The vampire airship flew in low over the frozen city. Shards of ice flaked off in the arctic wind. The air was littered with those blue-white crystals, and a frozen fog drifted up from the city like columns of wintery chimney smoke. Karamanganji's structures were tall and thin and widely spaced apart, so the city streets appeared open and stark. Fountains of frozen water stood near every major intersection.
The Krul warship trailed the better-armed Southern Claw Bloodhawk. Cold radiated up from the frozen streets. The breath of those inside the vessel frosted in the air. They sat huddled together, and their bodies slid or bounced into one another every time that Ekko had to take a steep turn or change altitude.
No one spoke.
The Bone Towers, as they were known, had been so named because of the blanched quality of the stone and ice that encased them. There were only three such towers, spaced in a triangular pattern near the center of Karamanganji. The Tower’s bladed belfries faced the center of the city and one another, like a tribunal of petrified hawks, and each had a stout stone keep at its base.
No one had any idea what lay within the Towers, because no one had ever gained access. It was considered unsafe to use explosives to aid in the exploration of Karamanganji, as the damage caused would be impossible to repair, and besides would prove incredibly dangerous to explorers, as well. It was widely agreed that bringing the city quite literally crashing down was hardly conducive to effective exploration.
“ It should be the northernmost tower,” Cole said. It was the first words spoken by anyone in the vampire ship since it had taken off.
They saw just enough through the cracked window to marvel at the height of the frozen towers as the vessel wove its way through an urban forest of ice and pale stone. Nearly invisible runes had been cast on many of the structures.
“ It's amazing,” Black said, “that all of this has stood here for so long, and yet we still know next to nothing about it.”
Karamanganji's durability was indeed a marvel. The site radiated power, which was why, even though it was often explored, it was also respected, and never harmed. Even the savage Gorgoloth, the most enumerate and destructive race in the region, seemed reluctant to do damage to the frozen city.
That reluctance, it seemed, was not shared by the Black Circle.
They found the Circle’s base camp at the foot of the northern Bone Tower. The Circle had left a modified ice cannon out in plain sight; its white casing was difficult to make out in the snow. A focal converter lens had been mounted over the barrel, and tanks of cryogenic fuel were hooked to the ammunition feed instead of the hardened spheres of liquefied shot normally loaded into ice cannons.
“ What the hell…?” Cross wondered aloud.
“ Impressive,” Ramsey said. “I could be wrong, but I believe the Circle has modified their cannon to cut instead of blast. That lens and that fuel would let it fire a sustained beam.”
“ And that way they can dig,” Cross said with a nod, “without bringing the entire city down. They couldn't do that with a flame cannon.”
The Bloodhawk sent a ground team to do a quick sweep of the Bone Tower’s lower level, while Cross and his team remained on board their ship. The Southern Claw soldiers found evidence of a recent dig, including tools and signs of forced entry, and a blasted hole that seemed to lead down to some sort of catacombs beneath the tower. Harker’s team reported that it didn’t appear the tunnels themselves had been breached, as the only means of entering was covered with a thick sheet of transparent ice.
Hopefully that means the Black Circle hasn’t actually found the Woman, even if they have made progress with their dig.
Signs of a recent struggle — dead human mercenaries and Gorgoloth — indicated that the Circle had run afoul of trouble, which must have been the reason they'd been forced to halt their efforts.
There was no sign of Jennar, however, nor of any of the more dangerous Black Circle members known to the Southern Claw, criminals like Molochai, Lllandrix, Malath or Klos Vago. Those few bodies that Harker’s men found appeared to be the remains of hirelings and minions.
Before Cross or any of his companions could inspect the excavation site firsthand, distant and hollow booms sounded in the air. Explosions.
A second sounded, and then a third. The radio blared with static. The reception was terrible — the radio was almost eighty years old — but the sending stone in Cross' hand went white hot as a priority message was sent to every ship, vehicle and foot soldier in and around the frozen city.
Incoming, the message said. Vampires, approaching from the west.
Cross’ team and Harker’s squad regrouped. They flew the airships away from the Tower and set down on an elevated hill near the north end of the city, where they surveyed the horizon with the Bloodhawk's scopes.
