And now there was Sunlight the Seer who had entrusted him with a secret and a quest. He doubted the truth of the old man’s tale, but he would at least pay a visit to Sunlight’s granddaughter out of respect for the old man. Who knows? he considered ambitiously. If she’s rich she might pay good money for news of her grandfather.
Twice he rose and contemplated sneaking back to check on the old man and reassure him that he was safe, but uncertainty of the whereabouts of Boss and the thugs held him from leaving the area to which he’d been assigned. In the end he huddled against the wall, curled up to keep warm in the cold space and drifted through a fitful sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The old man was dead. Face up on the dirt floor, blood congealed around the back of his head, he was staring blindly at infinity. Chase knelt beside the body and gently touched the shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. I should have come back.’ Then he raised his eyes and saw Boss and his three companions at their usual place at the gates. Boss was chatting to a guard. Chase’s rage ignited. He straightened and strode across the cavern towards the four thugs, oblivious to the other prisoners. A guard warned Boss of Chase’s approach and Boss turned to face him. Dogger and Boots stepped in Chase’s way.
‘Bilby,’ Boss said cordially. ‘Sleep well?’
Chase glared at Boss. ‘Fingerbone Fromriver,’ he said slowly, and saw Boss’s expression flicker with shock. ‘Yes, that’s right. I know who you are.’
Boots kicked at Chase’s shin, but he skipped aside. ‘My name’s Boss,’ said Boss sharply. ‘Teach him that, will you, lads?’
Dogger lunged, but Chase was ready and dodged. ‘I think he wants to play,’ said Boots, as he moved closer.
His balance corrected, Dogger snarled, ‘Bilby wants to play, does he?’
Chase crouched. Which one will strike first? Together? Rarely happened. Which one? He heard the prisoners marshalling. Voices began shouting encouragement and advice. The guards looked on with mild interest. Boots kicked. Chase caught the man’s ankle, twisted, and flipped him onto the ground. Dogger charged, swinging a roundhouse punch, but Chase ducked under it and punched Dogger solidly in the midriff, and the man collapsed to his knees. Chase danced back a couple of steps, checking what Boss and Pigspit were planning to do, but to his surprise they were simply watching, Boss with an amused expression. So it was to be two onto one. Then he had a chance, a slim chance.
Boots was on his feet and circling, and he dragged Dogger up as he passed him. ‘Think you’re smart, mate,’ Boots taunted. ‘You got lucky, first time. No more luck now. Now we mean business. You’re going to wish you’d never seen either of us when we’re done with you, mate.’
Chase pushed the taunting aside. It was a common street-fighting ploy, designed to goad the enemy into making a stupid move and he’d acquired immunity after suffering several punishing beatings as a boy because he reacted to it. ‘Courage gone like your tongue?’ Dogger sneered.
‘Try me,’ Chase answered calmly.
Dogger glanced at Boots, and Boots nodded. They separated, circling in opposite directions, making it difficult for Chase to see both at once. He had to get to the wall. Fighting with a back to a wall was easier than being trapped in the open. He sensed rather than saw Dogger swing and a fist grazed the back of his head as he ducked. Dogger grappled for a hold on Chase’s left arm, but Chase twisted quickly out of the clumsy attempt and back-turned to smack his elbow solidly across the back of Dogger’s head. He didn’t have time to assess the hit’s effect. Boots attacked with several sharp kicks and one caught him agonisingly in the shin. He lashed out with his fist at Boots’s face, but the man dodged and kicked again, catching Chase’s ribs. The force sent Chase staggering back, but he kept his feet enough to block two more kicks. Then, to Boots’s astonishment, Chase jumped forward, kicked him square in the chest and sent him sprawling heavily onto his back. Chase spun and met Dogger’s next charge, only this time he was too slow and Dogger wrapped him in his arms as they collided. Desperate to avoid being pinned, Chase twisted and punched Dogger in the back of the head repeatedly as they collapsed onto the cobbles and brought his legs up to heave the man off his chest, but his neck jerked suddenly as something solid thumped into the side of his head, and thumped again, making his left ear sting, and thumped again.
