They walked beneath a blue-black sky that looked like a vast and seeping bruise. It felt like it might rain, but they all knew that wouldn’t happen. It hadn’t rained much After The Black.
They walked across drifts of hard red clay and fine white dust. The air was cold and bone dry, and it tasted of salt even though they were far from any sea.
They rested only sparingly. They made cold camps and feasted exclusively on MREs, which tasted like wet paper.
Cross slept as he walked, or at least he came close. His entire body was sore, but thankfully, even with the continued march, his ribs had healed considerably, and the dizziness that had earlier plagued his every step had faded. He had a minor concussion, he concluded, at worst.
But the pain of his loss was greater, and it hurt deeper than any physical wound he could ever sustain. Cross’ nerves were on edge, and he was anxious to the point of nausea. On top of that, his temperature was high and he suffered bouts of extreme chill, so he’d probably contracted a fever.
He tried not to think about which loss was worse. Thinking about Snow sent chills through his stomach and down his spine. He tried to push the images of her young face from his mind, his memories of her as a young girl, which was who she was to him, and who she’d always be. Every time he thought of her face, he saw Red standing beside her, drowning her with dark magic and pain.
The loss of his spirit was more physically painful, and in its own right just as bad. He suffered withdrawal at her loss, plain and simple. His spirit was gone, and he’d never before been without her. It was like losing a part of his self. He felt incomplete, and hollow. A void grew at his core.
He, Graves and Stone marched towards Dirge, a borderland outpost and armistice town controlled by the Ebon Cities that stood west of Thornn and north of the Wormwood. It was directly en route to Red’s destination, at least so far as Cross’ crudely translated map indicated. Cross had determined that she was bound for the Carrion Rift, a vast canyon filled with the remains of the tens of thousands slaughtered by the Grim Father’s vampire legions in the early days after The Black. It was Cross’ guess that Koth, the necropolis ruled by the vampire outcast called the Old One, was there. It was the Old One that Red intended to give her information to; he was the one she planned to hand the key to destroying what was left of humankind.
It was midmorning, but they’d only been walking for a couple of hours. The three of them had originally been air-dropped northeast of the Wormwood, and they’d entered the haunted forest on foot, since the Wormwood was far too hazardous for them use mounts in it. Even pack animals were out of the question.
The airship, unfortunately, was not an option for getting to Dirge.
They’d come across its smoking remains just outside of the Wormwood. The pilot’s bodies had been flayed and their bones burned. Nothing was left now but timber. The vampires had hit it hard and fast. Eventually, someone would ask questions back in Thornn when the ship didn’t return, but that would take some time…several days, at the very least, and it wasn’t like the remnants of Viper Squad could expect any backup. Squads had been deployed far and wide in search of Red, and many of the Southern Claw’s most elite hunters and soldiers had perished during searches in the vampire-controlled wilds of the Wolfland, the harsh tundra of the Bone March, the trap-filled Razortooth Hills, and the barbaric winter lands called the Reach. Cross had known members from many of the doomed Squads. Others, like Renaad, he learned of later.
There was, quite literally, no one left to be deployed without leaving the major cities of the Southern Claw almost entirely unguarded, a potentially lethal option to all of the cities, but particularly to Thornn, given the hordes of Gorgoloth that waited perched to strike at it from the Reach. And the Gorgoloth weren’t even the biggest threat — the Rath battalion staged at the Bonespire west of Thornn constantly waited for the city’s defenses to suffer, and the dark tower housed a formidable array of Shadowclaws, blood wings, razor golems and bone-blade shock troops, a force that could do horrendous damage if they were to gain an advantage against one of the most populated human city-states left in the world. The Southern Claw Alliance would live on, but the loss of Thornn would be difficult to recover from.
“ Are you up for this?” Graves asked him. Cross got the impression Graves had already asked him that question at least once, and he just hadn’t heard him. He drifted in and out of awareness. When he was alert, he felt pain. He wasn’t sure how much more he could handle.
“ Yes,” Cross said after a considerable pause. “I just…I feel…”
“ You look like Hell,” Graves said when Cross didn’t finish his sentence. “I can only imagine how you feel.”
