“If they decide to follow, this will slow them down.”
With everyone’s lanterns on, it was a much easier thing to navigate the old corridors and halls of the underground. The dark passageways echoed with their footfalls, the need for stealth minimized by their need to reach the catacombs.
“Watch yourself,” Smith said.
Alice shifted up against the right edge of the corridor. Jacob wondered why until the crushed helmet of one of the men he’d killed flashed in the lantern light.
They skirted the bodies and slowed to snuff their lanterns when they reached the lights. Drakkar inched forward and looked into the room where Jacob had killed those two men. Jacob’s hand moved to absently rub at his biomechanics. Drakkar motioned them on.
Darkness accompanied them for a short time. When the corridor began to curve, Drakkar relit his lantern. More lanterns followed. The underground lake spread out on their right, which meant they’d be back at the burial wall in moments.
Light flickered in the distance when they turned into the burial corridor. The ancient, crumbling wood coffins sat more defined by a quartet of lantern light. Long-buried shoes poked from the ruined end of one—rotted through except for some copper bands—while a burst of dirty red hair showed from another. Jacob shivered. Somehow the long dead seemed far more unsettling than those so recently dead.
The voices rose and fell in whispers.
“Allies?” Gladys asked.
“Likely,” George said. “If there was fighting, we’d hear it. If it was an ambush, we’d hear nothing.”
Smith picked up the pace, breaking into a slow jog as he turned his lantern up. The rest of the group followed. The shadowed passages that trailed off their path were still dark as pitch. Jacob felt like there were a million eyes watching him from that darkness, but he let it slide off. Sometimes you needed to trust your gut, and other times you needed to keep some common sense about you.
The faster pace brought them back to the open cavern faster than Jacob thought possible. He looked up at the mummified dead set into their stone displays. With more light in the room, they were less terrifying, and more disturbing, all at once. One of the figures wore a cloak of dust and bones and held a scythe across his chest.
“It’s like the old stories,” Alice said, walking closer to Jacob.
He nodded. Childhood stories they’d been told around campfires, meant to be scary but not be actual horrors, came flooding back to him. Cloaked figures with wide, glowing scythes, come to harvest the children of another nation. It rang awfully true to the Fall of Ancora and the return of Ballern. Jacob frowned and looked away.
“Here we are,” Smith said, settling in behind one of the chainguns. He checked the ammo belt and spun the barrels. “Everything looks good.” He tied a makeshift strap of spider silk leather onto the chaingun, pulled the quick release lever, and hung the massive weapon from his shoulder. Smith bounced it in his grip twice and nodded.
Alice opened the stone drawer of Bangers and Burners. They all grabbed a few extra until only the building blocks remained.
The voices outside began to rise.
“Come,” George said. “Let’s find Cage and see what we can do to help.
Smith hurried to the other chaingun and looked it over. “This one is ready to go as well.”
The second chaingun had a direct line of sight into the station’s cavern. Jacob turned toward the tracks and froze. The station seemed alive. People surged in every direction, distributing weapons and pointing and yelling. It was chaos given life.
Smith jogged into it without hesitation. Jacob eyed the first knight they saw with suspicion. George grabbed the man’s arm and spun him around. It was the knight from the watchtower … the knight Charles had shown his Steamsworn medal to before they’d tested the glider. The man’s eyes trailed past George and landed on Jacob.
Jacob lifted the hem of his pants. This was not a man from which to hide what he was. The knight’s eyes flashed wide and he held out his fist. Jacob reached past George and wrapped his hand around the knight’s.
“Brother. I am sorry to learn of Charles’s passing. Do you trust these people?”
“Yes,” Jacob said, though he didn’t know if
everyone
here was an ally.
“Good, that’s good.”
“Where is Cage?” George asked.
The knight turned and pointed toward the other side of the station. “Cage is by the other end of the tracks. They’ve heard shouts and gunfire lower in the cave system. We’re not sure what’s happening.”
“Thank you,” Jacob said, stepping towards the tracks.
“Fight well, Steamsworn,” the knight said. “This is not the end for Ancora.”
Jacob slammed his hand onto the knight’s shoulder and nodded. They all jogged across the station, dodging knights carrying crates and resistance fighters hauling bundles of swords and food and water.
