Chương 64: 2.11. How We Kill It

"Okay, people." Tiago clapped his leathershod hands as he shouldered through the gate into the muster yard. The forty-odd hermandati and militia within its stonewalled circle clanked to attention in their hastily assembled munition plate.

"Ten minutes from now I want a line-up of each of you, in full kit. I want all the fire powder this settlement has, any animaxi you might possess, and any excess gear for the militia piled here, here, and here, respectively. The longest polearms you've got. Anchorpikes if there's any to be found. That's a long spear with a crossbar lug on the end and a spike on its butt. Are there any sorcerers in Shaheill?" The armored mob were quiet but for the odd clatter as they shifted foot-to-foot.

"That was not a rhetorical question, people," Tiago said.

"One." Riccana's ginger-maned head poked out from the line as she stood on tiptoe to be seen.

"But he's not well. He's… affected. By his time in the Winter War."

"Affected like wounded?"

"Not on the outside," Riccana said.

"But he hit the bottle hard once he got back, and he's not been sober since. I don't even know if he can cast the siege spell any longer, or if he'd end up setting himself on fire from the fumes." Seth and Tiago were still new in each other's lives, but the thief had come to recognize a crinkling at the edges of Tiago's eyes when he was holding back a grin or a laugh.

"You know him?"

"I do," Riccana said.

"We try to take care of him as well as we can. Least we could do, you figure."

"If all we have for now is a soused sorcerer, that's what we'll work with," Ofelia said.

"We need to run him through his fire test, Tiago."

"Yep." Tiago produced the cardstock skywire from his uniform pocket.

"The bulletin that brought us will bring more, if the Saints will supply." He approached Riccana with the message.

"We'll get these people fitted. Find that sorcerer, show him that, and bring him here." Riccana's straight posture shifted back onto the balls of her feet, robbing the little woman of a precious centimeter.

"I wonder if he won't be more trouble than he's worth, sir. There wasn't so much of a man left, even before he started trying to drown the rest. When I say take care of … I wonder whether he's even in a position to face this." The expression on Tiago's face broadcast his opinion in bold type of the sort of men who drink their lives away.

"That's not his choice to make," Seth said, before Tiago could say something worse.

"Or any of ours. We're not sending him to the front, the front's come knocking." A moment's hesitation, and then Riccana took the card.

"He might not get the difference."

"You know him, Chief," Tiago said.

"If we really can't use him, I believe you. But I need you to try, first. Do what you can." Riccana saluted smartly.

"I will."

"Thank you." Tiago returned it, and their petite subordinate hastened from the muster yard.

"She's rather short, for a CH," Ofelia said.

"This thing's the size of a townhouse," Tiago said.

"We're all short." He crossed past his sister, back to the muster yard's concrete ring as its nervous irregulars filled it with supplies. Seth and Ofelia followed him past precarious racks of two-story anchorpikes, a patchwork pile of surplus platemail, a hodgepodge of edged weaponry, and a heavy barrel with a splash of angry orange paint on its lid. This last item Tiago opened, and frowned into.

"Is this all the powder we've got? A blond hermandat, his armor close-fitted and meticulously polished, saluted beside the stock.

"Yes, sir."

"Do you have a powder cannon?" Ofelia asked. The man's shine dimmed.

"We have rifles."

"That'll tickle it, anyway," Ofelia said. Tiago lifted a pane of polished onyx from the supply pile, its octagonal edge bordered in riveted steel.

"And just this one animaxis?"

"Yes, sir," the hermandat said.

"Sorry, sir." Tiago returned it to its crooked place on the stack.

"No, no, just… try not to go unlit, I suppose. We can only catch one soul." The shiny hermandat ahem'd.

"Sir, may I speak of something indelicate?"

"It's an indelicate night."

"That woman is not the Chief Hermandat, sir. Our Chief vacated the village along with the Corregidor when the skywire came in. Riccana wasn't next in line, either. She's—""She's what?" Tiago's eyes narrowed.

"What are you telling me this for? Who was next in line?"" I was, sir. I'm the—""Why did you not speak up sooner?"

