Seasons of War, page 39
The shackles loosened. Tanith’s power returned. Oh, that felt good. But still she frowned. “Do I hit her? I feel like I should hit her.”
“Why would you want to hit her?” Skulduggery asked while his own shackles were being removed.
“Because she’s … OK, wait. What’s going on? How do you two know each other?”
“This,” Assegai said, “is so much fun.”
She stood in front of Tanith and turned her head right and then left, showing her the sigils tattooed behind her ears. Then she gave her a smile, reached back and tapped those sigils, and Assegai’s face flowed away, revealing Valkyrie’s beneath it.
Tanith clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. “You little marvel! You sneaky little marvel! How have you managed this? You sneaky little …! Where’s the real Assegai? Is there a real Assegai?”
Valkyrie grinned as she started to take off her uniform. “She’s tied up in her spare bedroom, along with Mevolent’s head of security – although they’ve probably been discovered by this stage, with the invasion so close and everything.”
“When did this happen? When did you take her place?”
“A few days ago.”
“That’s so cool,” Tanith said, hauling off the sackcloth and starting to dress in her leathers. “And when did you figure it out?” she asked Skulduggery, who had turned his back on them both.
“The first time we saw her, it struck me that Assegai had a very familiar gait. When I saw her fight, I knew for certain.”
“And you didn’t bother to tell me?”
“I couldn’t be sure that Mevolent wasn’t eavesdropping on our conversations. Also, I knew I’d enjoy watching your face when you realised.”
“I had Professor Nye carve the sigils,” Valkyrie said. Now that she’d abandoned Assegai’s uniform, she walked off, pressing the amulet to her sternum and tapping it. The necronaut suit covered her as she removed the God-Killer sword from hiding. “It took a little work to make sure the façade was an identical match to Assegai’s face, and then more work to alter my voice, but it was worth it in the end.”
“This,” Tanith said, “is hysterical.”
“Any idea how we dismantle the portal machines?” Skulduggery asked.
“Yeah,” Valkyrie said, without enthusiasm. She held up a strange-looking box. “According to Nye, this bomb is powerful enough to take out a building. I figure it’s enough to take out the machines, too. Only …”
“Only what?”
“Only there’s probably a segment of the people out there who’ll be caught in the blast. It’ll kill them.”
Skulduggery slid the God-Killer into the sheath on his back. Fully dressed now, he turned to her, and held out his gloved hand. “Then I’ll do it.”
Valkyrie hesitated. “No,” she said.
“You don’t want this on your conscience.”
“It’ll be on my conscience anyway, regardless of who sets off the bomb. I brought it here. It’s my plan. I should be the one to do it.”
Tanith put a gentle hand on her arm. “Val, think about this. You’ve just managed to get a handle on the old trauma. You really want to add a new one to the mix?”
“Not really,” Valkyrie said. “But I’m better able to cope with it, I think. I hope. I have done awful, awful things that I’ll never be able to forget – but I know why I did them, why I had to do them, and I’m OK with that. I don’t know if I’ve come to terms with it, but I’m … I’m OK. And, if this sends me spiralling again, fair enough. I’ll work through it, because I have to.”
Skulduggery dropped his hand. “If you’re sure.”
“I am.”
“Then I’ll be here to help in whatever way I’m able.”
“Yeah,” said Tanith. “Me too.”
Valkyrie smiled sadly. “Thanks.”
Somebody snorted. They looked round. The middle Necromancer had his head down, and was trying not to laugh.
“Something funny, sunshine?” Tanith asked, prodding him with her boot.
“Say nothing,” said the female Necromancer.
The laughing chap looked up, let out a giggle. “Why shouldn’t I? They’ll find out in mere moments anyway.”
Valkyrie frowned. “Find out what?”
“You’re all dead,” he said. “All of you. You can set off the bomb or throw it away – it won’t make any difference. Everyone will die here. Everyone will die now.”
“And who’s going to kill us?”
