hide us.”
“Aye, sir.”
Oran had finally spotted the enemy beyond the palisade wall and now stood there with his mouth open.
Six arconites loomed over the town, their armour pulsing faintly in the fog, their great skulls turning slowly as they peered down at the streets underneath their ironclad boots. Behind them, great translucent wings shimmered in the gauzy light like pale auroras.
Iron Head seized his brother's arm. “Your women are going on the barges. Your men are going to fight with us. Give Hasp over to these two, but keep him covered up. I don't want the arconites to spot him.”
“You don't have the right-”
“Do it or I'll have you killed.” The captain beckoned another of his lieutenants over, and ordered this man to ensure that Oran obeyed. The woodsman snarled and stormed off back to the Rusty Saw with Iron Head's lieutenant close at his elbow.
“What can we do to help?” Rachel asked.
“Trust breeds trust,” Captain Iron Head said. “Or at least I hope it does. Can your arconite defeat any of these others?”
“They can't be wounded or destroyed,” she replied, “but if Dill brings one down, we can get inside its head and disable it with fire. Against any one of them he has a chance, but he can't fight all six at once.”
“Then tell him to remain here and help with the evacuation. He can ferry people and goods over to the barges, and defend them if he has to. That'll earn us some time to get our families out onto the lake.” He turned back to his troops, but Rachel halted him.
“Captain, we have another problem.”
“Yes?”
“Hasp is compelled to obey any Mesmerist orders. They'll order him to kill as many of us as possible.”
“Then confine him in your arconite's jaw.” The captain turned away abruptly and strode over to where three units of his men were waiting for further orders. In moments he had dispatched them all and turned his attention to an approaching commander of yet another unit.
Rachel stood beside Mina, the pair of them watching as men rushed to and fro. Three short blasts of a horn sounded over the town of Burntwater, followed by another long single note: the evacuation signal, Rachel assumed. Some units were already marching back up into the main thoroughfares, while others ran into side streets, yelling and knocking on doors. Old men, women, and children were already making their way towards the lakeshore, carrying bundles of clothing, water, and food. Oran's people, too, poured out of the Rusty Saw. Meanwhile a blaze erupted with a roar against the wall of a warehouse over to the east. Other soldiers were busy rolling barrels along the jetties or dashing between the warehouses with flaming brands held aloft.
“Those civilians look like they were all actually
“It never occurred to me,” Rachel said.
“What?”
“To confine Hasp in Dill's jaw.”
“Let's only hope Hasp agrees to it.” Mina indicated the Rusty Saw tavern, where eight of Oran's men were carrying the glass-armoured god down the sloping earth of the building's ruined foundations.
At first Rachel thought the god was unconscious or dead, but then she saw that he was still gripping an empty bottle. His arms moved as he tried feebly to resist his bearers.
Rachel winced as the woodsmen deposited their burden roughly on the muddy ground in front of the two women. They all glared at the assassin with murder in their eyes, but then left without as much as a word. They had, after all, witnessed her fight.
A quick check revealed that Hasp's glass armour remained intact. Rachel could smell the harsh spirit on his breath. He had drunk enough to kill a normal man, and his red eyes rolled wildly, as if staring into a fever dream. He tried to stand, but slipped and fell back in the mud.
The assassin and the thaumaturge hoisted him up between them and helped him over the uneven ground towards Dill. Rachel called up to her giant friend, who, with a hiss of pistons and creak of metal, lowered one of his dead hands and allowed them to climb aboard.
Maneuvering the drunken god into Dill's jaw needed the combined efforts of both women. Though Hasp seemed unaware of his surroundings, he retched and spat and cursed them under his breath. After they had finally bundled him inside, he lay down upon a rug amidst scattered coins, turned over, and threw up.
“To think people used to worship him,” Mina remarked.
“What people?”
“I don't know,” she replied. “He's a god, so somebody, somewhere, must have worshipped him. Otherwise what use would he be?”
“Look after him, Dill,” Rachel said.
They left Hasp lying there and climbed back outside. From this height, Rachel could see Menoa's arconites clearly. Six great simulacrums of angels towered over the palisade walls, their armour still scorched black and bloodied from the battle at Coreollis, smoke pouring from their Maze-forged joints. Thin wings disturbed the fog, their white bones shifting constantly through the veiled atmosphere. Slowly and steadily they were surrounding Burntwater on its three landlocked sides. And then, with a sound of crashing metal and shattered timbers, they broke through the town's useless defenses.
By now the streets below were crowded with people fleeing towards the wharfs. Units of Iron Head's men hurried in the opposite direction, heading towards the approaching enemy. Many of the town's defenders had already taken up positions at key intersections, but for all their bravado it seemed to Rachel that they would accomplish nothing.
“The fog is getting thinner,” she said, as they began to descend.
Mina had her arms tightly wrapped around Dill's thumb. “It isn't easy to maintain,” she protested. And then she fell silent, and did not speak again until they had stepped safely back onto solid ground.
“I'm doing my best, Rachel.”
“I didn't mean to suggest you weren't.” Rachel now realized how the other woman's glass-scaled face disguised her exhaustion. The thaumaturge had been conjuring this fog ever since the battle at Coreollis. She could not keep it up for much longer.
Shouts came from the nearest wharf, where a throng of soldiers and civilians stood waiting for an approaching barge. The vessel bumped against the dockside, whereupon scores of men and women began clambering aboard its long low hull. Burntwater militiamen yelled orders to the pilot, and gestured to the captains of two more vessels further out.
By now, fires had taken firm hold of the nearby warehouses, and dense black smoke churned overhead. Frightened children howled and clung to their mothers, as militia pushed their way through the jostling crowds. Four armed men hurried along a lengthy wharf, rolling a huge barrel before them, while nearby an old man leaned against a mooring post and smoked his pipe and casually watched it all. Others raced back towards the town, clutching flaming torches, long poles, bows, and swords.
Rachel looked for Iron Head, but couldn't see him anywhere. She heard a distant scream and then a series of dull concussions originating from somewhere to the south. That meant Menoa's arconites were destroying buildings inside the walls.
“There's not enough time.” Rachel looked up and yelled above the surrounding clamour, “Dill, help these people get onto the boats!”
His great skull swung down to face the lake, the ground shaking under him as he moved forward. Another step took him into the churning waters, till the metal columns of his legs straddled the shoreline. Engines drumming, he stooped and picked up a barge in each hand and lifted them, dripping, out of the lake. As he moved, his wings swung across the heavens like some vast carousel. The refugees screamed and broke away all around him.
Dill set both vessels down on the promenade. Their hulls landed with heavy thuds and then tilted to one side. He turned back to look for more.
In the confusion, the town's refugees didn't know what to do. Many ran to the shore and tried to board the vessel now moored there, but it was already overloaded. The surging crowd pushed many unfortunates into the
