The White Towers (40 page)

They camped that night in a small copse of trees, a wooded hollow where they were protected from the harsh howl of the wind. The snow was more hard packed here, and had fallen lightly, making progress swift. But by Dek’s reckoning, they were still a good half day from Junglan.

They arose with the dawn, to find weak winter sunlight penetrating the sky. The sun was a runny fried egg, pale yellow and unappetising – but better than nothing. Kiki lifted her face to it for a while, whilst Dek and Zastarte packed up their temporary camp; then she stuffed her pack with the few possessions she’d bothered to remove, and folded her thick blanket carefully. Her breath streamed like white smoke, and she shivered, turning to watch Dek scrub his pan and tie it to his own pack. He was a stickler for keeping his pan clean; or at least, what Dek considered “clean”. She didn’t consider a scrub down with a handful of old leaves or a fist of snow really adequate. But then, in this harsh environment, after all the soldiers had been through, she no longer had the energy to complain.

They set off across rolling hills, then dropped into deep lost valleys where shadows piled on shadows, and chilled them. As they climbed the slope out of the third valley, after scouting a small collection of cottages and farmhouses, all deserted, they were pleased to find themselves back in the weak yellow sunshine. They followed a frozen mud road, and as they breached the rise they saw Junglan nestled far below at the base of a steep valley, the slopes rich with pine, ash and sycamores, and a scattering of holly bushes.

They dismounted, and moved to a stand of trees so as not to be silhouetted. After hobbling mounts, Kiki crouched, and watched. From this distance she could pick out tiny homes and the battlements of defensive walls to east and west. The north and south of the city were protected by near-thousand feet cliff walls: vertical jagged stone, grey and impenetrable. She supposed attackers could descend on ropes – damn long ropes – but it would hardly be a charge. No, Junglan was well protected from attack. But then, so had Zanne been.

“Can you see any movement?” Dek crouched beside her, chewing on a chunk of black bread, his eyes fixed on the distant city beyond the steep slope of snow-peppered forest. He tore a piece free and handed it to her. She took it in silence, chewed in thought.

“No,” she said, eventually.

“Me neither. Those walls should be manned. Come on.”

“Where to?”

“We should go and investigate.”

“You think?”

He moved in close, swift, his arm around her waist, pulling her in to him. He kissed her, and she was taken by the suddenness of the gesture. When they separated, she was laughing.

“What was that for?”

“Nothing. Get your shit together. We’re going in.”

“Listen to Mr Independent-I’m-In-Charge Boss Man all of a sudden.”

He winked. “That’s what love does to you.” And then he was gone, and Kiki paled, and she remembered what she needed to tell him, remembered what she had to tell him; about the change. The Beginning. And the End. Shit.
Shit.

Dek led the way, bristling with energy, hopeful there would be a tavern, a hot bath and a frothing ale waiting for them in Junglan. The roadway was better kept here, and edged with large cubes of stone. It had to be, for it was damn steep, despite its worming, S-formation switchbacks that carried a traveller down the steep slopes. From the corner of her eye Kiki noted several guard towers above the road at strategic positions; they were squat, brooding looking things, and currently unmanned. They had to be, for no challenges were issued. And anybody who’d ever travelled with Dek, with his tattoos, his scars and his bad attitude, knew he was a man who always brought questions from bureaucrats in authority. It’s just the way it was.

On the steep descent towards the western city gates, they heard it. A distant moaning, like the wind. And then a scream. They glanced at one another, and Kiki bit her lip. “Oh no,” she said.

“Could just be another young dandy getting robbed at knifepoint,” said Dek, glancing at Zastarte.

“Or some big bruiser with horse shit for brains getting his nose broken for the tenth much-deserved time.”

Dek gave a grin, all teeth, and they continued down the steep slope.

They came to the final guard tower, before the city gates themselves. It was built from large black stones, finely crafted by a master stonemason. Around the tower the trees had been cleared, but where they did begin, the Iron Wolves noted the bark had started to turn black, from the base of each trunk, creeping up. Each tree had developed symptoms to different degrees, each one at least half way up the main trunk, but some reaching the thickest lower branches. Here, not only was the bark a mottled, matt black and run through with fine red veins, the branches themselves had started to deform and twist, as if under the influence of a terrible disease. Many of the leaves, also, had turned matt black, interlaced with tiny red veins so fine they were like threads, or the spun web of a tiny spider.