A single armored Wing approached. There were seven vampire warships outfitted with heavy armor and long-range weapons and a dozen mounted Razorwings — brutish flying reptiles with enormous hinged jaws, reptilian wings, and razor-sharp bone protrusions that could slice through body armor. The Wing was led by a large airship the size of yacht, a vessel covered with large-bored cannons and preposterous blades as big as sawhorses. The Southern Claw called those command vessels “Coffins” due to their box-like shape and the fact that they were usually packed wall-to-wall with undead infantry: armored zombies, war wights, kaithoren, ghoul runners, and things much worse.
Between pilots and crew, over 200 undead approached the icy city. The First and Second platoons of Claw Company, conversely, had six Bloodhawk airships, plus the stolen vampire vessel, a Panzer II that had been reinforced with arcane-treated cold steel plates, and an M2 half-track that towed a Flak 38 20mm cannon. There were maybe seventy-five men between the two platoons. While the Southern Claw had ground fire superiority, they were badly outnumbered, and severely outclassed in the air.
God damn it.
“ We’ve faced worse, Sir,” Harker told him. Cross was twenty-seven years old, but he felt like an old man next to Staff Sergeant Harker, who was twenty if he was a day.
“ Please don’t call me ‘Sir’,” Cross said. “I’m not an officer.”
Harker nodded. Cross had voluntarily exited the chain of command in the Southern Claw as part of his deal to continue work as a special operative. The fact that he was no longer an officer with no true command authority hadn’t diminished his value in the eyes of most Southern Claw soldiers that he met. Because in spite of Cross’ attempts to keep a low profile, almost every soldier he ran into knew that he’d prevented the loss of human magic, and that he’d never wanted to be re-assigned to another team out of respect to the fallen members of Viper Squad.
“ In any case, we’ve faced worse,” Harker said. “Wait…orders are coming through now.”
The vampires were maybe ten minutes away.
It was important to try and reduce the risk of collateral damage as much as possible, so the decision was made to engage the vampires from the western edge of the city, using the sloped ice walls of the ruins to hide the Panzer and the 20mm. The vampires would almost certainly strafe the area with their warships, run interference with the Razorwings, and try to land the Coffin close to either the Panzer or the Bone Towers, where their undead infantry's sheer numbers would overwhelm the humans. It was imperative, then, to destroy the Coffin as quickly as possible.
Crylos, via radio, asked Cross to take command of Harker’s squad. Cross could have refused, based on the fact that he wasn’t a true officer. He also could have decided to stick with his mission, and penetrate the sealed catacombs immediately while Crylos’ men engaged the enemy.
But he didn't refuse the command.
Careful, he warned himself. You've been here before. Don’t lose sight of your mission.
Yes, he answered, I’ve been here before. And the last time, my friends died because we couldn't stay together. The Black Circle is nowhere to be found, and we need to secure this area before we can figure out what needs to be done next.
To do that, Crylos needs every available man.
He would've told that to the others if he’d needed to, but no one questioned his decision. He almost wished they had.
The Panzer moved just inside of the outer city walls, where the wide streets gave it enough room to maneuver, which was necessary with how slick the terrain was. They detached the Flak 38 from the M2 and left it with a four-man crew, who could roll the artillery around the outer edge of the city and pick and choose their targets.
From what Cross learned, Crylos would stay on the M2 and direct the ground troops, while Ankharra would lend aerial support from one of the Bloodhawks. Cross didn't have quite as much flexibility with his limited personnel — both he and Ekko had to be on board the vampire warship in order to make its weapons function, and since there would be no separating Kane and Ekko, they decided to send Black and Cole onto Harkness' Bloodhawk in order to make it three Southern Claw ships with magic capabilities instead of just two. Not only would that grant them more strategic options in the open air, but keeping the mages separated made it so no single ship would become the sole tempting target to the vampires. Ramsey decided to stay in the vampire ship with Cross, Kane and Ekko.
The Bloodhawks and the older, rickety vampire vessel circled low in the pale sky, trailing dark exhaust that swam through the air like smoke serpents.
Cross saw the Ebon Cities vessels through the arcane scopes. They were thickly bladed ships surrounded by clouds of black steam. Their motor guns were massive, and each vessel was equipped with several iron-tipped short-range missiles along their hulls. Their black and red armor was curved and angled like a creature's bones, and the collective approach of the Wing was like that of some polluted storm, slow and roiling, deliberate, an advance that darkened the entire sky.
