Endsinger Read online

  “Lie with me now, love.” Her breath, snow upon his cheek. “Make me warm again.”

  She pressed with black lips, and in her kiss he tasted,

  Ashes on her tongue.

  —from the Book of Ten Thousand Days

  11

  THE BATTLE OF KAWA

  Kapitán Aleksandar Mostovoi smoothed a stray length of grimy blond hair from his face, breath hanging white in the bitter cold. He looked around the burning city, the troops pouring off the assault fleet in waves, draped in skins of mighty wolves and bears and snow leopards. The streets around him were awash with red. The falling rain as black as sin.

  The slavers had put up a brief defense, paid for in slaughter, and had now retreated into their castle on the hill to prepare for siege. Their flags lay in the dirt amidst their corpses, blue slabs set with a Dragon sigil, now soaked in gore. The Blood-blessed were moving among the smoke—great, towering slabs of men, muscle heaped upon scar-tissue, clad in aprons of skin.

  Aleksandar had once seen a Blood-blessed kill an Iron Samurai with his bare hands. The man had been split from belly to rib cage, half a dozen spears sticking from his back like a porcupine’s quills. He’d used his own bloody innards to strangle the samurai leading the charge. Aleksandar recalled seeing four of the madmen roaming the battlefield after the stalemate at Fallow Pass, stooping to gather the blood of fallen slavers in human skulls, raising them in toast toward the surviving Shiman forces. Between them, the four berserks had slain fifty men.

  The Morcheban Expeditionary Force that attacked Kawa included a host of two hundred.

  Pulling his wolfpelt tight about his shoulders, Aleksandar trudged across the ankle-deep mire of the beachhead, cursing beneath his breath. Everything in this Goddess-forsaken country was filthy. The ground was either black mud, rotting fields or swathes of dead earth no soldier in his right mind would set foot on. The air weighed down their lungs, staining tongue, teeth and skin. No wonder the Shimans wanted to occupy his homeland—Aleksandar had only been here three hours and he already hated this bloody place.

  As he pulled up his wolfpelt cloak, the Kapitán noticed it stank of slaver blood; sharp and vaguely rank. There was little to be done about it—the black rain only made it dirtier and clean water in this hellhole was rare as gold. He recalled the day he’d flayed the pelt, the taste of the strength he’d drunk, copperish in his mouth. Hands shaking on the knife hilt. Breeches stained with piss. A boy of thirteen, now a man.

  Twenty years ago, next summer.

  His father had been killed when Aleksandar was twelve. House Mostovoi had been the first to meet the marauders with their growling armor and swords that cut through men like fog. The Mostovoi coastal defenses were nonexistent; their walls were built to repel attacks from other houses, not strangers crossing the Faceless Sea. Their capital had been razed. His mother and sister taken by Kitsune slavers. He’d only escaped by running; running until his feet bled and his lungs screamed and he couldn’t breathe or think or see. He still dreamed of it. Every night.

  But in the dreams, the slavers always caught him.

  He’d wanted revenge, of course. His family was a proud line, tracing their lineage back to the first Zryachniye, great Stanislava. But he’d need strength to fight this foe. A strength borne of a darkest heart. And so he’d walked into the Blackwood where the dire packs roamed, a boy with a spear and a knife and a will of cold iron.

  And he’d returned a man.

  That man now slogged his way across the slaughter to a newly-erected tent bedecked with standards of the Twelve Houses of Morcheba. He ran one hand over the House Mostovoi sigil on his breastplate; a rampant stag with three sickle-bladed horns. And breathing deep, he stepped into the gloom.

  It took his eyes a moment to adjust. A long table was arrayed with a map of Kawa city, small disks indicating troop disposition, red for the Shiman dogs, black for the forces of her Imperial Majesty, Kira I of House Ostrovska. The Imperatritsa’s flag hung between the tent poles; a black field arrayed with twelve red stars.

  Marshal Sergei Ostrovska surveyed the map with a critical eye, barely looking up as the Kapitán entered. Beside him stood the Majór of the Imperatritsa’s airforces, busy complaining about the damage being done to his rotor-thopters’ engines by the black rain. A pack of six warhounds sat at the Marshal’s feet, wheezing in the freezing, poisoned air.

  Two Zryachniye priestesses stood on the other side of the table, swaying like saplings in the spring breeze. Blond as wheat before summer harvest, faces scarified with totemic blessings—lightning bolts torn down Sister Katya’s cheeks, jagged claw patterns marring the features of Mother Natassja. Each right eye aglow.

