Deception is the art of war.
Tears well from Osidian’s eyes. Not tears, maggots. Carnelian feels their itch across the slab of limestone. A cliff verminous as cheese. Touching it, he finds it is warm flesh puckered with wounds. Mouths whispering, calling out for something. He tries to clap his hands over them to keep them quiet, but there are always more mouths in his flesh than he has hands to silence them. Thunder behind him under a forbidding sky. Turning, he sees the tide rippling in. He tries to flee to higher ground, but always, inexplicably, he runs back towards the waves. Spiral wormcasts everywhere in the sand. He can feel the tickle of their heads nuzzling up into holes rotten in the soles of his feet. He clasps a ladder, desperate to escape, but he cannot move his legs, now one with the earth. Unbearable itch as the maggots invade his flesh. They reach his knees. The itching rises in pitch until it becomes cutting blades so sharp they scream.
Carnelian jerked awake. The cessation of pain was so instant he was sure he must be a corpse. Was he blind in a capsule? He lifted his hands and they found his face. The wonder of touch. Listening to his breathing anchored him to the edge of the nightmare that gaped behind him, hungry to swallow him back in. His feet touched the cold floor. He shambled towards the wall. As he searched it with his fingers, it seemed vast enough to encompass a city. Finding a slit, he pushed his face into it, seeking, then drinking the night air. Drunk with it he pulled back. He could not let Osidian endure that obscenity again. Trying not to wake Poppy and the homunculus, he found his door and slipped out onto the landing. The moment he entered Osidian’s cell he knew it was empty. Nevertheless, he crossed the cell and ran his hands over the bed. Only the ghost of Osidian’s warmth was still there. Carnelian returned to the landing, then moved towards the ladder and peered down into the watch-tower core. Utter blackness. He could hear nothing. It was too late. In the bowels of the tower, Osidian had already sacrificed himself to his filthy god.
Carnelian returned to his chamber to await the dawn. The whole burden of their rebellion was now his alone to carry. The last time Osidian had lain infested with maggots listening to Morunasa’s god, Carnelian had not acted. When he had, it had already been too late. Horror of what had then happened tormented him. The accusing dead seemed to be standing all around him in the darkness. It was not enough to say to them that he had neither the strength nor the wisdom to work out what to do. Curled up, he rocked back and forth, fighting despair. The responsibility was his. He had in his hands the fate of those still left alive. He drew a little strength from that certainty. Slowly he assembled arguments; tried to work things out. The first light of dawn filtering into the cell brought with it some thin hope. He even managed to find a reassuring smile for Poppy and the homunculus as they woke.
In the watch-tower entry hall, Carnelian, Poppy and the homunculus peered down the ramp into the blackness of the stables. Carnelian knew he must go and talk to Lily and the Lepers, and he also wanted to get Poppy out of the tower, but he was afraid of what might lie below in that darkness; he had not forgotten the victims the Oracles had hung from the vast banyan of the Isle of Flies to be eaten alive by maggots.
Making sure Poppy was well wrapped up, he took her by the hand. Then, urging the homunculus to follow, Carnelian began descending the ramp. In his free hand he held a lantern. The edge of its light slid slowly down the ramp, a ridge at a time. With every step they took, the odour of dung and aquar grew stronger. When they reached the first level, he raised the lantern. The floor was strewn with chaff. Along the wall the stable doors were closed. Masked, cowled, gloved and cloaked, Carnelian could feel nothing directly, but he detected slight movements, as if the air was subtly tearing. He gave the lantern to the homunculus, then pulled his hand free from Poppy’s insistent grip and drew back his hood to free one ear. He flinched as something sliced the air near his cheek. Back and forth, slashes in the air. He tugged the cowl back over his mask. The air was thick with flies.
He gave his hand again to Poppy. The lantern light wavered. The homunculus was clearly in some distress. Down more ramps they went, Carnelian itching with disgust at the delicate hail of flies striking against his mask. The gold was too thin a membrane between him and such vermin.
At last they reached the lowest level, where he found, to his relief, that the portcullis giving onto the road was raised. Eagerly he strode out, past the monolith, into the bright morning, where he and the homunculus sucked at the clean air as best they could through their masks. Poppy glanced back, pale with fright.
As they emerged from the rampart of the Qunoth dragons, the Lepers rose like an ocean swell. Carnelian glanced back to the road, where the Marula camp huddled right up against the doorway into the stables. He was trying to rid himself of his unease at the way they had cowered when he had appeared among them.
He turned and saw the Lepers surging towards him. Poppy clenched his hand and the homunculus drew closer. The Lepers swarmed around them, murmuring, staring at them though keeping their distance. As he advanced a way opened up through their midst. Glancing from side to side, he could see he was surrounded and began to wonder if he had made a mistake in coming. There was nothing for it. To hesitate might be fatal.
Some figures stood their ground before him. With relief he saw a tall shrouded shape among them that could only be Fern. As Carnelian came to a halt the Lepers pressed in so close he was breathing their rankness. Their low menacing grumble beat around him.
‘Make space,’ cried a voice he recognized as Lily’s. Fern strode in a circle round Carnelian, shoving the Lepers back. ‘Give them space. Space, I say.’
As Poppy let go of his hand, Carnelian glanced down. Her face was set in an expression he could not read. He raised his eyes. For a moment he considered asking Lily for a private meeting, but he was only too aware of the dangerous temper of the crowd. What he had come to say he did not want to be heard by Aurum’s Lesser Chosen commanders or, even worse, Aurum himself, but he calculated that his voice would most likely be smothered by the Leper mob. And he did not believe that the Lepers would betray him even to the auxiliaries, never mind the other Masters.
His silence seemed to be heating them into anger. Voices began shouting questions from the back of the crowd. Others took these up until the noise swelled into a baying in which he could detect, in many voices layered one upon the other, the demand: ‘Give him to us.’
Carnelian raised his hands for silence, but their storm continued to build around him. The homunculus pushed against him. Carnelian too feared for their lives. For a moment he considered removing his mask whose cold, arrogant expression could not but be provoking them.
Then Poppy moved in front of him and her treble carried above the hubbub. ‘Let him speak.’ First Lily’s husky voice joined hers, then Fern’s booming tones, and slowly the noise abated.
Carnelian turned in a circle so that they could see he was addressing them all. ‘You shall have him.’
They answered him with thunderous cries and a stamping rhythm. He raised his hands again and this time they fell silent. ‘But if I attempt to give him to you now, you will have to fight for him against the auxiliaries and the dragons.’
Spears sprang into the air about him as they roared their rage. Once again the homunculus pressed in close. Carnelian looked round, sure that at any moment they would fall on him. Beyond natural fear he felt the first stirrings of panic that he had misjudged the situation.
