The Blood Groove (Purgatory Wars Book 4) Read online

  “The Cross Guard!” Vulkis shouted. “The Cross Guard!”

  The tale of the Cross Guard and their breaking of Borin the Black had spread through Purgatory like wildfire. The sight of those smoke wreathed ships, sailing past crippled Aesir vessels?

  It made those tales seem like a pathetic prologue.

  Even the huscral enemies seemed awed.

  Vulkis calculated.

  Gambled.

  “Charge!” he shouted, waving his sword.

  The guard rushed forward. Shields at the ready, weapons hefted up. The two armies smashed together with a resounding thunderclap. Huscrals were bowled over, trampled. Shields splintered. Heads were split. Vulkis hewed down a man with his sword, and felt it bend slightly. He didn’t care. The huscrals were trembling. Wavering.

  “For Sysminor! For Brax!”

  The bellow – issuing from dozens of throats and backed by the roaring sound of dozens more – came from a place that made Vulkis’ knees turn to water.

  They came from behind him.

  He turned despite himself.

  The streets behind them were filling with lizardfolk. They were smeared with grime and more of them than he thought possible were emerging from the sewer gratings. They came out, formed, charged. They charged in waves, their spears and shields clattering. They didn’t just smash home, though. They leaped and brought their weapons plunging down into unprotected shoulders and into helmets. They brought men and women down with their sheer weight.

  Vulkis brought his shield up just in time to deflect a bronze speartip. The lizardwoman facing him didn’t mind. The impact jarred his arm and then her head met his and his head lost.

  Vulkis hit the ground – everything becoming swallowed in blackness.

  ***

  “Bring us around!” Liam shouted as arrows rained down. The surviving Aesir ships were just out of range and their arrows hummed as they thudded into the arrow shields that the Cross Guard had dragged up hastily. Some overshot. Some fell between the gaps and might hit someone. But most of the Cross Guard were safe.

  The sails creaked, and the oars that they could use scooped at the water.

  Laurentinus risked a look. He ducked down. “We’re close!”

  “Wait for it-” Liam said, holding up his hand. He waited. Then he dropped his hand. “Now!”

  The shields dropped right as the incoming arrows slackened. Then the merciless broadsides came. Musketry filled the air with smoke and fire. But when the smoke cleared, this time, there were far fewer corpses on the enemy ships. Dozens of Aesir were starting to scramble to their feet from the cover they had taken.

  They learned fast.

  Fortunately, so did Liam.

  “Ranks B, fire!” The sergeants bellowed.

  Those who hadn’t fired opened up. The Aesir were consumed in smoke and Liam tried to not feel sick at the wet, meat slap of the bullets striking home. Part of him though, felt that sickness, and knew a moment of relief. He didn’t think he’d be human if he hadn’t felt sick.

  As the smoke cleared, he saw that Brax’s ship was open, defended only by a pair of longships holding lizardfolk. Brax’s ship had turned, though.

  Kneeling beside him, dressed in a thin slip and a loincloth, was Liv. She looked as beautiful as the last time Liam had seen her. Her blue hair had grown out in a wild corona. But he saw something more. Her hand was on Brax’s thigh, and he could almost see the connection.

  He felt something inside of him twist.

  He tried, desperately, to not descend into a blind fury. Something on his face must have shown. Liv glared right back at him.

  Well, a distant, sardonic part of him said. At least she’s got the strength of her convictions.

  In the distance, he saw lizardfolk and huscrals advancing towards the palace. Olimurias was taken. He stood there – not knowing if he should press the advantage or if he should retreat. Could two hundred barely trained musketeers do anything in the face of that?

  “Liam!”

  The scream didn’t come from one of his officers.

  It was Vani.

  He turned and saw what she was pointing at.

  Liam’s heart sang.

  Winging through the air were valkyrie. Hundreds of them. They were arrayed in a series of V formations, their wings beating in pattern, like migratory birds. They held javelins and slings, and the sun was shining behind them It was like an army of angels. He closed his eyes for a moment, thanking God. But more, he thanked Meg.

  She had done it.

  When he opened his eyes, he nodded to Laurentinus. “Wave the flag,” he said. “Indicate they should come down here.”

