siege, and that deserved some token act of homage.
Stenwold had never even tried to use a spear before.
He dodged past the Onychoi, narrowly avoiding being brained by one gauntleted fist. Fel did something complicated with daggers and his spiked fists, and a spray of fine blood dusted Stenwold as he rushed by. The expression on the Kerebroi’s face was loathing, but also fear, for here was the landsman, the venomous outlander, and who knew what he was capable of?
Still, he had wits enough to sidestep the spear, and its narrow head rammed the wall, shattering to pieces, only a needle of sharp bone after all. The Kerebroi brought his sword down, the stroke faltering as though even making contact with this land-kinden would carry some kind of contagious death. Stenwold took it on the spear’s shaft, which bowed under the impact but held, and then he just pushed hard, ramming the man backwards, putting all his considerable weight behind a shove that propelled the Kerebroi into the piecemeal wall.
The wall gave way. It was just a partition between one internal space and the next. No doubt its builders had never anticipated it being used as a weapon. The wall gave way, and the Kerebroi fell backwards onto a surging sea of spines.
Stenwold had a moment to witness the man’s realization of his fate before a dozen quills had impaled him, some keen enough to come jutting out from his front. Then the push was coming from the other way and Stenwold cast himself aside desperately, as the Echinoi beast lurched through in a rippling tide of spikes waving like pike-heads. It filled the breadth of their narrow room, and there were Echinoi warriors following, lipless mouths snarling to bare needle teeth at them, weapons raised. Stenwold watched Phylles, who must have been almost within reach of him a moment before, scrabble to a halt and draw back swiftly. She was on the far side of the beast. They all were. He saw Laszlo gather himself as if to brave the journey across, but the monster’s spines were almost scraping the ceiling, leaving no safe gap even for a Fly-kinden. ‘Stay back!’ Stenwold shouted to him. ‘I’ll find a way round.’
Then he ran. The Echinoi had spotted him, and he ran, stepping high through the swelling tide. He had no hope, just then, no hope at all. He wished only that Laszlo might go with Wys, and might find a way back to his family.
The Echinoi feet, behind him, were erratic but swift.
Thirty-Two
Stenwold turned the next corner and found himself facing a battle. There was at least a score of Mandir’s warriors in furious close conflict with a mob of Echinoi, both sides hacking at each other with single-minded loathing. He splashed and stumbled across behind them, utterly unnoticed, but there were more of the invaders hot on his trail. He had a moment to consider who his enemies were: those who would enslave him or those who would probably just kill and eat him. In the end, the closer kinship won out.
‘Behind you!’ he yelled at them, as his pursuers closed.
Two or three of the Greatclaw had just finished tensioning their bows, and at Stenwold’s warning they turned, craning past their shoulder-guards to spot the new enemy. The explosive retort of their weapons could be heard even over the melee, a pair of Echinoi hurled from their feet on the instant, one to lie still with half its head missing, the other to twitch and hiss, while its thorned hands plucked at the bolt sunk squarely in its chest. Of the remainder, all but one turned their attention from Stenwold to face this new challenge, descending on the armoured sea-kinden as savagely as beasts but utterly silent.
That one pursuer would be enough, though. Stenwold gripped the broken spearshaft, torn between fight and flight, as the single Echinoi made a slow approach, heedless of its brethren’s success or failure. Eyes that were black and featureless examined Stenwold, and perhaps the creature noted that he was different, not its kind’s usual prey. Perhaps not, but its rough-skinned visage held no expressions that Stenwold could put a name to. It hefted its bronze sword, elegantly wrought into a forward curve, and went for him.
Since its failure against the Onychoi armour he had almost forgotten the little snapbow, but Totho had made the weapon with two barrels, and one might still be loaded. He brought it up even as the Echinoi closed and dragged on the trigger.