Fern came to his side, and Lily and a figure that had to be Krow. With Poppy, they formed a shield around him, facing the mob, bellowing at them until, raggedly, the Lepers again fell silent.
‘Will you hear me out?’ Carnelian said. He gazed out over their heads, anxious to gauge whether the auxiliaries or the Marula or, worse, the dragons were making any move to intervene, but the dust the Lepers were raising in their agitation had shut the rest of the world out behind a hazy wall. He focused his attention on the front rank of the crowd. ‘Will you hear me out?’ he repeated.
He waited until nods in the front ranks spread out into the crowd. ‘Listen then,’ he said, using the strength there was in his Master’s voice. ‘If what I am about to say fails to persuade you otherwise, I’ll give your enemy to you now as was promised.’
Fern and the others moved away from him, turning to face him so that they could listen too. Carnelian gave Poppy a little shove. She glanced up angrily, but went to stand by Krow.
‘As you now know, your enemy is here. He came to join his strength to the Master’s. He came to fight with the Master against one more terrible even than either of them.’
A murmur soughed across the Lepers like a breeze over fernland.
‘He who is your enemy is also mine, for he tortured my uncle to death.’ He gave time for that to pass among them and registered Poppy’s puzzlement. ‘But he who comes against us is more dangerous still. He’s the consort of the Master’s mother and it is she whom you should fear more than any other. She it was who betrayed her own son and would have murdered him, as she did her daughter, if he hadn’t escaped with me out of the Mountain. More than this, it is she who sent your enemy to your valleys.’
As this news passed back through the crowd, Carnelian felt unhappy that he was bending the truth. He had worked this out in his cell. Even when he had imagined he would be talking only to Lily and a few others, he had already half decided he would not attempt to explain who the Wise were, nor the part they had played. Neither was he minded to attempt an explanation of the politics of Osrakum. Gazing at his friends, he knew he was deceiving them. As the Lepers fell silent again, Carnelian drew strength from what he knew was no lie. Jaspar and Ykoriana were at least as dangerous as Aurum and Osidian; and to tip the balance there was the fact that, in the current circumstances, he had some power over the latter two.
‘If you take your enemy now and return to your valleys, the Master’s mother will not forget you. She’ll not forget the secret way you showed us up to Qunoth.’
He glanced at Lily, fully aware that had been her gift to him. ‘What she’ll not forget nor forgive is that you’ve come up to the Guarded Land in arms. Worse, you’ve taken the part of the son she hates. Your enemy, Aurum, attacked you for his amusement; she’ll do so seeking to exterminate you utterly.’
He waited for his words to reach them all and then waited even longer to allow their threat to penetrate each stomach.
‘I didn’t come here to frighten you, but to give you hope. I’ve extracted from the Master an oath that, should you choose to help us fight his mother and her minion, and should we be victorious, you shall be pardoned.’
He looked at Fern, then Poppy, then Krow. ‘As will be all those who’ve risen in rebellion.’ He had hoped for more of a reaction, at least from his friends. The Lepers standing round him had their heads bowed and so he could not see their faces, but he felt that, there too, his words had awoken precious little hope. Almost he stumbled into making stronger promises – that the world would be changed; that they would play a part in freeing many others from the tyranny of the Masters – but he knew that would be going too far. Even what he had promised he could not be certain of delivering. ‘Choose to fight with us and there is a good chance you will gain the peace to rebuild your lives.’
Still they besieged him with their silence. He wished Lily could see his face. ‘You were prepared to fight for revenge against your enemy. Will you not fight to secure a future for yourselves?’
Lily freed her face with its blood-red eyes from its shrouds. ‘You speak to us of Masters we do not know, of threats that lie beyond the horizon. You make promises we’ve no way of knowing you can fulfil. What do you expect, Master?’
Fern raised his head and fixed Carnelian with a baleful gaze. ‘And are you so certain we can win this battle?’
Carnelian regarded him through the slits in his mask. It had come to the point when what he now had to reveal would fall upon Fern more heavily than any other. ‘I’m less than certain.’
As din erupted around him, he kept his gaze on Fern, whose face was screwed up with incomprehension. Carnelian spoke knowing he had run out of options. ‘Even now the Master communes with his god. He believes he’ll be guided by him onto a path to victory. I’ll not lie to you. I’ve no faith in his god and thus little hope he’ll find what he seeks.’
Fern’s look of pain threatened to break Carnelian’s heart. The wound the massacre had cut in Fern, so deeply it had almost destroyed him, was being reopened.
‘And you expect us to put our trust in that!’ Poppy glared at him, her face ashen.
Carnelian composed himself. This was no time for him to give way to their pain, nor his. ‘I didn’t come here expecting you to do this thing from faith nor out of trust. In surety of the risk you will take in waiting, I’ll give you control of your enemy, of the Master and of myself.’
Lily grimaced, not understanding. ‘How?’
Carnelian lifted his hand to point back at the watch-tower. ‘Move your camp around the foot of the tower. We shall then all be your prisoners. I’ll make it impossible for any of us to give commands save by your leave.’
He waited, keeping his mind and heart numb, feeling pain around his eyes, but seeing nothing but Lily’s bowed head. At last she raised it. ‘We’ll discuss it and let you know. Now leave us.’
Carnelian felt a twinge of anger at being dismissed thus, but he gave her a nod, left the homunculus with Poppy, then began the journey back towards the watch-tower.
Up on the road, more and more Marula were rising to gaze in his direction. At first Carnelian felt, uncomfortably, that they were responding to his approach, but then he realized they were looking past him. Glancing round, he saw Lepers were pouring towards him through gaps in the dragon line. He turned back to the Marula with a sense of urgency. If he did not manage to make them quit their posts quickly there could well be bloodshed. Without help this might prove beyond him. They had been set to guard the watch-tower not only by their Oracles, but also Osidian. He searched along the ranks of faces, and breathed relief when he found the one he was looking for. He made straight for him.
‘Sthax,’ he called out.
The Maruli glanced nervously towards the watch-tower foundation wall, behind which the Oracles lay communing with their god. As Carnelian climbed the ramp up to the road, the other Marula made space for him to approach Sthax. ‘I feared you lost.’
Sthax regarded him with what seemed to be suspicion.
‘You have to move your people away. I’ve given the tower to the Lepers.’
Sthax’s face hardened and Carnelian felt the Marula round them sensing his anger. ‘You have no choice.’ Carnelian glanced round at the approaching Leper tide to reinforce his point. The light his mask was reflecting into Sthax’s eyes was making him squint. Again Carnelian’s instinct was to talk to him face to face, but what was the point in pretending he was other than he was? ‘Tell the Oracles you were forced to obey my command.’
Sthax, unappeased, stood his ground. ‘What happen?’
Carnelian felt rage rising in him against this man, but knew he was not being fair. His disgust at the Oracles and their god and his obsession with the Lepers had made him treat these people shabbily. They had every right to an explanation and so he began to give Sthax one.
