by Andy Graham
“You said it yourself. These people would have give me a home. I lost my home a long time ago to the Ailan Legions. Could never really square with myself why I joined up. Guess I finally realised what that meant to me.”
“And the other thing you were going to tell me? You’ve got what?”
Orr’s hand twitched towards his belly. “I’ll explain later.”
“There better be a later, dude.” Nascimento held out a fist. “On three?”
Orr grinned a smile that crinkled his forehead. “You’re a brave man, Nasc.”
Paper-scissors-stone.
Nascimento lost. “You gonna forego the free-shot penalty now you’re getting all heroic on me?”
“Like hell, I am.” Orr’s fist slammed into Nascimento’s arm and pain sparked all the way down to his fingers.
“Baris Orr.” Karaan stepped out of the shadows, supported by a young boy. The white handlebar moustache embedded in Karaan’s grey beard was stained with dried blood. He was limping, one arm cradled across his body. The boy supporting him held out two shell belts. The leather was sweat darkened and worn along the edges. Bullet tips twinkled, head and tail poking out from their straps. Dangling from the holsters on the end of those belts were Kayle’s revolvers, the big gunslinger irons.
“You owe us.” Karaan’s eyes glittered like icicles. “You have a debt.”
“I don’t owe you, nor Kayle, not even Kaleyne. I was doing my job. I don’t do debt, neither.”
“Baris the Bard would have said I deal in death not debt,” Nascimento said in an obvious whisper. Mayka slapped him.
The revolvers hung between the two men. One from the mountains, one from a town that no longer existed. Moonlight picking out the roses engraved into the handles. “Only person I owe is myself. And I got some scores I need to settle.” With an unsteady hand, Orr took the belts. He strapped them around his waist and tied the holster ties tight around his thighs. They looked odd over the top of his 13th-Legion uniform. But somehow, just like a child can make any combination of clothes work that no adult ever could, the big irons would have suited Baris Orr no matter what he wore. “Lukaz, tell your Hoyden to travel light. We leave at dawn.”
28
Transit
Light from the rising sun spilled over the Donian Mountains. It coloured the snow-clad peaks gold and amber and turned the rock into molten steel, reminding Ray of something Stann Taille had once said. “God’s no carpenter. He’s a blacksmith. The sun is his fire, the moon his anvil, the stars the sparks from his celestial hammer. And not even the Devil wants to piss off a blacksmith who forged the universe with a hammer the size of a galaxy.”
The blacksmith’s storm that had torn up the night Ray had just survived had relented in the early hours. Skovsky Senior and his stolen chopper had made an emergency landing on a rocky outcrop barely big enough to stand on. He was an hour gone now, heading back for fuel, food and Martinez. Ray had watched until Skovsky disappeared into one of the cracks of blue emerging under the low cloud line.
Skovsky Senior. One person, a man who wouldn’t even make history’s footnotes, a bereaved father who would be remembered only by those closest to him, was keeping the Resistance’s fight alive in a manner that would put all storytellers out of a job permanently: reliable and unassuming, quietly getting on with what was right. He was a real hero. Something Ray would never be. Captain Lacky’s ghost would testify to that. Ray settled back on his haunches. The greasy feeling he got when he was tired was back and tinged with guilt. “Focus. Now’s not the time for self-pity.”
He signalled to the group behind him and crept forwards. The animals of the forest were emerging. A flutter of wings there, a bushtail’s rusty snout here. As the bedraggled bunch of people followed him, the woods fell silent. Quiet apart from the impossibly loud noise the Resistance were making, that was. They’d have had more chance of stealth if they’d come disguised as a marching band in blindfolds. In this case, however, God’s Hammer had worked in their favour.
The torrential rain and rolling thunder had made it easier for the small band of fugitives to get through the woods undetected. They’d slipped around Unsung sentries, and hidden as a rat-faced legionnaire had fled past. Now, with feet squelching in muddy boots and clothes soaked to the bone, they huddled near a scare-devil on the edge of the forest.
“What is this thing?” Vena ran a hand across the life-sized carving of a man. Bare-chested and bearded, it held a club in one hand and a rock in the other.
