Hell's Foundations Quiver (104 page)

Bullets hissed overhead, and he heard cries of shock—and screams of anguish—as they found their marks. He couldn't understand how anyone could possibly see to shoot under these conditions, but the attackers seemed to be doing just fine.

The men of his platoon began to return fire. He and Ainghus Kohrazahn had seen to it that they didn't forget the habit of digging trenches every night. Now they rolled into them, splashing into the water which had gathered in their bottoms, and took their rifles with them. Their rate of fire was hopelessly lower than that of whoever was attacking them, but at least they had protection while they reloaded and he could hear Kohrazahn's deep voice holding them together, coordinating their fire.

Mahafee started crawling towards his platoon sergeant, then stopped, staring in disbelief as a single human being came out of the trees.

He was tall, with an oddly curved sword in his right hand and one of the heretics' “revolvers” in his left hand. Muzzle flashes—from the prisoner guards as well as from the trees behind him—picked him out like spits of lightning even before he entered the uncertain illumination of the torches and the campfires. As far as Mahafee could tell, he was unarmored, but that didn't seem to bother him at all. He moved quickly—inhumanly quickly—and the pistol in his left hand tracked like some sort of mechanism. He fired on the run, which should have made it impossible for him to hit a thing, yet a guard went down with every shot.

Then the revolver was empty. It disappeared into its holster, and a second blade, perhaps half the length of the sword he'd already drawn, materialized in his left hand in its stead.

One of the guards came at him with a bayoneted rifle. The short blade blocked the thrust; the long blade hissed in a blood-flaring arc and the guard's head leapt from his shoulders.

That's not possible
, a small voice said through the madness and the chaos in the depths of Ansyn Mahafee's brain.

He'd seen enough combat by now to know how ridiculous the bards' tales of one-handed decapitations truly were.
Real
combat was far uglier and far more brutal than any of those stories ever admitted, and real soldiers couldn't simply lop heads off with a single sidearm blow. It couldn't be done.

Yet the charging shape of nightmare in front of him could do it. And whoever it was, he did it again as a second guard came at him. Dozens—scores—of the guards were firing at him now, probably because they couldn't see a single target under the trees, and it did no good at all. Mahafee had been astounded by how many shots could be fired in a battle without hitting anyone, but surely not
all
of those bullets could be missing him!

Only they were. Somehow, they were, and he heard screams of terror as the attacker waded through that storm of fire to get at the men behind it.

“Demon!
Demon!
” someone wailed, and something clicked in Mahafee's mind. Mother Church and the Inquisition might call them “demons,” but there was another name for them, as well, and he knew now that they'd meant every single word of the messages they'd left behind in their bloody work. “De—!”

The cry cut off abruptly, and then that single attacker—that single
seijin
—was at the center of at least a dozen men.

They had as much chance against him as a stand of bamboo against a grazing dragon. They didn't just die. They
flew
away from him, not as intact bodies but as bits and
pieces
of bodies. No man could come within his reach and live.

The
seijin
forged steadily toward the tents set aside for Father Trynt and the rest of the clergy, cutting his way through anything in his path like the wrath of Chihiro itself, and the rifle fire pouring out of the trees crashed over the wavering, terrified defenders like the sea. Every instinct told Mahafee to stay exactly where he was, but some stubborn spark of duty shoved him to his feet, instead.

“
Lieutenant!
Lieutenant—
Ansyn!
What the
hell
d'you think you're doing?! Get
down
, Goddamn it!”

He heard Ainghus' voice behind him, even through the tumult and the deafening thunder of rifles, but it didn't matter. Whatever he thought about the Inquisition, he had his duty. If he abandoned that, he had nothing, and it was only now that he truly realized how desperately he'd clung to that concept as his lifeline in a world turned to horror. Duty, honor, loyalty to his comrades and the men under his command—whatever one chose to call it, it was a far more complex concept than he'd ever realized before the Army of God marched into Siddarmark, and it was the only thing he had left. In this moment he saw that with a clarity he'd never before attained, and he knew that he would rather die than surrender the one thing which had allowed him to remain someone he recognized.

He started to run, drawing his own sword as he went, hearing more bullets than he could possibly have counted hiss by him from those lightning-shot woods. They couldn't possibly all be missing
him
, either, yet his life seemed as charmed as the
seijin
's. He half stumbled over dead and dying men, left in the ruin of the
seijin
's wake, and he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that his own body would be joining them soon.

