Brax knelt before the map of all the Hellenic cities and villages that his forces had visited over the past week and tried to not think about how close the raiding parties were getting to the supposed position of the Oracle.
Oracles…
He shook his head slightly.
“Why is there a de-de-delayyyy?” Sysminor groaned, his voice filling the tent.
Brax smiled and turned. “You mistake immobility for inaction, my lord,” Brax said. He tapped his fingers against the map. “We’ve attacked fifteen villages, getting supplies, spreading fear. The other Hellenic cities are locked down – a mere sight of our forces keeps them at their walls. My banner goes with every raiding party, and... well, I’ve painted a few of my more striking officers gold.” He nodded. “I’ve made a reputation. May as well use it.”
Sysminor remained silent.
Then laughed.
When Brax emerged from the tent, one of Fizit’s spies approached him. The young man looked as bushy tailed as a squirrel – not entirely figuratively, too, as his tail frills were very long. He saluted. “General Brax! We’ve gotten another report! Um, about the cloud.”
Brax nodded. “Any change?”
“The cloud, um, continues to float over Babylon.” The young lizardman looked up at the sky, his nictitating membranes flicking down to protect himself from the sun’s light. “We cannot see it from here. They’ve placed the sun between us and it. It’s miles up in the sky, visible from Wotan, though!”
Brax frowned. “Has it moved?”
“No. None of our spies in Babylon can get close enough to where the magic they cast to create it to take notes.”
Brax shook his head. “They’re working on some kind of weather spell. Let me find some sorcerers.”
The spy saluted again. “Sir!”
Brax smiled and filed the young man’s face away in his memory. He was definitely going on the flank attack.
When Brax started towards the edge of the camp, he saw that several of his soldiers were coming back in. They had new wounds that were already scabbing over. Siege battles, he had found, produced minor wounds that would have rapidly overloaded his sorcerers and his healing capacity, even with the priests from Olimurias. Intestines were split by arrows, wounds were slashed by dirty blades, and because the contact continued on and on, day after day, more and more wounds cropped up.
And that was with his forces away from the walls, with only periodic harassment duties.
Here, Sysminor’s blessing to his people became all the more valuable than gold. Wounds closed within days. Fatigue faded in hours. And the soldiers went back to fire arrows and taunt the enemy.
Brax stepped up to the wall of his camp.
The flags of Zeus and Apollo and Ares still flew over New Athens.
It looked like it was going to be a long siege.
Brax grinned.
***
Liv grabbed onto the lip of the next ridge, dragged herself up, then plopped her ass down on the side of the mountain. She looked down as Fizit leaped from her standing position to the part of the cliff right next to Liv. The curvy lizardwoman looked rather smug as she put her hand on the stone cliff-face, looking down at Liv.
“Getting tired?” she asked.
“Can’t you just use fucking magic to get there?” Liv grumbled.
“No,” Fizit said, quietly. “I don’t want to ping Sysminor. He’s aware every time we cast magic – I’ve been monitoring his reactions, and that’s the conclusion.” She shook her head. “So, up the next bit.”
Liv grumbled. “I fucking hate this piece of fucking shit adventure.” She gauged the wall, looking for handholds. She grabbed one, then put her foot against the wall and hauled herself up, making sure she was settled. She scowled. “So, by the way, I’m knocked up too.”
Fizit paused, then snapped her head up.
“You bring that up now!?” she asked, sounding shocked.
“Well, I was thinking,” Liv said, gritting her teeth. She hauled herself up another handhold. “I need you to tell Brax. I can’t head back. So, figured I should-” she grunted. “Tell you eventually.”
“You shouldn’t be here!” Fizit hissed. “You’re carrying the General’s child!”
“Eh,” Liv said, shrugging, then hauled herself up onto the next cleft. She panted and set her rump against the rock, turning and looking back down at Fizit. She grinned. “Try and jump that, you scaled bitch.”
Fizit smirked. She tensed, then leaped. Her claws dug into rock and she flung herself upwards. This time, she overshot and had to skid along the wall, her claws digging in divots along the rock face. When she landed, Liv scowled.
“You’re just jealous,” Fizit said sweetly.
“You know,” Liv said, standing. “Since you’re behind the death of one of my friends, I could push you over the cliff and no one would know any the wiser.” She shook her head. “But that’d piss Brax off.”
“I’m honored,” Fizit said, her voice still sweet. Then, frowning. “And wouldn’t it anger your friend Liam?” Her hand went to her belly. There was only a hint that anything was growing there.
Liv shrugged. “His god hates bastards, I think. He only had one over two thousand years, that’s a lot of fucking restraint. I figure Liam’d thank me.”
Then she turned and looked up at the mountain. There still seemed to be a fuck of a lot left to climb. Liv scowled.
“Why couldn’t the Oracle by somewhere easy to get to?” she asked, punching the wall lightly. Her knuckle contacted something that gave way. The stone that had seemed so natural before her smoothly melted down into the ground and revealed a perfectly rectangular corridor. It was lit only by the sun shining in from behind the two women – and that sunlight showed that the floor was an eerie silver color that reminded Liv of Liam’s longsword.
