The Shattered Lands - Chapter Five

With Dryxovan under siege, Erika finds herself in the kind of danger she has never faced before, and Rand Irellian has to battle not only the attacking pirates, but a part of himself growing louder...

The first booming sound made Erika’s house shake with terror, and jolted her from sleep. At first she thought something had fallen or broken. One of the window shutters lay on the bedroom floor, perhaps it had been that clattering onto the stone that had been the culprit. But then the second boom, and the third, and the smell of smoke reached her senses.

She stumbled out of bed and looked through the window. The people of Dryxovan were starting to bellow in confusion and fear, and further away they were screaming.

The claw tips of fire and the tendrils of smoke were coming from the dockyard. Rubble from one of the buildings uphill was rolling down the cobbled path beneath the window. Dark shapes in the night passed overhead.

Erika ducked down. Long balloon on top, with the wooden and iron hull beneath, the sails billowing on the side … airships. Dryxovan was under attack.

From one of the craft, she watched as a number of grey and black blobs were thrown over the side, towards the street and the buildings. A large, ruined building, now used as an indoor market, shuddered as explosions rippled across the roof, and one wall crumbled and tumbled with a cracking sound.

Tears filled Erika’s eyes as panic wound around her throat and squeezed. She shrunk down again as another airship passed overhead. Ropes lowered from the sides and figures roared, sliding down the ropes and into the street. There were more bellows and laughter from uphill. Gunfire began popping outside, the brigands firing up at the windows around her. Her older neighbour, Orel, a market man, was hit in the chest as he gawked out of the window at the commotion.

Erika jumped back as bullets hit the walls around her. One ricocheted off the ceiling and sent a puff of feathers exploding from her pillow, driving her scrambling across the stone floor with a shriek.

She bolted downstairs and slid both bolts across the front door, dragging them through the build up of rust and splinters. When they eventually engaged, she looked around frantically for something to defend herself with, finding only the pan she cooked in, and a knife that wasn’t as sharp as it should have been.

Something crashed against the door behind her. She screamed, and outside someone laughed.

“Let us in, sweetie.”

The voice sent a flame of horror across her skin. It was a bucket of sugar and a pint of oil pouring into her ears and down her throat, lust and blood and detachment from anything human in the slightest. Erika snatched up the knife, and ran to the cellar door. The space was tiny, but she would be safe down there if she stayed quiet.

She threw open the door and ran down the stairs, but they were narrower even than those leading up, and her foot missed one near the middle in her terror. Her ankle twisted and she yelped in pain, tumbling down to the bottom.

A moment later, the front door crashed inwards above her.

She tried to hold her breath, but whimpers of pain and horror couldn’t be restrained from escaping between her clenched teeth. The cellar door was ripped from its hinges, and shadows fell across her. Erika rolled over onto her back, and thrust the knife up at the chuckling group above her.

They didn’t need to come at her quickly. They strolled down the narrow staircase, jumping nimbly out of the way of her wild swings and slashes that threatened nothing but the air. Their eyes were dark in the low light, like chasms leading into an abyss of a skull. Their long knives, and some of their teeth, glinted down at her. They made no move to attack, just surrounding her, one by one.

They squeezed into the tight space, but left the stairs open as a way of escape. Mercy? Pity? Not much. They could see she was immobile, and they were waiting for something.

The final shadow began descending into the cellar. Erika could tell from the manner of her walk that it was a woman. There was a pistol in her hand, the barrel thin and long like a rapier would be to a sword. Her ammunition belt clinked with every step downwards. The armour over her chest was chainmail, the ringlets jewelled and glistening, beneath a woollen coat and large cloak. A wide blade sat at her hip in a jewelled scabbard.

She leered down at Erika, leaning down into the light. Erika reeled back at the sight of her. The left eye socket was stitched over with scarlet threat. The other eye was bright blue, twitching across her captive’s body. A familiar, swirling spiral pattern was tattooed across her bald head in oil ink, which danced in the leaping shadows.

Erika trembled as the female brigand crouched at the foot of the stairs and smirked at her.

She swiped at the pirate with her knife, who caught her wrist with ease. With the other hand, she plucked it from her fingers. She chuckled at it and tossed it behind her.

