Tomas, Justine, Emil … his heart must be shattered, she thought.
At dawn, Stone buried the camp and they travelled north, horses galloping through the forest. The pale blue sky, streaked red, was dotted with white clouds, twisting and scudding in the wind. The trees became sparse and the trails soon disappeared. The ground shifted to uneven scrubland. Stone urged them onto a north-south broken highway slanted across low hills thinly dotted with trees. They followed him, riding hard. Hooves clattered against the grey surface. Vegetation suffocated jagged splinters of concrete. The sun dipped behind the clouds, casting the land into shadow. The wind blew in their faces. Ahead lay a cluster of damaged buildings. Stone reached for his binoculars, brow ringed with sweat.
“Wait here,” he said.
He guided his horse slowly along the road. It horse snorted and he patted her, narrowing his eyes. Nuria and Conrad watched from a distance, horses pacing. Stone dropped down from his saddle, listened, wrinkled his nose at the smell. He wore a scarf around his neck and raised it over his face. He stalked forward, the harsh wind and the scrape of his boots the only sound. He stepped over rotting corpses and twisted metal road signs with faded warnings, clutching his rifle, right finger against the trigger, left hand cradling the barrel. Many of the buildings had been levelled and were nothing more than mounds of rubble. Some had been scorched by fire, walls crumbling, roofs half collapsed. Ancient vehicles, husks of perforated metal, littered the cracked asphalt, greenery surging through the gaps. He noticed the cars and trucks had been stripped of engines and frayed lengths of rope dangled limply at the front of each one. With no fuel they had doubtlessly been utilised as horse drawn carriages. Stone bent at the waist, peered inside; he saw blackened seats and human bones.
He straightened, grimacing beneath his face scarf. Side roads and alleyways were deserted. Rubbish drifted in the wind. His heart rate increased. It was apparent this town has suffered destruction more than once. It was a settlement from the Before, founded with brick and metal and glass, constructed by the Ancients, ripped apart during the Cloud Wars of centuries ago; yet it had been patched together by a new population only to succumb to another cycle of devastation, a shockingly barbaric removal of life. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before and nothing he would not see again, though it left him no less numb. He detached himself from the victims whose final moments had been to scream as flames singed hair and melted flesh. He signalled to Nuria and Conrad and focused his gaze toward the eastern horizon where the grim outline of the Maizan city stood, torn and twisted roadways, shattered blocks of black, red and grey. Had they been responsible for this carnage? Were Emil and the Map Maker amongst the dead? Is this why Mallon had been unable to find them?
Stone heard a sudden creak and knew it wasn’t from the wind. He took cover, dropped to one knee and raised his rifle. He licked his lips, stared along the barrel, sweeping it across the face of a long row of two storey buildings, gaping holes in the fire ravaged brickwork exposing lengths of twisted metal. He strained his eyes but saw no one. Nuria and Conrad slipped from their horses, alert to his sudden defensive stance, and quickly drew their weapons, cautiously approaching the town half-crouched. Stone waited. Another creak. A fleeting movement.
“Show yourself,” shouted Conrad, brandishing his sword.
Debris shifted with a loud crash and a pair of eyes peered out at them. Stone rose, still aiming his rifle. Nuria closed in, crossbow raised, until she saw it was a small child emerging from the rubble; grimy-faced with ragged dark hair and pale skin. She guessed he was nine or ten years old. She heard Conrad exhale with relief. Swinging her crossbow onto her shoulder she moved toward him, hand outstretched.
“Hello,” she said.
The child stared back at her; light green eyes, wide with surprise.
“I’m Nuria. What’s your name?”
His lips curled into a tiny smile. Then he looked past her, saw the rifle pointing at him and flinched, screwing up his nose.
“Stone,” said Nuria. “Lower your gun.”
She turned to the boy.
“He won’t hurt you. Do you have a name?” The boy remained silent. “Are you alone? Do you know what happened to this town?”
Metal ached in the wind. Dirt blew in a shower across the cracked road.
