Crown of Ash bs-4 Read online

  That’s probably a bad thing.

  Sol was yelling at him. H e couldn’t hear a word th e big man said.

  Everyone lay scattered on the ground, alive but dazed, contorted in awkward positions where they’d landed at the bottom of the dune. Smoke drifted over the m.

  The flaming wreckage of the Rakzeri ship slid down the sand and straight towards them. It would crush them all in moments.

  Sound crashed back into his ears like a tidal wave.

  “ Kane, mo ve your ass!” Sol shouted. The criminal hel d Jade ’s arm in one hand and had Maur over his shoulder.

  Ronan ran at Kane and tackled him, knocking the wind from his lungs. T hey both roll ed out of the path of the flaming wreckage. He saw an inverted image of the burning ship as it slid and tumbl ed down the dune. Black fire plumed into the air. Drifts of ash came down like snowflakes.

  The f liers approached, and t he tank drew within a few hundred yards. C hains dangled from the cannons and tore the sand. S hadowy Razorwings soared in low and nearly touched the ground with their oily black bodies. Kane saw dark armored vampire riders with bladed hand-cannons and serrated swords.

  Jade’s spirit was the first to strike. Undulating saws of purple light cut a swath across the sand. The Razorwings avoided the attack with ease, but she bought the team enough time to split and run in different directions.

  Her arcane blades kicked up a dust storm that twisted violently into the air. The storm expanded until it enveloped the entire crash site. Kane couldn’t see more than a few yards out, but he knew that meant he couldn’t be seen, either. The sand somehow stayed out of his eyes and throat, which meant Jade shielded them from the storm’s effects.

  Kane and Ronan lost sight of the others, but he knew Jade would be able to find them — he felt her telepathic presence at the edge of his mind.

  The sound of the tank fa ded as it struggled through the desert storm, and the fliers’ reptilian cries echoed in the distance as they desperately search ed for the ir prey.

  Kane and Ronan kept low and used the dunes for cover. They saw the silhouettes of the fliers in the grit — filled sky and heard the metal roar of massive wheels, but the sand mist concealed them, and soon they moved a safe distance away from the crash.

  The dunes were steep and difficult to cross. Kane and Ronan ran up and down sand drifts, muscles aching and out of breath, until they found themselves in a shallow stone valley made of blasted stone, either an ancient riverbed or a fault line that cut straight down into the sand like a crack.

  They only had to wait a few minutes before the others caught up with them. Miraculously, they hadn’t been followed.

  Whirling patterns of blue — and- white rock poked through the sand. Deep shadows flowed like water through the breaks in the milky stone. The ground in the small valley was hard and cold, and they actually discovered traces of black ice.

  They hid there in the crevice, concealed in side fissures in the rock. They heard the growl of some great aerial beast — not a Razorwing, and no thing that any of them recognized, but they decided they’ d rather not find out what it was — and huddled together as icy wind scraped past them.

  After a while, everything was quiet. Jade’s storm faded to a drift of angry wind. Kane saw how pale and out of breath she was. No doubt she was fatigued from using her magic so much.

  They waited another hour before they finally emerged. The afternoon had drawn long, and t he liquid sun hung frozen in the silver sky. Kane felt the chill of the ocean wind as surely as if they stood at the shore, but he guessed they were still a few miles out…and that was when he realized he didn’t actually have a clue where they were.

  “Do you know our location, Jade?” he asked. “I completely lost my bearings when we ran away from the crash.”

  “With no supplies,” Sol nodded glumly.

  “Shit,” Ronan said.

  “Damn it,” Kane echoed.

  “Maur is not pleased.”

  “I’m with Maur,” Ronan said. “Do we even know where the ship is now? We’ve been running around the dunes for a couple of hour s.”

  “Jade?” Kane asked quietly. She looked exhausted, and more than a bit panicked. “Can you get us back to the ship?”

  “ I think so,” she said hesitantly. “ But whatever we saw in those ruins back there is making it hard for my spirit to search the area.”

  “Your storm work ed,” Ronan said sternly.

