by Toby Bennett
“Necromancer!” The Pilgrim’s eyes are red as blood, as he rises from the mound of bodies. He is over the wall in two bounds, his eyes scouring the turned earth for any sign of the clown.
“I will find you, Necromancer! If you interfere again I’ll find you and kill you!” Sam screams, venting his berserker rage into the empty night. When it is clear that his enemy is not going to show itself Blake returns to the road and his two companions.
“Are you alright?” Sam asks, kneeling next to Lillian and examining the scratches and scrapes left by boney finger tips and desiccated nails.
“I’m alive.” Lillian answers, looking around at the corpses littering the road.
“No thanks to our guide!” Aden complains. “I can’t believe I agreed to continue this madness, as soon as I find my horse, you can be sure we have seen the last of each other.”
“I have already told you that you would be no safer if you left our company. Like it or not you need us if you are going to survive, just as we need you.”
Aden looks from one to the other of his companions, both stare back impassively.
“You know there is no way but forward, Aden,” Lillian says at last. “Of all of us I have most reason to do as the clown wants. Look around and tell me if you think running for home is a good idea. We’ve got Inquisitors behind us and god knows what waiting ahead, the only way we can survive is together.”
“So because some Strigoi bastard says I have to go with you, you think I am part of this!”
“You would make a very good decoy as an animated corpse.”
“Shut up, Blake, I don’t need any more of your shit.”
“You know there is no choice but to go on, Aden, for better or worse fate has placed you on this road.”
“Fate or you and Yorick?”
“I can’t tell you one way or the other for certain but you can take comfort from one fact.”
“What’s that precisely?” The mutant asks, kicking aside a limp corpse and retrieving one of his pistols.
“Yorick must have foreseen one future in which you reach the ruins, at a time like this I’d cling to any hope of survival.”
“You’re a treat to be around, Blake.” Aden mutters, wiping the gore from his gun’s handle and replacing it in his belt. All his instincts tell him he should give the weapon a thorough cleaning before using it again but he has not time for such luxuries; the horses are the first priority and then they will have to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the scattered carrion on the road . Slipping off the river before Brigton had been designed to give them the best chance of escaping notice but when the sun rises on the Maulten cemetery there will be no hope of keeping their passing quiet. Sooner or later the Inquisitors will find their trail, sooner if the fact that the clown had been waiting for them was anything to go by. Aden looks uneasily into the night and wonders just how many people waiting out there know what he is going to do before he does it.
Chapter 14:
“Hounds and Jackals”
Silverspring is the last touch of green before the burning emptiness of the desert, the last pool of free standing water before the unyielding thirst of the towns and settlements beyond and even that is like a sip snatched between two cracked lips, aching even as they feel life sinking back into them. The closer one gets to the oasis that spreads below the cleft in the damp rocks, the taller the trees that clustered around the silver waters. The inhabitants of Silverstop all but worshiped the grove and the pool, not above the Christ man or God far above in the sky, but these his more immediate blessings came before family or self. A good citizen would lay down his life to prevent contamination of the waters or so said the city fathers, who met in the only other building besides the Church built close to the edge of the lake. The closest many got to the soothing water was when it was distributed by the many water sellers, each in the employ of one of those great men, as surely as the guards who wandered the groves searching for intruders in their leafy sanctuary.
After the miles of sand and rock, the town struck the weary travellers like a mirage, a vision of paradise too wonderful to be entirely trusted. From her position behind Aden, Lillian gasps in happiness to see the green splendor of the trees, having been raised beside the Blue Snake, she had not known how much she had taken greenery for granted, until faced with the sweltering starkness of the desert. Now and then on their hurried journey west they had seen the smoke from one of the great trains billowing past and she had yearned to be in the comfort of the first class cabins. The trees and broad streets that would have seemed unimpressive and provincial only months ago, were now a sight every bit as breath taking as the great cathedral of IslandCity or the soaring towers of the palace.
Once the small group has entered the town the illusion is quickly ruined by the sound of a growing crowd shouting out in anger and loathing.
“Unless I miss my guess it’s a hanging, I guess there is someone else here from outside of town.” Aden says scathingly.
“What do you mean?” Lillian asks, “Silverstop is one of the biggest and busiest towns on the line. There must be hundreds of other outsiders in the city today.”
“You don’t know the setup,” Aden answers bitterly, “there’s always someone from out of town which means there’s always someone to blame something on. Oh they wouldn’t trouble a high born citizen such as yourself but any vagrant will do when the priests or water merchants are feeling vindictive.”
“Surely Baron Whistler would not allow such abuse of Union citizens.” Lillian protests.
