, my breath coming in grunts and starts. Forcing my hand.

I burst, spiking hard into Morgan's power, the wreath of
his incarnation manifesting in blue and black fire. The cage held for half a
breath and then it was gone, and along with it most of my invokations. My sword
fell to the smoldering floor and I dropped to my knees, drawing the bully as I
crumpled. The trio closed in.

My first shot took one in the knee, the second stopped his
heart. They started in on the Unmaking, but they weren't Cassandra and I was
fast. I emptied the cylinder, killing the second Amonite. The last one
abandoned the cant and just ran. Good thing. I dropped the revolver and fell to
my hands and knees, heaving bile and spit. Too much invokation. I probably
should have eaten some breakfast, too. Gotten some sleep. It's hard to be a god
on no rest and a little wine.

The room was wrecked. The half-walls were mostly burned and
crumpled, shattered framework turning to char from my final invokation. There
were clothes burning, and bodies, and the remnants of furniture. I spat the
last of the vomit from my mouth, wiped off and holstered the revolver, then
dragged myself to my still-warm sword. My hands burned against the metal.

"I gotta learn to dial that glory down," I
gasped. "God or no god, I need to keep that tight."

The girl was gone, I was sure. Doors slammed open, feet
hammered on concrete. Fading. The only voices I could hear were organized.
Calm. Directing an evacuation. I looked at the two dead Amonites, the ones who
had almost taken me. Scholar had his own Paladins, I guess. And the last of
this little convent of Amon was getting away. I stood and started toward the
next room.

Evacuating, all right. In a hurry. Clothes and various
personal items were strewn across the floor, possessions hastily packed,
weapons loaded, and food gathered. How long had they been here? It had the feel
of a place that had been lived in.

The escape hatch was about halfway around the room, a tiny
steel door that looked like it belonged on a depthship. Rusty iron wheel in the
center, pressurized glass window. I tried to undog it, but the wheel wouldn't
budge. Too much of Morgan had left me to force the issue. I looked around for
something large and metal for leverage.

The wreckage of the room was little help. The inner walls
were flimsy, little more than plywood braced up with scrap. There were no beds,
just piles of clothes, a couple mattresses that were intricately stained, and a
crib, but it was smashed. The only metal was in the kitchen, in the form of old
and worn-out utensils. The spoons were almost flat.

Amonites always had tools. I went to the bodies of the two
Scholars who had slowed me down. Wrenches, hammers, ankle-pliers, all clean and
stored carefully on their belts. I took the biggest wrench I could find and
tried the hatch, but there was no budging it. It was invoked, for sure. I went
and put the wrench carefully back in the guy's belt, then walked around the
room one more time. Looking for weapons, I guess. Looking for signs of an
underground conspiracy bent on kidnapping the most powerful man in the Cult of
Morgan.