Chapter 46

Planning was mostly about balancing odds. Mitigating negative outcomes, improving one’s chances of success by narrowing scope and removing risk. Yet no matter the work done, no plan was ever perfect.

Song knew that better than most, having spent what felt like most of her life falling just short of where she needed to be, of matching the standard that would finally see her father’s face gladden and her mother smiling for more than the ghost of a moment. The smallest of mistakes, of imprecisions, could snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. So Song had known, going in, of all the turns where their plan could tumble off the road. She had embraced it anyway, because no plan was perfect and Izel had conceived of one that cut through the worst of the risks.

She still felt like her guts were being put through a laundry wringer when she saw that red flare going up so soon after the blue one.

“Gifter render them aid,” Lieutenant Navpreet muttered, tone pitying as she watched the red fireworks fade. “The beast must have been lying in ambush.”

“They have the means to chase it off,” Song made herself reply. “Even caught off guard, I expect victory of them.”

Nenetl was a fine tactician and a careful woman, her Navigator allegedly one of the finest logos-wielders among the second years and Izel himself had put together that odd-looking field dispenser for his aether spikes. Song had thought the device looked like a fat and ungainly pistol, but both the other tinkers in their alliance had seemed impressed so she would defer to their judgment. They had the arms to harm the Lord of Teeth and the eyes to see it coming. It will be fine, she told herself.

Gods, let it be fine, else the cart had run right off the road on the first curb. She cleared her throat.

“Is everything ready, lieutenant?” she asked instead of letting fear keep carving away at her.

“See for yourself, ma’am,” Lieutenant Navpreet replied, gesturing for her to come along.

Of the three companies, the one Song had been put in charge of was the one with the easiest path but also the most dangerous position: it was why she had a whole half of the Garrison contingent along, artillerymen and regulars both.

Unlike the fast-moving forces under Sebastian, Song’s own troops were now entirely dug in. They’d marched up the paved street on the edge of the Nests until they reached the vantage point their scouts had picked out last week, a broad space backed by a warehouse with a collapsed roof but a still-standing high wall that few lemures would be able to cross. The blackcloaks had moved into place swiftly, fortifying the place in minutes by stacking then-empty gabions – wickerwork cages that were promptly filled filled with dirt, debris and wood – up and down the road while the side facing the canal became a reinforced cannon battery.

Falconet cannons were propped up against the gabions and loaded with grapeshot to cover their flanks to the north and south, supported by a firing line of muskets, but those would not be the decisive arms. That honor would go to the two large bronze culverins pointed eastwards, which Lieutenant Navpreet was now bringing her to inspect.

Each was twice the length of a grown man and almost as large, they’d had to be carried on wooden, wheeled gun carriages that’d been a nightmare to get in place even after a week of building passages for it. Not only must they pulled by men – horses would attract lemures – but one’s axle had broken just a minute out of the brushlands and needed replacing before the column could resume moving, costing them nearly a quarter hour.

Every second of it had felt like someone was cramming nails under her fingernails, Song all too aware that the entire plan rested on the ability of her company and Nenetl’s being able to shut the doors on the dantesvara’s lair on both sides. But they had made it, gotten those beasts in place and pointed down at the mouth of the Lord of Teeth’s lair.

The heavily pierced Someshwari patted the closest culverin fondly, as if it were her favorite nephew.

“These bastards are the latest model out of the Rookery,” Lieutenant Navpreet told her, “with bronze trunnions affixed – those protrusions there that let us pivot it up and down – and instead of notched mires to adjust elevation these have the modern screw-turn.”

Song had read two artillery manuals as a primer to her command in this operation, so she had in fact known what trunnions were and was aware that ‘notched mires’ were wooden blocks with painted notches on them that could be added or removed to adjust the elevation of cannons. Presumably the screw was considered an improvement by virtue of being less rickety. The Someshwari lieutenant cleared her throat.

“No matter where our friend pops up, we’ll have a shot lined up within ten seconds,” Lieutenant Navpreet swore. “My life staked on it.”

All our lives, Song thought, but prudently refrained from saying as much. Tristan had warned her the artillery lieutenant was less than sanguine about her assignment and Navpreet’s every half-suppressed twitch on the way here had backed the assessment. Song would still rather have the officer concerned this was all going to be the disaster than the one who was sniffing after glory, as the third company did. Not that Camaron had seemed worried. Let him throw his men at our foe if he wishes, he’d told Song. There’s glory enough to go around, and I’ll no balk at letting him soak up the casualties for me.

