Ecko Burning (22 page)

Ecko grinned.
An’ whaddaya know, it’s amateur night.

The phrase reminded him of Lugan - and the grin spread across his face. Lugan’d proved that friendship was not a weakness, it was something solid as ferrocrete -

Lugan’d been a lying fuckwit who’d sold him down the river. Jeez, if this program was about teaching trust an’ closeness an’ teamwork, oh my, then maybe Lugan should’ve been plugged the hell into it instead.

Ecko’s grin congealed.

Asshole.

And his humour caught light.

Y’know what? Fuck this. Fuck you and the bike you rode in on... If this is some teamwork 101 thing, then you can shove it. I’ll do this my way.

The only way.

Collator:
Chances of successful scenario at...

Whatever.

Angry now, he welcomed the burning, the singing in his nerves, the rush, the elation. It came with a sudden need to really refuse - to say fuck it all to death and just
go...

But Redlock was coming forwards, the fire no longer blocking his vision.

He said, “We’ve got little you can take - the animal carries trail food, not much else. What d’you want?”

The cowled figure snorted. “Where’s your sneaky friend? Get him back where I can see him.”

“What friend?” Redlock’s hands were on his axeheads; his tone was shameless.

“Don’t mess me about, axeman. Bring him out, or the girl’s gagging on her own gore. She your lover? Your daughter?” There was a grin under that cowl. “Both?”

“You’re funny.” Redlock didn’t flinch.

The figures were up to their knees in the long grass. They wore cloaks and shirts and trews, dusty and patched, but there was something about the way they moved...

Something...

Oh for fucksake.

As the penny dropped, Ecko almost slapped himself round the head for being that bastard dumb - these guys had the perfect metre-stride of plainclothes’ cops. Caught between his surging anger and a sudden rise of avid, eager curiosity, he paused to stare, quivering with glee and tension - and they were, they fucking
were
, they were walking in squad form even though the grass was past their shins.

These guys were goons.

His cackle returned, silent under his cowl.

Maybe they were renegades, AWOL, maybe they were on a super-secret stealth mission...

...or maybe they weren’t Bond James Bond and they just were on some sorta road-patrol?

His adrenaline shuddered, but sustained. He felt sick. He stayed where he was, his oculars scanning, heat and light and motion. Whatever was about to go down, he
really
wanted to play.

“Come on, axeman, I’m gonna count to three.”

It comes after two, y’know, in case you’ve forgotten...

...and after this.

Grinning now, he took a breath, focused on one of the wind-stunted trees. He gave them the hint of the Bogeyman’s breathing that he’d once loosed in the base of Doctor Grey, a world and a lifetime away. Hollow, wet, dank breathing - a chill down the back of your neck, an unseen daemon lurking, oozing, in the grass...

The two goons, shuddered, exchanged glances, looked round. One led the chearl, the other had a spear, and their hands were white with tension. The tall figure with the blade didn’t so much as flinch.

Smartass.

Ecko slipped onwards, circling to their backs as they advanced on the fire...

Nothing like giving this shit the personal touch.

* * *

Amethea was angry.

In fact, she could only remember being this angry once before - and that was with Maugrim, may he damned well burn. The fact that this figure had come out of nowhere and decided not only to remind her that she could be a victim, but to use her as leverage against her friends, was a bit much. All the praying in the world hadn’t saved her last time - she’d had to do that herself.

Her thoughts were broken by the breathing.

It came from behind them, from the grass at their feet - dark, dank, wet breathing, breathing like a mouthful of blood. She shuddered, right to the core of her soul. But the man behind her laughed - a sound she felt rather than heard.

He said softly, “It’s nothing, keep walking,” and the blade pressed harder, a warm line of pain across her throat.

He called past her ear. “Call it back, or this one -”

“We can’t.” The answer came from Triqueta, gamer, playing for the Count of Time. “We can’t call it back, it’s... it’s not human. We don’t control it.”