‘Battle?’ Sthax said, nodding wearily. His eyes seemed to be seeking Carnelian’s face through the mask. ‘We wins?’
Carnelian felt drained at having to trot out the same fragile reasons he had had to give to the Lepers, but as he explained they were waiting for Osidian’s dreams, Sthax’s back stiffened. Of course, Osidian’s god was the god of all the Marula.
Carnelian opened his arm to take in the warriors behind Sthax. ‘In a battle, many will die.’
Sthax’s smile was like unexpected sun. ‘We warriors. We fears no die.’ Light left his face. ‘We fears for loves. We fears for homes.’
This man was no fool. Sthax knew how narrow was the hope upon which his land and people hung. Carnelian explained why he had given the tower to the Lepers. ‘If they do not believe the Master will give them victory, there will be no battle. The Lepers will go home. The Marula will go home.’
He could tell from Sthax’s face that he saw even less hope in that. Grimly, the Maruli took leave of him as he began the work of persuading his fellows to quit their posts.
The Marula yielded to the Lepers. Lily left Fern behind to organize a new camp and then picked some of her people to accompany her. With a glance back at Fern, Carnelian led her and her people into the watch-tower. He climbed the ramps, keeping his gaze fixed always ahead, and was relieved when they reached the cistern level without mishap. Lily’s shrouded head turned as she surveyed the chamber with its shafts and ladder rising up into the tower. She gave a nod of acceptance, then assigned some of her people to stand guard upon the ladder, while to others she gave the duty of controlling the ramps they had just climbed.
As Carnelian walked out onto the leftway, he glanced over to where three of Aurum’s guardsmen rose to deny him access to their master’s dragon tower. Regarding their sallow, bisected faces, he judged they were unlikely to cause any trouble. It was not their job to react to changes in the camp, but only to protect their master. He busied himself with supervising the raising of the drawbridge that connected the watch-tower to the long run south to Makar. As the device was ratcheting up, he noticed anxiously that Lily had appeared and was gazing at the guardsmen and the dragon tower. As he approached her she turned. ‘Is Au-rum in there?’
Carnelian admitted that he was, then thought it best to explain that, without its crew, the Master had no means of operating the dragon, nor any way to communicate with the rest of his forces. When he was certain she was not going to make an attempt to seize Aurum, a need arose in him to have her answer some questions. ‘Do you really intend to sack Makar?’
‘Do you think it selfish of us that, after what we’ve suffered, we should seek the means to rebuild our lives?’
‘Would you heal your own wounds by wounding others?’
A furious glint came into her eyes. ‘You forget how badly the Clean have always treated us.’
‘They fear you… and it is, besides, a fear you’ve encouraged.’
Lily bowed her head. ‘Even if I wanted to pull back from it,’ she said, in a quiet voice, ‘it’s too late.’
Carnelian felt sympathy for her. He was certain she had used that promise to persuade her people to follow her here. ‘You’re not the first he’s trapped by turning your desires against you.’
She nodded.
‘If only you had come to me with this at the time…’ He paused. ‘Why didn’t you?’
Lily shook her head, then moved away to the edge of the leftway and gazed down. Carnelian was aware of the barrier between them. He moved to her side. Her people were occupying the whole breadth of the road below and, spilling down the ramp, covered much of the ground there too. ‘You have us all in your power, Lily.’
She did not turn. ‘It would appear so.’
Lily permitted Carnelian to continue residing in his cell with Poppy and the homunculus. He encouraged her to place a guard upon the tower heliograph and her people replaced the Marula as lookouts in the deadman’s chairs. He had discussed the situation with her and she had allowed Poppy to go down to see Fern and ask him if he would be prepared to go north to the watch-tower beyond the next and to remain there, keeping an eye out for Jaspar’s approach. When Fern agreed to do this, Carnelian sent him a mirrorman as a heliograph operator.
Days passed during which the breeze from the north-east gradually became the merest breath before failing completely. Without it the heat rose so that, even though the nights were chill, the stone of the watch-tower stayed warm to the touch. Carnelian lingered in his cell with Poppy during the worst of it, then, under cover of night, they would climb to the high platform where beneath a star-studded sky they often sat, hardly saying a word.
Then one afternoon a servant emerged from Aurum’s tower seeking Osidian. Lily allowed Carnelian to talk to the man. Cowering, sallow-faced, he was at first reluctant to divulge his message, but he could not long resist the imperious glare of Carnelian’s mask. It seemed that Aurum wanted to know if the Ichorian had been sighted. As Carnelian watched the man skulk back to the tower with a negative answer, he felt an increased level of anxiety. Jaspar must be close. He spent the rest of the day upon the watch-tower summit gazing north.
The following morning, Carnelian came awake certain he could hear gulls screaming above a gale. Poppy was there, staring at him. ‘Is this it?’
Carnelian sat up, hunched against the vast wave that was about to engulf them. The fear in Poppy’s face freed him from his dream. A muffled cry was coming from somewhere above them.
‘The lookouts,’ he cried, jumping up. They stared at each other. It was what they had been waiting for for days. He pointed at the ceiling. ‘I’ll go up and find out what it is. Can you please go down and tell Lily I’ll come to see her the moment I know?’
Poppy ducked a nod and made for the door. Carnelian put on his mask, took his leave of the homunculus, trusting him, then followed her out. As he scrambled up the ladder to the roof, the anticipation of what he would see up there was like lead in his stomach. He climbed the staples. Even as he crested the platform edge, he could see the Leper lookouts gathered, agitated, pointing. He clambered up onto the platform, blind to everything but the hazy north. A flash. He waited. A double flash. His heart, racing, measured the time to the next flashing. Three in a row. The prearranged signal. It meant Fern had sighted dragons coming along the road. Carnelian ignored the repeat as he peered into the vague north, straining to see the Ichorian. Dread arched over him like the wave in his dream: not just anticipation of the coming trial, but the acceptance that the time had come to wake Osidian.
Carnelian glanced back to where he had left Poppy with Lily and then he began the descent into the stables. He had had no need to go down there for days. The drain stench seemed worse, but he could detect no flies. He held a lantern out before him. He angled his mask so that its eyeslits would shield him from the glare. Reaching the first level, he saw the doors along one wall were all still closed. Transferring the lantern to his other hand, he reached out and touched the nearest. It gave under the pressure. Standing near its hinge, he pushed it open and swung the light in. A body came into view. It had the look of an Ochre corpse bitumened for sky burial. Leaning as close as he could stomach, and angling the light, he saw some twitching in the Oracle’s face. Squinting, he could make out the pink wounds pocking his skin. He retreated. So many doors with more Oracles behind them and two more levels beneath this one. His heart quailed at the thought he might have to look in all of them before he found Osidian.