“Good,” Song said.

She folded her hands behind her back.

“We do not need to kill it,” she reminded the other woman. “Only wound it enough it cannot run from the Skiritai.”

“Assuming it doesn’t just ignore them and charge us,” Lieutenant Navpreet said, hand fiddling with the silver pin on her collar.

“That’s what we’re here for.”

Song cocked an eyebrow, turning a look on the three newcomers. Maryam was in a fine mood today, despite the dangers yet ahead. Her Navigator walked on light feet – and Hooks besides her even more lightly still – and she’d spent much of the march talking with her sister and Jayati Banerjee. The haughty Someshwari might not deign to speak with a mere Captain Ren beyond the mandatory, but she’d been noticeably friendlier to her fellows. Song had overheard some rather unkind sniggering about Diego Calante’s recent stay in the Meadow and complaints about something called ‘Ada’s Knot’, which was apparently the worst thing since the Kingdom of Malan.

“We can slow the beast down if need be, lieutenant,” Jayati Banerjee agreed. “This is not a concern. Merely count yourself lucky you were paired with the better Banerjee.”

Lieutenant Navpreet offered her a pretty smile in a salute, though after turning away Song was rather sure she’d heard her mutter ‘no such thing’ under her breath. The silver-eyed captain turned to fully face Maryam.

“Did you need something?” she asked.

“Ruo’s back from his skulking,” Maryam said. “Says there’s movement to our south.”

Song grimaced. And now came the great danger of their position: while it had been comparatively easy for them to reach this place and bring with them the means to fortify it, they were forty-five people occupying open grounds on the edge of the Nests. Their numbers would scare off most of the lesser lemures, but it was only a matter of time until pack hunters or something larger came to have a look.

Despite their numbers the makeshift outpost was not so large that it took more than a minute for Song to reach the southern line, where she found Ruo Xuan Liu and Rong Ma quietly talking by the falconet.

“Warrant Officer Liu,” Song flatly said. “I hear you have a report.”

Implied in her tone was how he should have found her to deliver it.

“Mistress Ren,” he replied in ever-so-slightly accented Cathayan. “I have some matters of import to relay.”

It was an effort not to glare. The way he spoke the word for ‘mistress’ was very closer to the title of Zi in Machin, which was a generally respectful address but at its root a courtesy reserved for aristocrats. It was said that in some of the old families of Wendi royalist sympathies ran deep, that the abolished Duchy of Wendi was yet toasted behind closed doors. Liu was a common surname, mother to a hundred clans, but every part of Song’s gut screamed that Ruo Xuan’s clan must be one of those hidden yiwu traitors.

“Do so,” she curtly said.

They were interrupted by another flare going up to the east, green fireworks spreading. Song let out a tense breath: the plan was proceeding as planned. Nenetl’s company had driven the dantesvara back into its lair and shut the door behind it.

“A dominant ireltxo is stirring up its warren,” Ruo Xuan said, claiming back her attention. “I heard it kill a challenger, so as soon as they are done feeding I expect them to be headed our way.”

“How many?” Song asked.

“I could not get close enough, mistress,” the Mask said. “Yet I heard more than five.”

Song’s hands clenched. Five they could handle. The pigmen had thick hides, but they were not particularly quick and the falconet would blow right through them. It was what would come after that was a concern: the noise of that battle might just draw something worse.

“Rong,” she called out. “You may trap the southern approach. Take two soldiers with you and make it quick.”

The tinker lit up, saluting hastily, but Song saw no such enthusiasm on the face of the blackcloaks around them. Not only because few desired to leave the safety of gunline to help scatter around tinker traps, but because Song had just ordered their main path of retreat to be strewn with said traps. They were going to have to hold this outpost, like it or not. She spared Ruo Xuan a curt nod, heading back to Lieutenant Navpreet just in time to see the third company sending up their green flare. They were in position, then.

“Light ours,” she told the lieutenant. “And get ready.”

The green fireworks exploded above their heads, scattering into sparks, and Song checked her rifle one last time as she came to stand by the cannons. The Khaimovs and Jayati came to join her.