“Why deny the people one of their few entertainments?” Blake asks echoing Aden’s bitterness, “distasteful as we might find it there is no choice,” he pats the empty water skin on his horse’s saddle, “think what you like about the water sellers and their masters they are the only chance of good, clean water in a hundred miles.”
“I’d almost rather try to go to the pool itself.”
“It would almost certainly ease your thirst, no one needs to drink with a slit throat.”
“I know the city and her customs as well as you do, Sam, I don’t need lecturing about their obsession with the water.”
“Out here who could blame them?” Lillian asks, wiping the thick mixture of sweat and dust from her forehead.
“Anyone who’s gone unbaptised because they can’t afford the water.” Blake answers grimly.
The sound of the mob, working itself into a frenzy, increases as they near the centre of the town. Ahead of the trio the main road opens up into a large town square, as both Aden and Blake know the square is always full of clamour but today it is not the cries of merchants or the hum of customers that fill the air, it is the yammering of a mob and the sobbing of the child on which the gathering human storm was preparing to unleash their fury.
“Only a boy! What could he have done?” Lillian speculates.
“The sins of fathers are often visited on their sons.”
“Especially in this case,” Aden comments, pointing out the two unnatural growths sprouting amid the cuts and dirt on the boy’s forehead, “no water seller will knowingly sell to a mutant.”
It is only when Aden says this that Lillian notices Aden’s own hat is drawn down as low as possible, without breaking the desert’s convention about not hiding ones eyes and his seven fingered hand has disappeared into the sleeve of his coat.
“The child was probably caught trying to reach the water, the locals consider the pool a blessing from the Lord, something not to be touched by the unholy or unclean.”
“They wouldn’t kill a child just for trying to drink,” Lillian says, without much confidence, “surely?”
“They will kill him;” Blake says, “they have probably been trying to kill him slowly for weeks by refusing him water. Without a guardian, a deviant child has little hope of surviving, perhaps he even chose to go to the lake to end it quickly.”
“They were just a little bit too Christian to offer him a quick death i
n the first place?”
“I do not ask you to respect what they are doing, Aden, it is wrong on any terms but I ask you not to bait me by attacking my faith.”
“Why would I need to attack your religion?” Aden asks harshly, “it reveals itself in the whooping of this crowd and their punishment of a child whose only crime was being born in the first place.”
So saying the mutant slides from the horse and stalks off into the throng, leaving Sam and Lillian to push their way through the crowd to one of the water sellers, who, as usual, were doing sterling business with so many people thrust so close together under the late afternoon sun.
“Let him go,” Blake advises, “it will be easier to buy water without the risk of him being noticed. He will come back soon enough and if not I’m sure he will be easy to find, he won’t go far without money or a horse.”
“But what if he does something stupid? You know that this has to affect him, he was really upset.”
“There will be no stopping him if he really intends to do something foolish and any attempt to do so might only goad him further. He has not survived this long by letting his emotions govern him, I think we can rely on him to see sense now, if not, then the sooner we can get water the better, before there is any trouble.”
“Sense? I think it’s you that is acting strangely not him, how can you watch this without even flinching?”
“I have watched this many times, I have seem children die and many, who now seem little more than children to me, have fallen to my own weapons, would it not be hypocritical to weep?”
“It might be human.” Lillian shoots back, her eyes still locked on the sobbing child being pelted with rotted fruit, small stones and even handfuls of mud scraped from the spots where the water sellers nearer the raised platform, on which the small wretch awaited his fate, had moved their huge pots, for fear of losing them to the tide of hysterical citizens. Ironic that it was no doubt such small puddles and patches of mud squeezed through rags that had sustained the boy this far into his short life.
While the Pilgrim conducted his hurried negotiations to refill the large water skins that hung from their horses’ saddles, Lillian scans the crowd for any sign of Aden but the tall mutant is quite capable of being circumspect, when he wants to and she sees nothing but the contortions of the crowd as it surges forward only to be beaten back by bailiffs, like some shapeless hungry beast. With Aden gone and Blake deeply involved in the haggling process Lillian turns her attention to the horses, they had only been able to recover two of them after the attack on the road past Maulten and unfortunately one of them was the nag they had purchased in Marguild. Neither beast was holding up well under the rigors of their journey. The stronger beast would have done better but necessity had forced them to ride double, Lillian only hoped that their hard pace had kept them ahead of their pursuers, there would be no charging out of town this time if something went wrong, the horses simply didn’t have the strength. With that thought in her mind, she returns her attention to the crowd, willing Aden not to do anything stupid; it is at that moment that she notices the flash of a white Inquisitor’s robe from under the darker fabrics swathing one of the men on the edge of the crowd.
