City Of Ruin (14 page)

Malum slung down his cards as JC stood to berate the two for disrupting the game.

Malum placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Leave it, it’s fine.’ He gestured for JC to sit back down again in his seat. Then, to the kids, ‘What’s wrong?’

Jodil, the thickset one, spoke through the pauses in his breathing. ‘We lost Deeb. We was down by the boneyard. To keep watch to see if any of those dicks from the Screams was being brought in there this morning after that fight. Then Deeb tried it on with these two weird old men. And . . . And . . .’

‘Slow down.’ Malum moved over to them both and placed a paternal arm around each shoulder. ‘Sit, and speak a little more clearly.’ Soothing tones, close body contact: the things these young street-warriors most needed right now. Malum glared at the fat trader until the man picked up what was left of his coins and slunk out of the bar. The young Bloods took their seats.

‘Now’ – Malum leaned forward across the table, his arms folded, seeking eye contact – ‘what happened to Deeb?’

‘Dead,’ Din murmured.

‘He’s gotta be,’ Jodil agreed.

Malum pondered their body language. ‘You don’t seem convinced.’

‘Those two old men,’ Jodil continued, ‘they was fucking around with these graves. There was one that was already open.’

‘Criminal’s grave?’ JC offered.

‘They all are at the boneyard,’ Malum grunted. Anyone who broke the law was buried, not burned, so that their souls remained trapped within the city: an imprisonment during the afterlife.

‘Whatever,’ Jodil continued. ‘Deeb went over to see what was going on and he started calling them all sorts of names.’

‘Why?’

‘You know what he’s like. He’s a dick. Gives them all this attitude.’

‘The men, what did they do? Did you get a good look?’

‘One was bald,’ Din said, ‘but we didn’t get a proper look at the other. They was wearing too many layers – all dark shades.’

‘And what did they do with Deeb?’

‘They grabbed him by the neck, snapped it just like that, and threw him in the grave.’

Malum gestured for them to go on.

‘Then there was a flash of something. Cultists, we reckoned at the time. Then Deeb was lifted up out of the grave by three of the things that was already in them.’

‘What, the corpses?’

The youths both nodded.

‘What were you two doing at the time?’

‘We shouted something but we couldn’t move. It’s as if there was some sort of wall between us. We swear we tried to get to him. We tried to throw rocks over it, but only a few managed to get near them. Even that small crossbow of mine wouldn’t shatter it.’

Malum nodded. ‘Then what happened?’

‘Deeb looked dead. He shouldn’t have been able to move. His neck was broken and his head was hanging at an angle. His eyes was closed, too. The things to one side of him were really decayed. They looked like melted men with their skin peeling off. The three of them came towards us and that’s when we legged it back here and didn’t stop. We could hear them men laughing at us as we left the boneyard.’

Everyone waited for Malum’s next words to fill the painful silence, but no one made eye contact.

He had heard about these sorts of situations before, but they tended to amount to just rumours, fanciful stories designed to intimidate others, yet he’d recently heard about something similar happening on Jokull, with dead people walking across the tundra, but that was too far away to concern him.

Knowing what it was likely to have been, he eventually declared, ‘Cultist necromancers. That’s what they sound like. In the boneyard, raising the dead, killing one of our gang members.’

‘What shall we do?’ asked the skinny youth, hunching his shoulders, retreating into himself. ‘Could go back again, see if they return?’

Malum stood up, stretched his legs. ‘The Bloods, we’re family remember. If one of us goes down, I go down with him. We respect and support each other. But dealing with necromancers, well . . . that’s something way out of what we normally have to contend with.’

None of them would be equipped to fight people like that. He had a pact with a few cultists, a deal arranged to make their lives more comfortable in exchange for a little help, but he didn’t think that they were worth wasting on a power his own guys wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Necromancers were rare even in the weird and fucked-up world of cultists. His decision now would be to do nothing, but he would promote these youths up a level for at least trying to fight off a necromancer to help their already dead friend.

