The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (69 page)

Nish sheathed his red sword. Flames were swirling around his
wet boots and pants as he scrambled down the back of the barrier and began to
climb the knotted rope. By the time he looked down again the whole of the wall
was on fire and the troops could be seen as a cluster of shadows a few spans
below it. He must have been clearly visible climbing the rope but they had no
way to bring him down without harming him.

He reached the top and rolled onto the plateau, noting with
grim pleasure the glows coming from the north-western and north-eastern clefts.
However he’d only gone a few steps when a flare ignited high above the centre
of the plateau, brighter than any light he’d ever seen.

A brilliantly sparking and sputtering sphere of uncanny
force, the luminal lit up the surface of the plateau as brightly as daylight.
It had to be a creation of the tears – no other Art could have focussed
such power – and since the God-Emperor held the tears tightly to him and
allowed no one else to use them, Nish knew that his father had taken personal
charge. The real battle was about to begin.

The attack by the main force must be swarming up the
south-eastern cleft not far from the hut, and that way lay undefended. What if
he’d left it too late? The clapper-boards could have been going for ten minutes
and there would have been no one to hear them. How long had he spent here? Nish
couldn’t tell. Ten or fifteen minutes, plus another ten coming across. If he
sprinted all the way back, heedless of the dangers of the cliff track, it would
take at least five minutes to reach the main cleft. That could be too late.

He bolted, pounding along the muddy track Flydd had worn in
nine years of nightly wandering, splashing through puddles, skidding on mossy
rocks and leaping over broader pools fringed with stubby rushes.

He kept glancing over his shoulder at the sky. He didn’t
think the luminal could have been conjured from a vast distance – no,
Jal-Nish was up there somewhere, probably hanging silently in the night sky
from his favoured air-dreadnought, shielded from view by his Arts until the
moment when he burst upon them in an overwhelming display of power.

That was the one thing Nish could be sure of. When his
father finally came to the attack it would be at the moment when victory was
assured, and he would make a display of it that the whole world would talk
about. It wasn’t just the victory that mattered; the display of power was
equally important. His father had learned that lesson from the scrutators at an
early age.

Nish skidded to a stop beside the hut, before realising that
there was no point going in to check on Flydd yet again. He ran on, looking
fearfully down the cliff whenever the path skirted the edge, expecting to see
lights everywhere. There were none, not even where the camp fires had been at
the base of the pinnacle, earlier.

Surely that could only mean one thing – that the
entire army was on the way up after all. He reached the cleft just ahead of
Zham, who was charging along the rim path like a buffalo, and almost as
unstoppable. There was no sign of Colm but he’d had a much longer run, on a
winding, treacherous path between the bogs and stink-snapper pools.

‘Surr!’ cried Zham, staring in horror.

Nish looked down. He was drenched in the blood of the
soldier he’d killed. ‘It’s not mine. Come on.’

He hurled Flydd’s moss-covered timbers off the small stack
of barrels on the right side of the cleft. Zham began to do the same to the
left. Nish had just heaved the first barrel above his head when Zham, who was
already at the edge with his, stifled a cry.

Stumbling under the weight, Nish looked over. Down where the
cleft opened out before the last precipitous ascent stood hundreds of soldiers
clad in the distinctive beetle-shell armour of the God-Emperor’s Imperial
Militia. More soldiers were forming up below them, as far as he could see, but
they weren’t looking up. They were watching a man who had his back to the
plateau and was speaking in a thick, hissing voice that cut through the howling
wind. It was Seneschal Vomix, alive and seemingly unharmed by the earlier
crash.

A soldier in the front ranks raised his right arm. Vomix
broke off, turning slowly and deliberately, and the light of the luminal was so
bright that, even from this distance, Nish could see every detail of his face,
ravaged from the time Timfy had innocently placed the taphloid in his hand.

Vomix’s nose was a flattened blob, several front teeth were
missing and long, ragged scars ran around and across his cheeks, as if his face
had been torn off with a giant hand, ripped into three pieces and rudely sewn
back on again. His right arm ended in a knobbly stump.