He grinned. “Some of you will undoubtedly die at the hands of the Death Bringer himself. But the draugar will get most of you, and you’ll be added to the army of the dead.”
“The draugar on the other side of the shield, you mean?” Tanith asked.
“Yes.”
“And how are they going to manage that?”
Before the Necromancer could answer, the curtains opened, and tens of thousands of people were suddenly staring at them.
“Nobody move!” Valkyrie roared, cradling the bomb against her chest in case some Elemental tried snatching it from her hands. The crowd went quiet. She’d rarely seen as large a crowd of people want to tear her limb from limb before. It had happened, obviously. But it was rare. “I want everyone to back away from the portal machines,” she shouted.
“I thought you told us not to move!” somebody shouted back.
A few hundred people laughed at that one.
Valkyrie glared. “I’m about to destroy these machines of yours. This device in my hand will do that – but it’ll also take out a lot of you fine people. But hey, stick around if you want, see if I give a damn.”
The laughing died down. The people at the front tried to move away, but the people at the back weren’t budging.
“Go ahead!” someone else shouted from way back. “Set it off! Blow yourself up!”
That got a few thousand of them arguing among themselves, but, as soon as it started, the griping hushed. Valkyrie didn’t like that. Didn’t like it at all. She looked up.
“Ohhhh, hell,” Tanith whispered.
Mevolent and Lord Vile came drifting over the rooftops, eliciting a sudden chorus of cheers and laughter. The crowd regained their confidence in an instant. Even the soldiers were grinning.
Mevolent and Vile hovered there, in the air, far above the heads of the people. Mevolent wasn’t wearing his battlesuit. He didn’t even have that screaming helmet thing he liked to wear. It was just him, and he was all the more scary for it.
The bomb was cold in Valkyrie’s hands. Tanith prepared herself.
Skulduggery drew the God-Killer sword. “I’m afraid the executions will have to be postponed,” he shouted. “And your invasion will have to be called off!”
When Mevolent spoke, his soft voice carried. “We do not need the executions for the invasion to go ahead.”
“Damn,” Skulduggery whispered. “I was really hoping he wouldn’t realise that.”
“Open the portals.”
More cheers, even louder than before, even more raucous, the crowd channelling their fear into their excitement.
Valkyrie turned as the three rings lit up and a hum made the stage vibrate under her feet. A shimmering blue energy stretched across each ring like liquid soap, then started to swirl, creating three identical vortexes.
Mevolent cast his gaze upon his army. “Prepare to march,” he said.
Skulduggery waved. “Hey. Hey! Before you do, you might want to question these Necromancers. That one in particular. He seems to believe the draugar are going to break through any moment now.”
The chatty Necromancer went pale, and shook his head.
“No, go on,” Skulduggery said loudly. “Tell them what you told us.”
“I didn’t tell you anything,” said the Necromancer.
“Of course you did,” Skulduggery responded. “All that stuff about adding us to the army of the dead. I liked that bit. It was very ominous. Valkyrie, what did you think of that bit?”
Valkyrie nodded. “Very ominous,” she said, her mouth dry, her voice close to cracking.
“It sounded to me,” Skulduggery went on, “that you were about to tell us who’s behind it all. Behind the plague, the draugar, the Necromancers … It sounded like you were going to tell us who this Death Bringer is. Were you?”
The chatty Necromancer shook his head violently.
Skulduggery looked up at Mevolent and Vile. “Do you believe him?” They didn’t answer, so he looked at the crowd. “Do you believe him?”
A messy chorus responded, but their message was clear. No, they did not believe him.
“I wasn’t going to tell you,” said the chatty Necromancer.
“I think you were.”
“No. I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”
Skulduggery tilted his head. “Why is that? Is it because you didn’t want to spoil the surprise? What surprise could that be, I wonder? What name could possibly take the great Mevolent by surprise?”
Mevolent’s gaze was on the chatty Necromancer. He started floating down towards the stage—
—and then jerked sideways, narrowly avoiding Lord Vile’s slashing shadows.