"I—well, I—she was insubordinate, and I was waiting for an officer to—""What order was she insubordinate to, little man?" Tiago's glare was as black as a seraph cavern.

"What did you tell these people to do, that she could overrule you in their heads? We're all a day away from saving the entire territory or dying the worst possible way anyone can fucking die, and you think I'm about to lock up the only woman with the balls to do something about it?" Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"I—forgive me. I thought you should be made aware."

"It's time for you to fuck off," Tiago said.

"Sir—"" Fuck off," Tiago repeated.

"Back to your post, or you can desert with your chickenshit CH." The tin soldier clanked fretfully back into line. Seth took up his former position at Tiago's ear.

"What are we thinking?"

"We're thinking that skywire better catch wide and drag more bodies in." Tiago scratched the wispy pubescent hairs on his upper lip.

"Because if this is all we have to stop a blackfeather, we are fucked with a capital fuck."" I'm thinking that half-pint impostor scouring the town has caught my brother's eye," Ofelia said.

"Sadly shadowed as it is. That was very gallant, Tiago."

"Shut up, Feeli."

"He's got your inclination in reverse, Seth," Ofelia said.

"He enjoys looming over ladies."

"The Legion should be here in force to stop this blackfeather, and they're not, and she's just a rhubarb farmer, and she and hers are standing in front of it anyway," Tiago said.

"If you want to hear I admire her bravery, then whatever. I do."

"Admiring her bravery. Uh huh." Ofelia leaned Seth's way.

"Do all Plainlanders keep their bravery in their round, perky butts, or is that just Shaheill?" Tiago swatted her. Seth was barely listening.

"Would my Darkness work on it?"

"On what?" Ofelia's brow crinkled in momentary confusion.

"Oh, the seraph. I'm afraid I doubt it. Seraphs, especially stupid ones like a blackfeather, go berserk when they see kindred. If it works the way we think, the great bastard won't really give a shit about whether you belong, and there's no way to test it without putting you right in its crosshairs."

"I'm not sure what you'd accomplish climbing up on it anyway," Tiago said. Seth indicated the barrel.

"I could put that thing of fire powder on the back of its skull."

"Damn, il Gutierre. Ballsy." Tiago allowed a trace of amusement past his mercenary frown.

"But it's a low explosive. It won't do more than a siege spell could."

"So how do we kill it?" Tiago's reply was swallowed in the doleful sea of the saintspeaker steeple's bell, ringing its heavy, brassy clong above the village square. He held up an apologetic finger to Seth and raised his voice into its echo.

"All right, people. Weapons stay in the yard, the rest to the scaffold. Eyes and ears to the Verdugo." The three unlit companions followed their undercooked militia to the square where Anna stood atop the village's scaffold, her glare sweeping across the assembly like a lighthouse's beam. Undersecretary Simon il Teremi, the acting Corregidor, tarried sheepishly behind her.

"Boy, girl." Anna's gravelly voice carried an unnatural distance across the square.

"Up here." Tiago and Ofelia jogged to the scaffold's boards and ascended its steps to join their mother. Seth briefly caught Anna's narrowed eyes, which narrowed further at the contact. He stayed where he was. Anna stepped to a canvas sheet—a wagon tarp, to go by the O-rings on the edges. Tiago hastened to an edge and helped the Verdugo hang it across the scaffold's struts. Across its rugged hemp, an image had been painted in black linseed.

A four-legged beast, its head crowned with curling ram horns, its back studded with upward slashes like a child's drawing of a cactus.

"This is the blackfeather Enna-Belum." Anna unsheathed a dirk from her brace of knives and held it next to the mastiff-sized image; it came up to about a third of the thing's height.

"This is you." The image cast itself into the crowd's surface and rippled dismayed whispers through them.

"This beast could effortlessly kill any individual it encountered," Anna said.

"Tomorrow, when it comes for us, you will obey my orders and in sum become a deadlier predator than it has any hope of surviving." She thunked the dirk through the center of the image, where it stuck into the wooden spar behind it.

