The Marching Dead

by Lee Battersby

  “So he’s one of them.”

  Marius shrugged. “Or he just doesn’t need anyone finding out about his past. There are a lot of reasons for some men to lie, and they’re not always what you think.” He kept his gaze from his rich clothes, but the thought reminded him. “So there’s no crime that brings a man to your door at all, then?”

  “Ach, not many.” The sergeant shook his head in frustration. “We try to keep a few back, if we can, and we still give the rich ones the comfort of our facilities…” Marius breathed an inner sigh of relief. There was no mistake, then. Toshy would wake up sober, angry, and hoodwinked, but at least he’d wake up. “But we only manage a few a night at best. Fellipan’s men are everywhere. We can’t risk too much.”

  “Well,” Marius smiled, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Risks are what I do best.” Liar, said a voice inside his head. Rotten, cowardly, lying liar. And it was right, of course, but Marius had a slimy, slithering suspicion wriggling through his mind, and there was only one place to go to step on that suspicion’s neck. Risks might not be what he did best, but perhaps it was time to find a new best thing to do. “Why don’t you tell me what happens when you deliver a prisoner?”

  SIX

  “And you’re absolutely sure you want to do this?” Pyoc muttered for the umpteenth time. And for the umpteenth time, the little voice in Marius’ head answered no.

  “For the umpteenth time, yes.”

  “It’s your funeral.”

  “Again.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  They strode through the darkened streets of Mish, past taverns that had closed hours before normal, and bordellos with shuttered doors. It was unnatural. Mish was a money town. The streets should be packed with fools just begging to be parted from their bankrolls. Doors should be thrown open, light spilling into the street in a warm, welcoming haze of professional innocence and bonhomie. The air should ring with the sounds of song, cries of welcome, laughter, shouting, fighting, fucking, fighting while fucking… and there was nothing. The night was black and silent. Marius’ footsteps kicked up minute puffs of dust where the dirt street should have been compacted flat by the never-ending passage of feet. Where he expected the air to be thick with the odours of sweat, cooking, incense, and cum, he smelled only fear. The few travellers they came upon scurried onwards as if they had no errand more urgent than getting back to their hotel and hiding under their beds.

  “How long has it been like this?”

  “About a week or so,” said Pyoc, keeping his gaze smartly down the centre of the street and speaking from the side of his mouth. “But it’s been coming for a while. First we didn’t notice, then we didn’t understand. Now we don’t know how to stop it.”

  “And you still don’t understand.”

  “No, we don’t.” Pyoc grabbed his arm and stopped their progress. “Act drunk.”

  “What?”

  “Now.”

  Two red-robed figures emerged from a side street. They slid from the shadows with silent grace, faces hidden by bright red hoods pulled down low so the robes seemed to float disembodied above the dirt. Marius smothered a grin. An old trick, employed by secret policemen and inquisitors across the continent, designed to create unease in those they approached. He felt Pyoc stiffen. It still worked. Marius was more cynical, and was able to watch them as they approached rather than worry about what the approach meant. Something about them was familiar. They made no sound as they moved closer: no rustle of clothing, no rasp of breath in the cold night air. The long knives hanging from their belts hung loose and didn’t so much as slap against thighs that barely moved beneath them. Marius closed his eyes and viewed the approaching figures with dead sight. Very gently, a piece of the puzzle he was pursuing clicked into place.

  “You have a miscreant?” one of the Fellipani stewards asked. Marius kept his face still. Someone who wasn’t looking for it might not notice the lack of movement from the robe’s hood as the steward spoke. They might also not observe that it was impossible to tell who actually spoke. The voice came from the general direction of the approaching Fellipanis, but not directly from beneath either robe. Marius was now certain of what he would find if those hoods were thrown back, and the faces beneath revealed. He bent from the waist, turned his head so that he looked up into the bowed hoods, and focussed on piercing the blackness beneath. He saw their faces, and experienced a surge of satisfaction. He was right. Pyoc took firmer hold of his arm, and shook him fully upright.

  “Just a drunk,” he replied. “Out a bit too late for polite society.”

  “We will take him.”

