by Andy Graham
“How much farther, boy?”
The man stank of stale sweat. It made Malakan want to gag. “Not—”
“You tell me not far again and you’ll be getting the stock of my rifle up your arse first.”
How far? It’s here. I know it. I should know it. These tunnels are mine. I can’t fail. I’ve done this before. It’s not far. It—
“Grab him and debag him, boys,” Henndrik said. “I’m done with this shit.”
The tight tunnel was filled with the gleeful noise of bullies scrambling for the best seats. Underpinning that noise was the sound of a child wailing.
“I’ll shove my—”
“No!” It came out as a squeak.
“—up him with or without spit,” someone said.
“No!”
“Times up, Malakan.”
“No, listen. We’re here.”
The scuffle of boots and hands on stone stopped. The violent breathing of the Unsung was heavy in the tunnels. Tunnels which, Malakan realised, may have slowed the Unsung down on account of the tight space, but that lack of space had given him the precious seconds he needed at the end. The cry of the child rose, building in the slow crescendo that children have when they’re playing at being scared.
“Shit,” one of the Unsung muttered. “I was looking forwards to sticking it to Malakan.”
“You’re gonna get plenty of time to stick whatever you want to a whole bunch of peasants soon,” Henndrik replied. “Just wash your cock afterwards, or at least before you shove it back into your girl.”
“What if I stick it in your wife?”
“You’re welcome to my ex-wife; she bites.”
“Wasn’t gonna put it there.”
“Don’t put it anywhere else. You’ll be paying for it for the rest of your life. Her wallet bites worse than she does. Blows better than she does. Cobwebs, mainly.”
As the filth continued to the quiet clunk and slide of weapons being checked and loosened, Malakan felt a pang of regret. Trouble was, he wasn’t sure which part of his life he was regretful for: bringing a bunch of sadists into the heart of his home, or the life that had led him to this point?
Henndrik’s sickly sweet breath hissed in his ear, “You go first, Malakan. And remember what happens if you’re playing us.”
Rough hands grabbed the seat of his trousers, twisting the fabric so it cut into his crotch.
“I might not use my rifle. I might find something else to use. Know what I mean? I’ll even let you spit on it first.”
With sweat pouring off his face, Malakan crept forwards.
Stella ran out of the bottleneck tunnel that led to the stone cauldron and scrambled up the slope to the Council Chamber. Emily followed, playing hide-and-seek with herself amongst the rocks. The guards, one man and the woman with dreadlocks, Mayka, Stella thought it was, let them into the cave where the remaining Donian had gathered.
The scene that greeted the Ailan medic was one of silent defiance. Some thirty-odd people gathered in small groups, men, women, children, old, young, weak and frail. Brooke was there, watching a mother as she attempted to hush a crying toddler. The rest of the Donian were either manning the palisade or hunting Unsung in the forest. Some, she learnt from Mayka, had been sent to warn the other tribes dotted around the mountains, and their cousins in Mennai. And as the dreadlocked woman walked back to the cave mouth, Stella noticed Eleyka. The Elder was hunched over Karaan. His breath was coming in short, stuttering breaths, his skin dust grey.
“What happened to him?”
Eleyka peeled back his cloak to expose a bandage that was thick with blood. “Shot? Stabbed? I don’t know. It happened when Brennan betrayed us. He did not want anyone to learn of it. Not so soon after losing Kaleyne. I warned him against giving the speech earlier, said it was too much for him, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Stella knelt, probed the edges of the wound with her fingers. The subtle grinding of ribs under her touch brought tears to his eyes. “We need to help him,” she said.
“Save your energy for the others,” Eleyka replied. “Leave him. It is his choice.”
“Did he tell you this?” Stella’s instinct was to ask to see the signed consent form. That, she realised, was unlikely in these circumstances.
“It is our way, Dr Swann. There will be others for you to play god with.”
