He moved his hand towards the lever that controlled the doors but then something unnerved him. I haven’t heard the door to this room close yet, he thought as he turned around. The sight of Lolita standing in the doorway made his body jerk. Without thinking, he blurted, “He’s escaping! That blue! He’s escaping.” It was the first thing that came to his mind as a way of somehow delaying her—to give him time to think.
Lolita pushed Wallace to the ground with the easiest of slaps as she moved towards the glowing panels. “Let me see,” she said, investigating the images. “That is no ordinary blue, Nate. That is your brother! You are helping him.”
Wallace froze. For the first time in his life he didn’t know what to say.
Do what Cauly would do!
He didn’t think. Wallace dove for the lever but was punched down to the ground by Lolita. He swung his elbow back and clipped her in the eye. She grunted. Wallace made another lunge for the lever but this time received a kick in the gut. Air rushed from him; the same urge he had for the blood flower dust had now become a desperate gasp for air.
He staggered backwards towards the doors and they opened for him. There was no way he could fight her. He couldn’t fight at the best of times, that was Cauly’s job, and Grietum’s daughters had strength beyond any other he’d come across.
The panel by the door caught his eyes. He waited until Lolita was in the threshold then stroked the panel again.
Slam!
The doors closed on Lolita, trapping her between the metal hulks. Her eyes were still locked on Wallace—her face expressionless. After a few seconds a tiny trickle of blood dripped from the corner of Lolita’s blue lips. Her breathing was rapid, panting.
Wallace looked at her, appraising the rest of her body. Suddenly a wave of throbbing pulsed in his head. Cold sweat forced through his pores at the sight of Lolita’s mangled midsection. Part of one of the doors that slotted into a hole on the other door had punched through her belly. Red had started to ooze around the puncture wound, glooping down the door and dripping heavily on to the metal floor. Each drip was like a mighty bang inside Wallace’s mind.
He waited for the panting to stop. As the last wheeze of life escaped Lolita’s chest, he took a deep breath and stroked the panel to open the door again.
Only a brief ripping of flesh and a squelch of inners was heard before Wallace quickly covered his ears and screwed his eyes up.
Half blinded, he ran back inside, estimating a jump across the area where Lolita’s twisted, mutilated corpse lay. On the glowing panel was an image of Cauly frantically banging on the main doors. Wallace pulled the handle, then looked to the glowing panel again. Cauly jumped back and the gap to the outside began to open. His big brother turned to look back into the hive, mouthed some words, then disappeared through the gap.
Wallace flipped the lever up again to close the doors over.
Cauly was free.
The next hour was a blur. The panic and shock had cleared his mind from his craving for the dust and, for the moment at least, he was the old Wallace again. He dragged the body of Lolita through the empty halls, knowing he wouldn’t have much time left before the corridors would come alive again after the finishing of the hunt. He got to the blue-cells under the throne room, not remembering much of the journey there. He went into Cauly’s old cell and strained to lift Lolita’s dead body. With a final thrust he lifted her and dropped her so that the slave pole went through the hole he had made in her body with the door.
The hole that I made, he suddenly realized. I took her life away. The contents of his stomach left him. He retched. Part of it gave him a taste of the blood flower dust as fluid came out of his nose as well as his mouth.
Without thinking he walked to the wall and slammed his face against the hard metal. It didn’t hurt at first but then a throbbing came in his forehead and his lip felt numb. He lay on the floor, to add to the scenario he had devised, that of having been attacked by his desperate brother, who had been trying to escape.
His cover was set. Now he had to make it work. “Your Excellence!” he screamed. “Your Excellence, Cauly has escaped. And…” he paused, readying himself for what he hoped would be a convincing performance. He cursed and wailed in disgust at the tragic death of Grietum’s daughter. In some ways some of it was real. He’d blanked out the horror of the body he had ripped from life in such a grotesque way until now, when a performance of revulsion and grief was needed.