Something moving at the edge of his vision caused him to spin round, his heart in his throat. He could see nothing beyond the circle of his lantern light. He shuttered the light to a narrow beam. His hackles rose. Someone was there. A pair of eyes appearing suddenly made him gasp. A ravener grin curved into being beneath the eyes.
‘The Master is startled,’ rumbled a voice Carnelian knew.
‘Morunasa.’
The grin whitened, feral in the darkness. Carnelian opened the shutter and flooded Morunasa with light. The man recoiled, an arm up before his face. He was naked, his skin free of its customary covering of ash so that Carnelian could detect the subtle curling currents of his tattoos. He kept a wary eye on Morunasa’s teeth. He would not allow Morunasa to bite him as he had in the Isle of Flies. ‘Where’s the Master?’
‘Why?’
Carnelian felt his fear turning to anger. ‘I need to see him.’
‘The cries?’
Carnelian knew Morunasa would find out everything soon enough. ‘Dragons are coming here from the north.’
Morunasa’s eyes narrowed to slits, then he passed close enough for Carnelian to be able to smell the blood oozing from his open sores. He followed him down a level, then into a stable wider than the others, in the back of which lurked counterweights and cables. There was a pale thing lying on the ground. For a moment he had the impression it was one of the Sapients, but the flesh, though starved, was firmer. He looked and recognized Osidian’s face, as thin as it had been when he had had the fever. He stooped to touch him and recoiled from the marble cold of death.
‘He lives,’ slurred Morunasa. His eyes rolled up as if he had just been stabbed. The dark irises descended. ‘He is with our Lord.’
Unmasked, Carnelian knew his face must be betraying what he thought of Morunasa’s god. He reached out again and, taking Osidian’s arm, shook him. Osidian released a groan, but did not wake. Carnelian felt the wetness on his fingers and turned to see them dark. He wiped the blood on his robe, fearing, irrationally, that he might have touched not only a wound, but also one of the maggots.
‘He shouldn’t be woken.’
Carnelian glanced up. ‘I’ve no choice. Will you help me carry him up out of here?’
Morunasa regarded him with a glazed expression, so that Carnelian had to repeat his question. The second time, Morunasa nodded.
Carnelian watched Poppy as she gazed, frowning, on Osidian’s skeletal face. He and Morunasa had laid him out upon the cobbles within the shelter of the leftway monolith, round to one side of the entrance so that his face could be seen neither from the leftway nor from within the watch-tower. Carnelian had left him unmasked because he feared his mask might smother him. For what Poppy was doing, the Law demanded death, but he imagined only Aurum would dare attempt to enforce it. If Aurum did, Carnelian would immediately hand him over to the justice of the Lepers.
Waiting for Osidian to wake, they had watched the shadows lengthen across the camp below. Now, beyond the monolith, everything was bathed in the reddening gold of the dying day. Carnelian had concealed Osidian’s bony body and its wounds beneath a blanket. The mask he had used to hide Osidian’s cadaverous face from Lily was lying on the ground beside him. The gold face seemed to have been flayed from what was little more than a skull. Seeing how Osidian had suffered stirred feelings in Carnelian of guilt, of loss, of rage. He glanced into the shadows of the cistern chamber where Lily was waiting with her Lepers. Against the objections of her people, she had given in to his plea that they should be patient at least until the morning. A tiny twitching in Osidian’s thin lips gave the impression he might be talking to someone in his dreams. Carnelian had tried many times already to wake him, without success. This sleep was the brother of death.
Morunasa had reacted with anger when he discovered his Marula had abandoned their posts to the Lepers. Carnelian had told him that they had done so in obedience to his command and that, besides, the warriors could not have withstood the Leper numbers. He suspected that Morunasa was not appeased but had bade him return below to wake the Oracles. Both knew that they might well play some pivotal part in the next day’s events.
Everyone was waiting for Osidian to wake, but there was no certainty he would choose to climb up from the depths in which he wandered, lost. Even if he did, what hope was there he would have found what he sought?
Hearing voices, Carnelian started awake. Night had fallen. He must have dozed. A muttering was coming out from the cistern chamber that was punctuated now and then by a raised voice. Listening, he was sure he could hear the rumble of Fern’s voice. Carnelian sat up and reached for his mask, instinctively knowing Fern must soon appear. He paused with it in his hand and glanced at Osidian’s, smouldering darkly on the ground. He put his mask down and leaned back against the monolith. Fern had the right to see them both.
A dark shape appeared in the doorway beneath the toothed edge of the raised portcullis. Poppy rose and moved towards Fern as if to give him a hug of welcome, but she halted and let her arms fall. ‘What news?’
Fern gave no answer and, though his face was in shadow, Carnelian sensed his gaze was on Osidian. ‘Has he revealed how we might win the battle?’
‘We’ve not yet been able to wake him,’ Carnelian said.
‘He has the worms in him?’
‘He does.’
Silence.
‘Will he wake in time?’ Fern asked at last.
Carnelian was only too aware of what Osidian had done the last time he had awoken from such a sleep. ‘I don’t know.’ He peered into Fern’s shadow face, yearning to see him clearly. ‘Tell us what you’ve seen.’
The shadowy figure shifted. ‘Mid afternoon we saw dragons approaching from the north. After sending you word, we rode south to the next tower. We climbed it and waited there until nightfall. When I was certain they’d formed a camp around the forward tower, we returned here.’
‘So it’ll be tomorrow?’
‘If we choose to fight.’
Carnelian’s chin sank into his chest as he contemplated what the next day might bring. Perhaps a battle. Perhaps the Lepers would take Aurum and leave. Whatever was to come, there would be losses.
As Fern began turning away, Carnelian could not suppress panic that he might leave tomorrow, that he might go for ever. ‘Please, Fern
… please, stay here with us.’
The man became inanimate shadow. Then the shadow approached so that the light from within the tower found the contours of his form. Poppy moved aside, exposing a space beside Carnelian. ‘I’ll fetch you a blanket,’ she said and darted into the tower.
Carnelian sensed Fern standing there, but did not want to look up in case their eyes should meet. Poppy was soon back. Fern accepted the blanket from her, wrapped it about his shoulders, then sank down beside Carnelian with his back against the monolith. Intensely aware of the warm pressure against his shoulder, Carnelian regarded the sky. The ribs of the watch-tower black against the stars seemed the branches of some massive baobab. His heart remembered the time so long ago when he and Fern had shared a blanket in the Upper Reach. He turned his head enough to see Fern’s profile. He was gazing up at the night sky. Carnelian wondered if Fern too was remembering that night.