  “Marshal Sergei,” Aleksandar said. “Columns are mustered. We await your orders.”

  The Marshal was a man of fifty, pitted and worn from two decades of constant warfare. His head was brick-shaped, his face just a touch too small. The sigil of House Ostrovska decorated his breastplate; a black gryfon clutching broadswords. Still glowering at the map, he grabbed a handful of salted meat from a bowl on the table and tossed it to the wardogs at his feet. The hounds remained motionless, licking at drooling chops.

  “The slavers have retreated behind their walls, as expected,” Sergei said, tapping a finger on the Dragon fortress. “The castle is well defended, easily held even by a small host.” He raised one thick eyebrow at Mother Natassja. “You saw thirteen sky-ships, Holy Mother?”

  “Aerial reconnaissance reported only six,” the Majór said.

  “Seven more lurk in the clouds over the keep,” Mother Natassja murmured, running one finger down the claw patterns carved into her face. “I see them. They wait above, higher than your ’thopters can fly. Heavy ships. Well armed.”

  “The storm will grow fiercer close to noon.” Sister Katya’s glowing stare was fixed on the Kapitán. “I see lightning bright as sunlight. Airships burning in the tempest.”

  Aleksandar met the woman’s stare, trying to show no emotion. Katya was easily the most fearsome of the two Zryachniye, her reputation well proceeding her. Where the Holy Mother wore soft leather adorned with totemic trinkets, Sister Katya wore flayed Guildsmen suits like armor, helms beaten flat on her shoulders like spaulders. He almost pitied the Lotusmen who’d crashed near the northern lightning farm and fallen under her blades.

  “We wait until noon, then.” The Marshal barked a command, and his warhounds pounced on their meat, drool flying. “We attack frontally once our ’thopters have cleared the walls. The Blood-blessed will run in the vanguard. You will lead the attack, Mostovoi.”

  “Your command.” The Kapitán thumped his fist against his breastplate, turned on his heel. Mother Natassja’s voice pulled him up short.

  “Aleksandar Mostovoi. Slayer of Kirill, alpha of the Blackwood. Victor of Iron Ridge. Thrice-blooded in the service of his Imperatritsa. Son of Sascha, daughter of Darya, Matriarch of House Mostovoi.”

  He turned slowly. “Yes, Holy Mother?”

  The woman’s right eye was luminous, rosy light spilling into the ritual scars on her face. The glow turned her features vulpine, all hollowed cheeks and sharpened teeth, smile like a bruise on her skull.

  “Your sons will remember this day. How they remember is up to you.”

  “… Thank you, Holy Mother.”

  “Blessings of the Goddess to you.”

  “And you, Holy Mother.”

  The woman blinked, the glow in her eye fading like sunset’s light. The room seemed colder for its absence, her gentle smile failing to hide the sadness in her voice.

  “I will not need them,” she said.

  Aleksandar turned and marched from the room.

  * * *

  It was a storm sent by the Goddess herself.

  Just as Sister Katya had said, the winds began rising near noon bells, vast clouds blotting out Shima’s accursed red sun and plunging the land into freezing gloom. Lightning lit the skies as if the Goddess wished a clear view of the slaughter
to come. As the column commanders formed their lines, Aleksandar looked over the ruined city before him and smiled.

  The Shima sky-ships were descending just as Sister Katya promised, tossed about as if in the grip of frost giants. One crashed into the keep walls thanks to vicious crosswinds, another was struck by lightning as it descended, burning to cinders. A bloodthirsty cheer had gone up from the lines as the cloud ship incinerated, hymns to the Goddess rolling down the ranks. Surely She’d sent the storm to punish these faithless pigs. Twenty years of slaughter. Twenty years of plunder and slavery. Payment long overdue.

  The Blood-blessed were restless, pounding their mallets on the ground, the flayed skin draping their shoulders stained gray by the putrid rain. Aleksandar had tied a kerchief around his face, but his lips were cracked and burning, skin raw where the downpour leaked through his armor. Some of his soldiers had been so badly affected, he’d ordered them back to the medical stations and the ministrations of the Mercy Sisters. Every man in the legion was eager to get the attack under way—the less time they had to spend in this bastard storm, the better.