‘You were unlucky, mate. Boss should’ve stayed out of it.’ Chase wanted to open his left eye, but it felt glued shut. He sucked in a lungful of air, and coughed, rolled onto his side and spat something warm from his aching mouth. ‘Don’t rush it, mate. You’ve got plenty of time.’ Chase went to sit up, and winced from the pain in his left shoulder and side as he gingerly rose. His back was a mass of pain too. ‘Seen men die from a beating like that. Lucky you haven’t been in here long yet. Still got some toughness in you.’
Chase formed the words and tried to say ‘Who are you?’ but the sound from his woollen mouth was mumbled confusion.
‘Ease up, mate. I’ll do all the talking for you.’ Chase forced his swollen eye to open and could see his puffy cheek at the bottom of his vision. The light in the cavern from the overhead vent was darkening. ‘It’s nearly time to close them up,’ said the voice.
Chase turned his head, but could only make out a shadowy presence in the dimming light. ‘Who are you?’ he wheezed.
‘Doesn’t matter, mate,’ the stranger replied. ‘Doesn’t matter who anyone is in here. You just save your breath and concentrate on breathing.’ Chase felt arms embrace his chest and grunted as the stranger lifted him against a wall. ‘Sorry, mate, but it’s the only way I could get you sitting up. If I leave you out there on the floor, the guards might think you’re one of the dead ones and cart you away by mistake. You don’t need that.’
‘Thanks,’ Chase wheezed, but the stranger’s figure was already melting into the distance. He was alone. The chains rattled overhead as the roof vents closed. His last memory was of a fight, but after that he recalled nothing. That was in the morning. He’d been unconscious the entire day. The pain through his body was in disarray. Some parts, like his ribs and his left ear, ached. Other parts, like his lip and his lower back, were numb. He scratched at blood caked above his left eye and it began to bleed again.
The guards might think you’re one of the dead ones and cart you away by mistake.
He slowly surveyed the cavern. He was no longer in the front chamber where Boss and Boots and their friends lorded over the prisoners, but at the back again, where Boss had consigned him the previous night. How had he gotten into this part of the prison? Dragged? Dumped? Crawled? He had no memory after the beginning of the fight. Figures gathered expectantly in the shadows. The guards would bring the evening meal soon, but he wasn’t remotely hungry. He tried to rise from his sitting position, but his body refused and pain flared through his left ribs. He groaned quietly and slumped onto his right side.
When he opened his eyes, it was dark and cold. He heard metal striking metal. Torchlight flickered against the far wall. Keys rattled. Close by, in the dark, a voice whispered, ‘They’re taking the dead ones out tonight.’
A second voice replied, ‘’bout time. Old Possum’s starting to stink something shocking.’
So the guards are clearing away the dead. How many corpses are there? He eased into a seated position and listened to the sounds in the neighbouring cavern. He heard the cell gate swing open and boots on the cobbles.
‘What are you bastards looking at?’ a voice snarled.
‘It stinks in here!’ a second voice declared in disgust. ‘Let’s get the dead ones and get out of here.’
‘How many this time?’ asked a third.
‘I got told six.’
‘No bloody idea. Just check every section.’
‘Get back, you filthy piece of shit, or you’ll be carted out too!’
A body was dragged across the floor. ‘Bloody pick up the other end, you lazy sod!’ a voice complained. ‘You two check that side. You two, that end. We’ll wheel the cart round.’<
br />
The guards might think you’re one of the dead ones and cart you away by mistake.
He edged toward the centre of the cavern, moving as quickly and quietly as his pain-wracked limbs allowed. Torchlight spilled into the space. He reached the sewer drain, flinched, and laid his head sideways against the wet earth. ‘This one’s still breathing,’ a guard said several paces away.
A heavy thump followed. ‘Not now,’ another guard announced. Torchlight flooded the world beyond Chase’s eyelids. He held his breath.
‘We got three in this section!’ a guard yelled above him. ‘Bring the cart round.’
Hands grabbed his ankles and wrenched him along the floor. His ribs seared with pain, but he refused to cry out. His head bounced against the ground. He risked a slow breath. Then his tormentor dropped his legs. ‘This one’s pretty fresh.’
‘So’s the one I just put out of his misery.’ Laughter.
