Chapter XLII: To End This

 

The closer I came to my final run-in with the reikverratr, the less certain I became that I would be able to win it. The exhaustion of hours of fighting dug into my skin like the fangs of some huge invisible predator, slowing me down and sapping my strength. Not even adrenaline could carry me much further. Worse, there was an extra layer to the draining, something deeper and more profound, something that went down to the bone; I was quite literally anemic, the blood I’d lost against Ikamja having not quite been fully replaced.

Did any of that stop me? Of course not. I breathed deeply of the thin, cold air, let it saturate my sore muscles, and I moved on. Not that I had very far to go, or very long to wait. The battle was taking place at the very edge of the treaty-grounds-turned-war-camp, the distraction having not penetrated far, but even then the walk was only a fraction of the distance to cross Zrimash. 

Just before I got there, though, the tone of the battle changed, as the regular sounds of gunfire became suddenly frantic and intermittent, peppered between bursts of panicked screams. Whatever it was that that signified, it wasn’t good. I crossed the last stretch at a dead sprint, only slowing once I’d broken out into the open ground and had a good look at what lay before me. There were bodies everywhere, human and Durkahn and ghoul, mostly concentrated around a row of trenches about fifty yards out. The distraction force must have made their stand there, fending off regular counterattacks from the ghouls. Well, they weren’t making much of a stand any more; most of them were hidden out of sight, and those that weren’t had scattered and in many cases been driven out of cover.

The reason was clear enough, given she was over eight feet tall and entirely covered in heavy steel armor. She stood at the edge of the trench, surveying the carnage she had wrought, flanked on either side by what I thought at first was about a dozen Cassandran ghouls. As I slinked through the carnage, bent over almost double in an attempt to lower my profile, I realized that they were too small to be ghouls. They were, indeed, humans, wearing slightly fancier green coats, carrying slightly more decorated versions of the clockwork rifle, and with their faces obscured with identical steel masks. But they were definitely human.

“This section is clear ma’am,” said one of them. “What are you waiting for? We should drive them out now, not waste any more time!”

The reikverratr remained still. “Is that an official complaint, Candlestick?”

Candlestick took a step back, rapidly shaking her head. “Merely a suggestion, ma’am.”

“We will uproot them soon enough,” the reikverratr said. “Though with their lines cut in half, I imagine even the ghouls could finish the rest. Right now, I need time to think. The Bluerosers are cowardly, you see, but they are not stupid. There has to be some trick they’ve been holding in reserve, some final ace up their sleeve.”

“Wasn’t their plan to flank us, ma’am? The main force is already tied down in the town.”

“I know,” the reikverratr said. She sounded almost bored, staring out over the plains. “But something about this doesn’t feel right. We know that both the Blackbird and the Alraune are present, and yet neither has appeared.”

The urge was to make a show of it and loudly announce my presence at the dramatically appropriate moment, but even I’m not that much of a dumbass. The element of surprise would help overcome the severe disadvantage I had in every other area. So I continued to creep closer. Eventually I got as close as I was going to get, hidden from sight behind a scattered pile of sandbags. It was close enough that I could maybe dash the rest of the way, but far enough that I wasn’t sure. I decided to wait, and listen out for anything important.

“You’re sure the Alraune is alive?” one Cassandran said. “After what you did to it last time?”

“If the Alraune is dead, that would mean that an ordinary woman overcame the Violinist,” the reikverratr said. “Between that idea, and the possibility that a scientifically-constructed freak of nature could recover from decapitation… I’m much more willing to believe the latter.”

One of the other Cassandrans made a concurrent noise of disgust. “Makes you wonder what the Witch wants with it.”

The reikverratr audibly sighed. “Oh, you know how she is. She probably wants to cut it apart and see how she can replace humanity with more things like them for her whole ‘superior race’ thing. Damnable nonsense like that.” She suddenly turned, doing a three-sixty scan of the horizon. I ducked down, worried that she’d notice me somehow. “Damn her, where is Murahnok? She and her entourage were supposed to already be back.”

And that was my cue; if reinforcements were on the way, I needed to take down the reikverratr and her friends sooner rather than later. Thinking quickly, I drew my revolver and did a quick check. I’d only have six shots; the reikverratr was too fast and aggressive to give me time for a reload, so I’d have to make them count. I started moving to attack, then hesitated under the weight of a sudden burst of conscience. These Cassandrans didn’t deserve my mercy, I reminded myself; they were soldiers, imperialists, invaders. There would be time for therapy when the danger had passed.