From above, there was silence except for a few murmurs. Then Grietum’s voice came: “Go and see what this commotion is.” The plodding of her feet rumbled through the roof of the cell as she moved closer to the grid above Wallace’s head. “In nearly two-hundred years I have not had a hunt interrupted and—” she stopped mid-sentence, peering down through the grid into the cell, and let out a scream that echoed through the hive.
Wallace’s head swam. There were flashes of sights of rats around him. He vaguely remembered Grietum coming into the cell and sobbing next to her dead daughter. He definitely remembered the moment Grietum made eye contact with him, reading his face, adding up everything in the scene around her. “Rat!” she snapped in his direction through angry tears. “Rat!” she repeated.
“Excellence,” he said, unsure whether he was putting on the drowsiness to make his act of having been attacked more convincing, or whether he was actually feeling drowsy.
“This was your brother that did this, was it not?”
“Yes, Excellence. I tried to stop—”
“—It looks as if you did not try hard enough. You will go cold tonight for this.”
“No! Please! Your Excellence, I need the dust. Please! I tried to stop him. I swear by Jahanar above, I tried.”
He indeed ‘went cold’ that night. At first Wallace found it strange that somebody like Grietum didn’t kill him for failing her but after a night without the dust he realized why when he silently, then audibly, begged for his death as it felt as if his body was trying to turn itself inside out.
It was still trying to do exactly that as he was dragged in front of Grietum many hours, or perhaps days, later. The throne room and the blue woman were nothing but a blur. He hoped the next words out of her mouth would be that all was forgiven and he would get a sniff. But instead, she announced, “It is time that you fully committed yourself to becoming one of my rats. It is time for you to change from being a man, to one who serves me absolutely.”
Cauly
Cauly had been alone for nearly a year now with one single purpose: to find a way of freeing his little brother. He had returned home to their dwelling in the desert of Last Kingdom and earned coin. He’d push for more money, even resorting to Wallace’s sleight-of-hand tricks. All of it was in a good cause. He used it to buy himself plates of armor such as was worn by the soldiers back in Arland. He searched the bazaars for weapons—even some that were against the laws of the Ten Kingdoms—but he didn’t care. He had to get Wallace back.
The first weapons he bought were a simple pair of clubs. He would stand in the town square and watch the techniques of the fighters in the betting matches. Then, back at his home, in between fucking his way to more coin, he would practice on the outside wall of the dwelling. He’d batter the dried-mud wall until the bones in his hands ached.
The second weapon was from a back alley: an illegal blade—long and thin with a slight curve. It was beautiful, and it cost him a pocket-full too. “Hard to get in the Ten Kingdoms, this type of weapon is,” the old one-eyed seller croaked at him when Cauly winced at the price. But it was worth it. It would have to be hidden though. Carrying a weapon designed to cut and draw blood was an imprisonable offense in the Ten Kingdoms. He asked himself: What would Wallace do to hide it?
A walking stick!
So he fucked his way to more coin and bought an old man’s walking stick—a thin gnarly gray thing made from the branch of a hackle tree all the way from Hal’s Forest to the west. He took it home and split the branch in two using his long
sword. With a piece of rock he curved out a slot for the blade to sit in, then lashed the cane together with red velvet he had bought in another visit to Meltanespear. He slid the blade inside—the handle of the sword acting as the new handle for the innocent-looking walking stick.
Practicing with the blade was nothing like using the clubs. He only did it indoors or in the dark of night outside the home he’d once shared with his little brother. He wasn’t sure if what he was doing was effective; Cauly simply copied the movements he’d seen the club fighters use. He had no idea if they would work with a sword. Surely the aim is just to cut the fucker coming for you, he thought to himself, picturing Grietum’s rats charging at him as the huge metal doors opened—his brother being amongst them.
Now he needed a weapon that would not harm Wallace and one that he would not need to conceal. The long sword was his backup plan; his last ditch attempt at life if everything else failed. Wallace always had a backup plan and this sword was Cauly’s.