Fizit hissed. “I don’t like the looks of this.”
“You and me both, scalie,” Liv whispered.
Fizit reached into her belt pouch and drew a small chunk of crystal. She shook it and the mage light that had been cast on the crystal glowed to pale blue light. It shone into the corridor, revealing that it went straight into a circular room – spherical, actually. A tongue of metal thrust out over the center of the sphere, giving a place to stand. If one didn’t mind trusting their footing to a chunk of metal that could have been thousands of years old.
“Well, it fits the description of the Oracle,” Fizit said. She stepped forward, brave enough. Liv followed her, drawing her sword with a rasp. The blade shone in the light – and then Fizit grabbed her wrist, hissing. “No! The legends say any who attempted to bear a blade before the Oracle died-”
“Well, gods, now you tell me!” Liv hissed back.
“Vrepit Kloth, zenthis no. Gr’tar.”
The voice that spoke from the ceiling was fluid, turning the gutteral sounds of the language into an almost song. Light glowed into being from every corner of the room – a blue glow that made Liv feel oddly relaxed. The sword in her hand glowed white. Then the white glow flowed over her body.
“Ren’Sah Vrepit. Genko.”
The white glow faded and Liv tensed, ready for something to kill her.
“It’s speaking the language of the Ancients,” Fizit whispered.
“I wish Tethis was here,” Liv said, slowly. “Too bad you had her murdered.”
Fizit looked guilty. That was enough to make Liv hold off on any more barbs. For the moment. But while she wasn’t broken up over Tethis’ death – people died, that was the way of the world – she wasn’t about to forgive it or ignore it.
Except when you fucked Brax, a voice in her head muttered. She wanted it to sound like Liam, like a moralizing prat. But instead it sounded like hers. Liv felt something she hadn’t felt in a long while.
A twinge of guilt. She shook her head, then took a step forward. Nothing killed her.
She took another step, then another. Soon, she was standing in the Oracle’s room. The walls glowed to life, shining and showing a haze of strange symbols. They floated in the air between her and the wall – rotating, spinning. Some of them even blinked. Liv’s brow furrowed.
“It’s responding,” Fizit said. “The records say that this was how it would respond – but eventually, it stopped answering.”
Liv frowned. She looked at the floating symbols.
Something about them was familiar.
Not their shape, not their color.
It was how they were arranged.
She held up her hands slowly, then twiddled her thumbs.
“It’s an iPhone,” she whispered.
“What?” Fizit asked.
“I’ve seen Liam use his iPhone-”
“I thought it was called an iPod,” Fizit said.
“He’s called it both,” Liv snapped. “Like how sometimes my name can be spelled with one N or two. Now, focus. The symbols floated around when he tapped at them. He called them icons and when he touched them, things happened.” Liv reached out with one hand and pressed the biggest, most obvious icon.
Why not start with the biggest?
Her fingers touched it.
“Are you sure that’s a-” Fizit asked.
“Tell me, Oracle!” Liv said, her voice as commanding as possible. “What the fuck is going on with my fucking father?”
The walls around her fuzzed into a blur of colors and lights. Then, when they settled, they showed…
Green. Jungle. A statue of a valkyrie woman, standing proudly beside four other statue basis. Liv’s brow furrowed slightly. “The fuck is that?” she asked.
“It’s the Victory Hill,” Fizit said. “After the Ancient War, the five races of purgatory built statues to commemorate their victory.”
“Where’d the other statues go?” Liv asked. “And what does this have to do with Ares?”
“Valks got ideas about us who walk along the ground,” Fizit said, shrugging. “And no one bothered to stop them when they came to melt the other statues down for weap-”
The air before the statue exploded into light. A sphere of whiteness expanded outwards and vomited out a very familiar figure. Liam Vanderbilt – looking as dopey and innocent as Liv had ever seen him, dressed in a bizarre set of clothing – tumbled forward. He hit the ground and then rolled off the hill. As he rolled away, the sounds of his grunting progress down a set of stairs built into the hill filled the chamber. Liv laughed.
“This is fucking hilarious,” she said, shaking her head, then sweeping her hands at the wall. “But-”
Her hand caused the view to spin dizzily. She yelped and almost fell off the tongue of metal that thrust into the room. Fizit grabbed her shoulders, keeping her rooted as the view finished its spin and ended up looking at the sky as Liam’s exclaims of fear and wonderment – all of it in that bizarre pseudo-Latin he spoke – continued to ring out. Liv held her hands out and then slowly moved them.
The view panned around slower this time.
Liv grinned as she focused on Liam. He had just finished slaughtering a crystalback and was checking over his belongings. He started down the hill and was out of sight.
Liv bit her lip. “But this isn’t the future. This is the past. That’s how Liam came to Purgatory.” She paused. “Shit, I’ve walked within a few dozen miles of this place while hunting him and Meg.”
“Some icons have returned,” Fizit said, pointing at them with her finger. Liv looked down.
One of the icons was a jagged bar. Another was a thinner bar looped by a circle that spun slowly counterclockwise. The last was a V-shaped black line with a surrounding red circle. She touched the V-shaped one first. The image froze. Liam was halfway between taking a step and moving forward and yet, he didn’t fall. There was even a butterfly, caught between wing flaps.