  “He’s my collar.”

  “We will take him.” The voice was more insistent, the arm that was raised to take hold of Marius came out rigid and demanding. Pyoc tightened his grip.

  “I need a receipt from the desk,” he insisted. “I have to show my sergeant.”

  “There is no need. We will inform your masters.”

  Pyoc took a step forward but found his path blocked. “And how do you know who my masters are, then?”

  “You are Guardsman Emil Pyoc, of the Ludd Street Guardhouse. Your sergeant is Quincy Lukaku.”

  “Quincy?” slurred Marius, giggling a little.

  “Shut up, you.” Pyoc gave Marius a shake. He shut up.

  “You reside on the top floor rear room of Missus Fiffitt’s boarding house on Rolling Penny Street. You take your dinner at the Brown Carvery, and eat your breakfast in your rooms. You take an extra slice of toast and an egg for your midshift meal, which you eat at the guardhouse unless you eat it at the empty lot between the Cattery and Rollo’s Hi-Lo Card House. You visit Luscious Lyn at the Cattery three nights a week for a bath and three-riner special. Your father is deceased. Your mother lies in Mockenham. You have no siblings. You have been asking questions about the operation of the Central Gaol.” The steward let the information sink in. “We have been asking about you.”

  Marius felt Pyoc swallow, and the muscles in the guard’s arm clench in sudden fear. “That’s as may be. This man is still my collar.”

  “You will be suitably rewarded for your efforts.” Marius was under no illusion as to which efforts were being discussed. He decided it was time to turn the Fellipani’s attentions away from Pyoc.

  “Hey!” he yelled and suddenly lurched forward, out of the young guard’s grasp. Before Pyoc could react, Marius swung round and embraced him in a clumsy hug. “You, you shtay boodiful, okay buddy?” He planted a sloppy kiss on Pyoc’s cheek and whispered, “This is us. Be back soon as I can.”

  The guardsman, to his credit, played along and pushed Marius off. “Get off me, you lush.”

  “Hey, hey, don’ be like tha’.” Marius weaved between the three men. “Thish guy…” He slung an arm around one steward’s shoulder and leaned into him. “Thish guy… Boodiful guy.” He leaned against the man, arms hanging loosely at his side. One quick twist of the wrist, and the steward’s knife was off his waist and up one of Marius’ sleeves. “I love thish guy.” He reared back and waved at Pyoc.

  “I shee you lader, boodiful guy,” he shouted. “I’ma gon’ go with theshe guysh, ’kay?” He gave his new best friend a loving shake of the shoulders. “Love thish red shit.” The steward ignored him, his attention remaining fixed upon the guard. Pyoc slowly acquiesced, letting his gaze slip away and nodding.

  “As you wish,” said Pyoc. “A good evening to you.”

  “Guardsman Pyoc.”

  “She you lader, boodiful guy!”

  Pyoc turned and strode back up the street as quickly as possible. Marius and his new gaolers watched him go. Once he had turned the corner, Marius straightened and faced them.

  “So,” he said, smiling. “Now we’ve dealt with that, let’s cut the shit and talk business. How long have you two been dead?”

  The stewards stared at him and said nothing. Marius maintained his smile but the joy left his eyes, replaced by a coldness that changed the nat
ure of his face entirely.

  “Come on,” he said. “Look at me. Really look at me.” The dead men grew even more still. After a moment, one of them tilted his head in surprise. “Ah,” Marius said. “Got it now.”

  “How long?”

  Marius raised his hands in a “ta-da” motion. “About three weeks. Had a bit too much to drink, missed the wrong step on the stairs…” He let his hands tumble over each other in a falling motion. “Woke up the next morning in a back alley, naked and not breathing. Dog had nibbled one of my toes off. Couldn’t even feel it. What about you?”

  “That is not your concern.”

  “Oh, come now.” Marius clapped his companions on their shoulders. “We’re all friends here, surely? No need to keep secrets.” Quick as a snake, he reached up and flipped the front of their hoods backwards, revealing the dead men’s faces. “There,” he said, while their white eyes bulged in surprise. “Isn’t that better?” They looked as dead as him, he noticed: like corpses freshly dug up and brushed free of dirt, no real decay or putrefaction. Just a lack of animus, and the unrelenting reek of otherness.

