Iron Jackal (28 page)

He peered down the alley. It was dark in there, and the shadows foiled his eyes.

Well, there was no way he was going in there to look. He wasn’t
that
curious.

Then something moved. It was just on the edge of visibility, a suggestion of a shape in the blackness. He fought to make it out. Something large, round, low to the ground.

As he stared, it unfolded long limbs and straightened, and he realised that it had been crouched, curled up, with its back to him. Now it expanded, rising to its feet, dropping one shoulder, turning towards him. And it stepped into the light from the square.

It was seven feet tall to the shoulder, but it would have been nine if it was standing straight. Part human, part animal, part machine. Its short fur was wet and greasy, like something newly born. Its arms were thin and disproportionately long, ending in outsize hands with double-bladed bayonets in place of fingers. The knees of its legs were bent backwards, like a horse or a dog. And a dog was what its face resembled: a snarling hybrid of metal and muzzle.

No
, thought a small, clear voice inside that cut through the flapping panic in his mind. He recalled the sorcerer’s words.
A jackal. Beware the Iron Jackal
.

One half of its head was metal, as were much of the limbs. Machine parts sewed into and out of muscle and skin; servos and pistons were visible in its legs. Its spine was a spiked chain running up its hunched back, and there were thin plates of black armour scattered haphazardly across its body. Something about the colour and the look of them was uncomfortably familiar, but the connection evaded him for the moment.

One connection didn’t, though. One of its eyes was a red mechanical orb. The other stared wildly from its black-muzzled jackal face, without an iris, only a single huge black pupil.

That was Trinica’s eye.

He let out an inarticulate cry of fear as he stumbled away from the alley. The Iron Jackal’s lips quivered and curled, exposing long teeth. Frey raised his revolver and fired at it: once, twice, three times. But whether it was his bad aim in the darkness or something else, the bullets hit nothing.

Then he ran, and it came after him.

He fled along the edge of the square, boots pounding on the cobbles. He had too much pride to call for help, but a wordless yell of alarm would serve just as well, if only there was someone to hear it. But the square was eerily deserted, and the shuttered windows that faced it were dark.

The creature bounded out of the alleyway, running on all fours in great leaps, its bayonet fingers shrieking along the stone. Frey heard its hot animal panting, the screech and thump of each leap and landing, getting rapidly louder as it ate up the distance between them.

It’s coming it’s coming oh shit!

The Iron Jackal bunched and sprang. Frey darted aside, down a lane that ran off the square. A dark pile of muscle and metal and fur swept by, blades skinning the air, missing him by centimetres. Its momentum carried it past the end of the lane and out of sight.

The lane descended in long stepped sections, lit by a few lonely lamps in wall sconces. Frey put his head down and ran hard, driven by utter terror. He had a few seconds to get ahead, and he meant to make them count.

The sight of the thing that meant to kill him, the hard reality of it, had rocked him to his core. Until now, he’d been able to kid himself into thinking that the danger had been exaggerated. He wasn’t kidding himself any more.

He looked over his shoulder, and saw that the beast had entered the lane and was coming after him, running on two legs now in a grotesque lope. The light seemed to slide off it, pouring away as it passed beneath the lamps. Its red eye shone in the shadow. In desperation, he fired at it as he ran, emptying his revolver to no effect.

The lane ended in a steep set of steps, which descended to a sunken path by the side of a canal. Frey slipped on them in his haste, heels skidding, and almost ended up in the canal himself. He hit the path with a heavy jolt, but recovered his balance well enough to sprint off without losing too much speed.

There was a high wall to his left and the canal to his right. Boats were moored in quiet rows, bumping gently against one another. Houses loomed above him, black and dank in the chill of the night. There were lights in the windows, signs of warmth and life. No one there could help him. His lungs were beginning to burn. He wasn’t in good enough shape to run this hard, but the fear of what was behind him wouldn’t let him slow.