Vomix saw Nish standing at the edge of the cliff and his
burst mouth peeled open in the most sickening travesty of a smile. He snapped
his stump towards Nish, three times.

Dozens of soldiers rose from concealment against the upper
slopes above Vomix, clad in dark grey uniforms that blended perfectly into the
black rocks and deep shadows formed by the luminal. They began to move up the
cliff-bound slope, the only way onto the plateau, and two people couldn’t
defend it.

FORTY-EIGHT

‘It’d take a shipload of burning oil to hold that force
back,’ Zham said wearily. Nonetheless, he hurled his barrel towards the rocks
above the camouflaged soldiers and ran back for another.

Nish wasn’t hopeful either, especially when Zham’s barrel
struck the rocks and burst open, splattering its contents everywhere. It wasn’t
oil, but something thick and sticky that looked no use at all. But as the clots
of red-brown gunk, connected by stretching strands, wheeled through the air,
they left yellow fuming trails behind. A small clot landed on the wrist of one
of the soldiers, who tried to wipe it away with his other hand but began to
scream as his skin came off in red strips.

Another soldier, walking through a wavering yellow band of
fumes, stopped as if he’d walked into a wall then began to vomit
uncontrollably. Soon others were doing the same. Nish hastily hurled his barrel
to shatter on the sharp rocks above the leading group of armoured soldiers, and
ran for another.

By the time he returned, Vomix was scrabbling up the slope,
surrounded by a flickering green nimbus, presumably some kind of defensive
shield, and roaring at his troops.

‘Go at them. Any dog who falters in courage will die at my
hand, while those who win through to capture the son of the God-Emperor will be
rewarded beyond their dreams.’

There was something odd about him though. The nimbus drew
right in and for a fleeting instant he looked haggard and sunken-cheeked. The
climb, on top of his previous injuries, must have been too much for him.

Many of the camouflaged troops had fallen but the armoured
ones were lowering their visors and scrambling purposefully up the steep climb.
Nish and Zham hurled another two barrels. The burning mucilage, which Nish
suspected had been made from the goo inside the stink-snappers, mixed with some
reeking substance of unknown source, had little effect on the armoured troops,
but the yellow miasma was bringing them down.

A burly soldier strode boldly into a hanging yellow cloud
and came out the other side, seemingly unharmed. However his footsteps became
slower and slower until he stopped with one foot in the air. He abruptly
doubled over, straightened up again and tried to tear off his helm, but didn’t
manage it in time. Streams of vomit burst out through the mouth, nose and eye
holes, to ooze down his iridescent chest plate.

‘On, you cowardly cur!’ roared Vomix, standing in the yellow
cloud but evidently protected by his green nimbus.

The soldier ripped his helm off, wiped his face and tried to
struggle on, but doubled over again and began to bring up green and black muck
from the pit of his stomach. He cast a fearful glance over his shoulder at
Vomix, took another step but stumbled, fell to his knees and could not go on.

Vomix snapped his fingers at a sergeant, then pointed to the
soldier. The sergeant shook his head. Vomix swelled with rage; the nimbus
flickered in and out, creating an illusion that his body was stretching and
contracting, then he smashed the sergeant down with a mailed fist and with his
sword carved the stricken soldier’s head from his body.

Seneschal Vomix held the head up, still pouring blood,
urging the troops on with threats and curses. On they climbed into the
spreading yellow murk, spewing and vomiting blood, and falling down.

Oh for a crossbow. Nish, shocked by Vomix’s casual
viciousness to the proud Imperial Militia, would have shot him without a qualm.
If he could treat them so badly, the horrors he must have visited on ordinary
folk would be unimaginable.

Vomix looked up and they locked eyes. He gave a sick leer,
thrust his forefinger into the head’s windpipe, rotated it to face Nish and
held it high, taunting him. Again the nimbus flickered, and Vomix appeared to stretch
and contract, but there was something else odd about him. What was it? Nish
tried to see with clearsight but it couldn’t penetrate the nimbus.

Nish swayed; Zham jerked him away from the edge. Zham had
two barrels under his other arm and passed one across. ‘You might just get him
from over there, surr.’

