Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) (21 page)

Most had stopped eating or drinking. The food and cider lay scattered across the tabletops, growing stiff and flat, forgotten.

“Why Ray?” Allie said.

She stood at the head of a group that had surrounded Alexander, asking myriad questions over the top of one another. Alex held up his hands, doing his best to calm them, but his voice was drowned out by the sheer volume of enquiries. “I don't know,” was his constant reply. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Eventually, somebody at the back called a question he was able to answer. “Where did you find him?”

“The mill.” He was so pleased at being able to offer a reply that he failed to consider its implications until it had passed his lips. By then, it was too late. Each face had grown slack.

“
In his home?
”

At that, their voices grew frantic. Some whirled and rushed for the door, muttering about family who had remained at home. The rest stood fast, now yelling—
We're not even safe in our own homes? How’d they get in? How could you let this happen?

The news spread throughout the cathedral within moments. A gaggle of children playing between the cloister’s pillars were besieged by guardians who swooped down to claim them, gabbling like startled hens.

Alexander watched the growing unrest with bated breath and sighed. There would be no calming them anytime soon.

He turned to Agatha, who sat close by, ancient and decrepit, watching the pandemonium. Despite her misty grey eyes and slack-jawed senility, an air of indignation at their uncouth panic seemed to seep from her pores. She turned to him and offered a throaty chuckle. “Don’t make ’em like they used to, my boy,” she croaked.

“I suppose not,” he said, bending down and taking her hand. “I have to go and check on something. Could you watch them for me?”

She met his eyes, and the ghost of a great woman winked somewhere behind the cataracts and fog of dementia. “Of course,” she whispered. Her cheeks stirred, her eyelids narrowed, and she touched his face. “Alex….”

He nodded, waiting.

Her brows furrowed, and for the briefest of moments Alex was looking into the face of an old friend—and a mother. “You look so old,” she whispered.

He squeezed her palm gently, nodding. “I know,” he said. Then he headed for the door, keeping his head low.

Norman’s eyes took some time to adjust to the light of the campfire. Only after minutes of squinting did the silhouettes of three men become visible. Until then, all he had to go by was a ghostly muttering, carried on the wind.

Camped in the depths of a steep depression, backed against a screening of foliage provided by the boughs of an aged sessile oak, they could only have been seen from above. Unfortunately for them, it was from just such a position that the hunting party from Canterbury now watched them.

Lucian was still agitated and restless, in constant danger of sending a cascade of pebbles over the edge.

The others were balanced on their heels, crouched low to the ground, perched like vultures atop the ridge. Their long cloaks hung around their shoulders and pooled on the floor, turning their bodies into only so many amorphous bulges in the dark.

Norman knew they would be invisible if the men looked up. There wasn’t enough light to reveal their profiles against the sky, for the stars were veiled and the moon had retreated behind a silver spattering of cirrus.

Through his binoculars, he observed their unsuspecting quarry.

One of the three men—the youngest, judging by his slimmer, gawkier outline—was tending to the fire. His hunched shoulders and violent stokes suggested that he was irked, perhaps angry.

The other two argued in hushed voices, gesticulating without pause.

A few pre-End tin cans lay discarded nearby, their contents warming over the flames. Two rifles were propped up against a nearby rock, their barrels glinting.

Their attire was ragged and haphazard: overcoats muddied and basted top to tail with grime; footwear that looked to be patchwork-sewn walking boots; and packs that appeared limp and empty, sparse for light travel.

They had paused often over the last few minutes to look over their shoulders, but the argument the two elders were having had dulled their senses.

“Who are they?” whispered Richard. He and John had caught up with them after Alexander had delivered his announcement at the cathedral.

Norman had groaned when they’d materialised from the night at the edge of the city. Neither of them had much in the ways of field experience. The fact that Lucian had, in his haste, neglected to send them packing was just another misgiving to add to the pile.

Norman shrugged. “They don’t look like any of our people. I haven’t seen them before. Do you recognise them?”

Richard shook his head.