‘The old one around the corner isn’t. His guts is ready to pop.’
‘Get them on the cart. I need a drink and some fresh air.’
Hands grabbed Chase’s wrists and ankles and he was lifted and dumped face down onto a stinking, bony mass. He sucked in a tiny breath of air and nearly choked from the rotting stench. His ribs felt like daggers in his side. He couldn’t do this. He had to cry out. A weight thumped onto his back, and then another. ‘That’s the lot. Let’s go.’
‘Stop staring, you bloody lunatic. Your turn’s coming soon enough.’
‘It’s too bloody heavy. Push, will you?’
Chase winced and bit his sore lip as the cart bumped and clattered across the cavern. He wanted to open his eyes, but he dared not. He’d taken his one chance. If they found him pretending, he was a dead man. Either way, he was leaving on this cart. He heard the gate close and the keys chink in the lock. ‘How many?’
‘Eight.’
‘Boss said there was six.’
‘Well we got eight. One old geezer wasn’t quite dead when we went in, but he’s dead now.’
‘Okay. Get the stinking crap out of here then.’
Complaining, abusive voices bantered around the creaking cart as the guards pulled and pushed it along a corridor and up a slope. Chase felt cool air and a strong breeze on his right leg that dangled from the pile of corpses. ‘Plenty of fish food tonight.’
‘Only bit of good this lot ever done.’ Laughter.
‘Pity the poor bloody shark that gets the one that’s about to pop.’ More laughter. The cart stopped. The corpse across Chase’s back jerked.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Taking them off.’
‘Bugger that. Tip the lot over in one lump. Come on. Lift, lads.’ The cart tilted and the weight on Chase slid away. And suddenly he was sliding too, and dropping through the air, falling, spinning. He smacked against the water, and something solid hit his left leg and his leg went numb. He was under the freezing water. He struggled to the surface, spat sea water, was lifted on a dark wave, and went under again. Again, he fought the brutal pain and the rolling ocean and rose to suck in the sweet air. Something floated beside him. He grabbed hold and it rolled and bobbed and he realised it was a bloated corpse. Possum. He let go instinctively, and sank.
When he struggled to the surface for the third time, he flipped onto his back and tried floating, gaining precious seconds to breathe and gather momentum. He heard the ominous roar of waves breaking against the base of the cliff and was suddenly washed across barnacle-encrusted rocks that lacerated his back and legs. He thrust his arms into the dark water and glistening foam and tried to get a grip, but the receding wash sucked him back into the ocean and into the path of the next wave. The wave lifted him, carried him over the first rocks and threw him against a narrow rocky platform. The pressure pushed him momentarily under the ledge, churning him against the brutal knife-sharp eroded stone, but as he emerged on the backwash, this time he latched desperately onto the lip of the ledge and held on, his muscles straining almost to their limit. With a supreme effort, he hauled himself onto the platform and braced against the next wave that crashed over, trying to pull him back into the heaving ocean. Between successive waves, he wormed into a niche between the battered rocks on the narrow platform and hugged a jagged, wave-cut rock formation as the foaming water rose and fell around his knees. The cold sea air crept deeper into his bones and every shiver made him wince in agony as the pain in his ribs and now his left leg intensified. The ocean’s roar was endless. The night sky yielded only rare glimpses of a sliver of moon sliding between dark clouds. The water seethed and sucked at his legs, and spiralled away as each wave spewed onto the platform and retreated. If the tide was rising he would be dead soon, unless he could climb higher. He begged for a waning tide. He could have prayed, but he wasn’t a religious man and he had principles on those matters. He despised men who suddenly called on a god of some kind the moment they faced bad times.
He was exhausted. He was bitterly cold. He was in pain. He wanted nothing more than to sleep. But sleep was death. Already he should have been dead, but he wasn’t. Every good thief knew that when given a stroke of luck it was essential to grab it firmly with both hands and take it gratefully, and never give it back or away. But he so much wanted just to sleep.