Carnelian jerked awake and saw an ice face pulled into a silent scream. Its eyes, fixed on something beyond, communicated their terror to him. Osidian, releasing a stuttering gasp, raised the gleaming bony shard of an arm to point at the sky. Carnelian gazed up, expecting some horror to fall on them. For a moment he saw only the black arms of the watch-tower ribs, but then he saw the moon. A diamond scythe so sharp it felt as if it might slice through his eyes. He looked back to Osidian, who had subsided, mumbling. Closed, his eyes seemed to have sunk back into the silver mask of his face. Carnelian became aware Poppy and Fern were staring at Osidian too.
Just then a hail of tiny flutters on his face made Carnelian throw up his hands in alarm. Masked by his fingers, he could feel the pinpricks on his skin. It was not, as he had feared, an assault of flies. With a delicate hiss, something blowing on the breeze was striking him. He was disturbed by the memory of the sporestorm he and Fern and Poppy had endured on their way to the Koppie. This was only blown dust. Squinting against the delicate hail, he saw his friends had covered their heads with their blankets. Osidian seemed dead again. Carnelian hunched his blanket up, pulled it over his head, then settled back to sleep.
Waking once more, Carnelian sat up. Osidian was standing there with the camp pouring its undulating dark reflection over his mask.
‘It is an omen,’ Osidian said, his Quya a whisper.
Carnelian glanced around; not only the leftway, but everything below was in strange shadow. On both sides of the monolith, the leftway was dusted red, the colour collecting in the cracks between the cobbles like dried blood. More of this rustiness clung to the folds of Poppy’s blanket. He shook his own blanket and filled the air with it. ‘The dust?’
Osidian turned his mirror face slowly towards Carnelian. ‘The breeze,’ he sighed.
Carnelian moved to stand beside him, squinting against the dusty air.
‘It is my Father’s breath urging me to Osrakum.’
Carnelian was lost for a moment, contemplating the pale tendons, the corded veins in the arm and hand with which Osidian was holding his mask before his face. He wondered at where Osidian was getting the strength to stand. He focused on what Osidian had said and understood. ‘The rain wind.’ It was true. The wind had shifted. It was coming from the south-west. He should have realized that when he had woken during the night.
‘Why did you wake me?’
Carnelian regarded him. ‘Jaspar is here.’
He expected some kind of agitation, but instead Osidian gave a languid nod as if his mask were too heavy for him. ‘I saw him in my dreams.’
Carnelian indicated the dusty mass of the Lepers stirring below. ‘I gave them control of this tower. I have put you, my Lord Aurum and myself in their power. If you cannot convince them we will be victorious…’
Osidian gave another, slow nod. ‘Your precautions, Carnelian, were unnecessary.’ He shifted into Vulgate. ‘Today we’ll annihilate our enemies.’
Carnelian was uneasy at his certainty. He glanced round and saw Fern was awake, angry and disbelieving. ‘How will we do that, my Lord?’
‘Summon the Lord Aurum and I shall tell you.’
Calculating that it could do no harm, Carnelian asked Fern if he would fetch the old Master. Unease was bright in Fern’s eyes, but he went. Carnelian looked round for Poppy, but she was gone. He could not be sure how much she had heard, but he could hope she had gone to urge Lily and the Lepers to wait just a little longer.
Slaves struggled to help their master across the brassman up onto the leftway. As Aurum straightened, his slaves cowered away. He approached, hobbling. Watching him, Carnelian wondered again at his condition. Osidian sketched a gesture of concern. ‘Is my Lord strong enough to command today?’
‘Imago has come?’
‘We shall engage him before midday.’
The old Master seemed to grow more massive in his black cloak. ‘My will shall provide me with the strength my body lacks, Celestial.’
Carnelian thought that both his allies looked frail.
Gingerly, Osidian crouched and ran a thin finger through the red dust. ‘This is Imago’s line.’ Facing its mid-point, he traced what seemed a smile and from its centre dragged two fingers back to make a double line. ‘This is how we shall destroy the Ichorian.’
As he explained, Carnelian was noticing how the crescent matched the moon Osidian had pointed to during the night. Though the tactics were fascinating, he wondered whence they really had come.
Aurum’s mask regarded them. ‘And you are convinced, Celestial, this novel tactic will break Imago’s line?’
Osidian gave a slight shrug. ‘If it does not, then it is we who will be destroyed.’
Carnelian saw another objection. ‘Will Jaspar not realize what we are preparing for him?’
Osidian made a smiling gesture with his hand and turned towards the camp. Dust blowing against his mask collected its red powder upon lip and brows. ‘Behold my Father’s breath.’
Carnelian nodded, understanding. ‘You intend that we should come at him with the wind at our backs?’
‘We shall raise a red twilight that shall conceal our storm from him until it is too late.’
Carnelian pondered the appearance of the rain wind that very morning, wondering if he dare believe it really was an omen. Ultimately it was not he but the Lepers who must believe. ‘What about those who will fight upon the ground?’
Osidian winnowed the dusty air with a dismissive gesture. ‘They merely have to withstand the Ichorian aquar until we have broken through.’
Aurum was nodding. ‘If their huimur fail, the rest of the Ichorian will break.’
Osidian’s ‘merely’ was making Carnelian fret, but he knew that quizzing him further would not help gauge the threat to the Lepers. Osidian’s plan was akin to hazarding all on the flight of a single arrow.
‘My huimur tower is not equipped for such a battle, Celestial.’
‘That is why, my Lord Aurum, you shall be commanding your legion from my tower.’
Carnelian waited for Aurum to object to this. When he did not, Carnelian realized that, of course, the Master really had no choice. Though commands would be issued to his legion in his name, it was Osidian who would in truth command them. ‘And you would have me command the Qunoth huimur, my Lord?’
Osidian turned to Carnelian. ‘If my Lord would deign to do so?’
Carnelian considered that it was Lily and her Lepers who ultimately would have to make that decision. ‘I shall go, my Lord, to begin the marshalling of our forces.’
Osidian’s hand made a crisp affirmation. ‘I shall remain here long enough to determine with my Lord Aurum how best we might communicate our tactics to his commanders.’
‘Celestial,’ Carnelian said and, bowing, turned towards the monolith.
When he entered the cistern chamber the Lepers rose to face him. He came to a halt between the first two pillars, wondering if it was because they knew him that they did not bow or kneel or whether they had come to a point where they would dare show such defiance to any Master. Lily was there, Poppy beside her and Fern. Knowing there was not much time, Carnelian launched immediately into an explanation of Osidian’s proposed tactics. When he was done their shrouds did not allow him to see the reactions of the Lepers. Fern’s eyes, however, seemed flint. Lily turned her hooded head to scan her peers as if she was hearing them speak. She turned back. ‘And the Master believes this to be a revelation from his god?’
Carnelian felt uncomfortable discussing the source of Osidian’s tactics, but he could tell from Lily’s tone that what for him seemed a point of weakness seemed to her a source of strength.
‘Do you believe truly his god speaks to him?’
