Em ran forward and crouched down in front of it, one grubby hand outstretched. The gulon stood and stepped back two deliberate paces, then stretched out its neck and hissed, showing strong yellow teeth. Elija was going to tell her not to get too close—you could die from a scratch down here. But the grey-haired newcomer strode forward and snatched up the little girl and put her down again next to Elija. Startled, Em looked about to cry, but then the familiar look of tired resignation came over her face. She held on to her brother’s hand as the company passed wide of the watching creature and started up the winding stairs.
The gulon sat down again in a puddle of filth and started delicately washing its paws.
The company was more than a league’s march beyond the Eating Gate before the noise of its machinery was sufficiently muffled to allow speech. The way was uphill and Malvenny signalled a halt, raising his torch. They stopped gratefully and were about to sit when Emly stepped forward to the edge of the ledge and stared across the stream. She turned to her brother and pulled at his sleeve, pointing to the other side.
Bartellus was holding a torch and, as he squinted through the thick air, he thought he could see a pale blur upstream. He lowered the torch and blinked and shifted his gaze back and forth slightly to focus his eyes.
“A corpus,” commented a stooped old Dweller, not without relish. “Ay, that’s a corpus.” He nodded and looked around the company, seeking agreement.
Bartellus squinted again and could barely see what Em’s sharp young eyes and the veteran’s ancient ones had picked out. On the other side of the stream another, smaller, waterway joined it through a pitch-black tunnel, and at the junction there was a broken grille. The grille was broken in two halves, one fallen outward. Between the two halves a body had lodged. Bartellus could make out nothing of it, except an arm, or possibly a leg, stretched out, appearing and disappearing in the flow of the stream.
“Good,” said Malvenny, “there’ll be pickings.”
He glanced around his team, then said, “You, new man, with me.” He jerked his head. “Rest of you stay here.” He set off without looking back.
Bartellus started up after him then, realising they had both the torches, turned back and thrust his burning brand into Anny-Mae’s hand. When he turned again Malvenny was far ahead, just a bobbing point of light in the darkness. Bartellus caught up with him with effort and they continued on until the newcomer started to wonder if the leader knew where he was going. He had no doubt of the possible value of a corpse in the Halls. Where a copper pente could lead to a fight to the death, the chance of finding a gold tooth—perhaps several—was worth considerable risk.
They came to a break in the stream, where a mighty shifting of the land had broken the tunnel, moving it sideways, so the near side came close to the far side. A man could easily jump the gap, he thought. A man could easily jump the gap—if it wasn’t dark, wet and slippery. And a slip of the foot didn’t mean a hideous death.
Malvenny handed him the torch, took three steps back, then forward, and jumped lightly, landing rock-solid, his weight perfectly balanced. He turned back to Bartellus and gestured for him to throw the torch. Bartellus threw it carefully and the leader caught it nonchalantly. He stepped back.
Bartellus dismissed the image of the river of sewage beneath his feet, replacing it in his mind with a lush greensward. He jumped the stream easily, and by the time he landed Malvenny had turned and was already returning along the stream.
The corpse was that of a man. The body was bloated, so it was hard to judge if he was once fat or thin. His head was shaved and his skin decorated with the pale blue and green lines of tattoos. He was naked. A sad rag of clothing remained round his neck. Rats had been at him, Bartellus saw.
Malvenny squeezed through the broken grille and hunkered waist-deep at the man’s head. He pulled open the mouth and peered quickly around, then stood up. “Tongue’s cut out. No gold.” He spat in the stream with venom. “Let’s go.”
Bartellus gazed at the corpse. It was an arm, lighter than the rest, that waved in the flowing water, waved in the direction of their little group which Bartellus could now see huddled on the opposite side of the main stream. The chest and back were covered with tattoos, lines that had faded, just as the colours of the skin had faded, until they looked like the lines on a map, a plan of campaign, thought the old campaigner.
Just as Malvenny was about to return through the gap in the grille, Bartellus stepped forward and squeezed through, forcing the leader to make room for him.
