Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (51 page)

Several Grey Clan had been injured or killed in the blast, torn
apart
by the impact or the explosions.  Others lay maimed.
Grey-green blood was everywhere.

Sol
was dead, impaled on a piece of steel. 

“Kane!” Ronan shouted.  “Let’s go!”

“Where’s Maur?!”

“Maur is here!” the Gol coughed.  Kane couldn’t see him through the haze of smoke, but he knew the voice.

Burke was bloody and bruised, but both he and Turner had survived.  Neither of them seemed all that concerned with the loss of
Marcus
.

“
Look
!” he shouted.

They saw u
ndead
through the shattered windows. 
The roiling blue fog advanced like a vehicle across the ground.  The rhythmic
advance
of undead giants sounded like
massive drums
as they closed in on the ship
.
 

“Ronan, grab Maur!” Kane shouted.  He looked at Jade.  “I have to get to that city,” he told her.  “Are you with us or not?”

Jade looked around.  She seemed at a los
s
. 

Another blast
hit,
a
mortar shell that landed
less than
a hundred yards away
.  The walls
rattled
.  W
ater and mud splashed down
outside. 

“Jade?!” he yelled.

“Yes!”

She ran over to
Sol
and
pulled off
his pack. 

T
hey ran along the inverted ceiling of the crashed vessel.  Cables and wiring sparked and oozed hydraulic fluid.  Kane, Ronan, Maur and Jade raced out
of
the shattered viewport.  Raal, Mourne, Burke, Turner and a handful of Revengers and Grey Clan followed close on
their heels as they leapt down o
nto the muddy field.  They grabbed as many weapons as they could on the way, and Kane found himself with an M4A1
.
Ronan
grabbed
an MP5
A2
,
and
Maur had a SIG SG 552, a weapon nearly as large as he was if not for the removed stock and the fore-grip.  Burke and the Revengers held HK G36Ks, and they fired into the mob of giants.

The grey mist hung thick and low, and t
he marsh
ooze
was deep and
slick.
Kane sank up to his ankles
in fluid that
smelled of brine and puss. 
T
hey s
loshed their way towards the nearest walkway
, which suddenly exploded beneath a mortar shell, leaving nothing but ruined splinters
. 

They turned towards t
he ruins of Voth Ra’morg
,
which were still
half-
a-mile
mile away
. 
Thunderous blasts and the roar of engines screamed through the sky as the Grey Clan vessels exchanged fire with vampire warships.  Razorwings and gargoyles soared overhead.

Kane and the others had landed between the Ebon Cities’ waves of advancing troops: t
he Tr
o
j
were
ahead of them, engaged with the Scarecrows near
the
city
, while
t
he mob of undead giants was at their backs
,
still a good distance off
but
moving slow
and
steady. 

“We are
so
screwed,” he said. 

“Not yet,” Ronan
said
.
  His
shemagh
was
o
ff
, but
Ronan
still
wore a cloth wrap around his lower face.  Even then,
Kane could tell he was smiling evilly. 

They ran.  They could
n’t
waste
any
more
time
.  T
he giants behind them weren’t
very fast
but they covered
a lot of
ground with
their long
stride
s
, and
they weren’t bothered by the marsh. 

Burke shouted orders, and Turner pulled out a sending stone.  Dark shapes
appeared
in the ochre sky, gargoyle shock troops out of Black Scar.  Another mortar blast from one of the land tanks slammed into the mud a few hundred feet away.

Kane saw something shift to the north. He couldn’t be sure what it was,
but he knew that
it was big. 

The u
ndead giants closed to within
five hundred yards.  The line of Troj was
maybe
three-hundred
yards away, directly ahead of them and
between
the
m and
the ruins.  Between the team, Burke’s men and the Grey Clan
,
there were maybe twenty fighters on the ground.

“This is
n’
t enough…” Kane said.  His skin was cold, and panic welled in his chest.  Whispers slithered through the back of his mind.

Hell no.  Stay away.

“We have to go around
them,
” Ronan
sai
d.  “If we try to break through th
at
Troj
line
they’ll tear us to pieces.”

A
war horn sounded through the blood-haze air like a hollow
song.  Several giants
stepped forward
and hefted the great iron spheres
into the air.  Flames trailed
the balls
and made them
look
like steel comets.  They
burst open near the downed Grey Clan vessel
.  V
iolent explosions rocked the ground
.  Heat
and deafening booms
swept
over the marsh
, and Kane smelled burning gas.