“Food,” said the boy, his voice scratchy.
Nuria nodded. “We can spare you some food.” She reached into her backpack, plucked out a wrapped piece of dried meat.
“Put it away,” said Stone, hastily walking into the middle of the street, turning rapidly. “Look at him.”
Nuria blinked, disgusted with Stone. Tamnica was not going to claim her soul. The child looked miserable and dirty, alone in this horrible town that stank of death. His fleshy feet bore worn shoes. His solid legs were covered with threadbare clothing. His arms were stocky, one loose at his side, one tucked behind his back. Beneath the dirt and ragged appearance she realised he looked unnaturally strong and well fed, despite his sallow complexion. Nuria felt a creeping coldness chill her neck.
“Scavengers,” hissed Stone.
Wailing hideously, they swarmed from the rubble of the town, punching out of the debris, scrabbling from beneath vehicles; dozens of them, bodies mostly hunched over, a life spent in the dirt, roaming the wastelands, picking over the remains of slaughter. They pressed toward them in waves, hunting fresh prey, stringy lank hair, rough clothing, dirt encrusted hands grabbing.
“Shit,” yelled Conrad, swinging his sword, hacking into them as they pounced at the horses.
A group loomed at Stone. He slammed the stock of his rifle into an unshaven face, flipping him backward. He crashed his shoulder into another, levelled one more with his fist.
“Nuria,” he called.
The child revealed his concealed hand and lunged at her with a dust coated brick. He aimed for her skull and she fell backward, avoiding the snarling blow. He snatched at the wrapped meat that had fallen from her grasp. Nuria grabbed his wrist and violently shook the brick free. He jabbed his forehead at her but she nimbly dodged the head butt. The wind was suddenly knocked from her as she was punched from behind and staggered forward. Scavengers descended upon her, emitting loud screeches. A sharpened piece of metal swiftly slit the straps of her backpack. She ploughed her fist into the blistered face of a dark-eyed man with his hood raised. She punched another. She glimpsed the thief running with her backpack. Skinny limbs and a hooded coat. She snatched for her crossbow but the boy was reaching for it and punched her across the face, splitting her lip. She struck back fiercely, landing a blow against his jaw, shocking him from his feet.
Conrad saw the hooded thief fleeing with Nuria’s backpack, loaded with provisions. He could see she was in the midst of fighting her way out of a group of them. More seemed to be climbing out of the buildings, like angry black flies swarming around a corpse. He wrestled himself free, relentlessly jabbing with his sword. He rolled, swept his blade in an arc, and hacked at the fast moving legs of the hooded scavenger. The thief attempted to vault his blade, glinting in the waning sunlight, but the jump was low and he sliced through flesh. He sprang to his feet, lifted the backpack and raised his sword, preparing to drive the tip into the scavenger’s chest, but then he stopped and his face widened with horror as he saw the whimpering face of a young girl, wracked with pain, thrashing her bleeding legs against the ground.
Stone fired. One of the scavengers slumped to the hard asphalt, head blossoming with a patch of red. He saw momentary hesitation but still the pack ran at them, snarling and attempting to pin them down. He fired off a second shot, blasting one of them against a burnt out car. The street filled with scavengers, brandishing handmade weapons; lumps of wood with pieces of metal sticking out of the end, a brick tied to a length of rope, wire coiled around wooden poles. Stone kept firing, one deafening bang after the other, until six bodies lay dead. One of the scavengers let out a pained wail and the gang fled into the side streets, melting into buildings, disa
ppearing beneath the rubble.
“She’s just a child,” said Conrad, his breathing laboured. The girl was trying to crawl away, dragging her legs, smearing trails of blood. “And they left her behind.”
Drenched in sweat, Nuria took her crossbow and pack. Silently, she climbed onto her horse.