“There was nobody from the city out tonight,” Lucian said. “Just Ray.”

John murmured so close to Norman’s head that he started. “We can’t rule that out,” he said. “They could be lost.” He sighed, brushing his hair back from his portly face, centimetres from Norman’s. “Or they could be emissaries from London. They could have missed us. It’s not hard to walk right past us if you don’t follow the roads properly.”

All theory,
Norman thought, watching him.
All classroom wisdom.

John hadn’t been out of the city—or his classroom, even—for over a year. All he knew came to him from the mouths of others, rather than his own eyes.

But it seemed that he had been told about the amber halo that lit up the city like a monstrous firefly at night, suspended in the eternal dark of the wilds, courtesy of the streetlights.

Nobody answered him, but Norman could see exasperation reflected in several pairs of eyes.

He turned his attention back to the men below. By now they had let their argument rest and retired to the fireside, a sullen silence heavy over their shoulders. The youngest passed each of the other two a bowl. Even up on the ridge, Norman could smell tinned beans.

He would have known that decades-old stench anywhere. At winter’s peak they’d subsisted almost entirely on the last of the tinned food. Now he feared he’d never clear his nose of it.

The gawky youth then sat in a heap on the grass, his head dipped.

“They’re not ours,” Lucian muttered. “Look at them. Their clothes are rags.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing,” said Norman. “Look at how run down we got at the coast.”

Lucian was unperturbed. “No, there’s something about them. It’s too much of a coincidence to find them here—right here.”

John uttered a nasal note of disquiet. “Lucian, don’t—”

“Be quiet.”

“But—”

“I said
shut it
, DeGray. Save it for the blackboard.”

John looked to Norman for help, almost as though he expected him to reprimand Lucian for his indecency.

Norman could only stare back at him, biting back shame, until John’s shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly.

That hurt worse than the pleading stare—the disappointment. It stung at his flesh.

Spurred into life, surprised by his own actions, Norman gripped Lucian’s arm. “We’re not killing them,” he said. He wasn’t sure what had awoken in him, but suddenly he felt a force driving him forward, an unseen will, acting through him, one that applied a pressure that wasn’t only physical to Lucian’s arm. He swallowed, and muttered, “We’ll approach on foot.”

Lucian almost smiled—as though, somewhere deep behind his bloodlust, he was relieved—but then his face twisted into an angry sneer. “By foot? And do what?” he hissed.

Norman took his pistol from the seat of his trousers and deposited it behind his hip, where it wouldn’t be seen, but could be easily reached. He then lifted his trousers higher and buckled his belt one notch tighter so that his footfalls would be deadened.

What the hell am I doing?
he thought.

Pushing himself into a crouch, he made for the forest. “We’re just going to have a talk,” he said. “That’s all.”

Alexander strode into the infirmary and made a beeline for the old man.

“What's going on?” Heather said, poking her head from her back-room office.

“I need to talk to him,” he said, settling down beside their bloodied guest.

Heather shook her head. “He's deep under. I wouldn't bother. Didn't Ray tell you what you needed to know?”

Alex glanced at her and then back to the old man. “Ray's dead,” he muttered.

Her face fell. “He’s what?” She hurried into the room. “What do you mean?”

“I mean he's dead. We found him up at the mill. Murdered.”

“B—wha—by who?”

Alex shrugged and shook the old man’s arm. “I don't know. Creek and McKay have gone after them.” His jaw tightened at that. He’d almost cried out in anguish when he’d heard from the armoury guards that Lucian had headed off into the wilds—and that he’d taken Norman with him.

Heather sighed and held her head in her hands. She then began to shake, silently weeping. Alex watched her clutch at one of the beds, ready to catch her if she fainted. With the colour disappearing from her face, she had to suck in deep breaths to regain her composure. “How could somebody get into the city without us knowing?” she said, hiccoughing.

Alexander nudged the old man once more. “If somebody wants to get in, they can. There aren't enough of us to cover all the streets, all the fences. The city’s built too tight.” He paused, and fought back the urge to swallow. “Besides, I'm sure they've been here before.”

