Swords of the Imperium (Dark Fantasy Novel) (The Polaris Chronicles Book 2) (29 page)

“I’m an expert at those!”

“Are not! Otherwise you wouldn’t be a virgin anymore!”

Jibriil started to laugh. “It’s fine, you two. We’ll just deal with the titan. It’ll be a bit easier with three of us, anyway. The matron could’ve demanded much, much worse.”

As if on cue, two clanswomen came up on him from behind, pressed their hands on Jibriil’s shoulders, and started to squeeze. He turned his head in confusion and was met with a pair of sultry smiles.

“I am Hilda Head-Taker, and this is my sister, Salia Throat-Ripper,” said the crimson-haired of the pair. “We defeated many others to claim your seed.”

Jibriil’s jaw dropped, revealing a mess of half-chewed pheasant and bread. Hilda stuck her nose in his hair and inhaled deeply.

“Yes, it was worth it. Now come with us, male.” The sisters looped arms under each of his arms and started to drag.

“Lady Enilna, you sold me out, didn’t you?” Jibriil huffed.

Enilna chuckled nervously and waved.

Taki glowered at her. “Did you barter him off to be made into meat?”

“Not
literal
meat!”

“You’re really bad at negotiating, aren’t you?”

She glared and swatted at him with a piece of rib. The glaze left a sticky mark on Taki’s nose.

Taki chortled as the realization hit him. “Then I guess I’ll just wait around for a clanswoman to come get me, then. It’s not how I imagined my first time would go, but it’ll help their people and be fun for me, so there!”

“Oh, that won’t happen,” Enilna said. “You’re safe tonight.”

“Wait, what? But they
fought
to claim the likes of Jibriil…”

“Well, I told the matron like it was. We’ll kill any monster she wants, and her daughters can bang the hell out of smelly Jibriil all night long, but I won’t let them lay a single finger on you. The old hag tried to boss me around and threaten me to high heaven, you know. She even offered to let the titan thing go if I offered you up, but I held firm! So don’t ever call me bad at negotiating. I know where to draw the line!”

Taki’s jaw dropped.
“Are you serious?”

Enilna cupped his face in her palms. “Very serious. I won’t let a bunch of horny, murderous bandit bitches pass you around like a bent reload. You, Taki Natalis, are special to me. You’re my precious friend. I thought you’d…you’d kill those poor people in the hut back there, but you didn’t. It meant a lot to me, and I think I’ve fallen in love with you a little. So I’d hate for anything bad to happen to you.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. “Now, let’s eat until we’re in pain.”

Taki heard the weeping first. It sounded strange, though, and unlike any other he’d ever heard in his life. An ululating basso throb battered its way into his skull and echoed unceasingly within. He held up a fist to signal Enilna and Jibriil to be vigilant. None of them could see the source of the weeping, but all knew they were close.

The matron’s directions had led them to a place nearly overtaken with tangled, ancient trees and littered knee-deep in dead brush. Thick fog sank the forest into a lulling darkness that seemed to invite sleep. Not an ideal place to have a fight, Taki reasoned, but on the other hand, the oppressive overgrowth would help his soldiers evade an angry titan.

“One last time,” Jibriil whispered. “If the thing attacks…”

“Enilna and I will bait it on the ground,” Taki said. “You’ll climb and target the crystals on its body.”

“What if it has no crystals?” Enilna hissed.

“Then we’re basically dead,” Jibriil said with a shrug. He trudged forward, obviously limping.

“You sure you’re okay to fight?” Enilna asked.

“I’m fine,” Jibriil said. “Just sprained a few things.”

Taki grimaced and forged on, unsure of whether to be envious or relieved. The weeping grew louder and more distracting the closer they advanced, as did the thickness of the brush. Just before it became impossible to tread farther, however, he spotted the opening to a glade.

“This is it,” he said. “Enilna, stay hidden as we planned. Jibriil and I will go forth. If we’re killed, do not fight but retreat.” Something told him not to enter the clearing with a weapon drawn. No individual bullet, milligrad or reload, would probably help much anyway.
Lotte, Sir Aslatiel, watch me,
he thought, and stepped into the open.

