from the eyes of others. And Caulker’s eyes feasted upon it. How many furious spirits resided within that bag? It would be so easy to smash their tiny glass prisons and release them. With the armies of the King of Hell so close by, it was time now, he decided, to make his move.
“These Northmen seem capable,” he remarked to Anchor as they passed between the Coreollis Gate Towers. Archers in light, stripped-down plate and boiled leathers patrolled the city walls above them.
“Capable, yes,” Anchor replied. “Veterans of many battles with Hell, these men. But they are not good men. The poison they drink to wear such cruel armour…it makes them cruel also.” His expression wrinkled into one of distaste. “I killed one of Rys’s soldiers once, but the soul was tainted. Very bad.”
“What do you mean cruel armour?” By pretending to avoid a rut in the ground, Caulker moved to a position where he might best be able to reach the pouch of soulpearls at the big man’s side.
“The breastplates,” Anchor said. “Wait, I’ll show you.”
They were outside the city walls now, close beside the grounded steamship. Fog obscured the field sloping down to the lake, but Caulker could hear the howls and cries of King Menoa’s army nearby.
A unit of cavalry thundering past distracted him. The horsemen disappeared into the mists to the west, heading in the direction of Rys’s ballistae. Caulker could not imagine how such ranged weapons could be effective in this visibility, but he assumed they had acted as a line of defense long before the arrival of Cospinol’s skyship. He looked for the arconite but saw nothing.
How could something so vast remain hidden from view?
“You!” Anchor boomed at one of the Flower Guard. “Yes you, man. Come here, please. I wish to show my friend how Rys makes such good warriors. You will help me, yes?”
The man grinned and came over to join them, clearly pleased to demonstrate whatever superiority Anchor had perceived him to have. He was tall and handsome, with cropped fair hair and an angular jaw. He wore the same silvered breastplate and bracers as his fellows. As he approached, he loosened the leather straps at his side that held the metal plate across his chest. “Has this heathen not heard of knife armour?”
Anchor shook his head. “No, he is from another land. They do not know Menoa’s forces like you.”
The soldier snorted. “A soft breed, then? Not trained to resist the Deceiver’s persuasion as we have been.” He peeled away the breastplate and shuddered.
Caulker felt sick.
Beneath the soldier’s armour, the man’s chest was a red mess of scars. His skin had been punctured in half a hundred places. The metal plate, Caulker saw, was lined with four-inch knives, each pointing inwards.
“You see?” Anchor said to Caulker. “Rys’s soldiers wear such armour from the age of seven years. The knives start small, then as the child grows, the armour plates are changed for ones with longer blades. The body adapts around the metal.”
Caulker turned away.
“Many die,” Anchor said.
The soldier laughed. “But the survivors grow stronger.”
They left the soldier and walked west around the city walls, passing legions of assembled men preparing for battle behind earth and timber palisades. Caulker stared at their silver armour with dread, imagining the torsos within.
“The suffering makes them resilient,” Anchor said. “King Menoa finds it hard to sway men like this. It takes many years in Hell to break them. Ah, look, here is the iron angel now.”
It was vaster than Caulker expected. From where he stood he could see nothing but a pair of monstrous skeletal feet and leg bones which disappeared high into the fog. A shadow filled the sky overhead.
“Big, yes?” Anchor chuckled. “And strong. It has found a weapon.”
Caulker looked again. Something huge and metal hung in the mists above his head. He peered harder. He could just make out a long, bulky iron object with a funnel and rows of metal wheels connected by couplings. It moved suddenly, and a shower of black stones fell from it.
Coal?
“Perhaps we should return to the city,” he said to Anchor. “The soldiers will not thank you for bringing this fog.”
“I help them in the fight,” Anchor replied, still staring up at the arconite. “They put up with Cospinol’s fog. Fair trade, eh?”
“I don’t believe it,” Trench hissed.
Rachel turned to see the group of passengers who had disembarked from the steamship outside the city walls. Now Silister Trench, the archon who had accompanied her all the way from Deepgate, rushed over to greet one of them.
The old man clad in queer glass armour looked up as Trench approached, and grinned. “You made it, then? And without wings, I see.”
“You appear to have lost more than a few feathers yourself.”
They clasped arms.
“Rachel, this is Hasp,” Trench said, “the Lord of the First Citadel and commander of the Maze Archons. Ulcis’s brother. Hasp, this is Rachel Hael, a friend of the angel who gave up this body.”
Rachel swallowed. How many more brothers of Ulcis was she likely to meet?
Hasp said to her, “You knew Dill?”
She nodded. “Trench told me you would search for him in Hell. I…” She hesitated. “Did you find him?”
Hasp studied her for a moment. “He exists still.”
Relief flooded her heart. If Dill’s soul had not been destroyed then there remained a chance to return it to his body. Trench had promised her as much. But then she had a sudden thought. What did it mean that the Lord of the First Citadel was here on earth? Who, then, was looking after the young angel in the Maze?
“Menoa got to him,” Hasp said bluntly. “I tried to protect him but I failed.”
“What do you mean? What’s happened to him? Where is he?”
And Hasp explained.
“We go to look at the enemy now.”
John Anchor beamed. “Cospinol’s fog makes it difficult to see. Come…” He beckoned to Caulker. “We will go and see what type of demons we are facing.” He started walking down the slope towards the hidden horde.
“Shouldn’t you wait for the soldiers?” Caulker called after him.
Anchor glanced back over his shoulder. “What for?” Then he laughed and set off again, dragging his massive rope behind him.
Caulker hesitated. He’d seen Anchor fight, and knew that the big man was probably more than a match for whatever pickets the demons had placed around their encampment. And he realized that this might be the one chance he’d have to betray the tethered giant to his enemies. But the thought of walking into that terrible unknown made him pause.
Anchor had almost disappeared into the fog ahead. It was now or never. He bolted after the big man.
“Jack Caulker,” Anchor said as the cutthroat drew alongside him. There was a hint of sadness in his tone. “You once asked Cospinol to tell you how you die. He did not know the answer then, but he knows it now.”
Caulker was stupefied. Now he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know the answer to that question. He eyed the big man warily.
“You die trying to betray a friend,” Anchor said.
Caulker said nothing. A feeling of unease crept over him. How could Anchor possibly know his intentions? The big man was trying to trick him again, the same way he had tricked Caulker into swallowing the tainted soulpearl. And there was the truth of it, Caulker realized. The soul had somehow been rotten-that’s why it gave such horrible visions of death. As they marched on through the fog, down towards Menoa’s horde, the cutthroat became angry.