Suddenly they were circling each other in the air, neither man uttering a word while the crowd began to mutter and grumble below them, panic a mere moment away.
Mevolent flew at Vile and Vile shadow-walked behind him, raking darkness across his back. Mevolent spun, his blood dripping on to the upturned faces of the citizens below. Fire filled his arms and he released a stream of flame that forced Vile to cover up, allowing Mevolent to get close. They went whirling through the tallest tower in the city as the energy dome retracted and the Necromancers outside flew down to help their Death Bringer.
The people were following the spectacle like they were watching a tennis match – gasping, cheering, crying out. Mevolent punched holes through Necromancers, sent them dropping, but the odds were not in his favour, and he wasn’t wearing his battlesuit.
The Necromancers’ shadows darted through him, slicing through his flesh, impaling him with two dozen spears of darkness simultaneously.
He stiffened, his body rigid. Valkyrie saw him cough blood and then his head lolled back and he went limp.
Just like that.
Mevolent was dead, just like that.
Cries of horror from the crowd as the other Necromancers slowly retracted their spears. Vile brought Mevolent close, examining him, making sure he really was dead. Satisfied, his shadows flicked Mevolent’s corpse away from him, and the city moaned aloud in grief and horror.
Then the gates opened and the draugar came sprinting through.
The crowd panicked. Surged. Soldiers turned to face the onrushing horde. They met them with magic and steel and did well at first. They chopped at their legs and caved in their skulls and proved to be an indomitable line of defence. Until that line broke against the endless horde, and the screams of the soldiers were added to the screams of the people.
“March!” someone was screaming. Valkyrie picked her out among all those faces. Assegai.
“March!” she screamed again, and the soldiers closest to the stage hurried for the ramps.
Tanith snagged Valkyrie’s arm, pulled her round as Lord Vile lowered himself to the stage. Skulduggery was already stalking towards him, God-Killer in his hands, saying something that Valkyrie couldn’t hear, probably something cocky. A column of darkness shot out from Vile’s chest, slammed into Skulduggery, knocking him back. The sword fell, went skittering off the stage.
Energy crackling, Valkyrie stepped forward, but Skulduggery was already up again. Shadows leaked from underneath his collar, from his sleeves, from his boots. They wrapped around his limbs, his torso, his head, forming armour.
“Oh,” Tanith said, and then, “oh.”
Lord Vile met Lord Vile, and went to war.
A soldier scrambled up on to the stage and Valkyrie sent him spinning off again with a blast of lightning. There was a flash of colour and an energy stream caught her, spun her round, almost sent her toppling. An arrow thudded against her chest and bounced off, nearly taking her eye out as it whirled madly past her face.
She was aware of Tanith ducking the sword of another soldier, aware of her chopping down on that soldier’s arm, and suddenly the stage was crawling with soldiers and Valkyrie didn’t have anywhere to run. She yanked down the zip of her suit, stuffed the bomb in there, and zipped it back up.
“Right,” she said, and didn’t get a chance to say anything more. They came at her with gritted teeth and bulging eyes and swinging weapons. Fireballs exploded against her. Energy streams of assorted colours sent her stumbling. And she responded to it all the same way: she moved, she weaved, she grabbed, she blasted.
A soldier managed to tackle her. Valkyrie broke his fingers and punched him in the throat as the two Lord Viles fell into the street. They grappled, their shadows coiling and whipping, slicing through the people and soldiers and draugar around them.
“Valkyrie!” Tanith called.
She turned. Hundreds of soldiers were sprinting through the portals. The bomb that rested against her ribs would destroy the machines and stop the invasion – but it would mean killing herself, and everyone around her.
She spread her arms wide and let the lightning flow. Soldiers snapped back, went spinning, went hurtling off the stage, into the crowd, clearing a space, and she watched as one of the Lord Viles fell to his knees, unable to prevent the other one from dragging his armour away. Piece by piece, the armour became wisps of darkness, revealing Skulduggery beneath.
