Things were going worse than Maroto could have predicted, and he had a pretty damn active imagination. You’d think with that creative mind of his he’d have figured a way out of this kimchi pot already, but no. As far as strategic pickles went, this was the funkiest he’d ever sampled. Not in a good way, either, but then even the best metaphors break down eventually. Point being, a bad morning in Othean was only going to get worse.
Two thousand Cobalts. Not the smartest of the bunch, either. You could tell that on account of these being the ones who’d apparently followed General Ji-hyeon straight into the Lark’s Tongue Gate.
Fourteen hundred Immaculates. Better trained and equipped than the Cobalts, these, but hardly the best or brightest on the Isles. That was obvious from the fact that the empress had assigned them this bleak babysitting detail, which any sane advisor would’ve told her was a lost cause. With such meager numbers it was, anyway.
Ah, and five hundred Chainites. Er, four hundred and nineteen. Hard to believe he’d lost almost a fifth of his troops just getting inside the Autumn Palace. He’d expected to lose over half. That just went to show that some pickle pots are stronger than they look.
Do the sums and that added up to nearly four thousand soldiers, all tucked safe behind the walls of a legendarily impregnable fortress. Nothing to sneeze at … so long as that legend was true.
Which, as of about thirty seconds ago, it wasn’t.
His ears were still ringing and the choking plume of dust that had enveloped the lurching terrace hadn’t yet been beaten back down by the rain, so Maroto stayed where he lay a little longer. Coughing, reflecting. Choi was dead. So was Da. Even dazed from falling flat on his face, he felt as if he’d grown an extra heart at the news just so he could have two ripped apart at the same time. Granted, before he’d even stopped hugging Fennec that section of wall a quarter mile north had crumbled, sending shock waves down the line, so he’d like as not be joining his dead kith and kin before very much longer … but that just meant he had to pack in as much grief as he could, while he could.
And administer twice as much before he went. At a minimum. That was Maroto maths, elementary as the sun rising from the Sea of Devils each morn.
At last he began to feel the rain on his neck again, prickling the backs of his legs where they emerged from his battleskirt. Could breathe the burning dust instead of just hacking on it. Clear as a sign from Old Black herself, too, the fume parted before his eyes and he looked out not to the west, with its rampaging Tothan army, but to the east. It was a beautiful sight, the expanse of tiled rooftops stretching out to the horizon like the scales of a giant’s armor. Othean. Why the devils weren’t they already retreating into the city proper, fleeing to one of the other palaces erected at its four corners?
More importantly, why the devils was he looking for the back door when there was a good clean death knocking at the front? The Barbarian Without Fear, they’d called him in the old days, and while he’d always suspected Hoartrap had meant it sarcastically you couldn’t deny as a younger man he’d fought first and worried about the consequences second. Hells, as an old man he’d done the same—he might have gotten better at avoiding trouble in general, yes, but whenever the blighter came calling he didn’t pull the curtains and hide under the drysink.
Yet ever since Jex Toth it was as if he’d misplaced his guts … along with his balls, his spleen, and any other parts you could name what might give a fellow courage. Yes, the Vex Assembly were dread creepers, no doubt about that, but how much better off would Fennec and the rest of the Cobalts be right now if when the Tothans had captured Maroto he’d taken a noble death over betraying the Star and sending the monsters straight here to Othean? He was always risking his own neck to save his people before, it was the one thing he was good at, so what fell witchery had happened to make him value his own sorry skin over those of his friends? Was it really just because since falling in with Purna and company he’d started getting more out of life, was seeing it as actually worth the bother? There was some irony for you—as soon as he started appreciating his existence he stopped leading the sort of life that was worth living.
But maybe he was getting back on track, since right about now he wished he were dead.
“Alive.” Fennec wasn’t asking, he was telling, and Maroto obediently let his old friend help him up. Following his gaze out over the drizzly metropolis, Fennec said, “Bad news, barbarian—I just received a final order from the empress’s messenger vulture. Our last stand isn’t going to be quite as heroic as I’d hoped.”
“Fuck …” Maroto dissolved into coughs, and then he expelled a sticky clod from his raw throat … along with his temporary madness. “Fuck that! Last stands are for losers, Fennec, and that ain’t us! We’ve got to fall back into the city, now, while there’s still time. If we hoof it we can make one of the other palaces, and—”
“That’s the very order,” said Fennec, the paw that didn’t rest on Maroto’s shoulder crumpling a roll of parchment. “Or close enough. We’re not retreating to a palace, though, but the gatehouse at the heart of Othean. We’re going to try, I should say.”