“I like spirited girls,” she sneered. Her voice was needle-sharp. “Get her up.”

One of the brigands behind her lifted Erika up, and she cried out in pain as her weight came down on her ankle. On either side pirates restrained her arms.

The woman stepped forwards and stroked a hand through Erika’s hair, then down her cheek and her throat. She was so well restrained she couldn’t even recoil as the fingers stroked along her collarbone under her nightclothes, then down her body over them.

“I’ll wait ‘til we’re alone before I take this off you,” she murmured.

Erika thrashed weakly, unable to break free. “P…p…please…”

“I enjoy my spoils for a long time.” With a smirk, she produced a handful of powers from a pouch, and blew them in Erika’s face.

It streamed into her lungs and turned her limbs to wet rope. Her skin simultaneously went numb and burst into white-hot flame as her mind reeled and spiralled like the tattoo on the one-eyed woman’s head. It smelled like nothing she could have imagined, rotting fruit and tar, blood and sweet honey, sewage and choking smoke. Her vision went first, then her hearing, then the rest of her consciousness, tumbling and spiralling down into the dark.

***

Rand tore up the uneven cobblestones. The dock was on the other side of Dryxovan, and as the town burned his lack of firepower made his skin itch. He stayed close to the buildings on the left side of the main street, mainly for extra cover from the air.

He had so far counted three airships above. Pirates typically hunted in packs of five or six in a raid such as this one. It seemed that taking Rand wasn’t the only task at hand. Why miss an opportunity for plunder?

Bombs and cannonballs were plummeting into Dryxovan. Firebombs had set the old ruins alight. Flames and smoke danced with the ghosts of what had once been. People streamed out of the burning ruins with their families and hounds in tow, with little knowledge of the bitter fact that there was nowhere to run, nowhere that couldn’t be burned.

Rand could hear laughter amongst the shrieks of terror, and grinned. Some of them were on the ground.

Good.

Fierce barking and snarling drew his attention. One of the ruined stone buildings ahead of him had been patched with wood and newer brick, turning into probably a dozen houses, judging by the size of it. One of the wooden doors on the ground floor was hanging limply from a broken hinge, and shadows and bellows echoed out into the night from inside.

Rand holstered one of his pistols and drew his sword, sprinting for the door.

Inside, a pair of large wolfhounds had their jaws locked around a brigand’s ankle and forearm respectively. The pirate was howling and kicking out at the dogs, which kept moving out of the way while their jaws ground through his skin. A man and an older teenage boy were engaging three pirates with rusted, iron weapons. The boy had an axe and a cracked wooden shield, the man a bastard sword. Both were bleeding from cuts to the chest, upper arms and legs. In the small space, the pirates had the advantage with their shorter blades.

“One of ya kill these fuckin’ beasts, would ya!” the dog-food brigand screamed.

One the others glanced back and stepped out of the fight with the man and boy. As he turned to the dogs, he caught sight of Rand, and his eyes widened in fear.

“Dae Rauko!” He screamed.

Rand grinned and put a bullet between his eyes, before he plunged his sword through dog-food’s back.

The explosion of sound filled the room, and cannoned off the walls. Everyone was deafened except Rand. The two wolfhounds yipped in terror and backed away from him, whining. The melee in the corner was halted by the noise, as the four men were completely discombobulated.

It was a pirate who recovered first and wheeled around to face Rand. The older man ran him through, and turned to the other one, as the boy swung for him. The pirate dropped his sword and tried to bolt, only to be met by Rand’s blade.

The dying man’s eyes widened at him, and his bloodied lips mouthed the words again. Dae Rauko.

One of the wolfhounds bolted up the stairs, and the other jumped at the man and boy, licking their faces, then the blood from their wounds. They looked up at Rand nervously.

“Any more of them?” he asked calmly.

The man shook his head. The wolfhound whined again. From upstairs, a group of faces peered around the corner. The second wolfhound stood in front of them, and kept its unblinking eyes on Rand.

Behind it were an older woman, two other women who were the same age as the man and boy, along with three small faces of children.

“Your children?” Rand asked the man.