The Razorwings flew amidst the warships. They were black and leather-skinned beasts whose serpentine necks and chitinous bodies leaked shadows like dust. The riders and the vampire raiding crews that rode on the creature’s backs were almost invisible against their mount’s sinuous bodies, but the silhouettes of long spears and large-bored hand cannons were easy enough to make out. The black banner of the Ebon Cities swung in the hands of a rider on the rear Razorwing. Bat-like wings bound with hardened razor steel flapped slowly through the air, their methodical motion almost dreamlike.
The Coffin cruised along at the rear of it all, its 6-inch guns aimed straight ahead. It was a monstrosity of devilish iron and arcane plate, a floating armored juggernaut that spewed black fire and that bore barbed protrusions the size of lances. Even from a distance, Cross felt foul magical energies radiate from its core. The vessel used twisted perversions of tormented souls that were held captive and burned as fuel.
Cross pulled himself away from the scopes. Using them wasn’t as physically taxing as manning the vampire weapons systems, but it still required considerable effort from both he and his spirit.
Cross’ spirit felt at ease for the first time in months. She was calm around his body, ready to expend herself in whatever way he asked of her but not, for once, impetuous or impatient. Something inside of her, and between the two of them, had matured.
Better late than never, I guess.
He steeled himself. It would he mere minutes before the vampires were close enough to engage. He checked his weapons — the HK, a new machete, and a slightly-used sawed-off Remington shotgun with a pistol grip, the so-called “Witness Protection” model — and his armor, took a deep breath, and waited. Waiting was always the hard part.
The airship shuddered and turned slightly to port. He heard the hard arctic wind just outside the cold steel walls. His stomach twisted into a knot, and his hands shook.
He thought of the dream where he sat with his feet in the water. He couldn't remember if it was Snow and Dillon who’d been with him there, or if it had been Snow and Graves. He wished them all there, somewhere peaceful.
A hand on his shoulder broke his reverie and nearly brought his gun out of its holster. Kane held up his hands in mock surrender.
“ Careful, Killer,” he said.
“ Sorry,” Cross said with a relieved laugh. “What's up?”
Kane hesitated, and then offered his hand.
“ For what it's worth…”
Cross smiled. The weight pressing down on him seemed to lift, just a little. He shook Kane's hand.
“ You, too. It's been a pleasure, Kane.”
“ Mike,” Kane said. “My name is Mike. I prefer Kane, though. It reminds me of Batman.”
Cross laughed. He glanced down and caught sight of Kane’s forearms, which were exposed between the end of his armored coat and his thick gloves. Cross saw tattoos shaped like crescent blades and violent letters. They glowed red, but the illumination was so faint and feeble he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been staring directly at them from just a few inches away. He took hold of Kane’s forearms.
“ They gave these to you, didn’t they?” he asked. Cross let go and rolled up his own sleeves. “In Krul?”
“ Yeah…they didn’t even charge me!”
“ Shit!” He saw the same glow on his own arms, incredibly subtle. He realized that a non-mage might not have even noticed. Even as a warlock, he was lucky to see the glow at all, since he guessed it had been intentionally hidden. “We need to figure out a way to get rid of these,” he said after he thought about it for a moment. He raced to the front of the ship.
“ Get rid of what?” Kane asked from behind him. “Our arms?”
“ Tega, can you raise a channel to Harker’s ship?”
“ Sure thing,” Ramsey said. He grabbed the SCR-300 and turned it on. A high-pitched blast of static sound came over the telephone-like transceiver. Luckily, the squelch circuit prevented the Gol’s eardrums from exploding, no matter how loud the feedback.
“ Uh…crap.”
“ What?” Cross asked.
“ There’s no signal,” Ramsey said. “I think it’s being jammed.”
Cross pushed his way around Ramsey and moved behind Ekko. It was amazing how frozen the air felt next to her, almost like she sat in a freezer. Cross looked past her and through the cracked window, so that he could see the white city.
The dark clouds that signaled the vampire’s approach had doubled in size. They hung just over the edge of Karamanganji, a mass of pure black smoke that oozed through the pale air like octopus ink. Cross heard the clang of metal as vampire warships altered their wing configuration: steel dropped into slots that shortened the wings but extended the vessel’s length, making them leaner and faster, like black steel predators wreathed in cold ebon steam.
The battle began, unceremonious and quick. Cross blinked, and suddenly they were in the middle of an aerial war.
There were distant bomb blasts, and flashes of light against the nightmare of clouds to the west. It seemed that miles still separated the two aerial forces, and yet suddenly there they were, both sides in plain sight of one another, close enough to gaze into enemy cockpits.
