Death’s Head

by David Gunn

  “What is it?” Debro asks.

  “It’s a worm.”

  “Worms don’t have ribs.”

  I take a look around us. “This one does,” I tell her.

  CHAPTER 12

  A HUNDRED, maybe two hundred paces beyond the beginning of the worm a man in a side tunnel has a fire burning. The smoke is sour, and whatever he’s cooking smells rancid. I’m interested in what he’s found to burn; Anton is more interested in his source of food.

  “Hi,” says Anton, ducking his head to fit into the burrow. “I’m new here.”

  Hard eyes stare at him, and then flick to where I stand in the doorway. The man is bearded, dressed in a dozen different layers of rags, and his hand starts moving toward his boot the moment Anton enters his world. A knife, I guess. Probably homemade and crude, like his shelter.

  He’s a loner. We’ve all seen them before.

  “No,” Anton says, shaking his head. “I’m not here to cause trouble. I just want to know where you found the food.”

  The old-timer’s grin shows broken teeth.

  “Well?” My patience is not up to Anton’s standards.

  “Wall,” the man says before going back to prodding his fire. Most of the ashes seem mixed with bone. I have my answer.

  “We eat the worm,” I tell Debro.

  Phibs looks sick.

  “I’m serious…It’s frozen and vast. There’s got to be some kind of goodness in the bones, and the flesh can probably be dried for use later.” The girl is looking at me with horror. Debro’s expression isn’t much better. So I leave them to tell the others and push ahead. When I can go no farther and the worm gives way to a wall of sheer ice, I know we’ve arrived.

  “We’re going to die,” announces Phibs when he catches up with me. He’s looking at our new quarters, which used to be somebody’s old quarters until that person obviously moved up in the world. A cave has been hacked directly into the ice, and a mound of frozen shit and yellow ice decorate one corner. All you can say for the arrangement is that at least the subzero temperatures mean the shit doesn’t smell.

  A ragged piece of canvas is bundled into one corner. It’s ripped and filthy, but it’s better than nothing, and some of the men are wearing more than one layer of clothes. At least one of the older women has a cloak. Debro herself is wearing my jacket.

  “I need that back,” I tell her.

  Beside me, Anton bridles.

  Phibs already understands. “We must make a doorway,” he says. “Keep in what heat we can, right?”

  Debro slides herself out of my jacket, and I notice the expensive black suit beneath. No one has stolen Debro’s clothes anywhere up the line. I find that interesting in itself.

  “And your jacket,” I tell another woman.

  She glares at me.

  “And yours.”

  The man next to her clutches his arms across the front of his jacket. “Or what?” he demands.

  “I’ll break your skull against the wall and take it anyway.”

  Behind me, Debro sighs. “I think you’ll find he means it,” she says, looking at the man, who climbs out of his coat in sullen silence. A second later the woman does the same.

  We collect up spare clothes among us—Debro, Anton, Phibs, the girl, and I. Her name is Rebecca, but I only discover that when we’ve finished sorting the jackets and coats by size. She’s nervous around me, maybe because she heard me suggest swapping her for food.

  And then, once Debro has found something to go across the door, which turns out to be the rag we found at the start, I leave her redistributing clothing according to need and wander over to the pile of frozen shit, making myself vomit and catching the laser blade before it hits the floor.

  A quick flick of its handle and my blade appears. The m3x has a default set to cobalt blue, which lets the user see what he’s doing. At its purest setting the blade is entirely invisible and all the more frightening for being so.

  “Holy fuck,” someone says.

  But by then I’m working.

  Sandstone, ice, or carbon, there’s little difference among them as building materials and they’re all better than piss-stinking adobe. I cut block after block from the ice until I have enough bricks to build a wall. The ragged curtain provides camouflage, hiding my work from anyone outside.

  Waving the others back, I slash the cave entrance into a square, giving myself a surface to which the ice bricks will bond. And then I carry my blocks, three at a time, and lay them in place. It’s quicker than having to show someone else how to do it.