  “ Using my spirit for violence and using it to search an area are two entirely different things,” Jade said. “Whatever that phenomenon was, it’s been well hidden, and whatever magic was used to conceal it i s ma king this entire region unstable.”

  They walked beneath the pale and open sky. Kane heard howls in the distance. The wind was cold and sharp. His body was sore, and his knee ached like someone had jabbed a needle into it. Still, the fact that ever y step didn’t make him double over in agony was a good sign. He’d bandaged his arm — he didn’t remember removing the sliver of steel, but it was long gone — and Jade’s spirit had staunched the bleeding. Even then, it still throbbed and burned like crazy.

  They came to the top of a steep rise and found a good vantage of the desert. Thick drifts of cobalt dust shifted in the distance like corroding walls. Storm clouds brewed far to the east. T here were few discernible landmarks they could use to get their bearings: just the ubiquitous sand, rising and falling with no pattern or rhyme, cold and glassy, striated in bands of black and white. There was no sign of the ship, and it wa s impossible to even pick up the smoke trail with so much dust and sand in the air.

  “Maur wants to know what the hell that was — that vision!” the Gol said.

  “Yeah, that would be nice to know…” Ronan echoed.

  “Can we worry about that shit later?” Kane said angrily. “We need to figure out where in the hell we are. We can worry about what we did or didn’t see after we make sure we’re not going to freeze to death out here.”

  Kane saw everyone’s faces change at that, and he was glad for it. They had absolutely zero supplies from the airship with them, and if the sun went down they’d be in for a difficult and potentially lethal night…and that was just from the cold. He hadn’t even considered the predators or vampires.

  “Got a ny clue as to how we do that?” Ronan asked.

  “Well…I have a compass in my knife,” Kane said. “ Let’s give that a try. ”

  What they also had were the map coordinates to Blacksand, and even though they m ust have been several hours out it was still better than nothing, since it seemed unlikely they’d be able to retrace their steps back to the crash site.

  They marched. The going was difficult, and every time they started to make some headway they found themselves in a dust storm or standing in an area of dangerously soft sand. The wind hounded them every step of the way and sliced through their clothes.

  Kane’s skin turned raw from the cold. Sand invaded his boots and made his feet feel like lead. He, Ronan and Sol all took turns carrying Maur: it wasn’t that the Gol was feeling weak, but with the difficult terrain and the ir desire to make haste he needed help keep ing up with the group. Jade kept everyone as warm as she could with her spirit — it was the only reason they hadn’t come down with hypothermia — but doing so kept her constantly fatigued, and if she kept it up too long she’d end up wearing herself out.

  Distant animal howls echoed through th e hollow sky, which turned vein- blue as the sun slowly sank towards the shifting horizon.

  “Was that a portal?” Sol asked. A great deal of time had passed in near silence. Their feet lifted and fell with a monotonous rhythm. Kane and Ronan led the group with Jade close behind them; Sol had Maur on his shoulders, and they brought up the rear. The sky was dark and thin. They saw by the light of dusk, and that light was fading fast.

  Kane’s mind had wandered. He couldn’t even remember what he’d been thinking about.

  “No,” Ronan said flatly. “We were…halluci
nating, or something.”

  The vision. They’re talking about the vision, that shit we saw before we were attacked.

  “ Maur thinks it was a portal,” Maur said.

  “ I’m inclined to agree,” Jade said over the hiss of the rising wind. “ And I think it’s what the vampires are out here looking for.”

  “ Yeah, you said that earlier,” Kane said. “The question is whether you knew that before we came out here.”

  “Say what?” Sol said.

  “Oh come on,” Ka ne said. They kept walking. “Are y ou trying to tell me you didn’t know about the Gates to Hell back there?”

  “No,” Jade said. “Not that we have to explain anything to you, but no: we didn’t know about it. All w e knew was that the vampires were at our borders. You were supposed to help us stop them.”

  “And you still are,” Sol said.

  “This sucks,” Ronan groaned.

  “What, fulfilling your end of the bargain?” Jade snapped.

  “Being stuck out in the desert, hunted by vampires, completely lost, knowing there’s a portal to hell nearby, trapped with people I’d just as soon cut open as help survive.” Ronan made a p oint to smile. “Like I said…t his sucks.”

