Iron Angel

up Anchor’s rope. Rachel stared at the spectacle like a woman observing her own nightmare from the fringes of sleep. Was Carnival still alive?

Conflicting emotions plucked at her. She had been through so much with the scarred angel-as bitter opponents, and then allies. Carnival had saved Rachel and tried to kill her. Now watching her former companion’s body ascending to the skyship, Rachel could not totally reconcile her divided feelings.

High above her, the disparate warriors suspended from the Rotsward’s yards suddenly howled and roared with greater agitation. To Rachel’s ears, these cries evinced a profound madness. Was this what awaited the scarred angel?

Carnival had disappeared now, borne rapidly up the great rope. Trench turned his eyes from the skyship, a look of grim satisfaction on his face, then addressed Anchor. “If I’m to meet your master,” he remarked, “I’d rather reach his skyship in a more traditional way.”

Anchor laughed. “Rope and basket,” he said. “Same way we lift the fish and grain and fowl. Only John Anchor stays down here.” He stamped a foot on the ground. “John Anchor stays with the beasts.”

Evidently the basket had carried a great deal more fish than grain and fowl, for the stench brought tears to Rachel’s eyes. Supported by a much thinner and frailer rope than the one Anchor used to pull the skyship, the wicker container plummeted quickly out of the fog and thumped against the sandy ground. Trench climbed in first and was hoisted up out of sight by unknown handlers.

Several minutes later, the basket creaked down again out of the fog. It was empty. Rachel placed the puppy into the sour-smelling lift, and then hopped in beside it. She brushed her greasy hands on her breeches and wondered if the god she was about to meet would be likely to offer her a bath.

The rope drew taut, and with a jerk the basket began to ascend into the fog, up among the moaning warriors in their nooses. Basilis sniffed around her feet and then peed against the wicker side. The softly glowing colours of Cinderbark Wood receded below, the branches blurring into streaks of purple, green, and yellow. From up here Rachel could see the hanging figures more clearly. They were dressed in queerly exotic armour, and while each of their suits was different from the next, they all shared the same pallid complexion of men long dead. Howling stares turned to follow Rachel as she rose among them. These warriors were suspended from a matrix of damp spars and masts, like a vast scaffold built from the bones of ships. It seemed endless.

Up through the fog the basket climbed, wicker lattice creaking under Rachel’s boots. She could smell the brine strongly now; the taste of salt lingered on her lips. White crusts, like hoarfrost, laced the yards and ropes in places. Overhead loomed a shadow, denser than the surrounding network of timbers.

And then she saw Cospinol’s great skyship: the huge tattered hull of dark oak, the sleek tapered bow, and the sheer bulk of the stern rising like the ramparts of a castle. Amidst this impossible scaffold, the vessel reminded Rachel of a spider at the center of its web.

The basket rose until it clunked against the side of the midships balustrade and halted. Four slack-fleshed crewmen rested against their winch handles and fixed their vacant eyes upon the deck. There was no sign of Trench or of Carnival’s body. Warily, Rachel picked up the dog and climbed out of the basket.

No sooner had she set foot upon Cospinol’s deck than a booming voice came from an open doorway in the stern of the vessel. “If this message is truly from Hasp, then my brother Rys is behind it by proxy!”

“Rys knows nothing, I swear.”

The second voice Rachel recognized as Trench’s. She ducked through the open doorway.

Trench was pleading with an ancient battle-archon, a greybeard clad in crab-shell armour. The god of brine and fog? Cospinol was bedraggled, pigeon-winged, and wild of hair, and yet his blue eyes burned with feverish ferocity. “Twelve of them!” he roared, striding across the gloomy cabin. The floor dipped dangerously under his weight. “One arconite was dire news. But twelve…? Where did King Menoa find the power to construct so many?”

“A piece of the shattered god burns within each arconite, thus granting them immortality.” Trench lowered his head. “But the souls inside these creatures were taken from the First Citadel. We have suffered losses during this siege.”

Cospinol hissed. He glanced towards Rachel, but his eye fixed on the pup in her arms. Then he continued to pace his cabin again. “Twelve arconites,” he muttered. “This world is finished if Menoa can spill enough blood to release them all from Hell.”

“He will butcher everything in his path to facilitate their release from the Maze. We must bargain with him, Cospinol.”

“Bargain?” The god snorted. “Oh, Rys will like that.”

Rachel said, “Trench, what’s going on?”

“Who is this woman?” Cospinol cried. His outstretched finger shook as he pointed at the tiny dog. “And why did she bring that bloody hound aboard my vessel?”

The pup growled.

Cospinol eyed the mangy creature warily. “What is your interest in all of this, Basilis? Since when did you meddle in the affairs of the gods?” When the dog made no sound, Cospinol lifted his gaze to Rachel. “Speak for your master, then, thaumaturge.”

Rachel gaped at him. “I’m no thaumaturge,” she replied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This pup belongs to someone else. We…” She had been about to say We rescued it, but in light of these new events, she now began to wonder otherwise.

What exactly was Basilis?

Cospinol regarded her darkly for a long moment. “This is a conspiracy,” he growled. “Rys sends me to the other side of the world-to avenge our brother’s death, he says. To gather power for myself, he says. To seal a portal and halt a second incursion.” His chest rose and fell under the crab-shell plate. “All lies. Now that I’m here, what do I find? A messenger from Hell who insists we must abandon this land to the Mesmerists. And now a demon with his lying thaumaturge.”

“Abandon this land?” Rachel placed a hand on Trench’s arm. “What does he mean? Who are these arconites you spoke of?”

Trench was looking at Basilis, his brow creased in thought, but he now raised his eyes to meet the assassin’s own. “I’m sorry, Rachel. This has always been my message. King Menoa is assembling a new force of warriors: twelve giants who are able to walk on unblooded ground-who can travel freely beyond the Mesmerist Veil.” His shoulders slumped. “Just one of these arconites destroyed the bulk of Rys’s army at Skirl before they managed to subdue it. And even then they could not kill the thing. It was chained in the ruins of a flooded city. But the gods on earth now lack the strength to fight a second arconite. Cospinol and his brothers must surrender to the ruler of Hell and beg for his mercy, or they will perish.”

“But what about Deepgate?”

“There’s no hope for Deepgate,” he replied, “and no hope for Pandemeria, either. The gods must now act to save themselves. I’m afraid there’s no hope for mankind at all.”

The Heshette wouldn’t desert their horses. Caulker had hoped to be rid of at least some of them by now. He had expected them to take up Anchor’s offer of sanctuary aboard Cospinol’s skyship, but they remained down here-as firmly entrenched in the giant’s company as lice in a crone’s scalp.

Anchor himself had become subdued. For a while he kept one ear to the skies above as though eavesdropping upon a secret conversation, but then announced, “We go soon, I think. Bad news.”

“I’ll be glad to get out of this wood,” Caulker muttered. He had already dismounted and was pacing back and forth between the boles of two poisoned trees. “Although the path out of here is likely to be just as treacherous. The skyship must have brought down half a hundred branches from the canopy.”

Yet despite his misgivings, Caulker was beginning to feel more comfortable. Anchor had dispatched the scarred angel with consummate ease. Any Spine they encountered on the road to Deepgate would not pose a threat to him. It seemed to Caulker that they had survived the worst of it.

The tethered man took a soulpearl from his pouch and swallowed it. Then he rolled his huge shoulders and gave a great sigh. “War always benefits Hell,” he said. “Death and bloodshed make it stronger. Menoa knows this. It is why he wants war. The gods know this, too, but they cannot be slaves to Menoa.” He shook his head. “I do not think there will ever be peace between them.”