The Iron Revolution Chapter 70: Mayhem

Chapter 70: Mayhem

The man who stepped forward from the encirclement held his crossbow aimed at Lewin’s chest. He was older than the others, the kind of older that came from years of doing this exact work.

He kept the weapon steady. "The document," he said. "Hand it over, and the three of you walk out."

Lewin looked at him. He thought about the names on that first page and what they meant. He thought about his mother and his sister in the citadel workers’ wing, and what would happen to them if Beorn’s position collapsed.

He did not lower his eyes. "I don’t know what you are talking about," he said.

The crossbows fired.

Lewin moved on instinct. He got behind the merchant house doorframe before the second bolt fired. A third bolt scraped the wood above him.

He pressed his back flat to the wall and kept his left arm pinned hard to his ribs. His right hand stayed on the sword. Across the road, Orm was still at the wall corner with two crossbows on him. He had not moved. He understood that the corner gave him cover on one side, and he used it.

The air above the settlement had changed. For three hours he had been not-looking at the shimmer, and now it was thicker, closer. It felt like a room where something was wrong before anyone could name it. He caught it at the corner of his vision and kept his eyes on the road.

The sound reached his chest before his ears identified it. It was low and drawn out. It came from nowhere, but he felt it in the ground through the soles of his boots.

Every crossbowmen in the encirclement went stiff for a moment. The man who had demanded the document lowered his weapon slightly and looked up.

At the settlement’s eastern side, where the buildings thinned toward the unknown ruins, the air cracked. Not from one point outward, but all at once. Through the fracture, the light looked bent and diffused.

The first creature dropped through.

Its landing shook the ground thirty yards away. It had six limbs attached to its body, three on each side, spaced along the length of its torso so it moved low and wide over the earth, like a spider. It was the size of a cart horse. It did not look at the men in the road.

It rushed west toward the town center in a motion that looked grotesque and natural to it. Two men were on its way. The creature’s forward limb swept outward on its next step and caught the first man across the chest. The chest was split in a torrent of blood. He went down before the limb finished its arc.

The second man came at the flank. The back limb’s return stroke took his head at the neck, a clean decapitation that sent his head flying and his neck bleeding like a fountain.

The encirclement broke apart.

Two of the three crossbows that had been on Orm shifted toward the larger creature. The third man hesitated between his orders and the monster moving through the settlement.

Orm moved when the window opened, sliding along the wall and taking ground between positions. He headed for the alley mouth. Lewin came around the side of the merchant house.

Ern came around the rear corner from the back alley, a cut above his eye and nothing else to show for however he had spent the last three minutes. He had read the trap and gone out the back before the front closed. There was no time to say so.

A second fracture opened above the company town.

Screaming started somewhere south and did not stop. It had the volume of sheer panic and terror that meant there were more of these things. A third impact shook through the ground from the town far end.

The second creature came through the fracture at man height. It stood slightly taller than a man on two legs, with three knees in each leg. The extra knees made its walk a series of pauses, as if it had to find the ground fresh with every step.

It came straight toward Lewin.

He had his sword in his right hand. His left arm was still tight against his ribs. He had nowhere to go except in front of it. The creature reached for him with four fingers, and he felt the grip force through his coat.

He dropped under the grab and drove the sword at its midsection. The blade skidded off. He pulled back and hit the same place again. The result was the same.

The paused-step brought it around. The grab landed on his left shoulder and found the bolt there. Pain burst through him at once. He gritted his teeth, drove the sword downward into where the upper leg met the torso, and felt the blade bite two inches deep. That leg gave on that side.

He struck the same place again. It went down and stayed there.

Lewin looked up.

Orm was against a second creature of the same kind and striking the same weak points Lewin had found. It was not stopping. Ern came in from the side with his knife and hit the lower leg section, breaking the paused-step into a stagger. Lewin crossed the road and put his sword into the leg on the opposite side, where Ern had shifted the creature’s weight. It went down.

They stepped back.

At the settlement’s far end, near the ruins where the first fracture had opened, something stood at the boundary that none of the other creatures had come near. It had an enormous, ash white humanoid body, with absurd long limbs and no face. It was still. It held nothing raised and did not move toward the fighting.

For one moment, it seemed to be looking at something above the town, or at the town itself, or at the long pale break in the sky over it. Lewin watched it for two breaths. Then something from the south demanded his attention, and when he looked back, it was gone.

The road had changed. Most of the encirclement was gone, swallowed by the chaos spreading from the south, or behind buildings, or down. The large creature was still moving somewhere west in the smoke and screaming from the southern part of the town. One building in that direction was burning. Lewin still could not tell how many things were in the settlement, or where.

The document was still in his coat.

"North through the back alley," he said.

He glanced at Orm and Ern to make sure they had heard him. "Stay close."

Orm moved. Ern covered the rear.

They ran between the buildings toward the settlement’s back, and the barrenland opened ahead of them as they cleared the last building.