  The engineer companies signaled they were ready to move. The last of the slaver cloud ships hit the ground. Aleksandar nodded to his signalman, gave the order for ’thopters to launch. The soft whine built to a throbbing pulse, the lubdubdubdubdub of propellers vibrating in his chest. He turned, pale blue eyes watching the craft rise slowly, no more troubled by the brutal gale than a dog by a handful of fleas.

  The ’thopters were shaped like crooked dragonflies, possessed of the slightly asymmetrical coarseness common among his country’s engineering exploits. No two looked the same; cobbled together by mekaniks of different houses, each with his own theory on how to design a flying machine. But the fundamentals were similar—a round pod set with a tail, two glass portals resembling an insect’s eyes, and three vast propellers left, right and aft.

  They were as graceless as drunken whores. Slow as three-legged horses. Unable to achieve either the speed or altitude of the Shima cloud ships, and prone to catastrophic malfunction. Their crews called them “flying coffins,” and the infantry called their crews “the winged dead.” But they could fly in a storm, by the Goddess. And on a day like today, that was all the advantage the Morchebans needed.

  The slaver fortress crouched on a steep hill, its back to a ragged granite cliff, towers set with heavy shuriken-throwers. Any siege engines sent against the walls would have to be crafted of metal, lest they be incinerated by the flame-spitters studding the battlements. And even if the towers themselves weren’t flammable, the men inside surely would be.

  Of course, the spitters would only work if there were slavers alive to man them.

  The ’thopter fleet hovered fifty feet off the ground in rough formation, almost forty in all, wobbling in ferocious winds. A fierce gust sent one ’thopter crashing into two others, all three falling from the sky and ending as twisted, flaming shells on Kawa’s cobbles. But the rest made their way slowly through the cramped and burning city, drawing closer to the slaver keep and the samurai scrambling like insects on its walls.

  Hails of shuriken fire and catapult scatter-loads tore the skies as the ’thopters drew within range. Aleksandar could hear that hateful popopopopopopop!, his mind drifting back to the day his father had been cut down on the walls of Mriss. ’Thopters dropped from the sky, the men inside reduced to leaking bags of bloody meat. Explosions echoed across the city, bright flares and plumes of black smoke uncoiling from crashed aircraft. Aleksandar gritted his teeth, muttered a prayer. Ears straining. Eyes narrowed. Waiting for the storm to truly begin.

  A grim smile twisted his lips as a hollow crackling sound burned in the space between his eardrums, and bright arcs of impossible blue-white spat from the lead ’thopter’s snout, followed by half a dozen others. Raw lightning spewed from the belly-mounted cannon, shearing across the battlements in blinding patterns, leaving a green flare on the back of Aleksandar’s eyelids and blackened, bloody ruins where samurai had once stood. Flame-spitters spewed into the ’thopter’s faces, lightning boiling the black rain to steam. And turning to his signalman, Aleksandar gave the order for the second wave to begin.

  The siege-crawlers started their engines, filling the air with the stink of burned skin and ozone. The vehicles were ugly fat hulks of riveted iron, wrapped in segmented tank tread. Eleven of them surged forward, smashing a path through warehouses and family homes as they drove toward the keep. The machines were a brand-new creation of the mekaniks at the Akmarr proving grounds—this attack on Kawa was their first real field test. They looked impressive enough; all black studded iron, and broad, spear-tip snouts. But 30 percent of their complement had been lost during the beach landing, mostly due to mechanical failure.

  As if reading his thoughts, one of the ’crawlers coughed blinding sparks from its cooling vents, shuddered and ground to a stop. Hatches burst open, black smoke spilling into the air, charred troopers tumbling from the scalding innards. Mercy Sisters ran forward and dragged the poor bastards onto stretchers, hauling them to the medical trains at the rear of the line.

  Aleksandar lifted his kerchief and tried to spit the taste of charred flesh from his tongue.

  “Your sons will remember this day…”

  He waited until the ’crawlers were fifty yards from the keep wall, and with one last prayer to the Goddess, he climbed onto a stack of packing crates, drew his lightning hammer and looked over the army before him. A legion of heavy steel and black banners set with twelve red stars, blue eyes glittering beneath their helms, lightning on their blades.

  The Kapitán roared above the chaos of battle and engine and storm.

  “Brothers! Before you lies your hated foe, trembling behind walls of stone! You will drink their strength! You will wear their skins! And tonight you will dine in the ruin of their halls, or with the Goddess in the Halls of the Victorious Dead!”

