Iron Gods

by Andrew Bannister

  A day out from the town she began to smell the burning. She had stopped and lifted her nose to catch the on-shore wind. Definitely burning, but not fresh. There was something acrid about it, like ash mixed with – something; she wasn’t sure what.

  A day later she was sure. On the outskirts of the town most of the buildings were stone and those still stood, although a few had lost roofs and some looked ransacked. Further in, whole areas had been reduced to waist-high clay walls, extravagantly blackened and cracked, with the charcoaled bones of timber frames sticking up from them. The streets were paved with fat lozenge-shaped cobbles. Water had collected between them, its surface rainbowed with oil.

  That was the smell. She thought about that for a while, randomly walking the quiet streets with her eyes mainly downward – there were too many things to trip over or slip on. Then she shook off her reverie and looked around, forcing herself to complete one slow, full turn with her eyes raised and her senses properly alert.

  The coastal plain the town was built on wasn’t quite a plain. It rose and fell, reminding Seldyan of large-scale sand dunes. There was a high point a few hundred metres away, up-slope from the sea, with what looked like some fairly intact buildings on it. She compressed her lips. Either there was something here or there wasn’t; it was time to find out.

  She started walking.

  It took her longer than she would have expected. The streets were convoluted, full of twists and dead ends, and sometimes she had to retrace her steps when she was stopped by a collapsed building or a heap of debris. But after an hour of scrambling she was looking at a low two-storey building of long flat stones, smoke-stained along the side that faced the harbour but otherwise seemingly untouched.

  She looked it up and down, and then her heart bounced. There were chimneys at both ends of the roof, and one of them was wisping smoke.

  People. She had found people.

  She took a breath, but before she could call out there were running feet behind her and something hit her in the small of her back. She went down, crashing against the cobbles with her arms thrown in front of her face.

  Whoever it was, they seemed to be lying on her, but they didn’t feel heavy. She raised herself on her forearms, wincing at the protest from her grazed skin. Then she froze.

  ‘Stay down!’

  It had been an urgent whisper, so close to her ear that she felt hot breath, but that wasn’t what had surprised her. It was a child’s voice, and it sounded serious.

  She dropped again. Almost before she was down there was a shattering boom from somewhere in front of her. Something whistled over her head in a cloud of dust, and then there was a pattering like raindrops around her. She felt things landing on her arms and the back of her head; through screwed-up eyes she saw falling splinters.

  The weight on her back lifted abruptly, and then she found herself looking up into a brown face framed by a lot of dark straight hair. ‘He’s reloading,’ said the face. ‘Run now.’ And then it was gone and there was a slight figure running awkwardly away downhill, towards the harbour.

  Seldyan shook her head to clear it. Then she rose to a crouch and ran after the girl. She caught her up a couple of streets away; the awkwardness had quickly turned into a skipping limp, and the dark face was twisted with pain.

  She knelt so that their faces were level. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Are you okay?’

  The face turned away, but Seldyan had already had time to see that the dark colour was more dirt than skin, and there were darker smudges around one eye. She felt her own eyes narrowing. ‘Someone hit you?’

  The girl nodded, still with her head turned.

  ‘What about your leg. Was that …?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Who did it?’

  Emphatic shake.

  ‘Right.’ Seldyan patted her belt; the med kit was there, and felt undamaged. She looked around. ‘I owe you one. I can make you better. Is there anywhere safe we can go?’

  For a long time the girl was silent. Then she glanced at the med kit. ‘Make very bad things better?’

  ‘It depends how bad.’ Seldyan hesitated. ‘Are you very hurt?’

  The head shook again. ‘Not me. You come?’

  Seldyan hesitated, and then cursed herself. Maybe it is all shit, she thought. Maybe all I can do is make a bit of it a bit less shit. ‘Okay,’ she said, straightening up. ‘You lead.’

  The girl nodded and set off, still heading down towards the harbour. She wasn’t running this time, and the limp was so pronounced that her left foot seemed barely to touch the ground before it was lifted again, but she kept up a steady pace.

