by Andy Graham
“Kill him,” Ray replied.
“There must be another way.”
Vena pulled her coat tight and was shivering despite the muggy evening breeze. Ray raised his rifle. “No!” Lukaz shouted.
“If we had time and peace, we may be able to help them. But here and now, we have no choice. Trust me on this, please. I learnt the hard way that the Unsung control their minds.” And Ray sent up a private note of regret to whoever was listening for Karil, the once-man he had been forced into killing in the Weeping Woods.
“No, you’re wrong, look!”
Ray followed Lukaz’s quivering finger. One of the gwenium-twisted men had turned back to the forest. A tattoo covered most of his bare back, a bull and gate, the symbol of the 6th Legion. With a visible effort he raised both middle fingers at the Unsung hiding in the forest. The legionnaires’ insult: flying the eagle.
“See—” Lukaz’s exultant cry was bitten off in a gasp of horror. An explosion shattered the 6th legionnaire’s skull, spraying green-blue lumps across the grass. He collapsed bonelessly, middle fingers still extended.
“They’ve upgraded the hardware, too,” Nascimento muttered. “Nice.”
Tears were streaking down Vena’s face. The wrist lights flared red. The gwenium-twisted creatures howled in pain and rushed the Angel City. Kain in the lead. A ghost-white hand pushed Ray’s rifle down. “No. Your kind have killed enough of our people.”
The creatures raced up the ramp. Vaulting up the terraces. One clambered through the garish flowers, and fell screaming, ripping at his skin. Another splashed through the thick black liquid on the first terrace. Slipping and sliding over the earth on the other side, he got three steps before he burst into flames.
“What the—” Nascimento said.
“The liquid reacts with skin.” Mayka explained. “We have no idea where it came from, how our ancestors put it there or how to get rid of it. Guess that was one of the reasons the city was built here. Our teenagers occasionally run races along the edge of the trench, blindfolded.”
Nascimento stared at her, slack-jawed. And then the creatures were there, scratching at the wooden stakes, battering at the gates, and pin-balling between the giant statues that paraded around the last terrace. Kain stared up at Lukaz. Tears in his eyes. Lukaz fired. The first shot missed. Kain stood stock-still and spread his arms wide. The second shot took him in the chest. The third in his head.
“Is this all you got?” Lukaz yelled at the trees. He threw his rifle down and stalked off the palisade, past Karaan and a silently crying Vena Laudanum.
Behind him, the silence of the dead mixed with screams of the dying. A commotion broke out over the gate. One of the creatures had scaled the wooden stakes with the aid of knives in his boots and spiked knuckle-dusters. It staked a Donian warrior on the palisade, ripped the throat out of another, and hurled a third to the ground. It was done as casually as children crush beetles and ants underfoot on long, hot summer days. Then it came face to face with Vena Laudanum. Early-evening starlight reflected out of the silver lines streaking down her cheeks as she stood unflinching in the face of the twisted fury.
“What are you doing, woman?” Nascimento yelled. A Donian kid raised a rusting rifle. It misfired and winged one of the Resistance. “Hold your fire!”
Mayka shoved Vena out of the way and lunged for the creature. Nascimento grabbed the back of her tunic and thrust her towards Vena. “Take care of Death-Wish.”
He ran at the creature, knife drawn. It slashed spiked palms at Nascimento. Snagged his top. Arms trapped arms. Hands grabbed hands. They headbutted and bit as they struggled for space. It staggered. Spat bile-green phlegm at Nascimento. Kicked and punched and as the legionnaire’s head snapped back, his knife flicked out and caught in swollen flesh. Black blood sprayed onto the planks of the palisade. It jerked, his knife spinning away in a glittering arc. Nascimento lunged, slipped in the fresh blood and landed flat on his back. The creature lashed out, blind with rage. A blackened knuckle-duster with tree-climbing, flesh-ripping spikes in its palm slammed into the wooden palisade centimetres above Nascimento’s head, where it stuck fast.
