Chapter V3 Ch 2: With What Blood |
“Friend of yours?” Lieutenant Lochlann asked, like now was the time to spawn a sense of humor.
Aaron didn’t reply. Neither did Clever Hands. Aaron didn’t draw a blade. He couldn’t say the same of Clever Hands. To be fair, he drew it from the dragon’s eye socket. But he certainly didn’t put it away again after.
“Just not going to answer that, are you?” the stoat doppel asked, eyes going between the lieutenant and Aaron, before raising his voice for those behind them. “Humanity’s militia: if you can keep your weapons pointed at the dragons, you’re welcome below. You try to stab any of us, we’ll stab back. Mind the drop.”
With no further invitation, the stoat dropped down the far side of the dragon’s corpse and onto the stairs beyond. The doppels would let militia into Fourth Down. And lower yet, in true emergency. But they wouldn’t stand around trying to convince them.
“How is this safe?” hissed a militia man who Clev had not waited on.
“It’s as safe as you’re getting,” said Aaron, as the only voice here from lower than Third Down.
“We’ll protect you,” said Rose, which wasn’t at all what Aaron had promised.
…Except that Rose just had. And Lochlann would be with her for whatever stupidity may come. So fine, apparently Aaron was going to stand with them, too. But for now: he gave her a nudge towards the dragon corpse.
“I need to—” she protested, likely about to insist on taking the rear guard. Or worse: to keep trying to reason with the people who’d followed them, the ones Aaron barely knew the names of and certainly didn’t trust to be reasonable.
Aaron put one hand on her back and another on Lochlann’s, urging them to climb a corpse. Which was about as apt an introduction to Twokins as they were like to get.
The blacksmith had backed down to the hall below, leaving the stairs clear. Waiting at the bottom with her and Clev were two of the blacksmith’s roommates, also with crossbows. They’d clearly been snatched from her smithy mid-construction: the base elements were there, but with none of the polish of her finished work. Literally: the stocks weren’t even sanded. Clev had opted to wait on her shoulder as a stoat, enjoying access to her whole broad back to dodge behind.
Aaron frowned at the crossbows. “Is that all you made?”
“How lovely to see you again, too, Aaron,” she said. “Your little note didn’t come with a deadline. Or a warning.”
She pointedly turned her gaze on the dragon corpse above. Aaron blinked at her. He’d sent her an enclave bow. The ones famous for killing dragons. The ones restricted to the kingdom’s most trusted, since they’d do in a man in plate armor just as readily. Obviously he’d meant for her to spread them about; quickly should have been equally implied.
“Yes, that’s all,” she said, raising a hand to rub at the temple above her eye patch. “And even these aren’t so far along as I’d have liked for a dragon siege. Aaron.”
“So he’s always been like this?” asked Lochlann.
“You’re not funny,” the blacksmith told him, which was why Aaron continued to like her. She put both her hands back on her crossbow. It was mostly pointed back the way they’d come, but it wasn’t not pointed at them. It wasn’t not pointed at the few militia members who’d come down after them, either. They’d the air of a vanguard: a handful of adults, carrying a few of the lanterns the uptowners had managed to keep lit this whole way. They were peering each way down the hall like they expected to be overcome by a rat swarm any second.
A few others followed, hesitantly and with blades drawn.
Much less hesitantly, when the next dragon entered the hall above. Then there was a bit of a scramble to get the kids down, and the protesting we-can-fight teenagers, with the adults bringing up the rear. Aaron started to press himself and Rose back against one wall, away from the sudden shove of bodies, but a rather impressive shriek from Clev’s small body had most choosing the opposite direction. The blacksmith gave the doppel a hard look for doing that next to her ear; the stoat showed little remorse.
Another shriek. From above, from a dragon they couldn’t see past the corpse still blocking the stairs. It was roaring—screaming—crying, maybe, because that was the corpse of its sibling it had just found, and likely its friend.
The rear guard found their motivation to vault the corpse. The last of them tumbled down the stairs, landing with an entirely understated ow. The same overly polite man who’d been apologizing his way through the tunnels while holding a shield, before they’d had to leave his shield behind. Lochlann stretched out a hand, and helped the man up.
“Are you the last?” he asked.