I rolled out of cover and rose up onto one knee. The gunshot rattled me, the recoil stung, but one Cassandran screamed out and dropped, limp and still. Then another. And another. I started holding the revolver with both hands, cocking the hammer with my left thumb, shot after shot after shot, blind to everything except myself, my gun, and whatever was in my sights. It wasn’t until after I’d fired on two empty cylinders that I realized I was out of ammo and dropped the now-useless gun and drew my cutlass instead. 

My attack had indeed caught the Cassandrans off-guard, and it wasn’t until after I’d expended all of my shots that the survivors were really able to put up a defense. All except the reikverratr of course, who stood and watched my advance with her arms folded.

“So you are smart, aiming for the ones that your bullets will do something to. Give it everything you have, girls, the Alraune can take it all and more.” She put up her fists in a boxer’s stance. “But let’s not take that on faith.” The other Cassandrans raised their clockwork rifles to their shoulders and opened fire.

Most of the fight that followed was a blur as I dodged and juked out of the way of six streams of automatic rifle fire, or out of the way of the freight-train fists of the reikverratr’s powered armor. Even my speed wasn’t enough to stop me from getting winged a few times. Those were the hardest parts, retreating into cover or hiding in the abandoned trenches, or else just fighting through the pain until my regeneration could kick in. 

It was also a waiting game. Waiting for the right opportunity, the right opening to reverse my momentum and strike. I could cross enormous distances in next to no time at all, my sword moving in flowing arcs as Rook’s training took over for my conscious mind. One Cassandran I hit from behind, leaping off of the reikverratr to hit her like a cannonball and send the both of us into the trench. Once we were down, I got my cutlass into both hands and plunged it into her chest. Another put up more of a fight, drawing a long infantry saber when she realized I was closing with her. We dueled for a few seconds, sword against sword in an almost formal style, until I disarmed her by letting her impale me through the chest, then opened up her jugular vein.

None of it was enough to give me any decent odds of winning, of course. The longer I fought, the more exhausted I became. Every muscle burned, even my lungs burned, and not even the cold mountain air could stop my whole body from becoming soaked in desperate sweat. Eventually it became too much, and I forced myself to retreat. I dashed back, hiding behind the cover of a wooden palisade, and hoping they wouldn’t find me too quickly. 

As I panted for breath, trying to hold together enough strength to at least stay standing, a metal sphere landed in the grass at my feet. I suddenly felt very ill, and that was about all I had the chance to feel before the whole world went white.

The first thing I did after regaining consciousness was to throw up. It must have been an electrical weapon that knocked me out, I realized, and I was fairly sure I’d seen a similar weapon before. That was about when it hit me that I’d been dragged to my feet by two ghoul soldiers, and had something cold and metal pressed against the center of my spine.

“Only thirty seconds, that’s disappointing,” said a voice from over my shoulder. Dinara Murahnok’s voice, upon reflection. “Maybe you should send these things back to the Svenhal labs, give them another kick or two. I could’ve knocked her out longer with a punch in the tit!”

“No, you couldn’t have, Murahnok,” said the reikverratr. “Still, I suppose I should thank you for your timely arrival. She was being annoying.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Dinara said. “You didn’t have to spend the better part of a month being around this thing.” She circled around me, entering my field of view. Her outfit had, somehow, become even more elaborate in the time since I’d seen her last. On top of the gold trim and antler decorations, she’d also added a series of little medals pinned onto the chest of her uniform and silvered caps on the tips of each antler. She looked like someone who belonged on the parade ground or posing for a portrait, not someone who should be drawing a weird-looking metallic weapon and pointing it directly at my forehead.

“And that’s why I’m going to enjoy doing this so much,” she said.

The reikverratr moved as quickly as I’d ever seen her move, crossing the distance between herself and Dinara before my exhausted, woozy eyes could catch up. Dinara gasped in pain and fear as the huge steel hand clamped down on her forearm and dragged it away from me.

“There have been new orders from high command. The Witch wants it for her experiments. Would you like it if I was forced to report that you denied the Witch something that she wants, Murahnok?”

“No, no, no, of course not! I was just trying to scare the thing, that’s all!” Dinara said, wriggling around in a poor attempt to escape from the reikverratr’s grip. “Can I just… rough her up a little bit, without the electron pistol?”