Tattoos were common enough, especially among the soldiery. Some carried pictures of spiders or panthers. That was the mark of the tribe. This man was a walking picturebook, his torso closely tattooed with birds and beasts and obscure signs. He even had tattoos on his scalp. Bartellus saw the man’s hair had started to grow again in a dense stubble.
“Give me the torch.” He held his hand up, but Malvenny said, “Time to move on.”
Bartellus looked up. “Give me the torch!”
Malvenny paused. A Dweller for more years than he could count, he knew the movements of the stream and the times of the tides better than any man or woman. Without any compass he could calculate the trip to the Westering Shores and back precisely. When he said it was time to move on, it was.
But he realised the quiet-voiced newcomer could well break his neck if he refused. A long-time student of the practical, he handed over the torch, and watched as the older man bent again to the corpse.
There was an old scar, thick and white, high on the man’s right shoulder, an S-shape which stirred a memory in Bartellus’ mind. He studied it, frowning.
“Time to move on,” said the voice behind him.
It was a brand, Bartellus realised. The memory stirred again, then disappeared, ungrasped. His memory was full of lacunae now. It worried him that whole episodes of his past had vanished into those gaps. The old soldier foraged in the pouch at his waist and took out a small sharp knife.
He looked up. “Do we come back this way?”
“Gods willing.”
Bartellus paused, uncertain, then put his knife away and stood up. He looked down at the fading tattoos again, trying to commit them to his unreliable memory. Then he bent at the last moment and snatched the piece of cloth drifting round the corpse’s neck. Malvenny looked at him oddly, but Bartellus nodded to the leader and they both climbed back through the ironwork grille. Malvenny waved to the waiting group on the other side of the stream, then set off uphill again. Bartellus paced thoughtfully behind him, the piece of cloth squeezed dripping in his fist.
Chapter 2
The long length of a season had passed since Bartellus was forced to retreat into the sewers, and he marvelled at the resilience of the Dwellers who had lived there for months, even years. He trudged along at the centre of their party, the two children in front of him, the little woman Anny-Mae at his side. The tunnel was high there, with vertical walls, and the foul stream ran in a deep channel. Even after a few days Bartellus found the smell endurable, and the nausea that at first had constantly cramped his stomach had faded.
Anny-Mae paused and beckoned, and he courteously bent his ear to her. “Nearly there,” she told him cheerfully, beaming as if she were personally responsible for the proximity of their goal. And before long Bartellus felt the air around him lighten and the tunnel opened out, soaring high above their heads and widening on all sides. The light of the torches thinned and was lost in the deep expanses of gloom. Bartellus saw they were at the edge of a wide flat basin, where the main watercourse ran down the middle, leaving rolling banks of sludge on either side. The old soldier looked straight upwards, and for a moment found himself gripped with terror at the thought of the massive weight of the great City, bearing down on this shell of a sewer.
He heard a high thin squealing and saw a pack of huge rats flowing across the mudbanks, fleeing the unaccustomed light. He saw rats every day, they were constant companions in the Halls, but he had never seen s
uch giant ones, or so many. “They’re half blind,” he had been told. “They can only tell light and dark, and they always flee the light.” Somehow blind rats seemed more sinister.
He turned an ear to what Malvenny was saying. “Move quick as you like. We’ve got little time.” The leader glanced meaningfully at Bartellus. “New man, stick with Anny-Mae. She’ll tell you where you can’t go. Stay away from the shallow vaults.”
He waved a hand towards the darkest corner of the shores, dismissing them.
“What are the shallow vaults?” Bartellus asked the woman.
Her eyes were already fixed on the mud at her feet. “Over there,” she explained, pointing, “the vaults beneath are crumbling like sweetcake. You’d fall through in a trice.” She beamed up at him.
He glanced at where she was gesturing. “But, the children…” He could see the brother and sister already darting across the mudbanks searching for “pickings.” An image of another world flashed across his mind of two other children, golden-haired, on a beach at sunrise, searching for crabs and shrimps in rock pools.
