from the pen of icarus blake

Please enjoy this sneak peak of my current project.

14 Ignatan, 831 Saint

The bells chimed midnight in Eidan, the city a shadow against the blackness of the new moon. The wolf waited beside the wastewater outlet, a dirty reddish torrent tumbling into the bay below. Gradually the water slowed to a stream, then a trickle, and the wolf stepped between the bars and into the tunnel.
They felt their way through the dark to the first maintenance hatch and waited, anxiety prickling along the back of their neck. Rats scurried along the drain corridors, claws ticking on the brick as they searched for morsels. Sinouda opened the hatch, casting a dim square of light on the wolf below. He reached down and hauled them onto the foundry floor, scruffing their cloak for extra leverage, then gave the wolf’s shoulder an encouraging slap. His eyes asked if they were ready. The wolf nodded and slunk off through the shadows, leaving Sinouda to find the shackle keys.
The wolf padded through the deserted halls to the gate control room, where a guard dozed between the wall and the levers that controlled hydraulic pipes running through the foundry. They pushed the door open a crack, the squeal of the hinges startling the guard awake. He stood to close it, assuming it had shifted in the occasional drafts that passed like spirits through the monolithic building. He began pulling it closed again when he heard rapid footfalls coming down the hall.
The wolf, too, watched from the cover of the shadows as a group of guards passed. They were making for the slave pens. The guard inside pushed the door open more, and not a moment later the alarms squealed. He lurched for the gate levers.
He felt a gentle touch at his nape and his muscles grew loose. The wolf caught him around the waist and guided his fall to the floor, turning his head to face the wall. His mouth hung open, but he couldn’t speak as the wolf passed him. As quickly as they had begun, the alarms ceased. The wolf blew out a relieved breath.
The courtyard formed a large open space surrounding a raised gallows block where bidding took place on Eidan’s favored export: people. The wares milled about behind heavy hydraulic gates awaiting their fate. They were debtors, criminals, spoils of war from far off places, destined for lives of hard labor or exploitation in brothels and harems. Many huddled beneath threadbare blankets, the only kindness afforded to them by imperial decree.
Despite the alarm, the wolf waited with their hand on the lever until a shadow stepped into the courtyard and lit a lonely torch at the far end. The gates released with a hiss, creaking as they rose. A murmur of excited voices reached their vantage as Sinouda passed from pen to pen, offering the shackle keys to those inside. Others converged now, gathering people and leading them into the dark halls of the foundry while the guard was preoccupied with the distraction at the armory. The wolf threw all the levers they could find, opening every internal door and unlocking every lock. The hydraulic cacophony filled the building, followed by the bellow of the escape horn.
A panic broke out in the courtyard at the sound. The wolf pulled one final lever, and the external doors fell with an earth-shattering slam that locked the imperial guards out of the foundry. Then they ran.
Rapid footfalls of the panicked guard filled the foundry, but the slaves filtered out of the courtyard and vanished without trace by the time they made it down to the gallows. The cadre of abolitionists led them into the halls, then into the service tunnels that ran beneath the building and out into the moonless night. The wolf ducked around the corner, their skidding dodge masked by the bark of the guard commander as she herded several bleary guardsmen towards the control room. One of the guards caught their movement, yelling to the guard commander. Three broke off to follow them.
The wolf sprinted, but footsteps gathered behind them. Stern voices ordered them to halt in the name of the Emperor. They took the corners too close, whipping deeper into the mazelike bowels of the foundry. The guard’s heavy boots echoed in the narrow spaces, the cacophony building as they gained on the wolf.
Sinouda waited for them above the service hatch, crouched in the gloom. Footsteps approached them on all sides now, guards spilling around both corners. The wolf reached Sinouda and ushered him into the hatch, closing it quietly as soon as he dropped into the sewer. They stood atop it, backing into the wall.
The guard crowded in, shortblades outstretched. The wolf pressed their palms into the solid brick at their back and estimated the thickness, the porosity, then pulled in a deep breath that permeated every corner of their body until they were nothing but air and stepped backwards through the wall.
They tumbled to their knees on the other side, vomiting bile onto the floor as they shook off the dead cold of incorporeality. They took off from the guard barrack they ended up in, and kept running on unsteady legs until they found another maintenance hatch and pried it open. It slammed shut, leaving them in darkness.
A dull roar began on the far side of the foundry as the mills started churning again on the high canal. The water vibrated through the building, pulsing through the wolf’s chest as they ran blindly for an exit. The roar deafened them, the sewer increasingly tomb-like until they saw the moonless light from the outlet grate around a turn and redoubled their efforts. They reached blindly between the bars, the water splashing at their heels.
