They’d stumbled into a mass grave. Bodies addled by bullets and blades had been piled up and crudely buried beneath the surface of the rich mud. Soggy flesh sagged away from the corpses’ bones like melting fat, and everything was covered with worms. Cross and Cristena were forced to flee the scene.
Cross was sick. He felt like someone had pulled his insides out through his mouth.
He heard the screams of lost souls. He felt his spirit suffer as she was battered with clouds of pain that still surrounded the recently dead like a grim shroud. Everything Cross had ever seen and heard led him to believe that a person’s soul continued to exist long after the body had gone. They stayed, trapped in their last moments, forever locked in the eternal final seconds of life. Those souls were tortured to repeat their moment of death over and over and over again.
The squad made haste to move away from the field of carnage, only to discover more bodies. This time they were located off of a wide trade road that Cristena thought led directly into Rhaine. The naked corpses had been burned and hung at unnatural angles, held up only by strands of razor wire affixed to metal poles in the ground. Dead eyes stared at the squad, almost accusingly. Cross did all he could to keep their voices at bay.
“ We’re too late,” Graves said after they passed the bodies. They came around a bend in the hills. The sky had filled with sickly bulbous clouds. “These people were either bound for Rhaine, or else they came from it.”
“ We’ll check it out,” Stone said. No one questioned the decision.
They had to see Rhaine, but they already knew what they’d find. The Sorn did not take prisoners. If Rhaine’s residents were lucky, they’d been killed quickly.
They rested for a short time, drank some water, and calculated their position on the maps. No one ate, and they barely spoke. No one really wanted to move on, but they had to, and they all knew it.
They caught their first sight of Rhaine over the next ridge. It was a large settlement spaced across a massive hillside and built right up against the edge of the Carrion Rift. The walls that protected the city were low but solid, and they were set with battlements and a large number of crude towers. The city rolled and curved with the hill, and its districts had been separated by short intervening walls, visible even from outside the city.
Smoke drifted over much of Rhaine, filling the sky with red and gray war pollutants. Even from a distance the smell of burning fuel was strong. Cross saw a few large, gray-skinned figures moving around in the city even at the squad’s distance, and through his scope he confirmed their identity by their bladed armor, their black iron weapons, their heavy steam-powered firearms and the single, central eyes they bore on their smooth heads. Sorn.
“ The easiest way to cross the Rift,” Cristena said, trying like the rest of them to ignore the fact that the city was likely filled with hundreds of dead people, “is to cross that bridge. We have to go through Rhaine to get to it.”
“ Of course,” Graves said bitterly.
“ There may be survivors,” Cross said quietly.
“ Doubtful.” Stone took the scope and surveyed Rhaine’s smoking husk, starting at the gates and inspecting all of the way to the bridge at the far northern edge of the city. The bridge had been built into a tower set in Rhaine’s north wall, and it stretched across to a second tower on the far side of the Rift. From what Cross could tell, Rhaine’s north wall was flush with the canyon wall, which meant there was no other means of accessing that particular bridge from their side of the canyon.
Cross tasted sorcery in the air, and it was as thick and as pungent as the pollution. It was known that the Sorn made use of powerful military technology, steam and gear-driven devices powered by arcane fuel, and machines that relied as much on magic as they did on gears or engines to operate.
He heard dead whispers in the air, but fewer than he expected. The Sorn must have cleared away the bodies of their victims, maybe even dumped them into the Rift. They were nothing if not efficient.
“ The Sorn may be setting this place up for use as an outpost,” Stone said. He still held the scope to his eye. “They’re a big raiding party, but they’re conducting a very systematic search for survivors.” He lowered the scope. “This wasn’t a random attack. They’re making sure they’ve cleared the place out. They’re hunting down survivors.”
“ How many Sorn are there?” Cross asked.
“ I only saw seven, but a full raiding party is usually ten strong. The others might be invisible to us right now because of the smoke, or they might be out on patrol. We need to stay sharp.”
“ The other three Sorn could be dead,” Cristena said, dubious by her tone. “Maybe they were killed during the attack?”
“ I doubt we’re that lucky,” Stone said.
“ We’re not,” Graves groaned. “Trust me. We’re not.” He looked down at the Rift. “But even if Cristena is right, there are still seven of them. Seven Sorn commandos,” he laughed. “Shit.”
“ Are they as bad as I’ve heard?” Cross asked.
“ Worse,” Stone said, and Cross was officially sorry he’d asked.
They decided to approach under cover of the foothills southeast of Rhaine. They heard gunshots and bodiless cries issue from deep inside the city. The setting sun bathed the world red. They decided that it would be best to enter the city under the cover of darkness, so as to capitalize on the Sorn’s poor night vision.
The foothills came to an end just a few hundred yards short of the city walls, which meant the squad would have to cross the last stretch across exposed ground. Lucky for them the city gates had been left wide open, and there were no sentries in sight anywhere on or near the walls.
Just to be sure, Cross and Cristena loosened their holds on their spirits and conducted an arcane reconnoiter. Cross breathed in ghostly steam, and he tasted bitter eldritch power that burned his lungs. They sensed a tremendous amount of residual magical energy inside the walls — most likely it was from the Sorn’s weaponry — but none of it was located near the gates.
There were also very few whisperings from the dead, all of them scattered and weak, and that was both reassuring and alarming. There should have been more dead whispers if the city had been wiped out.
Maybe they’re not dead. Maybe the Sorn took the city hostage.
Based on what they’d seen on the road into Rhaine, Cross doubted it, but that being the case neither he nor Cristena could explain why there was nary a lost spirit to be found anywhere near Rhaine.
We’ll have to figure it out later.
The sun had almost completely set by the time the squad made their run. Rhaine’s bulky shadow loomed before them. They had to leave the camel behind, since the load it carried jingled and clanged so loudly it was a surprise the Sorn hadn’t already heard them coming from a league away.
They raced across icy and brittle ground and passed through Rhaine’s gates. Not alarm was raised, and no shots were fired.
A good start.
Stone directed them with Southern Claw hand signals, the same system used by the old U.S. Army Rangers. Stone was at point, Cross and Cristena and their anxious spirits roamed in the center, and Graves brought up the rear. They moved quickly but quietly, checking every corner, careful not to trip in the thick shadows.
The level of debris and wreckage that blocked the way increased as the squad moved deeper into the city, and swift navigation soon became very difficult. The darkness didn’t help. An array of sounds echoed through the city streets — gunshots, bomb blasts, shouts, working machinery — but it was all so distant that it was hard to gauge its direction, especially with the echoing effect of the nearby Rift.
They passed buildings that had been hollowed out by mortar blasts and grenades. Entire streets had been cracked apart by gunfire. The red flames of burning buildings grew more intense as they neared Rhaine’s epicenter, and the fires cast everything in a bloody glow. Most of those flames were clustered near Rhaine’s heart, and those blazes were primarily what lit the squad’s way through the ugly night.