The warships were not fast. Dark and soiled smoke trailed from thaumaturgic engines like streams of paint, or blood. Vessels swam in the thick air as though stuck in turgid waters. The scream of engines sounded like metal banshees.
Motorguns rattled off hundreds of rounds; they fired black explosive shells or cold iron stakes or ballistic spheres capped with razor shrapnel. Shards of bone laced with necrotic energies sought out living targets, while short-range missiles filled with blessed napalm powders blossomed into mushroom pattern throughout the sky.
Explosions and bullets collided against outer hull armor. Motorgun rounds bounced away from spirit-charged shields infused to the Bloodhawks. Southern Claw incendiaries detonated against hardened shadow carapaces.
For a few moments that stuck in Cross' mind like an eternity, it seemed as if neither side could do the other harm.
That illusion was shattered just moments later.
His spirit swam hot around him, and she scalded his skin with her bristling destructive excitement. Kane and Ramsey braced for close-range fighting. Ekko carefully twisted in her seat as she piloted the warship. Cross clenched his fists till his hands were white, and he ground his teeth until they sounded ready to crack. He put one hand out and grabbed the guide pole located behind the cockpit. He took a breath, and held it. He was ready to fall into the white void.
Vessels crashed into one another like Brahma bulls. Metal on metal, and metal on flesh. Fire exploded in an avalanche of engines and speed. Ships bounced and curled away from one another. Sparks turned the air into a rain of flames. Motorguns blasted armor to shreds. Spiked hulls tore into each other, ripped sheets of metal away so that the crews within the vessels flew out into the open sky.
By the time Cross released his held breath, four ships had been reduced to ruins of metal and exploding skin. There was no way to tell them apart once they exploded. They dissipated like paper, barely visible through the vampire vessel’s dirty window. Vicious noise followed seconds after the destruction occurred, as if delayed. Clouds of dismal blood vapor filled the air where the airships had been.
Bodies, living and dead and undead, fell through the sky like rag dolls. Some fell into turbine engines, which summarily exploded as the bodies ejected out of the other end like flaming husks of jerky. Other bodies smashed into hulls and came apart like sacks of meat, or else they fell headlong into viewports, stuck there as the vessels careened wildly out of control.
Some fired side arms as they fell. The living cried out; the undead fell silent, their eyes cast into the void of sky above them. Caustic black clouds trailed the vampire vessels and cloaked everything in a choking haze.
Cross was only vaguely aware of his own screams as he sent his spirit through the walls. His muscles burned and his eyes watered.
His spirit drove through a warship's bulkhead like a spear made of hardened midnight. He felt the power core tear apart beneath her meteor sharp edge and balloon out in a dire necrotic explosion. Fire filled the vessel and incinerated undead flesh before it blasted through the viewport and out of the rents in the hull. The ship fell from the sky in a hail of scorched metal and bone.
Ferocious booms shook the air and filled it with clouds of explosive smoke.
The Panzer.
Its mobility allowed it to avoid becoming an easy target, but the airships were just fast enough that it was almost impossible to get a quality shot.
The rapid barrage of 20mm shells fired from the Flak 38 carried into the clouds. They hammered low-flying warships as they swooped down and dropped incendiary missiles onto the ice city.
Great frozen structures cracked with a sound like breaking bones. Clouds of icy shrapnel flew into the still air. Undead napalm spread through frigid streets, leaving trails of fire and steam.
Cross’ heart hammered. The ship lurched and twisted as Ekko flew in behind a vampire warship and rammed its aft side with the bladed plates on the front of their stolen vessel. The enemy ship spun away, careening like a lost top through the air.
“ Our guys won’t shoot us, right?” Kane shouted. The noise in the ship had grown to a din.
“ Probably not!” Ramsey yelled back. “We’re in an older ship! They look a little different!”
“‘ A little’?” Kane repeated. Ramsey just nodded. “Thanks…I don’t feel any better!” Kane said.
The explosions and the roar of the engines and the hammering staccato rhythm of massive shells made it so that at first none of them noticed the hole in their starboard side. Smoke and wind blasted across their faces and made it impossible to hear. Cross looked out and saw a shred of pale blue sky through the ripped wall.
“ Incoming!” Merrick shouted. His M16 was ready before Cross even made it to the gunner's alcove.