The man behind Amethea laughed again - she could feel the depth and timbre of it in her back, in her skin. The blade pressed into her throat and she pulled back from it almost without meaning to, pressing her head into the man’s broad chest. She thought for one mad moment that he would stroke her hair with the other hand.

“Call it back, or you know what I’ll do to your pretty little girlie here. You want to watch?”

Pretty little girlie?

Saint and Goddess.

And something in Amethea’s soul remembered the pure stone, remembered that vast strength she had once touched, had felt within her skin...

Pretty little girlie.

She’d had about enough of this.

* * *

Ecko had gotten close now, right up to where they loitered, right
there
, at the edges of the trade-road. He was close enough to see the whites of their eyes - hell, the whites of their fucking kacks if they had any - and certainly close enough to see the fine red line that spread across Amethea’s throat, the tickle of dark fluid that was easing down her skin.

But she didn’t look remotely afraid. If anything, she looked downright pissed off.

Playtime was over. If his Bogeyman trickery was useless, then he had a whole fucking arsenal of other shit he could pull. Like a bluff against a bluff - see what these guys were really made of.

Like this.

The full-on high that he welcomed like the best class As on the market -
Oh now we’re talkin’!
Redlock was moving forwards; Triq was using him to block their line of sight, pick up her bow.

The cloaked figure shouted, “Put the axes down or the girl -
shit
!”

His threat was cut short as one of his cronies cried out and fell, one kick to the back of the knee bringing him down in the grass with an explosion of dust and colour. The second strike with the same foot stretched the goon in the dirt, jaw shattered, eyes staring and mouth lax. Red leaked from his ear.

And Ecko said, “You lookin’ for me?”

* * *

As Ecko appeared, both Redlock and Triqueta were moving -the axeman forward in a roll, Triqueta stringing her lop-ended bow. She had an arrow notched and to her ear when the lead goon shouted, “Hold!”

Still held against his chest, Amethea felt the word throb on her back like an ache. She’d no idea what game Ecko was playing - why he’d downed the sidekick rather than coming for the boss, but she wasn’t in a position to be asking questions.

As Redlock stopped dead, his face etched with tension and more dangerous than she’d ever seen him look, the goon started to laugh.

“Don’t be stupid. You know how this works. One move and the girl dies.”

Ecko said, “So?”

The word was a slap. Amethea gaped, held down the panic.
What? What are you...?

But Ecko shrugged, grinned. “You think I give a shit? You slit her throat for all I care.”

No, he was bluffing, he wouldn’t...

Held still, the teacher felt a rush of absolute white-cold fear - even in the stone tunnels of Maugrim’s heat, her own blood spiralling across the floor, she’d never felt such absolute certainty...

I’m going to die here.

Really. Here. Now.

Her “Saint and Goddess” was suddenly hollow - words she’d used too often for them to have meaning. She wondered if Vilsara would miss her; wondered, stupidly, if Feren would be waiting.

The blade was tight against her skin now, cutting, hurting. Hot and cold and pain in a tense line across her throat. Tickles crept down her skin. Flashes of ’prentice classes came to her - she knew exactly how deep it needed to cut before it hit her windpipe, and exactly what would happen when it did.

Little priestess.

Feren had had courage. He’d fought his way across the plains because he couldn’t abandon her. She owed his courage her life.

She owed these people her life.

This life.

Right now.

This life she wasn’t going to give up.

The blade cut deeper, making her bite her lip to avoid crying out. The grunt jerked her body, as if making her dance.

“You move - any of you! - and the girl -!”

“I moved!” Ecko was closer now, and grinning, capering like some crazed market jester. “Hey, look, I moved again!”

“I’m not playing!” The goon was getting angry - she could feel it in the skin of her back, in the way she was held. His anger was good - it meant he was unstable, not in control. He was being made to look like a fool and he knew it. Amethea almost laughed - this whole thing was crazed, some sort of comedy mummery. The man’s voice scaled upwards as he cried, “I mean it -!”

Ecko folded his arms. “Go on then. But when that one’s dead, I’m gonna rip your fuckin’ head off and play soccer with it.”