“Lije knows what he’s doing,” said the little woman. “They’re lighter than us, they can go safe. Everyone’s afeard of it so there’s good pickings.” Her sharp black eyes picked out the pain in his face and, misunderstanding, she repeated kindly, “Young Lije knows what he’s up to.”
Bartellus found there was little for him to do. He held the torch, moving it where she pointed, while the woman used a small rake, combing through the sludge which lay in smooth undulating banks around them. She unhitched a flat sieve from the paraphernalia at her waist and sifted the mud, picking over small objects unearthed.
Once she put up her hand and showed him a coin. He held the torch flame close to it, but could make nothing of it. Her experienced fingers ran over the dull surface. “Third Empire,” she told him triumphantly, handing it to him. “It’s gold!” Then she was back to work, bent over, and he placed the precious piece in a pouch. He wondered how they would divide their spoils.
Anny-Mae moved quickly, stopping occasionally to prod the handle of the rake in the mudbank in front of her, testing the depth, the firmness of the sludge. She pounced with pleasure on small things Bartellus would never have spotted. She found several coins, though no more gold, half a broken hinge, which she told him to pocket, and a knife handle. She found a metal box, empty, which she discarded, and the leather cover to a book. She handed that to Bartellus, perhaps thinking him a man of letters.
There were dead rats, and cats, and the half-eaten bodies of dogs washed up on the shores. But they saw no more human corpses. Bartellus guessed the layers of grilles stopped large bodies floating this way. He thought back to the corpse and its tattoos. A memory nudged again at his brain, but he failed to catch it and it fled away.
His thoughts were idling in the past when he realised the Dwellers all stood listening. He could hear little above the sound of rushing water. Then he heard it too—a far-distant banging as of a hundred saucepans being struck like gongs.
“Rain!” shouted Malvenny, and the Dwellers started to hurry back the way they had come, discarding precious sieves, rakes and trowels, carrying only torches in their haste to get away.
Anny-Mae grabbed Bartellus’ arm. Her face was anxious. “This shore will flood in a trice,” she told him. “We must scurry.”
Bartellus saw the children were in front of them as they streamed back along the crumbling path, hurrying with care on the treacherous footing. “What was the noise?” he asked Anny-Mae’s back.
“Dwellers high above,” the woman told him, watching her steps, struggling as fast as she could on tiny feet. “They bang the drain covers when it rains. Warn us all.”
Bartellus realised the stream they were following was rising as he watched. When they had travelled this way earlier it had been far below them. Now it was swirling just below the lip of the path, its surface foaming and roiling with grey froth and big bubbles which burst slowly and stickily. And he became aware they were still travelling down.
“This is downwards!” he cried, but Anny-Mae was too busy hurrying and watching her feet to answer him.
The children were quickly losing ground from the rest of the party, whose torches were flickering far ahead. The little girl suddenly slithered as her feet hit a slimy patch of pathway, and her legs went out from under her. She slid feet first towards the stream. Elija grabbed at her, but he was hampered by the torch he carried, and he missed and fell too. In the last moment, as she slipped helplessly to the edge, Bartellus snatched the girl’s stick-like arm and pulled her up and into his chest. She was tiny, weighing less than a good sword. He looked into her white face. Her eyes were wide and unseeing, beyond terror and exhaustion.
The boy climbed to his feet and stopped in front of them, forcing Bartellus to halt. Anny-Mae pushed past, chasing the rest of the group, now gone from view. Elija glared up at Bartellus. The old soldier gazed down at him calmly, then said, “I will carry her. Let me help.” Elija didn’t move, and his face was set. Bartellus nodded his head the way they were going. “Move along, boy,” he growled.
Elija turned and ran on, more quickly, and Bartellus raced to catch up with him, for the boy still held the torch.
When they caught up with the group, Bartellus’ heart sprang into his mouth. They had arrived at the convergence of two mighty tunnels. Fresh water—he could smell it—thundered down a second drain, carrying lightly its burden of branches and other debris. It joined their rising sewer in a crash of tormented water roiling with debris.
