A week ago, he would have added except after our lovely evening together, of course, or something similar. I hesitate, then say, “Your packs have been doing well.”
He nods, bleakly. “Did you know Ghelty? About your age, five foot tall and skinny as a twig, but rot, what a fighter. She was right in front of me, fighting a scuttler, and a blueshell came up behind her. I shouted something, but she just … missed it. Too tired. Rotting thing cut her to bits. I killed it afterward, but what good does that do?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and somewhat to my own surprise I mean it.
“Meroe was right,” he says. “She made the right decision, and people are dying anyway.”
“Believe me.” My chest feels tight. “She knows.”
“Ghelty used to dance,” he says. “She was such a proper little thing, most of the time, but if you got a couple of drinks into her she’d dance, and it was—”
“Can I ask you something?” I say, hoping to change the subject.
“What?”
“That … shield you make, with your Melos power. How do you do that?”
“It’s not hard,” he says. “Just try to picture the armor opening out, like a flower. It takes a lot of energy, though.”
“Did someone teach it to you?”
“Jarli.” He shakes his head. “God, I wish she was here.”
“Did she teach Karakoa the sword he uses?” I raise my hand. “Half the time my blades just scratch the surface of crab shell, but he cuts right through it.”
“Good trick, isn’t it?” Zarun grins, and looks like his old self for a moment. “He’s a Myrkai talent, you see. Never uses it to throw fire around, but he spreads that energy through his Melos blade. The heat helps it cut clean.”
I’d never heard of two Wells being combined like that, even in people who could use more than one. Though it wasn’t much help to me, since I didn’t have even a touch of Myrkai.
“Glad he’s on our side.”
“Me too.” He cocks his head. “Are you angry with me? For using you against the Butcher?”
“I probably should be, but I’m too tired. Are you angry with me for stealing your dredwurm’s eye?”
“Let’s call it even.”
“I did seduce you.”
“Is that how it went?” He gives a crooked grin. “Well. I didn’t mind. If we live through all of this…”
He makes a vague but nonetheless obscene gesture. I can’t help but laugh.
* * *
I wake up in the morning—if it is morning—to find Meroe huddled beside me, her head resting on my shoulder. She looks so carefree, sleeping, that for a while I don’t move.
The second day’s march goes much like the first. At the head of the column, the hunting packs flush out the crabs and cut them down, a never-ending fight that leaves more and more crew stumbling away injured. Sister Cadua and her assistants can provide only bandages and crab juice, then a pat on the back as the pack members return to the fight. In the rear, the attacks are less intense, but we still have to stay on guard.
Fortunately, the center of the column is relatively safe. The youngest crew gather there, and the injured, and those whose Wells are too weak to be any use in a fight. It’s where I’m walking, too, when a long, red leg slips up from underneath the bridge and plunges into the crowd.
The farther we’ve come, the less familiar the crabs have been. The scavengers have names for some of them, but we’ve come far enough that there are creatures even they have never encountered. This one is certainly beyond my own experience, a towering, spindly giant of a thing with eight legs, each only as thick as my wrist but several times longer than I am tall. Far above us, they support an oval body, shaggy with brown fur. A central mouth bristles with fangs.
The air fills with screams as the thing swings itself up. It must have been nestled against the underside of the bridge, somehow patient enough to wait until the front line had passed it before attacking. Smart, for a crab, or maybe just lucky. Either way, it’s waded into the most vulnerable part of our line, with anyone who can fight several hundred yards away behind a mass of panicking people.
The bridges aren’t the safest place to panic, either. Some sections of a rickety metal railing remain, but most are long since rusted away, leaving nothing between us and a sheer drop. As the young and the injured flee from the red-armored crab, they pack together, pushing the crowd dangerously close to the edges.
Near me, I can see a girl Tori’s age fall to her knees. Her shouts are inaudible under the general panic, and before she can get up someone kicks her in the side, sending her sprawling toward the drop. The crab takes another step forward, and the crowd surges, shoving the girl over the edge.
Once again, I’m moving before I’m conscious of making a decision, sliding toward her as she overbalances and begins to fall. Her hands claw at the unyielding metal, desperately, and I go down on my stomach and grab her wrist before she disappears forever into the dark. The weight of her nearly jerks my shoulder out of its socket, and her nails dig into the back of my hand, drawing blood. She swings sideways, scraping my arm against the edge of the bridge. I get her in my other hand out just before my grip gives way, and start to heave her back up. Muscles clench and strain in my chest and back, and on my stomach I feel the pop of a stitch giving way. A hot gush of fluid dampens my shirt.
I manage to get the girl back on the bridge. She clings to my hand even after her feet are back on solid metal, and I have to pry myself away. More screams draw my attention back to the crab, which is chasing the mass of people pressing toward the rear of the column. Its furry body dips down, like a bird taking fish from the water, and snatches a boy out of the crowd. He shrieks as it lifts him high into the air, hanging from its underside, long, flexible mandibles slowly closing around him.
The only accessible parts of the thing are its legs. I ignite my blades and charge, but a swing against the armored limb only produces a long scorch mark on the red plate. Even driving a spike into that armor isn’t going to help, not from here, which means there’s nothing for it. I jump, gripping the leg in both hands, and start to climb.
The crab takes notice when I pull myself up past its second joint. It pauses in its slow ingestion of the screaming boy to shake its leg, like a dog with a burr. I do my best burr impression and hang on. The crab raises a second leg and tries to scrape me off. I grit my teeth, letting its taloned foot press against my armor, the familiar crackle of Melos power raising heat on my back.
At least my armor works again.
Another body length and I’m close to the screaming boy. I grip the crab’s leg between my thighs, freeing my hands, and reignite my blades. I don’t dare simply cut him free—we’re high enough above the bridge now that the fall would be dangerous—so I go for the crab’s body, punching my glowing green weapons into the furry mass. The core of the thing is surprisingly small, and much softer than its legs. It twitches with each strike, and the blood that bubbles out is disturbingly close to human red. I focus on where its legs meet its body, and before long the creature is leaning sideways, wobbling closer to the abyss.
The boy’s leg is close enough to grab. I dismiss one blade, take hold of him, and deliver a final strike to the crab’s core with the other weapon. It staggers, its jaws spasming, and lets the boy drop. I let go at the same time, pulling him close to me as we fall, wrapping my body and my Melos armor around him as I once wrapped Meroe for a much longer plummet.
This fall is thankfully brief. We hit the bridge hard enough to knock the wind out of me, a spray of green sparks earthing themselves in the metal all around us. Above me, the red crab weaves drunkenly, then collapses, its body tumbling over the side of the bridge, followed by a tangle of legs.
The boy on top of me is still screaming, which means he can’t be too badly hurt. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about myself. There’s a lot of blood around us, and I think it’s mostly mine.
* * *
I don’t quite pass out, but the rest of the day goes by in a blur, a shifting mass of visions that change whenever I blink.
Someone carries me. Or several people. I think it’s Thora, at first, but later it seems like Zarun. I can hear the roar of Myrkai fire in the distance, and shouted commands, as though my ears were stuffed with cotton.
Meroe walks beside me. That’s the one constant. When we stop for a while, she pulls up my shirt to change my bandages, which are soaked alarmingly red. I try to say something to her, but it comes out as a croak, and she shushes me.
Sometime in the afternoon, I fall asleep. When I wake up, we’re on another support platform, with a spiral stair wrapped around the central pylon. Everyone is sprawled on the deck again, so the day’s march must be over.
My head is clearer than it’s been since the fight, though I still feel as weak as a kitten. I look around for Meroe, and find her nearby, carefully pouring water from a skin into a larger clay jug.