by Andy Graham
The Hoyden and Resistance, their differences forgotten, spread out across the slope and started picking their way upwards. The Unsung twitched, feet scrabbling for better purchase as they aimed.
“We have more people,” Lukaz shouted.
“They got the high ground,” Nascimento said to Ray. “This is going to be a slaughter.”
“We got the high ground and the hostages.” Henndrik beckoned and a woman was dragged kicking and struggling to the front. Moonlight flashed out of her green eyes, her grey hair messy, an ugly bruise flowering on one cheek. “Try anything and this old bitch gets it first.”
“You’re dead,” Lukaz yelled.
A single shot rang out and Eleyka crumpled to the ground.
“Nope. She’s dead,” Henndrik said. “And that counted as ‘trying anything’. Next!”
A wail of disbelief cut the air. One of the Hoyden screamed at the sight of Karaan being led forwards. The old man was swaying, eyes welded shut with blood and bruises.
“So much as blink and we’ll pop the old boy. Then, just to keep it even, we’ll do this Ailan chick.” Stella was dumped onto the ground, face white with terror. “And then—” Screaming and kicking, two people were wrestled to the front and pinned down with rifle muzzles and rough hands. One of the Unsung yelled and whipped his hand back in a spray of blood. “Then,” Henndrik repeated, “this dreadlocked bitch gets it and we’ll turn preggers over to the boys for a bit of fun. Got a man here who wants to wet the baby’s head, if you know what I mean?”
“That’s Mayka and Brooke.” Nascimento started forwards only for Ray to grab his arm.
“Wait!”
“Don’t be thinking for too long, gents,” Henndrik shouted. “You got one hour to give up, all peaceful and docile, then we start playing. Understand?”
“You will die,” Lukaz said through gritted teeth.
“Cut the melodrama, Pale-face,” Henndrik yelled back. “One hour. And no sneaking in through any tunnels. We know where they all are.”
“You’re lying.”
A rattish-nosed figure joined the sergeant. It was the kind of man that should have been dry-washing his hands. Instead, with a weaselly grin, he waved down at the Hoyden. Mayka launched herself at him and was slammed in the back of the head with a rifle butt. She collapsed as if poleaxed. Lukaz was staring open-mouthed.
“Who’s that?” Nascimento asked furiously.
“Private Malakan, here,” Henndrik yelled, “is a bit of an expert on these tunnels. And it turns out he’s got scores to settle with his family.”
34
Tradition
Burnt logs and ash spilled over the blackened circle of stones that held the fire at the heart of the Angel City. The metal wheel that turned the roasting spit was clammy to Ray’s touch. And as stars sparkled like knife points in the sky, and wolfbark trees groaned and creaked against the blackened metal bars that surrounded their trunks, Nascimento spoke. “You sure there’s no other way into that Council Chamber of yours?”
“No.” Lukaz adjusted his makeshift sling. He’d not said as much but it was obvious the shoulder was paining him again. That didn’t surprise Ray in the slightest. The thing had been through hell in the last few hours and that was just the ‘treatment.’ “The Council Chamber connects to the Resting Room—”
“The one with the statues.” Ray nudged Nascimento. The bigger man’s face soured.
“—but the main tunnel between them will surely be guarded,” Lukaz finished. “I don’t know which other tunnels lead there. I didn’t think anyone did.”
Behind him, the remains of the Resistance and Hoyden bunched in separate groups in the shadows. Still separate, but closer. Progress of sorts, but not quick enough.
“Seems this Malakan kid knows the tunnels,” Ray said.
A wolf-like dog with a flash of grey across its broad chest padded out of the shadows and lay at Lukaz’s feet. “Malakan was known for spending time there. We used to call him Mole when he was a child. We called him many other things, too, but that was the nicest. Guess he learnt more about those tunnels than any of us realised.” He squatted down to ruffle the dog’s fur, picking at it, smoothing and stroking. It seemed to be more for his benefit than the dog’s.
He only knows how to do one thing, Ray thought. And now he can’t fight, he’s lost.