‘Lady Rika, you want to say a little prayer, or something?’ Randur muttered. ‘Might make the snow stop.’

He gazed out across the treeless plain, at a stolen glimpse of sunlight – at skies turning the colour of a rusted sword, providing the only distraction from the same bleakness they had travelled through for so long now. Pterodettes circled terns that circled pterodettes in avoidance manoeuvres. In such vast open skies there was nowhere to hide.

‘From the sound of your voice,’ Rika said, ‘I assume you are having some fun at my expense, Randur.’ Her black cloak rippled in the breeze, revealing an ornate medallion attached to the robe underneath, a reminder of the wealth she and her sister were once used to.

‘Not much, if I’m honest,’ Randur replied, catching a wry smile from Denlin.

Randur leaned on his sword as they sheltered from the constant snow under the porch of an old farmhouse. The building hadn’t been lived in for years, but it was
somewhere
. Psychologically, points like this were essential havens on their map. Thirty days now, and most of them spent icy wet. Thirty days on the run from Villjamur.

They were fugitives, no less; he’d stolen these girls from certain death and angered an entire empire in the process, and to say he was now feeling paranoid was an understatement. On a rickety boat that lurched and lunged amid choppy waters, they’d skimmed north along the coast of Jokull, under nothing but empty skies and sea spray. They avoided ice sheets near Kullrún, then travelled south with mordantly cold winds chasing behind them, before landing with more luck than skill on the east coast of Folke the previous night.

Yet they were barely at the halfway point of their route. Villiren, a city located at the end of the next island north, was their target destination – though it seemed a world away.

Still, at least we’re out of the fucking freezing water.

Folke: Randur’s homeland. He knew it well, so was aware of the dangers to be encountered anywhere away from the major towns. Looking out across a snow-blasted landscape, with nothing ahead but biting wind, with only a few provisions and having not seen another person in days, the success of their journey seemed improbable at best. Patches of exposed land near the coast were so inhospitable that only moss and lichen could survive, but the territory itself was familiar enough to provide him with reassurance on a deep level that he wasn’t really aware of.

Denlin briefed their companions, now that they were further inland. The old man’s age and experience were useful out here, but Denlin now seemed to have an opinion on
everything
. ‘Girls from a fancy background who have lost everything – money, family and whatever. You two are nobodies, now, right? What are you?’

‘Nobodies,’ they mumbled, sounding as if they had been berated for some petty misdemeanour, not fighting for survival in a deleterious landscape. Both were garbed in featureless brown furs, hoods flipped up for protection, travelling bags at their feet. Rika’s once-elegant hair was now lank and dishevelled, leaving black tendrils clinging to her face. Unlike Randur’s partner Eir – her hair was shorter, scruffier, her face more gently rounded than Rika’s, but otherwise almost identical in appearance. This similarity gave Randur some concern – that he might make some inappropriate suggestion to the wrong sister, maybe slap the wrong behind. And get his face slapped back. Two times he had come close, two times he caught a fine detail at the last moment in time to make him stop.

‘Because if you’re
somebody
, you get your arse kicked,’ Denlin declared. ‘No, you get the crap thieved from your arse.’

‘Does he have to be so crude?’ Eir asked.

‘It grows on you,’ Randur grunted.

‘Seen a lot, lad. I’m a man of the world, me.’ Denlin faced him with this new-found authority, and this sense of command added a little dignity to his age-sagged face. His forest-green cloak, ex-military, was annoyingly clean, probably an old soldier’s habit. When Randur had first met the old man, he could barely keep himself clean, could barely gather together enough money to buy himself a meal in the rancid taverns of Villjamur. Randur no longer hated being the best dressed, even out in the middle of nowhere, under these big island skies.

‘This ain’t the time to be nice and kind,’ Denlin said. ‘You got to speak the language of the wild.’

A movement in the distance.

