The Pilgrims: Book One (The Pendulum Trilogy)

by Elliott, Will

  The Tormentors rose from belowground into the city’s northern quarter. Some were so big that new underground highways had been built just for their passage here from the woods, where they’d been gathered and herded at considerable cost in lives. (The creatures could not easily be predicted and certainly not commanded.) At times they tolerated human and animal life nearby, even when it was loud and brash, when fingers were snapped in their faces or when they were prodded with sticks, as experiments had shown. Other times they attacked anything alive, roaming far to seek out prey, using that peculiar magic effect which none yet understood. Their behaviour towards one another seemed to be passive and even co-operative, though not to any observer’s view organised, as such. But they had never been observed in such numbers and in such close proximity as this. The larger ones were generally the most placid, but always the least predictable. Herding the big ones had not proved possible … but a handful had indeed followed their smaller kindred to the city of their own accord.

  This invasion had been a difficult and expensive secret to keep. Very few of those unfortunates mind-controlled and trained to steer Tormentors were left alive in the miles-long tunnels. Many of the creatures remained still and silent in the highways belowground, but enough, easily enough, found their way towards the sounds and vibrations of the city, even as it tossed and turned in its sleep. As they neared the surface, the greatest noise and vibrations came from the northern quarter, and it was there they were drawn. There, in the wide, flat space before the northern gate, and manning the turrets and shelves up along the gate and walls, the city’s defenders waited for horn calls in the pass to alert them of the coming enemy.

  High on the artificial shelf ringing around and above the city, Anfen tossed uneasily in his bed, trapped in nightmares under Loup’s sleeping spell. On his arrival, gazing at the crowds, he had reflected on the presence in the city of spies, usurpers and the castle’s Hunters. He hadn’t known that operatives had been here for years in greater numbers than anyone feared, chiefly in the city’s underground trade routes and their overseeing bureaucracy: smooth-tongued Hunters legally working their way into key positions of the city’s governance with a store of gold on hand to bribe, and the skills to murder enemies as needed, all of them taking orders from a distance. The underground highways leading from the woods were not merely for the transport of felled timber — that had been guessable enough, to those in the know. But the Strategists had told no one when the invasion would come, or what it would look like.

  Nearly two hundred construction workers slept on-site beneath the surface. Tormentors came past their dim lantern-lit bunkers with enough wooden creaking for a ship at sea. Some men woke to screams echoing from deeper down the tunnels, then louder ones from nearby rooms. They found nightmares standing by their beds gazing at them with frozen alien smiles, others passing in great numbers past their doorways. Some thought they themselves still dreamed, even as time lagged and all they knew were razor-sharp points and edges, moving so very slowly.

  The Tormentors stalked in their stilted gait past those screaming and fleeing, to the surface’s fresher air and better light. Once the last shrieks had been silenced in the bunkers the only sound was the constant creak creak creak, magnified many times, as death from beyond World’s End climbed at last to the surface and poured out freely onto the streets.

  At the city’s northern gate, those posted in the many nooks and battlements keeping watch on the mountain pass fancied for a moment or two that the wind bore the sound of screaming. But it was so faint they weren’t sure, until those few people out and about at night — vagrants, night-workers, whores and their customers — saw dark, stalking shapes in the gloom, some of them huge.

  A bustle of activity began amongst the soldiers. A horn blew, followed by another. Braziers were lit and the place was filled with the orange glow of firelight. All troops were now awake, thousands soon in formation. Orders were shouted. Metal hissed a thousand times as weapons were drawn. Most turned towards the gate, thinking the screams that came from within the city were from artillery fire, missiles catapulted over the city walls and over their own heads — yet, why had no warnings sounded from the mountain pass? No one posted in the high places outside had blown his horn to signal enemy sighted.