“We can’t just leave her here,” said Conrad. He sheathed his sword and crouched to lift her but the girl hissed at him, slapping him away. The cuts on her legs were deep but he was thankful she had jumped or he could have sliced through flesh and bone and crippled her. As it was, though, she would quickly bleed to death unless her wounds were cared for. He walked to the top of the street the scavengers had escaped along and cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Hey, you left a young girl behind. She’s hurt bad. You need to come and fetch her. She needs help.”
The wind blasted rubbish and grit. The scavengers remained hidden.
“Come and help this girl. We won’t fire on you. Just come and take her.”
He fumed at Stone, who was calmly reloading his rifle.
“It’s so easy for you,” he said, taking cloth and water from a saddlebag.
Stone put the rifle on his shoulder and began to search the bleeding bodies, finding nothing.
“I offered that boy food, Conrad,” said Nuria. “All he wanted to do was bash my head in.”
He ignored her and crouched beside the girl as she continued to pull herself across the street. He reached for her but she kicked at him. “I’m trying to help you,” he said, impatiently, brow dripping with sweat. “Stop fighting me.” Wild, hate filled eyes glared at him as he clamped her ankles with his left hand. He poured the water over her wounds, rinsing away the blood, only for it to weep through the torn skin once more. “I cut her so deep,” he muttered. “I didn’t realise she was a child.”
“That child would have eaten you for dinner,” said Stone, pulling himself into his saddle.
“So that’s it, is it?” said Conrad, long dark hair falling around his face. “This is how you survive to be your age in Gallen, is it? By shitting on every one and everything?” He faced the bleeding child. “Please, let me help you.” She howled in pain, barring cracked and browned teeth at him. “You know what I learned in Tamnica, Stone? That I’m a man with a soul. A scared man but still a man with a soul. That’s what I learned in that foul place.” He knotted cloth around the sword wounds he had inflicted. Her face was growing pale. “Your fiends are coming back for you,” he said, glimpsing movement in the nearby street. “Get them to stitch you back together.”
He got to his feet, brushing the dirt from his trousers. “Do you have no feelings about anyone?”
“Lay off him, Conrad,” said Nuria, quietly. “He buried Justine yesterday. Have you already forgotten?”
For a moment, he had. He was the last to ride out of the town. He glanced over his shoulder and smiled as the scavengers gathered around the wounded girl.
“They came back for her,” he said, a tinge of pride in his voice.
Stone stared knowingly at him. At first, Conrad didn’t understand the look and then the colour drained from his face.
“They’re not going to help her, are they? She’s useless to them wounded. They’re going to eat her.”
--- Twenty Two ---
Days rolled into days.
With each darkening of the sky, a sensation of helplessness engulfed Stone, perversely taunting him in his failure to uncover Emil’s whereabouts. In a land of so few people he had hoped it would have been a simple task to track her down but it had proved the very opposite. There was nothing to suggest they were even close to finding her, and then his thoughts would drift back to the skeletons in the burnt vehicles, wondering if they had already found her. She had been taken a long time ago. Even travelling on foot, moving at the Map Maker’s slow pace, they would have reached or be near to reaching the northern shores of Gallen by now. Stone pondered once more the tale of Sadie’s old map, conveniently worn in the spot that would reveal or deny the existence of Ennpithia; the mythical dreamland conjured to provide hope of a better place after death.
Yet Philip had contradicted the fairy stories when he had quizzed the one-legged man – “Ennpithia is real. It is not a fairy story.” Words spoken with fire and conviction. “It is a land of great cities and knowledge, where a man can raise his family in peace beneath the sign. It is not a final resting place for departed souls. That is nonsense. How can that be true? The Map Maker understood. He knows it is there. It has always been there. A light in the dark. I know these things. Do not doubt me. It is there.”
“What is the sign?” Stone had asked.
“I do not know. I do not know what that is but it is what they say. A man can be free and safe in Ennpithia beneath the sign. Gallen is a world of hate. It is an ugly place.”