"Three teams." She moved to a capped plywood crate at the edge of the scaffold and kicked it onto its side. Strips of cloth spilled from it like multicolored entrails.

"Tie your color to yourself. Somewhere clear and obvious. Each team is equally important and equally endangered. If I catch you trading it's ten lashes and I'm holding the whip. I want anyone who knows crossbows, fire powder rifles, bows, javelins. Projectiles. Step to this side." Fifteen or so people filtered through the assembly to the corner Anna's pointed index indicated.

"You're Yellow. At the beast's approach, you will aim here." Anna punched a finger onto the painted seraph's face.

"We have a stockpile of weapons for you, and there's quicklime at Mortauk's garrison, three hours west. You will disorient and blind the monster, so that it cannot kill your friends." She took a handful of saffron cloth strips and held them out to Ofelia.

"Girl." The designated girl grabbed the cloth and hurried to the sequestered soldiers, who greeted her approach with varying ratios of stoicism-to-dread.

"Green team," Anna said, as her daughter badged the villagers.

"When Yellow has done its job, you will be cued. You're the primaries. You'll break from the line and you'll flank. The beast will be disoriented and blinded. Be fearless, fast and precise. Billhooks, sickles, halberds. Tendons, knee joints, leg muscles." Tiago gathered the green strips and descended into the assembled Shaheillians.

"Red team is the anchorpike line." Anna pointed across the square to the muster yard, where the racks of pike towered up past the stone walls.

"If you have not previously used an anchorpike: these are weapons designed so that terrified idiots can fight and kill the thing you are fighting. You will be brave and you will be smart, and you'll survive. The metal bit at the back goes in the ground, as far as you can stick it. You hold it steady, seven spans from the pikehead, and you allow the planet to take the seraph's impact." Undersecretary Simon took a red cloth from the pile and tied it around his own forearm.

He took the rest and climbed off the scaffold.

"With luck, the monster will be too addled to mount a charge in the first place," Anna said.

"If it does, and if you're planted right, and if nobody shits their pants and flees, you will check that charge. I've seen it done. No standing close. Keep the line open. Staying tight will not save you. If the rest of the teams do their jobs, you won't even get near the blackfeather until it's served up to you blinded and crippled." Seth fought the urge to duck away from the crowd as they were tagged in red and green.

"When the thing is disabled, the sorcerers—however many we get—lay into it with as many siege spells as they can cast," Anna said.

"Once that's done, Red loosens its anchorpikes, advances, and drives its points into the vulnerable spots. That's the underarms here, this point here, below the ribcage, and the throat. The monster will be dead, your families will be safe, and for the rest of your lives you'll tell any taphouse you walk inside that when a blackfeather crawled its way through the dome, ready to crush us like ants, you stood tall, stood together, and stuck the lance of the Legion up its misbegotten ass."

A smattering of uncertain applause broke out, then grew until it had reached a genuine cheer. Anna let it wash past her, impassive as a stone in a stream. Seth sidled up to Ofelia, who had finished distributing her colors and now waited past the crowd's edge.

"Will it work?" Ofelia studied the sky as if the stars held some fatal forecast.

"If we get enough reinforcements," she said.

"And enough sorcerers. And if everyone's good at their jobs, and brave. Then yes, it'll work. Though we'll lose a dozen or two."

"A dozen, or two?" Tiago joined them, a green cloth fluttering around his forehead.

"Two."

"Ever the optimist, T," Ofelia said.

"Two dozen is the optimist number. Don't call me T."

"What's the pessimist number?" Seth asked.

"Dunno. Didn't get a look at the population sign coming in." Tiago gave a pair of light pats to Seth's arm.

"You can sleep if you need, Seth. Carriage is open." Atop the scaffold Anna stood above and away from them, arms folded and face grim. Seth caught her looking; her gaze slid from him and fixed on the nighttime horizon. Her whiskers twitched. A blackfeather calls for strength. You aren't strong.

"I don't need sleep," Seth said.

"I need a spear."