  No one really had an answer to that.

  They walked. Kane thought he spied lights in the distance, but the windblown waves of black dust made it difficult to tell. He saw the shadow s of giant fliers, but they moved askance, like black paper birds in the dying light.

  Wait…

  He looked closer. The shapes grew larger. L ights cut through the quiet sandstorm, halcyon strobes and hooded flood light s attached to steel machines, low-flying vessels with curved sails and jagged hulls.

  “Do you see that?” Jade asked.

  Kane stared.

  “Yeah. I do.”

  The ships — there were three of them — had clearly seen the m, as well. The vessels had been headed south, but suddenly they veered east on an intercept course. T here would be no avoiding the ships, not with how fast they moved, so Kane readied his weapon and signaled for everyone to move.

  As the skiffs drew within a few hundred yards, Kane saw that they were shaped like bladed planks. They had low-dragging rudders that nearly scraped the ground. L arge chainguns and recoilless rifles were mounted on the forward hulls. A handful of human-sized silhouettes stood on the decks of each vessel.

  “Those aren’t vampire ships,” Ronan said, and Sol nodded in agreement.

  They took cover behind a sharply curved dune and watch ed as the vessels approach ed.

  Not like this dune will give us much cover against those chain guns, Kane thought. If they decide to start shooting, we’re screwed, no matter where we’re standing.

  The ships accelerated and spread out. Their turbine engines were quiet. S torms of dust trailed in their wake.

  The vessels were about 300 yards away when a blast tore through the air. T he lead ship exploded.

  Hot wind flashed over Kane, and he had to shiel d his eyes against the light of the flames. Smoking metal and chunks of steel fell to the ground.

  The vampire tank roared over the dunes to the north. The two Razorwings accompanied it, slavering razor jaws and armored wings blocking out the sky. They flew in fast and low and mov ed with the grace of swimmers.

  “Ronan, right flank!” Kane shouted. “I’ll take left! Sol, straight up the middle!”

  “That’s what she said!” Sol laughed, and Kane actually had to restrain himself from turning and shooting the man.

  The skiffs turned, caught unawares. Kane was close enough now to see that the crewmen weren’t of any race he recognized — they were humanoid in size and shape, but the ir gre asy grey skin was covered in scales. They wore haphazard scraps of armor, aviation hats and steel shoulder plates, and they were equipped with crude and archaic weapons. Every one of them wore a gasmask.

  The chainguns roared with pulsing steel noise as they opened up on the tank.

  The Razorwings came in fast. T he chainguns couldn’t track them. The first one swooped in low over a skiff and snatched two crewmen off the deck, leaving a spray of blood and screams in it s wake as it flew past. The creatures still on deck fired at the flying reptile with small arms, but the rounds ricocheted off its scaly hide. The second Razorwing dove beneath the other skiff and swiped at the lower rudders, which crack ed and fell to the ground.

  Sol hammered the nearest Razorwing with his M78. The steady stream of bullets echoed like a quiet storm. Jade and Maur retreated back behind the dunes, while Kane, Ronan and Sol moved within a hundred yards of the nearest skiff.

  The air was thick with exhaust and the smell of fuel. The vampire tank released another shot, which flew past the skiffs and tore into the desert. Sand exploded like a dry geyser. Kane and the others charged through clouds of dust.

  The Razorwing turned towards them. Kane fired at the beast as it charged at Sol. The trio of vampires on the Razorwing’s back fired hand-cannons and a needle rifle, but the speed of their mount threw off their aim. The beast flew in a straight line towards Sol so it could swallow him up in its sizeable jaws.

  Kane ducked as the beast flew past him, and he barely d odged the metal-plated wing. He fired a s he rolled and managed to hit one of the vampires, who tumbled off the deck. A mooring wire was wrapped around the vampire’s leg, and he was dragged across the sand behind the Razorwing.

  The bladed tail swooped at Kane, and he barely jumped clear of the scythed limb. He threw himself forward and flung a grenade with all his strength before he landed face first in the sand.