  Seldyan guessed she would be about the same age as Dimollss. Something about the thought made her pause for a second. Then she squared her shoulders and followed the girl.

  As she followed, a thought followed her. This was what I came for.

  The smell in the shack made her retch. It was shit and piss and the powerful waxy stink of unwashed body and, overwriting all of that, something rotting – not just rotten but actively putrefying.

  Seldyan had once cleared out a cold store where the chillers had failed. She had shovelled out half a tonne of spoiled synthetic protein. That had been similar, but not as bad.

  The door had swung to behind her. She kicked it open, found a loose cobble, wrenched it up and used it to prop the door so the light fell on the pile of rags in the corner, and the skeleton that had tried to raise itself when she had first entered.

  It was a man – she guessed a young man, but the face was so shrunken and bearded it was hard to be sure of age. The one certain thing was that he was starving to death – had obviously been doing so for a long time.

  He was covered from the waist down by more rags. She swallowed and drew them back. When they got to his feet they seemed to stick. She pulled a little harder, and they came free, and she covered her mouth in horror. But she didn’t let herself turn away.

  The soles of the man’s feet, from the ball to the heel, were raw flesh, blackened and oozing pus. At the heels, white bone glinted. As Seldyan watched, a short brown worm wriggled out of the wound, and then another.

  Still without turning, she spoke to the girl. ‘How did this happen?’

  ‘The men cut him.’

  ‘Which men?’

  She shrugged. ‘Men from the town.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘Most gone. There was burning, and then bad smells.’

  ‘But why cut him?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘He was the Painter.’

  ‘Okay, never mind.’ She didn’t understand but questions could wait. She took out the mini-doc, clamped her lips together and knelt down by the man.

  When she finally sat back on her heels and dug her hands into the small of her back to ease the ache, the light was getting dim. She ran her eyes over her patient and nodded slowly. The doc had supplied sedatives, a shot of quick-heal and a massive dose of a broad-spectrum anti-parasitic. His feet were cleaned and dressed and his horribly broken arm was encased in splint-foam.

  ‘I think you’ll live.’ She rotated her shoulders. Everything ached. Then she turned to the girl, who had barely moved the whole time. ‘I haven’t forgotten you,’ she said, ‘but we need to get this one somewhere clean and safe. Do you know anywhere?’

  The face flickered. ‘Clean. Not safe.’ Her hand went to her bruised eye. The index finger was swollen and crooked, and Seldyan realized with a jolt of disgust that it was broken.

  ‘Not safe because they did things to you?’

  The girl nodded.

  Seldyan stood up, feeling her knees creaking, and reached into her pouch. The smooth bulge of the stunner fitted easily into her curled fingers.

  ‘Maybe we can do something about that,’ she said. ‘Will you trust me?’

  The girl’s eyes went to the unconscious man, and then back to Seldyan. She nodded, and her lips twitched in something that might have been the start of a smile.

  �
��Right. Show me where.’

  She wasn’t surprised when ‘where’ turned out to be the house she had headed for that morning. Viewed from what she hoped was a safe distance, the chimney wasn’t smoking any more and there were sagging timber shutters over the windows. One of the shutters had a corner missing. She saw clean white wood along the tear and guessed it had fallen victim to whatever weapon had been fired at her earlier. A plume of splinters on the ground led towards where she had met Bis.

  It seemed an odd name. She hadn’t been able to find out if it was short for anything, because the girl had become less communicative as they got nearer the house. Her face was pale and set. It wasn’t pain; Seldyan had given her a painkiller and a dose of quick-heal. She had borne the hypo phlegmatically, like someone who’d had practice bearing things, and Seldyan had found herself shaking her head.

  Now she leaned down and spoke quietly. ‘Will they fire again?’

  Bis shook her head. ‘Drinking time.’

  ‘Ah. How many people?’

  ‘Just him.’ The word was flat.

  Seldyan watched the house for a moment. Bis sounded sure but she might be wrong, and there was no way of finding out by looking. Seldyan felt the stunner cradled in her palm. Her body heat had warmed it. It felt – friendly.