“It should be any-”

The air shook for an instant before the sound caught up – a wave of noise that swept over them, for a moment swallowing the world whole as the ground trembled beneath their feet and a blinding flash of light seared the air. Song squeezed her eyes shut just in time, opening them to the sight of a massive plume of smoke and falling debris. Across the canal bed, on the high grounds beneath either mouth of the lair, a gaping and smoking hole had been blown open.

Hunting the Lord of Teeth in its own lair would have been ruinous, small companies forced into twisting tunnels and caverns where the creature would overwhelm them in moments, so Izel had found them an alternative: blowing open the roof.

And it had worked. In the crater, past the smoke, Song could make out several caverns that had just been wrenched open. There was, however, no sign of the dantesvara. No purple flare from the eastern company meant it wasn’t trying to break out their way, and that left only one option.

“Navigators to the front,” Song shouted, shouldering her rifle. “Cannons at the ready!”

A heartbeat later, as if summoned, the dantesvara’s horned head came out of the shadowy entrance. It was, Song saw with a start, heavily wounded. A chunk of its head was gone, the bone spur at the base of its left horn peeking out, and as it slipped out of the cavern she saw one of its front legs was gone at the joint. Its mane was nothing more than a few burnt out strands and it had half a dozen patches of its dermis eaten through by salt and phosphorescent munitions.

The first shot out of the culverins missed by less than a foot, smashing into the wall and spraying shards of stone on the monster, but that’d been the chance: it slipped into the water, fleeing out of sight even as Lieutenant Navpreet shouted to reload. A dantesvara could stay under for as many as ten hours, Kang had taught them. Too long for the blackcloaks to be able to stay here and wait it out, assuming it wouldn’t simply head to another part of the city.

It was gone, finished. Unless-

“I can’t find it,” Jayati Banerjee tightly said. “Light it up for me.”

“There,” Maryam replied. “You have to-”

“The Teeth-Gnasher Slain, Choked To Death,” Jayati spat out in Samratrava, hand whirling through strange patterns of Gloam until she crushed the final glyph in her own hand.

Song waited patiently, rifle at the ready. One, two, three, four–

The dantesvara’s head surfaced and it let out a sky-shaking roar of fury. Song would have been miffed as well, to have the very air in her lungs fouled by a curse. She snapped her shot without hesitation, landing it between its eyes, but it was not lead shot or salt munitions she had aimed. Instead a bright, pale light burned on the Lord of Teeth’s head, the tinker mixture burning up not harming the creature on the slightest.

It wasn’t meant to.

“Pivot, pivot, pivot,” Lieutenant Navpreet shouted. “Aim at the light! Lorenzo, turn that screw faster or I’ll make you eat the goddamn thing – there! Fire!”

Flame was touched to the blowholes, a nail-biting heartbeat passing before the culverins belched out their shots and kicked back like the world had slapped them for it. The first shot only clipped its horn, sending up a geyser as it careened into the bay, but the second hit the dantesvara right in its chest. Flesh tore, bone shattered and ichor sprayed. Song cleaned out the barrel of her rifle, reaching for the lantern munitions again, as she heard Maryam and Jayati talk in clipped tones about something that sounded like seal and cycle.

Not that it mattered. Before Song could snap a second shot at it, the creature gave up the game and with a great heave dragged itself back into the mouth of its lair. It slunk into cover, disappearing into the dark, and Song let out a heavy breath. Gods, they’d done it. They had kept the door shut on the western flank. Now the Lord of Teeth had nowhere left to go but where they meant for it to be.

She turned to ask Maryam how long the curse would continue only to find her friend frowning, a worried-looking Hooks besides her.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The aether in there feels… odd,” Hooks said. “The Lord of Teeth has been doing something for all those weeks.”

“Odd how?” she pressed.

“Not thin, exactly,” Maryam muttered, “but maybe bri-”

She was interrupted by the sound of muskets firing, Song’s gaze turning to the southern gunline – where, behind the gabions, blackcloaks had shot at an approaching pack of irelxto. A full dozen of the pigmen, she saw with a grimace, and while they’d been slowed by the trip-traps they would need ordnance to chase off. And beyond them, in the heights of the Nests, Song caught movement. Beating wings. Harpies, she thought. Let it be only those, and not that thrice-cursed griffin that had apparently been haunting the hunt since the start.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Song told Maryam. “We have to hold here.”