Dawn sunshine shone upon Stone’s face and he reflected on Philip’s words as he scraped at his beard. Gallen is a world of hate. He supposed he was right about that. He wondered what life beneath the sign was supposed to mean and he involuntarily glanced at his forearm, the Tamnican branding concealed by his clothing. He saw Nuria out of the corner of his eye. She had seen him staring at his arm. She offered him a faint and reassuring smile. He nodded at her, saying nothing.
Beyond the town the asphalt beneath them had become ragged and horribly pitted, ruptured with long bleak fissures. Stone suggested they abandon the highway and return once more to the plains so they steered the horses toward an unforgiving terrain, deserted and lifeless, the hard ground spotted with depressions and brush, low dunes and water starved canyons, but the horses found the going much easier than the road, able to stretch their powerful legs and drink up the miles. Late in the afternoon, they came upon the half-buried remains of a road with patchy white markings along its middle. The black surface curved and banked across the rough landscape, angling toward a valley in the east that appeared to stretch to the horizon. Blocks of metal girders jutted above its edges, like iron giants peeking over the rim and observing their surroundings for the first time. The horses began to snort and rear, troubled by the valley. The three of them halted and soothed the frightened beasts, observing the landscape before them with near reverential silence. It was Conrad who finally spoke, his voice hushed, awestruck.
“Tristan once told me of this place. He came here one winter when the land was white. He tried to explain how vast it was and how awful it had made him feel.”
Nuria had sadness in her eyes. She had been born in a city of thousands, white walled buildings and dirt roads, pedal bicycles and horses, yet her home of Chett, in the Southern Deserts, was a poky hamlet compared to the sheer size and scale of the city that lay smashed beneath them; buildings piled one atop the other, squashed side by side, leaning, snapped in two, consumed beneath shifting layers of dirt. Millions of Ancients must have once resided here. Millions of Ancients had most certainly died here.
Stone turned his horse from the valley. They had been straying northeast and needed to right their path. He pressed straight ahead, riding alongside the valley of the dead city. The ridge stretched for miles and it would be dusk before they were past it. No one spoke, numbed by what they had seen. The wind continued to whine as they galloped by, a torturous lament, as if millions of souls from the past were calling to them from the dead city, reaching through the centuries, beseeching them for help - then angrily blasting showers of grit and dirt at them when those pleas were ignored.
Soon, they reached another highway, running east to west. They spotted a slow-moving convoy of people travelling from the east. Raising his binoculars, Stone saw men, women and children, faces grim, as they trudged along the broken road, many of them pushing wooden hand carts laden with possessions packed into boxes, crates and sacks.
“Who are they?” asked Nuria.
Stone shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
“They must be from the city,” said Conrad.
The
Maizan city was much closer now, sitting beyond a range of low foothills.
“They’re roughly an hour from us,” said Stone. “Let’s rest the horses and wait for them.”
“Why?” said Conrad.
Stone lowered his glasses.
“To talk to them.”
Apart from the Scavengers, they were the first people they had encountered since leaving Dessan, but Stone was wrong; it would take nearly two hours for the shambling column of people to reach them. Stone paced the road. He had eaten a small amount of food and now waited with his rifle across his back and a water bottle in his hand. The sun had disappeared and darkness spread across the land. He was a mere outline in the gloom. Nuria lit a fire at the roadside and Conrad sat with her after checking the horses were secured. The bleak landscape had turned black and Conrad fanned his hands toward the fire, glad he could no longer see the valley, though unsettled by the feeling that ghostly eyes were boring into his back.
He shivered and glanced at Nuria, her soft skin reflected in the flames, her beautiful blue eyes round and luminous. He traced his vision down her slender nose and full lips. He ached for her, more than ever since Tamnica, when both of their lives had hung delicately in the balance each and every day, never knowing who or what would be responsible for their demise - a fellow prisoner, a Cuvar, sickness, starvation. His exiled father passed into his thoughts, his dead mother, his friend Mallon, his aunt Mary, his young brother, Tristan.
The Wasteland Soldier, Book 2, Escape From Tamnica (TWS) Page 26