“Shit!”

“Go!” Burke shouted.  “We’ll hold them!”

A
Grey Clan airship pulled their attention sky
ward
.  One of the clunky grey vessels roared by
and left
thick plumes of black and blue smoke in i
ts wake.  Bomb bay doors slid open, and metal tubes
plummeted
to the ground.  Kane
watch
ed
the bombs
descen
d
against the orange-black
sky
.  H
e realized they
were about to
land
right
on
top of
the Troj.

“Duck!” Turner shouted.  Everyone went to their knees or fell prone in the mud. 

A
cid flames
rippled across
the ground
. 
Burning
cloud
s
rolled
over the scaly humanoids.  Guttural screams
came from within
the roiling f
ire as burning b
odies writhed and twisted and
fell. 

I hope they got the Scarecrows
too
, Kane thought as he helped Jade to her feet. 

“Now
go
!” Burke shouted. 

Kane hesitated,
and
looked at the Revenger.  The man just shook his head.

“Weird shit,” Kane said.

“No doubt,
”
Burke replied.

They readied their weapons, and ran.

T
he dead giants
behind them
charged
through the flames and
ran
even
while
immolated
, m
assive meat candles
that
surged towards the craft.
 
The downed ship was caught in a cage of fire.
 

Kane pushed ahead.  He tasted hex currents in the air as Jade sent her spirit forward to
push mud
and water out of their
path
,
leaving
a narrow trench of
sodden
clay. 

Blasts
sounded
everywhere
. 
Kane’s head rattled
from
t
he growl of heavy vehicles
and
the fall of artillery fire.  Mortar
shells screamed
down
and
into the giants.  Gargoyle
s
flew
over
the wall of flames
,
oblivious to the four
mercenaries on
the ground
as they
dove
at the Ebon Cities zombies
. 

Burke and the others held their ground
with
small arms
fire and
magic. 
Gargoyles snatched Grey Clan
and hauled them
into the air
.  Some of the reptilians
plummeted painfully to the distant ground, while others grappled their aggressors and hacked into them with blades and
claw-
hammers. 

The group worked
its way
around
the wall of dying flames.  Troj writhed and moaned inside the crackling barrier. 

Kane
saw
Scarecrows through the
smoke and fire
.  He fired
at
them, and Ronan and Maur joined suit.  The Scarecrow
’
s armor was thick, but concentrated
and repeated
strikes brought them down.

The band of mercenaries
drew to within
a short distance
of
Voth Ra’morg. 
It looked like they’d be able to slip in through
some
cracks
in the northwestern wall
, on the opposite
side
of the city
from the Black Scars ground forces.

Scarecrows and
Revengers
advanced on
the front-line of zombie giants. 
Kane
look
ed back
and saw the
Grey Clan
ship being
destroyed
.
  Shells pounded the ground.
  Ships tore apart in the sky.  Debris and shredded bodies fell like rain. 

T
he
y
dodged
around
the
flames and
jumped
into
a shallow trench
in the shadow of the city
. 

Bullets
pounded
the ground
around them.  Blood rang through Kane’s ears. 
Adrenaline flooded his body. 
He fired, reloaded, fired again.  Every time he
look
ed up there seemed to be more Scarecrows
.  G
angly black bodies
advanced on the trench.  Kane fired at
grinning
skeletal
faces
with
e
yes like white holes.

He
tossed a grenade, and Jade
’s
spirit
rain
ed
down
shards of
blade
d
ice.  Undead bodies sputtered and collapse
d
, but more
stepped forward to replace them
. 

Something erupted out of the grou
nd
. 
C
annon fire
w
as
drowned out by a guttural and monstrous roar.
S
ickening slurps
echoed into the sky
.  Kane smelled rot and earthen waste, something like bile and dirty rain.

A massive worm
exploded into view
.  Glistening black and yellow, the
creature
was the size of a
tank
.  An enormous circle of
buzz saw
teeth squeezed Scarecrows in half as its body
rose and
twisted
.  It had no eyes, but seemed to sense
prey
just the same. 
Gooey white
blood
exploded from its body as shells
struck
its carapace, but the attacks
only seemed to
enrage the beast further.  It rose high
into the air
, a
quivering
black
tower
of placid skin, then fell and smashed a trio of Scarecrows beneath it
s massive bulk
.