  “Fool.” The stewards reached for their hoods, but Marius had a fistful of their robes and he dragged them closer while they were still off balance.

  “Let’s not fuck about,” he said. “We’re obviously going to the same place. I just like to know what I’m getting myself into. Don’t you think you can spare a little bonhomie for a fellow corpse, brother?”

  His new friends were both larger men than Marius. They may have been caught out, but now they gathered themselves, disengaging their clothes from Marius’ grip with a minimum of effort. He let them go with a smile. They reached up and replaced their hoods.

  “I’m Loncelno. This is P’Shet.” Neither one indicated the other. Marius decided not to ask which was which.

  “Toshy.”

  “We have orders to deliver all miscreants to the Central Gaol, brother Toshy.”

  “Does that include a fellow deceased?”

  The stewards paused, but only for a moment. “Our Lady does not distinguish.”

  “Ah, fair enough.” Interesting phrasing. It certainly brought one or two questions to the front of Marius’ thinking. “Best proceed, then.”

  They turned as one towards the end of the street, Marius in the middle of the two red-robed figures. “Tell me,” he asked as they began to walk, “Does it worry you, walking around dead like this?”

  “We do our duty,” Loncelno, or perhaps P’Shet, replied. “We are loyal to our Lady.”

  “Your lady? You mean…” He indicated the crest on their chests.

  “The Mistress Fellipan. We are her bondsmen.”

  “Does she know about your… little infirmity?”

  “She knows.”

  “Ah. And that doesn’t bother her?”

  “We serve her loyally.”

  “Oh, of course.” Another piece gently clicked into place. “Does she provide a lot of opportunity for persons of our… disposition?”

  P’Shet, or Loncelno, shrugged. “We do our duty. We don’t question our mistress’ plans.”

  “Well, no. Why would you? Glad to have the work, I expect.”

  The stewards stayed silent. Slowly, the gloomy grey edifice of the Central Gaol emerged from the shadows of the surrounding houses. It sat at the end of the street, brooding and sullen, and let its coldness seep out along the cobbles, leaching all the colour and noise and liveliness away like a cranky great-grandmother. The younger buildings around it shrank away, as if forced into a form of respectful silence. No sound interrupted the frigid silence, no movement other than the bent-over, shameful scuttling of quiet figures in and out of its entrance. This was not a place for joy, or emotion, or basic human courtesy. That sort of behaviour may be all right for other, less well-raised neighbourhoods, but the buildings around the gaol house were brought up right, and knew how to behave around their elders.

  “Cheery,” Marius observed, staring at its bowed front steps and unlit lanterns.

  “We shall escort you inside.”

  “Of course.” They ascended the steps, pausing before the massive oak doors. “One thought,” Marius said. “Just out of interest.”

  “Yes?”

  He laid a hand on the wood. “Why does everyone end up here, anyway?”

  The stewards pushed the door open.

  “Mistress Fellipan orders it,” one of them said. Marius snorted.

  “Of course, she does,” he said, and stepped inside.

  Bustle and noise and protest and violence. Orders, shouting, threats, feet thumping on floors, drunken singing, doors crashing against walls, the thud of coshes against backs, wailing, crying, fear, objections, the screaming protests of whores and drunks and mothers and wives. Chaos, pandemonium, violence, brutality, indifference, anger, and hate.

  This was more like it. This was a real gaol house.

  Marius hung back in the doorway for a moment and watched the multitude of tiny passion plays being enacted in front of him. There was an order to the chaos, as there is in any properly functioning gaol house, a pattern to the seemingly random assortment of beatings and draggings and fights that constitute the processing of a night watch miscreant. And, he had to admit as he watched the rhythm of the Central Gaol dance, the Fellipani stewards were beautifully efficient.

