by Various
Bas looked at the few cans of food remaining in the metal box at his feet. There were no labels on them, but he didn’t suppose it mattered. Like himself, the tattooed boy would be glad of whatever food he could get. Together, they would eat well in celebration of their new friendship. Tomorrow, they could search out new supplies as a team.
With these thoughts buoying his spirit, Bas bedded down and tried to sleep, knowing he would need to be well rested for the dangers of the night ahead.
Darkness fell fast in Three Rivers, and this night the sky was clear and bright. Overhead, the planet’s three small moons glowed like spotlit pearls. The stars shone in all their glory. Had Bas deigned to look up, he might have noticed some of them moving inexplicably northwards, but he did not. His eyes were fixed on the scene below.
In the ruined plaza, ork cookfires burned by the dozen, surrounded by massive bodies turned orange by the flames. The majority of the brutes were drinking some kind of stinking, fermented liquid from barrels they had unloaded from their trucks. Others ripped hunks of roasted meat from bodies that turned on their spits. Bas didn’t know what kind of meat the greenskins were cooking, but he could hear the fat pop and sizzle as the baking skin cracked and burned. Others still were barking at each other in their coarse tongue. Fights broke out sporadically, each ending in a fatality as the stronger hacked or bludgeoned the weaker to death.
Bas’s stomach groaned, demanding he act on the savoury smell that wafted up towards his perch, but he ignored it. He needed all his focus, all his attention, to recognise the moment he could slip back inside the dome of the administratum building.
It seemed that a great many hours passed as he hunched there atop the ruins of the old church once more, clinging to the statue that broke up his silhouette. In fact, only two hours had gone by when, with their fill of meat and drink and fighting, most of the orks settled down to sleep. Their communal snoring soon rivalled the noise of their engines from earlier in the day.
It was time to move.
With all his concentration centred on avoiding detection, Bas made his way across his plank-bridges and soon reached the gaping crack in the dome. There, pressing himself close to the exposed stone, he peered inside and scanned the hallway below.
There were fires in here, too, though smaller than the ones outside. Around them slept the biggest of the greenskins, those with the heaviest armour, the largest weapons, the most decoration. There were a few hook-noses, too, sleeping in groups near the fly-covered dung piles. They had not been allowed to bed down near the fires of their giant masters.
Bas watched and waited and decided that the orks within were as sound asleep as those without. He steeled himself for what had to be done, then stepped out from behind the cover of the dome and began his descent. The stars cast his shadow on the tile floor below, but nothing stirred, nothing noticed.
With all the stealth he could muster, Bas descended, his toes and fingers seeking and finding the same holds he had used earlier in the day. But while the daytime descent had taken only moments, this one took minutes. There was too much at stake to rush, and nothing to be gained.
Finally, his bare feet reached the cold tiles and he turned from the wall. He realised that, even had he slipped and made a noise, none of the orks would likely have heard him. Up close, their snoring was preposterously loud. Good. That would work in his favour.
Bas avoided looking directly at any of the fires. His eyes had adjusted well to the shadows over the last few hours of patient observation. He didn’t want to lose that. He had to be able to see into the dark places, for the cage with the human prisoners was flush against the far wall and the marble staircase next to it cast a black cloak over it.
He moved, keeping to pools of deep shadow wherever he could, at the same time careful to steer clear of the huddled hook-noses. Had he not masked his scent with ork filth so often and so diligently, their sensitive noses might well have detected him. But they did not awaken. Bas reached the cage and stood exactly where he had earlier that day.
Gentler sounds of sleep issued from behind the black iron bars.
Good, thought Bas. Most of them are sleeping, too.
He hoped they would stay that way. But where was the boy?
A figure moved to the cage wall. Bas squinted, and was relieved to see the boy standing there before him. Bas smiled and nodded by way of greeting.
The boy did not smile back.
I told you not to come back. Don’t take this risk. Escape with your life.