Jamerson Nascimento had the reputation as one of the nicest legionnaires to don the black uniform of the 10th Legion. He had a different reputation amongst some of the female hangers-on the legion attracted. Nasc’s own take on that was those hangers-on could be filed under those-who-had and those-he-would. There was another facet to his personality, one which the ‘nicest people’ always took care to bury deep down inside or keep numb with other pleasures. This Nascimento was slow to rile but hard to calm, one which gave him the nickname that made Nasc grumpy: Nasty. This part of him was the real reason that had bound him to Baris Orr tighter than either wanted to admit: a love for violence.
The gwenium-twisted creature was pinned to the stakes with its own blades. One arm across its torso, the other arm reaching down, either to cover its groin, or to slash at Nascimento’s legs. Snarling, Nascimento hooked a foot around the heel of the creature, and slammed the sole of his heavy boot into the monster’s knee. The joint splintered backwards. The second knee followed. Nasc straddled the monster and with his bare fists beat it until the skull cracked, then split, then caved in.
“Hey, hey, hey! Put Nasty back in his box.” Ray dragged Nascimento off the fresh corpse. “It’s dead.”
Nascimento was too far gone to think. “I’ll fucking do you, too, Franklin!” He grabbed Ray and slammed him into the palisade, bending him back over the spikes. “It’s your fault these people are dying. You! Your fault. You fucking bastard. Orr’s dead because of you. Aalok. Hamid.” Nascimento’s face was a mess of anger. The spikes dug into Ray’s back, bones twisted to the breaking point. Ray clutched at the big man’s hands. He was too strong. The grip too deep. His vision blurred. Someone pulled at Nascimento, was shrugged off, and as the blackness closed, Ray heard a woman’s voice.
“When you finish murdering your friend would you like to kill an old unarmed woman, too?” Vena stood at the shoulder of a berserking soldier twice her weight and untold times stronger than her. Nascimento’s fingers tightened on Ray’s throat. “Here.” Vena tilted her chin up and pulled her coat collar down to expose the soft skin of her throat. An artery throbbed next to the long muscle that ran up the side of her neck to her ear. “Try mine. My bones should snap more easily than Franklin’s.”
And Ray could breathe again. On hands and knees. Coughing up silver spittle. Lungs grasping at the air. Nascimento screamed into her face. As the spittle-flecked air hit her she blinked, once, then fixed that snake’s gaze of hers on the big man until his scream ended in a gurgling choke. He stamped down the stairs that led into the Donian village.
“You should go to him, Mayka,” Vena said.
She bristled. “Who are you to tell me what to do? I am not his nursemaid nor his mother.”
“He needs neither. He needs someone to fuck.”
Mayka’s jaw dropped. Someone sniggered.
“Surprised to hear an old woman swearing?”
“No. I—” A wind rustled through the trees, followed by a noise like rain. “Yes,” she finished. “You people from Ailan are not what I expected.”
“For what it’s worth, neither are you.”
“Who are you?” Mayka asked.
Vena’s face darkened. “Someone who is responsible for more than you will ever be. Go to him, please. He’s a good man. You would do much worse than him. At least sit with him.”
“I preferred the other option.” Mayka bared her teeth. “I will be gentle.” She chased after Nascimento, her soft-soled shoes scuffing on the steps.
With a grimace of disgust, Vena watched as a Donian warrior shoved the dead man off the walkway. He hit the ground in a thud of limbs. “Franklin, Karaan. We need to talk.”
And that was how the first day ended, wrapped in shadows and silence, with dead on both sides of the fence.
Except for the legionnaire in the garish flowers.
He wasn’t silent. He was whimpering. And Mayka and Nascimento? They were soon making enough noise to make the statues ringing the Angel City blush.
Vena slammed her hand down on the rough wooden table. “Take your men into the woods and hunt Randall Soulier down. He’s up to something and the more time you give him, the worse it is for us. You cannot just wait for him. I know him better than any of you, better than he knows himself in some respects.”
“We will wait for him here, on the palisade, in the village, on the dust around the Dawn Rock and then in the caves under the mountain. We will make him pay for every step.”
Vena leant on the desk, arms spread, head jutting forwards. “Then, Karaan, you will lose.”