He ran faster.

There!

Major Paxtyn raised his own pistol as the men between him and the
seijin
went down … or threw away their weapons and ran. The major's face was twisted in fear, his eyes huge and disbelieving, and he gripped the pistol in both hands. Flame exploded from the barrel, the muzzle flash almost touching the
seijin
's unarmored chest. He
couldn't
have missed at that range, yet the
seijin
never even slowed, and Paxtyn cried out in raw terror—then screamed in agony—as that dreadful sword disemboweled him. He went down, shrieking, trying to hold his butchered belly together, and the man who'd killed him simply vaulted over his body and left him to finish dying behind him.

Mahafee tasted the sour burn of vomit at the back of his throat and hurled himself after the
seijin
as the other man—or the demon; Mother Church's claims of demonhood seemed far less problematical at the moment—reached the tents just as Father Trynt darted out of one of them, staring about him in horrified panic and disbelief.

“There you are,
Father!
” The deep voice cut through the tumult almost effortlessly, yet it was impossibly calm, almost conversational. The
seijin
wasn't even breathing hard! “I've been looking for you. You should have heeded my warning.”

“
Demon!
” Father Trynt screamed, signing Langhorne's scepter against him, and the
seijin
laughed.

It came through the chinks in the gate to hell, that laugh. And then, with blinding speed, he dropped the longer of his two blades, caught the front of the priest's cassock in his suddenly empty hand, and snatched Trynt Dezmynd from his feet.

“Give my regards to Father Vyktyr,” that deep voice said. “Tell him Dialydd Mab sent you.”

Dezmynd screamed in horror, feet kicking as he twisted like a terrified cat-lizard kitten in the
seijin
's grip. Then that shorter blade buried itself in his belly and butchered its way upward. It exploded back out of the upper-priest's chest, and Dialydd Mab tossed him away to die.

Mahafee drew in a sobbing breath that mingled horror, fear, and desperation in one and drove his sword into Mab's back in a powerful lunge backed by all the momentum of his running pursuit.

It never connected.

The
seijin
reached back with his empty hand, without even looking—without ever having so much as seen Mahafee coming—and caught the naked blade. It was as if Mahafee had driven the keen-edged steel into a brick wall. The thrust simply
stopped
, with a violence that half numbed his own hand. And then the
seijin
—Mab—twitched his wrist, and the sword flew out of the lieutenant's grip.

Mahafee snatched at his dagger, but now Mab turned to face him. The same hand which had stopped his sword, the hand that should have lost fingers to it sharpness,
flicked
downward. It caught his own hand before it ever reached his dagger, and he cried out in anguish as it twisted his arm, forcing him up onto his toes.

Time froze.

He found himself staring into the rock-hard brown eyes of a man five inches taller than he was. A man whose arm didn't even tremble as his steely fingers gripped Mahafee's wrist with crushing force.

“Lieutenant Mahafee,” that same deep voice said calmly, cutting through the tumult—the ongoing screams, the continuing crackle and bellow of rifle fire—with utter clarity. “I've been looking for you, too.”

Mahafee stared at him, feeling his complete helplessness in that inhumanly strong grip. The
seijin
flicked his blade with a snapping motion that cleared most of the blood from it. Then he sheathed it, and something tugged at the lieutenant's belt as the other man's left hand plucked Mahafee's dagger from its sheath. He knew he was about to die, and the terror of that thought choked him, yet at least it would be an end.

“You may not believe this, Lieutenant,” Mab told him, “but this is actually for your protection.”

Protection?
Mahafee blinked. That was the most insane thing he'd ever—

Anguish flared like white-hot fire as the blade in the
seijin
's hand—Mahafee's own dagger—stabbed effortlessly through his own upper left arm. The pain was incredible, and yet the thrust was clear, clean, economical, and impossibly quick—the blade recovered almost before the hurt was given.

“You're going to want to have Sergeant Kohrazahn take care of that, Lieutenant,” that deep voice said. “And just to be on the safe side.…”

Mahafee cried out again as the hand on his right wrist moved upward to his forearm, tightened, and twisted. Bone snapped, and he felt his knees collapsing.