The glade was really part of the grassy bank of a lake, and its far end was bounded by rippling, murky water. It was impossible to tell how large the lake really was since everything else was shrouded by fog. Twisted ruins of a bridge jutted from the ground like gray saplings that had died without the chance to bud. Kneeling at the water’s edge was the Wailing Lady.

It would have been easy to mistake the titan for a colossal pile of fallen, mossy tree trunks. Her overall shape seemed to be humanoid, but much like an ancient woodpile, her profile was broken by jutting, branch-like structures. Her skin, if it could be called that, had a close resemblance to slate rock and boasted centuries of lichen and mats of velvety green moss.

Taki held in a breath, walked forward, and considered how to get the creature’s attention without getting smashed to paste. It occurred to him to leap onto it, try to find the head, and stab the hell out of everything
,
but he recognized the idea as similar to the sort of compulsion that made one want to jump off a high bridge. When nothing else came readily to mind, he simply cleared his throat and spoke.

“Er, milady Titan…”

The ground trembled as the Wailing Lady straightened her torso and shifted around on her knees. Birds’ nests and accumulated detritus plummeted to the ground around her. The titan’s face could not have been said to be human in appearance, with block-like features and eyes like deep, dark pits.

“You,” the titan said in a rumbling voice that reminded Taki of millstones grinding grain. “You’re not from around here.”

“I am not,” Taki said. “I am Taki Natalis, fahnrich of the Imperial Spetsnaz. The matron told me where to find you.”

“Are you here to laugh at me?”

“No. I was sent here to…to kill you.”

The Lady let out a baritone laugh. “Plenty have tried, all have failed. I will not move from this spot until my dear husband comes for me. Neither of you puny men look like him.”

Taki gritted his teeth. As predicted, there was a small area right on top of the Lady’s pate that seemed less slate-like than the other parts of her body. Most of the larger monstrosities had similar chinks in their armor, though the Lady’s was placed in a location impossible to hit from the ground. Fortunately, she was also encrusted with stringy vegetation and harsh outcroppings that could serve as handholds. It was just a matter of not getting crushed first.

“How do you know that your dear husband will come back to you?” Jibriil shouted. “For all you know, he is dead or has gone back on his word.”

The Lady slammed one of her blocky fists into the ground, and Taki nearly fell over from the ensuing temblor. “Imbecile, you know him not! My dust will be mingled with his, forever and forever and forever. Why should I climb the lookout? Leave!”

Shit, she’s fast as well as strong,
Taki realized as he reclaimed his footing. He glanced at Jibriil, upon whose face panic was spreading. According to Jibriil, the inherent weakness all titans had was their relative sloth in comparison to their strength. But the Wailing Lady was different. She’d crush them all like bugs.

“While your hair was still cut straight across your forehead, you played about the front gate, pulling flowers,” Enilna said, as she stepped out of the brush.

“The hell are you doing, girl?” Jibriil shouted at her. “Get back!”

The Lady stared at Enilna, her dark pits possessed of a menacing intensity. “How? How do you know this?”

Enilna put her hands on her hips. “He came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse. He walked about your seat, playing with blue plums. And you went on living in the village, two small people, without dislike or suspicion. At fourteen, you married him, your lord. You never laughed, being bashful. Lowering your head, you looked at the wall. Called to, a thousand times, you never looked back. At fifteen, you stopped scowling. You desired your dust to be mingled with his, forever and forever and forever. But at sixteen, he dragged his feet as he departed into the river of swirling eddies. He has been gone for many months while the birds make sorrowful cries overhead. And now, by the gate, the moss is grown too deeply to clear away.”

“What sort of gibberish are you spouting?” Taki said. Enilna shushed him with a glare.

“The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind,” the Lady said in a gravelly whisper. “The paired butterflies are already yellow with August over the grass in the gardens. They hurt me. I grow older.”

“He told you once,” Enilna said, gathering her fists over her chest, “that he would let you know beforehand if he came down through the narrows of the river. So that you could meet him, as far as…”

“As Sanct Gotthard,” the Lady concluded. She bowed her head. “How did you know this? How did you know what my dear husband confided only to me?”