‘Well, using that same language,’ Randur interrupted him, ‘how do you say “There’s a caravan of militants over there, and they’re heading our way”?’

The old man turned to observe the approaching group. ‘Good point, lad. Bugger.’

A horse-drawn caravan crested the hill, with a red symbol painted on its side: a crude image of an eagle on fire. Randur knew it to signify one of the rebel groups that cropped up now and then across the Empire, a crew of rascals that he’d encountered once before on Folke. They called for freedom from Jamur power, and refused to pay their taxes, but still managed to defile the good name of anarchism. You would hear about them cruising from town to town, seducing girls who were impressed with their half-baked philosophies stolen from others, more thrilled at outraging their elders’ feelings than engaging in revolutionary activities. These young men liked to challenge others to fights, but it was only machismo, nothing more than posturing in taverns.

‘Two horses at the front, one at the back, one to the side of the caravan and, more importantly, four armed men in ragged cloaks, all carrying big, fuck-off swords,’ Randur observed. ‘Reckon they’re selling flowers?’

‘You think we can take them, Rand?’ Eir fingered a gold necklace, one of the few trinkets he’d rescued from the city. She had certainly grown in confidence since he had tutored her in swordsmanship back in Villjamur. Randur liked her new attitude – he longed to get a moment alone with her so they could explore their developing feelings. Truth be told he was gagging for it, but with her god-blighted sister and Denlin always hanging around, that wasn’t possible.

‘Wouldn’t recommend it,’ Denlin suggested. ‘You two fancy yourselves something rotten since Villjamur. Think you’re heroes after that display on the walls. Well, things is different, out here.’

‘I would hope we can stay away from more violence,’ Rika interrupted. ‘Astrid, I’ve seen enough of it.’ She lowered her head, as some kind of Jorsalir prayer began to form on her lips. The girl had spent years on Southfjords studying the Jorsalir religion under the guidance of a priestess of the goddess Astrid. It annoyed Randur, the way she’d turn to religion at times like this, when they needed no divine-intervention shit.

‘Lass speaks some sense,’ Denlin agreed. ‘No violence is needed, no cause for alarm. Better let me handle this.’

Denlin sauntered gingerly over to meet the approaching crew, a right bunch of Neanderthals judging by the look of them. When he was fifty paces away, after Denlin’s initial greeting, Randur couldn’t hear a word. The old man began to make all manner of gestures, pointing this way and that, laughing appropriately, hand on hips, and it was reassuring to see some of the other men lighten up and begin to smile themselves.

The momentum of the day changed in an exchange of glances.

One of them aimed a crossbow and shot Denlin through the eye and blood flamed across the snow. The old man crumpled backwards, while the gang looked on nonchalantly.

Rika gasped.

‘Get inside the farmhouse
now
,’ Randur urged. ‘Eir, if I fail, look after your sister. I don’t think this lot will be kind to her.’

Indignation contorted Eir’s face – she wanted to stay here to prove herself, he well knew, and she might yet have her chance, but he suspected she wasn’t up to killing again, not yet, despite her best intentions of being a hero. Eir opened the farmhouse door and, with a final glance back, ushered Rika inside.

Fucking hell
, Randur thought.
Denlin . . .

Saying prayers didn’t seem like such a bad idea any more.

Tuning out all his emotions, he focused on the task at hand, tugged aside his black cloak and gripped his sword handle with an edge of anticipation. Randur approached them with slow, measured strides, hoping not to be shot to pieces before he even reached them. He was aching to get away from here, trying desperately not to look at the dead corpse of his friend. Snow compacted underfoot, and the wind calmed, leaving an eerie ambience that protracted the walk towards them indefinitely.

‘A little unnecessary that, wasn’t it?’ Randur called out to the man sitting at the front of the caravan, an obese and swarthy figure in a brown cloak. Crumbs and stains were spattered down his front, and in one hand he held a bladder of wine.
Probably pissed
.