How did I feel that? What the hell is happening?
Moments later, the sensation was gone. Cross’ stomach felt like it had been filled with sewage.
Graves fired into the mob of onrushing soldiers as he re-mounted his horse. Graves and Cristena had made it through the neck and were just outside the open portcullis, but still beneath the protective stone outcropping of the barbican towers, which, lucky for them, made it difficult for the sentries on the city walls to get a clear shot at them. Cross didn’t see the other Razas, but he remembered the flame cannons mounted up top with the gunners.
We are so screwed.
Cristena sent an arc of electric blue energy into the portcullis. The gate rumbled in place and groaned against its own tracks. Stone just managed to get his horse and the camel out of the neck before the thick iron slammed into the ground with a reverberating crash and a cloud of dust.
The squad was outside of the city.
“ What about the monks?” Cross asked. Graves hauled him up to ride behind him. Cross’ ribs stung like fire.
A klaxon sounded inside the city. Shouts and battle cries filled the air as more of Dirge’s finest answered the call.
“ Stone killed one, and Cristena got the other,” Graves said. “She’s a badass, man. She looked like you out there.”
Cross hoped he’d live to resent his replacement later.
A rifle shot struck the ground in front of them. There was open country ahead, a steep descent into rolling red hills, dusty plains, rock-filled ravines and thin forests. Beyond the trees was the Bone March.
“ The riflemen will kill us the second we make a break for it,” Graves said. “Being under the barbican is the only thing keeping us alive, and it won’t take those soldiers long to make it out here.”
“ Ride forward, then,” Cross told him. He reached into his coat pocket. “Slowly.”
“ What?”
“ Do it.”
Graves did, even while Stone and Cristena both shouted for them to stop. The horse moved out from under the barbican, one step at a time, until they were out into the open, just far enough for Cross to look up and see the edge of the roof directly over their heads.
Cross threw the grenades up and onto the top of the barbican, one and then the other, and he let the pins fall into the dirt.
“ Whoa!” Graves shouted. He turned the horse round and raced back under cover.
The blast was deafening, like a fall of thunder. Chunks of metal and dust cascaded onto the ground. Fire and bodies fell amidst a wreckage of machinery parts, broken wood and chunks of shattered stone. Seizing the moment, the squad urged their horses forward, hoping the riflemen positioned further down the wall wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot through the haze and smoke.
At least we got rid of the flame cannons, Cross thought with some satisfaction.
He glanced back through the smoke and saw streams of fire spread rapidly along the tops of the walls as the liquid fuel reserved for the cannons exploded. Black smoke billowed into the air.
The horses thundered down the hill. Cross was nearly thrown from the back of Graves’ horse when they came to the first steep descent off of the level ground there in front of the city. They raced down steep slopes that led all of the way out to the plains. Cross hung on for dear life, his hands locked in a death grip around Graves’ waist.
The squad tore towards the badlands, passing through drifts of fire smoke and dust stirred up by harsh dead winds. Cross heard nothing behind them to indicate that any sort of pursuit was still underway, and for a moment he thought they’d gotten away clean.
That was when the mortar shells began to fall.
The blasts started slowly, a distant chorus of soft booms. It was difficult to make out the origin points of the mortars, but they heard the bombs tear down through the air with sonic force, a cavalcade of building momentum.
The first blast hit about 300 yards behind them, well off the mark but close enough that it rattled the ground and spooked their horses. Graves had to fight their mount to keep it from throwing them both to the ground. Chunks of earth scattered and fell around them like dice. The second blast hit a few yards closer.
“ Ride!” Stone shouted. “If this smoke clears and they get a clean shot, we’re dead!”
They raced, nearly out of control, down the steep hill. The mortar blasts got closer and closer, and they fell one after another in quick succession. Cross expected every blast to hit. His spine tingled, and the hairs on the nape of his neck froze in spite of the sweat and flight. His back tensed, ready for the blast, ready for the shrapnel.
Somehow, they made it. Within a few minutes they’d left the crash of mortar shells behind them, and the city of Dirge faded until it was just a dark stain.
The land continued to slope to the north. The path widened between the growing hills, which turned rocky and jagged. Up ahead, past the last line of dying vegetation, was a realm of red dirt, black soil and white trees. The Bone March.
They rode in silence for a time, listening for the sound of pursuit. Surprisingly, none came, but they kept their pace for another hour.
The air took on a metallic and stale quality. There was no breeze. The land ahead of them was already an eyesore, a dread panorama.
“ So,” Cross said at last. His voice was surprisingly loud in the prevailing quiet. There weren’t even insects or bird calls in the air.
Stone rode the point, and the others filed in behind him. The camel, who’d shown surprising endurance through the entire ordeal (or perhaps not that surprising…Cross realized he didn’t know a great deal about camels), brought up the rear, tethered to Graves’ horse.
“ So…what?!” Graves asked. “You have a habit of starting a conversation and then falling asleep.”
“ I was talking to Cristena, you moron.”
“ Bite me.”
“ Yes, children?” Cristena said with a sigh.
“ What did you do?” Cross asked her.
“ What do you mean?” she hesitated.
“ I mean, what did you do?” Cross asked again. “Back there, at the gates.”
“ I heard you. That doesn’t mean I know what you’re talking about.”
“ Your magic,” Cross said. “Something about the way you channeled your spirit, maybe, or…”
“ You’re not making any sense,” Cristena said, and she cut Cross off when he tried to respond. “Listen, Cross, no offense…but I don’t want to talk to you about my spirit. I don’t want to talk about much of anything with you. All that should matter to you is that I’m going to help you get through the Bone March. That’s it. I don’t want to get to know you. I don’t need you. You need me.” The anger in her voice was hard to miss.
“ Yeah,” Cross said.
I felt you touch your spirit, he thought. I felt your magic, back at the city, even though my spirit is gone. And I don’t know why. I shouldn’t be able to do that. How did that happen?
Was it you that somehow made that possible? Or was it me?
“ Is there a problem?” Stone asked from up ahead.
“ No,” Cross said. He met Cristena’s gaze until she finally looked away and cast her cold eyes to the north horizon. “No problem at all.”
PART FOUR
He stands alone in a wasteland of black sand, a realm of charcoal graveyards. The black mountain stands in the distance, impossibly tall, a rip in the sky. The forest lies at its feet, subjugated by the peak’s brutal size. The stink of crumbled empires and the breath of ghosts drift on the ice wind breeze.
There is nothing beyond the glade and the mountain. They are adrift, an island in a sea of nothing. Black sands run to infinity. He feels the icy cold of the open desert, and he gazes up to a bloody red sky filled with swirling steel clouds. Dead air whips along the ground, and it draws sand up into a black storm that takes to the sky like a predatory flock.