“What’s the gatehouse?” asked Maroto, squinting into the haze. “Is it, like, some kind of secret second Gate the Immaculates have kept hidden from us Outlanders all these years?”
“Not that kind of gate, Maroto, the regular sort—over there.” Fennec pointed out to the horizon, where a pale band ended the sea of buildings. “That’s the wall that runs from the Summer Palace in the north all the way down to the Winter Palace at Othean Bay, bisecting the city. While we’ve been holding this castle for them the Immaculates have been evacuating West Othean into East Othean, behind the wall … and now we have to follow them.”
“With all due respect, man, how are we not already there?” said Maroto, unable to believe he had to lecture Fennec of all people on when to cut a tactical retreat.
“Because that’s not just a ghost town down there, it’s a murderhole. Half the capital is rigged, the biggest death trap the Star has ever seen, and we’re the bait. So long as they’re busy chasing a fleeing army the Tothans won’t take the time to inspect their surroundings until it’s too late. Her Elegance has been so good as to send us this map of the only safe route through the western city.”
“Damn …” said Maroto, the quiet metropolis no longer seeming like such a welcome omen after all. “… Nobody likes to draw the short straw, granted, but you have to admit it ain’t a bad plan, far as last ditches go. Gives us a chance to get across and get safe behind another wall, anyway, which is better than no chance and no wall at all.”
“But not so good as if she’d shared this plan with me from the beginning, when we actually had a prayer of getting most of our soldiers out,” said Fennec. “Even if we started the extraction now—”
“Now it is!” said Maroto, striding forward … and falling back to one knee as the world lurched again. Or at least his world did, anyway. “… Damn.”
“Yes, I was waiting until I could walk in a straight line before I tried to climb down from an unstable ruin to race an army of monsters through a massive city,” said Fennec, smart as ever in both the mouth and the arse. Or were those two of the same thing? “Once we start moving, Maroto, we won’t have much breath for chatter, so lest I don’t have another chance … thank you. For coming here, I mean, even when you had to know it was hopeless. I’m glad you came back.”
“Well, shit …” said Maroto, letting Fennec help him up again, and not in such a hurry to get moving this time around. “Truth be told, Fennec, I didn’t even know you were here, nor none of the other Cobalts. I just came to clean up my own mess for a change. Figure it’s about time I started.”
“The Mighty Maroto, a man whose ego is so grand he can take sole credit for an invasion of demons,” said Fennec, shaking his head and retrieving Bang’s pipe, which Maroto had dropped, and worse, forgotten he’d dropped.
“See, it’s a lengthy song but it’s not a long song …” Maroto began, but trailed off as the rain further dispelled the cloud of dust and he could see back out to the west. The beetley black swarm teemed through the slums beneath them, cascading in through the sundered outer wall and pressing toward where they’d brought down the inner. Fuck, there were a lot of them, and other things down there, too. Worse things, knowing his luck, whose blazing green eyes he could glimpse through the dreary drizzle … and at that Maroto found his balance again. “Right, maybe even if we’re still at the crawling stage we get a move on, yeah?”
“Long past,” agreed Fennec, coming to Maroto’s side and nodding down the listing terrace to where his officers awaited their descent at a more stable stretch of the ramparts. “I hate to do anything that benefits the empress but can’t very well decline a chance out for some of our loyal followers. Even if it’s only postponing our final reckoning with the Ten True Gods of Trve, we’ve got to try.”
“I thought you traded in that particular cloth ages ago,” said Maroto.
“Somehow I always seem to rediscover my faith at times like these,” said Fennec. “But all the same I’d rather wait a while longer before discovering just how much Korpiklani and her nine siblings appreciate the prayers of a fair-weather friar, so let’s move fast.”
“Faster than fast,” said Maroto, pocketing the pipe Fennec had returned—a few dings in the wood, but like certain other things Zosia had graced with her touch, the lucky briar had survived another fall. It reminded him to retrieve his mace, which teetered on an edge.
“Do you see that?” Instead of squinting down from their vantage Fennec was looking up. “Am I … am I dreaming?”
Between the rain coming down and the tendrils of dust or smoke still rising from where the wall had collapsed, Maroto couldn’t see at first … and when he did he wished he hadn’t. Never, ever say things couldn’t get any worse, was the lesson here.