Liv tapped the V-shaped one again. Motion returned.
She nodded. Seemed simple enough.
She took hold of the ring. Turning it counter-clockwise caused Liam to move backwards. If she turned it back far enough, the image would move to the moment he arrived. She kept twirling it backwards and found that the image actually turned back into a haze of random colors and blotches a few moments before he arrived in that ball of light.
“So, it’s like a sentry,” she said. “It reports on Liam’s arrival, but has nothing before. I wonder if this sentry has anything earlier than Liam.”
She reached out and touched the last symbol.
The colors swirled out.
Swirled in. Formed into the image of a dirty home. A priest of Hestia stood above a bed. An elven woman lay in it. She had haunted, bitter eyes and glared into nothingness while her swollen belly was tended to by two midwives. The midwives looked at one another, wordlessly communicating. The woman’s face, though. Looking at it...
Liv felt as if she had been slapped.
“Who's that?” Fizit asked.
“That’s my mother,” Liv said, voice grim.
She hit the cease movement button.
Fizit’s brow furrowed. “Why is your birth recorded by the sentry?”
“I don’t know,” Liv said, her voice flat. “But I don’t need to see her die in childbirth.”
“But there were priests,” Fizit said.
“That’s what I said, and I don’t need to know,” Liv said. She tapped the ‘next report’ button. This one showed her mother too – hale and healthy and looking utterly alien. She was clad in a kind of armor. It looked like armor at least. The edges were hard and straight, but also had an organic curve at the joints. There were blue crystals located in the shoulders. She was speaking to the camera, speaking the tongue of the Ancients.
“How old are you?” Fizit asked, quietly.
Liv shrugged. “Lost count,” she said.
“You-” Fizit shook her head. “You lost count?”
“My life is fighting and fucking and waiting for the next of both,” Liv said, looking at her. “Once you get past the first century, a second or third one starts looking a lot like the first one.” She smirked. “Honestly, the past year’s the most memorable I’ve had in a while.”
Fizit looked like she was reconsidering her position on not murdering Liv. Liv honestly couldn’t figure out why. But before she could ask, a loud clang sounded. The tearing of metal – and laughter. And Greek. Soldiers swarmed into the room. Each of them were valkyrie, and they carried crude looking shields and strange weapons. One of them held the hilt of a sword, while another held what looked like one of those muskets that Liam had made but smoother, sleeker, and without any sign of a firing mechanism.
Liv’s mother spun and drew her own hilt. Energy leaped from it and she sprang at the valkyrie. He knocked the blade aside with a sneer.
Liv watched, mutely, as they held her mother down.
Liv watched, mutely, as Ares swaggered into the room.
Liv watched, mutely, as screams filled the chamber – and the sound, the unmistakable sound, despite linguistic differences, of begging.
And male laughter.
Then she turned and walked out of the Oracle – the images behind her fuzzing into nothingness.
Fizit followed her.
“What are you going to do?” she hissed as the door out of the Oracle opened.
“I’m going to find Ares,” Liv said. “And I’m going to mount his head on a fucking pike.”
***
There was a small shop in Babylon that made a brisk trade buying and selling paper. The city of Babylon had an endless, voracious need for paper. Books were printed by the thousands, and the literacy rate was going up daily thanks to schools being set up by the priests and mages that Liam had been attracting to his city since the day the war began. In times of trouble, tall walls and a strong army had an allure all to their own for those who had read deeply of history and knew the result of sacks.
This shop – named something innocuous and easily forgotten – was a perfect cover.
No one asked why it made paper, or purchased ink, or sent out letters.
One would expect a professional scribe and papermaker to do such things, after all.
Linizt approached the shop in her robes and tried to ignore the pain spiking between her temples. She missed her tail. She missed her claws. She missed her teeth. She missed everything about not being disguised as a human – if only because she wanted to sink her teeth into something and rip and tear until it was all shreds.
Being a spy required patience and a willingness to listen and a mind for details and a memory that wasn’t dulled by reading and writing.
But there were limits, even to Lin’s abilities.
When she came to the shop, she knocked once, then twice, then three times more. A quiet voice spoke through the door to her: “Pass?”
“Lightning and shadow,” Lin murmured.
The door opened and the pain between her temples faded somewhat. Her handler – and the only other lizardfolk she knew in the city – smiled at her. He was handsome, even in the form of an elf. Maybe slightly more, as his elven form didn’t have that wicked scar across his muzzle that left his teeth exposed. Tark stepped back and gestured Lin into the chambers. Lin stepped forward and Tark closed the door.
Before she could even start her report, Tark leaned forward and kissed her. His lips were warm and eased the ache in her head to nothing more than a mild annoyance. Lin knew she should push him away. Remind him that there were orders against fraternization between ranks laid down by their spymaster.
Remind him that she was only supposed to be here for five minutes to give her report, not three hours. But they had been such nice hours…
Her hands gripped his hips and her breasts pressed to his chest as she kissed him back. Then Tark drew back, his voice was husky. “Report, then we can get to the fun part.”
