Sara Douglass – The Axis Trilogy 3 – StarMan

There. Timozel smiled in satisfaction. Below him lay the crippled town of Jervois Landing. Many of the buildings were slicked so deep with ice they were almost buried; when he peered closer Timozel could see at least three houses so completely iced over that they were closed to the outside world.

His smile deepened. If any people had been inside those houses they would by now have frozen to death. He was well pleased.

Battalions of Skraelings were moving quickly south, outflanking the town. Timozel had spared only a quarter of his army for this attack; the rest of the Skraeling mass he was already pushing south to their destination. Timozel was on a tight schedule; he needed to dispose of what pitiful force Axis had here in less than half a day, then move his army south and then . . . well, then move them to their hiding place. But he needed to get them there within ten days to be sure of avoiding the force that Axis was sure to send north once he heard of Jervois Landing’s collapse.

Although Gorgrael could recloak the entire northern regions of this land in storms so devastating that no man could survive more than a few minutes, Timozel did not want Axis to face weather that severe. Bitter cold, surely, but nothing that would prevent him finally leading his army north. Timozel very, very much wanted Axis to get through.

We are ready. Timozel shared his thoughts not only with his subcommand – the SkraeBolds and the Skraelings of higher than average intelligence – but also with Gorgrael, eagerly following the course of the excitement with his mind’s eye, deep within his Ice Fortress.

Privately, very privately, Timozel harboured resentment that Gorgrael should remain safely shrouded within his Fortress. Did he not want to face Axis himself? Or…was he afraid of him?

Timozel kept these thoughts very dark and very, very deep.

But he had better things to think of now, namely the killing that awaited him below.

Begin, he ordered.

Ninety Ice Worms moved in first. Men in buildings closest to the northern outskirts of the town heard the sound first, a frightful slithering and screeching as the Worms hunched and scraped their way through the frozen streets.

No-one assayed forth to attack them. Even if they had, archers would have lowered their bows in horror.

Like his Skraelings, Gorgrael had been working on the IceWorms over the past few months. In unrestrained narcissism, he had created all of his creatures with the huge silver eyes that he himself enjoyed.

The only problem, and it had been the problem that had largely frustrated GorgraePs attempts to push south to this point, had been that all of his creatures, whether Skraeling or Ice Worm or even SkraeBold, had been terribly vulnerable through their eyes.

Not so now. Now both Skraelings and IceWorms had their heads wrapped in bony armour that left only narrow slits over their eyes. Their vision was somewhat restricted, but it would take a skilled and extremely calm swordsman or archer to deliver a killing thrust.

Behind the IceWorms crept thousands of Skraelings, fully fleshed, equipped with bony protective armour, their mouths hanging open in delicious anticipation of the killing that awaited them.

Calmly, and with the most supreme confidence, the IceWorms crawled to the main buildings where most of the troops were likely to be located. Crouched behind one of the lower windows of the market hall where he was camped, Jorge was dry-mouthed with fear. He knew he was powerless to stop their attack; all he could do for his men was order them away from the windows and to the lower floors.

But what did it matter when it would delay their deaths but a few minutes?

He glanced behind him to the remainder of the Icarii wing. “Get out!” he rasped, “get back to Carlon. You alone will have a chance of escape. Tell your StarMan what you have seen here today. Go!” he shouted. “Do not linger!”

The Wing commander, RuffleCrest JoyFlight, signalled to the other seven Icarii. He did not share Jorge’s belief that they

would get back to Carlon. Surely Gorgrael would have Gryphon circling above – and RuffleCrest had seen what a Gryphon could do. But he nodded anyway. Perhaps one or two of them could get back.

They swiftly moved to a rear door and lifted on silent wings into the air. They blinked in the unexpected sunshine, circled for as long as they dared, noting the awesome forces that were crawling through the town and, further west, through the northern Aldeni plains, then they bunched close together for protection and sped south.

To the north Timozel’s eyes narrowed. So. He had expected such a foolish display of courage. Did they really expect to escape unscathed?

SkraeFear, who waited with one of the Skraeling units still outside Jervois Landing, screeched in his mind. Let us destroy them, Lord Timozel! Or send the Gryphon! They can rip them to shreds in seconds!

Fool’. Timozel replied and drew on the well of power that Gorgrael had given him to wrap SkraeFear’s mind and body with bands of cold steel. He could feel, if not hear, SkraeFear scream far below him. How had Gorgrael managed with such incompetents previously?

He touched the minds of a pack of thirty Gryphon circling to the west and directed them after the Icarii. But I want one or two of them to escape, he ordered, and he felt the Gryphon minds accept and agree. At least the Gryphon understood the principle of unquestioning obedience.

The Icarii birdwoman at RuffleCrest’s wing felt rather than heard the Gryphon behind them. She wheeled to her left and dived with a wordless cry, and as the Gryphon pack struck the Icarii Wing, the birdmen and women broke formation, desperately trying to evade the Gryphon and, increasingly, engaged in useless battles for their own lives.

One after another they felt the Gryphon on their backs, felt the great legs wrap about their bodies, felt talons and razor-sharp beaks rip into flesh.

RuffleCrest felt the sudden rush of air and hot breath as a Gryphon fell through the air towards him, and he desperately twisted and dived, hoping that he would prove more agile than the creature behind him. He groped for an arrow from the quiver on his back, but just as his hand closed about the shaft of an arrow he was seized in the death grip of the Gryphon.

He screamed, but he could do nothing more. One arm was twisted and trapped beneath the body of the Gryphon as it clutched to his back – agony flared as the unnatural forces twisting his arm finally snapped both bone and tendon. His other hand grasped uselessly at one of the great paws that were wrapped about his chest and belly. His wings fluttered uselessly; the only thing that kept him in the air now were the powerful wings of the Gryphon.

To one side RuffleCrest could see another Gryphon clutching a birdwoman in a death grip. Even in the split second that his eyes remained on the woman the Gryphon’s talons sheared through flesh and bone, and before his eyes the woman literally burst apart in a shower of blood and body parts.

The last thing he saw before he closed his eyes in horror was the carcass of his comrade falling through the sky.

The Gryphon tightened its grip, and RuffleCrest realised that at any heartbeat its talons would begin to tear him apart.

And indeed they did begin to tear, but they did not inflict fatal wounds. A whimper of pain escaped RuffleCrest as he felt the Gryphon’s talons slice into the muscles of his chest and belly, but they did not penetrate to a killing depth. After raking him with its talons for several minutes, slowly, extending its enjoyment, the Gryphon unbelievably released him, and RuffleCrest fell almost a hundred paces through the air before he recovered enough to spread his wings and push himself as hard as he could for the south.

Five of the hellish creatures chased him and toyed with him for several leagues, RuffleCrest sobbing with fear, certain that at any moment one would strike and finish him.

But they didn’t. Eventually they left him alone, and when RuffleCrest finally looked back it was to see that the sky behind him was empty of both Gryphon and Icarii.

He was the only one of his Wing who had survived.

Hugging his crippled arm to his chest, RuffleCrest slowly limped south. The flight would take him several days, and he would be almost dead from exhaustion and the spreading poison from his infected wounds when he finally reached safety.

In his more lucid moments, he wondered why he had been left alive.

Almost immediately after the Icarii had fled, the IceWorms staged an attack. Rearing their monstrous heads, they crashed through the upper windows of the buildings that they ringed, heaving obscenely to disgorge their cargoes of Skraelings directly into the buildings’ upper levels.