Going Under Read online

  Meanwhile the airship completed its laborious turn and straightened into the wind coming off the icy moutaintops. Another volley of arrows sailed about the ship, some glowing with charms to seek living prey. Lila charged her ammunition rounds and shattered them with shrapnel fire as they whizzed towards Zal where he crouched, tying the wheel into position. Seeing them outnumbered she brought her AI up to full Battle Mode and dreamed of guns in both hands; they appeared at once—Smith and Wesson six shooters, pearl plates on the grips and on her hands as she targeted simultaneously on port and starboard and took out half the airborne archers with basic hot lead. Seeing her accuracy the others fled to regroup. Lila drew her arms towards her body and cradled a rifle to her shoulder. She took them out with headshots and exploding rounds. On the last shot there was a click only. Her vision flashed red. A long stay in Demonia had left her out of ammo.

  Zal came out of cover and took a look at their heading.

  “We’ll make the wall,” he said as the gas supply nozzle sputtered its last and their downward drift became more obvious.

  Lila looked over the side, where the ground forces had grouped themselves around some large object. She zoomed in her vision for a closer look and saw that what she had hoped was a cannon or rocket launcher was in fact the ground unit for an MV being aimed in their direction. Without hesitation she took to the sky, searching all around for the anchor.

  She did not have far to look. The other ship had turned, and as its balloon and fans cleared the view towards the lagoon, Lila saw the sweeping wings of a drake carrying a demon rider and the light second unit, the crystal fan of its open face ready to complete the circuit. The Ahriman airship was directly between it and the ground force and only a few degrees of angle remained to guarantee a clear shot through their midsection. They did not wait for it. Even as she calculated the seconds left in which to move the MV made a connection. There was a terrifyingly loud bang and Lila and Zal were both flung to the deck. The wheelhouse, the aft lounge, and the steering system had all vanished, leaving a neat quarter-cylindrical cutout on the back of the barge as if it had been chopped through with a giant hole punch.

  “Abandon ship!” Zal shouted, already on the move towards Lila as she in turn began to run for the dark open doors of the cocktail lounge.

  A second bang and a circular hole appeared through the ship’s aft section. With cracking and rending the entire rear of the ship began to break off and the nose tipped downwards, ropes twanging as the balloon began to tear free of its remaining restraints. The third shot cut upwards through the deck as Sorcha appeared, blazing all over with red fury, and put her foot out onto nothing. The inrush of air heading to fill the gap where there used to be ship sucked her straight off the boards into the middle of nowhere. At the same time Zal ran right into the back of Lila, pushing her forwards. She let herself slide off the deck and into space as the balloon jerked free and shot upwards and the remaining sad half of the luxury barge began to plummet down alongside them.

  She felt Zal’s long, powerful fingers dig down under the straps of her shoulder armour as they fell and then his body fell onto her back and he wrapped his legs around her hips. Knowing he was secure she closed her arms in and let herself fall faster towards Sorcha until she could reach out and grab hold of the demon’s arm and then her waist. When she was sure she wasn’t going to burn them she ignited the jet boots and darted sideways. By this time they were only a few tens of metres above the ground. Above them the drake rider dropped its MV burden and unhooked a large netting gun from behind the saddle. The drake closed its wings and began to drop towards them with the speed and accuracy of a fighter plane.

  By contrast Lila, Zal, and Sorcha were just a lump of clumsy, hard to manoeuvre, slow-moving ballast. Lila made to ready a gun but then remembered she had nothing to shoot. Zal shouted to her in Daemonic, “Time for the trick riding shot. I’ll jump it.”

  Sorcha, face to face and breath to breath with Lila, smothered in righteous scarlet fire, blazed even more fiercely, “And I’ll hum it… after me, brother, in the key of B Flat Soon…”

  Lila increased the jet power to maximum by agreement as on either side of her the pair began a bizarre duet. Sorcha’s voice went once again into inhuman ranges and bizarre melodies. Zal stayed with a less ambitious song but in complement to hers. Lila’s AI calculated that his was aimed at the rider, hers at the drake itself. Surrounded by the music in both ears she felt herself growing disoriented and drowsy and only after she had started to fall had the intelligence to switch off her hearing altogether. In sudden silence she aimed them straight at their attacker.

