He saw another wound, the exit wound of a bullet, which had come out through his chest. The bullet was probably what killed him originally. Also, the man’s right foot, shinbone, and tibia were bare, completely devoid of flesh. The corpse must have been walking on a foot almost purely made of bone.
“Me, I be seeing the corpse, he worry you,” Hidalgo said. “Rick, you be wiser than Graham and his hunters, they be not listening to my warning.”
“You shot it twice?” Rick asked.
“Yes.”
Rick suddenly inhaled. The face looked familiar. “Is this one of the Harpsborough people?”
Hidalgo cackled. “Good eye. Two of them, they found dead by Graham and his men. Them hunters, they be claiming those bodies shot each other, fighting for some stash. Them hunters, they be saying this why the Fore wants all caches official. It stop murder. Me, I think they be wrong. Me, I think that the Fore, it be filled with fat greedy bastards and skinny uptight bitches. But me, I be thinking them fools, too, because those two men did not kill each other.”
Rick’s eyes had not left the body. “Why do you say that?”
Hidalgo laughed loud enough to send echoes down the chamber. “You not able to tell, but before this body, it got up and started walking, both men be together. And both men, they be shot in the back.”
That is unlikely.
“Murder is not so odd,” Rick said. “Maybe the Fore suspected murder, but just didn’t want to dig too deep.”
“I be thinking this too . . . at first. And me, I be thinking that maybe Graham or one of his hunters be doing it. They hungry too, yes? But I don’t think that anymore.”
Rick shifted his focus to the corpse’s foot.
Or maybe that’s what killed him. A hound got his leg.
But there were no teeth marks on the bone like he would expect to see from a hound bite. There were some lines there, though, almost as if a knife had been used.
Hidalgo’s voice became very serious. “I shot him twice, Rick. Once when I be hunting, and I be having no time to make sure he be dead. He been falling off of this cliff here.”
“That’s when he busted his head?”
“Yes. The man, he be distracting me from a dyitzu hunt, so I didn’t be checking for him. When I be coming home, when I finish with the hunting, I be stopping back by. Sometimes a corpse, he be living after falling like that, you know. The corpse, he be living, because his body be not down here. Him, he be wandering somewhere down that tunnel. Today I thought I be double checking, and the corpse, he be wandering his way back here. I be shooting him again.”
Rick pointed to the new arrow.
Hidalgo nodded, the beads and bones in his hair rattling together. “That’s right.”
“And?”
“When I be shooting him the first time, he be having two perfectly normal legs.”
It took Rick a moment to understand what Hidalgo was getting at. Shocked, he looked up at the tall man.
Hidalgo’s head was half obscured by the light of the tunnel around him. That great mane of dirty dreadlocks rattled again as the hermit shook his head. “That’s right. Someone, they be cutting and eating off that leg meat after he be turning into a corpse.”
Copperfield moved quickly through Harpsborough, past the cold Kylie’s Kiln and over to the side of the village that was the farthest from Father Klein’s church. The Still was the only underground room in Harpsborough, save for Ben Staunten’s Storeroom under the Fore.
The village was sleeping. Only the two guards by the entryway would be awake at this hour. He heard a nearby villager coughing in their sleep. Copperfield looked towards their hovel, but no one stirred.
Smoke seeped up through the cracks in the nearby hatchway, and he could feel the heat emanating from the stones here. It had been this smoke which let Copperfield know Davel Mancini was awake. Bending down, he rapped on the woodstone hatchway three times before waiting for an answer. He inspected his knuckle where he saw his knocking had torn loose a bit of skin. He bit it off and sucked the blood away. The taste reminded him of poorly distilled bloodwater.
“Who is it?” Mancini’s distant voice echoed up from deep in the pit.
“Copperfield.”
“Come on in.”
The heat blasted him as he opened the hatchway. He was already sweating a little from his walk across the village, but the perspiration came pouring out of him as he descended the first few steps. After he closed the hatchway behind him, he found himself in complete darkness. He made his way down by touch alone.