There was a muted click, no charge in the air-battery, even if a bolt was in place. Then that sinuous blade was descending on him. He caught the blow on his makeshift staff, but its impact splintered the spear-shaft almost in two, In desperation he lashed the crooked rod across the Echinoi’s face, snapping the weapon entirely but barely making the sea-kinden flinch. The creature swung at him again, overcompensating still in the thin air, and he saved himself by lurching backwards, tripping in the surging waters and tumbling from his feet. The scythe-like edge of the enemy blade passed inches from him as he toppled back. He still held two feet of haft, and he lunged with it as though it was a good Lowlander shortsword, but the jagged point only skidded off the Echinoi’s coppery cuirass, and then just as uselessly from its rugged skin. The sword flashed down again.
Something the colour of bone put itself in the way and the Echinoi’s blade skittered from a shield of yellowing shell. An armoured form was stepping over Stenwold in one solid stride, shoving the shield in the Echinoi’s face and pushing it back. Nemoctes – it was Nemoctes, come from nowhere. He held a weapon like a hook-billed pick in his hand and, as he fended off the Echinoi’s next strike he drove the point into his enemy above the neckline of its armour with a grunt of effort. Keeping its sword away with his shield’s edge, Nemoctes changed grip on his weapon’s haft, ducked low and then put all his strength into wrenching it upwards. Even over the general row of battle, Stenwold heard the splintering of bone as the deep-buried point dragged its way free through the top of the Echinoi’s ribs. Then Nemoctes had cast the injured creature away, taking its last weak swing against his greaves.
‘Get up,’ he snapped at Stenwold. His dark face was grim, splashed with blood.
‘I have to get to Laszlo,’ the Beetle told him, clambering to his feet out of the water, for what seemed the hundredth time. ‘Laszlo.. . Wys…’
‘You have to get out,’ Nemoctes interrupted him. ‘Anything else is a luxury.’ The armoured sea-kinden strode ahead through the water, away from the melee, not even glancing back to see if Stenwold followed.
He followed. He had no other choice.
If I could have got out with Laszlo and Wys, he thought bitterly, Laszlo said she’d take us straight to the surface, to Collegium. But where will Nemoctes take me?
Ahead he saw movement, and fumbled to raise his piece of broken spear. There was no enemy, though, but a rolling tide of water, coursing waist-high towards him. Nemoctes just forged on into it, taking the brunt of the water with his shoulder, with Stenwold standing in his shadow, clinging to the man’s arm to keep his feet. Everywhere abruptly seemed to be filling up fast, meaning the Echinoi must have cut a fresh gash in the brittle skin of the Hot Stations.
‘Nemoctes!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll drown-!’
‘Just follow!’ the other man snapped back at him, pushing ahead. Stenwold caught fragments of combat as they passed, glimpses snatched between one improvised piece of wall and the next: Onychoi and Echinoi locked together, tearing and clawing and chopping, shelly armour cracking, orange skin torn and hewn, all of them now chest-deep in water that swirled with their blood. There were things in that water, that bumped and jostled Stenwold invisibly and, almost as much as the rising tide, he had a sudden fear of a lopped-off Echinoi hand seizing him, digging its thorns into his skin and climbing up his body towards his face. It became harder and harder to force his way ahead even with Nemoctes, shield now slung across his back, half-dragging the land-kinden in his wake. Stenwold finally let go the useless splinter of spear and fumbled for the caul, though realizing that it was good for mere minutes of breath.
Please not a drowning death, he kept telling himself. The sting of a Wasp, the poison of an assassin, the steel of a treacherous Mantis, a snapbow bolt, anything but this, anything. He would never touch the sea again, he swore, if only he was allowed back onto land. No boats, no ships, not even any long baths. If there are any of Achaeos’s old powers that can hear me, let me die a dry death!
Something started grappling at him, and he let out a cry of panic at the thought that it might be those Echinoi hands, the writhing severed limbs come to drag him down. Then he realized that he had been stumbling forward with his eyes closed, consumed by his own fear, and it was only Nemoctes trying to wrestle the caul over
