accomplished rider, and he didn’t intend to stop, so he kicked the horse again, lowered his head and held on for dear life.
Cross smelled her magic before it came, a meaty smell that was thick and bloody and laced with fire. Red light flashed around the small woman as she whipped her hand backwards. A spiral of black and red glass cut through the air. The horse reared, and Cross was thrown from the saddle.
The world spun as he collapsed on his back. The wind was knocked from his lungs, and for a moment everything went black. Cross’ back and neck felt like cracked wood. Sharp pain throbbed in a solid line from the bottom of his skull to the base of his spine. He managed to open his eyes. The horse and its severed head lay on the ground next to him.
The Raza monk stood glowering at him. A halo of cold fire hung over her head, and it sapped away Cross’ strength just to look at it. He was dumbfounded, trapped in place when he tried to rise.
Gunfire erupted close by, and whispers swirled through his brain. A cold dead wind enveloped him in its spectral chill. Cross’ chest seized up with frost. He felt a touch like cold water against his skin, and it saturated him to the bone.
The Raza pointed a jagged fingernail at him, and a beam of impossibly ebon light drove into his core. The blackness grew there, and it rushed like soiled water through his veins. He saw a void, a black and vacant hole that unfolded out of the air like grisly paper. Cross fell into an unending liquid pit. He dissolved down an endless whirlpool of darkness.
He sees the mountain, and the girls. He feels the presence of the black unicorns. He sees men on a field caked thick with blood, marching for a place they can never reach to fight an enemy they cannot defeat.
She falls into the sky, like the leaves, adrift in the silver rain, falling and falling without end, forever trapped, unable even to die.
A sharp pistol shot sounded directly over Cross’ head. He ducked from the blast and threw his hands over his ears. The vision of falling into the midnight vortex and the slaying glade were violently snatched away.
The monk’s head snapped back in an explosion of blood and bone. Graves stood with a smoking Sig Sauer in his hand. Stone was behind him, firing the M16 at an onrushing mob of Dirgian pike-guards, while Cristena conjured a wave of liquid wraiths that spiraled out of her clenched fists like an exploding cyclone.
She shielded me, Cross realized. Cristena saved my life. My God, she’s got some serious power.
Impressive as it was, Cristena’s shield rapidly started to deteriorate as it repelled a hail of bullets. Cross felt the pulsations of her power buckle with each shot, just as he felt the shield shift and rattle in place like a piece of glass buffeted by heavy winds. He felt her exhaustion, felt the waves of power exuded by her spirit.
How did I feel that? What the hell is happening?
Moments later, the sensation was gone. Cross’ stomach felt like it had been filled with sewage.
Graves fired into the mob of onrushing soldiers as he re-mounted his horse. Graves and Cristena had made it through the neck and were just outside the open portcullis, but still beneath the protective stone outcropping of the barbican towers, which, lucky for them, made it difficult for the sentries on the city walls to get a clear shot at them. Cross didn’t see the other Razas, but he remembered the flame cannons mounted up top with the gunners.
We are so screwed.
Cristena sent an arc of electric blue energy into the portcullis. The gate rumbled in place and groaned against its own tracks. Stone just managed to get his horse and the camel out of the neck before the thick iron slammed into the ground with a reverberating crash and a cloud of dust.
The squad was outside of the city.
“ What about the monks?” Cross asked. Graves hauled him up to ride behind him. Cross’ ribs stung like fire.
A klaxon sounded inside the city. Shouts and battle cries filled the air as more of Dirge’s finest answered the call.
“ Stone killed one, and Cristena got the other,” Graves said. “She’s a badass, man. She looked like you out there.”
Cross hoped he’d live to resent his replacement later.
A rifle shot struck the ground in front of them. There was open country ahead, a steep descent into rolling red hills, dusty plains, rock-filled ravines and thin forests. Beyond the trees was the Bone March.
“ The riflemen will kill us the second we make a break for it,” Graves said. “Being under the barbican is the only thing keeping us alive, and it won’t take those soldiers long to make it out here.”
“ Ride forward, then,” Cross told him. He reached into his coat pocket. “Slowly.”
“ What?”
“ Do it.”
Graves did, even while Stone and Cristena both shouted for them to stop. The horse moved out from under the barbican, one step at a time, until they were out into the open, just far enough for Cross to look up and see the edge of the roof directly over their heads.
Cross threw the grenades up and onto the top of the barbican, one and then the other, and he let the pins fall into the dirt.
“ Whoa!” Graves shouted. He turned the horse round and raced back under cover.
The blast was deafening, like a fall of thunder. Chunks of metal and dust cascaded onto the ground. Fire and bodies fell amidst a wreckage of machinery parts, broken wood and chunks of shattered stone. Seizing the moment, the squad urged their horses forward, hoping the riflemen positioned further down the wall wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot through the haze and smoke.
At least we got rid of the flame cannons, Cross thought with some satisfaction.
He glanced back through the smoke and saw streams of fire spread rapidly along the tops of the walls as the liquid fuel reserved for the cannons exploded. Black smoke billowed into the air.
The horses thundered down the hill. Cross was nearly thrown from the back of Graves’ horse when they came to the first steep descent off of the level ground there in front of the city. They raced down steep slopes that led all of the way out to the plains. Cross hung on for dear life, his hands locked in a death grip around Graves’ waist.
The squad tore towards the badlands, passing through drifts of fire smoke and dust stirred up by harsh dead winds. Cross heard nothing behind them to indicate that any sort of pursuit was still underway, and for a moment he thought they’d gotten away clean.
That was when the mortar shells began to fall.
The blasts started slowly, a distant chorus of soft booms. It was difficult to make out the origin points of the mortars, but they heard the bombs tear down through the air with sonic force, a cavalcade of building momentum.
The first blast hit about 300 yards behind them, well off the mark but close enough that it rattled the ground and spooked their horses. Graves had to fight their mount to keep it from throwing them both to the ground. Chunks of earth scattered and fell around them like dice. The second blast hit a few yards closer.
“ Ride!” Stone shouted. “If this smoke clears and they get a clean shot, we’re dead!”
They raced, nearly out of control, down the steep hill. The mortar blasts got closer and closer, and they fell one after another in quick succession. Cross expected every blast to hit. His spine tingled, and the hairs on the nape of his neck froze in spite of the sweat and flight. His back tensed, ready for the blast, ready for the shrapnel.
Somehow, they made it. Within a few minutes they’d left the crash of mortar shells behind them, and the city of Dirge faded until it was just a dark stain.
The land continued to slope to the north. The path widened between the growing hills, which turned rocky and jagged. Up ahead, past the last line of dying vegetation, was a realm of red dirt, black soil and white trees. The Bone March.
They rode in silence for a time, listening for the sound of pursuit. Surprisingly, none came, but they kept their pace for another hour.
The air took on a metallic and stale quality. There was no breeze. The land ahead of them was already an eyesore, a dread panorama.
“ So,” Cross said at last. His voice was surprisingly loud in the prevailing quiet. There weren’t even insects or bird calls in the air.