  Sullen guards from the other watch houses were stripped of their charges at a desk set just inside either of the entry doors, and a receipt was issued before the guard could launch into well-rehearsed and well-worn litanies of complaint. Then they were simply ignored as a steward appeared from out of the swirling crowd to rap the prisoners on the back of the legs with a weighted nightstick before dragging them over to another table, where they were stripped of their outer clothing with efficient grace. The guard, with nothing left to say and the next prisoner already being herded past them to the table, had no option but to get out of the way, and nowhere left to go but outside again. They were quickly and subtly bustled in that direction by the Fellipani stewards who passed, seeming to bump them only on the side necessary to move them the right way. The prisoner, meanwhile, still too busy trying to regain control of their legs and process their sudden near-nakedness, was pushed up against a wall by two gorilla-sized gaolers, where they were held still while a third patted them down and removed any objects still hidden about their person. Then they were lifted clean off their feet and frogmarched through swinging doors at the far end of the room, where they disappeared from sight. The gorillas were back within fifteen seconds, and already throwing the next prisoner against the wall before the door had finished swinging. Marius noticed that all the Fellipani servants in the room were dressed as the steward at the city gate had been: in felt jerkin and simple hat, their faces clearly in view, and also very much alive.

  Anybody who had the misfortune to be accompanying a prisoner, be it wife or loved one or pimp, was simply squeezed out by the press of red-shirted bodies until a passing steward could grip their arm and push them back out into the night.

  It was a perfect, functional, and brutal system. As Marius watched, half a dozen collars were processed, not one taking more than a minute to go from one end of the chain to the other. Despite himself, he couldn’t help but be impressed. Only one problem presented itself. The knife he had stolen from Loncelno, or P’Tesh, weighed heavily against his forearm. There was no way it would remain undiscovered if he was thrown into the jaws of that inexorable human machine.

  “I’m not going through that,” he said, more in hope than certainty.

  “No need,” one of them replied. Marius sighed in relief, then frowned.

  “Actually, why not?”

  “There is no need.”

  “Right.”

  He allowed himself to be marched between the two robed figures, past the processing tables towards the door at the rear of the room. The milling chaos opened up before them as they moved, swirling behind them as if the disturbance had never exi
sted. The other stewards made a point of avoiding the two robed figures at Marius’ side. No one so much as glanced towards them as they passed.

  “Do they know?” Marius asked.

  “They have no need. They are told not to acknowledge those dressed as we are.”

  “And they’re all loyal.”

  “They do their duty.”

  “She must be something to inspire this kind of loyalty, your mistress.”

  They shrugged in unison. “She is our Lady.”

  Marius had never understood the notion of blind loyalty. He had served everyone from kings and caliphs to head dishwasher at the local brothel, and only ever with one objective: to relieve someone of the cruel burden of their money. As far as loyalty went, it began and ended with himself. It was a necessary trait in his kind of work. Loyalty to another made people stay in the path of danger long after running away became sensible. It stopped a man from knowing when to cut his losses, when to leave comfort and go back to relying on one’s wit, when to recognise a losing game and get out of it. A loyal man forgot when to scarper. Marius’ complete lack of it had kept him alive for so long.

  Except, of course, that he was dead. And it was loyalty to Keth that had set him on that path to begin with. Which, he reflected, pretty much proved his point.

  Their little group reached the rear door and stepped through. And everything Pyoc had been working so hard to discover was laid out before Marius in a single, awful moment.

  Directly behind the door, a corridor stretched past a dozen cells to an open entrance leading directly outside the building. The walls of the corridor were rough stone, unfinished and cold, as if the builders had got this far and given up in disgust. The floor was uneven, with large runnels between flagstones, and was sticky under Marius’ boots. Looking down he saw thick, dark stains across the stones and into the grouting, pools of black tarnish that refused to reflect the light from the few smoking braziers on the wall. The only real light came from a sliver of night sky that slipped through the entrance, and most of that was blocked off by what appeared to be a high stone wall outside. As the stewards herded him rearwards the view became clearer: a marshalling yard at least twenty feet long, cleared of anything but a number of half-naked prisoners who milled about in stunned, silent confusion. But it was the cells that captured his initial attention, and answered every question Pyoc and the sergeant might have had.