  The drake was no longer the lethal diving raptor it had started out as. Its wings opened up and it was almost lazily floating along the air, head weaving from side to side, its strange glowing eyes flickering like dying lamplight. On its back the rider was struggling hard to maintain control, mumbling to itself and trying to bring the net gun to bear on the easy target. Lila felt Zal jerk with the effort of punching out a note and then the gun fired and the net shot out. She made an evasive swerve but it caught over her head and shoulder, and over Sorcha, quickly wrapping them up in a charmed web of fine, hairlike strands.

  Zal pulled his hands free of Lila’s armour and she felt him climb to stand on her instead, one foot on each shoulder. He balanced like a circus rider and she kept going as the strands themselves hardened into filaments of steely strength and bound her arms to her sides and Sorcha to her. It also had the effect of cutting off most of Sorcha’s siren song, as well as the magic infused in the melody.

  With a snort the drake remembered itself and straightened up. They were within three metres of each other vertically. It flicked open a wingtip and Zal leaped as it began to veer away. The rider flung the useless gun at him. It was a reasonably large and heavy thing, almost as big as a rocket launcher, and the range was so close only an idiot would have missed. Lila had a clear view as Zal caught the gun lengthways and, in a move so nimble that only an elf could have attempted it, vaulted up and over it as though it was the top bar of a gate fixed solidly on the earth, using its small inertia to push himself higher. He landed feet first on the rider’s side and collapsed into it with the grace of a monkey landing on a tree trunk, his forehead connecting solidly with the side of the demon’s skull. Then her view was cut off by the drake’s razored wing passing overhead.

  Sorcha wriggled and giggled at the same time. There was a pinging noise and Lila felt the net starting to pop. She felt the demon’s hand moving and then there was a tearing as more of their bonds gave way. Sorcha did enough to free her arms and head and then waved her fingers in front of Lila’s nose. “Always the sharp manicure,” she said. “Now let’s get moving!”

  Just then a shot went winging past them. The ground force had found itself in range.

  “Fly, girl! Fly, fly, fly!” Sorcha shrieked.

  Fearing for Zal’s life, Lila took off after the drake. It was beating a steady rate towards the mountains, speeding up every moment. She was so intent on catching it she barely noticed that Sorcha went silent, her flames dying back to a simple flicker in her black hair. The drake’s speed, magically enhanced, was terrible to follow. The air battered Lila and Sorcha until the demon had to close her eyes. Lila’s eyes, not flesh, had no problems seeing that the struggle in the saddle was down to willpower and energy. She managed to zoom in on it and saw, with a sickening plunge in her stomach, the moment when Zal had clearly had enough of playing around. He had his leg firmly tangled in the drake’s harness and with a flick of his wrist undid the buckles holding the demon rider in position. His free hand snapped forwards and took hold of the demon’s head, thumb in its eye socket and two fingers hooked under its long, bony jaw. Then he just pulled with a sudden, short, fast motion. The demon screamed and pitched out of the saddle, flailing with its long bony arms and slashing down the elf’s body, but it was too late. It spiralled down and down and down and vanished on the darkening and increasingly rocky gr
ound far below.

  Her heart thudded in her chest and her skin felt raw. Recognition sang in her bones. In her chest Tath’s cold pleasure made her furious.

  You have learned a lot from each other, Tath whispered. She could feel his admiration for Zal, his hero-worshipping, self-loathing, love, and hate as if it were a taste, like bitter chocolate.

  She wanted to say something, but Sorcha was right there and, anyway, she didn’t know what she felt about it. What was there to say? They all of them were killers, given the right conditions, and those conditions came often and they did nothing to avoid it. She, who had been bathed in demon blood, wanted it to be different and the want was starting to feel like a wound.