The vampire's second wave, the Razorwings, suddenly filled the sky. Their jagged wings unfolded and arced forward, presenting barbed tips laced with venom and fire. Bloodhawks that had already been torn open presented the easiest targets, as their hulls left soldiers exposed to the armored reptile’s flesh-tearing wings.
The Razorwings swooped with grace and agility that defied their size, and they moved with a sense of utter fearlessness shared with their masters. They ripped men out of open hulls and threw them into the sky. Soldiers flailed and bled as they fell, and some were snatched up mid-air and torn apart by hooked beaks and claws.
Purple and black blood spattered in the air as chain guns and cannons cut through the Razorwing flotilla. Great squeals sounded, and wings shred like paper. A Bloodhawk plowed straight into a Razorwing with its ram-plate blades and pierced its chest like a host of lances, but then the pilot was unable to dislodge the ship from the beast, and they both went down.
Arcane fire coalesced and took the shape of a great winged humanoid, an impressive juggernaut of dark flame. The signature of Black's magic was almost impossible to miss.
Cross smelled charcoal and flames and blood as he slipped into the gunner's console. He heard Merrick rattle off a count, three Bloodhawks down, four vampire warships, four Razorwings, ground troops taking heavy fire from the Coffin. He felt the ship buckle and turn, slammed his shoulder hard into the steel alcove as Ekko made a sharp dive, felt his stomach lurch, felt sweat run down his brow and beneath his shirt, felt his boots clamp hard against the back of the bent recess that reminded him of a twisted doorway made for some caricature of a human, some creepy vampire thing with hunched shoulders and an oversized head, a Gory or a Burton character, and he remembered his childhood, his dad, the beach, the waves
Snow burning on fire and as his hand fell to the panel he breathed in his spirit as something noisy shrapnel metal blast rips through the ship and he is torn from his body
His vision is an arcane stream that floats through the air like a jet of fire. He is over the battle and inside of it at once, a detached carrion bird, a wisp of thought. The dark steel cannons on the warship’s turret turn and rotate at his command, an extension of his senses.
Warships dive in and out of dark clouds of smoke, steam and blood. Gouts of corrosive red flame eddy like pyroclastic balloons in the still winter sky. Bullets and blades soar through the air in thick and deadly streams. Razorwings dive and twist around deathtraps of falling steel. Artillery shells puncture armor plate and create pockets of exploding smoke.
The Coffin floats in low beneath the cover of warships and Razorwings and launches short-range ballistics loaded with electrified nails and spheres filled with explosive gas. Fire and steel splatter and spread through the icy city; the blasts crash into glacier structures and create unearthly waves of steam.
The Panzer shoots down one of the Razorwings, turns it into a splatter of reptilian innards and skin that collapses violently to the ground. Three other Razorwings overtake the Panzer, pick its crew away from the damaged shell and latch onto the gun and twist and pull until it fires misfires the shell goes off inside the turret and kills everything in and around it in a mass of shrapnel and blood.
Cross trains the guns on the Coffin and fires. The roar of the jackhammer cannons is deafening as they launch explosive dark shells. The shots batter the Coffin’s outer armor, but the guns can't do enough damage to reach the hordes that are hidden inside. Ekko brings their ship back into the sky.
Everywhere he looks there is fire and bodies and blood. Ships fly and burn. A missile rips through a Bloodhawk and turns it into a ball of flame. An injured Razorwing flies into a vampire warship and sends them both spinning out of control in a trail of smoke and blood mist, and they crash into an ice dome that explodes into crystal shards.
The once pale city turns black and red.
Danica Black's spirit holds her vessel aloft. She and Cole stand at the door, where they and a pair of soldiers fire small-arms at a dying Razorwing whose claws have latched into the rim of the engines. Cross trains his guns on the beast’s hindquarters, which dangle down well below the craft, and he fires until the body finally falls. Black and Harker's Bloodhawk is badly damaged. It trails smoke and lists to its port side.
Cross blasts through another Razorwing and splatters its reptilian body apart. Its vampire rider drifts away and hovers in the air for a moment before it calmly falls to the distant ground.
There are only three Southern Claw ships left, including Harker’s vessel and his own. He sees no sign of the M2 or the Flak 38. There are still three Razorwings, the Coffin and a vampire warship that need to be dealt with.
He sends his thoughts to Ekko, and without a word she brings the vessel around. Their warship is also damaged, and it leaks blood-red fluid. It moves slower than before, and the roar of its engines has been reduced to a wheeze.