A hand reached for them, then another grasping at their sodden sleeve as the torrent of water beat against them. More pulled them up to the ledge, where they collapsed and sucked in air like a fish. They wiped the water out of their eyes with their sleeve and Sinouda thumped them on the back until they found the strength to stand. Above them, the foundry alarm bells clanged loud enough to drown out their voices and wake the rest of Eidan. With no time to waste, Sinouda led the small throng of freed slaves down a precarious carved staircase to a rowboat moored against a pillar in the bay below. It swayed in the current from the outlet as he hauled it in. The slaves climbed aboard, the able taking oars. By the time the rowboat vanished into the dark, the wolf had shed their sodden robes into the bay and climbed back to the street in nothing but their breeches.
They slipped past the Imperial guard in the process of establishing a roadblock. A smile played on their lips, knowing not a single part of the operation went by road, and ducked into a dry aqueduct hidden in an alley between two buildings. There, they met the real objective: abolitionists hauling weapons from the foundry armory. Spears, swords, bows and arrows, even some hand cannons. They wrapped them in bundles of reeds and slung them over their shoulders, crouching to traverse the narrow aqueduct as they made their way to the new temple and the slave barracks there.
One of the abolitionists offered the wolf a dingy cloak. They slung it over their shoulders, along with a reed bundle, and followed the pack until they made it up to a wide street. Here, they looked like slaves coming from the salt flats with building materials. No one paid them any mind as they approached the guard at the work camp gate.
Vane met them there, raising his voice so everyone could hear him chastising the group for being late on their delivery of building materials. His voice cracked, his face flushing in embarrassment as he opened the way for them. The wolf tugged at his skirts teasingly, shooting him an encouraging grin. The boy straightened up, resuming his guard posture.
The couriers’ shoulders hunched with false apologies as they passed beneath the watchtowers. They straightened up as they passed into the slave barracks, setting the reeds down. Dutifully, as every night, the workers filed out of their shabby housing and gathered the materials for repairing their quarters. This was a job done by lanternlight, only after the work of the day had been completed. Inside, they unwrapped the weapons and distributed them.
Shortblades, polearms, and hammers stolen from the foundry found new homes in the hands of enslaved Vanaultan soldiers and nomads stolen from their caravans for cheap labor at the end of a whip. They gripped the weapons that would win their freedom, hope whispered through the camp in four languages.
The wolf huddled with the eager subversives as the first guard patrol passed, then the second. As dawn and the change of the guard approached, the slave quarters stirred with furtive activity. Armed men moved into the narrow alleys between scaffolding and external walls, hiding amidst quarried blocks of limestone in the silence of the dawn. The wolf scaled the empty watchtower and crouched in wait for the next lookout.
An expectant hush fell over the temple construction as the new guard shift resumed patrols. The watchman yawned and stretched at the base of the tower. Oblivious to the rebels watching him, he climbed.
The wolf hauled him inside, his yelp of surprise cut short by the hand on his throat. His vocal cords ceased to work, his breath hissing out uselessly as the wolf laid him against the wall and patted his helmed head. They cut the flag down, the red dawn of the empire fluttering to the ground.
The air split with the first of the battlecries. Harsh Vanaultan declarations of glory in death rung out.
“You’ll be alright,” the wolf assured the guard, who gurgled in protest. They clambered down the ladder.
Vane met them at the base, having shed his guard’s tabbard. He grabbed their arm and hauled them away from the watchtower as the first of the blackpowder charges detonated. They echoed from the back of the temple, the pillars crumbling one after the other. The wolf watched in horror as the legs of the watchtower splintered under the rain of shrapnel. The cabin toppled with the helpless guard inside and smashed on a limestone block, the young man smearing black on the white surface in the low light of dawn.
Vane pulled the wolf along. The remaining charges detonated one after the other, bringing down the walls around the work camp. The foundry alarms still rang into the light of morning, the sun rising red over the sea. Shouts filled the air as scaffolding toppled and burned, the guards that tried to flee up it falling back to earth.
Muster horns blared, vibrating through the bodies of scattered guard and rebel alike. The wolf fell to their knees, clutching at their large ears to block the sound. Vane hauled them back to their feet and shoved them forward. They ran for the aqueduct, the grate ripped off its hinges, as the sound of the metal-heeled footsteps rang like thunder until they couldn’t tell where they were coming from.
The mouth of the aqueduct opened to a narrow black void. Above it, the street seethed with bodies locked in battle. The Vanaultans threw themselves against the Imperial guard, who flung their bodies over the ledge to break on the ground below. One thudded at Vane’s feet, blood frothing out of her mouth.
His hesitation was enough, the Imperial guard filling the courtyard behind them. The throng turned their spears on Vane and the wolf. The wolf pushed the younger man behind them, backing him toward the aqueduct entrance. He turned heel and ran, his footsteps splashing into the dark. The guard captain shouted a command, but his voice was drowned out by a concussive blast as the wolf grasped either side of the narrow corridor and conjured all the energy mustered by the dying in a last stand.
They flew back from the explosion, choking on dust and the grasping hands of the stunned guard. Their chest ached with each breath as they were shackled and dragged away from the rubble. Their ears rung, hearing nothing as they stared at the bodies entangled in the masonry.