“A scare-devil. The tribes use them to scare things away, animals and people and such.”
“Devils?” she asked, a quirk to her lips.
“Didn’t work on you, Franklin.” Stella’s eyes were red-rimmed, set deep in their sockets. Emily slept at her mother’s feet where she was wrapped in Ray’s jacket.
Vena laid a hand on Ray’s arm as if to say, “Leave it.” She pointed to the palisade. “And those statues? What are they supposed to scare?” The statues ringing the Angel City were twice the size of a large man. Standing, kneeling, grovelling and prostrate, their expressions ranged from scared to petrified.
“The people inside them. See those eyeholes in the statues’ chests? They were sealed earlier rather than later if the person inside screamed too much.”
Even Stella took time out from her new obsession of hating Ray to look shocked.
“They buried their captives alive?” one of the Resistance muttered.
“Why did we come?”
“This is madness.”
“We’re going to die.”
“Should leave these—”
“Barbarians.”
“Shut up.” Matt, his braided Mohican dripping water, attempted to marshal his troops into something other than petty.
A wave of irritation spiked in Ray. He raised his voice so all of the Resistance could hear. “A friend told me” — Brooke told me — “the captives were given a final meal of the finest food before the statue was sealed. Sizzling pork crackling and steaming meat. Fried, salted potatoes that were still spitting oil. Carrots that glowed. All washed down with rich wine and a final shot that, as a former colleague said, ‘would put hairs on the inside of your chest’. It was good. Almost exquisite. But—” Ray studied the palisade ringing the Angel City. He was weighing up his options, trying to think of a plan that was at least halfway to decent. The chatting amongst the Resistance fell silent.
“But what?” Matt asked.
“There was always slightly more food than was healthy to eat and that food came back in stomach-wrenching agony when the captives were sealed in the statues, in some cases while the alcohol from the shot was still warm in their throats.” There was movement on the palisade. A twitch here and there, enough for Ray to know they’d been seen. He’d had no inspired ideas about how to get to the city unharmed, but took a grim satisfaction in the wide eyes of the Resistance as he finished his story. Maybe he’d inherited some of Stann Taille’s flair for the horrific. “What a way to die. Sealed in stone, watching the world go by, with only the fumes and cooling warmth of your last meal for company as it came out the other end.”
“Not pleasant but not helpful at the moment, either. What are we waiting for?” Vena asked. “If the Donian people are on your side, why don’t we just knock on the gates?”
“Because if Captain James Brennan or any of the VP’s other henchmen are behind those gates, we might end up being the last meal fed to the next generation of statues. And I’m sure a man as understanding and compassionate as Randall Soulier would go to great pains to ensure that family members didn’t have to dine on each other.”
His next sentence was cut off by a creak of wood. The gates in the palisade swung open. Behind them the peaks of the Donian houses were limned by morning sunlight. A squat shape was framed by the gate posts. He — it had to be a he — stood at the head of the ramp and pointed. A single-word command. Indistinct but audible. Figures loped past him, running soundlessly. One, two, three,
four... Ray lost count at twenty.
“What’s going on?” Matt asked, attempting to squeeze the water out of the end of his braid.
“Mushroom picking,” Ray replied. “Old Donian tradition on the morning of a battle.”
“Really?”
“No, not really.”
Vena sniggered as the red-faced man crept back to the rest of the Resistance with all the grace of a man mountaineering in roller skates. There were around twenty-four of them, huddled in clumps under trees. Or as Vena had put it: ‘about two dozen variations of useless’. Adding when she thought Ray was out of earshot, “If only I’d known how pathetic they were.”
The squat man in the gate to the Angel City was joined by a larger silhouette. They held out their hands. Where Ray expected to see them clasp hands and shake, they pumped closed fists up and down in the air three times. Ray couldn’t see the shapes they made with their hands on three, but he saw the squat one hit the bigger one on the upper arm. A free-shot penalty. The dull thud of the squat man’s boots rang hollow on the ramp. Then he ran, ghost-like, into the forest and disappeared into the green gloom.
“So what are they doing?” Vena tugged at Ray’s sleeve and gestured the way the Donian had disappeared into the woods. “Don’t you know?”