“No, there’s—there’s more, not just our group. People must have seen us from the rails; there’s more trying to follow. I think we’ve the only route the dragon’s haven’t started blocking.”
Of course there were more. There was a literal city’s worth crammed in up there.
“Not my problem,” said the little stoat, which made the polite man startle hard. “Is it your problem, Smith? Yours…?”
And maybe he was going to name Aaron there, but Aaron pretended not to see the way he started to look over, casual as they’d used to be, then tensed all over, his tail spine arching.
“It’s mine,”hissed Rose.
“We can’t make the shot from here; the corpse is blocking the way,” said the blacksmith, reasonably. “And we’re not going up there.”
“Give us the crossbows, then,” said one of the other militia members.
“Ha,” said the blacksmith. She still wasn’t not aiming at them.
“We’ll need the bows down here to guard the children,” Aaron said, before anyone got any ideas that ended with them having to figure out how to dispose of human bodies in the middle of the rest of this. “And the smith needs her prototypes to build more. More is what we’ll need, if we want to actually clear the dragons out of here in the coming days, instead of getting ourselves killed here today.”
“The more of you we help, the more of you there are to back stab us,” said Clever Hands, who’d never met a fight he couldn’t start. “The dragons aren’t even killing them.”
“Yet,” added the blacksmith, equally helpfully. She turned her gaze towards Rose. Towards, and a little to the side; wouldn’t want to look directly at her. “Apologies for the direct address, Good Neighbor, but are there any of yours still up there?”
“All of them,” said Rose, who was not above using her fey mark against them, if people kept insisting on using it against her.
Above, the dragon’s screaming cut off. It coughed, that distinct cough that preceded their fire.
Lochlann swore. And joined a few other militia members in running up the stairs, like that wasn’t the wrong direction entirely. But then Aaron saw it too: the dragon shoving its head over the body of its sibling, maw wide—
Lochlann joined the others in shoving one of the corpse’s wings up into its face. The tar marked out a dark pattern of splotches on the membrane, outlined by flames, the wing’s veins tracing out a stained glass pattern that flickered red and yellow over the stairs. A macabre but effective shield.
A shield the humans still trapped in the hallways above didn’t have. The dragon coughed again. The screams that followed weren’t something Aaron could do anything about. The smell was one he knew from pyres, and harder to ignore. That particular dragon didn’t seem to be holding back on killing anymore.
“We hold here,” said Rose, as people she’d never met burned above.
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Clev was whispering something in the blacksmith’s ear; she was nodding. Neither action brought Aaron comfort.
“We can’t,” Aaron tried to explain. “It’s— This isn’t defensible. If we’re not elsewhere by the time they come down after us, they’ll just follow. There are places to hide, but the only ones we can use are those that fit humans. Doppeled dragons can fit in all of those, too. We can’t fight here.”
He’d already thought he’d lost her once today, in a place where she’d no real way to fight back. Circumstances had only changed geographically since then. He glanced up the stairs. He didn’t catch Lochlann’s eye, so much as found the man already looking at him. The good lieutenant had braced himself as well as he could, the weight of the wing bearing down on his arms. His eyes flicked to Rose, then back to Aaron. He nodded, like they had some kind of understanding. But Aaron didn’t have understandings with idiots, so if he had to go up there and push the man down those stairs to get him back with them, he would. The dragon on the other side was already distracted with killing others. They’d not get a better chance for running.
“The only thing we can do right now is hide,” Aaron said.
“No,” said Rose. “It’s not.”
Her gaze wasn’t on Lochlann; it was on the wall of the stairs. When she set her hand against it, his first thought was that she was steadying herself. She was still bleeding. Still bleeding, and she’d taken off her bandage, and her blood—
Wasn’t dripping to the floor any longer. She pressed her hand to the wall. Where the old ways in the castle would have taken her print and healed her, these walls took and kept taking. Her blood twisted out from her palm in blotchy smearing lines, like a sheet of Aaron’s practiced letters, or a child making a charcoal rubbing: there was something there already, laying forgot on the wall, that the blood was settling into.
“Letforget,” someone gasped, and Aaron put himself between her back and the militia, both his daggers out.