He passed a group of men on the path, who saw him coming and moved out of the way to avoid being knocked aside. As it was, he clipped one of them with his shoulder and sent him staggering into the wall. He ran on with their indignant exclamations ringing in his ears.

More steps, leading up off the path. He took them. The short ascent made his thighs ache. A poky street ran along the top of the canal wall. He staggered across it and into an alley, where he finally rested, heaving air into his aching chest.

He listened, trying to focus past the blood thudding in his ears. Where was the beast? He hadn’t seen it since he’d hit the canal path. If it had been following, surely it would have encountered the same men he had?

Perhaps it didn’t want to be seen. Or perhaps he’d lost it.

He holstered his revolver. Bullets wouldn’t do him any good. He wasn’t a crack shot, but he was sure that he’d hit it at least once. The thing hadn’t even flinched.

He heard a thump from overhead. He looked up, his breath catching: but all he could see between the buildings was a cloudy sky painted yellow by the city lights.

Something moving up there. Something heavy. The scrape of metal against slate. The sound of an animal breathing.

Frey pressed himself against the wall, eyes fixed on the rooftops.
You’re invisible
, he told himself.
You’re not here
.

He glanced at other end of the alley. There was a street there, well lit. Late night shops were open, and he could see people. People meant safety. It couldn’t get him if there were people about, surely? A beast like that wouldn’t want to show itself out in the open.

If he could just get to that street . . .

There was a sinister growl from overhead. The Iron Jackal was craning over the edge of a rooftop, looking down on him. He felt his stomach plunge and his limbs go cold.

He bolted.

He heard the rush of air as it dropped down into the alley, the impact of its landing, the snarl as it came for him. The mouth of the alley seemed a hundred metres away. He put every ounce of his strength into his legs and
willed
himself to make it. Every passing second, the Iron Jackal was closer, and closer, so close that it had to have caught him by now. But not yet, not yet, and then—

His intuition screamed at him, some millennia-old sense that warned him when a predator was about to pounce. Whether he tripped then, or whether he went down on purpose, he wasn’t sure. But he went to the ground, rolling and tumbling out of the alley onto the street, and the Iron Jackal passed over him, close enough to make the tail of his greatcoat flap.

Frantic, he got his feet under him and ran up the street, gasping and howling incoherently. Shoppers froze and stared at him. The Iron Jackal picked itself up, surprised at having missed its target. Its head turned, fixed on Frey, and it came bounding after him again.

‘Someone bloody help me!’ Frey yelled, who’d gone beyond pride and was only thinking about survival now. But the shoppers just goggled, and hurried out of his way. He glanced over his shoulder at the terrifying daemon steaming up the street towards him. It bounded between the shoppers, and none of them took the slightest notice of it. Their eyes didn’t follow the creature; they stayed on Frey instead.

They couldn’t see it.

A mad thought fled across his mind: was this all in his head, then? What if he stood still and let the thing come at him? Would it prove to be harmless?

It didn’t matter. He was far too scared to find out. As if the thing itself wasn’t bad enough, the aura of daemonic terror that it put out drove all sense from him.

It was no safer in the open. The Iron Jackal would catch him in moments on the street. He ran for another cross-alley, past lighted windows selling chocolates and toys and clothes. Jolly things for happy people, set in pretty displays. Frey was no longer in the same world. He was alone against the beast, in the midst of an oblivious crowd.

The Iron Jackal saw where he was going and lunged to intercept, but Frey reached the alley first. The beast bounded in after him, back on all fours, charging. The alley was only short, and Frey burst out on to another street, looking behind him as he went. The creature seemed to fill the alley, mismatched eyes glaring above a fanged mouth, a nightmare vision of naked savagery.

A dazzle of light, and a clanging bell. Frey’s heart lurched in alarm as he saw something huge bearing down on him. He tripped and fell, rolling onto his side an instant before a tram rumbled past him, and all he could see was a wall of wheels a few centimetres from his nose. He scrambled back, and then suddenly hands were on him and he was being pulled to his feet. He shook them off in a panic, sliding his arms out of his greatcoat to escape, but they grabbed him again.