His thoughts flickered and flashed in a welter of confusion, pain, and shock, and somehow the strangest thing of all was how gently the man who'd just broken his arm eased him to the ground. He knelt there, still supported by the
seijin
's right hand and unable to do anything else, and Mab tossed the bloody dagger over his own shoulder. Then he lowered Mahafee the rest of the way and knelt beside him on one knee while he ripped open the lieutenant's bloody sleeve and tied a rough but efficient bandage around the deep, wicked wound with flashing dexterity.

“There,” he said, resting one hand lightly, almost companionably, on Mahafee's breastplate. “That should handle the bleeding until Kohrazahn finds you. He's headed this way now, so I suppose I'd best be going before I have to leave
him
proof of how hard the two of you fought, too.”

The lieutenant blinked up at him, his mind slow and sluggish, and Mab smiled ever so slightly. Then the smile disappeared.

“You're the senior officer of this moving atrocity now,” he said. “Don't make me regret that I put you in command.”

Mahafee blinked again, hammered by too many shocks, too many impossibilities in too brief a time, to do anything else, and Dialydd Mab patted his breastplate.

“Do your best to survive this jihad, Lieutenant,” he said through the crackle and roar of the other
seijins
' gunfire. “The Church is going to need men like you when it's over.”

Then he vaulted back to his feet, caught up the sword he'd dropped, and disappeared into the night.

 

.IV.

HMS
Destiny
, 54, Talisman Island, The Gulf of Dohlar

“So my intention,” Baron Sarmouth said, looking around his rather crowded day cabin at the twenty-odd officers packed into it like sardines, “is to make our presence felt. On the other hand, I'd like the actual strength of our squadron to come as as nasty a surprise as possible to the other side, and I have a few
specific
surprises I'd like to share with them … eventually.”

He showed his teeth, and something between a chuckle and a snarl answered that thin smile.

“It helps that they haven't—hadn't—been keeping a very close eye on us here,” he continued. “Very considerate of them, that was. Of course, we owe Commander Lywys and Commander Cupyr a certain debt of thanks in that respect, as well.”

The snarl was a bit more pronounced this time. It also carried a note of profound satisfaction, and Cupyr, who was both young and amazingly blond and blue-eyed for an Emeraldian, colored ever so slightly. His
Sojourn
was the only survivor of the schooners which had sailed for Hahskyn Bay with Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht, and he'd taken that hard. The loss of his close friend Zheryko Cumyngs hadn't made that any easier—the ICN's small-ship captains tended to be a close, tight-knit fraternity—although there was scarcely anyone in Sarmouth's squadron who hadn't known
someone
who'd died—or, far worse, been captured—at the Kaudzhu Narrows. Grief hadn't prevented Cupyr from doing his duty, however. In fact, it had sharpened his edge, and he and Commander Fraizher Lywys'
Foam
had pounced on the pair of brigs the Royal Dohlaran Navy had sent to take a look at Rahzhyr Bay in the aftermath of that savage battle.

The Dohlarans had been considerably later getting around to that minor detail than a Charisian squadron commander would have been.

Sarmouth was grateful for that tardiness, yet he reminded himself not to confuse it with lethargy. Admiral Caitahno Raisahndo was a generally vigorous and capable officer, but he had a lot on his plate just now, and all of his intelligence reports agreed there couldn't be any large number of additional Charisian galleons that far forward. Not yet. Even assuming there'd been enough of them at Claw Island for Earl Sharpfield to send them east in strength, the earl couldn't have learned about Ahbaht's defeat soon enough to have already dispatched them to Talisman Island. More to the point, Raisahndo had a fairly accurate estimate of what Sharpfield's initial strength had been, and he knew exactly how many ships had been lost at the Kaudzhu Narrows. He also knew—courtesy of spies operating out of Port Royal—that no reinforcements had been dispatched from Chisholm, at least as of three five-days previously. Unfortunately for his intelligence estimates, however, Sir Ahlber Zhustyn knew all about the Port Royal spy. In fact, that spy had been carefully left in place while his counterpart in Manchyr had been quietly eliminated. As a result, even though Raisahndo knew exactly what
hadn't
sailed from
Chisholm
, Corisande was rather a different matter. There was no way for any Dohlaran even to know Sarmouth and his squadron had departed Manchyr, far less that it had reached Claw Island and that “Empress Sharleyan's orders” had inspired Sharpfield to send him forward as rapidly as possible.