  “Looks like they are,” Laurentinus said, grinning and looking relieved.

  The valkyrie stooped and dove.

  They weren’t slowing down.

  Liam’s brow furrowed.

  The javelin that struck his chest drove the breath from him. He staggered and fell as more wood and stone javelins plunged down. They sprouted from the backs and shoulders and heads and faces of the Cross Guard. Screams followed: screams of shock, screams of anger, screams of confusion. Liam blinked, then groaned as he grabbed the javelin.

  It had already fallen to the side, leaving a hideous dent in his bronze breastplate. The metal had bent inward enough to leave a dent and he knew something was broken.

  No time.

  The valkyrie had finished the pass and were soaring to the sky, wheeling around.

  Laurentinus was face down on the deck, two javelins sticking from his back.

  The Guard looked as ragged as a sail that had weathered buckshot.

  “They’re coming around again!” someone shouted.

  “Steady!” one of the sergeants said, her voice as calm and steady as if this kind of thing happened every day.

  Worth their weight in gold, Liam thought, his head dazed. His brain felt as if it had been rung like a bell. He staggered to his feet and bellowed. “Guns up. Do not fire until I give the order!”

  The valkyrie swept down, rushing faster and faster. Liam waited.

  “Fire!”

  Smoke filled the air. A valkyrie plowed right into the center of the ship with a resounding crunch. Others smashed into the water. But many didn’t. Their javelins plunged home. The smoke, or the musketry, or both had thrown a lot of their aim off. As they winged away, Liam closed his eyes.

  And gave the last order he wanted to give.

  “Retreat! Retreat!”

  ***

  Liv trembled like a plucked violin string. She didn’t tear her eyes away from the ships flying the Cross Guard’s banner as they sailed desperately away, already starting to rise along the curve of Purgatory.

  Quietly, she hissed. “If you killed Liam, I am going to fucking rip your balls off. With my teeth.”

  Brax, his voice heavy, said: “I know.”

  A rustle of wings sounded and a tall, broad-shouldered, valkyrie landed. He was muscular and looked dignified with age. His hair might have been starting to turn white, though that fact it was pure blond made it hard to tell. His eyes were crystal blue and glowed like Liam’s iPod. He was definitely one of the oldest valkyrie that Liv had ever seen. For one thing, she had never seen one with wrinkles before. They tended to die gloriously in combat before that happened.

  Though, that might have just been the ones who spent time with non-valkyrie.

  The valk leader walked forward to Brax, his eyes crinkling with a smile.

  “A pleasure to meet you, General,” he said.

  “The pleasure is mine,” Brax said. “Fizit told me your name was Skyheart of the Tribe of Olympus.”

  “That it is,” Skyheart said. “And I must say, it is a good thing to finally meet the man who has returned my granddaughter to me.”

  “Holy fucking what?” Liv asked, her eyes bugging almost out of her head.

  Meg’s grandfather looked at her as if she was a bug.

  “Ignore my slave,” Brax said, his voice firm. �
�I’ll punish her later.”

  “Good,” Skyheart said, grinning. “Now. To the victors...”

  He gestured to Olimurias. Smoke still rose from several points in the city.

  “The spoils.”

  Six

  “Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won,” Liam muttered. He wondered what Lord Wellington would think of his first foray into the field of gunpowder warfare.

  A rasping, wilting voice came from the cot beside him. “Nice... saying.”

  Laurentinus had taken two javelins to the back. His spine had been clipped, his lung punctured, and if they had been in Babylon, he would have been hale and hearty again within the week. Less, depending on the skill of the healer. But the ships of the Cross Guard were still a few days from the port, and their healers were stressed to the limits.

  The casualties hadn’t been as bad as Liam had feared. In the first few moments after the flank attack, he had been utterly sure he had lost at least half of his forces. But after the ships had started to row and sail away from Olimurias and the threat of another raking attack from the air had faded, people had been counted, bodies had been shrouded, and the total number had been less than a fifth.

  That number hadn’t climbed, but if they didn’t reach Babylon soon, it would skyrocket.