A flimsy rope-and-plank bridge spanned the maelstrom. It was the only way. By the hectic torchlight Bart could see the water was foaming round the bridge, the drooping centre under water. Yet the first man was already making his way across, clinging to the ropes, dragging himself along, half drowned by the floodwater. The others were ready to follow him.
As Elija ran up, Malvenny thrust the boy onto the bridge, taking his torch. “Go, boy!” he shouted. Elija looked to his sister and hesitated, and another man thrust himself in front of him and jumped on the bridge, discarding his torch. Anny-Mae pushed the boy onto the bridge, then followed him, smacking him in the back. Elija cast a glance at his sister then grabbed the submerged ropes and started dragging himself across.
Malvenny, holding the last torch, yelled in Bartellus’ ear. “The bridge’ll go any moment!” he shouted. “When it does hold on to rope or wood. Don’t let go!”
Bartellus stepped onto the bridge, which bucked and reared like a maddened cavalry horse. He felt the little girl’s arms creep round his neck and tighten, and he grasped the ropes with both hands. Then he was submerged in the foaming water. In an instant all feeling left him. He could not breathe, could not tell which was up or down. He could not feel anything beneath his feet, or the girl’s body against his chest, only rough rope under his hands.
Then the bridge gave way and he felt himself swept into darkness, a piece of flotsam in the turbulent water. He gripped rope and plank, then he squeezed his eyes shut and prayed for the life of the little girl.
In his dreams he often found himself in a lush green valley. On the faraway horizon grey mountains were capped with sparkling snow. He was on his knees in thick wet grass, each blade fat with drops of dew, and he ran his hands through its coolness. Then he would raise wet hands to his face and clean away the sweat and blood and the pain. He would stand then, and look around. There was no one to be seen, no beasts, no birds. The air was fresh, as if it had never been used. He wondered if it was the dawn of the world.
He had asked a fortune teller once whether the dream had meaning. The wizened old man, small as a child, had pitched his tent at the rear of an army as they waited to do battle, although Bartellus could not remember which army or which battle. The man did steady business throughout the night as frightened soldiers sought comfort before facing the new day.
“The valley is where you were born, general,” the old man had said to him, grinni
ng with ruined teeth. “The meaning is clear. Green speaks of fertility, and the valley represents a woman. Your birth was blessed by the gods. You will live long, have many sons and return to the valley before you die.” He glanced over Bartellus’ shoulder, already seeking the next customer’s copper.
But the general stayed seated and scowled. “Your words are not clear to me, old one,” he said. “Is the valley my mother, or is it where I was born?”
“Both,” the oldster replied smoothly. “The green valley…”
“For,” Bartellus cut across his words, “I was born on the desolate plain of Garan-Tse, in the midst of the Third Battle of the Vorago. My mother’s cries were echoed by the screams of dying men and there was only blood and mud for leagues in every direction.”
The old man squinted at him irritably. “It is a representational valley,” he explained. “All men are born in blood and pain. But you are surrounded by fertility. You have sons?” Bartellus nodded. “And you are wealthy?”
When Bartellus nodded again, the old man shrugged. “Then you are a lucky man.”
“Most men would not call me lucky,” Bartellus growled.
“You are a general, general,” the fortune teller argued mildly. “And you are alive. Most men would not call you unlucky.”
A million drains sucked the rain down, channeling it through the ancient system of pipes and ducts, culverts and channels, drawing it deep beneath the City. Most of the water made it through the wide drains into the great river Menander which drove through the City’s bowels. A weight of rain filtered through layers of the City’s history, deep down to where the sewers were crushed and broken, squeezed flat by the weight of time. A thousand branches, washed into culverts and through broken grilles, scoured the walls of the sewers, washing away the dirt and debris of years, and for a while, a few days, the Halls were cleansed of filth and the smell was of grass and good earth.
The City Page 2