  She grinned to herself and set the level to its highest point – Captain Hefs had been knocked out by half that, but then she had sort of liked him. ‘Wait for me there,’ she said, and pointed towards a patch of shade at the base of a ruined wall opposite the house. ‘Come when I call. Understand? Not before.’

  The girl nodded.

  ‘Right. See you.’ Seldyan straightened up, took a breath and ran.

  There was a flimsy-looking door in the rough centre of the ground floor. She ignored it. ‘Very strong,’ Bis had said, before she clammed up. ‘Go behind. Barrel drop.’ It had taken some clarification, but now Seldyan knew what she was looking for – the girl’s private way in and out.

  Hopefully private.

  The back of the house was piled with litter. Stacks of broken timber leaned against the wall. At one point they formed a lean-to tunnel. Seldyan dropped to her knees and shuffled along it, smelling tar and rot, until her hands met a rough wooden hatch. She ran her fingers round the edge until they felt a rusted hoop. A pull, and the hatch lifted.

  She eased herself through and dropped half her own length.

  Then she screamed as hot cramping agony flooded her leg. She tried to lift her foot from whatever it was, but it wouldn’t move. She almost lost her balance and her arms flailed. Her hand banged into something and gripped it, and then she realized she was still screaming and somehow bit it back. She looked down and her heart went cold.

  Someone had driven iron nails into a board, and had left it, points upward, beneath the hatch where her feet had landed.

  Or where Bis’s feet would have landed.

  Then she heard the footsteps on the floor above, and anger overcame the pain. She shut her eyes and pulled her foot off the nails, managing to experience the tearing of the rough metal with something close to detachment. Then she hopped sideways, away from the patch of light thrown by the hatch, until she was standing in a corner with the stunner held out in front of her. It wasn’t shaking much.

  The footsteps paused. There was a sharp creak and light appeared in the opposite corner of the room – the wavering orange light of a flame. Someone was coming down a steep flight of stairs, a lamp held out in front of them. Even across the room, it smelled of oil.

  Seldyan waited until the full length of the legs was visible. Then she fired.

  There was a howl, and a body crashed down and lay twitching. The lamp clanged to the floor a metre away, and flames flickered about a spreading pool.

  Seldyan swore. She half hopped, half skipped across the floor, picked up the still burning lamp and put it on a shelf. Sacks of something were stacked against the wall by the steps; she hauled one of them out of the stack, dumped it on the pool of flames and watched it until she was sure they were out. Then she dragged another sack on top of the first, sat on it and glared down at the fallen man.

  His eyes were wide in the dim light. One hand was underneath him. The other reached convulsively for a leg which lay in an impossible shape, the calf forming an acute angle with the thigh. Even in the lamplight she could see dark wetness spreading through the material where his knee would be.

  She nodded towards the leg. ‘That’s going to hurt a lot more when the stun wears off. Are you the man who beats up little girls?’

  ‘What’s stun?’ The words were slurred, and she caught a sour gust of bad teeth and alcohol.

  Seldyan sighed. ‘I shot your legs. Look, I haven’t got time … you’re going to sleep. I’ll see you if you wake up.’ She raised the stunner again and fired, this time at the torso. The body convulsed and was still. About half a day, she guessed. Long enough.

  It took her a long time to climb the steps. By the time Bis answered her call she was sitting on a stool, her injured foot propped up in front of her. The girl’s eyes widened when she saw the blood-stained sabot. Seldyan managed to grin at her. ‘Can you be a doctor?’

  Then she leaned back and closed her eyes. Just for a minute, she promised herself.

  When she opened her eyes, the room was lit by firelight. There was a rough blanket around her shoulders and her bloody sabot was on the floor by her stool.

  Her foot hurt; that was what had woken her. There was a job to do. She sat forward and looked around. ‘Bis?’

  There were soft footsteps behind her and the girl appeared. Seldyan looked her up and down. Her stance was symmetrical now, and the footsteps had sounded even. ‘Feeling better?’

  Bis nodded.