  Liam felt his stomach knot. How could he have been so stupid? Brax had already shown the ability to co-opt others into his banner. He’d proved that with the Aesir. And if the valkyrie tribes were as haughty and bigoted as Meg had implied, then would it really have been that hard to convince some that humans and elves and goblins were slightly worse than the lizardfolk?

  But the question he didn’t have an answer to was, which tribe had turned on them?

  Was Meg, even now, trying to argue the tribe near Babylon to turning wing to the Cross Guard’s banner?

  Was she rotting in some jungle?

  Another person he’d failed.

  Liam rubbed his temple. For the moment, he’d have gladly sacrificed his faith and several of his surviving troops for the certainty of a video game. In a video game, the camera was located far away from the action. The fog of war existed, but it was smoothly pushed back by clever use of your resources. Enemies were turned into numbers. Possibilities were dropped into a manageable number of paths. They go high, you go low. They build defenses, you build offense.

  It had as much to do with reality as the idea of running a city had to do with one.

  Course, I managed to screw that one up too, he thought. I’m sure Babylon’s already descended into chaos.

  “Liam,” Laurentinus voice dragged him from his thinking. He looked down at the goblin. Laurentinus looked as if someone had managed to drain all the green from him, leaving his face ashen gray. Only his size and his ears differentiated him from any other human suffering from a serious injury. His hand grabbed onto Liam’s wrist – despite the weakness brought from fever and blood loss, he remained remarkably strong. “Never. Let them. Think it.”

  Liam sighed.

  “Never,” Laurentinus hissed. “Troops can take a defeat. Not defeated.”

  Then his eyes fluttered shut. Liam remained at his side for a few minutes, watching him breathe. He slowly parsed the words and understood. He straightened, drew up his shoulders, and started for the cabin door that led to the deck. He stepped out to look at the soldiers that were keeping watch. The sun was dark, and Olimurias sat between sky and ground. He could literally see the circular top of Brigid’s citadel.

  A year and change on Purgatory had cured Liam of the crushing vertigo that normally came from looking up and seeing nothing but more ground.

  “Sir,” one of the sergeants said. “The lookouts haven’t seen any valks flying this way. I think we’re cl-”

  Crunch!

  The entire ship rocked to the left. Guards flailed their arms and several had to grab onto the railings to keep from pitching over. Liam looked around, his brow furrowing as he tried to make sense of the yelling and shouting from the guards. He could have sworn that one of them just said...

  “We’ve been rammed by a fucking shark!”

  Liam sprinted to the side of the ship.

  Sharks in Purgatory weren’t exactly the same as sharks on Earth, but they were close enough that, when seen at a distance, they looked the same. This one, though, filled the water with red. It trashed and then swam off. Liam’s brow furrowed as one of the sergeants held up a mage-light. They had been expensive to make, but the merest idea of bringing torches aboard a ship filled with gunpowder had made the expense worth it.

  The light turned the ocean waters into a mirror.

  Then the mirror shattered as a glowing hand reached from the water, grabbed onto the planks of the ship. The wood crumpled under their strength. A moment later, a bow taller than Liam flew from the water and landed on the deck behind him – nearly braining several of his guardsmen. Then a dripping, bedraggled and utterly furious looking woman dragged herself onto the boat, hand over hand. Her bare feet slapped onto the deck and she stood there, panting, her eyes wild.

  “So,” Artemis snarled. “I hear you’re in the lizard killing business. I’m in.”

  Liam blinked.

  Artemis reached down and undid a rope that wrapped around her hips. She untied it, tossed it to a flabbergasted guard, and then stalked past Liam. “Drag the flotsam on board.”

  The guard leaped to it as Liam looked from Artemis to the rope. A few moments of dragging and hauling brought the thing the rope was tied to into the light of the boat: a plank of wood from one of the destroyed Aesir ships, bearing an extremely bedraggled looking Neb Mataare. The Chosen of Anubis – who Liam hadn’t seen for nearly a year – looked tired half unto death, her left arm lashed to her chest by a crude collection of soggy cloth. Her fur was soaked through and she was clutching to the plank with her free arm.