  When this is finished we have a doorway narrow enough to be guarded by one or two people, if they keep their nerve.

  “We’ll be attacked tonight.”

  “By whom?” asks Debro.

  I shrug. “Whoever gets here first.”

  The new walls keep in the heat and the cloth across the narrow entrance keeps out the worst of the cold and within an hour we have a temperature in which humans can live. My laser blade, jammed handle-first into one wall, provides light.

  “You and you stand guard.” I choose two people at random. “Then you two. You take the next watch.”

  “And you?” asks Anton.

  “I’ll stay awake the whole night.”

  “Because tonight is the most dangerous?”

  I nod.

  “Then I’ll stand with you.” He catches my look and smiles. “I can fight,” he tells me. “I used to do it for a living.”

  “Militia?”

  “Palace guard. Believe me, the training was tough. And before you ask what happened, I met Debro…Her family were furious.”

  Yeah, I think. I bet.

  In the early hours of the morning Phibs raises his head, like a rat questing. “Outside,” he whispers, “a lot of people.” Before Anton or I can reply, Phibs puts up his hand, stilling us and the two of our group currently standing guard.

  “A dozen,” he announces finally. “Two groups, different captains.”

  He must have seen my doubt.

  “Aural augmentation,” he says. “Very useful in my business.”

  Printing? I want to say, but have other things to worry about. “I’ll go,” I say, moving toward the curtain.

  “Take your blade,” suggests Phibs.

  “No.” Anton shakes his head. “It’s too early to show our hand.”

  “Then take mine,” says Phibs, handing over a crude blade with rounded handle and rounded sheath, ideal for swallowing or shitting. “Not as impressive as yours,” he adds, glancing toward where my blade still burns in the wall. “But still effective.”

  It’s Ladro, with four others, all wearing warm-looking jackets. Half a dozen hangers-on crowd behind, dressed in rags.

  “Impressive,” he says, nodding at my knife. “Although I’d have bluffed with that and kept the other. It’s got real balance.” He’s holding my stolen Death’s Head knife, lightly and very professionally, between his first finger and thumb. Ladro’s right about the sweet point. He’s got it exactly, from the look of things.

  “Glad you like it,” I say.

  “And I’ll take the girl while I’m at it,” Ladro says. “Hand her over and you can walk away from here unhurt.” He’s very sure of himself, a man so used to getting what he wants that it’s obviously never occurred to him things can change.

  “Afraid not,” I say. “We’re keeping her.”

  Someone sniggers.

  So I move out from the doorway and feel Anton and Phibs slide out behind me. With the two guards inside we should be able to hold out for quite a while.

  “I’m going to take her anyway,” says Ladro. “Give her up now and we’ll treat her well.”

  Again, that snigger.

  “Hold out,” he says, “and we’ll make her pay.”

  “You don’t get it,” I tell him. “We’re not giving her up.”

  He comes in then, fast and dirty. The knife in his hand, my knife, slicks toward my throat and I spin away. It’s a feint
and he goes for his real move, which involves trying to kick out my right knee. There are a dozen ways the outcome can go and each offers a slightly different outcome for our group.

  I decide on quick and dirty myself—knowing, as I make my choice, that Debro will not approve and wondering why I care.

  Twisting, I let his kick go past me and take his blade in my shoulder. As Ladro grins, I spin my own knife—well, Phibs’s knife—so my blade juts to the right of my fist and tear its edge hard and fast across Ladro’s throat.

  He jerks back, and I rotate my blade, dragging upward from scrotum to breastbone, releasing his guts. The hot stink of shit fills our corridor.

  I take down two others. A vicious slash at one severs his jugular. The other I kill by grabbing his head and twisting until bones break. Both of them are from the ragged brigade. We store up less long-term trouble for ourselves that way.

  “Go,” I tell the rest.

  Hostile eyes watch us. A flaming torch is held high, as if someone is trying to get a better view.

