Wixon's Day

by Phil Williams

  Around lunchtime, they draw up to a decaying wooden tower that stands alongside the canal. It stands on four legs, one of which has crumbled in the middle and slipped inwards, at just an angle to continue supporting the structure. A metal shed stands alongside it, which Marquos jumps off to investigate. Inside, he finds a small pile of rusted metal and a human skeleton, dead for many seasons. It sits in a position of crumbled repose, as though one day the person simply sat down and gave up. Sat to its side is a small revolver, which Marquos takes back to the boat. It is an old gun, a small circular metal chamber screwed into a little wooden handle, with a snub barrel and a large hammer attached by an external lever to the trigger. It is the sort of home-made weapon popular amongst bandits, a mix-match of a variety of other decrepit weapons. The revolver is rusted and stiff, but the pilot oils it and finds the chamber still spins and the hammer works. It has no bullets, but Copin potters through Marquos’ boxes of odd junk and determines to construct some. He shaves a thin old pipe down into cylinders and fills them with gunpowder taken from a pouch of his own, then jams the ends shut with assorted small bits of metal. Copin slips the cylinders into the revolver, spins the chamber and hands it back to Marquos with a grin. He explains that he wouldn’t dare test it unless in an emergency, and even then it would be better to have the enemy try to use it.

  Hart returns to the deck shortly after this endeavour, bringing a steaming can of food with her, eating as she emerges. Marquos and Copin watch her without comment until Copin shrugs and heads down into the cabin, offering to get something for Marquos. Hart merely notes, “This is good.”

  “It smells it,” the pilot replies.

  Hart looks around her, trying to make out the horizon through the thin fog that still remains. She says “We’ve come a little way. If we can get to Yerth in an hour there’ll still be some light. We won’t have time to pass through though.”

  “You think we should wait until tomorrow?”

  “It’s suicide either way,” Hart states factually. “Makes no difference.”

  Marquos regards her carefully for a moment as she wolfs down more meat from the tin. He waits for her to finish, then asks “Why did you agree to come out here?”

  “Why not. Someone sold us out back in Thesteran, there’s nothing to stop it happening again. We assumed after the raid that it was one of the people who went missing in the fighting, that they wouldn’t dare sneak back into our ranks, but that’s no guarantee, is it? If you ask me, it’s dangerous to be around Elzia and her people right now. I’m all for fighting this war, but I don’t want to be sat in some crowd that’s waiting to get sprung in a trap.”

  “You didn’t try to find the spy?” Marquos asks. “I mean, none of you?”

  “Oh sure, we tried,” Hart shrugs, “But every one of us has worked with the Border Guard at some point or another. No one’s ever been above suspicion. We could kill each other based on what we already know.” Hart pauses, looking at Marquos as though only just noticing who he is. She points her fork at him and says “I’ve heard the things you’ve said. You don’t believe in fighting for our country. You think we’re all mad. I think you’re mad, though. If you’re not trying to achieve something that’s going to last, whatever way you contribute, you’re just waiting to die, aren’t you?” Marquos does not know how to respond, thinking for a second, and Hart goes on, “Must be why you’re willing to come out here, acting like you’re not afraid of the North. You don’t mind dying, looking for some new experience, because no one ever gave you anything worth living for.”

  Marquos averts his eyes, “Maybe.”

  Copin cuts short the morbid talk, returning with two more steaming cans. Marquos takes one, thankful both for the food and the interruption. Hart throws her empty can towards the bank, then eyes Copin’s for a moment. Without warning, she scoops her fork into his food and takes some, and as the other two watch she chews it and comments “Think I chose the right one.”

  “Glad you cleared that up,” Copin shakes his head at her, smiling.

  “How do you rate our chances in Yerth?” Hart asks her fellow Kand. “Maybe we should go around the city, rather than take the river through it.”

  “I think it’s too late for that,” Copin shakes his head, “We’ll stick to the plan, don’t worry. Getting back’s going to be the tricky part.”