  A clear enough sign came suddenly behind them. A tall shape — surely beyond six man-heights — swept with loping, swinging arms between two buildings. Those who saw it froze for a moment in disbelief before a rain of arrows flew at the lumbering beast. Arrows that struck it skittered off its hide. It stopped and swung its head their way, the enormous mane fanned out behind its head rattling, and stared at them. Another rain of arrows flew and fell; the sound of them glancing off the beast’s hide then onto the cobblestones below was like hail on a rooftop.

  A whole company rushed over to meet it while it watched them, still motionless. Screams began to sound more frequently from deeper within the city as hundreds of the beasts, smaller than the giant one but almost always bigger than any man, poured towards the waiting soldiers from the shadows with fast jagged strides and turned the area into a churning sea of death.

  The huge one ambled over too, as though convinced at last by the screams of fear and pain, and the ring of blades striking hard hides, that it too had a role to play. Arrows from the high wall still glanced off it harmlessly as it reached down into the crowds of men.

  58

  A hand shook Anfen’s shoulder with urgency, rousing him from the deep dreams of his spell-made sleep. If they were supposed to be pleasant dreams, Loup had got the spell wrong, or else the magic was too thin for him here. Anfen had seen nothing but death painted in vivid, sickening colours and marching to horrible music. On waking, his new sword was drawn by old instinct, and he was surprised to see it was Siel by his bed, whose hand usually calmed the instinct to draw his blade when she roused him. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

  ‘War has broken,’ she replied in a voice of forced calm. ‘An emissary came for us. They are evacuating the Mayors, all officialdom, and us. We leave now. No time to pack, they say.’

  Anfen was on his feet, slapping his own face to shake off the effects of Loup’s spell. His thoughts were sluggish. It was still dark. Out the window there were fires burning below. He could make out part of the city’s northern wall at a distance and saw the braziers had been lit. There wasn’t much else to see down there, except —

  ‘By all the Spirits! Siel, look at that!’

  The huge Tormentor — he recognised it as such at once — strode past the gate. It slowly reached high up the wall and plucked an archer off the shelves up there, while others could be seen leaping to their deaths to avoid its touch. As they watched, it carefully impaled the squirming man it had grabbed on the spike of its left shoulder as though it were placing an ornament on itself. Anfen was sickened to see, in the braziers’ light, writhing shapes of other men still alive but similarly impaled on the many long spikes all down the beast’s body. Spears and arrows were fired at it from the ground and from the high wall, but it was hard to tell if anything had stuck into it. The beast thumped huge hands against the gate, making it shudder and boom, then ambled away with lurching steps till it was hidden from their view by buildings.

  Gazing further across the city, Anfen saw one, two other huge shapes moving about, their outlines lit by fires which had begun to spread through the streets. Horns began to blare as the city wakened from sleep into a nightmare. Anfen was partly awestruck by what he’d seen. ‘Valour help us,’ he whispered, not even realising he’d said this prayer; having brought such shame to himself with sword in hand and cries to the Spirit on his lips, he’d sworn never to speak Valour’s name again.

  Siel pulled him from the window, otherwise he might have watched on until it all played out to its end, helpless to look away. ‘We must go,’ she said.

  Anfen came back to himself with a start. ‘We’re not going with the Mayors. You and the others. Get horses and follow me. We hav
e a new mission.’

  He grabbed his things then rushed through the luxury inn with its marble walls, trickling fountains and scented air. Many guests waited in confusion in the lobby, self-important foreign officials among them. He saw one such in the colours of Yinfel, having a heated argument with a girl doing the luggage boy’s job, since he’d likely been called away to the gate and handed a bow and arrow to defend the city. Anfen ran over and grabbed the bloated, red-faced man, who reeled back, startled and angered. ‘Listen close,’ said Anfen. ‘A message for your Mayor, Izven. The discussed cargo to be delivered now, directly five miles west of the end of the great dividing road. Not a footstep beyond. Your Mayor alone to hear these words and hear them soon, or I will hunt you down. The message comes from Anfen of the Mayors’ Command.’

