Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) (55 page)

He struggled against his own bindings as Lucian’s cutting allowed Robert to give a brutal tug and break free. They both moved fast after that, turning over the bodies of the fallen and patting them down for supplies. While he wrenched and pried at the fibres cutting into his wrists, he scrambled over to Richard and knelt over him. “Richard, we have to go.”

Richard ignored him, weeping still, caressing his master’s groomed locks of grey hair.

“Richard. There isn’t time.”

“I don’t care,” he whispered. “It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters. We can’t stop it.”

“We can still make a difference.”

Richard choked back a sob. “Why? So we can starve in some hole and forget about the Old World?” He looked at the professor’s body afresh and his horror seemed redoubled. “He knew so much. He could have done so much more. And now he’s just … gone.”

“Yes, he’s gone. But he wouldn’t want you to stay here.”

Richard laughed weakly. “He never wanted me to be here.
He
didn’t want to be here.” His face crumpled. “I made him come. I killed him.”

“You took a stand, and so did he. He knew the risks.”

“I can’t go on without him. I don’t know what to do. I can’t do his job. I’m not … I’m not strong enough. I’m not him.”

Norman looked at him a long while and saw an echo of himself. “No,” he said finally, “you’re not him. Men like him are different, and we’ll have to walk in their shadows for the rest of our lives—but only if that’s how we choose to see it. Or, we can remember them, and do what we can in the best way we can, instead of trying to be what we aren’t.”

Richard swallowed.

Norman reached into John’s pocket and took out the black king chess piece he had been holding hostage these long years. Never had Richard claimed it from him. Now Norman held it up in the fading darkness. “He believed in you. God knows I know what it feels like to have all that weight dumped on your shoulders. But all we need is something to keep us going. You’re right. You’re not ready. Neither am I. And nobody ever really is.

“But we can’t let that stop us. Because they didn’t let it stop them. So here’s your prize, Richard.” He slipped the king into his pocket. “I’ll hold onto this. One day, you will be ready. And when that time comes, it’ll be yours. But you have to work for it. You have to keep fighting.”

Richard staunched his cries and wiped the spittle from his mouth, leaning back on his haunches. He pulled off his coat and laid it over DeGray’s face. He was silent while Robert and Lucian freed them both from their bindings and went back to gathering supplies, letting Norman do what needed doing.

At last, he nodded. “Alright,” he said.

Norman squeezed his shoulder. “The road will be long. Are you ready?”

Richard glanced at Norman’s pocket and his eyes sharpened. “I’m ready.”

Norman swept up and joined Robert and Lucian. They laid out what they found and were disappointed. None of the bodies had anything but knives or machetes. A few had only sharpened scrap metal or farming tools. It wouldn’t be much use to them against an army.

Of those who had ridden north from New Canterbury, only four remained. They might never find the others taken down to the camps.

But they would have to go back and do what they could. If they moved fast enough they might be able to warn somebody. It was all they had left.

“So what now?” Richard said.

Lucian scowled. “We get back.”

“How?”

“We’ll figure it out,” Norman said. He said it without thinking, though his mind seemed bogged down in a sudden quagmire. A strange light filtered in from outside, akin to that of the Echoes. A strange undulation coursed his bowels, and he was suddenly sure that something was coming. He kept still and waited as the others argued.

“We get back to the mountain and look for our horses. That’s the only way to be sure we’ll find mounts,” Robert said. “I know the path.”

“That’ll take too long,” Lucian said.

“It’s the only choice we have.”

“We can search the camps,” Richard said. “They must have horses.”

“They’ll have taken them.”

“Maybe there will be some left.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Screw you!”

“Be quiet, both of you!” Robert said. “Let me think.”

Norman wasn’t listening. The little girl who had appeared in the tent’s doorway took up all his attention, sucked him in, and suddenly seemed to span all of space. As soon as he looked upon her, he knew—she was different. Special. It was written in the air over her head.

She was very young, no more than ten years old. Fire headed and freckle faced, she held a stubby little knife out in front of her and took a hesitant step toward them. Norman blinked, surprised that any child could approach four bellowing men, covered in blood with a stack of knives at their feet.