He indicated the cliffed edge of the cleft further out. Zham
carefully tapped in the end of his own barrel with a stone, then hastily poured
the mucilaginous mess along the edge of the cleft until he’d treated the entire
length of the way up. Within seconds, in contact with the air, yellow fumes
began to issue forth.

Nish crept out along the rim where the cliff fell away,
moss-covered and unclimbable, for hundreds of spans into the darkness, to a point
where it overlooked the wider part of the cleft where the troops had gathered.
Vomix was keeping well back so he couldn’t be targeted, though Nish thought
that, with a little luck, he might splatter some of the contents of his barrel
on him from here.

He peered over. Vomix was stalking back and forth, roaring
orders, increasingly frustrated at the inability of the Imperial Militia to
pass through the miasma. He looked barely in control and his attacks on the
stricken troops grew ever more vicious. Three more soldiers now lay headless
before him and Vomix had hacked the third to pieces after he fell.

The soldiers at the front were retching and struggling on,
and falling. None had yet passed through the yellow murk that hugged the steep
ascent and, as Nish watched, Zham pegged another barrel into the defile they’d
have to pass through in the final climb.

Putting down his own barrel, Nish carefully tapped in the
end. Vomix, almost incoherent with rage, kept casting anxious glances at the
sky in the direction of the luminal, and well he might. The God-Emperor’s
retribution fell swift and hard on those who failed him, whatever their rank,
and Vomix had notably failed once. Another defeat would see him broken to a
common soldier, or slave, or even sent to Jal-Nish’s torture chambers. Nish
hoped so. It was only fitting that his father’s most vicious lieutenant should
die as he had lived.

Vomix broke off from his ranting to raise his sword,
intending to decapitate another collapsed soldier, and Nish saw his chance. He
stood up, held his breath as he raised the gently fuming barrel and, aiming it
with a focus born of cold fury, hurled it hard and high.

A sergeant of the Imperial Militia standing behind Vomix
glanced up and saw it coming but, oddly, said not a word. Vomix’s sword hacked
through the unfortunate soldier’s neck, then the sergeant stepped smartly out
of the way as the tumbling barrel slammed upside down onto the back of Vomix’s
head.

He collapsed onto his knees, gasping and gurgling as the
mucilage streaming down his head and shoulders began to fume, but not one
soldier of the Imperial Militia moved to aid him. The sergeant looked up, his
eyes locked with Nish’s, then jerked his head in acknowledgement.

The Imperial Militia were not entirely without honour. The
momentary truce was over and they’d be after him the instant they could get
past the miasma, though it could be hours before that was possible. And,
thankfully, even if Vomix survived, he would be in no shape to lead his men for
a very long time.

But Nish was immediately proven wrong. Vomix lurched to his
feet, tore the barrel off and with a frantic snap of the fingers, a sound that
echoed like a whip crack, forced the green nimbus down until it disappeared
into his skin. His whole head and shoulders were foaming; his ravaged face
appeared to be peeling apart in bloody strips. He thrust both hands high and
let out a scream of pain and rage, as if calling power into himself from the
sky.

The Imperial Militia turned to stare as one, for he was stretching
and shrinking again. He drew his clenched fists in, striking himself above the
heart, emitted a great roar of agony, then seemed to literally burst apart.

Bloody skin, fuming rags, fragments of armour and boot
leather flew in all directions, trailing smoke. What remained of him fell to
his knees, clawed at the moss-covered rocks beneath his feet, then, as naked as
the day he was born, lunged for the sky again.

Nish nearly fell off the cliff in shock. It was like Flydd’s
transformation in reverse, for what had been revealed was not Vomix at all, but
a taller and more strongly built man, one whose skin was red, cracked and
weeping all over, save where the burning mucilage had etched away the
corrugated layers of his face to reveal raw flesh beneath. A man with long dark
hair, now falling out in sticky clumps, an arching prow of a nose, and a
fanatic, almost maniacal gleam in his dark eyes.

‘It’s Monkshart!’ Zham said in astonishment.

Monkshart had transfigured himself into the very image of
Vomix, and the change must have been of astonishing perfection, to fool not
just the officers and troops of the army but its accompanying mancers as well.