Bas shook his head and spoke in low tones, unsure if the boy could read thoughts as well as he transmitted his own. ‘How do I open the door? How do I unlock this thing?’
He pointed to the heavy chain and crude cast-iron padlock where they lay at the foot of the cage door. The chain’s coils wrapped around the bars twice.
I ask you one more time, said the boy. Will you not leave me and save yourself?
‘No!’ hissed Bas. ‘I will not go on alone. I’m sick of it. Don’t you understand?’
The boy’s voice was silent in Bas’s mind for a while. Then, it said, There is a key. The head slaver wears it on his belt, tied to it by a piece of thick rope. If you can cut the rope and get the key without waking him…
‘Which one is he?’ Bas whispered.
He lies by the fire closest to your left. His right ear is missing.
Bas stalked off towards the fire, still careful to avoid looking directly at its heart. There were seven orks around it and, as Bas drew close to them – closer than he had ever physically been to one of the tusked giants before – the sheer size of them truly dawned on him for the first time. He had always known they were huge, these savage horrors. But it was only this close, their wide, powerful backs heaving with each breath, that he realised how small he truly was and how fragile. There was nothing he could do against even one of them. If everything went wrong here tonight, he knew it would be the end.
Bas quickly found the slave master and moved around him to find the monster’s key.
The slaver’s barrel chest expanded like some huge bellows each time he took a deep, rumbling breathe and, when he exhaled, strands of thick saliva quivered on his long, curving tusks. The smell of his breath in Bas’s face was foul, like a carcass rotting in the sun.
Against his better judgement, Bas moved between the slave master and the fire. It was the only way to reach the key on the beast’s belt. But, as his shadow passed over the closed eyes of the monster, its huge shoulders twitched.
It stopped snoring.
Bas’s adrenaline, already high, rocketed. He stood rooted to the spot, his hands and knees shaking. If the beast came awake now, he didn’t know what he would do. He simply stood there, and the seconds seemed to stretch out like hours.
But seconds they were, and only a few, before the monster settled again and began to snore even louder than before. Bas’s relief was palpable, but he didn’t want to be near the damned thing any longer than necessary, so he crouched down by the monster’s thickly-muscled belly and, with slow precision, drew his grandfather’s knife from the sheath at his waist.
The rope was thick and the key itself was heavy, but the Sarge’s old knife was razor sharp. It had never lost its edge, despite all the use it had seen. It parted the rope fibres with ease. Bas lifted the key, re-sheathed the knife and made his way back over to the barbed cage.
‘I have it,’ he whispered as he crouched down by the massive padlock.
‘It turns clockwise,’ said a voice from the deep shadows within the cage.
Bas looked up with a start and saw the tall, gaunt man from before standing in front of him on the other side of the cage door.
‘I’ll help you, son,’ said the man, lowering himself into a crouch. ‘You turn the key. I’ll keep the chain and lock from rattling.’
Bas looked for the boy he had come to save and saw
him come to crouch silently by the gaunt man’s side.
‘You’ll need both hands to turn it,’ said the man.
Bas fitted the head of the key into the hole and tried to turn it until his fingers hurt.
Nothing.
An act of no effort whatsoever for the aliens was near impossible for Bas. The torque in his wrists just wasn’t enough.
‘Here,’ said the man, handing Bas a smelly rag that had once been clothing. ‘Wrap this around the handle and try again.’
Bas did. With his teeth gritted and the effort raising the veins on his arms and neck, he wrestled with the lock. There was a screech of metal. The lock slid open. Bas turned, certain that he had achieved this feat only to bring death on himself. Every sound seemed so much louder when stealth was paramount. He scanned the hall behind him, not daring to breathe. He sensed the tension on the other side of the cage, too. The orks, however, slumbered on. Perhaps there was little to fear after all. Perhaps the beasts slept so soundly he could have run through here clapping and yelling and not have roused a single one.
Overconfidence kills more men that bullets do, snapped the remembered voice of his grandfather. Stay grounded!