Her shadow cast by the flickering lamps stretched out across the room they had commandeered. It was the closest the Donian had to a hospital. It looked like a cross between a kid’s first chemistry set and a mail-order shop: All Your Witches’ and Wizards’ Paraphernalia and Paranormal Needs (No Necromancy).
Karaan’s gaze cut to Eleyka. In turn, hers shifted to Lukaz. “Fight,” he said, simply.
A ragtag group of leaders from the Resistance and the Donian waited. Matt was there, tugging at his braided Mohican. Others, too, bland and grey and scared.
“I was hoping to resolve this with minimal losses,” Karaan said. “My taste for blood has faded with age and I have shed too many tears over those we have lost too soon. What of this general of yours?”
“Field-Marshal Chester will not help you, but I doubt she will help Randall Soulier, either,” Vena replied. “Take some of your people into the woods. Fight him there.”
Karaan cut a forlorn figure, his pride battered out of him. Part of his cloak stuck to his body. “Very well. We will do what we have always done and fight. Leave now, Lukaz. If our future is to be red, than I would sooner see it today.”
“Them, too.” Lukaz pointed at the Resistance.
“After you bumpkins killed one of our people?” Matt asked.
Lukaz barged round the table, scattering chairs as he went. Matt backed away. Lukaz grabbed him, headbutted him. Scarlet burst from Matt’s eyebrow. Matt brought his knee up into the other man’s groin. Then they were on the floor, rolling and punching and snarling. It took a collected effort to pull the two men apart.
“What is the meaning of this?” Karaan screamed at Lukaz.
“They eat our food, steal our heat and insult us in our own home!”
“That is—”
Vena held up a finger and Matt clamped his mouth shut. Obedience to authority had been cultivated for so long in the Ailan society that a woman who looked like the president appeared to have the same control as the president herself. The illusion of control gave real power. That worried Ray almost as much as this Laudanum sister did. “If I may?” Vena asked the Elders.
“Be quick,” Karaan said.
“One at a time,” Vena said.
“But—” Matt began.
“Speak out of turn again and I will tie a cheese wire around your balls and drag you out of the Angel City myself. That is assuming I can find them. Understood?”
Eleyka leant across to Karaan and said in a loud whisper, “Can we keep her?”
Lukaz, nursing his shoulder, said, “We cannot leave the Resistance behind while we fight. I do not trust them. We do not trust them.” He looked around his colleagues for support and got a round of back-claps that made him wince with pain.
Vena’s finger aimed at Matt.
“They killed one of us.”
“That—” Lukaz began.
“Run and get a piece of wire, would you, Ray?” Vena said casually.
“OK!” Lukaz said, hands spread in front of his face.
“They killed one of us. Why should we die to protect their home?” Matt asked.
“The first we shall treat as a regrettable mistake for now. As for the second, is a fully fledged member of the Resistance balking at a fight against the government they have so inadequately opposed for so many years? Or should I send for a pair of shorts instead of the cheese wire?”
Someone sniggered. The sound died as Vena’s ice-blue eyes took in the assembled people.
“I’ll lead the Resistance,” Ray said.
“You?” Matt asked, indignant.
“Yes. Me. Or do you want to have this out around the Dawn Rock? That is the Donian way and as we are here we should respect their traditions.”
Matt shuffled back into line, his face burning with shame and frustration.
“I’ll lead the Hoyden,” Lukaz said. He was moving his recently relocated shoulder in small circles, appearing to test it to see what his scuffle with Matt had done. (Someone had put it back in for him the old-fashioned way. With Lukaz on the floor and biting down on a leather strap, a Hoyden who looked to have forgotten to fit the bolt in his neck that morning had put his hob-nailed boot in Lukaz’s armpit and wrenched the limb upwards. Lukaz had bitten through the leather but not uttered a sound. The Hoyden had thumped chairs and knife hilts and rifles on the wooden floor of the hut in a noisy show of respect to their leader. In return, he gave them as gracious a bow as Ray had ever seen.)