The Coffin flies close to the ground. It bears down on the M2, which races across the ice as the soldiers in the truck fire assault rifles and B.A.R. s at the command ship’s heavily armored hull.
Cross aims the guns and fires. Static booms perforate the air and rip away chunks of steel plate. Fragments of flaming metal fall to the ground. Blasts erupt out of the Coffin's bladed aft and port cannons and paint the sky black.
Explosions rock the warship. Cross tastes metal and rotting fumes. The air outside scalds and scars.
A Razorwing collides with the back of their ship. Arcane blades tear through the beast’s skin as Black’s spirit attacks.
The men on the M2 have rocket launchers. The Coffin moves straight towards them. It flies just above the ground, as its vertical lift has been impaired by the damage that Cross has dealt to it. Ekko flies them in low, as well, and they and the M2 flank the command ship.
The Coffin’s razor cannons fire living shrapnel, necrotic and intelligent blades that fly and seek targets like flocks of malevolent ravens. Cross feels cold wind and black breath. He hears Kane roar as he blasts the aggressive shrapnel with a shotgun in one hand and the M16 in the other just moments before it reaches their ship.
Cross fires at the Coffin's damaged port side, as do Crylos' missile men. Explosive shells claw and burst just as the vessel’s guns blast back at them.
The Coffin is on fire. It descends and lands hard on the icy ground just inside the city. It smashes apart ancient ice structures. The earth shakes as the heavy vessel screams to a halt.
Kane has dealt with the shrapnel, but their ship is losing power. The engines moan and spew forth thick plumes of grim smoke. The wind stings as they bear down on the now grounded command ship.
Flames leap all across its surface. Cross senses the presence of narcotic gasses and fuel tanks that are on the brink of detonation. The Coffin's smaller guns drive the M2 back as they smash open the windshield and perforate its tires. The undead vehicle’s bay doors open.
Cross sees undead — black clad vampire shock troops, red clad Shadowclaws, war wights with enormous talons and pale smooth bodies, zombies with shields and swords and hammers, child-sized ghouls in feral packs, a floating kaithoren with dangling tentacles and six mouths made of circular razors, bone constructs of many limbs and saw blades and pyroclastic eyes, hordes of creatures, a legion, and Cross takes a breath, turns the guns, and fires at the opening in the ship, hoping to mow them down before they can do any damage.
But a Razorwing flies out of nowhere and intercepts the blast. Its body explodes into a greasy missile that collides with their ship.
Spinning flaming out of control weightless dizzy falling Cross fires and pulls in his spirit uses her to shield the others as air and metal falls and crashes into cold hard ground
Cross fell back into the physical world with a painful jolt. Metal pressed against his back, and his body had twisted and contorted into a painful position there in the narrow entrance to the gunner’s alcove.
The bitter odor of smelted metal, gunpowder and burning fuel filled the interior of the ship. Despite the cold in the air, a glaze of sweat covered his face and soaked his shirt, which clung to both his armor and his skin. Pale light spilled through jagged holes in the starboard side of the vessel, where blasted metal had torn into the cabin like curved claws.
Cross pulled himself up, winced at his bruised arm and neck, and looked around.
The front panel was smashed. Arcane circuitry sparked and burned. Ekko pulled herself away from the console; a jagged piece of steel stuck out of her left arm. Kane, bruised and bloodied, pulled her away from the cockpit. Ekko yanked the metal out of her arm without a second thought. Cross watched the wound seal up, like sand falling into a hole.
“ Ramsey?” Cross called out, but there was no answer, because Ramsey was dead.
His small body had been crushed between two plates of steel that had folded in and collapsed where the warship impacted the ground. One hand protruded out of the ruined metal. Cross saw bits of crimson cloth and dark stains of blood.
“ Shit!” he shouted.
They heard gunfire seconds later, the scream of warship engines overhead, and the deep-throated screech of Razorwings. Cross sensed bodies moving outside, guns and claws and saw-blades. They smelled the charnel stench of a mass grave.
They snatched up weapons. Cross pressed a panel to open the rear hatch, which slowly groaned upwards. They heard growls just outside of the smashed viewport at the fore end of the ship, as well as whirring blades and sickening wet slurps.
The rear door took an eternity to open. Cross gauged their weapons. He had his HK, a machete, and the vampire triple-barrel. The M16 was dry, but Kane had the Remington, two short swords, and an axe. Ekko had an MP4A and her claws.
It would have to do.