  She heard Zal begin to sing a different song to the drake. It banked slightly and then beat towards the mountains again on a new heading. Lila followed, keeping watch on the now-receding ground force. She saw them halt at a crossroads and begin to mill about. Some gestured after them, but without much enthusiasm. Heads were shaken, shoulders shrugged, wings flipped in disgust. After a few minutes their decision was clear. They would not go to the mountains. Whatever they were being paid, it just wasn’t enough. Some of them split off to go search the wreckage of the airship and the rest turned and headed back to the city.

  For the first time ever even Sorcha seemed to have nothing to say, but her silence wasn’t due to any problems of conscience. As Lila looked ahead she saw a huge structure, its edges blurred with the intense vibrations caused by the magic that held it in place. Around it the air crackled with colourful discharges of various aethers, and elementals gathered in gnatlike groups darted all about it, sipping up what interested them. All the metal in her body, infused with its own peculiar elemental life, began to resonate with excitement at being close to such a monumental statement of power.

  They were crossing the wall.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “You are going to die,” mumbled the imp in Lila’s ear.

  They were sitting on the wrong side of the wall in the weak sunshine, listening to the hum of too much aether crammed into the rocks behind them and watching the drake from the corners of their eyes as it ripped up earth with its claws and pondered whether to escape, stay, or attack. Sorcha was filing her broken talon. Zal was next to Lila, his thin body burning hot with elemental demon heat. She was patching some superficial wounds in his leg with pieces from her medical supplies. The imp sat on a high rock over her head, hissing…

  “Leaving me to plunge to my doom without even the slightest attempt to find me or my poor, mangled body. So, I wasn’ gonna say this being and how we’re such good friends but I have to say—you are going to die. We all do and you will. I don’t know how but I can tell you when that moment comes you’re gonna realise we were all level, just bumbling along according each to our own pitiful natures, and you weren’t no better and there never was any better to be. You were just having to wing it like the rest of us, you crazy control freak. All the power has gone to your head and now you think you want to change the world and if you can’t change it you’re going to complain for the rest of eternity. D’you know how I could find you? ‘Cos I can hear you whining from the other side of the world “I don’t want to kill any more. I wish this hadn’t happened to me. Why are the demons so nasty? I wanted a quiet life and what did I do to deserve this? Why can’t Zal just go back to Otopia and sing songs? I defeated a professional demon task unit all on my own this morning without breaking a sweat and it’s so unfair. Boo hoo, poor me. I wanna go home.” Well, lady, you should thank your lucky stars I have a forgiving nature and I am here to remind you of your weakness and mortality before you get even more cocky. And as for Hell, don’t think I don’t know you were thinking of killing me back there like that would solve your problem. I saw it. And you call yourself a friend.”

  “Slayer,” Lila said smoothly, keeping her attention focused on attaching the dressing to Zal’s sweaty skin without fixating on the fact it was Zal’s skin, and hot, and naked—a feat in itself. “The word is Friend-slayer.”

  Zal chuckled, “That imp really has you pegged.”

  Lila stuck it down very hard.

  “Ow!”

  The drake looked over at them, slavering with agitation.

  “It doesn’t like the wall,” Sorcha said.

  “It likes the wall fine,” Zal said reassuringly. “Now its rider is dead, it’s having a loyalty crisis.”

  “How long will it last?”

  “I don’t know, but it’ll either eat us or sit down and then you’ll know.”

  “I thought drakes were like cats—no master,” Lila said.

  “I thought they were like dogs…” Sorcha said, in the tone of one who has never really noticed other species or taken much of an interest in them.

  “They’re not like cats or dogs,” Zal said.

  “I suppose they’re a kind of dragon,” Lila murmured, half aware of screeds of data whirling around her AI self as it was made encyclopaedic with all the processing power not currently being utilised by Battle Mode. She carefully didn’t look at the creature in case being looked at made it annoyed. Dragons didn’t care to be looked at, according to the one and only Otopian record source, which noted that all surveillance of the creatures ended quickly and unilaterally.

