Iron Angel

his very skill as a warrior stood against him. Even the weakest of Menoa’s advancing hordes could have ordered the Lord of the First Citadel to turn against his fellows. And Rys would not risk that.

John Anchor’s laughter could be heard above the sound of the marching troops. He clapped his big hands together and dragged his master’s skyship down the hill where his fog lapped the heels of Rys’s Northmen.

Armed with bows and axes, Ramnir and his Heshette warriors urged their tough little horses down the western flank.

And the battle began.

Dill hurled the Sally Broom.

That great iron steamship plowed a furrow through Menoa’s warriors. It sliced through the wet earth, throwing up a vast spray of red soil and corpses and machines. And then the hull struck a mound in the landscape and rolled, tumbling funnel over keel. Whole decks peeled away and spun out across the enemy forces. Metal debris rained down. Its superstructure now torn apart, the bulk of the hull jumped and crashed down again, burst into flames, and settled close to the lakeshore in a cloud of grit and smoke.

The king’s dogcatchers set upon Rys’s Northmen. They moved like wild beasts, seeking to tear at exposed flesh, but Rys’s warriors formed phalanxes. Spears shot out of the metal huddles, again and again, slaying demons on all sides. Once the attacks had been quelled, they lifted their shields and charged as one wall into a mass of Menoa’s gladiators. Bronze-clad warriors fell under them, but the wall of Northmen pushed on, leaving the wounded to the swordsmen following behind the vanguard.

A pall of bloodmist had risen over the killing field. And now Harper watched as the king’s war machines sent screaming missiles hurtling into the thick of the battle. Bright explosions flashed among the ranks of Coreollis troops, shredding whole units of them. A witchsphere burst into a cloud of pus. Hellish cries and moans pierced the air.

Silister Trench fought alone against seven Non Morai, his shiftblade changing constantly as it blurred between forms. The winged demons spun and howled around him. The Champion of the First Citadel made shields to protect himself from their claws, then altered the weapon to hack or cut or jab at their leathery wings. Corpses fell around him and he moved on to fresh pasture for his demonic weapon.

Dill’s great skeletal body towered over the battlefield. He still wielded The Pride of Eleanor Damask. None of Menoa’s forces were a match for his size and strength; he slaughtered them like insects. He raised the iron locomotive and then brought it down, pounding the ground, crushing Icarates and dogcatchers and war machines and everything to mulch. The pistons in his joints hissed and leaked thin vapors. His engines growled like a forest of wolves. The very ground shook under him.

The Heshette were in trouble. Their mounts, unaccustomed to facing such creatures, reared and panicked. The horsemen struggled to control them while firing arrows into a pack of fang-toothed giants. These creatures had been pushing the war machines, the spinning, shrilling wheels of knives and nests of flesh and chains. Two-thirds of Ramnir’s men had already fallen, while the others were hard-pressed to retreat. Menoa’s armoured giants seemed impervious to arrows. They tore the horses to shreds and feasted on the meat.

But John Anchor moved to help his friend.

To see him in battle was to see nothing. Wherever his veil of fog moved through the army, it left corpses in its wake. And as it reached the last Heshette survivors, Harper turned away.

“It’s a slaughter.”

A young woman was standing beside Harper, gaunt and dressed in battered leathers. “Rachel Hael,” she announced herself.

“Alice Harper.”

“It’s not often I meet another as pale as me,” Rachel said.

The engineer drained the last mist from her bulb. “I’m dead,” she said. “And by all accounts I should be down there with the rest of Menoa’s freaks.”

Rachel shrugged. “We’re just as freakish on this side of the battlefield, too, only prettier.” She smiled. “And we’re winning.”

Harper squeezed her empty bulb. “Out of blood,” she said. “When the battle’s over, I’ll have to wander through the butchered corpses to feed my soul.” She expected a look of shock or horror from the other woman, but what she got was an even broader smile.

“Sounds pleasant,” Rachel said. “I think I’ll join you. A friend of mine is down there now, someone I haven’t spoken to in a long time. He’s grown since I last saw him.”

“Dill?”

She nodded.

“It won’t be long before it’s over now.”

Rys’s Northmen had driven the remnants of Menoa’s army back into the waters of LakeLarnaig. Trench, finding room around him, had lowered his shiftblade. He was breathing hard, his sackcloth shirt drenched in gore. Down on the western fringes, Anchor’s cloud of fog moved away from another field of corpses. And Dill now stood alone in the center of the battlefield, gazing down at the destruction. Fresh blood plastered his shins; his monstrous club was dented and missing most of its wheels.

Rachel and Harper set off together down the slope.

Severed limbs and shards of metal littered the ground for half a league in every direction. Red steam rose from wet mounds of unidentifiable remains. The landscape had been battered and scarred, pocked with great holes and trenches where Dill’s club had fallen. In places they were forced to wade through the crimson mire.

But Harper felt her strength return. “They bloodied the Larnaig Field,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Menoa saturated the ground all the way to the gates of Coreollis,” she explained. “After the arconite-Dill-had turned, he couldn’t hope to win this battle. He sacrificed his entire army in vain.” She shrugged. “It seems so senseless.”

“Simple rage?” Rachel asked.

She shook her head. “That isn’t like him. He plans everything in perfect detail. All his plans have plans within them. It’s his nature to adapt to changing circumstances. He thrives upon it.”

Rachel dragged her heel out of a sucking pit. She shook blood from her boots. “Perhaps he just couldn’t adapt to face this threat. He had every living god against him here, the most powerful warriors I’ve ever seen together in one place.”

Harper stopped suddenly. She swung her gaze around the battlefield, and the thousands upon thousands of dead, both human and demons, all piled together. Crows had already come out from the city to feed. They squawked and tore at strips of flesh, then fluttered away with their prizes. Crimson vapors rose from the newly slaughtered, so heady and sweet and rich that it made Harper shudder.

“All together in one place,” she whispered. “Rys, Cospinol, Mirith, and Hafe, the living gods. Hasp and his champion, both of the First Citadel. Human mercenaries and the Army of Flowers and Knives. A thaumaturge from Deepgate and her Penny Devil.

Everyone who could have stopped Menoa made it to this battlefield.” Now she gazed up at Dill. “And the only arconite who could have turned…Gods help us.”

“What do you mean?”

“The thaumaturge put a splinter of her soul in Dill. That’s how she was able to reach him. But Menoa knew about the splinter.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Menoa made twelve arconites. His Icarates have been feeding them all of these years, persuading them, torturing them into submission. But not Dill.” She threw her arms out. “Don’t you see? Dill was different. He was the only one who could betray Menoa. The King of Hell expected him to defect.”

“But why?”

“Because of all this,” Harper cried. “This killing field! This graveyard! Enough blood has been shed here to open another portal.”

And even as she uttered the words, Harper felt a tremor run through the battlefield. The ground began to sink under her. Heaps of corpses tumbled inwards, consumed by the now pliant earth.

Dill stumbled and then staggered back from the collapsing field as flesh and bone and armour slid towards a