  ‘Good. I need your help. Is there any hot clean water?’

  She watched while the girl heated a blackened pot on the fire. It was big enough for her whole foot to fit. When it was ready she gritted her teeth and bathed it while Bis watched with learning eyes. Then she withdrew it and rested her heel on the ground. ‘Now, I need some strong drink.’

  The girl’s face flickered, and Seldyan added, ‘Not to drink. To clean. Stop bad getting in.’

  Bis nodded. She gestured to the med kit. ‘No good for you?’

  Seldyan glanced at the kit and hesitated. In the end she said, ‘I only use it if I have to.’ As a general statement, she thought, that was true. It just avoided the specific point that there was nothing left; she had used the whole kit on Bis and the man in the shack.

  And she didn’t even know who he was. But Bis thought he was important, and she had to trust someone.

  Bis fetched a flat glass flagon from a store beside the chimney. She opened the stopper with a twist that looked practised and held it out. Seldyan shook her head. ‘You do it,’ she said. ‘Pour it over.’

  And gripped the legs of the stool, hard.

  By the time she had bandaged her foot with the cleanest-looking rag she could find and jammed it back in her sabot, the light was getting dim. She reflected for a while. Then she put a hand on Bis’s shoulder. ‘I’m going to fetch the man,’ she said. ‘Stay here. Keep the door closed. Tend the fire. Is there any food?’

  The girl nodded.

  ‘Okay. Get us something to eat. Soft things. Soup. You know how to make soup? He’ll probably be awake, understand? He’ll need to eat.’ She reflected for a moment, and added, ‘And heat water. Lots of water. He’ll need to wash.’

  Then she turned and limped through the door. She heard it close emphatically behind her.

  Unknown

  HE HAD BEEN – wherever it was – for a while. Time was difficult. They didn’t allow him to sleep and the light never changed, so days were unmeasurable. There were no meals, only the sour fluid they forced between his lips from time to time. It seemed to contain a stimulant, because it could wake him from the warm stupor he occasionally lapsed into when they had hurt him too much, or for too long.

  They would always pun
ish him for that, although he could never predict exactly when.

  His world was the thing he sat on and was fixed to – an ordinary chair, but skeletal and seemingly capable of being any shape and in any position – and the dim view of a wall. Between him and the wall, a stool, and on the stool a small human male in drab clothes.

  He was aware of the operative, or operatives. He had no way of counting them; no means of telling how many there were, or if they had advisors, assistants or even an audience. Everything he couldn’t feel or see, he ruled out, and what was in front of him he acknowledged, but didn’t trust.

  To not trust your world. That was all there was. Trust would be acceptance, and acceptance would be ending. So far, and as far as he could tell, he hadn’t ended. He was less sure if he was sane.

  The world he didn’t trust was demanding his attention. The man on the stool had sighed. ‘We begin again. We will begin again as many times as we need to. Only you can help us to an ending.’ His eyes slid a little to the side and he nodded.

  Yellow. Vess had come to assign colours to pain. This was yellow, a bright hot yellow like a sun, or better perhaps like a shard of metal, heated close to melting. He smelled burning flesh.

  When it stopped the little man was looking at him. ‘People have lived for years in that chair, you know. So long that their flesh has fused to it, so that they have to be torn from it in the end.’ He leaned forward. ‘There is no escape. No insanity, no death. We know better than that. You are the best-preserved living entity in the Spin.’ Another nod.

  Yellow, and more burning, and convulsions; tearing of muscle fibres leaping against restraints.

  ‘So, a beginning. You came alive out of the Stack. You were then interviewed by Vut. You handled a runner. The runner was rogue and now Caphraime II is dead and a few hundred people have hearing damage. Had Chairman Or-Shls not acted quickly he would be dead instead of her, and that was probably the real intention. You have no reason to love the Chairman. You claim to know nothing, but I don’t believe you. Speak at any time.’

  The same question, and he had already given his only answer many times. He would have shaken his head, but it was fixed in place. He would have closed his eyes but they had removed his eyelids.