“ No,” Cross said, aware of how weak his voice sounded. “No. You can’t.”
“ Let’s pick up the pace,” Stone said from ahead of them. “I want to make Dirge before nightfall. The last thing we need is to spend another night outdoors. Pick up your feet and move, Cross.”
“ You’re all heart, Stone,” Graves said. Stone gave him a look. Morg would have laid Graves out for that. Cross was glad Stone wasn’t quite so aggressive. In fact, Stone was actually pretty quiet, though when he did say something it was usually something unfriendly.
There were dead trees in the distance, and the low and jagged hills seemed to circle the three of them like predators. The deep red sun fell fast behind a thick flotilla of iron clouds. The temperature continued to drop, but they kept walking. Cross wasn’t sure how he managed to maintain the pace.
“ She’s gone,” he said after a time.
“ What?”
“ She’s gone, Sam. Snow…my spirit. Both of them. I didn’t think it could happen.”
They walked in silence again. A wolf howled in the distance, and the sound echoed with bloodcurdling resonance through the menstrual sky.
“ How…” Graves didn’t seem to know what to ask.
“ Is it…is it always like this, for you?” Cross asked. “This…quiet?”
“ I don’t understand.”
“ I’m used to hearing her. My spirit, I mean. I’m used to hearing her voice, her whispers. The spirits, they…they don’t really say anything, but they’re there. Always. And I feel her…felt her, I mean…wrapped around me, like a shroud. I’m cold now. And it’s so quiet.”
Graves didn’t say anything.
Cross had no way of knowing if he would ever have her back. He’d never heard of a warlock or witch who’d lost their spirit in the first place. The two were supposed to be inextricably linked, a joining of souls, tied together by an invisible and unbreakable bond. Killing one meant killing the other, or so Cross had always believed.
I was wrong. That, or I actually am dead. I feel dead.
It bothered him that he was focused more on the loss of his spirit than that of Snow. Maybe it was easier that way…after all, losing his spirit seemed like his pain. Snow, for all he knew, could have been suffering horribly at that very moment.
Stop thinking that. It doesn’t help.
He knew that Graves was keeping an eye on him, probably to make sure he didn’t pass out. Cross walked in a zombie state. His mind didn’t process the act of moving, nor was he really aware of what was around him. He was used to being able to send his spirit out, to feel his surroundings, to search for what was there and what wasn’t, and that act was as natural to him as breathing. He felt blind now. Empty and alone.
Near sunset they stopped at the top of a hill with a cave filled with heaps of animal bones. Mounds of dry red dust stood to either side of a crudely dug path that led away from the hill and into some dead plains. The path ran like a crooked river to the edge of the small city of Dirge.
Dirge was a squat and ugly town, a shell of haphazard buildings made of brick, clay, steel and timber. It was surrounded by a fifty-foot-tall wall of corrugated black iron held together with rivets cast from hexed steel. The parapets of the city were manned by masked sentries armed with crossbows and assault rifles. Thick streams of black smoke churned from Dirge’s smithies and factories, and near the center of the city stood a black stone tower eighty-foot high whose apex was set with a circle of black barbs that formed the semblance of a crown. The sounds of industry churned from within the unforgiving city walls. The gates were made of black steel and surrounded by a defensive perimeter of sandbags and caltrops.
“ God, I hate this place,” Graves muttered.
“ I haven’t had the pleasure,” Cross said. Even looking at Dirge filled him with a sick sense of foreboding. Normally he would have interpreted such a feeling as a warning sent by his spirit.
“ OK, let’s lay some ground rules,” Stone said quietly. “This is an armistice town, so vampires are as welcome here as humans. Humans are only allowed if they aren’t associated with the Southern Claw.”
“ Okay,” Cross said. “So how do we explain where our equipment came from?”
“ Mercs and hunters use Southern Claw equipment all the time,” Graves shrugged. “It’s the best stuff on the black market.”
“ So we bought it, we stole it, or we traded for it,” Stone added. “But we need to keep the specialty items hidden. Hex grenades, arcane salts, those gauntlets of yours…anything on us fancier than a gun is going to raise eyebrows.”