“There’s been a struggle.” Dek nodded with his head towards the black maw of the doorway.

The whole door, in fact, had been torn free. Kiki drew her short sword and advanced with slow footsteps, ears pricking, eyes alert. To the left, deep in the trees, she saw where the huge, iron studded oak door had landed, flattening ferns. At the guard tower, she also saw the door had been torn free of hinges and bolts, which dangled against broken stone. She licked her lips.

“Something extremely powerful did this,” and the hackles lifted on the back of her neck. Inside the tower, something shifted…

They came for her, a seething mass of tendrils like writhing snakes, and her right-hand sword came up fast in an outward arc, knocking half the tendrils aside and away from her face as, simultaneously, her left hand drew the blade on her right hip, and cut into yet more of the tendrils with sounds of chopping flesh. Some were hacked free and lay on the stone step of the guard tower, wriggling, like dying, severed worms.

It came for her, from the shadows: an elf rat, broad shouldered and hunched, with eyes like blood-red berries and snarling teeth like thorns in a twisted round maw. Both hands were held out, palms vertical, and from the core of each palm writhed the thick, snake-like tendrils. Kiki stumbled back and Dek ran in, long sword slashing down. He cut free several tendrils, but others slammed into his chest with pile-driver force, punching him back off his feet in rapid acceleration, face contorting in pain, sword clattering from his hand. Zastarte, also, darted in, rapier flickering with incredible speed, and chopping free yet more of the advancing tendrils. But more grew back, flowing from the creature, grasping for him. He ducked left, sword slashing right. A wriggling white worm hit the ground, but there was no blood.

“Wolves, to me!” yelled Kiki, backing away towards the road. Dek rolled to his feet, drawing twin knives, and he and Zastarte flanked Kiki. The elf rat stumbled towards them, leaving the sanctuary of the tower, giving them more room to fight. Kiki leapt in, both blades cutting and slashing, whilst Dek and Zastarte separated, coming in from different angles, dodging the elf rat’s quests, cutting several free before Kiki managed to get in close enough to drive her sword down through the creature’s clavicle. It gave a sudden high screech, left arm dropping to its side, the tendrils flopping suddenly to earth like an entwined rope made of thin snakes. Dek leapt in, plunging a long knife into the creature’s neck, and Kiki’s blade stabbed out, spearing through the creature’s open mouth, snapping teeth before cutting through into the brain.

The elf rat hit the ground, and slowly the tendrils started to retract into its dead, motionless hands.

“What the fuck
are
they?” snapped Dek.

“They’re like roots,” said Zastarte, pushing the long slim tentacles with his boot. Within a half minute, they’d gone completely, leaving the hacked-open elf rat prostrate and, barely, human in its embrace of death.

Kiki glanced over at the tower, face grim. “‘Thin roots which come from their hands, they can crawl inside your brains through ears and nose and mouth and rip your head apart with a simple tug’,” she quoted, grimly. “Do you think that was one of them? Tree Stalkers, I mean?”

“I think, possibly,” said Zastarte. “But Sameska seemed to think these Tree Stalkers were special elite hunters. This thing we killed, here, was a guard. I assume it was guarding something?”

“I reckon we caught it in the middle of something,” agreed Dek, hefting his black sword.

“Let’s go have a look then,” said Kiki, and gave a cold smile, without humour.

She led the way to the tower entrance, and placed one foot tentatively over the step. The quests she had cut free were gone, shrivelled to an almost nothing of pale skin; like a shed snake-skin.

It was dark. It smelled bad. Metallic, like vinegar prickling at her nostrils. There were two rooms on the ground floor with nothing but basic furniture, several overturned chairs and three chests against one wall, all open, mostly empty except for some discarded weapons, axes and knives. In the corner, leaned three old spears. Kiki gave a silent gesture to ascend, and the other Iron Wolves nodded.