  “They’re dead,” says Anton. “And so will you be if you don’t fuck off.” His voice is raw, his customary politeness discarded. This is the Anton that Debro must have met, the one who worked for the palace guard.

  “We’ll be back.”

  “And we’ll be waiting,” Anton tells the voice.

  They leave with threats and curses, dragging Ladro’s body and the bodies of the ragged behind them.

  “Was that necessary?” Debro asks.

  No, I want to say. It wasn’t…We could have given the girl up as I suggested.

  “We made our choice,” says Anton. “Now we live with it.” Which is his version of the same.

  Debro wants to say something but turns away. The next time I see her she’s comforting Rebecca, who is in tears and protesting that it’s all her fault.

  “No,” I hear Debro say. “It’s men.”

  Anton sighs.

  “We’ve lost Phibs,” he says, about five minutes later; something I’ve already noticed.

  “Give him time,” I say. “He’ll be back.”

  And he is, dragging food and flammable rubbish wrapped in a stolen blanket. “I thought,” he tells us, “while they were busy I’d see what I could find.”

  “Who?” asks Anton.

  “The next lot in.” He glances at me. “They’re already talking about another attack. Revenge for their dead.”

  “What’s their camp like?” I ask.

  He smiles. “Warmer than this,” he says. “It’s inside the worm. Well, it joins the worm through a hole in the skin. Maybe twice this size. They’ve even got a mattress.”

  “We take it tomorrow night.”

  Anton scowls at me.

  “It’s warmer, that’s one. And if we don’t attack them, they’ll attack us, that’s two. As for three,” I say, “we started this and they’ll slaughter us if we back down now.”

  CHAPTER 13

  IN THE EVENT we take two days to prepare and attack the moment we’re ready. I’ve spent the previous forty-eight hours laboriously hacking away blocks of ice to run a corridor around the outside of the worm to the back of their camp.

  It isn’t the cutting that’s laborious, but the carrying away of the blocks in utter silence. Phibs helps, although he draws the line at joining me in the attack. This isn’t really a problem, because I want him and all the others in the corridor, where the ragged camp exits into the body of the worm.

  It’s time to get them bloodied.

  “You know what you’re doing?” I ask Anton.

  He nods.

  “Good, give me three minutes.”

  He smiles, then starts counting, adding thousands to the end of each second to make the time stretch correctly. Sixty seconds from now he’s going to lead everyone out into the corridor, move a couple of hundred paces as silently as possible, and arrange them in a half circle around the entrance to the next camp. I’m going to use that time to navigate the corridor and slice out one last section of ice bricks.

  “One hundred and seventy-eight…one hundred and seventy-nine…one hundred and eighty…”

  Kicking in the wall, I stab my Death’s Head blade toward the first person I see, slitting his face from eye to neck and adding a fresh wound to his collection. It’s a man from the earlier attack.

  He falls back, so I open the guts of the idiot who grabs his place. My attacker is tired and hungry, his fighting as ragged as his death. The corpses from our previous scuffle are piled in one corner, mostly eviscerated and reduced to bones and a bucket of innards.

  My first thought is that these people are no better than ferox. And then I realize they’re not eating their dead, merely rendering the bodies for tallow and fat. The oily lights on the walls indicate their success.

  A woman slashes at me so I twist away. When she slashes again, I block her blade with my arm and stop her with a single jab to the throat, shaking her free from my own blade. She opens her mouth to scream and dies without saying a word. As the others retreat into the corridor, a sudden explosion of noise makes it obvious that Phibs, Anton, and the others are ready and waiting.

  The fight is brutal, but then it’s meant to be.

  In the space of five seconds Anton breaks the legs from under three men using the same sideways kick, then takes a fourth by surprise, grabbing his wrist and using the man’s own momentum to swing him into a wall, dislocating his arm at the shoulder. A kick to the skull kills him.

  “Practice,” says Anton, seeing me nod.