He made a quick count of the Hoyden and the Resistance. “Two teams of about twenty each. We’ll take the best fighters and leave a skeleton force here.”
“Sounds good,” Lukaz said. “What’s the plan?”
“Maximum damage in the minimum time.”
“Does that include my son?” Quietly as it was said, everyone heard it. “Are you going to kill him like you killed my husband?”
The people gathered in the large single room of the dead bonesetter’s cottage-cum-hospital looked anywhere but at Stella. Her eyes were red raw. Her fingernails bitten to the quick. Emily was curled up on a bed, sleeping like only a child can.
“Stella, please—” Ray said.
She laid one hand on her daughter. “Do you know young kids make noises when they sleep?”
“I didn’t kill Dan.”
“They grunt and snort and squeal like a pig. That’s what Dan called our son when he was tiny. Jake Pig.”
Ray held his hand out, palm up, the way you would to a wounded animal.
“Jake Pig.” She tucked a strand of hair behind Emily’s ear. “The noises are hell to sleep through at first. I kept thinking Jake was choking or having nightmares.” She drew in a deep breath, her body quivered as the air seemed to hiss out of the room. “Then they stop making noises, at least Jake did. Anecdotal. Study of N equals one. Lowest form of evidence.” She grimaced. “And the silence is worse. At least when they’re noisy, you know they’re alive, they’re breathing.” Her fingers bunched up in Emily’s hair, the girl moaned and curled up tight into a foetal position. “I can’t hear Jake breathing now, Ray. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. And it’s killing me.” She staggered forwards and threw her arms around him. Squeezing. Clutching. Hurting.
“I’m sorry, Stella, truly, But I didn’t kill Dan.”
“You didn’t save him, either.” She pushed him away. “There will be wounded. I’ll get this place ready.”
As Emily twisted on her hospital bed, the tension in the room broke. Men and women hurried out into the gathering gloom, tripping over themselves, two burly men getting their shoulders jammed in the doorway. Stella, with one eye — and, Ray guessed, one ear — on her daughter worked her way through the cupboards in the small hospital. They were made of a mix of light pine, dark wolfbark and rusty heartwood trees. The wood had been scrubbed till it glowed. She shoved bowls of multicoloured powder and leaves to one side, muttered something about “just give me some bloody drugs, maybe something for the patients, too”, and pulled out a roll of bandages.
Other than the Elders, Stella-Watching-Emily, and Ray, the only people left in the room were Lukaz and Matt. The face of the first was smeared red with the blood of the second. The second wore an expression that was ugly at best and resentful at worst. The freshly broken nose didn’t help.
Matt scowled. “We’re not as useless as you think.”
“Prove it.”
“What about him?” Matt nodded towards Lukaz.
“He’s not my responsibility.”
“And I am?”
A snip snip snipping sound cut the air. Vena had found some wire in a drawer. She held up a length and snapped it taut at both ends. “Ouch,” she said. “That would hurt.”
Matt left the room as Karaan said to Vena. “I never thought I would be thanking someone from Ailan for encouraging me to fight someone from Ailan. Especially when that someone looks like a woman who made our lives hell.”
“Maybe that someone is looking to make amends for past mistakes.”
“We’ll never know, will we, Vena?” Ray said.
“Drugs!” Stella yelled triumphantly. “Enough to knock out a whale. Hang on—” The victorious cry became a suspicious silence and the plastic clicking of tops being opened, the rattle of pills in bottles. “These are from a hospital I worked in.” She was on her hands and knees, backside sticking up in the air, head deep in a cupboard. When she emerged the anger in her face had changed into the pique of an irritated head teacher. “You stole these!”
“Did we?” Eleyka said.
“Not possible,” Karaan added, spreading his hands. At least the one he could.
“I thought your medic—”
“Bonesetter.”
“Whatever. I thought she believed in ‘nature being your medicine and your medicine being nature’.”
“With a hefty dose of manufactured chemicals mixed in when needed. Got to be realistic,” Eleyka said.
Nascimento burst into the room, jacket hanging loose and teeth marks on the side of his neck. “What did I miss?” he said.