Enilna lowered her arms. “It’s an old poem, written by Master Li long before the Fall.
Ba’gshnar
loves it because it’s by his favorite smut writer. A romantic but ultimately tragic tale. Your husband probably wanted to tell you to give up hope and move on but could not do so directly. He wanted to free you from his spell.”

“Nonsense,” the Lady said. “He clearly told me he’d send me word of his return. Even if this is an old poem and not his creation.”

“I am truly sorry,” Enilna said. “But when Master Li wrote the poem, it was because he wanted to tell a tale of two people caught in a love affair that ended too early. Two humble folk separated forever by distance and the cruelty of death. Your husband wanted you to move on, to climb the lookout. To search for your true purpose and worth. That is why you must leave this place and break free to reclaim your pride.”

“And what do you know of love?” the Lady snarled. She brought her face close enough that Enilna’s hair was blown back from her breath. “Have you a dear husband?”

Enilna let out a nervous laugh. “Well, funny you should ask! The thing about that is…you know…” She shrugged. “No.”

The Lady let out a wailing roar, twisted, and plunged a hand into the murky water. A mussel-encrusted, twenty-meter-tall pillar of stone leapt from the depths and sprayed foulness high in the air. She raised the giant club high in the air and threw a glinting arc of water droplets into the fog. Then, she swung it straight down.

Taki leapt without conscious thought and barreled into Enilna to push her out of the way. She let out a yelp when his shoulder crashed into her gut, and they rolled painfully on uneven loam speckled with fist-sized rocks. Behind them, the earth heaved as the titan’s club smashed home and sent pieces of turf flying.

“You okay?” Enilna asked.

Taki blinked. He lay on his back with a rock grinding on the small of his back, and his limbs felt on fire. Enilna lay on top of him, covered in green foulness from the bottom of the lake. He wanted to laugh at her appearance, but behind Enilna, the titan’s outstretched hand reached out to crush them.

He intoned a breathless incantation and stuck a palm out. A shimmering burst of compressed energy spat forth and smacked into the monstrous hand to repulse it. The Lady let out a high-pitched roar, and the earth heaved again as she stumbled.

“Dammit!” Jibriil shouted. From what Taki could see, the former archangel swung perilously by one hand from a ledge near one of the titan’s hips. Jibriil’s face contorted in consternation as he tried to latch his other hand on to anything else. “I said distract her, not piss her off!”

“How the hell do I do that?” Taki yelled.

“Like this!” Enilna said. She took aim with her Colt and fired.

The Lady howled and smacked at her face as if swatting flies away and let out a roar. She lifted her club again and took another swing. This time, both Taki and Enilna dove the opposite way before the massive stone pillar turned them into paste.

Taki glanced over at Enilna to make sure she still stood and then knelt to invoke another sutra. Enilna’s gun barked as it discharged lead at the titan’s newfound sensitive spots and drew the Lady’s attention away. Just as she was ready to try for another swipe at Enilna, Taki stretched out both palms and let the energy flow.

“Pyr!”
he shouted, and sent out a blast of hot plasma that hit the Lady in the back of her leg.

She howled and stumbled. Jibriil, who had made it midway up her back, let out a melodic stream of curses. The Lady issued a piercing, tree-shaking roar and rounded on Taki. She twisted her hips and swung in a wide arc, which he barely ducked under. Ancient trunks behind him snapped like stalks of wheat hit by a flail, and a cloud of angry birds erupted from the destroyed greenery. Yet more gunshots rang out from Enilna’s direction.

Taki tried to pull himself to his feet, tired beyond measure. His prana was waning fast. He found no success, though, because one of his ankles had been trapped by a pair of massive, fallen boughs. With growing panic, he tried to wrench his leg free. Suddenly, Enilna’s gunshots stopped.
She’s run out of ammunition,
Taki realized. The Lady let out an angry roar and raised her club again. This time, Taki wouldn’t be able to dodge the blow. He grimly drew his saber. Survival demanded he lose his foot, but it was better than dying meaninglessly…