He didn’t see the next step. Just the way the militia’s adults were putting themselves between their children and him—between Rose, and whatever she was doing at his back. Clev and the blacksmith, along her two crossbow-carrying roommates, were taking this chance to edge farther down the hall. Aaron watched them from the corner of his eye, but didn’t call attention to them otherwise; he wasn’t one to ruin someone else’s escape.
“Wake up,” Rose said. Like she was arguing with her twin, instead of a wall.
There was a sound behind him, like grinding; then flickers of light, which he still didn’t turn to see. He smiled at the closest of the militiamen. The fellow obligingly retracted that step he’d just taken. Aaron obligingly left him with all his blood on the inside.
The light was red-gold, like the O’Shea’s own colors.
“I’m going up,” Rose said. And when he heard her boot scuff the next stair, he took a step up behind her, never turning around.
The wall was glowing where she’d bled, that same not-light as the old castle gave. He didn’t flinch from it, because flinching was what the militia was watching for. But he couldn’t stop his eyes darting to it, to the curls of writing he couldn’t read, glowing out from under the stone itself, brighter where blood had been painted over it. The stone was lighter there, too; a dark dusting of soot and dirt lay crumbled on the stairs, the dirt of centuries wiped clear by whatever she was doing, revealing what lay underneath. He could see each step Rose had climbed in the hand prints she’d left behind: the dragging smears, the clear prints where she’d stopped. Rested. Her back was against Aaron’s, and growing heavier.
“Move,” she said, at the top of the stairs, and, “Help me up.”
Lochlann didn’t argue. It wasn’t the first he’d seen her do something like this, today. Whatever she’d done back in the castle’s council chamber had gotten them out alive; the good lieutenant didn’t waste time doubting her now. He dropped the wing. Did something to make the others drop it, too, which sounded half of orders and half of shoving.
Aaron kept smiling down the stairs. Tossed a knife in his hand, and caught the hilt, and if anyone down there assumed that meant he was good at aiming these things rather than that he’d spent his childhood trying to be cute in a way an assassin king would favor, that was on them.
A salter had pushed through to the militia’s front, and was pouring lines of salt and iron over the final stair. They kept watching his little knife tricks with their own little flinches, which was cute enough.
“She’s over,” Lochlann said, settling a hand on his shoulder, light as a fellow who didn’t want to startle another. “I’ll hold here.”
Aaron sparred a nod to the man, then vaulted a dead dragon after a princess.
Tar-smoke was thick in the air, and there was one woman who wouldn’t stop making noises until someone had the mercy to help her; others who’d stopped already, whether dead or not. But more had pushed their way down to this hall in the hopes of a way out of whatever trap the dragons were constructing, and a dragon could only spit fire so fast. Or maneuver so much, in a space made for humans. They’d gotten its head wrestled to the floor, with enough bodies on top of the neck to pin it there despite its bucking and scrabbling. It had gotten in one last snap before they’d pinned its jaws shut: they were latched in a woman’s arm. She was currently girting her teeth as her fellow militia muzzled the thing with her limb still inside. If she survived, maybe he’d introduce her to his sister.
…His sister. Thoughts shouldn’t hurt like blades. He didn’t have time for nonsense like that.
Rose was leaning against the wall, not looking much better than the trapped woman.
“Move,” she said to them, like that was a thing any of them could do. “Carry me,” she said to him, and that was a thing he could.
He sheathed his daggers—the militia up here had bigger problems—and knelt, his back to her. She climbed on, legs around his waist, one arm around his neck. Her other hand never left the wall.
“Just keep walking,” she said, her chin against his shoulder.
He stared at the dragon. They’d strung together a few belts, and looped them around the thing’s muzzle; it seemed too fragile a line to stop the beastie from opening its mouth again. Certainly not enough to stop it closing them. It bit down harder. And, well. The woman was certainly freed.
“Walk,” Rose ordered again.
Aaron took a half-step towards the dragon’s bloody teeth, because he had to start somewhere. His next was nearly normal. The militia did not move: they couldn’t, and still keep the beast contained. The woman who’d lost an arm was still helping to keep its muzzle shut, in weight if not in strength. A teenager had climbed up on its spine, intrepidly trying to pry up a neck scale long enough for her friend to slip a blade in, but its writhing kept throwing them off their aim. Few of them could even spare a look as Aaron brought the princess closer, and closer, nearly up to the dragon’s flaring nostrils.