Carnelian squirmed, then remembered. ‘He claims it was his god who told him how to lead us out of the swamps that the waters in your valleys feed.’
This information produced a muttering among the Lepers.
‘I was there too,’ said Fern, his mouth twisting with disgust. ‘He led us, but who is to say we would not have found the way ourselves? Unless you’re claiming that his filthy god has always led him infallibly.’
Carnelian withered. Osidian had claimed it was the Darkness-under-the-Trees that had led him to massacre the Tribe.
Fern shook his head as if trying to dislodge his anger. ‘Talk not to me of gods. Instead tell me if you believe this tactic can bring us victory against the Bloodguard.’
Carnelian stood frozen, unhappy to have his opinion influence the decision upon which these people would risk their blood. His mask was casting glimmers over them. If he was going to tell them what he believed he did not want to do so wearing the imperious majesty conferred by that false face. They flinched as he reached to release it. Fern frowned as Carnelian exposed his face. Poppy was the only one to smile. ‘Look into my eyes and see for yourselves what it is I feel about this. I don’t know if this will work. I wouldn’t have you believe that I do. What I do believe is that the Master has a genius for battle; that if any plan could work, his might. More than that, I will not say.’
He gazed round at them, enduring their scrutiny. ‘Even if it works, it’ll depend on you holding the mounted cohorts of the Bloodguard. Perhaps you know their reputation?’
He looked at Fern, whose father an Ichorian had wounded fatally, whose brother and uncle the same Ichorian had killed. ‘I’m not the only one here who has seen them kill.’
He felt their doubt and saw it on Poppy’s face; it was there too beneath Fern’s coldness. A sound behind him made him jerk his mask up. He paused before it had wholly covered his face, feeling the heavy footfalls of Masters approaching, hearing the scrape of Aurum’s staff. He let his hand fall, the mask hanging from his fingers, and turned.
‘Horns and fire,’ cried Aurum. Carnelian sensed his Quya making the Lepers falter. ‘Is it possible, boy, that you have not yet learned the lesson of the baran?’
Carnelian watched the old Master half turning, his hands rising to give the commands. He remembered how on the baran they had chopped gestures and how, in obedience to those, his guardsmen had massacred the crew.
‘We’re no longer on the ship,’ Carnelian said, deliberately, in Vulgate. ‘And you’re here with none who’ll heed your murderous commands.’ Defiance was sweet.
Aurum turned to Osidian. ‘Celestial, these creatures must all be put to death.’
Osidian’s mask turned to Carnelian, who could see a glitter of eyes moving behind its slits. His hand rose, making a smile gesture that, though it carried appeasement, was also shaded by a dismissive amusement. ‘It would seem, my Lord Aurum, impolitic for me to destroy the commanders of my auxiliaries.’ He rolled an elegant hand. ‘Let us say that these creatures are become members of House Suth.’
Confident his gambit had paid off, Carnelian glanced round. Fern was considering what he had said to them and, Carnelian was sure, Lily and the Lepers were too. The decision was theirs to make. Their enemy was there unarmed among them. They could take him now and return to their valleys and flee the coming battle. Fearing either outcome, he waited, not willing them to decide one way or the other.
It was Lily who first gave him a nod. Others followed. He turned last of all to Fern. As their eyes met, his heart gave a lurch. He dared not name what had passed between them lest he should destroy it. Fern broke the contact with a nod.
Carnelian turned back to the Masters. Their gold faces seemed to float disembodied above their black cloaks. ‘My Lords had best go now down to the camp. It will take my Lord Aurum a while to negotiate the ramps and we must make haste lest our enemy be upon us before we have had time to prepare our battleline.’
Osidian gave him a nod, then advanced on the Lepers, who moved from his path. Aurum was forced to follow him, each punt of his staff gouging the floor. Carnelian watched them until they had disappeared down into the darkness of the stables. He wondered how Aurum, already discomfited, would react to the Oracles and their sacrament.
Lily speaking made him turn to her. ‘Our enemy seems weakened.’
Carnelian was still savouring his victory over Aurum. ‘Don’t worry; he won’t die before we give him to you. We Masters maintain a fierce grip on life.’ Almost he added: and we are made of finer clay. That made him smile and ignited in him a fierce desire to destroy Jaspar. At that moment he felt he had the power to tear down the Commonwealth. Then he saw the people standing before him and his ardour cooled. A large part of the price for victory would most likely be the spilling of their blood. ‘You will fight then?’
They answered him with a cry of assent that made the portcullis counterweights shiver. He felt moved and covered this by going over again the part they would play in the coming battle. When he was sure they understood, he told them they must go and make their people ready. ‘While I’ll do the same for my dragon commanders.’
‘I’ll go with Fern,’ said Poppy.
‘What do you mean?’ Carnelian said, suspicious.
‘I can’t let Krow go into battle without saying goodbye to him.’
The frown Fern gave her showed he was sharing Carnelian’s misgivings. ‘You’re not going to fight in the battle.’ Carnelian pointed up into the tower. ‘You can watch it from up there.’
Poppy’s face hardened. ‘What if Krow should die?’
Fern gripped her shoulder. ‘I’ll take care of him for you.’
Poppy wriggled free and glared at them both. ‘I’m not going to stay here when you’re all out there. Besides, what makes you both think this tower’s safe?’
Carnelian and Fern glanced at each other. She had a point. Carnelian thought about it. He hung his head. ‘You can come with me.’
Poppy beamed. ‘In the dragon?’
Carnelian looked to make sure Fern approved and then nodded heavily. The Lepers were already descending the ramp. Fern gave Carnelian a look he could not read. ‘Take care.’
‘Don’t forget you promised to look after Krow,’ Poppy said.
‘I won’t,’ said Fern. He looked at Carnelian. ‘Make sure we win.’
Carnelian gave a nod, his heart aching. As he and Poppy watched Fern disappear into the darkness, a nausea crept over him that he feared was a premonition of Fern’s death. Poppy took hold of two of his fingers and squeezed them. ‘Don’t worry. While Fern’s taking care of Krow, Krow will be taking care of Fern.’
Sitting in his command chair, Carnelian saw in front of him a long file of dragons trampling their shadows as they lumbered into the west. A cohort of his own Qunoth dragons was immediately in front. Beyond them Aurum’s with the old Master and Osidian on Heart-of-Thunder at their head. Carnelian was confident the rest of his dragons were following him in single file. All along the starboard edge of their march the dragons were unfurling a vast red banner of dust that was drifting away into the north-east. Not only was it hiding the road, but everything that lay in that direction. More disconcertingly, it was proclaiming their position to Jaspar. Earlier, Carnelian had bidden his Lefthand to get their lookout to relate what he could see of the road. Word had returned that, even perched aloft, he could see nothing at all through the dust. This was exactly what Osidian had hoped for. If their lookouts could not see the road, then Jaspar should not be able to see their banner masts. Nevertheless, none of this stopped Carnelian feeling nervous that, at that very moment, the Ichorian could be bearing down upon their flank unseen. He fretted again over whether his commanders had fully understood his explanation of Osidian’s tactics. He was also beset by doubt whether, when it came to it, they would follow him into a battle against the feared double legion of the Bloodguard.