* * *
It was late afternoon and Cauly was on his way home from Meltanespear when he passed a farmer making his way to the town, herding his puff of yapes. The burnt-red puffy coats of the black-faced animals blew in the gusting desert winds. One of the yapes had strayed from the puff. The farmer whistled and then with a flick of his wrist, a black coil extended and cracked as it got to its full length.
A whip!
The yape stopped in its path and gave a rebellious throaty bahhhh back to the farmer. The man flicked the length of the whip high in the air and then sent it uncoiling towards the yape. With a sharp snap, the black leather coiled around the front leg of the adventurous yape and the farmer hauled the animal back in with the rest of the puff.
That’s what I need, Cauly thought. Without thinking, he ran towards the farmer and his puff of yapes. “Sir,” he shouted, trying to use a ‘business’ voice like Wallace would have done. “Excuse me, sir.”
The farmer jumped and readied his whip. “Stay back! I’ll whip your balls off if you touch one of my puff.”
“Please,” Cauly said, holding his hands up. “I only wanted to ask—”
“—You have blue eyes,” the old farmer interrupted, calming slightly. “You somebody important around here, eh?”
What would Wallace say? he wondered. “Yes…”
He’d say more than that, you fucking idiot, Cauly mocked himself.
“My mother is cousin to Queen Vasani,” he said out of nowhere, feeling as if his brother was next to him, whispering in his ear.
“Queen Vasani’s cousin, you say?” the old man asked, thinking over what he had just heard. “How do I know you are telling the truth?”
Why bother telling lies? I’m not good at it. I’m not Wallace.
“You don’t. But it doesn’t matter. I just want to buy your whip and then learn how to use it.”
“How much coin do you have?” the farmer asked, eying up his own whip as if weighing it to work out its value, or figuring out how much he could squeeze out of the deal.
“How much do you want for it?” When Cauly asked the question he could practically hear Wallace making fun of his bargaining skills.
He was sure that he had made a terrible deal with the farmer for the buying of a simple whip. However, the man had offered to teach him more skills each time he passed with his puff of yapes in return for some help herding them through the streets to the watering hole in town.
* * *
It came when Cauly least expected it: the moment he finally felt ready to return to the hive to save his little brother. Cauly was behind a young girl, his cock was balls-deep inside her. She was a regular customer of his and something she said slapped him across the face: “You’ve become so strong. You’re like a warrior.” The words stirred something in him. It gave him an energy to speed up his thrusts and finish, shooting his load inside her. As the feeling subsided, the words stayed with him. I have become strong, he thought to himself as the girl wriggled out of bed and began to clothe herself.
Cauly was ready.
“How much do I owe you?” the girl asked, rummaging for coin in a little pouch around her waist.
“No charge,” he said, springing out of bed, gathering his things that he had spent so long preparing.
The girl laughed. “What’s the catch? This never would have happened if little Wallace was—” She paused then added, “I’m sorry, Cauly. It just slipped out. I—”
“—Don’t be sorry. He’ll be back by the time you visit next.”
* * *
Four days later, after traveling through the desert and over the Last Mountains, Cauly had set up camp on a reasonably sheltered ledge in the rocky hills above the entrance to Grietum’s Hive. And there he waited. Every time he heard the doors shudder open he’d run to the edge, lie down flat and peer over the side. It was the times just as the sun was setting that most interested him; when the door rats came to lock the hive up for the night.
All of the rats that came to do the check before locking the doors would take a moment to savor the cool desert air as the sun swelled, dropping below the horizon. Every time the group of men, usually seven strong, stood facing the sun with their backs to the doors, Cauly would pray to Jahanar that one of them would be Wallace. But as they turned back to the entrance, and he saw their partial faces from above, his heart would sink when he saw that his brother was not among them.
So he would wait for another day. Early in the morning he would hike across the mountain and down to a water channel and refill his skin. Cauly didn’t like killing but it didn’t seem so bad to hunt the ugly little lizards that would crawl over his face at night. And they didn’t taste half bad!