  “What’s the plan?” Marquos asks. Copin grins at him, replying “I already told you, that bag’ll get us by. We’ll bribe them through. As long as the first gang we encounter isn’t one of those insane ones that don’t listen to reason.”

  “That’s most of them,” Hart says.

  “That is,” Copin agrees, sounding entirely serious. The pair of Kands stare blankly out ahead of the boat as Marquos gawks at them in disbelief. A collective sense of doom hangs over all three of them.

  10

  They slow down a short distance from Yerth and take it in, daylight just clinging on as Hart predicted. This city is not held in a fog of industrial waste, and it has not been maintained with haphazard scrap, giving what is left the more permanent appearance of untreated concrete and brick. The walls have crumbled, though, and the empty windows are host to hollow shells of homes and offices. The buildings are plentiful, but they have been long abandoned, and their solidity is nothing more than a monument to a past world. There is no cliff, no volcano, nothing of the spectacular scenery Marquos had been told about. Just a stretch of ruined buildings, overrun by what little weeds survive here.

  “Are you scared?” Hart asks Marquos directly. As Marquos returns her gaze, he genuinely tries to find the answer within himself. Yerth is as empty as any location he has visited, yet he knows it would only take a dozen bandits monitoring the river to turn it into a death-trap. In all likelihood there are more; a city of this size could be home to a hundred gangs, each as deadly as the next, and the river is the perfect place for them to find stray travellers. Just as he has heard about the beauty of the North, Marquos has heard no end of stories about its horrors, from sick torture to cannibalism and slavery, and is more inclined to believe those. To anyone he had spoken to of this journey, he brushed off those stories as hearsay and exaggeration, but now he feels his skin tingling with the acknowledgement that they might well be true, and it was the positive tales he should have doubted.

  “Does it make a difference?” he murmurs.

  “It’s not too late to turn back,” Copin tells him. “Or you can wait here, we’ll find a way through, come back to you in a few days. You don’t need to do this.”

  Marquos looks up to the sky, its ceiling of cloud, and he thinks aloud, “I’ve got to go further than this. We haven’t seen anything yet.”

  “Yes, seeing things is my main concern too,” Copin says with a hint of sarcasm. “Hart, have you ever risked your life over something that vague?”

  “I doubt it,” Hart says. “Let’s not dwell on it. You’ll need to move fast, Marquos, and give them something to chase, because we want to see the first bandits coming. With any luck, they’ll be the smarter ones. They’re not going to wait for others to get the prize.”

  “Okay,” Marquos takes a deep breath and releases the throttle. A large warehouse stands to one side of the canal, the start of an industrial site that must have spanned the edge of the city. Hart watches it carefully as they pass, and Copin rushes down into the cabin to retrieve his bag. He returns with it and shakes it proudly, saying “We’ll be fine.” In his other hand he holds a solid wooden club, though, panelled with sporadically nailed metal.

  Past the warehouse, they drift under a crumbling bridge and approach a denser series of buildings; numerous towers with too many windows to count.

  “I should leave,” Hart says, “It’d be safer for all of us.”

  “As it pleases you,” Copin replies, “But I don’t like to think of you on shore here.”

  “I like it better than being in a floating box.”

  Marquos angles the boat to the side of the canal a
nd Hart springs off. She darts away between two buildings. The pilot watches her warily, “Will she be alright?”

  “She’s a pro,” Copin says. “Worry about us.”

  They slide between taller buildings, which block out more of the already dimming light, and the pair search the walls around them for signs of movement. Marquos’ eyes dart from one shadow to another, constantly aware of sinister shapes that threaten to attack. Copin is equally alert, but manages to keep smiling, apparently enjoying the scenery. The sound of the Hypnagogia’s engine seems painfully loud, echoing off the walls as the waves splash against the banks. Marquos finds himself cringing, willing the sound to quieten, but keeps a hand on the tiller, steadily moving forwards.

  “Ah, got it!” Copin whispers with more triumph than alarm. He points up ahead and says “Slow down. There’s something in the water.”

