Hammer and Bolter 4

by Christian Dunn

  ‘Why do they rush back to their labours?’ Xavier asked Adora who stood up beside him. ‘Are they mad?’

  ‘No, just stupid,’ she said. ‘The overseers always beat the last couple of people to come out.’

  ‘Maybe we should hurry too, then,’ Xavier said, but Adora shook her head.

  Even in this gloom he could see the way the light played in her hair, its lustre untarnished. She was beautiful, he decided. The only beautiful thing left in the world.

  ‘Save your strength,’ she said. ‘There are always a few left stunned by the melee.’

  Xavier frowned. ‘What if there aren’t?’

  ‘Then we’ll stun a couple,’ Adora said and smiled, her teeth as white as a shark’s in an ocean full of seals.

  Xavier grunted and decided that she was joking. Soon the crowd cleared and she led him forward, pushing through the weaker of the slaves who remained below. If some of them flinched when they saw who was pushing them, Xavier didn’t notice, or if he noticed, then he didn’t think about it.

  He let her climb the ladder first, admiring her form as she did so. Then he followed her up into the waiting torchlight. After the lightless hours spent in the pit he found that he was squinting, and he rubbed his watering eyes as the iron shackles which bound him to the chain gang were snapped around his ankle. When he looked up his breath caught in his throat.

  Adora was not locked into the chain with the rest of them. Instead she was cowering beneath the touch of a monster. Like all of its verminous kind the thing had chisel teeth and a scaly lash of a tail. It had the beady black eyes too, glittering with malevolence and cunning, and an obscenely naked wrinkle of a snout. Unlike its fellows it was huge. Even with its stoop it was as tall as a man, and even wider across the shoulders.

  But what choked Xavier with horror was not the thing’s bulk but the way it was touching Adora, dragging its filthy claws through her hair with some grotesque parody of affection.

  Before he knew what he was doing he was on the balls of his feet, weight balanced and shoulders loose. Had it not been for the shackle on his ankle he would have attacked, weapon or not, and that would have been the end of him. As it was, the dead weight of the steel and the deader weight of the slaves around him gave him pause, and in that moment Adora looked at him.

  She winked, and for the first time he realised how blue her eyes were. As blue as the pure seas and clear skies that awaited them above. Then she tilted her head, gesturing him to leave her. It was a barely perceptible sign but he followed it as thoughtlessly as a bull followed the flicker of a red cape.

  They would survive, he knew that now. They would survive together.

  He let himself be led away with the slaves and didn’t even look back as he heard the soothing sweetness of Adora’s voice whispering in the distance.

  And Adora needed to be soothing. Once his underlings had scurried off, their whips dancing gleefully across the skin of their victims, Skitteka turned and lumbered off to the sanctuary of his burrow. It was only when safely ensconced behind the heavy iron doors that he turned to Adora and unburdened himself.

  ‘Vass is coming,’ he said simply. As he said the name his tail trembled and even Adora could smell the change in his odour. She said nothing. She didn’t need to. Skitteka obviously needed to speak, and of all the creatures down here Adora was the only one it could trust.

  ‘Evasqeek, Evasqeek, Evasqeek,’ the thing gibbered, its voice a high pitched whine. ‘He will betray me, the vile thing. He will use me to avoid paying for his own failings and make them mine instead. When Vass comes, Evasqeek will blame me for the slackening flow of the stone, the thrice-accursed liar.’

  Skitteka clawed at her as he spoke, but she endured his painful caresses as uncomplainingly as ever. In truth she barely felt them, for as her verminous master spoke she saw the first cracks appearing in her confinement.

  ‘Oh, Vass,’ Skitteka moaned, his voice a terrified combination of horror and admiration. ‘In Qaask he chained all the slave handlers together and let the slaves work them. None of them survived their own whips. Then there was Tsatsabad where they say he simply sealed the entire mine and flooded it with poisoned wind. Imagine how they must have scrabbled and fought as their lungs melted.’

  Skitteka paused and licked the yellowed blades of his incisors with a long pink tongue.