The reikverratr paused a moment before relinquishing her grip on Dinara, her body language saying that she was seriously considering ripping the Chanter’s head off there and then. Dinara, for her part, got away from the reikverratr as quickly as possible and went back to me. 

I looked up. “So, you gonna punch me, or…” 

She punched me. In the face. It kinda hurt. Predictable bastard.

One of the people holding my arms decided to speak. “If we aren’t going to try killing it… how are we going to get it to the Witch?”

“It’s tough, but not even the Alraune can break through steel manacles. Once we’ve finished our business here and left Chanter Murahnok in charge, it will be a simple master to keep it our prisoner.”

Dinara was about to take another go at my face when something the reikverratr said made her expression fall. “About that… I have news, from the town, about the fighting going on there.”

The reikverratr turned. “Yes?”

Dinara hesitated for a short while, trying several times to explain, only to apparently discard the effort and start over from the beginning before speaking more than a syllable. Eventually, prompted by the reikverratr’s increasing anger, she said, “The accursed in the town have begun retreating. Not all of them, but most. They say that they were ordered to do it.”

I was suddenly revitalized, collecting together enough energy to stand under my own power and hold up my head. Ikamja had actually ordered her troops to retreat!

The reikverratr, for her part, let out an incoherent roar of animal rage, bringing her foot down with enough force to crack the earth. “Whorespawn! I should have known that they couldn’t be relied upon. No matter… I can take care of the rest of the Bluerosers all on my own if necessary.”

The reikverratr began giving out orders and organizing a backup plan using Dinara’s loyalist Durkahns, but I wasn’t particularly interested in any of that. Instead, my half-focused eyes caught movement in the still ruin over her shoulder. All the others around me were too busy to notice it, but there were small groups of fighters moving all around us.

I suppressed a smile, instead replacing it with what I hoped was an expression of curiosity. “How did you get those ghouls to work for you, anyway? I can’t imagine they hold money to be of any value, and they certainly don’t believe in order or whatever ideology you hold to. So how’d you do it?”

“I offered them a deal,” the reikverratr said after a long moment of hesitation. “I promised that, once we had won, we would give them the undesirable members of our society as a food source to ensure their ongoing survival. The offer of food was more than enough to get them onto my side.”

I gasped in mock-horror, putting up a show of renewing my struggle against the guards holding me down. “How could you!” I said. “Give up non-violent criminals to be devoured alive! You tell Dinara that you’re bringing civilization, you’re elevating Urcos, and then you come forward to say that you’ll be promising human lives to cannibal ghouls. You’re a monster.”

The reikverratr suddenly stiffened, her attention turning to Dinara. “You give me no credit for my cleverness. Promising, after all, is a very different thing to giving.”

Again I had to suppress a grin, turning it into a look of sudden understanding. “So what you’re saying is that you were never intending to actually live up to your end of the bargain?”

“Not really,” the reikverratr said. “I mean, why would I? By the time I’d be in any position to fulfill that agreement, there would be enough Cassandran soldiers in place to not need ghoul assistance anyway.”

“So what you’re saying is,” I said, raising my voice, “that the ghouls are getting played, and you’re going to double-cross them at the first chance you get?”

“Yes,” the reikverratr, sounding almost bored. “I’m glad to see that you’ve finally wrapped your head around the concept of lying.”

I could no longer hold myself back from smiling like a huge idiot. I leaned over, looking as far around the reikverratr’s side as my captors would allow me to, and said, “Well, you heard the woman! Now what’re you going to do about that?”

The reikverratr wheeled around in an instant, but it was already far, far too late for her, because by that point a gang of about thirty stonewose had stopped to listen to her. And standing at the front of that group, a scowl on her face, her hands gripping so tightly onto the haft of her glaive that the tendons stood out in her wrists, was Ikamja. 

For a few moments, all parties stood frozen in a standoff. Ikamja spoke first, her voice dripping with white-hot rage. “That sounds like a confession to me. Take the Cassandrans; leave the Blueroser.”

Everything exploded into motion. The two stonewose holding my arms, too terrified to act up until then, dropped me to the ground and turned their guns on the reikverratr. The surviving Cassandrans were thrown into a panic, raising their clockwork rifles but afraid to fire without hitting one another. Dinara Murahnok fled for her life. 