He shook his head, and nodded to the boy. “His. My grandchildren.”

Rand nodded. “Board that door, take their firearms, and tie off those cuts. You have a cellar?”

The boy nodded and pointed to a hatch underneath a barrel. “They called you … what did they call you? I didn’t …”

“It doesn’t matter what they called me. Go down there and lay low. I’m going to the docks, I need a quick and quieter way than the main street.”

They glanced at each other.

“I’m not fleeing, if that’s what you think. I just need a bigger gun.”

“Take the alley behind this building,” the man grunted. “Follow it downhill. When it splits, take the left path, then the first right, you’ll come out by the bounty office.”

Rand nodded, and checked outside. The street was still largely deserted, but the crash of a firebomb told him that it was far from safe.

He ducked out and followed the building around. The alley was dusty and smelled of the distant past. The same odour of sour milk and burned hair hung over the stone, as it hung over every ruin on every island he had been to. It was here now even over the smell of fresh flame and death.

There were a few people huddled in the alleyway, some vagrants, hiding behind old packing crates. There were others who had fled from their homes, some families, cuddling in cubby-holes and alcoves, staring out at him in the same terror the brigands showed him.

He listened to the screams and blasts and scattered gunfire. Dryxovan wasn’t going quietly, but their smattering of town guards weren’t going to be much of a match for the brigands. They had numbers, surprise and air superiority. No doubt the guard airships would have been the first things to be firebombed. Whatever defences they had were vulnerable, from the air or from the ground.

He took the left path as the alleyway reached a dead end, in front of the two remaining crumbled walls of an ancient castle, or perhaps a prison. The next right led around it, and back downhill. The open square where the dockyard lay was ahead, glowing with the flames of death.

Rand sprinted for it, only slowing when he was around thirty feet from the mouth of the alleyway. As he had suspected, the airships that had been laid out for repairs were all engulfed by flames. The top of the giant dome at the far end had been breached and burned. The statues in front of it had toppled over and shattered. A brigand airship floated overhead, exchanging rifle fire with guards who were huddled in a fortification that had been dug in the foundations of a ruin. Bricks and bags of sand had been piled into walls, with firing holes for the men inside.

Rand peered around, pistols in each hand, and jogged at a crouch along the nearest wall of the bounty office. At the corner, he checked the front.

Four pirates lay dead at the doorway, large holes in their chests. Just on the threshold, the bulbous form of Hachi was visible in the shadows. Rand hissed his name, and his sweaty, flabby brow poked out through the entry.

“Not dead yet, eh Irellian?”

“Not yet. Nice to see there’s something in the Shattered Lands that’ll actually make you stand up, aside from the promise of a feast.”

Hachi waved his blunderbuss. “This thing is loaded, flyboy.”

Rand grinned. “Keep safe. Without you here, there’s no work for me in these parts.”

He took off at a run, dodging around the wrecks and making for the hangars, where Scythe waited for him. The berth had cost him five gold bits, but it seemed to have been well-spent.

The hangars were little more than big sheds, and could only fit a smaller airship or a balloon like Rand’s. Each had a large double door at the front that opened outwards. The padlocks on the bolts that locked them up were laying on the dusty ground, broken.

He crept around to the side, listening for anyone who might have been plundering the craft. He could hear very little over the battle outside, though. He cursed, and jogged around to the door. With a pistol up, he opened it slowly.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness immediately, a little assistance from his shadowy companion. A brigand was bent over Scythe’s basket, undoing the fuel bottles from beneath the burner. Another pair were gaping at the massive rifle attached to the side, and holding out the long bullets it fired with amazement.

Rand crept through the shadows swiftly, circling around behind Scythe. He didn’t want to risk shooting the one in the basket: he might hit the fuel, and with the candles burning within there was every chance they would all go up in flames.

As soon as he was in position behind the men at the rifle, he raised his pistols. Close enough to not miss, both took shots in the back and fell. Rand dropped the pistols immediately and jumped into the basket with the other startled brigand, slashing across his throat and chest with his sword. Jumping out again, a quick stab each ensured that he was the only living thing inside the hangar.