The wall’s glow followed her hand. Rose’s blood came even with the beastie’s snout.
The dragon began to convulse. Nothing like its earlier struggles: more like a bug dropped on a flame. It scrabbled, clawed, nearly crushing the teens on its back as it bucked against the stone above so hard one of its own wing bones snapped.
“Move,” Rose said again, to those still trying to hold on. “Let it retreat. We can’t have its corpse blocking the way.”
Which was certainly one way to get them all listening. The teens had already scrabbled clear; those pinning the neck did too, helping the bitten woman along with them. The dragon reared back before they were all free, bashing its own skull against the stone ceiling in its haste. It didn’t stop to snap at any of the targets scurrying away from it. Just pushed backwards with its legs, shoving itself clear of Rose’s Letforget with just as much haste as the militia was dodging clear of it.
Aaron waited only long enough for the way to clear. Then he kept walking forward, rather more confidently.
Rose kept her hand on the wall.
The dragon scrabbled away from them as fast as a half-stuck lizard could, down the hall, to the rail, and straight over the edge; it caught itself by its claws on the rocks below, keening. Other dragons had been gathering there, stopped only by its body in the way. They had rocks for blocking the way, and claws for any who couldn’t take the hint. Rose ignored them. So Aaron did, too.
She wasn’t lifting her head off his shoulder, any more.
He walked, slow enough for a princess to bleed, until the rail ended and the stone closed around them on all sides once again.
“That’s enough,” she said. Which was all the permission he needed to let her slide to the floor and get another bandage wrapped around that hand, for all the good the first had done. Dragons were hissing from the open space behind them, but people were already evacuating through the corridor past them, headed for the stairs, which was sign enough that whatever Rose had done had worked. The dragons couldn’t get in.
“I begin to understand,” she said, “why this was forgot.”
Her eyes weren’t focusing.
“Stay awake,” Aaron said.
“I’ll carry her,” said Lochlann, who was here, and kneeling down next to them, and Aaron didn’t know when that had happened.
“I can do it,” said Aaron.
“You need to show us where to go.”
He did, at that. He needed to show them. Those militia at the bottom of the stairs, the ones he’d led this far, the ones that would have mobbed her for doing whatever it was she’d done—those could find their own way from here.
“Come on,” Aaron said. Lochlann gathered Rose up in his arms. Aaron grabbed the man’s coat sleeve, like he was some child who needed the reassurance, and dragged him into the flow of humanity headed down the stairs.
The line of salt and iron had been scattered by other feet, long before they reached it.
The militia was still guarding the bottom. Some of the newcomers had brought shields. Whether they’d have closed ranks before Aaron was on the first of them was a moot point: a crossbow bolt lodging in the stone in front of their faces was enough of a flinch for Aaron to simply shove through. With his own flinch, until he saw that it had been one of the blacksmith’s roommates to fire, not the blacksmith herself.
“Brat,” she said, but beckoned them down the hall, away from the direction the militia had chosen.
The militia’s way was carved rock: a direction recognizably touched by human hands, if in not so polished a way as the upper levels. The blacksmith’s direction rapidly gave way to natural cave.
Lochlann stumbled as they left the militia’s lanterns behind. Aaron didn’t. He kept his grip on the man’s sleeve, pulling him along a path carved out by those more and less than human. Aaron could hear the smith just ahead, in her breaths and the sounds of leather and cloth and her leather boots against the stone; could hear her two companions in front of her. And a fourth set of feet, just joining them: little claws over stone. Clever Hands had waited for them ahead. He took the lead now that noses were more reliable than eyes. But this path, at least, was one they all knew.
Lochlann stumbled again behind them.
…One most of them knew.
“Can she do more?” asked the blacksmith.
“With what blood?” said Rose, as irate as any thirteen year old when the adults started talking over them. She’d still enough blood to get irate. Aaron let the dark take his relief.
“We need the raccoon,” he said.
Clev didn’t say anything, up ahead. But when the correct turn came, the little stoat took it.