Cage stood on the lower tracks, by the giant carcass of a long dead invader. Alice leapt off the edge and landed beside him. Jacob followed.
Smith and the others lowered themselves down with a bit more patience.
Cage glanced at them and then resumed talking to another man. “I know that’s what you
think
you heard, but this city is not sitting on a nest of Widow Makers.”
“Umm,” Jacob said. “Actually it is.”
Cage stopped talking and blinked. “What?”
“They’re a few levels down,” Alice said, “They almost killed us when we escaped.”
“I
told
you,” the other man almost snarled. “Someone in that cavern screamed, ‘Widow Makers,’ and then there was nothing but gunfire.”
Cage nodded. “Take a scouting party into the first level. See if you can find anything, but do not engage unless your lives are in danger.”
The other man nodded and left.
Cage squeezed the bridge of his nose. “The other mercenaries and soldiers are coming up the mountain path, and we can only assume up through the caverns. They’ve set up defenses in the Lowlands to prevent a retreat. Good news, I need good news.”
“We’re here to help?” Alice said.
Cage smiled and a small laugh escaped his lips. “Ah, thanks, kid.”
“We can retreat through the catacombs if we need to,” Jacob said. “There’s another hatch at the top of the stairs we can climb through, but you can’t move people quickly. It’s only one ladder.”
A teeth-grinding screech echoed up through the cavern beyond the bars. A thousand more creatures took up the call, and Jacob covered his ears.
Cage stared into the darkness before turning back to Jacob’s group. “I have scouts saying that these bastards are marching with Red Death. Can someone explain that? Red Death hordes kill anything that isn’t a Red Death.”
“They are likely using the technology of Charles von Atlier to control them,” Smith said.
“Like the transmitters used to bring the Fall?” Cage nodded.
“That is our theory,” Smith said. “Yes.”
Cage cursed. “I thought my scouts had lost their damn mind.”
A series of screams went up where the tracks exited the station. Jacob turned to see a lone Jumper. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw it was Bessie, with Samuel still riding on her back.
“We will help defend the entrance from the mountain,” Smith said. “It would seem our most vulnerable spot.”
Cage looked at his hand and then held out his fist.
Smith wrapped his hand around it and nodded. “Fight well.”
Alice pulled on Jacob’s arm, leading him through the thinner crowd on the tracks until they could walk up the marble stairs. Bessie skittered from one side to the next.
“She’s nervous,” Alice said.
“Samuel!” Jacob shouted. “Here!”
The Spider Knight gave Bessie two quick taps on the head. She covered the distance to Alice and Jacob in one mighty, furry-legged leap, slamming into the stone walkway beside them.
Samuel looked frantic. “They’re coming from the upper paths
and
the lower paths. I don’t know how they got onto the upper paths. I didn’t think there were any access points left.”
“Where does it lead?” Smith asked as he joined them on the platform.
“Here,” Samuel said. “They’ll all meet here. The side of the mountain is black with Red Death, Smith.” He leaned forward in the saddle and spoke quietly. “We don’t have enough bullets and bolts to kill them all.”
“How long do we have?” George asked.
“Minutes,” Samuel said. “At most. The lower group is rounding the last bend on the mountain path.”
Jacob looked out across the platform. These were desperate people, and desperate people were the best fighters in the world. Their travels since the Fall had reinforced that knowledge, but these people were hopelessly outmatched. A horde of Red Death? An army of Fel soldiers fighting for Ballern?
Alice grabbed his head and pulled his eyes down to hers. “It’s okay. Whatever happens, it’s okay.”
He tried to take a few deep breaths, but they were shaky and shallow.
Alice kissed him, deep and hard. “It’s okay.”
He stared at her, in that final chaos that would either spell their end or the beginning of a painful reconstruction, and knew she was right. They’d done everything they could. All they had to do now was see it through.
Smith tossed Samuel two of the Firebombs. “Go make some noise.”
Samuel nodded and spun Bessie around. She launched them both out onto the tracks and then bounced up and over the entrance to the station.
“C
heck your ammo,”
Smith said. “Be ready to make for the catacombs. We will stay at the edge of the station for now, but the moment we start to be overrun, make for the catacombs and the second chaingun.”
