Free The Horns of Ruin by Tim Akers Page B

My line of retreat had been ... over there. This hole could have come
from something the coldmen had done while they tried to get to Barnabas and the
girl. The sides of the crater were charred, and most of the indentation was
filled in with rubble. The cobblestones here had been pulverized but left in
place, like a giant cube of ice crushed in a bowl. The Amonites had been
clearing it out, from the looks of things. And among the shards of stone was an
icon, torn from someone's ceremonial robe.
    We all wear icons, the scions of the three Cults of the
Brothers Immortal. My armor is an icon, as are my sword and revolver. Very
practical icons. But I wear others, noetic symbols of the power of Morgan. An
iron fist pendant at my neck, the bound copper wire around my wrist, tattoos on
my chest and legs. There is a holy symmetry to my symbols, brought to arcane
life by the power of Morgan. The Fratriarch jangled with the icons of the holy
Brother.
    This was not his symbol, not a symbol of Morgan or of
Alexander or any of the other minor sects dedicated to inchoate powers of
significant events or famous battles. This was a symbol of the Betrayer. Amon,
in his aspect as murderer and assassin. It was a pendant, silver clasping the
gnarled blade of that darkest aspect of our darkest god. No wonder they had the
Amonites so tightly reined.
    "Is there any doubt now that the Betrayer was
involved?" the inspector whispered at my side.
    I holstered my revolver and looked back nervously toward
the pack of Scholars at the far corner of the square.
    "Did any of them touch it?" I asked.
    "One of them found it, but swears it did not reach his
skin."
    "Contain him. You'll need to keep the rest out of the
general population until you can confirm they were not infected."
    "We know the rites of infection, my lady." The
inspector sniffed and waved a hand at some of his fellow whiteshirts. "We
will do our duty."
    "Whatever." I bent to the icon and dusted the
debris away from it. It had been embedded in a cobble, like a stone pressed
into hot wax. I removed the penetrated cobble and slid it onto the ground.
"Some force that was."
    "Your battle was mighty, my lady."
    "I had nothing to do with this," I said.
"Those weren't servants of the Betrayer I was fighting. Not scions, at
least. Evil creatures, perhaps, but there was nothing ... blessed about
them."
    "Who, then? The Fratriarch?" the inspector asked.
Doubtless remembering the old man who walked in the parades. Not exactly a
figure embodying power.
    "What is it?" Owen asked, running up. He skidded
to a halt and looked over my shoulder at the stone and its infernal decoration.
"Ah. Oh ... huh."
    "You are a man of culture and insight, Justicar. What
do you make of it?"
    "You did not speak of scions of the Betrayer, though
we all suspected they were the power behind the attack."
    "Suspected," I said, nodding. "But
unknown."
    "We can lay that to rest, it seems. How did it get
here?"
    I craned my neck to look up at the elevated track. The
damaged car had been removed, and the twisted support towers were being
rebuilt. The tracks themselves looked solid enough.
    "A fight," I said. "The icon gets ripped off
in the heat of battle."
    "When, though? You stated that the Fratriarch was
locked away in a column of steel, and the coldmen could not break him out. Then
you returned and he was gone. They were all gone."
    "They didn't break him out." I stood, looking
around at the damage of the square, seeing lines of force and advance in the
arrangement of wreckage. "He fought his way free. There was a body in the
door of the car. I never really thought about how it got there."
    "So he might be out there, free?" Owen turned in
a slow circle, gazing around at the buildings on the square as if the
Fratriarch might be looking down at us from some terrace. "We should
organize search parties."
    I snorted. "You should? Maybe a day ago, when I first
came to you with this. No, he didn't get away. The living Fratriarch would