  ‘And in Isquvar he had the overseer sealed into a cauldron and then rendered down into slave gruel. They say he added one scrap of coal to the fire at a time so that it took an entire day for his victim to stop screaming. Mind you, he had been caught stealing warpstone.’

  The cracks which Adora had seen appearing at her confinement blossomed into real possibilities. They were tenuous possibilities to be sure, but they were real enough to set the carefully nurtured embers of her hope ablaze. As Skitteka continued to speak her eyes burned blue in the darkness.

  ‘Curse Evasqeek,’ Skitteka continued, turning from admiration of Vass to shrill self-pity. ‘He will give me to Vass and something horrible will happen.’

  Adora felt a flash of contempt, and wondered how this weakling had become the master of the slaves. She supposed it was because of his muscle. It certainly couldn’t have been his courage.

  ‘My lord,’ she said, her face lowered. ‘If Evasqeek does betray you, I will be finished. Without you I am nothing.’

  Skitteka struck her. It took her by complete surprise, and she was sent tumbling across the stone floor of the burrow. There was no pain, not yet, but there was numbness down one side of her body and a warm trickle of blood had already begun to flow.

  ‘Ungrateful creature!’ Skitteka shrieked as she staggered back to her feet. It had drawn its dagger, and although the metal was dull, the liquid that coated it glowed with a toxic intensity. ‘How can you be so selfish?’

  It lurched towards her, its monstrous bulk blotting out the light from the lantern, and Adora knew that in these nightmare depths, death was finally upon her. She didn’t waste time worrying about it.

  ‘Forgive me, my lord. I only meant that I would like your permission to kill Evasqeek.’

  Skitteka stopped and staggered backwards as though he had been shot by a jezzail.

  ‘Kill him?’ he asked, a new hope in his voice. ‘But how can a little cat like you kill Evasqeek?’

  Adora looked at him, and for the first time since she had met the creature she made no effort to compose her features. No pretended humility marred the porcelain hardness of her features; no false fear widened her predatory gaze or trembled on the hungry perfection of her lips. No simulated respect bowed the straight perfection of her stance, nor did it smooth the arrogant composure with which she carried herself.

  As she stood before him unmasked, Skitteka took another step back, and another. He felt as though he had bitten down into soft flesh to find a razor blade hidden within. Adora, seeing his beady eyes swivel uncertainly, lowered her head demurely.

  ‘I will do it because I must. Without you I am nothing, my lord. Get me within striking distance of Evasqeek when Vass arrives and I will do for him.’

  Skitteka hesitated, paralysed by hope. Then he sheathed his dagger, the blade hissing like a serpent as it disappeared, and slumped back into his chair.

  ‘Maybe,’ he murmured, scrabbling in his filthy robes for something. ‘Maybe you will.’

  The first hint the slaves got of the impending visit was the sudden cessation of work. In the days preceding their lord’s arrival Vass’s servants insisted on checking every inch of the mine for traps, and while they did so the slaves were locked into their oubliette.

  At first they wallowed in their idleness, savouring every moment of it as a starving man will savour every mouthful of a feast. But as time dragged on their permanent exhaustion was replaced by another torture. Forgotten in the blinding darkness, starvation started to take its toll.

  It wasn’t long before rumours of cannibalism began to circulate.

  ‘I think it’s time to escape
,’ Xavier said, whispering into Adora’s ear so that they wouldn’t be overheard. ‘What do you think?’

  Adora enjoyed the warmth of his breath on her neck. She had long since learned to use such scraps of pleasure to distract her from… well, from everything. She leaned closer to him before she replied.

  ‘I think we should be patient,’ she said and tried not to sound patronising. ‘Even if you could climb up to the trap door, and even if you could get it open, what do you think would be waiting for you there?’

  ‘Perhaps nothing. Perhaps we have been abandoned.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ Adora asked.

  ‘Well then, the vermin,’ Xavier said carelessly. ‘I’ll have to kill them to get out eventually anyway.’