“But—”
Eleyka placed a hand on Stella’s arm, gripping the flesh beneath it. “Listen to me, child of Ailan. I am sorry for your loss. I am sorry your children lost their father. But most of all, I am sorry you are here. I do not like you. I do not want you here. None of you. You people are thieves and murderers dressed in false finery, robes spun of the fool’s gold you call civilisation. Your democracy is a joke built on the deaths of people like us. The freedom your politicians espouse is the freedom for them to dictate how everyone else lives. You rewrite history to suit your own future. And now you have a madman in power, who did not even go through the sham of voting.” She stroked Karaan’s face with her free arm. Her fingers came away shining with sweat. “Look at Karaan and see what the rest of the world has seen through the ages whenever they faced your empire of blood and bones. Your husband chose his death. The circumstances may have been forced on him, but he made a choice. Now leave Karaan to die as he wills. It is his choice. His wish. Our way. If you can at least respect that, maybe there is hope for your people.”
“‘The circumstances may have been forced on my husband?’” The controlled voice of Dr Swann found the calmness to say to Eleyka what Stella would have screamed. “I think the manner of my husband’s death is illustration enough of what my government is capable of.”
“And who put him in that situation?”
The words hit her with an inevitability that Stella would never outrun. No matter what happened, she could never be free of that one, not-quite-innocent, decision to go to a bar without her wedding ring on, purely to feel the thrill of the chase again. But now, the chase had become a hunt that was all too real.
Karaan let out a shuddering groan. He was pale and shaking. Every fibre of Stella was crying out to help, but as Eleyka bent her head to Karaan, the Ailan doctor found herself whispering, “Impulse and emotion don’t belong in science and medicine.” Who said that? One of my teachers? Or was it a quote from the medical legend that was Professor Wu-Brocker? A woman praised in text and online but reviled in the secret corners of the medical world and the Light Net.
Wu-Brocker was wrong. Without emotion there was no point to medicine. It wasn’t Stella’s professional promise to do no harm that made her speak; it was her refusal to sit by and watch a man die when there was still hope. “Martyrdom should never need to be a choice, especially when we allow someone else to martyr themselves in our place.”
Eleyka’s fingers twitched towards the dagger she had at her belt.
“But you are right, life forces circumstances on all of us. It is how we deal with them that makes us. Let me help him, please,” Stella laid a hand on Eleyka’s arm, gripping it the way the Elder had done to her. “Let me show you the other side to the empire of blood and bones, the side that builds not breaks, heals not hates.”
Eleyka’s shoulders dropped a fraction, the lines around her green eyes softening, but before she could reply, Vena was at Stella’s side. The elderly woman crooked a finger. “Follow me. Now.”
Eleyka’s back was turned. Karaan was in a fitful sleep. The moment was gone. Stella followed into a darkness that grew damper and dustier as they walked away from the entrance, where stalactites and stalagmites twisted from ceiling and floor in glistening browns and yellows.
Stella grabbed Vena’s coat. “Why didn’t you let me help Karaan? Why did I even follow you?”
“Respect.”
“What?”
“The answer to both your questions is respect. Now, listen, I need to tell you something in case I die. It’s about Ray Franklin’s parentage and what happened to Rose before he was born.”<
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Thread veins of the red gwenium rock flickered, the heartbeat of the mountain nervous and agitated. “Why do we have to do this now?”
Vena held a finger to her lips.
“Don’t you shush me!”
“Quiet, woman. What’s that noise?” Vena asked.
The gentle rustling of people talking in whispers was given a hollow feel by the cavern. The crying toddler was hushed. Brooke was on one knee in front of the child’s mother. Whatever question she had been about to ask remained unsaid, one finger still pointing quizzically at the child. Brooke stared into the black at the end of the cave, stern and alert.
“What noise? I can’t—” Then Stella heard it: the crunch of a boot on gravel, the clunk of steel, and the hissing intake of breath from the Donian behind her. “Oh no.”
Blackened faces loomed ghost-like in the darkness at the end of the cave. Red flickered across the steel of rifles and knives. And with a sweat-stenched roar of hate, the Unsung poured from the unguarded tunnel at the back of the cavern on the unprotected Donian.
Lukaz led the Hoyden through the gates. The men and women on the palisade would be counting. The whispers would be spreading that someone had died. Exactly who would gnaw away at them until all the faces had been seen. Jamerson Nascimento, the burly legionnaire whose skin blended with the night, hailed the returning warriors. Lukaz slowed his pace. He would not stop for this man from Ailan, but he would at least listen.
