A stupid question, she supposed, but she was so disoriented that she couldn’t figure out what had happened. Amaranthe tried to sit up, to gauge her injuries. She didn’t think she’d broken anything, but in the morning she’d have lumps bigger than those love apples Maldynado was always talking about.
“Books?” She touched a dark form beneath her, and then the other. “Akstyr?”
They weren’t moving. Everyone was crumpled on the floor, their limbs entangled in the confined space. Amaranthe’s earlier assessment, comparing the space to a cider keg, wasn’t that far off. The rounded walls didn’t possess any visible instruments or gauges, though the front had disappeared, replaced by a window of some sort. A translucent barrier, might be a better term, as nothing so familiar as glass shielded them from the outside. She remembered escaping through a similar door the last time she’d left the Behemoth and wondered if that would become the new exit. The old door, the one through which they’d entered this “lifeboat” was sealed shut.
Amaranthe disentangled herself from Books and Akstyr. She was alarmed that neither was moving, but curiosity prompted her to check the view first, to see if she could see more than the stars. What if… She gulped. What if the Behemoth had spit them out on some trajectory that would take them to the South Pole? Or, dear ancestors, another world?
On hands and knees, she crept as close as she dared-she had no idea if she could fall out, but had no wish to chance it.
Snow and rocks and trees blurred past below them, far below.
The only other time she’d been airborne had been on that dirigible, and they hadn’t been this high, nor had they been traveling so quickly.
“Books,” Amaranthe rasped. She picked out cliffs and canyons below, then a river that disappeared almost as soon as it had appeared. They were flying over mountains. That meant they’d already left the capital and the farmlands around the lake behind. “You’ll want to see this.”
Before he stirred or she could prod him, the speed at which the terrain was passing below slowed down. A queasy empty feeling came over Amaranthe. Had she eaten recently, she might have thrown up. Was the ground getting closer?
It took a moment for the truth to dawn. They’d reached whatever apogee they’d been hurled toward and were descending.
“Never mind,” Amaranthe squeaked. “You may want to stay unconscious for this.”
She refused to accept that either of them could be worse than unconscious. Though if their lifeboat didn’t have a means to soften the landing, they’d all be worse than unconscious. The smoke that tainted the air, burning her eyes and her nostrils, wasn’t reassuring. Maybe whatever means this craft had of landing safely had been destroyed.
Indeed, they were picking up speed. Not lateral speed this time, but vertical speed. Dropping like a rock, came the unwelcome phrase from the back of her mind. It was the last fully formed thought she managed.
She stared, terror rising within her as the rocks and trees and snow drew closer and closer. She patted around the walls, frantic to find some control, something that could slow their descent, but the smooth featureless interior of the craft offered nothing. Lastly, she dropped to her knees, curled into a ball, and flung her arms over her head.
The window disappeared with a hiss and pop. More smoke flowed into the cabin, and blackness dropped over the craft.
Chapter 20
Sicarius couldn’t feel his fingers or his feet. Numbness made him stumble as he ran through the snow along the lake. Blood dotted the tracks he left, but he barely noticed. He didn’t care. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the dark horizon.
There should have been lights, fires, sparks from weapons, but blackness lay ahead. In the aftermath of the Behemoth’s crash, the night had grown utterly silent. Not so much as an owl hooted from the bare icicle-draped branches of the trees lining the running path. The air stank of more kinds of smoke than his nose could identify-burning trees, and coal, and black powder, but more alien scents too. And blood. The scent of blood lingered amongst it all.
Through no conscious awareness of his own, Sicarius’s pace slowed when he reached the end of the trees, the scant trees that remained standing. The Behemoth had mowed down all the ones by the lake on its inbound trajectory; the closest ones had been topped, such as a logger might do, with only the tips of the trunks torn off, but the ones farther in had been knocked to the snow in their entirety. Wreckage, wood, and bodies littered the white fields. The tents that had housed the invaders were all flattened. And the fort…
Sicarius stumbled to a stop, his legs numb from more than the icy cold that encroached upon his extremities. Aside from one crumbling corner of the wall, Fort Urgot was gone. It had been completely and utterly flattened beneath the massive black dome of the Behemoth. One side of the craft was buried meters into the earth, while the far side merely lay upon the snow, but that great weight… There was no sign of the buildings, the defenses, or the people who had been inside the fort when it hit.
Images of Maldynado and Basilard and Sespian flashed through his mind, with Sespian being in the forefront. Sespian shooting down the cable into the enemy camp. Sespian smiling and explaining how to encourage a girl. Sespian sleeping in his bed as a boy, charcoal sticks and a sketchpad scattered all about the blankets.
Sicarius closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He willed his legs to carry him forward. There was a chance…
Maybe Sespian had been out on the field, fighting hand-to-hand with the invaders, or maybe he’d seen the Behemoth coming and there’d been time to run away.
Sicarius scoffed. Run away. Right. Once it had risen from the lake, the craft had taken less than five seconds to plummet across the water and crash.
He ran to its side anyway, his legs carrying him over and around countless bodies in the snow. Some had died from the fighting, but others must have been flung through the air as a result of the crash, mangled like the tents and like so many of those trees.
As he passed, Sicarius glanced at each face, checking to make sure. He didn’t recognize any of them as soldiers from within the fort. These men all wore blue armbands. He ran a full circle around the crashed vessel, just in case… but, no. Nobody inside the fort had made it out.
Sespian was gone.
He halted, shoulders slumping, and stared at the ground. He’d never gotten a chance to… They’d barely started to… His chin drooped to his chest. How was he supposed to-
Someone coughed, the noise loud against the silence that had descended upon the battleground. Sicarius located the source. A man had appeared in the side of the Behemoth, seemingly stepping out of the hull of the ship ten feet above the ground. He slid down the side to land in a ridge of snow pushed up around the bottom. A second person, a woman this time, stuck her head out of the black wall, hiked up her skirts and followed the same route.
Sicarius pulled out his black dagger and strode toward the invisible escape hatch. The tangled thoughts that stampeded into his mind were hard to follow, and it was more some buried primitive instinct that guided him than intellect. That monstrosity had killed Sespian, and he was going to kill those who had brought it here. And if Amaranthe was in there, he’d find her.
She must be in there, he realized. Her plan… this was because of her plan.
He shied away from the idea of blaming her for this, for Sespian’s death. She hadn’t brought this abomination to Stumps. Whatever plan she’d enacted, she’d been trying to help Sespian. He’d find her in there and bring her out. If he’d lost Sespian… Sicarius’s fingers tightened on the hilt of his dagger. Amaranthe was all he had left.