‘This will be tricky,’ said the man in the cage. ‘Lift the lock away from the chains and put it to the side. I’ll try to uncoil this thing without too much racket.’
That made sense to Bas. The chain looked particularly heavy, and so it was. In the end, it took all three of them – the gaunt man, Bas and the tattooed boy together – to remove it quietly. Remove it they did, but before the gaunt man could try to open the door, Bas raised a hand. ‘Wait,’ he whispered. ‘We should spit on the hinges.’
The man cocked an eyebrow, his face just visible in the gloom. ‘Good thinking, boy.’
Bas was surprised by the compliment. His grandfather would never have handed one out so easily.
Regardless of how good the idea was, it proved difficult for the man and the tattooed boy to generate enough saliva for the task. Too long without adequate food and water had made their throats itchy, their mouths bone dry. After a few failed attempts, however, the man had an idea. Instructing the tattooed boy to do the same, he put a corner of his ragged clothing in his mouth and began to chew it.
Soon enough, the door’s two large iron hinges gleamed wetly with fresh lubrication. Awakened by the sound of spitting, other prisoners rose and shuffled forward to see what was going on. That made Bas uncomfortable. He was sure they would give him away and bring the whole rescue down about his head. He was wrong. They had learned early in their captivity not to awaken their captors if they didn’t want to be tortured and beaten, or worse.
‘Stay quiet, everyone,’ the gaunt man told them. ‘The lad has freed us, but getting out will be no easy matter. You must stay quiet. Exercise patience or we’ll all die here tonight.’
‘We’re with you, Klein,’ whispered someone at the back. Others nodded assent.
Assured of their compliance, the gaunt man, Klein, turned back to the cage door and gently eased it open. The hinges grated in complaint, but only a little. At last, the cage stood open.
Bas stepped back.
Klein put a hand on the tattooed boy’s shoulder and ushered him through first. He stopped just in front of Bas, who couldn’t prevent himself from reaching out and embracing the boy.
‘I told you I’d get you out,’ Bas whispered, then stepped back, abruptly self-conscious.
Klein led the others out now, until they stood together outside the cage, a silent, terrified gaggle of wretches, all looking at Bas expectantly.
‘What’s your plan for getting us away from here, son?’ Klein asked now. ‘How will you get us to safety?’
Bas almost blurted, ‘I only came for him,’ but he stopped himself. Looking at these people, each hanging on to life and hope by the thinnest of threads, he knew he couldn’t just turn his back on them. He had come into their lives, a light in the dark, and he could no more extinguish it now than he could abandon the boy who would give new meaning to his survival.
He turned and pointed to the broad crack in the dome up above. The closest of Taos III’s moons, Amaral, was just peaking from the eastern edge of the gap, casting its silver light down into the hall, revealing just how many of the huge greenskin brutes lay sleeping there.
Bas’s gut clenched. It could still go so wrong. One slip would bring slaughter down on them, and yet he was so close, so close to getting himself and the tattooed boy away from here.
Klein followed Bas’s finger, his eyes roving from the gap in the dome, down the rough wall to the cold marble floor. He frowned, perhaps doubtful that some of his group would manage the climb. Nevertheless, he nodded and told Bas, ‘Lead us out, son. We will follow.’
Thus, with the utmost care, the group picked its way between the ork fires, freezing in terror every time one of the beasts shifted or grunted loudly in its sleep. Crossing the hall seemed to Bas to take forever. This was foolish. Even if these people did get out, how slowly would they have to cross the bridges he had laid between the rooftops? It would take forever for them to…
To get where? Where was he going to lead them?
He couldn’t take them to any of his boltholes. Those had been chosen for the difficulty of their access, for their small size. They were meant to be inconspicuous, but there was nothing inconspicuous about a group of clumsy adults struggling to pack their bodies into such a tiny space. And the smell of these people! They smelled so human. Bas hadn’t realised until now, standing there among them, just how strong people smelled. The greenskins would track them like hounds when they awoke. No doubt these people thought Bas smelled foul, standing there with dried ork faeces rubbed into his skin, clothes and hair. But they would learn to do the same or they would die.