A wind stirred the ashes under the blackened logs, blowing flecks around the men. Lukaz plucked them out of the dog’s fur, grinding them into dust. “When Malakan disappeared a few years ago I never thought to ask where he had gone. I was happy to see the last of him. I heard talk that he had gone to Effrea to seek out his fortune in the capital of Ailan like his big sister, but I’m not sure anyone really cared. He was a difficult child.”
“A difficult child with a good memory,” Nascimento said. “So what do we do? We can’t storm the slope without taking heavy losses. We got no quick way in, and unless we deal with these numpties soon, we’re gonna have Unscum knocking on the front gates with Henndrik’s boys blowing shit up our arses.”
“There’s another way in,” Ray said. “The underwater tunnel between the Resting Room and the cave where the hostages are.”
“I told you,” Lukaz said. “We can’t get there in time. The other tunnels I know that lead to the Resting Room wind deep within the mountain. We only have” — Lukaz glanced up at the moons which to Ray’s eyes had barely changed position — “forty-five minutes left, or thereabouts.”
“Neat trick.” Nascimento jerked his thumb to the skies.
“There’s another way into the Resting Room,” Ray said. “A tunnel behind the waterfall leads to a small pool. Swim that and we’re in, then we just need to find the second tunnel to the Council Chamber.”
Lukaz’s fingers froze in the thick fur of the dog. “How do you know this?”
“Brooke showed me.”
Lukaz’s cheeks coloured. Anger? Or anger cut with jealousy? “I don’t know of this tunnel. You could be lying again.”
Damn the man to the seven hells, there was no time for this. “‘Lying again?’” Ray said.
“Yes, again. You people are nothing but lies. Liars led by lambs.” The dog was growling, a low throb that Ray felt through his boots.
“Why would I lie, Lukaz?”
“I don’t know. I’m an honest man.”
“Not to yourself, it seems.”
Lukaz ripped the belt supporting his arm off and stood close enough to Ray for their boots to touch. There was no nervousness in him now, the pain in his shoulder was obviously forgotten, too. He was back where he belonged: fighting. “Are you calling me a liar, Franklin?”
“I’ll call you whatever I have to to get through to that tunnel behind the waterfall.”
“We do not need your help. Your people are holding our people. Why should we trust you?”
“Your people?” Ray shouted. “Stella is not yours, Laudanum is not yours, Brooke—”
“—is not yours, either! None of them are yours.” Lukaz shoved Ray.
The dog was snarling. The Hoyden were gathering around their leader. Starting the slow circle they used to frame the fights around the Dawn Rock. Resistance fighters looked amongst each other, edging towards Ray, fingers hovering over triggers. The air was filled with the soft pop of safety straps around belt knives being released. And as Ray’s fingers curled into a fist, Nascimento was between the two men.
“Ray, easy, this is not going to help. Lukaz, you trusted Baris, Baris trusted us; my maths works that out as you trusting us. Besides” — he traced a fingertip over the scratches on his neck — “I fancy seeing Mayka again.”
As quickly as Lukaz’s anger had flared, it guttered out. He sat in a ragged heap on the ground, trying to put his belt back around his neck one-handed, the buckle pin snapped and the leather fell onto his feet. Lukaz cursed and said, “The tunnel behind the waterfall. If it is even there. I don’t know. It may work.”
Another Hoyden knelt next to him
to knot the belt together with deft fingers. He was older, sterner, with a lightning bolt of a scar cutting across his bald pate. “The Ailan man speaks true.”
“Did Brooke take you there, too?” Nascimento asked, failing to hide a grin.
“Even if it is true, I don’t know why Brooke took you there, nor what you did there,” Lukaz said, “but that place is sacred to us. I cannot—”
“Enough.” Ray shoved the older man out of the way and hauled Lukaz to his feet. “Enough talk. Enough excuses and self-pity. Trust me on that one, I’m an expert.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Nasc muttered.
“Unless we do something soon, there’ll be no living left to honour your dead. The Unsung will rape your people, piss on your culture and shit in your graves. How much is your tradition worth to you?”