  The crew got to work bringing her aboard. Liam turned to face Artemis, who was starting to restring her bow. If it had been damaged by a few days dunked in salt water, it didn’t show it. Artemis looked like she had been wounded a few dozen times and healed – tiny white scars lightened her bronzed flesh, while half of her scalp had been burned down to the roots, making her look almost like a punk rocker.

  It suited Artemis.

  Liam didn’t want to know what she had looked like before healing.

  “What happened?” Liam asked.

  “You were there, dickless,” Artemis said, scowling at him. “I saw you running away with your tail between your legs.”

  “We’d been attacked in the flank,” Liam said, trying to sound calm. “Or did you want me to led my men off a cliff?”

  Artemis scowled. “You sound like Athena.”

  “Athena won you Troy,” Liam said.

  Artemis opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked mulish. Then she shook her head. “Fine. I’ll listen to you. But if we’re not killing lizardmen by the end of the week, your head goes on the wall. I didn’t ride a shark here to work for a fucking pussy.”

  And with that, she stomped to the captain’s cabin.

  Liam rubbed his temple.

  “Oh boy.”

  ***

  Meg sat in the nullcage and glared at the wall.

  In the cage right next to hers, a badly burned and bandaged Athena was left to her own devices. Meg wondered if they were going to heal the goddess of wisdom – but she doubted it.

  The door to the dungeon opened and Meg sprang to her feet.

  “Proudfeather,” Skyheart said, his arms spread wide. He spoke the name as if he was greeting a long lost relative. The fact he was didn’t phase Meg at all.

  “Asshole,” Meg said, arms crossed over her chest. “Liam told me about people who do that kind of thing. He called it ‘deadnaming.’ Fuck off. Fuck you.”

  Meg’s grandfather looked aggrieved. Meg didn’t particularly care.

  Skyheart shook his head as he walked over to the nullcage, careful to avoid touching the scul
pted crystal of the bar. Nulldarts had been a part of warfare between landlings and valks since the first had been born. Shaped crystal could drain their power but Meg had never seen the same approach applied to a prison until now.

  “Proudfeather,” he repeated.

  “Meg,” she said, her voice faux sweet.

  “Granddaughter,” Skyheart said. His lips were twisting down in a frown. “I came to see if you’d listen to reason. This landling boy you’ve cleaved to-”

  “Oh, we’ve done much more than cleaved,” Meg said, grinning at her grandfather. “Heck, we did more than cleave when he didn’t even speak Greek. Though, technically, he still doesn’t speak Greek.” She rubbed her chin. “Meh. He doesn’t need to speak Greek to kick your ass.”

  Her grandfather didn’t look amused. His wings rustled as he drew them taut against his back. It was an impressive trick, turning the feathered limbs into a kind of pseudo-cape. Meg had used it herself. Something that most landlings didn’t know, though? It took stretching the wing muscles and compacting your shoulder blades. It was as roughly as comfortable as compacting your knees into your chest. The instant you started, you started wanting to stretch your wings out.

  “I’m sure he will, considering that’s three cities conquered by Brax the Golden and your, ah, landling associate-”

  “Lover,” Meg said. “Fiance, actually.”

  “What!?” Skyheart’s wings snapped out and spread wide.

  Liam had called that movement of wings a ‘wing boner.’

  Meg had no idea why.

  “You cannot marry a landling,” Skyheart spluttered.

  “Mom did,” Meg said, casually.

  “I won’t allow it,” Skyheart snarled. “You-” He stopped himself. “Do you know a thing about this place that Liam comes from?” He gestured wide. “I do. Brax’s ambassador told me. Their god has observed their world for years. Decades. Your toy comes from a world that makes the barbarians that live in Purgatory look like utter saints. Wars fought by millions of men – with millions of the slain. Not merely warriors, but the humble peasants at home. Weapons that burn a fighter’s lungs out from inside out, or kill from miles away without discrimination, care or honor. Flying machines that drop explosives by the millions, turning entire cities into firestorms.” He shook his head. “And that’s just how they fight. Has your precious Liam told you about the death camps? The rooms that fill with poison, so that hundreds - thousands! - could be slaughtered as quickly as possible?”