  The men answered with a roar, all raised fists and gleaming iron.

  “Today you are not men of Aushloss, Krakaan, Veschkow, or Mriss! You are not orphans of twenty years of bloody oppression. You are not fathers to slaved daughters, brothers to stolen sisters, sons of slaughtered mothers! You are not soldiers! You are a reckoning!”

  Another roar, shapeless and deafening.

  “Blood for the Imperatritsa! Blood for the Goddess!”

  “Blood!” they roared. “Blood!”

  “Chaaaaaarge!”

  The men surged forward, a wall of iron and rage. Troop towers collided with the keep walls and his men barreled up the walkways, Blood-blessed swinging their great two-handed mallets at the samurai who charged to meet them. Aleksandar stalked through the streets, lightning cannon momentarily blinding him, eyes narrowed as he shouted orders to the column commanders over the rising sound of slaughter.

  The Iron Samurai were fighting like demons; the unholy strength from their mechanical armor was a sight to behold. Aleksandar saw one slaver—a commander by the look—leap off the battlements and land on a rotor-thopter’s snout. The man punched through the windshield and dragged the pilot out through the shattered glass, hurling him onto the ground below. The ’thopter wrenched hard left, plummeting after its master as the commander leapt back toward the fortress and scrabbled onto the battlements.

  Aleksandar charged up a tower walkway, toward the castle walls. The Blood-blessed were on the battlements now, drunk with murder. A thicket of Iron Samurai waited with chainblades drawn, a wall of flesh seething into them, heedless of their growling swords. The ramparts were littered with corpses fried to cinders by lightning canon. A few shuriken-throwers were still operational, bathing Aleksandar’s troops in steel.

  The Kapitán waded into the melee, roaring like an ice devil. His lightning hammer was a hymn in his hand, each impact into some slaver’s skull making his heart sing. He waded among the berserks, smashing chainswords from hands, heads from shoulders. Blood on his gauntlets. On his face. On his tongue.

  A rotor-th
opter wobbled in the sky above, an Iron Samurai leaping from the wall to plunge both chainswords through the windshield. The machine listed and dropped like a stone, the samurai calling out a prayer as the craft collided with a troop tower. Arcs of lightning spilled from sundered tanks, electrocuting the soldiers amassed inside. Raw current dancing on iron and flesh. Faces split in rictus grins. Smell of burning meat.

  Aleksandar heard a loud voice, the song of chainblades. He saw a familiar figure—the slaver commander who’d torn the ’thopter out of the sky. He was shearing his way through dozens of soldiers, fighting like a demon possessed. A flag waved from atop the power unit of his armor, blue as real sky, a white dragon coiled upon it. Around and above, Aleksandar could hear songs of slaughter—chainblades roaring, mallets crunching, groans of the wounded and screams of the dying. Battle stench coiled in his nostrils. Burning fuel and burning meat, the reek of split bellies and shit, blood’s metallic tang hanging so thick he could have waved his hand through the air and had it come away red.

  He waded through the throng, smashed some slaver’s head from his neck—just a boy, no more than eighteen summers old. His eyes were on the slaver commander, now badly outnumbered, his men falling all around him. But still the man fought on, seemingly fearless. A Blood-blessed charged with mallet raised high, and the samurai sidestepped, cleaving through the berserker’s abdomen, entrails spilling out in long, rolling coils of red and purple. The Blood-blessed roared as the samurai commander spun on his heel, taking the berserker’s leg off at the knee, skipping back as the man fell howling in a puddle of his own insides.

  Three soldiers fell on him, a warhammer crashing down on his power unit. Fuel spilled down the back of his legs, thick and blood-red as he took out one soldier’s throat, caved in another’s face with his fist. But they were all around him now, a swarm with no craft—just a seething mass of iron and the skins of flayed beasts.

  “Wait!” Aleksandar roared. “He’s mine!”

  The men stilled around him, pulled back half a dozen steps. Aleksandar hefted his shield, leveled his lightning hammer at the slaver’s head. The man seemed to understand, his men parting around him. He reached up to his power unit, snapped his clan banner free. He thrust the flag deep into the bodies around him, the once brilliant blue now stained muddy gray. The Dragon sigil fluttered in the freezing wind, the rain seemed a final defiant hiss at the army come to avenge twenty years of slaughter. But not without a fight. Not on his knees.