“Back off, Ray.” Nascimento laid a hand on his arm. “Let’s have a bit more Aalok and a little less Baris, eh? You’re not the only one with friends up there.”
“None of us are going to have friends up there if we don’t start making some decisions soon. And I’m not going to let Brooke die for tradition’s sake.”
“Tradition has given my life direction since before I had teeth. I can’t just throw it away,” Lukaz said.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Ray shouted. He wanted to shake this man until those traditional teeth of his rattled. “We don’t have time for tradition, let alone speeches about the bloody thing. People are going to die.”
“Captain Ray Franklin!” A voice boomed into Ray’s ear. Birds exploded out of a wolfbark tree in a crack of wings.
“Fuck, Nasc!” Ray rammed a finger in his ear. “You almost deafened me.”
“Just checking your ears still work,” the big man said mildly.
“Yes, they work!”
“You might want to try using them then.” Nasc nodded to Lukaz. “That’s what Captain Aalok would have done. You do remember him, right? Skinny, freakishly strong and usually right? I think he might even have saved your skin once or twice.”
Ray did remember. Aalok’s lung-bursting up-downs on the parade ground for legionnaires who were too slow. A man who always knew what each legionnaire needed to hear, even before they did. But most of all, the man who had given his life for Ray, propped up against rusting oil barrels under Substation Two. “Yeah, I remember him. Sorry, Nasc, I’ve been behaving like a—”
“Dick?”
Ray grinned. “I remember Baris Orr, too. I’ll listen, Lukaz. But please be quick.”
Lukaz pinched his unnaturally white skin, his pink-tinted eyes gleaming. “Tradition made me what I am. Being the seventh son of a seventh son was hard, being the colour I am was harder. Not all of our traditions are pleasant.” He traced a finger over one of the scars that decorated his arm. “But I refused to be a victim, so I embraced them, made them my own and dragged others into my life. And recently I discovered many of those traditions were lies.”
“Then what’s the problem? Why are we talking? When can we go?” Ray wanted to shout all of these things and beat an agreement out of the man. Instead, he ground his teeth together and waited.
“It’s not easy to let go of a lie when it has shaped your life.” Lukaz fell silent. “I only have two regrets. The first is that she got tired of waiting for me to stop playing hard to get. You know who I mean?”
Ray knew, though he hadn’t known of Brooke’s interest in Lukaz. “And your second regret?”
“That I never went to your country. I wonder how my life would have been in your cities. There, I would be another colour amongst the many. Here, I was the man everyone knew. The Man of Dust. Devil Eyes. The Moon Child. Even” — his lips twisted into a sour smile — “the Milkman.”
“The Milkman?”
“Yes, Jamerson Nascimento. Are you going to laugh at that?”
“Why? Milk makes you strong. Strong is good. Let you in on a secret, though,” he whispered. “Stronger is better.”
“Not now, Nasc.”
“Just making friends, Ray, just making friends. Fuck knows we need them,” he added under his breath.
“We cannot let strangers into the Resting Room. Tradition is important.” Lukaz’s words were the same, but the conviction behind them weaker.
“I can tell you exactly what would have happened had you lived in Ailan,” Ray said, squatting next to him. “You would not have left the hospital. You may not have even left your mother’s womb if the doctors had picked up on your condition first. Had they let you live, you would have been placed into a camp, maybe even Camp X517, where they experimented on identical twins like me and Rhys. You would have been turned into a medical pincushion. The government of Ailan does not allow niceties such as tradition and tolerance to stand in the way of profit and power.” He gripped Lukaz’s shoulders tight enough for the man to grimace. “And if we do not stop these people soon, my bastard half-brother will uproot these mountains and scorch every living thing just to make a point. Now I will say this again. Tradition be damned. I am going through that tunnel, whether you like it or not, but I am trying not to ride roughshod over you and your people in the process. Are you going to help?”
Nascimento tapped his wrist. “Reckon we’ve got about thirty minutes left.” He turned to Lukaz and pointed at the moons. “What?” he whispered to Ray. “It’s how he tells the time.”
“I cannot swim with only one arm,” Lukaz said.