‘Here! Calm down!’

The authority in that voice restored a little sanity. They were militiamen, in the Archduke’s blue and grey. Four of them.

‘You alright, feller?’

‘Here, you nearly got yourself killed!’

He wasn’t listening to them. He was looking at his greatcoat, which had fallen to the floor. There were three long parallel slashes across the back of it.

The tram was slowing to a stop, its raucous bell still echoing in the night. It slid out of the way to reveal the mouth of the alley he’d come from.

There, standing in full view of the street, was the Iron Jackal. Frey threw himself back against the militiamen, but they grabbed him and restrained him.

‘No! No! It’s there! Can’t you bloody see it?’ he howled.

‘Calm down, I said! Don’t make us calm you.’

‘You ain’t gonna like it if we do,’ added another.

But the Iron Jackal made no move to attack. It simply watched him, its hunched back rising and falling. It lifted one bayonet-finger to its blunt muzzle.

Sssh
.

Then it stepped back into the alley and was gone, leaving Frey to wilt into the arms of the militia as the last of his strength left him.

Eighteen

Crake is Troubled – Distinguished Company – Two Histories – The Tooth

T
he tavern was called The Wayfarers. It was pleasant enough, nestled on the side of a hill in a quiet district of Thesk, with the palace visible in the distance through windows paned with coloured glass. The bar area was full of niches and sheltered corners, and there were parlours upstairs. It was a place for privacy, away from the raucous press of the dockside taverns. Prices were high, but not exclusive. Guards on the door ensured order within.

All in all, it was Crake’s kind of drinking hole. The décor reminded him of his university days, with its cramped feel, the dark wood-panelled walls, the low murmur of conversation and the stuffy warmth of several fires. In other circumstances, he would have taken great comfort in finding himself here, scribbling formulae on a piece of paper with a pint of black ale in a pewter mug. But he was troubled, and he couldn’t set himself at ease.

The Cap’n had woken him up in something of a state last night. Crake had listened with growing horror to the story of the attack he’d suffered. Frey showed him the slash-marks along the back of his greatcoat, desperate to prove that he wasn’t as mad as he sounded. But Crake needed no convincing. He was already gravely concerned.

Frey had been dragged off to the Militia’s district headquarters for causing a disturbance, but once he’d calmed down he managed to convince them to let him go. After that, he came to see Crake, and after that he was going to take a dose of Shine, since it was the only way he’d get any sleep that night. Crake usually disapproved of narcotics, but tonight he couldn’t blame the Cap’n.

It will come for you three more times
.
The third time will be on the night of the full moon
.
If you’re not dead already by then, that night will be your last
.

That was the first. And it would only get stronger.

He
had
to find a way to stop it.

He sat in a corner of the tavern, furiously scribbling calculations, pen scratching over paper. He’d consulted what tomes of daemonism he had on the
Ketty Jay
, but they’d offered him nothing. He’d spoken with the daemonists he knew in Thesk, one of whom was an old friend from Galmury who had been responsible for getting him into the Art in the first place. Only one had heard of any daemonist who’d attempted something similar to what Crake was trying: an obscure fellow named Parkwright, who’d published some articles in secret daemonist broadsheets and then went mysteriously silent. Needless to say, those broadsheets wouldn’t be easy to get hold of, if it were possible at all.

The problem was that there was so little call for daemonism outside the sanctum. Daemons, when summoned, were capable of escaping a daemonist’s protective measures, with terrible consequences – Crake had ample experience of that – but they never lasted long outside of the resonator fields that pinned them to human reality. Their frequency was naturally out of phase with the world that people saw and felt and heard, and they returned to that state unless thralled to an object or, in the case of the Manes and the Imperators, to a body.