“Nah, you ain’t dreaming, friend, you’re looking at a nightmare I’ve met in the flesh.” Maroto scowled at the familiar flabby flapping of the squid-dragon as it rode the currents over the northern fields, shivered as he remembered being carried aloft in its sticky tendrils. It was still a ways off but those things covered ground fast, and while he could only see the one for now—
“It’s her!” Fennec staggered past Maroto, lifting his fuzzy hands into the rain like a mad prophet reaching up for a handshake from the divine … and then an owlbat swooped between his claws, circled his head in a squeaking blur, and flew back out to the west. “Fellwing!”
“Kang-ho, no, Ji-hyeon’s devil?” Maroto tracked the bobbing black dot through the rain, his hackles going up at the spooky image. “I heard if they outlive their master without ever being freed they’ve got to haunt the site of their grave, but figured that was just another myth. Poor damn thing.”
“She’s not dead,” Fennec breathed. “She lived. She lived, and she’s come back!”
“How’s that? You said the empress executed her!”
“She executed Kang-ho, but Ji-hyeon fled into the Gate!” Fennec scampered over to the edge of the unstable terrace, the massive slabs beneath their feet shifting ever so slightly … and ever so queasily. “There! By the Temple of Pentacles, do you see?”
Taking a far more cautious approach, Maroto advanced a few steps and tried to follow Fennec’s stare. All he could see were the countless black-shelled soldiers and their herds of warbeasts pushing into the outer wall … and of all the ill luck here came a second Tothan regiment, marching down through the northern fields. As far as the eye could see were monsters on the move, not one but three of the squid-dragons wheeling over their advancing legions. Had Fennec lost his shit entirely, to think Ji-hyeon had—
No, there they were. Blue pennants just to the west, flitting around in the narrowing gap between the Tothan force invading the Autumn Palace and the second army coming from the north. There was that speck of white behind them, the Temple of Pentacles. It rose from the fields like a tooth … or an Imperial headstone. As he stared the black flood entering the outer wall began to flow backward, the Tothans reversing course to confront the Cobalt forces harrying their rear.
“She came back,” Fennec repeated breathlessly. “She came back!”
“She didn’t borrow enough from Zosia, now she’s got to fake her own death, too?” asked Maroto, but he was smiling wide. That kid of Kang-ho’s was all right, he’d known that from the first. “How’d she do that, exactly? And how many Cobalts followed her back into that Gate after the empress double-crossed you?”
“I don’t know how she fucking did it, but she did it! And nobody went in with her. Those aren’t our soldiers—she’s brought a brand-new army with her!”
“A brand-new army that’s about to go the way of every other army that finds itself playing pastrami in a two-front sandwich,” said Maroto, drawing Fennec’s attention to the second Tothan regiment. “The only thing their showing up now does is buy us some much-needed time to fall back through the city.”
“No …” Fennec’s face fell and Maroto cursed himself for a tactless bastard as the inevitable sank in for his old friend. This was almost worse than if Ji-hyeon never came back at all, to return straight into the middle of a meat grinder. “We can’t just turn our back on her! She’s trapped out there!”
“She’d do the same if we were out there and she was in here, with one chance to make a getaway,” said Maroto, hating the words even as he said them. Hating the truth in them. What a cold and terrible world they lived in, where only the ruthless could survive, where only the heartless could prosper.
“You’re probably right,” said Fennec. “Which is why it’s so important we old-timers set a better example for the next generation.”
“Yeah, I—wait, what?”
Fennec was grinning the sort of crazy grin he’d always accused Maroto and Zosia of wearing right before doing something really, really stupid. It was a good look on him.
“You see a Cobalt unit about to be crushed between two Tothan armies, but I see a Tothan unit about to be crushed between two Cobalt hordes,” said Fennec, beginning to clamber down the ruined terrace toward his captains. “We smash them fast and hard with everything we’ve got and we can clear the way for Ji-hyeon and her soldiers to get inside Othean, before that second regiment swallows them whole. Then we all retreat together.”
“That’s fucking barmy!” cried Maroto. “The Tothans are already pushing into the hole they just punched in the Autumn Palace, and you told me they’re ten thousand strong! We’ve got one golden fucking opportunity here to escape through the city and instead you want to try plowing through an army of monsters? With a second army of monsters almost on top of us? All to try to save a friend you already gave up for dead, and who’s like as not going to buy it for real long before we can reach her?”
“That’s your general’s plan,” said Fennec, the terrace wobbling even worse than before as he and Maroto picked their way down to where the officers had convened on the wall-walk below. “You don’t like it, barbarian?”
“Like it?” Maroto balanced his mace on his shoulder as he swayed on a seesawing beam atop a ruined castle at the end of the world. “I fucking love it. Just let me pop into a washroom first—need to freshen up my makeup before we go dancing.”