Luckily, their dark fatigues and armor didn’t bear any insignias of the Southern Claw, and the design was standard enough issue that it would be easy to pass the three of them off as mercenaries. They stowed Cross’ more unusual gear: the grenades and the salts, the alchemy tubes, the entropy stones, all of his gauntlets, the wires and battery packs, the arcane fuses. They hid this contraband inside of thick blankets, coats and other bulky items they carried with them. They decided to keep Winter’s oversized battery pack on hand, which they would claim they scavenged in the wilderness. With even a decent trade for the battery they’d be able to restock their ammunition and acquire extra supplies for the arduous trek north. To pursue Red, they had to drive straight through the heart of the Bone March.
“ It feels wrong to get rid of this,” Cross said as he looked over the rest of Winter’s gear.
“ We don’t have much choice,” Stone said. They marched side-by-side down the steep hill. Graves was at the point, and he carefully approached the city with his shotgun in plain sight. Cross didn’t need his lost supernatural senses to sense the Dirgian flame-cannon mounted high on the wall above the gate. The massive weapon turned in their direction as they drew close. “Don’t go soft on us now, Crossie.”
“ Don’t call me ‘Crossie’. ‘Stonie’.”
Stone laughed.
“ How you holding’ up?”
“ I’m fine,” Cross said. “I’m worried as hell about Snow, but if we can get to Red and stop her, I’ll feel even better.”
“ We will,” Stone said. “Thanks for going down into that mud hole. I thought we were done.”
“ We may still be done,” Cross said quietly.
It had taken hours to translate the map, and he was far from certain he’d done it correctly. The calculations, codes and references had been difficult to translate, and he’d been forced to do it all from memory since he hadn’t been able to use magic to aid him. But he’d grown up learning everything that could be learned about the arcane. Once Cross had discovered the truth about himself when he was young, he’d obsessively dedicated his life to understanding magic, especially when it became clear that Snow was similarly cursed. He had decided long ago that he’d never be at a loss because he didn’t understand something…which was yet another reason why the loss of his spirit had been so hard for him to adjust to.
This is what I am. All I am.
“ We should get a tracker,” Cross said, almost to himself.
“ A tracker?” Stone asked. “Are you serious? We don’t need some mercenary tagging along.” He stopped and turned to Cross. Graves also stopped. Up ahead, the flame-cannon had aimed right at them. “This is serious, Cross. We don’t need a loose cannon on board.”
“ We need all of the help we can get,” Cross said. “We need someone with magic, someone who can track, and someone who knows more than we do about traveling through the Bone March. Correct me if I’m wrong, but what we know about that place isn’t a whole hell of a lot.”
Stone looked at him for a moment, and then smiled.
“ Man, we are screwed,” Stone said with a grin. “I’m taking the advice of a warlock without magic.” He looked back at the city, and the stoicism returned to his chiseled face. “I’ll do the talking.”
“ Guys…” Graves asked from the front. He stared right at the flame-cannon, and it stared back. Naturally, he sounded more than a little nervous. “Any time you want to move your asses and get up here that would be great.”
“ Talk away,” Cross said to Stone. “I’m liable to throw up any second now.”
“ Tough guy,” Stone said with a sad shake of his head. “Great.”
The gates were directly ahead. The border of the dark door was made from thick bands of iron surrounded by a bass relief of a fanged skull, positioned so that when one walked through the gates it was like they’d stepped into a leering mouth.
“ Cheery,” Cross said quietly.
The gate guard’s masks were clear silver plates set with eye-holes. The rest of the masks were featureless ovals, dented and marred to the extent where they reflected nothing. Their armor was mismatched — they wore steel shoulder plates, face wraps and tunics, leather pants and steel-toed boots. Kevlar and flak vests were just barely visible under their billowing cloaks, their hard steel gauntlets gripped sharp iron poles, and they wore aged pistols and wickedly curved knives strapped to their belts.
Surprisingly, the Dirgian guards didn’t detain the three of them much at all. They gave the trio a brief interrogation as to the nature of their visit, verified that they bore neither alchemy or void bombs and didn’t suffer from any arcane diseases, made a quick but fruitless search of their belongings, and ushered them into the city.