The stone steps led up a narrow channel in a tight spiral, a device used to make defending these stairwells beneficial to the defenders, and Kiki climbed with wary, carefully-placed footsteps. As her head breached the next floor, so the stench became incredibly over-powering, and she nearly gagged. A sound came to them, then, a low groaning, an ululation of constant sound, rising and falling, like breathing, and coming from many mouths… A short wall obscured Kiki’s view. But then she came out into the wide open room and she stopped dead, staring. There were perhaps twenty people in the room, crouched naked and hunched into upright, near-foetal positions. There were a mixture of men and women, thin and fat, with different hair colourings, differing bruises and scabs on naked, scraped and battered flesh. But each one had a thick sprout of tendrils emerging from the tops of their skulls, then falling like tentacles of flesh to wind and curl and curve around the torsos and limbs of their victims, as if each person was in a prison of flesh-coloured, snake-thick strands, each winding and twisting on individual paths to create a cage purpose-built for that specific individual.

“What the fuck…” hissed Dek through clenched teeth.

In response to the sound, the tentacle coils slid greasily together, seemed to tighten around the people caught in these root-like traps. Kiki gestured for Dek to be silent, and they found themselves feeling suddenly sick. Whatever had happened to these poor people, their skulls had been invaded by some alien intrusion or device. As the tentacles, or quests, or whatever the fuck they were, tightened, so the sounds emanating from entrapped mouths increased in pitch, rising to a wail that made Kiki shudder to the very core of her being, hackles raised on the back of her neck and arms.

Kiki crept forward and knelt close – but not too close – to the nearest woman. Her sagging breasts were held unnaturally upright by a thick limb, which then curled tight across her belly and dropped between her legs, winding back up around her left thigh until it… Kiki turned and vomited through her fingers, a gagging acidic spray mimicking the stench in the air. Dek was beside her, cradling her, lifting her, and the Iron Wolves moved back to the steps, hurriedly down and out into the fresh air.

Kiki leaned against the stone. “One went inside her, up through her vagina, and another through her belly button.”

“Like an elf rat umbilical cord?” said Zastarte.

“What?”

“A controlling device. Keeping them alive? Maybe controlling them?”

“Why don’t they leap up and attack us then?” snarled Dek.

Zastarte shrugged. “Maybe they weren’t… ready. I don’t know. It’s only a thought.” He was pale, licking his lips nervously, left hand clenching and unclenching.

“Well, they’re still alive,” said Dek. “Suffering.”

“What do you want to do?” Kiki’s eyes were wide and she looked suddenly, incredibly vulnerable; like a child again.

“What you have to do when any decent creature is suffering. You end their misery.”

“We haven’t got time for this,” said Kiki, weariness settling across her like ash from a crematorium chimney.

“You and Zastarte, go and check the city. I’ll go get an axe,” Dek growled.

Kiki met his gaze. It was hard as iron, his mouth a grim line.

“Maybe that’s not the only way?”

“I’ll try and remove one of the things first. If that doesn’t work, then I’m not leaving our kind to suffer.”

Kiki gave a nod and, with Zastarte, headed back to the road. Without a backward glance, Dek entered the dark doorway of the tower.

 

They were a hundred yards from the towering gates of Junglan when a shriek cut through the air, one of the most high, piercing sounds Kiki had ever heard in her life. It ended abruptly, and with a distant thud. Zastarte glanced back, but could see nothing; no sign of Dek, and no sign of any more elf rats.

“You OK, Kiki?”

“Yes.”

“It was a savage sight, was it not?”

“Yes. One of the worst.”

“Can you not… you know?”

“What?”

“Use the
Shamathe
thing? The earth magick, or whatever it is.”

“It’s a power born of rocks and trees and the mountains. And it’s almost random, Zast. I don’t control it. By the Seven Sisters, the bastard seems to control me!”

“Oh.”

Their boots skidded a good distance before the gate, and they stopped, looking up at the vast, black edifice. Narrow archer shots could be seen near the top, and Kiki felt, again, incredibly vulnerable. It was not a feeling she enjoyed.

“They’ve taken it, have they not?” Zastarte’s eyes looked just a little haunted.

“Yes.”