Lin grinned. Her hand went to her robes and she casually skimmed them backwards. Tark let the robes hit the floor – his hands were too busy finding her shift and tugging it up. Lin lifted her arms and shivered slightly. The warm air of the office caressing her bare skin felt wonderful after what felt like whole lifetimes being buried under clothes. She missed scales. She missed the casual nudity of the tribe.
But she did rather like the size of her breasts in this human disguise – more so when Tark cupped and squeezed them. She closed her eyes, arching her back to thrust her tits into his hands.
“The, ah,” she said, then gasped. His fingers had found her nipples and tweaked them, sending jolts of pleasure through her. Her knees felt weak and she bit her lip, hard enough to almost draw blood. “Theeee ah um, the project. I’ve gotten close enough to, um, see what they’re doing. That cloud?” She opened her eyes, looking into Tark’s eyes. “They’re building something up in the sky. I don’t know what magic keeps it there. Haven’t found out. But the pottery they’re making goes there. And there’s also something else! The shipyards? They’re not actually building ships – that’s what we think they’re making, but no. No. The wood is too thin, and the sails are on the wrong parts of the ships. The shipwrights, though, are being watched too close for me to get any more information about the ship building projects. But I don’t think they’re making a fleet.”
Tark nodded. “Brax will know by the end of the week.” He leaned forward, then and caught her nipple in his mouth. His fingers dipped to the snarl of fur that grew above and around her sex. He caressed the folds of her pussy, then plunged his elegant middle finger all the way into her – his fingertip found the center of her pleasure and this time nothing Lin could do stopped her from arching her back and moaning.
They hit the bed a moment later.
Lin wouldn’t admit it unless under torture, but there were some advantages to not having a tail.
For instance, laying back on the bed, spreading her thighs wide so that Tark could delve his tongue into her hot, needy cunt? Much more comfortable without a tail right above her rump. She arched her spine and crooned as his tongue lapped along the folds of her sex, his nose rubbing at her clit. It felt like he wrung pleasure from her body for hours – letting her rise towards climax, then drawing it out enough to let the waters recede, then driving forward again. He stoked her higher and higher and higher, until the moment his long, thin cock pressed to her sex.
“Ready?” Tark purred.
“God yes,” Lin whispered.
Tark plunged into her.
And Lin forgot orders. Forgot the fact she was stuck spying in a city, far from her people, in a body that wasn’t her own. She forgot everything but this moment. Her thighs closed around Tark’s back and she clung to him, moaning inarticulately as he fucked her and fucked her hard. His mouth found and sucked on her neck. He added just a hint of teeth, to make Lin squirm and shudder under him. Her cunt clenched around his cock.
Tark threw his head back and roared quietly. His balls clenched and his heat filled her. Lin shuddered and panted, her eyes hooded as she breathed slowly under him.
The two spies laid together.
“What happens in Babylon, stays in Babylon, right?” Lin whispered, her hands caressing his back. Tark – who was still managing to hold himself up so he wasn’t squashing her – kissed her neck and made a quiet noise at the base of his throat that might have been an affirmative. Might not.
Lin kissed his forehead, squirmed, and pushed, and eventually got Tark to let her go, no matter how badly she wanted to stay. Once she stood, she shook her head and grabbed her shift. She slipped it on over her shoulders, feeling sweat starting to soak into the thin cotton. “I don’t know what the cloud is hiding. But it...” She paused. “It has to be big. It’s more than just magic. Be sure to tell Brax that.”
“I shall,” Tark said, quietly, watching her dress.
Lin blushed, leaned forward, kissed her handler one last time, then turned and hurried away.
Tark smiled.
A flash of white light filled the room. When it faded, Tark was no longer laying in the bed. Instead, a completely nude and utterly beautiful looking Lin was lounging there. She adjusted the covers, so that the coarse sheets covered her hips, leaving only her breasts exposed. She brushed her hair out and waited paitently. When the door opened again, Tark – the real Tark – walked into the room.
He bore with him several jars of ink and a distracted look. He staggered to a stop when he saw Lin.
Lin – Loki – grinned at him.
“We shouldn’t be doing this again,” Tark whispered, slowly, as he walked towards the bed. But his cock already showed what his plans were. Loki rolled onto her back.
“I have nothing to report,” she purred. “So, what better way to spend our time, Tark?”
Tark didn’t have an answer.
Ah, Loki thought as Tark’s cock plunged into her sex, hilting himself to her as she kissed him on the mouth. I fucking love my job.
***
Liv sat on a hill about five miles from New Athens and stewed silently. Fizit crouched next to the firepit that they had dug, with wood planted above it to break the light and smoke up to make them harder to spot. The siege of the city had settled into the bloody work of stalemate, and Liv had been glaring at it for the better part of a week.
In the back of her head, she had done the math. A fucking week to the fucking Oracle – no, not the Oracle. The sentry. Two days to climb that fucking mountain. Two fucking days sitting around at the sentry, trying to coax more information from it. Two days to get fucking down the fucking mountain. A week to fucking get fucking back. She shook her head. Now, a week of sitting. Almost a month.