The stone stairway was tight, even for a man of normal build, and in places Copperfield had to turn his padded frame sideways in order to squeeze through. As he approached the bottom, a light from the room beyond illuminated the stairway. The smoke swirled up to the ceiling, traveling over his head and back towards the village.
He suppressed a cough and entered the still. Inside, Mancini was feeding woodstone blocks—not unlike the kind that Copperfield himself made torches from—into the furnace. Above the furnace, Copperfield could see the reflected glow of the hot copper vats. The vats’ tubing rose up to the top of the chamber before descending over Mancini’s lowered head to a set of sealed receptacle barrels. Kylie’s pottery vessels lined the walls, some filled with Mancini’s brew and corked with woodstone, others open and empty.
“You’re up late,” Copperfield said.
“Early. I went to bed right after Michael did. Couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d get working on the bloodwater.”
“You haven’t been buying as much woodstone lately,” Copperfield said, watching the man as he removed some more blocks from a chest.
“It’s this new kind of brew I’m making. Doesn’t require as much heat.”
“No one’s buying much woodstone these days. This may make me poor, Davel, but I love this new brew’s taste. What’s different about it anyway?”
Mancini bent over and fed the rest of the woodstone into the furnace. “Oh no. Trade secret, my friend.”
“No doubt, no doubt. And I’ll be damned if I let anything happen to you. Can’t let a devil get between me and my booze.”
“Nah, you’d just order a villager to save me.”
Copperfield laughed. “True enough.” Copperfield’s eyes rose up to the jars of corpsedust that lined the uppermost shelves. “Hard to believe that when I drink your juice, I’m drinking little bits of those corpses.”
“You’re not,” Mancini said. “If it makes you feel better, I have to clean the corpsedust out of the vats every now and again.”
“Can you re-use it?”
“No.”
“Then we’re drinking some part of it, my friend. It’s sinfruit, isn’t it? You’ve added it to the bloodwater.”
Mancini shook his head. “I’ve always done that. Sometimes, whenever we get a trader from the Pole, I’ll add honey. But that’s not the secret.”
“You’re a devious man, Mancini.”
Copperfield looked for a place to sit down, but there were no chairs in the still. The heat and the smoke were making him lightheaded. “Did Mike take much of your brew, last night?”
“No, he only had a glass. Took Kylie to bed, though. Hard to sleep with a woman next to you, I always say.”
Mancini closed the door to the furnace and stood up. The smoke around his head swirled with the motion.
“Kylie’s a nice girl,” Copperfield said. “Good head on her shoulders. Ugly though. Surprised he sleeps with her.”
“Why shouldn’t he?” Mancini asked. “He’s slept with all the pretty ones. He’s got to pick between ugly and a villager.”
“I’d go villager. Aaron had the right idea, trying to chase down Alice.”
“Michael likes powerful women.”
“Bitches, you mean.”
“Them too,” Mancini nodded, staring at the flames through the furnace’s grate. “Now did you really come here to talk about women and wine?”
“The villagers are starvi
ng. My own miners have started doing underhanded deals. There’s rumors of caches being found by hunters, far out caches, that nobody is reporting. Before Michael . . .” Copperfield stopped to cough up some of the smoke he’d been breathing. “The villagers want change, Davel. And what do we tell them? The same old shit everyone else has been spilling about how everyone needs to have a goal. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass. I’ll shovel those lies myself if someone asks me, but I’m not giving up what I have. I spent three years of my damnation running around the wilds. Now I’ve got villagers to mine my woodstone for me. I’m not going back there. The villagers are going to rise up, Davel. They are. They’re going to come knocking on the Fore’s door curtain and ask us for some food. And you know what? Michael’s going to give it to them. Think about it. Under Charlie, opening the stores wouldn’t have even been an option.”
“Those are dangerous words,” Mancini said, a smile on his lips.