He jerked awake from a strange dream and reeled back when he realised he was half suspended in a natural rock chair two arm spans above the water. Soft, early dawn light spread an apricot hue across the bluing sky and the waves washed gently over the rocks. A white- and-grey seagull circled forty paces away, fluttered its wings into a stall and dropped onto a bobbing mass in the gently heaving waves. A corpse. The gull pecked at it, lifting its beak high to swallow its prize. A grey fin cut the swollen crest of a wave, heading for the corpse, and slid beneath the surface. The corpse wobbled violently, as if in spasm, and the alarmed seagull took flight. Chase shivered. The sharks were feeding.
He bent his head back to look up. The cliff overhead loomed vertically, protectively towering over the thin platform and jumble of rocks. Wave erosion had carved away the base. One day, the cliff top would lose its balance and topple into the ocean. His ribs ached from the pain and exposure. His left leg was bruising along his thigh to his knee. His battered face was stinging, as were the hundreds of cuts and scratches all over his body. His shirt was a rock-shredded rag. The old Seer is fish food, he thought, and vaguely pondered the metaphysical possibilities of death, letting his thoughts drift incoherently. But I am alive, he reminded himself, and I’m out of that gaol, as I said I would be. He searched the surrounding landscape, assessing every rock, the cliff, the ledge, the ocean, the distant shoreline of buildings across the bay. Now how do I get out of here?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
He made the swim across the bay’s dark waters after sunset, moving with the steady rhythm he learned as a boy playing on the harbour, but the water was much colder than he anticipated and the pain wracking his body made every stroke difficult. Huddled in the dark against the pylon of the rotting wharf, shivering, desperately trying to find warmth from within his sodden body, he listened to the steady wash of the ocean rising and falling around the wooden structures of the old docks, a rhythm that threatened to lull him into a fatal sleep. He dared not sleep.
The thought of his sister, Passion, stirred him into motion. He clambered unsteadily across the barnacle-encrusted beams between the pylons, slipping and cutting his hands and arms on the knife-like shells, reopening wounds, until he found a rickety ladder. He cautiously climbed to the decking and, by the glow of a cloud-hindered pale half moon and the halo of the city lights, he surveyed his situation.
The old docks were home to vagrant seagulls, discarded dogs and cats, resident rats, and desperate homeless individuals who made the detritus of the city’s history their refuge. Chase knew the place. Passion and he had survived in its depths for three years until she was employed in the Perfect Pleasures brothel. There were lonely old men lurking in its darkest corners, creatures no o
ne knew and no one loved, the refuse of humanity. Some were mad and lost souls, prone to outbursts of raving and deep depression, their minds addled by heavy drug abuse over the years. Some were sad but kindly individuals to whom life had dealt a harsh and unfair hand and who, in different circumstances, would have been quiet, friendly citizens—someone’s mother or grandfather. Some were sinister creatures—men with little self-worth and even less compassion for other living beings—shadows that lurked in the deepest recesses, preying on weaker souls that wandered into their lairs.
Aching, shivering, bleeding, Chase moved through the darkness, weaving cautiously between the creaking, rotting buildings and piles of long-abandoned cargo and equipment, hoping he would avoid stumbling into any of the dock denizens. A she-cat leapt aside and stared with moon-green eyes at him, surprised that a human could move so silently, and a dog growled from the shadowy depths of an old building, but he pressed on.
Only when he glimpsed flickering firelight did he pause. A fire burned at the centre of a courtyard between three old buildings—a large fire—and shadows moved around it. Curious, he crept forward, clinging to the darkness for protection, watching and listening for anything that might emerge from places close by, until he was near enough to hear the low rhythmic chanting that identified followers of Jarudha conducting a prayer session. He was puzzled to find someone of formal religion in the godforsaken ruins of the old docks because the Seers had designated temples for gathering the faithful dotted throughout the city. Shunning his pain and discomfort, he edged closer.
Around the fire, a small host of men, a few women and children on their knees, their faces upturned in the manner of supplicants, their features disfigured by the dancing firelight, were repeating, ‘Jarudha is one. Jarudha is all.’ Their ragged clothing revealed their poverty. Two men closest to the flames wore the traditional yellow robes of Jarudhan acolytes, men training to become Seers, their heads shaven to demonstrate their discipleship. If they graduated to Seer status they would be allowed to grow their hair and they would wear the sky-blue robes of the Seers.
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