“No.” A smile crept across Ray’s face. “But he will.” He pointed to the man, broad-shouldered and proud, at the top of the ramp.
“Brennan?”
“That’s Nascimento.” A sudden hope surged in Ray’s chest. Not so far behind it was the realisation that he was only minutes away from Brooke. The closer they had got to the Angel City, the more nervous that thought had made him. Now, it flooded his senses, overwhelming him in a rainbow of emotions and urges.
“You can’t be sure who that is from here.”
Ray pointed to the expanse of toenail-short grass. “No way we can sneak up on them, though.”
“You have a plan?” Vena asked.
“Got to take a risk here and there.”
“You haven’t got a plan, have you?”
Before she could say anything else, Ray broke cover and stepped out onto the damp grass. A few scarred tree stumps lay between the forest edge and the first of the three terraces under the Angel City. There was a rustle of movement along the palisade. Heads popped up from behind the sharpened wooden logs. Rifles and bows were levelled at Ray. For a second, his enthusiasm at seeing his old friend and his visceral desire to see his lover were lost in a sudden thought: what if Nascimento’s loyalty to the Unsung outweighed his friendship to Ray?
A cracking of sticks and rustling of leaves behind him signalled the impatience of the rest of his party to get going. Tired, wet, hungry and with a flair for disobedience, the Resistance ignored his gestures to stay back. One, the hungry one, Ray thought, cowered under the scare-devil. The man was gaunt and haggard, the statue bold and leering.
A crack of lightning lit the sky. It came from nowhere, and had no business being there. It lit up the scare-devil’s face in hellish shades. In that face Ray saw both vampire and a gargoyle; he saw a body ravaged by the Cracks that stalked the streets of the city and the dried mud of the countryside; he saw his brother, Rhys. Whatever the man at the foot of the scare-devil saw remained unknown, but he screamed. Ray twisted to shut him up. A crack of thunder sounded alongside the lightning. A spray of red burst from the man’s shoulder. A second explosion came with a flare of red fire over to Ray’s left. Splinters of wood exploded off the statue to reveal a patch of unweathered wood beneath.
Not thunder. Gunfire.
“Sniper,” Ray yelled. “Head for the city!”
The Resistance staggered from the treeline, fear adding clumsiness to their haste. They were easy targets in the low-cut grass. Ray grabbed Emily from Stella’s arms and sprinted for the ramp. The little girl slung over one shoulder, Vena Laudanum’s arm clamped in his other hand. A bullet whined between him and Vena. It blasted a hole through a giant statue near the ramp. Dust spilled to the ground. More fire rattled across the open grass. Rapid-fire, too much to be coming from a single sniper. Blood sprayed from the chest of a Resistance fighter. He collapsed without a sound.
A chill ran through Ray’s adrenaline-heated body. The Donian are shooting at us! They think the sniper’s one of us! They think we’re attacking. The gate was closing at the top of the ramp. Men were grabbing at the bolts on the other side, preparing to lock it the minute they were shut. “Stop! Nasc! It’s me, Ray Franklin.”
Another crack of gunfire. A Donian warrior tumbled headlong from the palisade, spinning slowly. He didn’t let go of his crossbow until his body thumped to the ground, snapping the weapon and piercing himself with his own bolt. The impact triggering a howl of anguish from behind the wooden palisade.
His senses in overdrive, Ray saw the bloodshot eyes and hard-lined faces behind the spikes. Heard the click of hammers and the dripping of sweat on wood. Smelt the fear-driven anger as all manner of weapons were aimed at him. Maybe, a tiny part of his brain observed, picking up Emily Swann wasn’t the best idea. You’ve just made her a target as well as yourself. Another attempt at doing the right thing spectacularly backfiring.
Skovsky Senior would have done the right thing, a niggling voice whispered back. Would you let him die, too, if it served your purpose?
Ray snarled and weaved across the grass, tugging Vena with him, trying to dodge the bullets and outrun his own thoughts. A divot of earth erupted at his feet. It spattered mud across Emily’s golden hair. And across her desperate screams, Ray yelled the first thing that came to mind, “Aalok. Reza Aalok. Captain Aalok.”