Alice started checking the belts strapped to her chest, filled with anchors and bolts. Jacob checked the clip for the air cannon. Ten rounds filled the clip, and he had a half dozen more clips in his backpack. After that he’d be left firing rocks.
The Red Death screeched again, and this time Jacob knew they were close. This could be the Fall all over again. Only underground, with nowhere to run.
“Keep your heads up!” Cage shouted. “If we lose the station, nothing will stop those things from reaching the Highlands. Ancora will be lost.”
Two massive booms sounded outside the station. Barely a minute passed before Bessie came bouncing back into the station.
“How many?” George asked.
“The blast may have sent a hundred Red Death and soldiers off the mountainside. I don’t suppose we have about fifty more of those bombs?”
George shook his head.
Samuel raised his voice so everyone in the vicinity could hear. “The soldiers above us are setting up rappelling lines. If they stick to Fel tactics, they’ll try sniping us from the top edge of the station. Be ready to shoot them down.” Blood dripped from a gash in the armor on his left shoulder.
“How bad?” Alice asked.
“How bad what?” Samuel glanced at his shoulder and cursed. “Didn’t even feel it. Must not be too bad.” He rooted through his saddlebag and pulled out a swath of white linen. Samuel stuffed it into the break in his armor and nodded.
Jacob couldn’t stop the frisson of terror that lanced through his body when a series of high-pitched shrieks echoed up from the tunnel behind the bars. He’d heard it before, and it meant only death.
“Widow Makers,” Gladys said. “Nothing else makes that sound.”
“Nothing I’ve met before,” Samuel said.
“Here they come!” Smith shouted. “Ready!”
The Red Death poured onto the tracks first. They weren’t smart enough to realize that’s where everyone was aiming. Cannon fire and bolts and Smith’s chaingun shattered the first wave of Red Death. Dead and broken carapaces slid to a stop inside the station. Minutes passed before Jacob realized where things were about to go wrong.
“It’s full!” he shouted over Smith’s chaingun. “They can walk right onto the plat—”
The next wave scampered over the corpses of their fellow invaders, and swung right, mauling and dismembering their defenses on the opposite platform. Jacob physically flinched at the explosion of blood and carnage that tore their allies’ lives away.
The Spider Knight beside him fell into a heap. Jacob looked down at the man’s face. Samuel’s Captain … a round hole leaked blood from his cheek, and the back of his helmet was distorted. Where was his mount? What had happened? What had shot him?
Jacob’s eyes snapped up. “Sharpshooters!”
Smith’s chaingun elevated before the tinker even had time to aim. Bullets ricocheted off the stone before cutting into a half dozen sharpshooters. Flesh and ropes separated in the hail of gunfire. The living ones retreated above the breach, but Jacob knew they’d be back.
Something slammed against the far gate. The gate that protected them from the things below.
Smith shouted over the chaos. “If it falls, you run. If it falls,
you run!
”
A shadow moved above the tracks outside of the cave, too graceful to be an invader, and far too large to be a railcar.
“What is that?” Jacob asked.
“Mary …” Smith said, his voice not much more than a whisper. “What are you doing?”
The shadow of the Skysworn vanished a moment later, devoured by something wider, and longer, something that shouldn’t be there.
Jacob shivered and pointed. “It’s one of Belldorn’s warships!”
He hadn’t finished speaking before fire and sparks streaked from the cannons mounted all across the Porcupine. The earth shook as the shells detonated, bathing the side of the mountain in fire.
Jacob ran to the edge of station and joined a small cluster of soldiers at the tracks. His jaw slackened at the wall of Red Death still surging up the mountainside. Craters from the cannon fire showed remnants of a hundred dead beetles, but for every pile of dead, there seemed a thousand more of the skull-like glowing eyes. The chainguns opened fire, strafing the wall and sending fountains of gore up all across the mountainside.
The Skysworn’s lone chaingun joined that percussive cacophony of destruction, tearing through hundreds of Red Death and—if the rain of blood and viscera said anything—the remaining sharpshooters at the station’s entrance. No matter how many died, the horde didn’t stop.