He felt their words.
I Love You. I’ll always be with you, no matter what happens.
They were Kane’s. They were sincere, and warm, and yet leaden with sadness and regret. Kane choked on them.
He felt Ekko’s emotions, muted though they were now due to her newfound cursed state. He felt regret cut across her still beating heart like a hot blade, felt it sear and score her insides. He saw memories, flashing images of she and Kane together, little moments, most of them desperate, most of them on the run or fighting for their lives, imprisoned, separated, waiting to be together.
They were apart again. And even as close as they stood now, the chances of their ever bridging the gulf that separated them were next to impossible, and they both knew it.
For a moment, Cross had to stop, nearly crushed with grief. Ekko was no longer capable of shedding tears, so Cross, whether he wanted to or not, did it for her.
He gathered himself, and boarded the ship.
NINETEEN
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.”