  Marquos squints to see it, and can barely make out the break in the line of the canal a short distance ahead. He slows the boat and whispers “What is it?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Copin smiles, and suddenly shouts out “You’re ready for us?” Marquos reels sideways, ducking down with alarm as the Kand bellows on “I’ve got something for you! Come down in peace and we’ll strike a deal!” Copin turns to Marquos and says “Let’s stop.”

  “Are you insane?” Marquos hisses at him, “You’ll draw every bastard in the area to us!”

  “That’s the idea,” Copin winks and launches himself off the boat, to the bank. Marquos slows the Hypnagogia to a halt, squirming on the spot as Copin pulls one of the mooring ropes aside and begins tying the boat in place. The Kand looks up to the walls and yells out “Are we going to do business or what?”

  Copin stands still, looking up at the buildings with wide, alert eyes. Marquos is tense on the boat, unable to make out any approaching bandits. Suddenly, Copin roars over to him “Get down! Take cover!”

  Marquos jumps aside without thinking, rolling down the stairs as something slams into the roof. He looks up and sees an arrow head stuck through the wood. A second later another one springs into the deck where he was standing. He hears whooshes through the air and the boat is tapped by further strikes at either end, peppered by a barrage. Copin shouts “We can make a deal! Come down and talk!”

  Marquos drops into the cabin and clambers through his tools, retrieving a hatchet blade, little more than a sharpened slab of metal with a cloth handle tied around one end. He crawls back to the stairs and a screeching cry pierces through the air. It is immediately met by the sound of feet on cobbles, the bandits moving outside.

  “Get out of there, Marq! We’ve got to move!” Copin yells, and the pilot does not hesitate to leap up the stairs. He is met with the sight of men piling out of doorways on either side of the canal, all of them swinging weapons above heads masked in ghoulish white facepaint, sprinting for all they are worth. Marquos jumps off the boat; as he lands he sees another group of men charging at him from the other direction. Copin has retreated to one of the buildings, through a broken window, yells at Marquos to follow him. The pilot runs forwards and leaps through the window. A rock hurtles by him accompanied by a scream. The two groups converge on his position a moment later and immediately start scrambling to follow. Copin pulls Marquos aside, takes an energetic step forward, swings his club down with one direct blow that cracks the leading attacker’s head. The body goes instantly limp. The men following him have to claw at it to drag it back out of the way of the window, and the hesitation drives them to manic animal noises.

  “Through this way!” Copin turns, pushing Marquos ahead of him. The pair run over rubble into a concealed hallway. Charging footsteps can be heard surrounding them, the attackers clambering in pursuit through multiple entrances. A yell gives one of them away ahead of the pair, around a corner, and Copin pulls Marquos back to clear the corner with his club already swinging. The bandit is caught square on the jaw, head sandwiched into the wall before he knows what’s hit him. Another bandit runs behind him, slams into Copin. The bandit leaps up over Copin with a feral sound, raising a knife above his head, and Copin catches the blade coming down, stopping it inches before his throat. As the two are locked in this pose, Marquos kicks out at the bandit and catches the man’s face. The bandit is knocked free of Copin, but the pilot trips and slips to the floor, hitting his head. Slightly dazed, he twists backwards and sees the larger groups of bandits pushing past one another to get into the room and give chase. Marquos pushes himself up quickly and swings his blade around at the first charging men, only nicking their clothing as they leap back. They are ready for him, and one of them snaps a metal bar down into his hand, knocking the blade away. Another springs forwards with a spike, aimed at Marquos’ heart, but Copin pulls him out of the way and meets the spike with his club, sending the bandit stumbling backwards. Moving with brutal speed, the Kand flows his parry into another strike, catching one of the bandits on the underside of the jaw, up into the air. The bandit crashes into his fellows, their numbers bringing them down. Copin drags Marquos back out of the room with him. Marquos dumbly spins around to follow him, seeing the second bandit from the hallway sprawled on the floor with his head caved in.