  Adora smiled and sighed contentedly. Men were all fools, of course, so that was alright. What was important was that she had finally found one with the courage to be a leader. Like all shepherds she knew the value of a good sheep dog and she had truly found one in this tough little Estalian.

  ‘It might be better to fight them when they aren’t standing on top of a hole waiting for you,’ she said, and felt him pull away.

  ‘I do not appreciate being mocked,’ he said, and Adora smiled again. Pride. Was there a better way to handle a man? Well, maybe one. She reached for him, but she was interrupted by the clang of metal and a shaft of light cutting down into the darkness. After the blind days she had spent down here the light seemed as solid as a stream of molten iron, and her eyes ached as she looked towards it.

  When her tears cleared she could see the mass of slaves that huddled around her, hope and terror warring on their upturned faces. When one of the guards appeared in the trap door opening they froze like a field full of mice beneath the shadow of a hawk.

  ‘Skitteka wants his pet,’ the creature shrilled.

  Adora got to her feet and walked towards the opening. The other slaves pulled away from her, all but Xavier. As she waited for the ladder to tumble down he appeared beside her, and his hand brushed against hers.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t,’ Adora told him, surprise lifting the perfect arcs of her eyebrows. ‘You haven’t been summoned.’

  ‘They won’t care,’ Xavier said with a fatalistic confidence. ‘And I need to see more of this place. Need to start finding weaknesses.’

  ‘No,’ Adora shook her head. ‘No, it’s not worth the risk.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ Xavier insisted.

  ‘Don’t come,’ Adora said. ‘It’s better if – ‘

  ‘Quick-quick!’ the creature above shrieked, and Adora realised that the ladder had reached the ground while they had been arguing.

  ‘Stay here,’ she said, and started up it. When she reached the top she was not surprised to see Xavier clamber up behind her. She was sure that the verminous guards who awaited them would kick him back down, but they seemed hardly to notice.

  It slowly dawned on Adora just how distracted they were. Their whiskers twitched at every draft of air and the scaly lengths of their tails coiled and uncoiled nervously. Once, there was a boom of some distant falling rock, and all the guards sprang into the air, their beady black eyes rolling in terror.

  When they finally arrived at the entrance to Skitteka’s personal burrow they hung back, chittering nervously.

  ‘Go on!’ the leader said, pushing Adora towards the iron door. She went, trying not to let her guards’ terror infect her. Xavier followed closely and, as soon as she had gone through the iron door, she closed it behind her, pushing him against it.

  ‘Wait here,’ she hissed. ‘Any further and we’ll both be killed.’

  To her relief he nodded, and she paused to give him the briefest of kisses before composing herself and padding down the corridor into Skitteka’s chambers. As soon as she saw him she knew why his underlings had been so terrified. He had been gnawing on wyrdstone.

  Adora felt something like despair as she looked at her chosen master. He wasn’t aware of her or of anything else. His eyes were rolled so far back in his skull that she could see the whites, and pink foam bubbled down from his mouth.

  She glanced down and saw the remains of one of Skitteka’s underlings. Its carcass was torn and broken, and as she crept a little closer she could see that it had been partially eaten.

  That was no problem. What would be a problem would be if the wyrdstone had brought on more than a fit of madness. She knew what it could do, had seen the half-glimpsed horrors that were occasionally driven screaming from the mine. The wyrdstone didn’t just kill, it transformed.

  She squinted into the gloom as she padded silently around Skitteka’s paralytic form. As far as she could tell the body which sweated and wheezed beneath its filthy pelt was the same grotesque bulk as always.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  Adora spun around and glared at Xavier. After a quick glance back at Skitteka she paced angrily towards him.

  ‘I told you to wait,’ she hissed, but he didn’t respond to her fury. Instead he just pushed past her.

  At first she thought that he was making for the half-eaten corpse that lay crumpled on the floor but he hurried past it and into the shadows on the far side of the chamber. When he stood up she saw the glitter of a sword in his hand. He weighed it, looked at Skitteka and smiled.