“You’re a cat, Davel. Always landing on your feet. You’re the guy who whispers into the ears of the First Citizen, no matter who he is. The bloodwater you make doesn’t do anything useful, but people will starve to get it. No matter what happens, Davel, you’ll be okay . . . even if you were the one to make the revolution happen.”
“And you too, Copperfield. You’d be fine if the Fore fell. With your woodstone miners and torch makers,” Mancini smiled harder. “Or would you, now that you’ve taught others how to make them for you? What if they get greedy, and want more than the devilwheat you pay them? Why, without the hunters backing your claim, they could just make the torches all on their own.”
Copperfield gave him a dismal look.
“You should be careful who you trust with your secrets,” Mancini went on. “I mean, look at me. I haven’t shown anybody the first thing about how to do what I do. You should make sure that whoever you give information to is a trusted ally. Someone you can stick with through thick and thin. Someone who will support you, even if the First Citizen happens to change. But it would be a dangerous thing to go against Mike. Anyone doing it would likely be killed.”
Copperfield nodded. “I imagine they’d need some powerful motivation, if they were a Citizen.
“They would indeed.”
“Of course, Staunten would almost certainly die in a revolution.” Copperfield said.
Mancini turned towards him and raised an eyebrow. “Why would you say that?”
“Oh, he’s the keeper of the stores. The key is in his room. I’m sure the villagers would storm it first. Break down his door. It’d be a shame. But then some of the things that were Staunten’s storeroom would have to be redistributed. Even what’s in those black barrels.”
Mancini walked across the chamber, displacing the smoke on the ceiling as he did so. He stopped at the end of a condensing tube. “Could you check that quicksilver over there by the furnace? Can you tell me what mark it’s on?”
Copperfield eyed him warily, but walked over to the quicksilver. It was a thermometer, and the liquid metal had risen past two hash marks.
“As I got better at the brewing,” Mancini continued, “I realized that one of my marks was wrong. For the brew to be just right, the heat should run between the second two.”
“That’s the secret then?”
“I suppose I better be careful now. If I keep telling you things like that, you’d be able to brew your own.”
“Yeah,” Copperfield said, “if I wanted, I could steal away your business. I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”
“Through thick and thin.”
Copperfield smiled. “No matter who happens to be the First Citizen.”
“We do need to rest,” Aaron said. “Galen, I know you want to figure out what’s happening to the Carrion, but we may want to go ahead and try to get home. As hopeless as that journey might be, we’re not going to last long out here.”
“You’ll not make it back like this,” the priestess said.
Kelly’s her name.
“Sadly she’s right,” Galen said. “We need rest and munitions.”
“There’s no place in the Carrion that will afford you that,” Kelly said.
“Well, look who’s all Miss-Doom-and-Gloom.” Johnny Huang said.
The priestess raised her delicate jaw at him. “Unless you were to find the favor of one of Maab’s priestesses. I could take you to such a place and negotiate on your behalf.”
“Fuck,” Aaron said, and dropped into a squat.
Absentmindedly, the Lead Hunter began to rub the back of his head. River water flicked off of his hair as he did so.
“Is it worth it?” asked Avery. “Would it be better to join them than die? Even after everything Arturus said about what they do to the slaves?”
“You would be made slaves.” The priestess began to wring out her hair, angling her body and neck oddly in a way that kept her midsection from moving much as she did so. “You’d be forced to renounce either your religion or you genitals. But it’s not hopeless. If you work hard, you can become baptized. Become a soldier. If a priestess takes a liking to you, you can even become her consort.”
Aaron swallowed and looked at Galen. “Tell me there’s another way.”
Galen frowned. “There is. One other way.”
Kelly’s eyes narrowed.
“Will we like it?” Aaron asked.
“It isn’t without its own risks. We can beg succor from Calimay.”
Kelly sucked air in through her teeth. She must have done it hard enough to hurt her ribs because she bent over slightly, wincing.
