They quickly made their way back to the Dreadnaught. Though the air was caustic, the smoke from the burning fuel provided them with some cover. The dead forest was mostly barren, and while there were plenty of trees to be found, they were all naked and needle thin.
The Dreadnaught’s wreckage had spread over a quarter-mile area. The aft end was the only piece of the ship that was still even relatively intact. Everything else had pulled apart into splinters. Wood, metal and machinery parts lay like industrial snowdrops on the soiled forest floor.
Dillon and Vos took position in opposite ends of the aft wreckage. Each man stood just inside of the now- sideways staircases that led below-deck. Black, in the meantime, took Cross and the prisoners behind what looked like part of a wrecked turbine engine that had fallen about a hundred feet away from the aft section. Between the four of them, they covered most of the clearing.
Wreckage and felled trees littered the ground. The skeletal forest was all that stood between them and the advancing Gorgoloth. Mist froze in the air near the tree line and blocked any clear line of sight. Ethereal light lit the air like soft fire. The air was gray and cold. White mist and dark smoke obscured the pale sky.
By the time they’d taken up position, the Gorgoloth’s battle cries had drawn noticeably closer, as the volume of those cries had tripled in their intensity. The brutes possessed a talent for placing their calls from distances and directions that made it all but impossible for an enemy to determine their numbers.
Black pushed Kane to his knees, then waited for the other prisoners to follow suit. Ekko hesitated before she knelt down. Lucan didn’t move, but it didn’t seem to be out of protest. The glazed look in his eyes and the manner in which he rocked on his heels told Cross that Lucan wasn’t entirely aware of what was happening.
“ Lucan,” Kane said from his knees. “Come on, buddy, snap to.”
“ Now,” Black said, insistent, but she didn’t shout. “On your knees.”
“ Yes,” Lucan said with a tired nod. “Of course.”
The vampire growled quietly. It hovered in the air a few feet behind them. The dark flames of its prison crackled and hummed with magical force.
“ Is that thing secure?” Cross asked.
“ Yes,” Black said impatiently. “Feel free to not ask again.”
“ Careful, big guy,” Kane said to Cross from his kneeling position. “You don’t want to get on Warden Danica’s bad side…not that she has a good side…”
Perhaps to prove Kane’s point, Black used her boot and pushed him forward and onto his face. Ekko shot Black a baleful look. Cross wondered if the deep scar on Ekko’s neck was the reason he’d not heard her speak.
Black produced an old-fashioned lever-action Winchester rifle; it was made of black metal and decorated with an elaborate grip carved into the likeness of a dragon’s tail. Apart from the stock design, it was like a weapon straight out of the Old West.
The broken turbine machinery was about four feet tall and twice that in width, so it provided good cover for the six of them. The device still smoked and crackled now and again, and the low hum and stink of broken magic made the area around it dank and thick.
“ Is this thing going to blow up?” Kane asked.
“ Yes,” Cross answered. He was relieved when Black smiled at that.
The air tasted raw with cold. Cross watched his breath steam in front of his face. He only barely saw Dillon or Vos in the nearby ship.
They waited. The sky turned the color of salt. Cross held his spirit ready and alert, but he didn’t want to send her out, at least not yet. He sensed Black’s spirit close by, and he didn’t want to leave himself exposed in case she tried something underhanded.
The ground rumbled slightly, as if from thunder.
It won’t be long.
His spirit slid down his arms and onto his gauntleted fingers, which promptly went numb from the cold. Needles of pain tingled up and down his skin. His spirit was so excited it literally hurt him.
Black’s male spirit was ambient and powerful and aggressive, made of tumultuous energy that was packed up tight like a bag of gunpowder.
Cross drew his HK45, which he checked and rechecked far too many times. The prisoners waited. Lucan and Ekko did so quietly, while Kane whistled loudly until Black finally threatened to shoot him if he didn’t stop.
“ Black,” Cross said. It was hard to sound casual when he knew that a horde of ebon-skinned cannibals were coming right at them. “Where did you say you were headed?”
“ I didn’t,” Black answered through gritted teeth. She didn’t look at him.
“ That’s right,” Cross said. “Is that because you don’t want me to know that you’re not supposed to be here?”
At that, Black shot him a sideways glance. It was all the confirmation he needed to know that he’d guessed correctly.
“ You’d be better off minding your own business,” she said. She had her rifle ready and aimed at the tree line to the east.
“ It’s a little late for that,” he said.
“ It’s too late for anything,” Lucan said. His voice took them by surprise. Cross looked at him. Lucan’s eyes were closed and his head was bent forward, as if in prayer. “An end is near.”
“ Thanks, man,” Kane said next to him. “ Now I feel better.”
“ What do you care, anyway?” Black asked Cross, ignoring the prisoners.
“ Maybe I’m just curious,” Cross shrugged. “We may be dead in a minute.”
“ What, do you want a kiss, too?” Black said dryly.
“ I do,” Kane said.
“ Shut up,” Black answered. “So why do you really want to know?” she asked Cross. “If you have something to say, then I’d prefer that you just say it.”
“ Yeah, you seem like the forward type,” Cross smiled.
He looked at the clearing. There were a few hundred yards of open space between them and the trees. Drawing a horde of charging Gorgoloth into the clearing was the only chance they had to funnel the brutes and control their movement to trap them in a cross-fire. In retrospect, staying deeper in the trees would have made it easier to avoid getting surrounded, but it would have been more difficult to set up any sort of defensible position.
I don’t want to die here, Cross thought. Somewhere else. Not in the Reach.
The mist thinned. Dark shapes took form in the distance, a mass of bobbing shadows.
Cross didn’t need to see the white spider. It was a guide, somehow, the world’s way of telling him where to go, only he’d seen it less and less those past months. He knew it was there, somewhere, out on a tree or crossing the path. They were supposed to be there, finding that crash.
Follow and you will find.
“ Dillon and I are on a mission,” he said. “We’re looking for something.”
“ Pray tell.”
“ The Woman in the Ice,” he said.
Cross noted Lucan’s reaction: he stiffened like a board, and his eyes fluttered open for a moment, as if waking from a dream, and then closed again.
Black flinched at mention of the Woman.
“ You’re heard of her,” Cross said.
“ Maybe,” Black said with a nod.
Thunder approached the tree line. The Gorgoloth would break into the clearing in a few moments. Cross’ spirit coiled up so hard she weighed down his limbs. He breathed in deep, pulled her into his lungs, and held her there.
“ I know you’re not supposed to be here,” he said. “You have a skeleton crew and only a handful of prisoners. Whatever you’re doing here, it’s not as a Revenger.” He had to raise his voice to be heard. “If we live through this…you and I have things to talk about.”
The sound of the approaching force grew louder by the second. Inky silhouettes bled into view through the dying fog. A second later, and the Gorgoloth were there.