He glanced round. Poppy was there sitting against the bone wall. The homunculus was hunched beside her, his head sunk between his knees so that he appeared to be nothing more than a boy. It was Poppy who had asked to have the little man along. Red dust in the folds of her Leper shrouds looked like dried blood. More carpeted the deck and formed drifts in the angles of the cabin. Had he been foolish to let Poppy come with him? Was she really safer here than back in the watch-tower?
To port, the cool blues of the morning were only lightly wisped with the dust the riders were churning up. The Marula rode nearest to the dragon line, two abreast. Beyond, ranks of auxiliaries faded into their own dust, their jiggling mass grotesquely animated by long shadows. He had divided the Lepers into two groups. The first under Lily rode up at the front of their column. The second under Fern brought up the rear. In the camp he had been glad Osidian’s wish to have the auxiliaries fight next to the dragons had banished the Lepers to the extreme flanks. Now he was not so sure. Though the intention was to advance with both flanks re-fused so that they would be as far as they could be from the Ichorians’ fire, what if Jaspar attempted to outflank them? Then the Lepers would bear the brunt of the fighting on the ground.
He gazed at the rump of the dragon in front. Each of its footfalls gouged up a red spiral of dust. Several of these intertwined, feathering diagonally up to feed the clouds rolling towards Jaspar. At least, Carnelian thought, by placing the aquar to port both they and their riders were being spared that choking fog.
At last Osidian veered them north-west. Carnelian gave the order to turn an eighth to starboard, then watched as the auxiliaries matched the new course and the hazy shadow of the duststorm oozed out over them. Then he gazed out to starboard. Though he knew they must now be marching parallel to the road, he could see no hint of it through the murk.
A muffled, deep-throated cry sounded from far ahead. This was taken up by another trumpet and another, in a cascading sequence that grew louder as it sped towards them. This was one of several prearranged signals. Even before it reached them, Carnelian gave an order to his Righthand. The man muttered into his voice fork and, a moment later, the cabin shook as a vast, nasal groan was released by Earth-is-Strong’s trumpets. A movement in the corner of Carnelian’s eye made him turn to see Poppy startled. He considered saying something to reassure her but in the end he stayed silent. He did not wish to diminish the martial atmosphere of the deck. Worse, he feared that one kind word might encourage Poppy to some action. It was better she should sit there quietly.
The trumpet blasts were fading away to the rear of the march. Carnelian gave the command that made Earth-is-Strong turn to starboard even as she slowed to a halt. He watched with some relief as the neighbouring dragons turned too. He had deliberately held his dragon back so that the rest of the line would advance a little in front of him. Leaning on the arm of his chair, he peered to port, down the forming line of dragons. At last he saw what he was looking for: a dragon half lost in the dust it was raising as it approached. It was Heart-of-Thunder coming to join him in the centre. He watched the monster slow, then turn, inserting himself into the line six dragons away: the six that would form the horns of the crescent.
Gazing to starboard, Carnelian watched a seethe of dust undulating down the line as his auxiliaries rode off to form the right wing. He screwed his eyes up, but could see no clear evidence of Fern’s Lepers at its very end. Grimly, he gave a command, and slowly, with the cabin rocking from side to side, Earth-is-Strong edged into her place in the line. On either side, the dark shapes of Marula were pouring forwards to form their skirmish screen in front. The breeze was carrying the red dust wall away from them, sinking as it thinned. The glare of the sun was beginning to coalesce into a patch, then into an orb so bright he had to lower his head so that the slits of his mask would shield his eyes. His heart was pounding. At any moment he might see a wall of dragons thundering towards them. From violet, the north-eastern sky was turning blue. At last he realized he could see all the way across the plain to the horizon. No sign of movement, of the road, of anything.
He became aware of the tower settling around him, creaking, releasing tension. He heard and felt the tremor of Earth-is-Strong emitting a snort. Furtive sounds rose from the crew in the lower decks. He was conscious of his breath as it passed in and out through the nostrils of his mask. He leaned forward. In the far distance a long flat sliver of movement. A twitching, shifting strip that could have been the froth of a blood sea breaking its waves upon a shore.
A lurid twilight filled the cabin. Carnelian felt they had been pushing through its red fog for days. He had lost all sense of time. Anxiety that at any moment an enemy dragon would emerge from the murk had left him weary and irritable. Though he feared it, he also longed for the battle to begin.
Osidian had waited while the Ichorian formed its battleline. The froth of dust had widened along the horizon. That it thinned to the edges suggested Jaspar had matched his battleline to theirs as Osidian had prophesied. Dragon was matched to dragon; aquar to aquar. Why not? Jaspar knew he had the greater strength.
The mirror signal Osidian had sent flickering towards either flank consisted of a single command. ‘Advance’. The dragons had lurched forward stirring red surf into life at their feet. Soon this had rolled over the cordon of Marula stretched across their front. Higher and higher it had boiled, tendrils smoking up to grip the blue morning. Soon, the red, rolling wall had risen to quench it altogether.
Carnelian leaned forward in his command chair, peering into the rolling cloud they were driving before them. He was sure he had seen something, but it was probably just another phantasm. He glimpsed three small dark solid things there on the ground. Marula labouring like ants through the sandstorm. It gave him stale satisfaction that this dust would be striking directly into the faces and towers of Jaspar’s host.
‘The signal, Master.’
Carnelian jumped, having almost forgotten his Lefthand was there. Instantly he looked to port, where the nearest dragon seemed a ship in a fog. A tiny glow like a marsh light upon its tower roof was moving from side to side. This was it. He gave the command for Earth-is-Strong to slow. As the cabin began to rock, he commanded her pipes lit. The dragon to starboard was keeping pace with her. Hopefully this was happening all the way down the line. To port, he saw the dragon there pulling ahead. The other five were surely advancing in line with it. He turned Earth-is-Strong an eighth to port. Slowly they began shearing in behind the six. Carnelian peered into the murk counting the shadows while at the same time looking out for Osidian. The horns and beak were the first to emerge, like a floating crucifixion. Then the massive bulk of Heart-of-Thunder with her tower solidified in the gloom.
‘An eighth to starboard.’