They heard growls. The moment that the door opened high enough for them to squeeze through, they ran.
A small horde of undead came at them from around the front of the warship. The ground looked clear around the aft end and to the port side, but Cross knew that they had only moments before they’d be overrun.
The dead pushed at them from the starboard side. There were armored vampires and razor-fanged gray zombies encrusted in salt and ice, taloned war wights with pale blank eyes and horrible mouths of saber-like teeth. Cross saw undead monstrosities that oozed phosphorescent slime and dripped dark waste from the pores in their decaying hides. Expanding clouds of flesh and tentacles filled the air, pulsating beaks and hungry innards. Dozens of lifeless eyes looked at the three humans, hungry, angry. The dead soldiers filed forward with shocking speed.
Cross, Kane and Ekko ran. The undead were right on their heels.
They fired back behind them as they fled. Bullets flew into the lifeless mob. Shotgun blasts and automatic fire tore through the wall of the dead. The vampire weapon strained Cross’ forearms and fingers with its rapidly spinning shotgun barrels.
Their feet moved sluggishly, as if stuck. The air felt frigid and slow.
Ahead stood more of the ice city, cold and pale and empty. Undead ran through and over the warship behind them. They fell from the top of the vessel like flesh rain and landed clumsily on the blasted ice.
The ground was slippery and uneven. Centuries of rock hard rime covered mounds of gravel and cobblestone, so even in those areas where the ice had melted the ground was still difficult to cross.
Cross fired into the undead mob. Bullets lanced around him on the ground. Black blades soared through the air in high arcs and buried themselves in the ice just inches away from Kane's feet. A whirling sphere of flesh leapt at Ekko as she reloaded, but she tore it to shreds with her razorine claws. Her face was bestial and inhuman.
They ran.
Adrenaline pumped through Cross' body. The Ebon Cities ground forces were right behind them.
The wreckage of the Coffin was just a few hundred yards off the bow of their downed ship. The M2 sat just north of the Coffin, near a ruined building made of ice and stone. Crylos’ vehicle was also under attack by the same horde of undead foot soldiers that continued to pour out of the Coffin.
Flares fired into the smoking sky. They saw Black's Bloodhawk engage the last vampire warship, and more Razorwings.
Ravenous undead flew at them as they ran. Whirling saws locked to maimed zombie appendages rang with the song of grinding steel. Bone needles hammered the ground. Cross sent his spirit out in a wave of dark wind that threw the needles aside before he brought her back around. He twisted and honed her form until she was a pencil-thin blade, a vorpal lance that rent the zombie front-runners in half.
The mass of undead was less than fifty yards behind them. Kane and Ekko made for the ruined building, the same as Crylos and his surviving men. Cross saw Southern Claw soldiers cut down by whirling bone blades and enveloped in folds of living skin the size of bloody carpets.
He couldn't hear anything beyond the catastrophe of bullets and explosions and screams. Burning meat scent filled his nostrils and throat.
The undead were right on top of them. Cross fired the triple barrel with mad determination. Kane dropped the empty shotgun and hacked through necrotic bodies with his swords. Ekko's oversized and utterly inhuman claws sparkled like diamond ice as she hacked and slashed through ranks of bladed zombies, wights and whip-bearing phantoms.
Blood flew onto their faces and chests. Cross didn't remember dropping the triple-barrel, but it was gone, and he hacked away at the enemy with his machete instead. Heads and arms cracked beneath the destructive energies that his spirit encased him in.
Still they came.
Thunderous blasts tore through the air to the north. The Flak 38 rolled into view. Three bloodied soldiers found a spot just past the ruins, positioned the cannon, and blasted into the undead ranks. Metal thunder broke the air. Shells the size of carrots pummeled dead flesh and tore Ebon Cities’ soldiers to pieces. The Flak 38 bought just enough time for Kane to pull Ekko back. Cross cleared enough space for them to run by firing a phalanx of flaming coals into the undead, which set their flesh alight.
Still they came.
Relentless, and without end.
The M2 was overrun. Half of Crylos' men were brought down with bone and blade. Most of the rest engaged in close combat with an overwhelming horde.
The Razorwing dropped a vampire swordsman out of the sky like it was a white flesh missile. The vampire slashed through the Flak 38 crew in seconds, and the lone soldier who got away was snatched up by the Razorwing’s claws and torn in half.