A last effort, and Vile stole Skulduggery’s darkness, adding it to his own, and kicked Skulduggery away.
That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all.
More and more draugar came, and the crowd surged, soldiers and civilians. They climbed over each other, clambering on to the stage, flowing round Valkyrie and then slamming into her, frightened faces pressed up against hers, wide eyes not even registering her in their panic. Valkyrie found herself lifted, cursing, being forced back, unable to settle herself, unable to push back. She glanced over her shoulder to the shimmering portal and then she was through it.
Back into Roarhaven.
It was snowing.
The masses pressed tighter and Valkyrie squirmed round, saw rapidly forming lines of Roarhaven Cleavers and Sanctuary sorcerers pushing back against the invading army. But it wasn’t an army, not any more. There were soldiers and Redhoods, here to fight, struggling to form up, but there were also the screaming civilians, the spoiled aristocrats, their shrieks of surrender lost amid the cacophony of violence.
Valkyrie’s feet touched down and she fell to one knee. A woman beside her disappeared, squawking, in a forest of legs, and Valkyrie powered up, grabbing whoever was close as she scrambled. She hissed in a face, head-butted another, all the while carried along by the people around her.
A soldier tried to plunge his knife into her side. She took hold of his wrist with one hand and his throat with the other and she let the lightning flow through her. He jerked back and was lost in the next surge. She had his knife, though.
There was space around her now. A soldier came in, swinging an axe one-handed, aiming to split her down the middle. She lunged into him, one arm up to keep the axe away, the other driving the knife deep into his armpit. His howl turned to a gurgle and she tore the axe from his grip. It was big and heavy and she didn’t have a whole lot of room to swing it.
A wall of air knocked Valkyrie to her knees. She didn’t have time to look behind. She just turned, bringing the axe round in a short arc. It bit into the side of a leg and the soldier grunted and fell to his hands and knees. Valkyrie brought the axe down and it cut off a few fingers. The soldier screamed and Valkyrie abandoned the axe and took his sword. The soldier wasn’t going to need it.
She slashed and hacked and grunted and lost the sword and a mace crunched into her shoulder. She screamed in rage and loosed the lightning, then took to the sky over the portals, feeling the instant relief of open space around her. She landed on a roof, closed her eyes for three whole seconds, enjoying the cold wind and the snow on her sweat-streaked face.
Eyes open again, she surveyed the scene.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
The High Sanctuary was to her right, its shield up. The Dark Cathedral was to her left, protected by a large group of armed guards. The zone between them was a surging mass of bodies. Right now, it was pretty evenly split between Roarhaven and Tahil na Kurge forces, but there were more soldiers and civilians stumbling through those portals all the time. It wouldn’t be long before the numbers started to tip.
She unzipped her suit, took out the bomb. All she had to do was arm it and then toss it back through one of the portals. As easy as that. The machines would be destroyed, the portals would close, the day would be saved. And a lot of people would die.
The soldier she’d stabbed in the armpit. The others she’d hacked at. They were probably dead.
That was different, though. That was in the midst of battle. It was kill or be killed. But throwing a bomb through a doorway … That wasn’t quite so clear cut.
Valkyrie wished she could just leave. She was back home now, after so very long away. She should be able to run into Militsa’s arms. She should be able to hug her family. She shouldn’t have to fight. She’d fought enough.
Down there, in the middle of it all – Skulduggery, fighting back to back with Tanith. Valkyrie could see Dexter now, and Serpine. No sign of Saracen yet. He was probably perched somewhere with the bow, picking off targets.
Her family and Militsa were going to have to wait. Valkyrie climbed over the parapet and let herself drop.
Skulduggery swung the God-Killer sword and enemies split in half around him.
Tanith’s katana flashed in the cold Roarhaven sun, but all that hacking, that slashing, that stabbing and that wounding had dulled the blade so she dropped it, took out the God-killer dagger, killed her opponents with the merest nick.
The God-killer spear twirled in Dexter’s hands, the staff knocking them down, the bladed tip finishing them off.
