An hour passed. Then another.
Finally, Beami led the way into the centre of the now revealed structure. Everywhere they found broken bodies, and she sighed with relief each time she realized one was not clothed in the familiar black uniform.
*
Everyone took a break, apart from Beami. Exhausted though she was, her body seemed beyond pain. Snow came and went, a brisk wind blew dust into her eyes and mouth. She merely wiped it away and continued. There was only one thing she could focus on. She shamed everyone into working almost as hard.
Dusk approached and Bellis came to tug at Beami's sleeve. 'My dear, you've got to get some rest.'
'Not yet, there's still light enough. Then there's the biolumes to help. You go back to the Citadel if you want to.'
Another hour, a step closer to pitch darkness. She clambered over towards where one of the inner walls jutted up through the rubble, and continued her work there, shredding stone and moving on, shredding stone moving on…
A groan? Was that a groan?
'Over here,' Beami called out, her heart racing. She scrambled closer to the source of the sound and, with her bare hands, began hauling smaller hunks of masonry out of the way. Once that was done, she used her relic again.
A Night Guard shield was suddenly exposed.
'Hello,' she called. 'Hello, can you hear me? How badly are you hurt?' Others arrived behind her, excitement rippling around the group.
A voice called back, its Jamur accent precise and clear. 'I think… I think some of us… Some of us, we're OK.'
She didn't recognize the voice – it certainly wasn't Lupus – but a rush of adrenalin spurred her on. With the help of others, large chunks of stone were lugged away, biolumes were brought forwards. They laboured under night conditions now, ten of them, little conversation except brief instructions. Stretchers were fetched by the Rumel Irregulars, who lined them up close by.
'Keep your eyes closed, all of you who can hear me,' Beami said, before disintegrating more of the masonry with her relic.
A big enough gap now, and she climbed down to reach the trapped soldiers, immediately looking for Lupus, but she couldn't see him.
Beami lifted one of their shields and handed it to a rumel loitering above her. 'Biolumes,' she ordered, and the bucket was passed down. She tipped its contents on the ground where the luminous creatures gave off their eerie light.
Beami called up, 'Someone give me a hand getting this man out.'
A bulky rumel stepped down and took the weight of the soldier. Together they carefully pulled him out by his arms and, as Beami guided his body, she winced at the stump of his ruined leg, too severe for the augmentations to have much effect.
One by one the Night Guard were lifted out of the rubble, their faces bloodied, and there were smashed arms and scars that had begun to heal. One had been hit in the eye with an arrow, one was a female, one was dead – but he was not Lupus. One was the albino, but still no sign of Lupus.
There he is! Lupus lay on his back, his shield half covering his face. His leg was bloodied, and his face was blackened with dust. She moved to his side and peered to see if he was all right.
'So you leave me till last then,' he rasped weakly.
Beami sobbed with relief, and rested her head on his chest. He tried to say more, but clearly could not.
*
Beami had found a surprising new point beyond exhaustion where she felt she could carry on. For nearly three hours she walked by his stretcher as it was carried through the safer streets leading to the Citadel, an arduous route in this pitch-blackness.
The commander of the Night Guard was now reasonably fit enough to guide the line of stretchers down towards the underground hospital, offering to carry his own men where possible. The line headed through the sanctuary of those passageways, and a sense of calm returned to her. Lupus even managed to smile at her now and then.
As they shuffled into the main ward everyone stopped and gawked at the scene in disbelief.
'Dear, Bohr no!' someone exclaimed.
Rows after row of the makeshift beds had been toppled over. Lying on the floor, or in whatever postures they could manage, were hideously deformed patients. No, it was worse than deformed – they had had things grafted on to them, appendages that were from… other creatures.
'Fucking hell,' another voice gasped.
'Bring some torches so we can see what's going on in here,' Brynd ordered.
Light arrived. Hundreds of men and women were revealed to possess furred or scaly replacement appendages, limbs ripped from reptiles, or legs transplanted from horses, or heads grafted and grown from invertebrates. The rumel patients had been similarly deformed, grafted with human heads and hands, amassed in stockpiles. They groaned and wept with shock and depression, for as far as you could see. To one side lay the dismembered corpses of the doctors and nurses who had been tending to them, their entrails strewn across their bodies.
And up near the ceiling hovered something like wraiths or ghosts. A trick of the light perhaps?
A soldier came running towards them clutching a note, which he thrust towards Brynd. 'Found it on that guy at the far end of the ward. Hanged himself by his shirt – think he's been dead for some time.'
Brynd read it, shaking his head: 'It's from Doctor Voland and it says simply: "If you manage to survive this war, here's to your happy ending. May it be as happy as mine was. Fuck you all. Sincerely, Voland."'
The noises being transmitted from these people-monsters were alarming. Many of these things tried to lumber towards them, but collapsed almost as soon as they moved, being unused to having spurious limbs. An elderly female, with giant dog-legs for arms, pawed at a soldier before someone pushed her over. One man with a lizard head managed to get close before someone shot the thing with a crossbow.
Brynd ordered everyone to get out of there, and they firmly bolted the door.
Was there no end to the horrors?
FIFTY-TWO
The Exmachina droned across the skies. It seemed to be taking forever to reach Villiren. In the distance, the columns of smoke did not provide a good omen.
They must be funeral pyres, he thought. Bloody hell, how many people can have died?
The city looked flat – either by design or from war damage, he couldn't tell. It wasn't at all like Villjamur. The sea lay beyond, a darker expanse of grey that merged indiscernibly with the sky.
Eir joined him and surveyed the view. 'Rika's still the same,' she fretted.
It seemed Eir could not let up on how much her sister had changed. Randur kept telling her she was probably now safer under Artemisia's protection than they could manage for her themselves. It made his own life easier, anyway – this was what he wanted to say, but instead he dutifully listened to her complaints.
'Doesn't look good out there,' he observed, trying to change the subject.
'I'm still not sure how we're going to go about this.'
'I'm sure she'll have it all planned.'
'She has schemes for everything, I'd wager,' Eir said. 'I still don't trust her.'
Just then Artemisia strolled up to them, dressed in full battle gear.
'I think the city's seen better days,' Randur said, gesturing over the edge of the ship.
'It probably has. But it stands, which is an achievement. Your military is rather useful, it seems, and this bodes well.'
'So what's the plan?' Randur asked.
'We ourselves shall enter the city, while the Exmachina continues onwards. I plan to have it destroy the gateways through which this invasion originated. I guarantee it will disrupt the sentience of the enemy.'