Aaron stood back up. “Calimay?”
“One of Maab’s former priestesses.” Galen opened his pack and held it at an angle, letting it drain. “Just because she’s turned against Maab doesn’t mean that she’ll be sympathetic to us. We’re also toting a lot of baggage. She may or may not take kindly to us carrying around a priestess. She may or may not be happy with Turi’s marked up shoulder.”
Aaron looked towards the single exit. “Better than being a slave, right?”
“If we’re lucky,” Galen said. “She may still carry on the institution. But she’s not one of Maab’s, so that gives her some room to have changed for the better.”
“That seems to be the best solution. Do you know where she is, Galen?”
Galen shook his head and looked towards Kelly.
She pursed her lips for second, thinking. “I don’t know exactly where she is. But I know about where. As a Little Lady, I visited the place they say she’s taken up hiding.”
“Where?” Galen asked.
“Near the Asphodel Fields. East of Nephysis and his corpse eaters.”
Galen grimaced. “Aaron, you may wish to reconsider.”
“Why?” Johnny asked. “Who’s Nephysis?”
Kelly tied her hair up into itself, wincing in pain as she pulled it out into a ponytail. “Maab’s Necromancer.”
“You believe in magic, huh?” Aaron asked sarcastically.
Kelly nodded.
“There is no need for magic to affect a corpse,” Galen said. “And where they are thickest, the dyitzu may be lightest. I know a quick way to get there. Hopefully we can be discovered by one of Calimay’s soldiers without shedding any blood.”
“Can you get us there safely?” Aaron asked.
“Yes,” Galen said. “I think so, though I’ve never seen any place as thick with devils as the Carrion is now.”
Aaron stood. “Then let’s try it.”
Arturus’ father walked towards the exit. They followed.
Galen took the lead, his Heckler and Koch held at the ready. Johnny Huang came next, Galen’s pistol held before him. Arturus and Avery took up the center. They had no weapons. Arturus had lost everything except his clothes and his razor. He kept the razor in his right hand, not because he thought he could use it to save himself from the devils, but because it was all he had.
Aaron took up the back, carrying his rifle. “Just so you know, I’ve only got two bullets
left.”
This is bad.
They left the ruby veined area and started down another path. The arches here had white marble keystones as opposed to the Carrion’s more typical violet ones. Unlike the portions of the Carrion Arturus had seen earlier, the rock varied dramatically—changing from granite, to sandstone, to black and purple hellstone—but the architecture remained consistent.
The hunters were moving as quietly as they could, but everyone was walking with a limp—except for Galen. Even so, Arturus was able to make out echoes of dyitzu claws, clicking against the stone.
He thought seriously about their chances of making it home . . . and about what would happen if they got into a fight while he was armed with only a razor. He could hold them off for a while, until they backed him into a corner. His friends would be dying around him. Eventually, the devils would tear him down, too.
We’re not going to make it. Father, why did you bring me here?
Julian had no way to measure how long he’d been lying there because no one had come to feed him. Anticipation of the insidious things they’d do to his soul, mind and body was driving him mad. He almost wanted them to come—almost.
The door opened.
Light shined into his prison. He tried to stand up, but hunger had taken his strength. Three Carrion soldiers entered. They ripped off his clothes, tearing them like dry paper. Two held him down while the third pulled on his masculinity and tied a string around it. His cock was a black wrinkled worm, struggling to make itself as small as possible. He could feel his testicles trying to withdraw, but they couldn’t because of the knot the soldier had made. The pain hit him so hard he vomited. The retching contracted his stomach muscles, pulling his testicles back into the string, which only caused more pain.
His manhood hadn’t had time to fully heal from the mutilation it had received during his time on the slab. In the old world, he knew, the damage would have been so severe that he would never have been able to heal. He would’ve had useless sacks of pulped flesh between his legs. In Hell, they had the chance take that from him all over again.
Knight of Gehenna (Hellsong Book 2) Page 7