Fizit had been the one who had grabbed Liv and dragged her back into the room.
“We need to learn more,” she hissed. “You can’t go off and try to kill the God of War without knowing what caused him to change.”
“I don’t fucking care!” Liv snarled. “He raped my mother. He’s going to die.”
Fizit rolled her eyes. “Come on, Liv. You can’t be this fucking self-centered, can you?”
Liv growled and opened her mouth to speak. Fizit snapped her teeth, cutting her off.
“No, shut up, and listen,” the lizard said, her tail lashing from side to side. “You knew Ares. For centuries. Tell me, honestly. Did you ever think that he romanced all the women he laid?” She shook her head. “I doubt it.”
Liv opened her mouth to respond. But she couldn’t say it. Instead, she shook her head.
Fizit sighed. “You knew he was like that. Why so mad now?”
“Because it’s my mother!” Liv shouted, yanking her hand from Fizit. “Because it’s... because...” She stopped, then closed her eyes. “Because...”
Fizit shook her head. She stepped forward and put her hands tentatively on Liv. Liv whimpered. She had never whimpered before in her life. She didn’t know what to think, how to feel. Every part of her heart screamed for vengeance. That was her mother. But Fizit was right. She had never thought about or cared about what her father did. He was just the man who had trained her, and then sent her out to do missions.
Go there.
Kill them.
Come back.
It had been her life, for centuries, and she hadn’t minded. She had gotten to fight and fuck and not worry overmuch about where the food would come from.
What had her mother done? But die?
Leave her alone?
Fizit sighed. “Now. Let's find out what we can. Then we can see about killing Ares.”
The only problem was that the two days of fiddling with the sentry produced nothing but more confusion. Not every image was as clear and well remembered as the three that Liv had first found. A great many were filled with strange smears of light and textures unlike anything she had seen before. Imagine patterns of gray and white dots, intermixed and then shaken rapidly, so that the colors continually fuzzed through one another. It was almost hypnotic but it was also nearly useless.
Sound, too, was spotty. Several had perfect recreations of sounds and voices. Too perfect, considering the fact that Liv wouldn’t forget the sound of her mother begging for mercy. Ever. But most had no sound at all. Some had sound that seemed to come from the bottom of a deep well, or was filled with unearthly screeches and howls and whistles and pops and rattling noises.
They sifted through this information while eating through the last of their rations, but it only left Liv more confused.
Apart from Liam's appearance, the the sentry only seemed to be interested in elves - and in an extremely morbid way. There were dozens of fragmentary images that showed elves being killed or dying. Some of sickness, most of violence.
Liv hadn't recognised any of them, except Ares, who appeared in three images. The first was...
The first she knew.
The second showed Ares stepping into a ruined chamber. He looked around himself, nodded smugly, and then walked over to a large chunk of crystal. His hand touched the crystal, which started to glow a pale blue. Then the image fuzzed into useless.
The last one was the only one that had given them any hint as to what had changed in Ares. It was five minutes long and most of it was a silent view of a doorway in a chamber that was dominated by several rectangular plinths. All but one were empty – the one that held anything at all contained what seemed to be a silvery skullcap. Liv had planned to leave after the first minute, but Fizit forced her to sit with a glower and a snap of her teeth. Over time, the door had started to crumple inwards. Then, finally, it exploded.
If there had been sound, Liv realized, she’d have been hearing the battering.
Ares walked into the ruined chamber, flanked by two hoplites. They looked like a scouting party, dressed in only light armor. Ares looked around the chamber, shook his head. His mouth moved and Liv thought he was ordering the hoplites to head back outside. Then his eyes fell on the helmet. He picked it up, eyed it.
His mouth moved but the angle was bad.
“He’s not going to put that on, is he?” Fizit asked.
“Why? What is it?”
“It’s an ancient artifact,” Fizit said. “I don’t know if you remember, but for most of Purgatory’s history, ancient artifacts killed people.”
Liv snorted. “Well, I mean, their shrines tended to kill people.” She remembered a few men she had lost while trying to kill Liam as he fled with Tethis and Meg into a teleport shrine.
Ares put the helmet on.
Then he fell to his knees, his mouth open in a silent scream. His body arched and he started to flicker with flames. Literal flames – they burst into being around his body. His armor turned to slag and dripped off his form as his clothes scorched away. The only thing unaffected was his skin, which seemed unharmed, even as molten bronze dripped along his belly and off his balls. He writhed on the floor, still screaming.
“Holy shit, this is awesome,” Liv whispered, grinning.
Fizit glanced at her.
The flames faded and then the image turned into a jagged mirror. It shattered into the white fuzz that meant that the sentry was confused or had forgotten or something.
Liv scowled. “Come on! Did he die or what?”
“I don’t think he died,” Fizit said. “I think that? That was the moment it changed. And more?” She looked at her. “It was a year ago.”
Liv blinked. “How the fuck did you figure that out?”
Fizit sighed. “I used my eyes. Come on. Let's get back to New Athens.”