  He ran outside to the high shelf and forced himself not to look down at the chaos. The first light of day began to turn the sky white. Men with pikes were erecting a barricade at the top of the long ramp down to the city, to keep the Tormentors and refugees away from the city’s tall shelf and its precious tunnels out, so the officials could more easily escape. A last group of people escaping the carnage were allowed to flee past before the pikes and spears went up. Those trapped on the ramp wailed and screamed; some passed young children over. The guards took the children and tossed weapons back over the barricade for the rest to defend themselves and defend the ramp.

  Anfen ran for the stables, not caring whose horse he was about to steal — the tired scrawny things that had brought them here wouldn’t suffice. Siel and Sharfy spotted him and followed, against the heavy flow of people rushing for the secret exits through the caves. Neither of them spoke as Anfen shoved past the protesting stable hands and got up on the finest steed he could find. ‘Get yourselves horses,’ he ordered.

  But Siel had an arrow drawn and a tear sliding down her cheek. At present, the bow pointed at the ground. Anfen looked at her, amazed. ‘What is this? Look outside. Tell me what you see.’

  ‘We serve the Mayors’ Command,’ said Siel, ‘not you. Wait for their permission. Whatever happened in the night has surely changed their view of things.’

  ‘There’s no time left for their blather. Put your arrow away.’

  Siel’s arrow rose to point at his chest. He tried to gauge from the look in her eye whether or not she’d shoot him if he rode past her. Probably. So be it. It would count as an honourable death. He flicked the horse’s reins.

  The stable hands had run back towards the inn to spread word of trouble. Now, a few guards approached along the city’s high, curved shelf with weapons drawn.

  Sharfy looked from Siel to Anfen to the approaching guards, and he drew the sword he’d bought yesterday from smiths in the Bazaar. It now flashed sideways, knocking Siel’s bow off target. The arrow loosed and skidded across the ground. He wrenched the bow from her hands and hurled it into a pile of hay. Soon he too found a quality mount already saddled and climbed up. ‘Be safe,’ Anfen told Siel, who stood helplessly watching them with tears streaking down her face.

  His horse galloped out onto the shelf, rearing as it passed the guards, Sharfy following. They headed against the flow of people for the long ramps down, and found one whose barricade was not yet in place. They began steering through a panicking mass of citizens fleeing for the southern gate. From Elvury, the Wall at World’s End would be a week’s hurried ride through far safer country than the Aligned north, if they rode like the wind straight down the great dividing road and changed horses at every chance. Which was what Anfen intended.

  He hoped that as he rode a way to destroy the Wall would occur to him, for he still had no idea how it could be done.

  When Loup heard what had happened, he found a steed of his own and headed after them.

  59

  ‘A city,’ said the war mage, bowing again as though it were his butler, and pointing a hooked claw at something off in the distance. Though Eric could not see Elvury, he could see smoke pouring into a faintly brightening white sky, empty of magic. He assumed the lack of magic was why the war mage had set him down here, on the ledge of a small cave above the mouth of a mountain pass.

  The war mage waited for instructions, cat-yellow eyes studying him carefully. He had no thought for it at all, for below in broad columns soldiers poured from the fields and into the narrow pass with shields held over their heads, boots stomping the ground like a drumbeat. Only after the last row of men had made their way into the tunnel did anything happen: an explosive noise sounded at the entrance, echoing off the sheer cliff faces. A huge column of stone fell out of a groove in the cliff’s wall and slammed across the road, making a quick escape back through the pass impossible.

  At intervals along the road, smaller columns were by invisible means blown free from the walls with sounds like huge whips cracking to thud down across the path. The invaders scrambled in panic to avoid being crushed, which most of them managed to do. The fallen pillars made their passage slow — made a charge at the city’s gate at the other end of the mile-long pass nearly impossible. Once retreat was cut off, a hail of arrows and stones began to rain down. The shields held overhead made it look as if insects with shells crawled sluggishly along, and sent arrows glancing to the ground with the odd flash of sparks lighting up the pass.