He picked up the bullet from the floor and slid it into the rifle’s breech, cycling the bolt on the side. After that he jumped into the basket again and opened his toolbox. Fastening the belt of rifle bullets across his hip and shoulder, he picked out his wrench and began unfastening the rifle’s bipod from the side. Once it was loose he hefted it into his arms and turned to the hangar door as it flew open.

“Lonn? We ‘eard shots, where y-“

Rand stepped instantly into a wide stance. From the hip, he squeezed the rifle’s trigger. It bucked wildly in his arms, and a jolt of pain blasted up his right shoulder.

The bullet kicked into the first brigand’s thin gut and blew him into two twitching pieces. The two behind him howled in terror and ran.

He ducked back down behind a rack of wooden planks, and put the rifle down to reload his pistols. He needed to ignore the pain in his shoulder, but the dark companion within him was feeding on it hungrily. His ears and eyes were sharper as a result, he could viscerally taste the smoke and blood in the air.

The pirates would be waiting for him, no doubt, if he slipped out through the front door. He moved back to the far wall, and felt for any of the wooden boards that were loose.

Near the ground there were a pair of shaky ones that had snapped in some accident or another. He managed to move them aside using a crowbar from his balloon, listening for any sound on the other side of the wall. When he was satisfied, he slid the rifle through, and crawled out on his belly.

Rand peered around the hangar. The pirates were laying down on the ground, their pistols trained on the hangar door. Trained, but not experienced, most likely.

He slipped between the hangars until he could get out from beneath the overhang, heading back along the edge of the dockyard. This time he circled around the back of the bounty office, and ran back up the alleyway.

At the ruined castle walls, the one remaining weathered corner of an ancient fortification, Rand paused. He peered up at it. Some of the ramparts seemed to be intact. The walls were high enough to offer a vantage point.

“Are you going to let me climb that, with my shoulder the way it is?” Rand mutttered.

The dark companion chuckled. “The pain is only a benefit to both of us.”

Rand snorted and steadied his breathing. He almost screamed in pain as his weight settled on the injured shoulder, but as it did, cold power surged through his body and his hands. He began climbing swiftly, and every time his fingers touched the ancient stone, he found more information filling his mind.

First, he could tell the stone was a touch under a thousand years old, and on the next touch he could narrow it down to nine hundred and ninety three years old. By the next touch, he knew the number of months and days that had passed.

By the fourth he knew that the wall was made of limestone and granite, held together with mortar mixed from oil and sand. By the fifth he knew the exact quarry, gone now, from whence the stone was cut. By the sixth he could picture the grassy hill that had been razed to get to the treasured material beneath. By the seventh he got a trace of blood, from the slave who had been killed when the stone accidentally fell during construction. Then there was the blood of everyone else, from the battles that had been fought atop the ramparts. The blood of the castle’s defenders, and the invaders that had attacked it from across a vast, endless body of water that had been nearby. Real water, not conjured from the hands of a sorcerer or distilled from urine. He could feel the breadth and depth of that water too, the ageless nature of it, the echo of damp, the smell of salt and strange water-borne wildlife.

When Rand’s hand planted on top of the wall, the final jolt of pain gave him a taste of something else, something darker. The stench of sulphur, and materials deep within, only present now in the islands close to the Core of the Shattered Lands. The stone was hot to the touch, from a burst of fierce energy centuries old. The burst of energy that broke everything.

Rand pushed himself up into a crouch on top of the wall. Up above, he could see two airships prowling, lining up another bombing run at the dome. He balanced the rifle’s bipod on the ramparts, and peered through the telescope fixed to the top.

He adjusted his aim so he was leading the first brigand craft, and squeezed the trigger. The boom drowned out everything for a moment, and Dryxovan seemed to pause at the new player entering the game.

The bullet punched through the airship’s balloon, rending the thick canvas with ease. The craft dipped, and swung around as the crew tried to adjust the flight path. They managed to point it at the dockyard, where the hull smacked into stone and splintered, scraping along and leaving dead and injured crew in its wake. Guards pressed the advantage, streaming across the yard from their shelters. The second airship broke off its attack run, banking towards the dockyard to protect the survivors and slaughter the exposed defenders.