“What happened?” Nascimento asked.
“We killed many of your people.”
“Not sure they count as my people any more, dude. Even if I wanted to go back, I can’t now.”
Lukaz spun. The force of the movement jarred his battered arm. “You have no home here, either, Jamerson Nascimento.”
“Guess not.” The big man’s coal-dark eyes took in the Hoyden. They were scratched and bloodied, heavy with loss. “You’re a man down.”
“He died,” Lukaz said. I shot him, he thought. It had been the right thing to do but felt so wrong. A cloud blocked the cold light from the moons, throwing Nascimento into shadow. “You’re a dick,” Lukaz wanted to say. That’s what Orr had wanted Lukaz to tell Nascimento. They’d been friends. And as much as Lukaz killing his friend in the woods had felt wrong in its rightness, welcoming people like Nascimento, Franklin and especially Baris Orr into the Angel City felt right in its wrongness. Maybe it was time for the Hoyden to embrace some new traditions and some new people. Lukaz held out his hand. His pale skin was swamped in the darker-skinned grip of the big man. “Yes,” he said, amused at the quizzical look on Nascimento’s face. “We’re a man down.”
“How did he die?”
“Well, like Baris.”
“Can’t ask for more than that.”
“No. I guess not. Baris told me to tell you—”
“I’m a dick.” Nascimento grinned into the distance. “Never thought I’d miss Old Squat and Ugly. The world’s a safer, happier pace without him, but so much more dull.”
Lukaz released his grip. Shaking hands in friendship with a life-sworn enemy of the Hoyden? Maybe Orr was wrong; maybe violence wasn’t the best form of diplomacy. “Your friend Ray Franklin and his men are back?”
“Just arrived. They’re a little thinner in numbers than when they left, too. Not really his men, though, are they? Not really anyone’s since Rose got herself killed, to be fair. Seems to have turned their world inside down and upside out.”
“I don’t trust them. They killed one of our people.”
“Accident, dude. War’s full of them. Some more deliberate than others, it has to be said. Only two certainties in life beyond Old Father Time stealing your hard-earned gym gains and shoving you in a dirt coffin: soldiers bleed and leaders live.”
One of the Hoyden who Lukaz had sent to the bonesetter’s hut came running towards them. “Empty. The Ailan doctor and her daughter aren’t there. There was a note. They have gone to the others in the Council Chamber.” His mouth twisted into a sneer. “I saw Franklin and the cowards running there, too. We should go there. I don’t like them being with our weak.” Mutters and head-nods spread around the group of Hoyden.
Lukaz held up his good hand. “They—” He looked at Nascimento, a ghost of a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “We must trust them.”
The mutters became shouts—
“But we will go to them to be sure.”
—and then whispers.
One by one the Hoyden trailed up the dusty track. Some supporting others, loosely gripped rifles dragging lines behind them in the dust. The wind hissed through the gaps in the log palisade, shaking the gates, bringing the taste of sulphur. That smell had always made Lukaz feel sick. He started up the track, away from the palisade and towards the cave in the rock funnel where his people waited, and a thought struck him. “Nascimento, our women.”
“What?” The big man’s face radiated wide-eyed innocence. “Is this where you warn me off this Mayka chick?”
“Chick?”
“Baby chicken. It’s a term of affection where we’re from.”
“Pecking incessantly at food. High-pitched clucking. Scrawny legs.” Lukaz dragged a hand through the scrub of white hair on his scalp. “Not sure I see the compliment.”
“More of a literary thing than literal.”
“I don’t need to warn you off Mayka. She is capable of taking care of herself. But if you do try anything she doesn’t like,” — Lukaz tapped the knife at his belt — “then yes, we’ll have words.”