  As for Phibs, he’s everywhere, ducking under blows and sliding in from the blind side. A punch to the throat, a kick to the balls, if possible an attack from behind. He fights dirty, as if taking a special pride in it. And he stops, every time, to rifle pockets or steal some object that catches his interest. Within ten minutes we own their camp and everything in it, although Phibs mutters darkly about having to drag back the booty he stole from them only a couple of days before.

  “Cut blocks of ice,” I tell Anton, tossing him my laser blade. “Seal the tunnel we made in case the survivors try to use it to do the same.”

  He nods, obviously amused to be taking orders.

  “And you?” asks Debro.

  “I’m going to talk to the next camp along.”

  “Make nice now,” says Phibs.

  Debro scowls.

  My warning to the next camp is stark. We’ve killed Ladro, and we’ve just claimed the camp that helped his men. If they leave us alone we will leave them alone. If not, we won’t be held responsible.

  It’s an arrogant speech.

  As I walk back along that bizarre corridor and wonder what exactly feeds the light strings that grow beneath the great worm’s spine, I calculate it will take those I’ve just insulted a week or more to get angry enough to attack us. I’m wrong; it takes them less than three days.

  “Outside,” says Phibs. “People.”

  Anton’s on his feet and I’m reaching for my laser blade before Debro and Rebecca have even woken.

  “Keep her safe,” says Anton.

  His ex-wife nods.

  Like it or not—and it seems she does—Rebecca’s been adopted by two adults looking to fill a hole in their own lives. If I were the kind of man to have a daughter on Farlight, I’d probably be adopting the kid, too.

  “Ready?” I ask.

  Everyone nods.

  This is politics, I realize, finally understanding something that has eluded me. This is what OctoV does. Says one thing and means another. He does something that looks intended to get one result and what it actually achieves is something else altogether. It’s not as complicated as I thought.

  Almost to the hour, three days after I return from warning them to leave us alone, the next camp in launches its attack. They are better armed, better dressed, and better fed than the last group we fought. But we are new arrivals, we’re organized, and the physical strength we brought with us has yet to dissipate.

  Also, they’re
nervous. Not good in soldiers.

  We kill fewer than in our previous battle. There’s no need for extremes. Ladro’s death and our reputation go before us. We lose three men to their five, gain a child they apparently stole from another camp only days earlier, and establish our right to live within the ceramic tunnel itself.

  The next camp surrenders without a fight. The camp after that offers to swap places before we even begin to make warlike noises. We have moved five times in less than nineteen days, gathered a dozen people to us, lost half a dozen of our own, and picked up clothes, weapons, kindling, and food along the way.

  People are beginning to pay us taxes.

  The camp after this is Ladro’s old base, and I decide to visit it by myself. Anton and Debro are all for staying where we are, and most of the others feel the same. But that’s not how war works, at least not in my world. The legion has rules. You take ground and then you keep taking ground until casualties make farther advance impossible.

  “Let it go,” Debro suggests.

  “I can’t.”

  She sighs, glances at Anton. “You talk some sense into him.”

  Anton shakes his head. “Different rules,” he says.

  I go alone, the Death’s Head dagger carried openly in one hand and my laser blade tucked into the back of my belt. Nobody outside our camp knows of its existence and nobody is to know, unless it’s unavoidable.

  And so I march up a corridor our group shuffled down only a few weeks before. Blankets move slightly as loners and families peer from their burrows. It’s the camps that interest me, places built around a central fire, with inhabitants organized enough to keep guard and run shifts, even if the shift just says the weakest do all the work. For every such camp, the corridor has a dozen burrows, squatted by people who wrap themselves in rubbish and hope to be left alone to live out what remains of their lives.

  I ignore them and in their gratitude they ignore me.

  “Hello? It’s Sven. I’ve come to talk.”

  Knocking at the door seems only polite. And since it’s the first camp I’ve seen in Paradise to have a door, I enjoy doing so. Being in the legion makes for simple amusements.