Rand already had another heavy bullet in the rifle’s breech, and had the sights fixed on the burner fuel beneath the balloon. The shot was off-target, but still pierced the balloon. Rather than crash, this airship pulled away, fleeing from the battle swiftly as it could manage, losing altitude the entire way. Repairs would have to take priority over the spoils.

A rifle shot rang out to his right and he turned, pistol drawn in his left hand.

On the roof of the building next to the castle walls, a sniper put another brass-wrapped bullet into her rifle and cycled the bolt. She nodded to him, and made a gesture with her fingers, pointing to her midnight brown eyes, and then the alleyway and main street. Rand holstered his pistol and nodded. The dockyard was looking in a far more secure position than it had before. The main causeway was a different matter. Brigands had seized a building, a tall smattering of dwellings, and were firing down at the guards who were trying to take it back. The sniper’s rifle popped, and a pirate in one of the windows fell back, a spatter of blood from his chest dripping down the wall. Rand fixed his sights on the lower floors, where a barricade had been cobbled together from whatever could be cobbled. Doors, window shutters, tables, it was keeping the guards out. Brigands fired at them through narrow gaps in the barricade.

Rand waited for the flash of a muzzle, and his rifle boomed in return. The firing hole tripled in size, and the shadow behind it wavered and toppled. He reloaded, and put another round through a barricaded shutter on the second floor as a rifle barrel poked through. The barrel jerked and the entire weapon hung limply out of the firing hole, only kept there by the jammed stock.

The sniper fired, reloaded, and fired again. She had an impressive technique, although that was only useful if she actually hit anything. The first round missed a brigand on the floor below the roof, but the second hit home. Rand could see that there were sharpshooters on the roof of the fortified building. He trained his rifle on them as one peered across the roofs towards his ally, and raised his weapon. Rand’s heavy round kicked him in the chest and sent him careening into the remains of an ancient chimney head first. He slid down and slumped, leaving a trail of blood on the wall above him.

He ducked down and sent a tether to the sniper, just at the edge of his range.

Relocate, or get in cover. You’ve been spotted.

Her shot went wild and she looked around at him in confusion and anger. He sent a heavy round into another sharpshooter who had her fixed in his sights. The sniper stood and sprinted for the edge of the roof. She leapt and grabbed the edge of the castle wall, hauling herself up and behind the ramparts.

She crawled over to Rand, taking deep breaths from the exertion. Her bushy hair was tied back in something like a ponytail or a bun. She wiped her brow. “I missed that there were shooters on the roof.”

“Luckily, they missed you as well.”

She frowned. “Well, your bloody great big rifle probably made me. Compensating for something?”

Rand raised an eyebrow at her. “Compensating for your bad eyes, apparently.”

She glanced behind him at the alleyway, and lay down flat on her stomach. “Talking of bad eyes, you haven’t spotted the company.”

Rand crouched and listened. Brigands were moving down the alley, starting to jostle and terrorise the people who had taken cover there. When he glanced back, he could see that a good number of the leaders were looking up at the ruined castle walls with purpose.

“Ah, yes. Would you mind greeting them for me while I entertain their friends?”

The sniper grinned, and scoped in on them. As she opened fire Rand vaulted the ramparts, ran along the top of the ruin at a crouch and lay down in the remains of a watchtower.

At the fortified building, the guards were right up against the walls, and firing into the lower floors. They were starting to clear the barricade, and the brigands were firing down at them from above. Rand reloaded and picked off a few of them, until the Dryxovan guards were streaming into the ground floor. On the roof, brigands began setting firebombs to burn the building down, until Rand again felled them one by one. The last three were killed as Rand shot the lit firebomb in one of their hands, which burst and coated all of them with thick flame. When the guards got to the roof they managed to put the more manageable fire out.

The kicking of the rifle into his shoulder was feeding his dark companion, and keeping him sharp. A flash of movement near the top of the hill caught his attention.

The remains of a door to a block of dwellings flew into the street and a brigand strode out. His heightened sight could pick out the black spiral tattooed on her shaved head. A captain, much like Vriess.

He adjusted his aim towards her, and almost fired. The trigger was half squeezed before the parade of brigands came into view, carrying an unconscious girl slumped between them. One of them picked her up in a cradle, and even from this distance he was sure. He released the trigger immediately.