  “Yessss,” said the drake in Demonic. It stared into the distance fixedly during the long and uncomfortable silence that followed.

  They took the time to observe the rocky emptiness of the mountains, to eye the dark and scrubby-looking forests that crept over the lower slopes, the glittering ice of the glaciers, far above them. The wind blew gently and the sun was warm.

  “Doesn’t seem that bad,” Lila said after a few minutes had passed. “Bit big though. How are we going to find—”

  “Ssilence,” said the drake. There was a peculiar cold authority to its words that even Lila could perceive. Zal and Sorcha both adopted even more oblique angles to it, unconsciously moving in sync with each other. Nobody spoke. Thingamajig twiddled his thumbs and made himself very small and inconspicuous on his rocky outcrop near Lila.

  Lila observed the drake closely. It had characteristic peculiar eyes that were more light than solid, crocodilian snout stretched out, gashshaped nostrils flaring. The small fans and spines that frilled its ugly skull were spread and erect. It was listening. She wished she knew for what.

  Zal, moving slowly but surely, got to his feet. He was looking the same way as the drake and his long ears were in a “side out” position Lila had learned to associate with aetheric filtering.

  “It’s coming,” he said quietly. “Get up.”

  Lila stood. “What’s coming?” She figured if he would speak, she would too. As far as any of her senses could tell the wilderness ahead was empty of everything except pleasant afternoon sunlight and a few breezes that spoke of later rain to come, but the others were starting to spook her. In the absence of solid ammo she measured what she might do with blades, electricity, sound, or by hurling nearby objects. For the first time in a while she felt Tath stir and creep out of her chest along her arms, his aetheric body shifting up towards her skin and then into contact with the outside world. At her neck the amulet started to become hot.

  The drake’s head snapped around fifteen degrees in a split second, looking directly at her for an instant before going back to its vigilant stance.

  Your magician’s work holds againts a dragonkin, Tath said. Remarkable.

  It didn’t hold, Lila said. Otherwise it wouldn’t have noticed anything.

  But it didn’t notice me. The necromancer’s supple aetheric form spread itself up her neck like an invisible mantle, creeping through her armour to test the world beyond. He fixated on the same point the

  others gazed at, where Lila saw nothing. Zal is right. What is it?

  [*(tath)Death, *]said Tath and Lila was so familiar with him that she didn’t need to ask if he was being literal. He meant that whatever it was he had no hope that any of them would sur
vive it. The details of its nature were irrelevant beyond that point.

  I can’t believe there are things out here so much worse than…

  Who cares what you believe? Tath asked.

  For once the retort didn’t sting her. She gazed ahead into the pleasant boredom of the landscape, uneasy only because she could feel Tath growing cold with the desire to hide, or to run.

  But what are they doing out here with just one stupid wall to hold them back? Wouldn’t they have already razed all the cities if they were that unstoppably bad?

  They have no interest in the affairs of the minor demons, Tath said. As to what interests them, I dare not speculate. Surely it is nothing that would interest an elf.

  Lila asked Zal and Sorcha what they thought. They didn’t move from their positions but Zal said, “power,” and Sorcha, “mastery,” and Thingamajig said, “completion,” and the drake said, “Godhead.”

  Just like the elves then, she replied inwardly.

  Tath flickered witheringly and she laughed at him, but he was serious about the danger and although the others were trying their best to maintain a confident stance, she could feel tension beginning to creep between them. Her human body, what was left of it, suddenly felt most distinct from her machine self. The flesh and bone wanted to escape.

  “Is there a point to staying here?” she asked in her calmest tone.

  “Teazle can’t hear us on the other side of the wall,” Zal said.

  “He won’t hear us now.”

  “He will,” Sorcha whispered, backing up very slowly, as if it were accidental, against Zal’s other side.

  Lila put it down to some magical sense, rather than entertain the notion that Sorcha might mean they would soon be screaming loudly enough for Teazle to hear, and decided now wasn’t the moment to ask questions. It had become very quiet. Even the wind had stopped.