  Weighted rope ladders flew up over the roadblocks near the gates, and men scrambled over. Far fewer missiles rained down on them than should have, for many of the pass’s defenders had fled their perches and run back to see why horns blared in the city. Two-thirds of the invading force survived their passage through that hellish stretch, to regroup in the space beside the huge gate, safe from attack. None of the rank and file yet knew what awaited them behind the city walls, only that something unnamed would leave Elvury’s defences weak by the time they got inside, that their mission was to finish the city off then enjoy a day’s plunder before the castle overseers arrived to catalogue the takings.

  Back along the ‘road of death’, as it would be known in tavern lore, thousands of bodies in colours of many Aligned cities were piled in a short space, with no one to collect the wounded or to finish off those dying slowly. At the tunnel’s entrance, waiting with the elite unit sent to stamp out any potential rebellion, the General ordered the deaths of those few who’d refused to enter the pass. Some had got away and fled towards the elemental plains, where punishment enough probably awaited them from the wild things there. There had not been many deserters, little more than a hundred in all. The General marvelled at the waste of troops so brave. Vous’s feet had trampled this road, and Valour, if he had watched the fight at all, gave no battlefield reprieve.

  60

  High up as he was, Eric was mercifully too far to see many details in the gruesome picture below. The distant sounds of it, the screams and thuds of heavy rocks toppling, were bad enough. Then had come the huge logs, soaked in flammable oil and tossed down amongst the scrambling bodies, to be lit by fire-tipped arrows.

  The war mage hadn’t shown much interest in proceedings down there; once or twice it had made rasping speech Eric took to mean it wished for them to leave. ‘The city is just over there, isn’t it? Is it safe there?’

  ‘Not safe,’ it answered, surprisingly lucid.

  ‘Are you sure? That army lost a lot of men.’

  It clawed the air with its fingers, irritated. ‘A ship sails on … churning waves. A wave crashes into … churning rocks. Rocks fall on … churning ground …’

  Eric nearly succumbed to the urge to kick it. ‘Fuck! I wish you could speak clearer. What do you intend for me, then? To take me to Anfen?’

  It looked confused. ‘A servant.’

  ‘A servant, great. Know what? I wish you’d change clothes. Is the human skin really needed? It’s supposed to look like human skin, to make you feared, right? In fact, is that human skin?’

  A high-pitched garble sounded in its throat.

  ‘Great. You’re wearing human skin. Just great. So is Anfen at the city or n
ot? Let’s find him. Take me inside.’

  The war mage spat and made a rasping sound of disapproval, but grasped him again and leaped off the ledge. For two seconds they plunged straight down until it veered away from the deathly scene in the pass, making a curved line through the sheer walls for the northern gate. From this short flight, with no visible magic in the air its body was soon almost too heated to bear, its breathing a deathly rattle. Flight in skies thick with magic had heated it up much more slowly.

  The huge gate approached. Beyond it plumes of smoke poured into Elvury’s skies and horns blew like pained cries. The first invaders to make it through the pass gathered off to the left in an area free from raining arrows and rocks, and waited for others to catch up.

  The war mage perched up on a high turret on the gate itself, smoke and stink puffing from its overheated body. The city unveiling beyond was bigger than Eric had anticipated. The far southern gate was too distant to see, even from this high up. Thousands of rooftops and steep roads extended out across ground that dramatically sloped away from the mountains on the right and left of the gate. They’d landed on the highest part of the city’s wall, atop of which was a thick platform with room for defenders to take places for shooting below. In both directions were bows, shields, quivers and slings lying discarded. It took a moment for him to realise that what defenders remained did not face the pass, where the invaders still streamed through. They faced back into the city, and from the walls occasional arrows rained down inside it.

  Directly below on the city’s side was what might have looked like a child’s messy room, with toy soldiers scattered around in broken parts, were it not for the litter of organs and blood spread thick on the pavement. Screams and distant sounds like explosions could be heard, and fires raged. There were few survivors moving about.