The man was panicking now, trying to drag her backwards and away. Angry, she dug her feet into the wet soil, refused to move.

Then the solid thunk of an arrow took the second goon clean in the chest, dropping him like a rock, ripples in the grass. His groan as he fell was the sound of Redlock coming to his feet, his expression bleak as winter.

The chearl, freed from its captor, shook its spiked mane and went back to the grass.

But Amethea was damned to the rhez itself if she was going to be rescued again.

Instead, she lifted one foot and kicked backwards, hard as she could manage, at where she thought her captor’s kneecap would be.

Her aim was true. She drove her boot-heel hard, felt the contact, felt him flinch and groan and fold. As Triqueta was stringing a second shaft, her hands a blur, as Redlock was coming forwards in a lunge that would tear the life and breath and flesh of anything in its way, so she was out - the man’s grip had slackened enough and she was ripping her way free...

She was turning and slamming that same boot squarely into his groin.

He toppled, clutching himself and keening.

And Ecko laughed outright, a sound that split cracks through the sunset sky, that shook the battered buildings of the trade-road.

Still curled from the impact, the grunt took a metal axe in his neck and fell sideways, the front of his throat tearing free as the blade cut through him. He toppled slowly, his garments and skin flooding red like the last of the sun.

When he hit the ground, he twitched for a moment, opened his mouth to speak - but it was too late.

Her heart like stone, Amethea stood over him and watched him die.

* * *

She stared at the fire.

In her mind’s eye, the soldiers she’d crafted with metal and watched die; in her heart, Maugrim’s passion and caress.

Little priestess.

It was a stupid phrase, archaic and clumsy. She was no more some damned priestess than she was...

...than she was a healer.

Lately, she seemed to be better at hurting things.

Heal and Harm; calls to saints and Gods. Denials of responsibility. Maugrim had told her this. She’d sat in his chambers and waited to be rescued, lost herself, crafted horrors because she’d not had the courage to refuse. In those memories now, “should have done” blazed in the fire, flames like regret.

Like
anger.

Amethea’s fingers touched the fine line that was scabbed across her throat, and then her hand moved to rest on the belt-blade that she’d been learning to use.

Strangely, it felt comforting - for the first time in her life she felt as if she was at ease with its presence.

“Got it!” Triqueta’s cry startled her, made her look up.

The Banned woman had been going over the corpses, their pouches and packs. The sky over her was almost dark now, the moons crossing the ground with wonder and light. In the gleam, Triq had sat back on her heels and she held something that caught the light - a glimmer of moon through resin.

“Ecko was right,” she said. “These guys’re soldiers.”

Soldiers.

Amethea felt her heart shrink in her chest and she wasn’t even sure why.

Ecko had gone on patrol, hunting more bad guys, fading into the darkness as though he’d never return. Redlock was prowling uneasy, axes in hands. The trade-road itself was quiet - they were off the main thoroughfare here, and far enough out of the city that no one would know or care what had happened to them.

But if they were this far out, then why were there...

Soldiers.

“They’re out of Fhaveon,” Triqueta said. She shoved the corpse over on its face, and held up the resin tag. “Twentyfourth tan, south city Range Patrol.”

“Why the rhez’re they out here?” Redlock stopped, turned. “They don’t come anything like this far. That tag his, or has he stolen it?”

“They’ve all got them, same tan,” Triq said. “And you saw the way they moved, their stance, everything about them.” She stood up, holding the craftmarker up to the bright moonlight. “Either these guys are renegade...”

“Or Fhaveon’s patrolling the trade-roads.” Redlock let out a low, awed whistle.

“Maybe they’re looking for us?” Amethea said softly.

“How would they know we’re out here?” Triqueta had acquired assorted other objects from the downed soldiers that she was now carefully sliding into various pouches. “Everything Nivrotar said - I think Redlock’s right. I think Fhaveon’s soldiers are spreading. Like some damned disease. I think the occupation’s started.”

Amethea shivered. Pulled her cloak tighter.