Else the dantesvara would be able to flee into the water and escape the noose. And, should the worse happen and the third company be driven back, then Song’s battery would be needed to cover the retreat their retreat as they fled back up – and perhaps even attempt to kill it one more time, of it pursued far enough.

“It’s all in their hands now,” Song grimly said. “Trust them to end it for us.”

—

Angharad had noticed that Skiritai often had a routine, a secular rite they went through in the moments before the plunge.

Musa was nigh-inaudibly drumming his fingers against his knee to the rhythm of Redeemed Will We Be – amusing, considering it was an hymn and he was about religious as your average chair – while Jeronimo kept rubbing his thumb against the pommel of his left-hand dagger, sliding along the curve of the horns on the goat head. It was some ancient Chelae spirit, she’d been told, a patron of his homeland. Shalini’s own rite looked like simple caution, at first, but no one needed to check their pistols as many times as she did – even when they had four.

Angharad wondered what her own rite was. She did not think she had one, but was she merely as blind to it as her fellows seemed blind to theirs?

“Eyes up,” Sebastian Camaron said. “The outriders are returning.”

She could feel the change even without looking, the way weights shifted and their attention sharpened. Violence coiled and ready. Most of them had come with sidearms of their own, but today the core of their armaments was the same across the five of them: a steel-tipped hunting spear in the Malani style, fit for both throwing and thrusting, as well as a long and double-edged dagger.

Angharad had reluctantly set aside her saber, knowing it would be of little use against the Lord of Teeth, and instead complemented her equipment with a shorter ixwa stabbing spear secured against her back. The ancient Malani fighting spear was hardly ever used for war, these days, but its spearhead was well-suited to punching through thick hide and flesh. Its use would only come later, though. First they had to bring down the beast, and by Sebastian Camaron’s plan it was not they who would open the dance.

While the broad lines of the engagement had long been agreed on, the tactics had needed to be adapted on the spot to the lay of the battlefield revealed by Awonke Bokang’s munition barrels. When the powder mixtures were blown, it had collapsed the better part of the ceiling over two caverns: one stretching towards the right and the other towards the left, with an oblique wall between them that’d been right in the middle of the explosion and was half-leveled because of it.

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Those two caverns and the rim of the breach blown into the ceiling would be the arena in which they fought to slay the Lord of Teeth.

It was not as split-up a ground as it seemed. The oblique partition wall, on which Angharad and her companions were crouching, had been hit hard enough that the debris had formed rough, jagged slopes on either side that their squadron had used to climb up. One could move from one cave to the other through there, if slowly, so Sebastian Camaron had elected to split the regulars into two separate gunlines facing the west.

Between both caverns there were five tunnel mouths, three in one and two the other, but in each cavern one mouth was facing east and thus could be forgotten about – Song’s company had fought the dantesvara to the west, so they knew the monster would be coming from there. Beyond that it was difficult to predict which tunnel the beast would use, however and thus which cavern they would fight in.

Angharad had considered reaching for a vision, when the beast first failed to appear and it became obvious a short glimpse ahead would not suffice, but there’d been a rub: she could not say so without outing her contract, which she would not.

Sebastian Camaron had thus sent outriders into the tunnels to draw out the beast instead, which in turn made burning her sole vision of the day pointless. Sending twelve souls into the dark tunnels made what was to come too fluid, the two glimpses ahead she’d taken contradicting each other, so Angharad had resigned herself to patience instead.

Their perch atop the wall separating the two caves had them well positioned to join the fight no matter where it erupted, though Angharad hoped the dantesvara would come through the cave to the right despite its two west-facing tunnel mouths. The collapse in that cavern had been thorough enough the rubble made a slope reaching from above ground to the cave floor, the same they had all used to descend, and it was stable enough that Captain Shange was able to deploy ten men in firing line halfway down.

The cave to the left was larger, but there was a large puddle of water by the sole west-facing tunnel mouth that would slow the outriders when they went through and the east-facing mouth on the other side of the cave was narrow enough it would funnel together the gunline should they be put to flight. They would be easy meat for the Lord of Teeth, should it chase them into the tunnel.