  The grenade exploded in the air next to the flying lizard. Blood sprayed from a gaping hole in its flesh. S hattered ribs jutted out be neath its damaged wing. The beast fell to the ground with a thunderous crash. Sol and Ronan take position and he ld their ground while they hammer ed the dying reptile with gun fire.

  The damaged skiff went down behind them. Metal cracked and flew away as the s ails snapped. The remaining crewmen had secured themselves to the deck with rope s and chain s. S econds after the skiff noisily touched down, the vampire tank destroyed it with another roaring blast. Steel and smoke ripped away as the vehicle exploded.

  Kane stumbled backwards. Hot wind scoured his face. A shockwave hit him with the force of a hammer and knocked him to the ground.

  M ore explosions. Kane rubbed grit and sweat from his eyes. Ronan and Sol were on top of the dead Razorwing, where they battled its vampire riders in a blur of blades, claws and gunfire.

  Kane saw t he second skiff t a k e aim at the advancing tank with its recoilless rifle. Heavy clouds of dust and shadow trailed the vampire vehicle.

  “Jade!” he shouted. He looked back and saw her and Maur peek over the dune. “Get that tank’s attention!”

  Jade’s spirit spun forward in a lance of ice-blue fire. Frost vapor s scorched the ground white. The spirit tore through the sand and caused an eruption of frozen dust.

  “Now get down!” he shou ted. Kane ran towards the tank and bank ed right, firing his M 1 4 as he ran. T he turret turned his way.

  “C over!” he shouted. H e dove down as the t ank fired. The blast cracked open the sky. Grisly charcoal smoke poured out of the bladed turret.

  The shell landed somewhere behind him. A cyclonic storm of debris pelted his body with splinters of shattered stone and sand. Kane folded himsel f and shield ed his head and neck.

  Kane was dizzy as he stood up. He felt almost drunk. H e saw the dark shadow of the tank through the unnatural fog. Black steam curled into the air, and even with his ears ringing Kane still heard ghastly incorporeal defenses circle round the tank, a choir of banshees fused into a shield. They only discorporated when the weapons fired, and Kane hope d the skiff would get a shot off before the shield fully reformed.

  The shrill blast of the recoilless rifle howled through the air and squeeze d through th e undead shielding just in time. Kane heard armor crack. The tank tumbled out of the smog of undead vapor. S
teel and bone s and chain s scattered across the pale sand. The roar of the crash was deafening.

  The tank ro ll ed to a stop. One wheel was gone, two more had shattered, and the gun turret had snapped off. Kane heard combat behind him and felt the air turn cold from Jade’s spirit, but when he looked back over his shoulder all he saw were drifts o f dark smoke.

  H e hesitated, and moved towards the crashed tank. His body was wracked with fatigue, and the sharp pain in his knee gave him pause.

  Cowboy up, dude.

  The tank was still. A chunk of loose steel fell from the mangled turret. Kane’s feet kicked up sand as he jogged down the dune. H e slowed as he drew close the vehicle, and kept his M14 aimed at the wide-bodied tank hatch and the rear doors.

  He’d never been th at close to a vampire assault tank before. The outer hull was black steel and bone plate. Blood dripped from the rivets, and the chains that dangled from the sides were covered in tiny spikes that ooz ed dark fluid. A small anti-personnel gun — probably a nail launcher — was pointed right at him. He hadn’t even noticed until he was practically right on top of the tank.

  His heart froze, but when he was still alive a few seconds later he realized he was probably safe.

  I f any Suckheads we re still in there they would have fired that thing at me by now.

  The tank oozed mechanical fluid. A gaping hole in the hull billowed dark fumes.

  The skiff flew up behind him and came to a sudden stop less than a hundred yards away. Scorch marks marred the face of the desert-tan vessel. S moke churned from the lower exhaust ports near the tilting turbine engines, which kicked up the sand into a small dust storm. The curled sails had folded back like a dark fan, and the chainguns mounted on the forecastle still spewed smoke. The recoilless rifle was covered with paintings of skulls.

  The grey-skinned reptilian crewmen regarded him with haunting yellow eyes just visible over the gasmasks that cover ed the lower halves of their faces. T hey aimed one of the chainguns at him.