Earth-is-Strong responded, wheeling away from Heart-of-Thunder though still closing, until the two monsters were lumbering forward side by side. Carnelian glanced over to Heart-of-Thunder’s tower, but it was too murky to see Osidian. As they picked up speed Carnelian could make out ahead the six dividing into two cohorts with a gap between them. Carefully, he and Osidian guided their dragons into this gap until they were moving in line abreast with the six. Carnelian turned to look back, but could see nothing clearly. It was the intensifying reek of naphtha that confirmed that the rest of their dragons were feeding their lines in behind them. To starboard, the sandstorm was thinning as he expected. Soon, only the Marula churning the earth would sustain it along their original front. If the fog failed too soon, Jaspar might see there was no longer a battleline of dragons confronting him.
When his Lefthand made him aware Osidian was sending the second torch signal, Carnelian had this relayed to the three dragons on his starboard flank. He watched as the nearest advanced and imagined the other two doing the same, each further than its neighbour to form the right horn of Osidian’s hollow crescent. They were ready for battle.
Lightning flashed to right and left in the murk. A shrill screaming was muffled by the dust-cloud.
‘Dragonfire,’ Carnelian muttered.
A throaty brass voice groaned. He was already giving the predetermined command even as the Marula rushed back towards him, like ants fleeing a forest fire. ‘Ahead full.’
His Righthand had hardly finished muttering into his voice fork when Carnelian felt the change in Earth-is-Strong. The power of her sinews caused the tower to vibrate in a way that made him expect it to chime like a bell. Air wafted in against them. He felt dust scratching against his mask. Then all this was forgotten. A colonnade of shadows was solidifying ahead. For a moment Carnelian had the impression the fog would clear and he would see before him the Isle of Flies, or the edge of the Labyrinth. As each pillar grew more visible, his eyes widened behind his mask in disbelief. Dragons they were, but even more massive than the one he rode. A flash of flame seemed to oil the gold-sheathed curves of immense horns. A head that was a wedge of hide and bone weightier than the prow of a baran. The tower emerging from the gloom was four-tiered and had three flame-pipes pointing straight at him. He felt he was gazing down those barrels, waiting for fiery death to come searing out at him. An electric arc screamed into being so close he braced for the scorching of the fire upon his skin. He saw it was in reality a twin jet of flame pouring towards the oncoming monsters from Heart-of-Thunder.
‘Flame,’ he said.
He felt a rumble through his feet, a sighing almost too low to hear, a choke and splutter, then the screams vibrating their harmony against each other as liquid flame spat out. Its arches collided with Osidian’s. More were coming in from around the curve of the crescent. Glaring light that made him jerk up an arm to shield his eyes. Heat upon heat building along the leather of his upheld forearm, beginning to seep through the gold cheek of his mask. Head averted, teeth clenched, he squinted, watching the sun they were rolling before them. Its white heart coruscating, pulsating in time with the spluttering gurgle of naphtha pumping out below his feet. He sensed, more than saw, the massive Ichorian monster veering away from the fireball. He was mesmerized by the carved complex geometries of its tower, stark in the blinding light. His starboard companion dragon was slowing, being left behind. The sun before them was flickering, dulling as the flame arcs of his horn of the crescent swung away. A jet of burning naphtha splashed against the flank of the Ichorian dragon. Carnelian leaned on the arm of his chair to watch the fire pouring off it, stunned.
Then he felt his own pipes shut off. The fire in front of them vanished into black smoke that, as it thinned, allowed him to see that the way ahead seemed clear. He gaped, incredulous, as the fog ahead paled from violet to blue. Sky and land stretched empty to the horizon.
The plan coming unbidden to his mind issued a command through his voice. ‘Hard to starboard.’
As Earth-is-Strong wheeled, the rear of Jaspar’s dragon line came into view. Rumps moving away from him partially veiled by the dust fog. Incredulous, he gave another command. ‘Pipes to fire at will.’
The pipes beneath him began spitting long fiery jets feathered with black smoke that fell upon the dragons and their towers. As they thundered along behind that long line, raking it with fire, Carnelian rose to his feet and swayed over to grab hold of the screen and peer through. Osidian’s plan was working. Carnelian could think of nothing else. The fearsome destruction his fire was wreaking upon the defenceless monsters was confounding his disbelief. As their towers began to smoulder, the creatures reacted by trying to turn away from the heat. Order soon turned to chaos. Their screeching was like tearing bronze as their hide blistered and ruptured. Maddened by pain, blindly they swerved and, here and there, were punching into each other. Towers crashed together, or began to heel over.
He felt a tiny grip and saw Poppy had joined him, wanting to hold his hand as she surveyed the carnage. For a moment he watched its effect upon her face. Watched her eyes twitch as they darted here and there. Watched her grimace as they passed through a pall of smoke that carried a pungent shock of charring flesh and bone.
At last, miraculously, they saw the end of Jaspar’s dragon line coming into view. As Carnelian turned, he caught the incredulous glances of his Hands before they ducked their heads. He understood their consternation: they had seen a Master holding hands with a barbarian girl. He disengaged Poppy’s grip and asked her to go back to sit beside the homunculus. She made her way past his Righthand, and Carnelian returned to his chair.
As they approached the last enemy dragon, he slowed Earth-is-Strong and turned her so that her pipes could play their fire upon the creature and its tower. As they circled round its flank, other arcs of flame, from the dragons following him, fell on the same target. The bone tower blackened, charred and fiery mouths began opening into the decks within. He grimaced, imagining the crew’s fiery hell. Fire pouring down over its flanks and head, the enemy dragon screeched and tossed its head, yanking violently against the tyranny of its tower. With an audible crack its golden horn snapped, its tip flashing as it spun away upon its chain.
‘Look,’ cried Poppy.
Somehow she had crept back to the screen. The alarm on her face brought him quickly to her side. She pointed her thin arm through the screen. Peering at where she indicated, Carnelian could not at first see anything but smoke billows and dust rolling red over the land. But occasional ragged openings tore in the palls, through which Carnelian glimpsed masses, shapes that his mind resolved. Hornwalls, their circles squeezed out of shape by the pressure of attacks. He felt his blood draining to his feet. Unbelievable victory had made him forget their people on the ground. His first instinct was to take his dragons to their aid. Then at the edge of his vision he saw, to starboard, the vast movement of Jaspar’s dragons in flight, aflame. They were heading straight for Fern’s wing.
A thunderclap hurled Carnelian against the cabin wall. It was a moment before he could make sense of anything. A ragged hole had been torn in the starboard screen. Through it he saw an incandescent mass tumbling earthwards, streaming smoke. The enemy tower had exploded. Then he saw Poppy lying on the deck and surged forward, stooping to lift her. Stillness came upon him, deafness. She was dead, but then she stirred and the cacophony returned, though there was now a hissing in his ears. Poppy looked at him; she was only stunned. He gestured the homunculus to look after her, then threw himself into his command chair. He had his Lefthand flash a message to his dragons, commanding them to turn inwards towards the centre and herd Jaspar’s fleeing dragons into the open space between their aquar wings.