The captain glanced around at Erika, and gestured to the rest to follow her.

“No mercy.”

Rand ignored its words. They were heading to the other side of Dryxovan, to the fields.

“No mercy, Rand.”

He sprinted back along the ruin to the sniper, still exchanging fire with the brigands in the alley. He ran right past her and jumped onto the roof she had vacated, rolling to his feet.

“Have you forgotten the burning fields?”

He jumped onto the next roof, and a moment later there was an impact and a grunt behind him. The sniper was following.

“Where are you going?” she grunted tersely.

“They’re taking people. Probably an airship landed near the fields.”

He cleared the gap to the next roof, barely, turning to catch the sniper as she followed. She cried out as her weight tipped her backwards, and Rand pulled her up with his forearm.

“Thank you,” she gasped. “Wait a moment…”

She doubled over gasping.

“Leave her here or kill her.”

“No!” Rand snapped furiously.

The sniper looked up at him angrily. “I need to catch my breath. How many rounds do you have left in that cannon of yours?”

“Eleven in the belt. I have plenty left for my pistols.” He grunted at her. “You?”

“Twenty or so.”

“Right. Let me put this to you simply. We have very little time before the airship takes off. We have likely less time before the girl is defiled.”

“Girl? What girl?”

Rand breathed. “Erika, from the bounty office.”

The sniper nodded. “Ah, aye, I know of her. Been through enough even without brigands … I’ll try to keep up. If I can’t … look, I’ll get to you later.”

Rand nodded. “It’s by the fields, I’m almost positive.”

“See you there. Don’t get shot.”

He grinned. “Don’t miss your jumps. Things go a little better when you’re watching my back. Make sure the town guard know where that ship is. If it’s on the ground, we can cause a little chaos.”

Before she could reply, he bounded away and leaped onto the next roof.

The way was tricky. The roofs weren’t all level. The jumps down were child’s play, although too far down and he found the need to break-fall. The climbs and jumps up were trickier, especially with his shoulder still giving him grief, although they had the side effect of heightening his senses. The chief boon was that he was unimpeded by brigands, and had no need to waste any shots on them.

The sniper never had any chance of keeping up with him, injury or no injury. She was just human.

Not that he was entirely unopposed. As he traversed Dryxovan’s heights, sprinting up the fallen spire of an old church, the smell began.

It was a scent from his deep memory. Crops on fire, livestock turning to ash, the burning wool of sheep. It began choking him the longer he tried to ignore it.

“You want me to be merciless, hmm?”

The smell increased sharply at his words, and for a moment he almost felt as though he had been swept from Dryxovan and back to that old, bitter place that burned in his memory.

“Do you think that I’ll show that captain any mercy? Or her crew? If they’ve hurt the girl, what are the chances they’ll be recognisable when I’m through with them?”

Slowly, the smell receded. Rand swallowed and nodded.

“There will be blood. The shadow is my master, and will ever be.”

He sprinted onwards, leaping and climbing up a narrow drainpipe to the highest point of Dryxovan.

From here he could see everything. The dockyard had been retaken by the guard, the main causeway a battleground that still raged. Ahead in the centre of the fields, a fat airship sat on a flat bottom.

This was a battleship. It looked to have three decks including the top beneath three balloons, strung together with rope. His sharpened eyes could pick out the captain as she and her men bore the unconscious Erika below decks, as well as counting the four cannon hatches on the side facing him. A formidable craft for sure, but not one that couldn’t be hindered.

He scoped in on the balloons. Each had a pipe attached to a hot air burner, covered by armour plating. The pipes were probably hardy as well.

He fired at the balloons, piercing two with one shot. After reloading, he scoped in on the burners. As he suspected, they were hardened against even one of his heavy rounds. He looked up a little and grinned at the seals. They looked to be some kind of fixed leather, a vulnerability and an awkward repair.

The heavy round blasted through the seal and buckled the housing of the burner, starting a small fire that alerted the crew on deck. By the time they had put it out, he was already running at full pelt downhill, working his way down to ground level, and ready to bring them their doom.