At the wall, the group huddled together and Klein spoke to them again.
‘The boy will go first,’ he said. ‘All of you, watch him carefully. Watch how he ascends and try to remember the handholds he uses. We have to do this quickly, but not so quick as to cause any mishaps. Syrric,’ he said, addressing the tattooed boy, ‘you will go second. Once you and – I’m sorry, son, I don’t know your name.’
‘Bas,’ said Bas.
Klein put a fatherly hand on Bas’s head. ‘Bas. And now we know the name of our saviour.’ He smiled, and Bas saw that he, too, had had his teeth broken, no doubt by a blow from one of the greenskins. ‘Bas, when you reach the top, you and Syrric will help the rest climb up, okay?’
For an instant, Bas imagined just taking Syrric and running. The duo would have far better odds alone. But no sooner had the thought come to him than he felt the beginnings of a sickening guilt. What would his grandfather have done? There had been no lessons about this. No tests. How he wished there had been. Had the Sarge ever made such a decision? Had Bas’s education simply never gotten that far?
What should I do, grandfather? Bas silently asked the old man in his memories.
No sharp voice rose from the past to answer him.
He looked over at Syrric, and the boy nodded back at him in support.
‘Right,’ whispered the Klein. ‘Up you go, son. Show us the way.’
Bas started climbing, not looking down, letting his hands and feet find the holds he knew were there. He scaled the wall without noise or incident and, at the top, turned to find Syrric only a few metres below him. As the boy neared the top of the wall where the dome opened to the air, Bas reached down and helped him up.
Below, Klein was helping the first of the adults, a woman with short hair, to begin her climb.
How frail they all looked. How shaky. Could they really manage it?
Bas heard a shout in his head.
No! Dara, no!
It was Syrric. He had seen or sensed something about to happen. From the desperate tone of his thoughts, Bas knew it was bad.
&
nbsp; Surging from the back of the group, a woman began shouldering others roughly out of her way, screeching hysterically, ‘I have to get out! I have to get out of here! Me first! Let me up first!’
Her mad cries echoed in the great hall, bouncing from the domed ceiling back down to the ears of the sleeping greenskins. With grunts and snarls, they started to wake.
Klein tried to stop her as she surged forward, but panic had given her strength and he reeled backwards as she barged him aside. Then, from the bottom, she reached up and tore the short-haired woman from the wall, flinging her backwards to land with a sickening crack on the marble floor.
The short-haired woman didn’t rise. Her eyes didn’t open.
Bas saw the orks rising now, vast furious shapes given a doubly hellish appearance by the light of their fires. The first to stand scanned the hall for the source of the noise that had awoken it. Baleful red eyes soon picked out the pitiful human escapees.
Roars filled the air. Blades were drawn. Guns were raised.
Bas loosed a string of curses. There on the lip of the crack in the dome, he and Syrric could see it all play out below them. It would have been wise to flee then, and deep down, Bas knew that. But there was something about the inevitable horror to come that kept him there, kept him watching. He had to bear witness to this.
Was this his fault? Were they all to die so he could assuage his loneliness?
Dara scrabbled at the wall, desperately trying to ascend at speed, ignorant of the imminent slaughter her foolishness had initiated. Though she hadn’t been composed enough to map Bas’s path in her head, she made progress by virtue of the frantic nature with which she attacked the task.
She was halfway up when the others began to scream. The first orks had reached them. Heavy blades rose and fell, hacking their victims to quivering pieces. Fountains of blood, black in the moonlight, geysered into the air, drenching the greenskins’ leering faces. Deep, booming cries of savage joy sounded from a dozen tusk-filled maws. Bestial laughter ricocheted from the walls.