Nascimento’s hand drifted to the teeth marks on his ear. “Yeah. Guess that sounds—”
A scream rattled through the tunnel that led to the Dawn Rock. A deep throbbing boom shook the earth. Reds and crimsons reflected off the moons. Gunshots. Lukaz’s gaze whipped round. The men and women of the Hoyden were already disappearing into the tunnel that led to the Dawn Rock. One slipped. The others charged over him, weapons and voices raised. The gathering chill of the night that was seeping into Lukaz’s bones was washed away in a flash of anger. “Traitors. The Resistance have betrayed us.”
Ray Franklin and Jamerson Nascimento collided into each other with a bone-crunching thud. A handful of men from the Resistance who were following Ray like lost geese hauled the two friends up.
“Franklin! I was looking for you.”
“What’s going on? What was that noise?”
“We got a problem. Lukaz and the Hoyden think you guys are attacking the Donian in the caves.”
“My guys?”
“The Resistance. Where are they?”
“I sent most to the Council Chamber. I went to the bonesetter’s to find Stella.”
Another scream echoed in the night.
“Unsung,” they both said at the same time.
And in seconds two ex-legionnaires and a few Resistance fighters barrelled into a tunnel that was peppered with the distant crack of gunfire.
The sweeping expanse of grass at the base of the rock bore was silent. Behind the Dawn Rock, the waterfall thumped into the pool. One of the moons, the strip-mining-scarred one, peered over the lip of the mountain walls, past rocks that scraped at the sky and left dizzying trails of stardust behind them. It illuminated a frozen picture of incipient violence.
Sprawled on the rock-dotted slope that led to the Council Chamber were the twitching remains of one of the Hoyden. His jaw dangled at an unnatural angle. More people lay where they had been cut down. Blood streamed from the purple gash of bullets in the belly of the last. They were all in the open; none of them hiding behind rocks. That wasn’t their way. The rest of the Hoyden stood at the base of the slope, Lukaz’s good arm outstretched to hold them back. Ray and Nascimento tumbled out of the tunnel.
“There!” one of the Hoyden shouted. “They’re behind us, too!”
Drunk on rage and frustration, the Hoyden sprinted at the Resistance and the violence bubbled over. It was hell. Slashing, stabbing, shooting. No space to move. No air to breath. One
man tripped, blinded by his ill-fitting helmet. He stumbled into the back of one of his friends, knocking him into a wild knife thrust from one of his colleagues. All three of them collapsed in a heap, the knifeman at the bottom. No one seemed to have any idea of who was who and where the right side of good lay. Hoyden lashed out at anyone. Some even took a swipe at their ghost of a leader in waiting: Lukaz whose pink-tinted eyes gleamed with bloodlust. As Ray and Nascimento grabbed at men, pulling them apart, screaming for sense, a rattle of gunfire burst over their heads.
“We’re on the same fucking side!” Ray shouted as Nascimento pulled a pair of men apart and dumped them on the floor. “They’re the enemy.” He jabbed a finger up the slope.
A line of Unsung legionnaires stood on the lip of the slope, rifles trained on the Hoyden. Standing front and centre was a towering figure of a man, handsome and rugged, muscular and daunting, the picture-perfect soldier. “You’re idiots,” the officer yelled.
The Resistance and Hoyden lurched forwards as one.
“Hold!” Nascimento yelled.
“Major Henndrik’s the name,” the figure shouted. “And I’d love to let you kill yourselves, but I need some of you alive.”
Lukaz, quivering with anger, picked his way through the tangle of bodies on the floor. “What do you want with us?”
“We want you to open the main gates. Nice and peaceful, to let the rest of our guys in. No way I’m going to risk my men in those dirt tracks you call streets, too many corners for you to hide behind, too many places for you to set traps. Too many fucking dogs, too. Then when all my legion’s in and settled, we want some of you to work the mines. None of us are going to dig this gwenium from these mountains. I’ve see what it does to people. In the meantime, we want your women, and maybe a boy or two. We haven’t got enough money to pay the new legionnaires what they deserve so some of the lads agreed to work for benefits.”
A Hoyden youth screamed, slipped past Lukaz’s grasping hand and sprinted up the slope. A burst of muzzle fire kicked up dirt and gravel and ripped the kid into chunks. “Come on then!” Henndrik shouted. “We got plenty more bullets up here if you want to play hardball.”