Only the reikverratr seemed ready for a fight. “Traitorous hounds!” she screamed, then charged out toward the attacking stonewose. Ikamja was right there at the front of the line ready to meet her. One on one, a duel between Ikamja and the reikverratr would have been a slaughter, which is why Ikamja wasn’t so stupid as to fight one on one. Two dozen stonewose moved to encircle the reikverratr, attempting to drag her down with hooks and tear at her armor with axes while others held her at bay with bayonets. They moved as one, with coordinated tactics no doubt practiced for the hunting of elephantine beasts. And the reikverratr played her part as well, roaring out insults and profanity and attempting to beat them all into the ground. 

I spent a few moments on my hands and knees where I’d been dropped, focusing my breath, gathering what little strength I had left. How desperately I wanted to just curl up and take a nap cannot be put into words. Hell, the stonewose probably had it covered, didn’t they? It wouldn’t have been wrong to just dust off my hands and pass out after everything I’d been through. 

But it wouldn’t have been right either. It took a dozen breaths before I felt confident enough to stand up, and three more after that before I could turn my focus outward on the battle. The reikverratr was being swarmed like a bison by wolves; even if I’d felt like going after her, there wasn’t any room to reach her. Dinara Murahnok was a different story. She wasn’t particularly capable of outrunning the stonewose after her, but she didn’t need to; the strange metal weapon she had was firing off flashes of blinding light and leaving corpses in its wake. I turned and made a dash for her.

Even without moving faster than what felt to me like a hurried jog, I easily overtook both Dinara and the stonewose going after her. Going directly after her would be suicidal; every time the weapon fired with that flash of light, a little bit of nausea rose up in my gut to remind me about my weakness to electricity. Instead I hung back until Dinara entered the edge of the treaty grounds, then went wide. With her lines of sight blocked by the tents and structures, I pushed myself to the limit and circled around. Dinara was too busy focusing on the pack behind her to notice my presence as I caught up to her, attacking from a perpendicular angle as she passed through a street intersection. I sent her sprawling to the ground with a single shoulder tackle, and the stonewose caught up a moment later. 

When we returned to the trench-lines with Dinara in tow, the battle was already over. The reason why was obvious: the reikverratr and her five remaining Cassandran allies were surrounded by at least sixty ghouls, many of them still carrying clockwork rifles. Dinara was quickly and efficiently tied up and put with the others, and I shivered at the reminder that all of these people did this quite often. 

The reikverratr was in a particularly bad state. She was still in her armor, but seemingly immobilized by it, the actuators that allowed the multi-ton assemblage of steel to move under its own power having been damaged beyond repair. The stonewose had done quite a number to her. They’d torn enough plates from the exoskeleton that I could see how her body was strapped into the device, and the generator on the back was sputtering and leaking liquid coal onto the earth.

“You can’t do this,” she growled as I approached. The lenses of her steel mask were locked on me. “You can’t let these monsters take us away. If you let these things kill us, then you’re just as much of a monster as them, Alraune. And I know how you like to pretend that you’re human.”

I didn’t say anything, but instead walked right up to the reikverratr, close enough that I could have reached out and put my hand on her chest. Even bound and disabled, she was enormous. It felt like confronting a giant. Without even fully knowing what I was doing, I drew my cutlass and pointed it up to her face. The stonewose around me suddenly tensed, ready to intervene if it looked like I might rob them of their catch. Instead, I flicked the blade twice, then sheathed it. The reikverratr’s steel mask thudded to the ground with two severed straps. 

The reikverratr looked like an ordinary woman, a handsome one even. Pale skin, sharp jaw, shaved scalp, green eyes set deep in their sockets, roman nose, scarlet lips. I looked up at her and calmly said, “Tell that to Meredith Ironseed.”

As I walked away, I passed by Ikamja. I slowed, stopped. She looked down at me with that familiar expression, a mix of respect and confusion, and gave a curt nod. Whether I wanted it or not, she and I had formed… perhaps not a friendship, but definitely an alliance.

I said, “Dinner is served,” and kept moving. 

Eventually I did find a nice place to sit down, a soft patch of dirt by a pile of leather and cloth that might have once been a tent. Before I knew it, without meaning to, I fell asleep. When I awoke, it was evening, and there were people all around, Durkahns and humans alike celebrating their victory and looking ahead to all the rebuilding, renegotiating, and reforging that would come. But it would all wait for tomorrow. And on the distant, dark horizon, you could see ghouls’ new encampment by the soft glow of blazing cooking-fires.