  “There’s too many of them!” Copin yells, “We have to get out of here!”

  The Kand sprints down the hallway to another empty window and vaults through it, turning to pull Marquos after him, but as the pilot follows a blow comes from the side and knocks Copin down. A bandit launches into view of the window, holding up a spiked plank ready to swing; the pilot jumps straight through the gap and bowls him to the floor. The pair roll through broken bricks, into a cloud of dust, and come to a scrappy stop scrambling to pin each other down. Copin hazily pushes himself back to his feet, shaking a bloody face to clear his head, and turns to see the struggle unfolding. He roars down at the bandit and pulls the man free of Marquos. The pilot quickly pushes himself back up just in time to see Copin slamming his head into the bandit’s, a blow powerful enough to knock all sense out of the man. Their pursuers are already at the window, but it is too narrow for more than one at time. Copin turns to them and snatches a metal bar off the man trying to climb through. He swings two short blows into the man’s temple and screams into the approaching horde, “There’s one for every one of you!”

  Marquos quickly assesses their new surrounding, a gap between two towers, and pulls Copin back from the window shouting “Back to the boat!”

  “Are you mad?” Copin roars at him, shoving him away. The Kand retrieves his club from the floor and swings it into the next man climbing through the window. The rest of the group scramble backwards into the building. Copin and Marquos turn to move down the alleyway, but a pair of the white-faced menaces charge into view, blocking their path. They turn to the other direction and see two more. With their prey surrounded, the bandits slow down, advancing with slathering laughs. Marquos picks up a metal bar from the floor and backs into Copin, the two men bracing themselves for attack. More bandits pile into the alleyway, knocking into one another. As soon as one steps within arm’s length of the pair, Copin swings the club out with a yell and the bandits all flinch back as one. They sway into the movement, though, and pounce. There is not enough room for effective blows to be swung, and the bandits pile on top of the pair, bringing them down to the floor with clawing hands. Copin and Marquos push back with punches and elbows, but they are struck repeatedly and trapped fast. With no other defence, they yell in desperation, to the degree that they do not hear the gunshot. The bandits at the rear hear it and leap up in panic, whilst the others continue their attack. Another gunshot sounds, then a third. Marquos and Copin become aware that the bandits are confused and trying to retreat, and the pair use this to push themselves up and start fighting back more vigorously. Copin slams his club into a stomach, jumps to his feet and follows through with a deadly blow that knocks the bandit out of the way. Marquos follows him, dodging a bandit’s fists, and sees dark shapes making their way through the alleyway behind. A glin
t of metal slashes from one side to another, blood splattering in arches behind the bandits. They spin about with wild screams, flailing their weapons in all directions. Copin and Marquos duck back together, fending off the last blows of the bandits as their saviours charge in. With a few more slashes, the last bandits are cut down and replaced by men in no finer clothing, heads hidden by black scarves and goggles. Only a handful of these men have replaced a veritable army of the screaming attackers, brandishing long, bloodstained swords in each hand. They step aside and point their swords back down the alley, letting Copin and Marquos pass.

  The pair move between the newcomers with their weapons raised, shuffling over the bandit bodies still ready to fight. They edgily make their way out to the canal and find more of the white-faced enemy lying slaughtered on the pavement. There is one sprawled over the side of the Hypnagogia, cut down from behind as he tried to board, and another crumpled against a wall with a large hole in his chest. One of the black-clothed men stands by the boat with a gun in his hands, awaiting the pair’s return. They approach him warily, his colleagues following them out, and Copin and Marquos take in the new gang that surrounds them. Up ahead, two of them are hauling a large log out of the canal. There are no more than ten of them, filtering about the building entrances with their swords, and only the one has a gun; a stubby little one-handed rifle, a block of wood with a metal barrel indented across the top. He pulls his scarf and goggles down, revealing a clean-shaven face, with a huge scar on one cheek, and calls out in an uncultured tone, “You said something about doing business.”