It was on the seventh night, when he heard the grinding of the doors and he crawled to the edge, that he saw a shape that could have been Wallace. The middle person in the group below had the same hair color as his little brother but it was unkempt and the person’s hands looked to be an odd color.
When the rats turned back towards the entrance of the hive, Cauly gasped as a face that looked as if it could once have been his brother’s came in to view. But this boy’s features were drawn, purple around the nose, red and baggy under the eyes and, although he couldn’t be sure from this distance, he had dry crusty lips.
This is it!
He’d prepared so long for this moment.
Cauly hopped down to the rocky layer that covered the roof to the entrance of Grietum’s Hive. He shuffled to the edge, directly above the huge doors. Walking stick strapped to his back, clubs in hand, and whip coiled over his shoulder, he waited for the sound of them beginning to close.
Clunk!
Cauly jumped onto the sand below and turned to face the rats. Two of them immediately ran at him, spears in hand. He readied his clubs and blocked a thrust from the first rat while using his body to roll inside the other’s spear thrust. Simultaneously he clocked the two of them over the head and they collapsed to the ground.
Two of the rats scarpered inside and within seconds, a horn was sounding. The doors still crawled towards each other. Three rats came at him. One of them was Wallace but for some reason he looked angry, as if he was attacking.
Cauly launched one of his clubs at a pursuing rat and it caught him in the face, slowing the man’s attack. Reaching for his whip, Cauly drew and whacked it towards his little brother, entangling his legs and pulling him to the ground.
“Wallace, it’s me!” Cauly shouted.
“Cauly?” his little brother said, spitting out sand. Then his tone changed to a twisted angry snarl. “You should have fucking stayed away! I’m not going with you. Fucking leave me!”
Cauly’s heart sank as he heard those words.
Wallace started untangling himself from the whip. Cauly turned his attention to the rat that was nearly upon him. This one had no spear so Cauly was able to get in close, blocking a punch to his face. With a knee to the gut, he knocked the air out of the large man, causing him to curl forward. With the b
utt of his club, Cauly rammed the back of the rat’s skull, and his victim crumbled to the sand.
Cauly reached for the handle of his whip and pulled it to tighten around Wallace’s legs again.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” Wallace roared. It was as if he spat venom.
“I’m getting you out of here and taking you home!” Cauly shouted, pulling Wallace towards him, feeling a growing sadness to see the image of his tortured little brother.
“No! Just fuck off! I won’t fucking let you!” Wallace screamed, frantically trying to free his legs. His claw-like hands scratched at the leather of the whip, as he fought against Cauly, who was trying to pull him away. “Help!” Wallace cried into the hive as the doors neared twenty footfalls apart. “Fucking leave!” he bawled, turning back to Cauly.
At that point, Cauly froze.
“What have they done to you?!” Cauly yelled at his little brother.
“Mother Grietum gives me the gift! And she made me pure. She made me pure so I could serve her properly! And if I serve her, I will be rewarded.” Wallace was almost free of the coil around his legs.
Three figures appeared at the narrowing gap between the doors. It was the two rats that had run inside earlier along with one of Grietum’s daughters, all of them carrying spears.
Backup plan, Cauly thought as he saw the freakishly strong woman moving towards him, flanked by two rats.
He drew his sword with his free hand.
The rats and the woman picked up pace. Cauly threw his remaining club at the woman first, but she swiped it away.
He dropped to a crouch, grabbing a handful of sand. When the three were within a few footfalls he forcefully threw the sand into the eyes of one of the rats. Cauly shuffled closer to his victim, and as the man winced and shielded his face, he received Cauly’s blade to the guts. In that moment, taking the rat’s life meant less to Cauly than snapping the necks of the ugly lizards from his ledge on the mountain. His heart was pounding. He thought of nothing else but killing these bastards and saving his little brother—whatever was left of him.
Snare of the Blood Flower: A novella from A Poisoned Land Page 5