It had taken the entire trip down the mountain for Liv to finally get Fizit to explain how she had figured it out. Snooty bitch. She had said that there were symbols she spotted in each image – they were placed right next to the main ‘interface’ (that was the word Liam had used for that kinda thing on his iPhone at least.) Apparently, she had compared the symbols every time she had had a specific date and the numbering for Liam’s arrival and the numbering for Ares’ change were so close as to be nearly identical.
“I think Liam’s arrival came after. Barely,” Fizit said.
That had given Liv a lot to think about.
Which was the problem.
She didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to wait in a camp, hunting for food and drinking water from a stream while considering history and her own outrage. She wanted to plunge a spear through Ares eye socket and have that be that.
“You okay?” Fizit asked, breaking Liv out of her memories.
“No,” Liv said.
Fizit shook her head. “Have you noticed the clouds?”
Liv’s brow furrowed. The past few days had been quite sunny and hot. No sign of storms or anything. But now that Fizit mentioned it, she had noticed clouds. But they had been distant enough that her brain had filed them away as being unimportant. She craned her head backwards. The sun shone overhead – and there was a cloud streaming out from behind it. Not impossible. Save that the angle looked wrong. Clouds tended to clump close to the ground on the other side of Purgatory. This cloud seemed to be billowing from behind the sun, as if someone had started boiling water by flinging it at the surface of the sun.
“That...” She paused, groping for words.
“Is fucking weird?” Fizit suggested.
Liv nodded.
“That’s one word for it.” She did some mental math. “That’s got to be directly over Babylon.”
“Has to be,” Fizit said. “According to Brax, before I left, spies were reporting that nothing much was happening.” She frowned. “If Loki’s not behind subverting my spy network, I am going to be pissed off at Tark.”
“What if Loki is behind it?”
“Then I hope Tark’s alive,” Fizit said, shaking her head. “Still. There’s nothing in the world quite as shit as not knowing what is going on.”
“Liam’s probably going to do something stupid and suicidally dangerous,” Liv muttered, poking at the fire in the camp.
“I doubt that he’s putting himself in danger. He’s a king now,” Fizit said. “King’s don’t do that.”
***
“And if you die?” Neb asked, her tail lashing from side to side.
“Liam is not going to die,” Meg said, glaring at the nervous looking jackalgirl. “If he does, I’m killing him.”
“But Babylon needs a leader,” Neb said. “And you should at least take the secondary convoy, the one over the ocean. The safer one.”
Liam chuckled as he stood on the entrance to the wooden construct. It wasn’t the first off the production line – the first few had been carefully smuggled out of the city to be tested in the desert, far from prying eyes. The first few had also crashed. But Liam was studiously not thinking about that. Instead, he just smiled at Neb.
“If I die, then Meg kills me, and then they have a new election. I have faith in Babylon’s democracy.” He nodded. “I got to be here. This is a frightening thing to ask of any man or woman who serves under me.”
Meg snickered quietly.
Liam ignored her. “I have to be with them,” he said, his voice firm.
When he stepped into the construct, he saw the others who would be going up. Each construct had ten seats and room for their supplies – carefully packed rations, Minié balls and gunpowder. Each Cross Guard wore their uniform - a concept unknown in Purgatory, save for a few small mercenary units, or symbols painted on shields. Liam hoped that the sight of the Cross Guard in their white tunics with the red cross – the full Cross Guard, the trained Cross Guard – would put some fear in the bad guy’s hearts.
Once he was seated next to one of the soldiers – a lilin girl who smiled at him – he called out, “Take us up!”
Meg had demanded to be on the line for this transport. She and three other valkyrie took hold of the hawsers, then started to beat their wings in unison. As the transport shuddered and started to move up, the lilin hissed to Liam.
“Are we sure they won’t drop us?”
Liam chuckled. “Mary,” he said, speaking loudly enough that everyone in the transport could hear him. “Mary’s seen to that.”
It had actually been an idea each of them had contributed to – him, Meg and Mary, after one of their late night semi-regular threesomes, had all discussed the problem. Skyheart – driven by the bitterness of two generations of his family turning on him – had definitely been the most extreme, but a general sense that landlings weren’t actually people remained among the valks, even if they were following Meg. Though part of that might have been the fact Meg had already kicked the asses of two challengers before the week had ended.
So, when the project started, and the valks started to work directly with Babylon’s artisans, Meg and Mary worked together to pick the artisans they needed. Not the best artisans. The work hadn't really required skill. It just needed a complete lack of fear, the ability to follow the instructions Neb had printed in bulk on broadsheets for the workers, and the ability to trust in valkyries.
Meg had picked those who were without fear.
Mary had picked those who were personable. Charming.
“F-fuckable,” Mary had admitted after Liam had eaten her out. “I also picked the ones t-that were, uh, fuckable!”
Liam grinned at the Cross Guard looking at them. “You know these valk that are carrying us up? Half of them are marrying landlings once this war’s over. The rest have already done it.” He chuckled.
Nothing like workplace relationships.
It wouldn’t fix the problem. He was sure there were still valks who grumbled and muttered to one another about landlings. He was sure in seventy or so years, they’d be back in full strength. But for now, things were settled.
The Cross Guard laughed, looking relieved.
And Liam could settle back into his primary job of not looking utterly terrified.