“What do you mean by that?” She lurched forwards and took Alex's hands away from the old man's frail body. “I've drugged him. He won't be awake for hours—Alexander, what do you
mean
, they’ve been here before?”

Alex took to searching the man's clothes. “Whoever killed Ray knew where he lived, and they knew how to get out again without being seen.”

He paused with his hands immersed in the remains of a tattered trouser pocket. When he withdrew his fingers, they were wrapped around a folded piece of paper.

“What’s that?” Heather said.

Alex shook his head and slipped it into his pocket. “I don’t know. I’ll look at it later.”

Without another word, he nodded to her and left the room.

Norman had descended into the depression without breaking a single branch, and was now secure behind the trunk of the enormous oak. John had somehow shifted his bulk with equal success, and was stooped beside him. Crouched behind neighbouring trees were the others.

They signed to each other in the shadows, with the three strangers only twenty feet away.

Norman pointed to the flanks of the clearing: Go around.

Lucian nodded and led the others off into the darkness. John left the oak’s trunk without protest, stumbling once too often to excuse his presence. Norman tracked their silhouettes until their weapons appeared to be nothing more than extensions of their bodies. By the time they were settled, their outlines blended seamlessly with the blackened underbrush.

A single ghostly shadow, however, remained pressed against the trunk closest to Norman.

It was Richard. The whites of his eyes pleaded to be allowed to stay.

Norman signed for him to go and join the others, but he didn’t move an inch. His eyes flashed with defiance, and then he ambled towards the oak despite Norman’s shooing waves.

“What are you
doing
?”

“Maybe Lucian’s right: maybe my Master—DeGray—is out of touch. I’m tired of being useless. I need to be out here, in the thick of it. I need this.”

“You’ve never even been—”

“You need somebody else to go with you. They might attack on sight if it’s just you.”

Norman made to protest, but instead sighed. This was no time to argue. They were on the clock.

“Fine,” he said. “On three.” He ran a hushed three-count, and then they stepped out, hands raised.

As Norman and Richard moved into the firelight, there was a moment in which the three men looked up from their food and only stared, too dumbstruck to respond.

And then they burst into action. Norman froze as they leapt to their feet and grabbed their weapons, raising them to shoulder height as they stalked forwards. He couldn’t help glancing to the trees, afraid that the men would be dead in seconds, before he could ask a single question. He would need to act quickly, before Lucian felled them.

“Who are you?” the youth bawled. His pencil-thin face was dominated by his bared teeth.

“We’re from the city,” Norman said. “We’re looking for somebody.”

The eldest of the men, hollow-cheeked and loose-skinned from severe malnourishment, frowned and gripped his rifle tighter. “What city?”

“Canterbury,” Richard grated.

The older man spoke again, lacking the hostility of his younger companion. “Who are you looking for?”

Norman lowered his hands. “A murderer.”

The friendlier man blinked. Now that Norman observed him in detail, he could see that he stood apart from his peers, dressed differently. “Canterbury…” He turned to his companions. “Isn’t that where Jason was… But you said…you promised that you—”

“Shut up! If you ever want to see your boy again,
shut it right now
!” the younger man screeched.

The older man fell silent. Suddenly he looked frightened.

Norman hesitated, taking further stock of the other two men’s clothes, which were grimed by putrid plant matter. A pungent odour was coming from each of them. “We’re not here for revenge.” He did his best to emphasise those words, for Lucian’s sake. “We’re looking for answers. Now…lower your weapons. I’m sure we can work out some kind of deal.”

The younger man sneered. “Answers? You mean you’re looking for a neck to tie a noose around. You expect us to put our guns down so you can drag us off to the wicker man?”

“Like I said, somebody was murdered.”

As he spoke, Norman’s attention was drawn to the final man, whose eyes alone unsettled his gut. A neckerchief had been pulled up around his nose and mouth, and long hair hung about his cheeks. Only his eyes were visible—eyes that Norman thought, for just a moment, he might have recognised.