“Nasc and I will go.”
“Great,” Nascimento muttered. “Small tunnels full of cold water.”
“And we’ll take a small group of men, Hoyden and Resistance.”
“How will you get to the waterfall without being seen?”
“You take the rest and go to the base of the slope that leads up to the Council Chamber. Start a fight over nothing, you should be good at that, while we slip past in the shadows.”
Lukaz’s jaw was working. Ray figured that by now he was trying to resolve problems rather than create reasons why this plan wouldn’t work.
“Rifles won’t fire when they get wet.”
“Knives are quieter,” Ray replied.
“Messier.”
“Not my concern.”
“Promise me one thing,” Lukaz said.
“Malakan?” Ray asked. Behind him the Hoyden and Resistance were on their feet.
“No, he belongs to his sister.”
“Who?”
A cloud drifted across the moons, casting the group into shadow. Lukaz’s teeth glittered in the remaining light. “The one who killed Eleyka, Henndrik. Save him for me. I will feed him his own eyes.”
From his vantage point at the top of the boulder-strewn slope, Private Malakan had a view of the place that had once been his home. The moonlit expanse of the rock bore spread away into the shadows. Darkness piled upon darkness. The crash of water at one end competed with the screech of crickets and other critters in the grass. They were the kinds of noises your brain was supposed to filter out. Everyone else claimed to stop hearing them after a while but, for Malakan, they had only got louder and louder. That was one of the things that had attracted him to the tunnels as a child, their silence. A muffled squeal sounded from behind him. A sub-corporal was forcing himself on one of the younger Donian girls. She was pinned face down in the dust; rough hands ripped off her trousers. Malakan took an involuntary step forwards. “No, not that—”
“Let the man play, Malakan.” Major Henndrik was sitting on the fallen throne, running his curled fingers up and down the muzzle of his rifle. “Or would you like to take her place?”
“No, sir. But—”
Henndrik had already lost interest, and was picking dirt out from under his fingernails. By all accounts, the major was a good looking man, one that drove women wild with lust and men mad with jealousy. Malakan didn’t see it. He saw the evil that hid in plain sight under Henndrik’s skin.
The girl kicked up dust, twisting and writhing under her captor’s weight. She had silver hair. An un
usual feature in the tribes, especially in one so young. She reared up and smacked the back of her head into the sub-corporal’s nose.
“Bitch! Break my fucking nose, will you? I’ll crack your pelvis with my cock.”
The girl yelped, clawed at him. The Unsung sub-corporal slammed her face into the ground. “Yeah, that’s it, fight me.”
From the ranks of the huddled Donian, Brooke spoke. Malakan didn’t hear what she said but the young girl went limp. Not unconscious, just limp. Breathing heavily. Watching. The colour rose in the sub-corporal’s face. It matched the blood that tangled with his moustache. Swear words poured from his mouth as the girl took the pleasure of the fight out of his fun. And around them the silent Donian stared at their captors. It brought Malakan out in a cold sweat. They would be committing every detail of this to memory.
“Save her for later.” Henndrik hopped off the fallen throne. He didn’t appear to notice his boot heel cracking the hand off the legionnaire that had been crushed under it. “Go check the back of the cave, Nonnweed.” As handsome as he may be, as callous as he was, Major Henndrik was not stupid.
The sub-corporal knelt over the girl and patted her arse. “Later, babe, gonna have us some sweet dreams.”
She spat in his face. It took two men to pull him off her. “I’m good,” he said to the two legionnaires holding him. “Let me go. I’m good.” He armed the blood off his face just before the girl spat a broken tooth at him, hitting him in the eye. This time, it took three Unsung to peel the man off; this time, the girl didn’t get up.
“I said to leave her, Nonnweed.”
“She broke my nose. Spat at me. Bitch disrespected me.”
“There’ll be plenty of time for games later,” Henndrik said. “Now do what you’re told, or we’ll all do you before we do the girl.”
The sub-corporal fingered the swelling on the bridge of his nose and grinned, a gap-toothed, nicotine-stained smile. “Yeah, right. Good one.”