The old rage is hot in Aden’s soul, so strong that the bile seems to be burning at the back of his throat. The noise is all too familiar, he only has to do is blink to see the crowd reaching for him trying to tear his flesh. Remembered pain leaves his hands shaking, apart from the size of the mob he might be back on the day of his own mutilation. Now though he was one of the crowd. Had even one voice spoken out against the hysteria and hatred could things have been different? Probably not, he’d lived long enough now to know that, but here he was watching another mad crowd at its grizzly work. No one voice could stop this atrocity but something else might if it were loud enough, his hand slips inside his coat and touches two tubes roughly the size of a candle. Aden had been only moments from trying to use them near Maulten even though in such quarters it would have meant certain death, his thumb flicks over the top of one of them priming the fuse. Over the years, since he had first come to Silverstop, the three storey inn that overlooked one side of the square had had little or no serious attention given to its brick work and the gouge left by a careless carter’s wheel in the corner of the building has only become worse with time. Aden makes for that spot, walking determinedly through the howling throng, a cheer lets him know that the rope has been put around the boy’s neck, without needing to look up, even if he is too late Aden is determined their victim will not die alone.
The last silver pieces have disappeared into the water seller’s pouch, when the man starts and hastily disappears into his tent. Sam deliberately finishes capping the water skin, ignoring Lillian’s warning of “Inquisitors!”
“I said you would not show weakness twice,” a familiar voice mocks, “but I just had to see if you would be foolish enough to display your sympathy for mutants again.”
“I’m afraid I rate the peasants here more dangerous than your Inquisitors, then again I thought I killed you last time we met.” Blake answers.
“It is a good thing that you show caution but I must warn you not to underestimate me or my men, there are twenty guns trained on you now, my twenty best, so unless you think you can move faster than every one of those bullets I’d turn round slowly.”
“I assume there’s a reason you didn’t just shoot first, other than taking the opportunity to gloat, what is it?”
“I know how you value your life Pilgrim and you know how we value Lady Carter,” Nathaniel Tenichi’s voice is pitched so that only the Pilgrim can hear it over the screams of the nearby crowd, “there might be a way to preserve both.”
“And what would I have to do for my life?” Sam’s tone is equally quiet.
“No more than tell what I suspect is the truth. Despite his confessor’s best efforts General Leedon is in the city with us.”
“Good to know we merit the attention of such a prominent man.”
“He is most concerned about his future bride,” Nathaniel says ignoring Lillian’s scowl, “Rugan would have him believe that her ladyship was abducted by the Strigoi, now while this might do wonders for our flagging recruitment it is a fiction I cannot allow to continue, for obvious reasons.”
“Because another campaign against the Strigoi could hardly fit into your master’s plans. What if I were to mention that to your General?”
“Do not think to embarrass me. These men know who they serve, and I don’t think you would survive more than a few moments after the kind of treachery that you are threatening. Do you think the General would set you free to continue your unnatural existence? Even if he spares you, you will not survive unless you gain the favour of someone who can provide you what you need. My lord, Kalip really has no wish to earn your enmity, Samuel, you have been manipulated into your current position for no good reason. We all seek the same thing, we want the Gates open whatever the necromancers may have told you, they will never allow you to reach your goal, it is one of the first principles of their order to prevent one of the undying from reaching the Gate.”
“I seek the Gate myself, I do not work with any Necromancers.”
“Perhaps not now, but you have until recently, we did not call you or tell you of the importance of Miss Carter, it had to have been them. There’s no point in denying it, what my scouts found on the road outside Marguild told me all that I needed to know.”
“The corpses attacked us, hardly a sign of cooperation.”
“Indeed that would seem to be the case on the surface but how did they know where to find you? Why did your horses stop on the road if not to talk? I know you were not in the eastern baronies when Lady Carter went missing, my master knows every traveller on the trains and your passage was marked. So who called you into this situation?”
“I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter for all I can trust your word.”
“You can trust it Samuel because although personally I woul
d like to repay you for all the pain you brought me, my master has given his orders and I make a point of carrying those out. You could be a useful asset if you would transfer your loyalties to a more appropriate faction, you see you may not know who brought you into all this but I do.”
“How could you know that, when I don’t?”
“You will once I tell, you won’t you? And then you could prove your loyalty and usefulness by repeating what I tell you to the General, when you are brought before him.”
Blake pauses and stares at the immaculately dressed Pardoner. “There’s more to this isn’t there? You say you want my help against this Necromancer but if you want the Gate as much as I do, then you know that we must reach the ruins of Silversnow. Yorick has the book and he will not be there if we do not arrive.”