  ‘Vengeance comes to those who wait,’ he said softly, and Adora saw that he was going to kill Skitteka. Skitteka the vicious. Skitteka the coward. Skitteka, the weak link upon which all of her plans for escape hung.

  ‘No,’ she said, starting forward to intercept him. ‘No, leave him. We need him, can’t you see that? We need him!’

  But Xavier wasn’t listening to her. His eyes were ablaze with a devouring hatred, and he was holding the blade with professional ease.

  She knew that she wasn’t strong enough to stop him. Knew that no words could quench the rage she saw in his eyes. Knew that even if she called for the vermin none of them would arrive in time to help.

  So she reached up to her neck, untied the ragged shift and let it fall to the floor.

  Xavier stopped, his mouth falling open. She looked like something from another world.

  Of course she was scrawny. Scrawny enough that he could count her ribs. But she was still whole, her breasts and hips and thighs still curvy enough to catch the same torchlight which glowed within the golden mane of her hair. She was also incredibly, unbelievably, impossibly untarnished. No trace of disease marred the smooth silken perfection of her skin. Neither did any dirt.

  Who was clean down here, he wondered? How was it possible?

  But more than that, much more, was her fragility. Only things that haven’t been broken yet can be fragile and he could see that Adora, alone amongst all of the slaves, hadn’t been broken.

  He tried to hold on to his outrage but then she was running one hand along the clenched line of his jaw and standing so close that he could smell soap. Soap!

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. They were his last words. A sudden explosion of pain blossomed in his belly, and then thrust upwards into his liver.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Adora, and twisted the blade she had taken from him. If she had punctured his heart first it would have been easier, or at least cleaner. As it was his heart carried on beating as he died, pumping great gouts of blood from his desecrated body. It spattered on to her chilled skin with hideous warmth.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  The look of confusion stayed on his face, pinned there by death, and he collapsed onto the floor next to the verminous corpse of Skitteka’s half eaten victim. Adora knelt down, twisted out the dagger, and slipped it into the stillness of his jugular just to make sure.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her face expressionless. Then she tore off the ragged remains of his shirt to wipe herself clean of his blood, and clean her dagger before slipping back into her clothes. Then, sitting on the cold stone floor, she put her head in her hands, and wept.

  An hour later
Skitteka regained consciousness. By then she was as composed as ever.

  Vass had been born last into a litter of thirteen. He had also been born the runt. Not many of his species could have survived such twin disadvantages but Vass did. He not only survived but thrived, doing so by the simple expedient of devouring his siblings. He started with the weakest, losing three of his milk teeth in the process, and finished with the strongest. That had been just as soon as he had learned to lift a rock above its sleeping head.

  This was an exceptional beginning even for one of his species, and his dam was so distressed that she died soon after the last of her other offspring. It was not a sacrifice Vass had let go to waste. The rest of his life had been a continuation of that promising start. He joined his clan’s warriors almost as soon as he was out of the burrow, and soon set about translating the fratricidal excesses of his whelphood into political progress.

  Now, at the ripe old age of twelve, Vass had developed a reputation for savagery that made him the envy of his kin. It had preceded him into this miserable mine, a dread that was almost a physical thing. He could see it now in the crouching forms and twisting tails of the chiefs and leaders who abased themselves before him, grovelling in the dirt of what had once been their domain but which was now so effortlessly his.

  He had gathered them in the audience chamber. His personal guards stood around the walls, magnificent in their arrogance and cruelty. They would satiate their bloodlust before the day was out, and anticipation of the joys to come set their eyes agleam in the darkness. Their presence did little to help Evasqeek’s nerves.

  Instead of executing the chief overseer immediately for his treacherous inefficiency, Vass had decided to let him talk first. Not that it was doing him any good.

  ‘It was the cave-in, your worship.’ Evasqeek chittered. He was grovelling so abjectly on the floor that the blades of his incisors tapped intermittently on the rock.

  ‘The cave-in?’ Vass asked, his beady eyes as hard as glass.