Cross called his spirit, pulled her to within centimeters of his skin. He felt her, tasted her, sticky and burning, like sweet acid on his tongue. Rage filled him, power fueled by the same controlled and murderous force that made him win fight after fight back in Krul, power that boiled his blood and made his eyes smoke when he thought of Dillon, who would never again see his sister or her son.
That power curled inside of him and froze, an icy core, a glacial shield around his heart, growing, building, freezing. And there, nestled right beside it, in some far removed and distant aspect of his mind, was a shard of light and life, a powerful and ancient slice of arcane matter, a derelict fragment of an older creature from an older time. Cross saw it, felt it.
Used it.
He is on the mountain, looking on as the blaze of cold fire races toward him. The frost is so powerful it freezes his skin.
He watches Snow and Graves and Dillon and everyone else he ever cared about crystallize and shatter like glass figurines.
Behind him, beyond the pale doorway, are Ekko and Black. Their bodies are alight in coronas of white fire, and their eyes burn like vacant suns.
They are the inheritors of Lucan's primal spirit. They are the keepers of the light that burned inside him, a light that has burned for centuries, and that will go on burning for centuries to come, regardless of what happens now.
But right now that light has a purpose to fulfill, and while it will not allow itself to be used for just any reason, it will grant them, those three, its new avatars, some small measure of its strength so that they can defeat their enemies.
It does this not out of compassion, but as a token of good faith: one service, for another.
Cross roared, and the sky flew apart.
Shards of light exploded out of his body. He didn't need to see Black and Ekko to know they’d had been taken by the same nova glare, that their bodies were held in sunbeam prisons. Their consciousness melted together, fused into a common purpose.
There will be a price. It was no voice, but an understanding held between them. An acknowledgement.
There will be a price.
There always is.
Raw soul matter exploded out of Cross like he was the heart of a star. It expanded and curled along the ground, reached into every crack and crevice, into every fold of dead skin and raw socket, into every hollow bone and dangling bit of sinew. Necrotic energy recoiled before the agonized cry of primordial spirits, a collective of the damned that screamed out of Cross’ bleeding eyes and hands like they were rolling liquid flame.
The undead exploded. Pale animated bodies and jagged skeletal weapons, razor vapors and icy claws, maggot hearts and grave dust, soiled black fire and cursed souls: all of it immolated within the onslaught of primal spirit matter like paper put to the flame.
White detonations rang up and down the field as dead bodies erupted in blasts of cold fire. The explosions carried on through the small horde in a chain reaction. Angry white light leapt from one body to the next.
In the sky above, the vampires in the final warship and those mounted on the last Razorwing were also affected by the light. The dead flesh tore from their rotted bones and evaporated like melting snow.
The light caught the burning fuel in the Coffin and ignited it. The resulting explosion peeled into the sky with a deafening blast. The ground shook. Everything sucked in towards Cross like a vortex.
When it was done, every last Ebon Cities fighter was gone. Nothing was left of them but ash.
Cross stood in a daze. His eyes burned and his skin peeled from the cold. His arms and legs trembled, and after a moment his strength left him completely, and Kane caught him as he fell to his knees. His throat felt like a chimney.
The last vampire warship crashed to the ground just a few hundred yards away. Shrapnel and gouts of caustic flame filled the frozen wind with the smell of burnt metal.
And as abruptly as the battle had began, it was over. The icy world settled into near silence.
The last Bloodhawk landed a few minutes later, having lost three men. The Bloodhawk that carried Ankharra had been shot down, but her magic helped most of those onboard survive the crash.
All told, over forty of Crylos' seventy-five men were dead.
They all stood in silence for a time. They watched bloody patches of fog fall and melt the icy ground beneath them. Smoke of different colors competed for control of the sky. Torn and exploded remains were everywhere, and soon they were covered in drifts of smoking ash. The air smelled like long-burned meat.
Ekko stumbled over to Cross and Kane. Black and Cole joined them. The side of Black's face was bloody from where, Cross later learned, Harker’s head had exploded when a bone grenade went off inside the ship.
Cross stared off into the pale and frozen sky. The ghosts of centuries passed through him. He felt soiled, and very old. He had become a conduit for Death.
And I'll have to do it again, before this night is done. That was what they really taught me in Krul, whether they knew it or not. How to kill…and kill again.
Quietly, the survivors of First and Second Platoon, Claw Company, gathered what resources and men they had left. Their task was not get finished.
They still had to find the Woman in the Ice.
Steven Alan Montano
Black Scars