Because he was.
This entire idea had seemed very clever when he had come up with it months ago. Now, sitting in the first transport to be taken up, he was beginning to really grasp just how nuts this was. They were contained in a glider, roughly the half the size as a Greek trireme, built out of the thinnest, lightest wood that could still hold a frame. The wings were based off the same designs that Liam had brought on his iPod, and they had been tested.
It’d glide just fine.
Rather than having a tow-cable and an airplane, though, the glider was being dragged upwards by four valkyrie. Other gliders were going up at the same time, but Liam’s had launched first. And as they rose up into the air, Liam started to breathe more and more. He felt like he had been jogging in place – and his head spun. He called out to the rest of the Cross Guard.
“It’ll pass – height sickness passes soon. Don’t worry.”
One of the Guard groaned quietly.
The glider rose.
The air thinned.
And then lightness that Liam had only felt twice before came to him. But rather than falling off a cliff-side or tumbling off a city wall, this time the lightness wouldn’t end with a bunch of snapped bones. Then the glider shuddered and he heard Meg’s voice – slightly attenuated by the thin air – come through the wall. “You’re in place!”
Liam laughed. “Now we wait,” he said, grinning at the others.
The rest of the Cross Guard looked deeply queasy. Humans and lilin were worst off up here. Elves handled it slightly better. Goblins showed no sign of getting sick in microgravity, lucky them.
Liam himself just focused on not vomiting in front of the troops.
The gliders were dragged upwards in stages – the valkyrie working quickly and en masse. Four to a glider, five hundred and thirty four valkyrie alternating as quickly as possible, meant a hundred and thirty three gliders every trip. The shipwrights had been given some assistance when it came to building the gliders. Materials had been brought along the coast as fast as Ra could cut the trees down and ship them, while the guilds of magicians and alchemists shared secrets they had once kept dear to their chests.
All with the goal of building as many gliders as quickly as possible.
Ten soldiers to a glider.
Ten thousand men and women – some from Babylon, some from beyond: Aesir, Hellenes, Coptics, Tuatha. They had come and they had been drilled in the simple mechanics of gunpowder warfare. Listen to your orders. Stand your ground. Reload. Fire.
A thousand gliders. Each one piloted by a man or woman given a crash course – bad phrasing, that, Liam thought – as the other gliders were built.
It sounded like a lot to be dragged upwards to the place where the sun’s gravity and the gravity of Purgatory canceled one another out and something could ‘orbit’ safely. But when you had five hundred valkyrie, a mountain could come to Mohammad. Or, at the very least, be carted there on wheelbarrows. Liam closed his eyes and wished for a window.
But glass was expensive. There was only enough for a single slit for the pilot.
Liam could only imagine what was above them.
In the simplest term, it was a heat shield to end all heat shields. The sun was four times hotter here than it was on the surface of Purgatory. Hot enough to burn wood and crisp sails and cook men and women alike. The valks wore amulets of Ra, which protected them from the heat. But for the gliders and the Cross Guard there was the heat shield. The design was simple: ceramic tiles, layered atop one another, enchanted with the same kind of magic Tethis had used to channel heat. That heat was dumped right back into the kilns to make more pottery. Water, dredged from the ocean, purified of salt, and then dumped onto the heat shield by teams of valkyrie completed the chilling effect needed to keep the shield intact and protect the gliders beneath.
And best of all?
It covered the whole construction with a cloud of steam.
After three hours, the sounds of the valks flying around changed slightly. Liam grinned slightly, opening his eyes. “Everyone, get ready.”
***
Meg beat backwards and away from the heat shield. The amulet hanging around her neck prevented the heat from being killing but it didn’t stop her from sweating buckets. She had never felt quite so tired. But she had never been so elated, either. This was something new in the world. The gods had helped along the edges, but the basics? The real guts of the work?
All of it had been done by mortals. Mortals had made the clay, mortals had assembled the heat shield, mortals had risked their lives. Though, amazingly, none had died. Several had come close, but valks had managed to catch all of them before they tumbled out of the area of microgravity. And now there were a thousand gliders mounted to the heat shield – wings touching one another. The only thing that ruined the moment was the fact it was night.
She tried to imagine what it would look like during the day with the sun shining off the heat shield and every glider glowing with reflected light. She shook her head, squared her shoulders, and called out,“Wings! To flank! Go!”
The tribe beat their wings and men and women soared past her, flying around to the left end of the heat shield. They each wore gauntlets – thick hawser ropes were great at ripping up palms, so hand guards and gloved had been required. They came in handy here. Dozens of bronze bars thrust from the left flank of the heat shield, providing a place for the valks to grab – then start to push. And push.
And push.
Liam had explained this carefully when the plan was first being hashed out.
Weight was a function of mass and gravity. Take the gravity away, the weight was gone but the mass remained. It took energy to move mass, even if there was limited friction. Each beat of the wings caused the whole heat shield to groan quietly – and to move.
Meg grinned, her own wings starting to strain.
“Come on!” she shouted. “We’ve got this!”
The heat shield and the glider army took four hours to move from the space above Babylon to New Athens.
