God of Clocks

centuries. Dead slaves, dead sailors, dead warriors hanging in the Rotsward's gins. Even Alice Harper did not require air to survive, simply a supply of blood.

Was this the creature Harper had detected earlier?

The skyship rope thrummed against his back. What's wrong, John? Why have you stopped? Some sort of trouble?

Anchor wrapped his legs around the spine of the portal, and then used both fists to jerk down on the rope three times in order to relay his uncertainty back to Cospinol.

Harper isn't reading anything unusual on her locator. Some ghostsnearby, but nothing that wasn't once human. The soul traffic she detected earlier is still quite far below you. I'm afraid it's much further away and larger than we previously thought. The sheer scale of it has confused her device. But the closer we get the more information she can decipher. It's certainly not an arconite, John.

The tethered man peered into the murky red waters. Human souls swarmed amongst the suspended debris like jack-o'-lanterns at play, illuminating facets of the queer drowned architecture. He looked again for the creature but saw nothing more.

No doubt it was simply a Mesmerist construct that had somehow failed to die at Larnaig. Still, he did not recall seeing such an animal on the battlefield.

He began his descent again.

Further down it grew brighter. The waters thinned and cleared, and soon Anchor could discern just how vast the debris field was. It stretched as far as he could see in every direction, men and beasts and machines and pieces of black masonry all floating in fluid as thin as air. Strange gold and crimson clouds stained the far horizon, as if backlit by a hidden sun, and from these issued an amber radiance that slanted through the fluid like evening sunshine.

The pressure had fallen to such an extent that Anchor was tempted to open his mouth and inhale. He resisted that urge. This was not air.

The rope trembled again. John, our metaphysical engineer is obtaining clearer readings from the portal below you. There is a vast number of souls down there. Cospinol paused. I can't explain it, John, but this looks like another army rising from the Maze.

An army of what? King Menoa had slaughtered his entire Mesmerist force to open this portal. He had nothing left but the arconites that walked the earth. And yet here appeared to be a second force as vast as the first. Hidden reserves, perhaps? Or had the Lord of the Maze managed to bend the souls of Rys's slain Northmen so soon after Larnaig?

Either seemed unlikely.

Then what was this new force?

The tethered man grinned. King Menoa had exceeded all of his expectations, a worthy foe indeed. Anchor slammed his hands together and chuckled deep in his throat. In all his long life he had not heard of another being fighting an army within a portal. Men would sing about this battle for centuries to come.

John, they're rising fast. Drag the Rotsward down towards you. My gallowsmen have centuries of saved anger to spend.

Anchor felt a twinge of disappointment, but he was neither proud nor selfish enough to deny his master's gallowsmen their share of sport. He gripped the portal spine between his knees and then tugged on the skyship rope. Again and again he pulled on that briny hemp, allowing a great loop of it to sag into the portal below him.

After a while the rope continued to fall past him without his aid; he had given Cospinol's skyship enough momentum to descend on her own. He looked up to see a vast dark moon burgeoning in the heavens above, the edges made ragged by countless crosshatching gallows.

And when he looked down again, he saw the opposition Menoa had brought to meet him. Not warriors. Not Mesmerists, either.

Something far worse.

Cospinol's cries of dismay traveled down through the skyship rope and into Anchor's mind. How could he have gathered such a force so soon? Are these creatures the Larnaig fallen returned to haunt us? There are too many!

From the depths of the portal surged a vast and ragged army of cripples. Most appeared human, or partially so, but their faces reminded Anchor of the scribbles of a delinquent child. Their twisted limbs flapped and groped at the portal waters, arms and legs that appeared to have been broken and allowed to set crooked. Rags trailed behind their torsos like bloody bandages. Many had been stretched, twisted, or punctured, as if forged by instruments of torture. Others were part beast-dog- or apelike-their toothy grins and impassive eyes mere parodies of humanity. Yet more were simply children.

Harper recognizes these creatures, Cospinol said in a weary and doom-laden tone. She says they're known as the Failed, John. The Mesmerists broke them so badly that their minds became useless. He paused. Those Icarate priests abandoned them, leaving their souls to cascade down through Hell and form a river. Menoa should not have been able to recruit these creatures from their grave. They do not suffer men or gods. They can no longer be persuaded.

Dread filled Anchor's heart. He gave up counting their numbers. There was no honour to be found here. These pitiful creatures swam in currents of madness.

He waited, a great solitary figure limned in the long amber light, clutching the portal spine as tightly as if it had been a life rope. What could Menoa hope to achieve by sending this force here to die so senselessly?

The Failed propelled themselves upwards through the debris field in ways that suggested unfamiliarity with their own flesh, their arms and legs writhing like the tentacles of strange cephalopods. Some wore useless armour made from broken mirrors or feathers stitched with colourful thread, while a few gripped weapons drunkenly by the blade or hilt or guard, as if someone had thrust unidentifiable objects into their uncertain hands. They breathed in the portal water and clutched wildly at the tiny motes of light around them, and many dropped their swords and knives in doing so.

Did they understand battle?

By now the Rotsward was looming directly overhead, and its gallows spanned the watery sky, its timbers aglow like gold bars in the slanting amber light. Anchor gazed numbly up at the vessel. This was the first time he had seen Cospinol's skyship without its cloak of fog. He had imagined something grander. An agglomeration of corpses and pieces of debris had snagged on the underside of her hull, and her gallowsmen had begun to struggle and kick against this refuse. Other slaves moved quickly amongst the gallowsmen, cutting them from their nooses with knives so that they might fight.

The skyship rope hung loosely below Anchor, and scores of the Failed had reached that rope and were clinging to it, some gnawing on it or hacking at it with blades. They had distinguished it as something alien amongst the floating debris and so set upon it with a common purpose.

With the lowest of the Rotsward's gallows still three hundred yards above Anchor, the first of the Failed swam closer. Their outstretched fingers groped for him.

The Riot Coast barbarian finally pushed himself away from the portal spine. He grabbed the first hand that drew near and pulled his opponent towards him, then broke the thing's neck and shoved its corpse away without giving any more heed to it. But the victim with the broken neck flailed his arms, turning in the clear water, and came back at Anchor again. He had bitten his tongue, and a ribbon of blood now trailed from his backwards-lolling head.

Anchor was now right in the midst of six or seven foes. Grim-faced, he set about the fight methodically. He snapped their bones and smashed their skulls with his fist, then kicked their broken bodies away with the thoughtless efficacy of a fisherman gutting his catch. The broken-necked man lunged for him again, his head lolling. Anchor grabbed the thing's jawbone and twisted the head all the way around, tearing it off.

Still it lacked the sense to die.

The headless creature swam back towards the big Riot Coaster. But Anchor was brawling with a dozen foes by now and he lost sight of the thing amidst flailing limbs. Those whom he thought he had already killed returned to fight again, while yet more swam up from the depths to join them. He broke them all and threw them back but they would not die. Three half-naked wretches set upon the decapitated head with savage blows, yet without a glimmer of thought or emotion in their bovine eyes. From the depths thousands more swam closer.