A gunshot sent another member of the Resistance to his knees. Two of his friends grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him towards the ramp.
“Hold fire!” A bass voice.
“Nascimento! Reavermen, come to bury your bones, remember? Remember?” Ray yelled the unofficial motto of the 10th Legion over the crack of rifle fire.
Answering shouts and orders. The gates creaked open. Ray sprinted up the ramp. A bullet thunked into a board. Ray ducked, pivoted, dragged Vena with him as the planks bounced and danced under his boots. Emily screamed for her mother, for her brother, for her father, the Dan-ster, who used to scare the monsters out from under the bed and was now a stiffening corpse in the sea-locked Morgen Towers. In a fit of panic, she headbutted Ray in the nose with a ferocity that staggered him. He fell to his knees and skinned his knuckles as he dropped the girl. Emily tumbled to the floor. Buffeted by the stampede of the Resistance up the ramp. Ray scrabbled towards her. Someone stepped on his fingers.
“Get up!” Vena screamed.
“Run, Ray!” Nascimento.
Ray barged past the last runner, scooped the girl up, gritted his teeth against the raging pain in his back and raced towards the gates. The springy wooden planks threw his pace off. The gunfire was above his head now, aimed at the forest. Random but enough to give the snipers pause. Ray sprinted through the gates and they slammed shut. Vena was there. Stella, too, tending to her daughter. The Resistance had only lost one man on their flight. That, considering their situation, was luck in the extreme.
Nascimento had stripped the Unsung insignia off his uniform. Standing in a cloud of dust, both his arms were extended to keep two warring parties at bay. Three Donian warriors. Two Resistance fighters. All of them screaming that the other side had killed their man. The rest of the Resistance and the Donian were squaring up to each other, their shouts competing with Nascimento’s. Ray slumped back against the gates. The rough wood bit into the back of his skull.
Everything hurt. His lungs were spasming. But overriding all of these, more powerful even that the urge to go find Brooke, was the thought that the budding alliance between Resistance and Donian people couldn’t have got off to a worse start.
29
Remembering The Arch Trees
All that was left of the Axeford playground was a rusting A-frame that had once been a swing. The roundabout S
tann Taille and Rick Franklin had almost killed themselves on half a century ago was gone. Stann couldn’t remember whose idea it had been to rig up a motorbike engine to the roundabout in the first place. It hadn’t mattered back then. Rick and Stann had been inseparable. The Magnet Kids, they’d been nicknamed by Stann’s old man in one of his kinder moments. Then the farce that had been Castle Brecan happened. One small homemade bomb stuffed with nails and an old coin had caused so much more pain than just physical damage. That was the point, he guessed. Break bodies to break minds.
Stann’s neck clicked and popped as he stretched the tightness out of it. Memories of Brecan brought the pain back, the ache in his missing leg and fingers, the regret for the loss of soldiers in his unit. Most of all, and this was something he was reluctant to admit, he felt the pain at the loss of his friendship with Rick. He held up his hand and a half. They were more knuckle than flesh but still deadly enough with a rifle. Staring at them didn’t make the pain go away, nor did it ease the guilt. He’d long ago learnt that thinking about problems rarely helped; dealing with problems was the solution.
“You OK?” Flayme was close enough for him to feel the heat from her body.
He fought the urge to stand taller for a second, then thought: fuck it, minute a man loses his pride is the moment he might as well dig his own grave and piss out any testosterone he’s got left. “I’m good.” He straightened up out of his habitual slouch. “Grew up round here is all. Place has got a lot of memories for me.” He gestured to the other side of where the playground had once stood, a rectangle of weeds just visible amongst the grass. “That used to be the bodyball pitch. Guess whoever removed Axeford from the map thought the Arch Trees too much work to uproot, though.” He pointed with his crutch.
The trees were wide enough to stop three grown men linking hands around their trunks. A tangle of branches entwined around each other, stretching across the road. The timeless, graceful majesty of the Arch Trees was gone, tarnished. They were older and weaker but they were still standing. The Old Lady, Mother Nature, was still fighting Old Man Time. You fight; that was important.