But there was strength in her eyes that made him feel weak.

Robert, Lucian, and Richard stopped arguing as soon as she crossed the threshold. A silence longer than any Norman had ever endured stretched out between them, so total that he thought the world’s clock itself had wound down.

Then she raised her little knife still higher and said, “You.” She pointed at Norman. “You’re the one.” Her voice was soft, lilting. Irish. Just like the old man they had found outside New Canterbury.

She was close now, close enough for him to see her in full even in the gloom. It was her. The girl from his visions. Even as he realised it his mouth was forming her name—a name he couldn’t have known, yet he knew it. “Billy?”

She nodded. “I’m here.”

“I see that,” he said lamely.

“You know this girl?” Lucian said.

Just like you knew about James. We all have our secrets, Norman thought.

“I know her.”

“Where did you come from? Did you escape from the camps?” Richard said.

She shook her head. She didn’t even seem to notice the bodies lying on the ground behind them. “I came from home. Far away.”

Robert kneaded his forehead. “We don’t have time for this.”

Norman fought away flickering film snippets of the dark-eyed man sneering at him in those very same visions. This was his doing. “He sent you?” he said.

I sound like a bloody lunatic
.
Like those travelling gypsy fortune-tellers Lucian used to chase away every summer
.

Billy nodded. “I’m here to help.”

“With what?”

She shrugged.

Lucian grumbled. “Will the madness ever stop?”

“Daddy says all the best people are mad,” Billy said without a hint of humour. Her eyes were steely. Norman wondered what she’d seen. She was so filthy, so ragged, that she looked feral. Yet she spoke softly, and there was nothing of the wild about her. She was like a forest nymph.

“She’s probably in shock,” Lucian muttered. “Don’t worry, kid. We’ll get you to a safe place.” He rounded on Norman. “Stay focused. We need to get home.”

Norman spent a moment wondering how he could explain himself to the others without them labelling him insane, but there was no way around it. They lived in a mad world, where people vanished and pigeons heralded coming death. “We’ll get there,” he said.

“How?” Richard cried, throwing his hands into the air. “We can’t. They took our horses. We’ll never get back in time.”

“Don’t worry,” said Billy. She smiled, an impish look in her eye. “I have a friend who knows a shortcut.”

Norman smiled. “A friend?” He had barely spoken to this girl, and even then it had been in a dream, yet he felt like he knew her, knew her well.

She shrugged. “I hope he is.” She took a step back and jerked her head in the direction of the cliff. “Come on. Hurry.”

Robert looked bemused, Richard forlorn, Lucian angry.

“You’re here to help us?” Robert said slowly. “Who sent you?”

“I’ll explain along the way,” Norman said. “There’s a lot to tell.”

Lucian gripped him by the shirt. “Hang on. This is nuts, Norman. I know we’re going through a lot here, but I need you to keep it together. You’re tougher than this now. Don’t crack on me.”

Norman yanked himself free. “Listen to me. If I’m right, we’re about to see some weird crap. But it’s the only way. So why don’t we get on with it?”

“Norman, she’s a shell-shocked little girl.”

“No, she isn’t. Now we’ve all seen some weird things, but we keep going; we live with it. So let’s take a leaf out of that book. Let’s go.”

Robert looked him hard in the eye. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

Robert nodded slowly. “Good enough.”

Lucian scowled for a long moment, then shrugged. “Fine, whatever. Next stop, crazy town.”

Norman nodded to Billy. “Lead the way.”

Billy had been waiting without expression. The girl took flight from the tent, dashing with nimble strides along the cliff.

They followed at a run, clumsy by comparison but keeping pace.

“Are you ready?” Lucian said.

Norman nodded. The pain in his chest had never seemed so distant. The road had been long and tough, but he was finally who he had always been meant to be. “I’m ready.”

They paused together on the cliff edge and watched as the first of James’s army came into sight. Dark figures carrying long burning torches cast the pale ragged mass into harsh relief.

Thousands. Endless thousands, all moving south, all marching under the banner of the pigeon. In time they filled the horizon, and the torches they carried lit up the colossal emptiness of a world rotten, fallen, and on the brink of tumbling one last time into true darkness.