A flight that normally took days, if not weeks, in a matter of hours.
Sunchaser – who was on the push-bar next to Meg – beamed at her. “Think this counts as the straight shot?” he asked, gasping and panting, his whole body quivering.
“No,” Meg said. “But it’ll be close enough.”
She pulled a crystal from her belt pouch.
Snapped it.
And the magical charges in a thousand wooden mooring posts went off. Tiny blasts of gunpowder rang out and each glider dropped away from the heat shield. They started to fall forward, their wings spread out wide. Their pilots guided them forward into the darkness, their rears suddenly illuminated by mage lights, so that each could follow the other behind it. They swooped into the darkness of Purgatory’s night.
Meg panted.
Now was time for the hard part.
***
Liam clung to the side of the glider – feeling weight returning to him. The lilin next to him vomited on the floor. He patted her back one handed.
A goblin behind him whooped.
Then the turbulence faded. The atmosphere grew thick enough that the wings were able to catch it. The air was filled with the sound of creaking wings and groaning wood. Liam’s mouth felt dry. He was aware they were falling – soaring, not falling – towards the chosen battlefield. But he didn’t know if his glider was going to be the one that crashed.
Because some were going to crash.
That was just a certainty.
“I guess they can’t just call us landers now, huh?” the lilin asked, wiping her mouth off.
Liam laughed.
***
“Did you hear something?” Fizit asked.
“Yeah,” Liv said, her eyes narrowed as she looked upwards.
A dark shape swooped by overhead.
“Holy fuck!” Liv sprang to her feet. “Was that a valk?”
“If it was, it was the biggest goddamn valk-” Fizit put her finger to her temple. Magic glowed around her fingertips – the moment clearly important enough to risk tipping off Sysminor. She gasped. “Oh god. We have to get back to camp.”
“What?” Liv asked.
But Fizit was already starting to run, pregnancy be damned.
Liv gaped at her.
***
Brax rubbed his chin. Something felt wrong. He couldn’t place a clawtip on what it was, but he could sense it. The sentries seemed to be on edge, the conversation was subdued. If his men and women hadn’t been in high spirits since the siege started, he might have thought that the months of holding the Hellenes on lock would be what did it.
But…
Again, they had been in high spirits.
His ear-holes strained as he heard faint sounds. He couldn’t place them though, nor figure where they were coming from.
“Brax!”
A distant voice made him look up. He heard the commotion that followed the voice – several guards were drawing arrows and trying to draw a bead. But the figure that came through the front gate of the wooden fortifications literally barreled through the other guards who rushed to stop her. She shoved them aside with the careless abandon of someone who didn’t need to fear edged weapons.
“Brax! Look up!” Liv shouted, her body glistening with sweat in the mage light of the camp.
Brax looked up.
The sky overhead seemed dark and normal.
Wait…
The sun, even while dark, was usually visible as a sphere of silvery luminescence, so soft and easily ignored as to be forgotten. But there was no sphere. Rather, there was a black-red rectangle that filled the heavens above the camp. An atavistic fear exploded through Brax as he realized that the rectangle was coming down. He looked at Liv and heard the shout from Fizit.
“Evacuate the camp! Evacuate the camp! Now! Now! Now!”
Sysminor emerged from his tent – several of his slave women trailing after him. The glowing false god glared about himself.
Then stopped, looking up.
Without a word, Sysminor started walking towards the gate, leaving behind a gaggle of very confused, mostly naked human women. Brax turned and bellowed,“Evacuate! Now!”
Ten miles up, the heat shield – pushed carefully out of micro-gravity and into the grasp of Purgatory's surface – was still accelerating. The edges rattled as chunks broke free. The wind and the stresses it had been under over the past few weeks caused new reverberations to splinter and crack throughout the superstructure.
Five miles up, the heat shield fragmented like a shotgun shell.
The lizardman army was sprinting as fast as it could, rushing away in every direction. Huscrals and Tuatha auxiliaries lagged behind, desperately trying to keep up. Supplies were left behind. Mounts were lost. Fortifications were abandoned. And everyone in New Athens trembled in fear at the resounding sounds of the heat shield plummeting – the cracks and booms sounding like an angry god. But no god had ever cast down something like this before. A few also saw great, bat winged monsters soar by overhead. Several of them trailed behind flags, flags bearing blood red symbols.
Crucifixes.
What nightmare army brought down the sky and flew torture devices on their standards?
What nightmare army flew in the first place?
Then the heat shield impacted.
Purgatory had never seen artillery before, but the impact of thousands of pounds of heat shield had the same rough effect. The lizardman camp, supplies and fortification was utterly pulped as smoke rose into the air. Superheated fragments of pottery caused flames to roar through the destruction. Smaller chunks, knocked aside during the tumble, landed in and among the fleeing troops. Several were bisected as neatly as if they had been cut by a buzz saw. Others were crushed. Still more burned.
Several chunks even landed in New Athens, smashing down a house filled with people, leaving them stunned and wailing and wondering why their gods had forsaken them.
And then, with the same suddenness as the impact, the sun kindled.
And the people of New Athens saw the flags and the army gathered, miles distant.
The Cross Guard was here.