The Ring of Five (24 page)

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They wore black uniforms with silver markings, and polished black leather boots. Their faces had the same pixie shape as his own, and he imagined, the same eyes--one brown and one blue. But there the resemblance ended, or at least Danny hoped it did. For the two Cherbs wore expressions of mingled brutality and cunning. Danny had seen Rufus Ness, of course, but that had been in the relatively tame surroundings of the Painted Wall. Here they seemed much more threatening.

The black boat inched closer. The two Cherbs examined him with open curiosity. Danny smiled weakly and waved at them. They stared for another moment; then the engine of the boat roared, her stern dug in and the boat sped off. Danny breathed a sigh of relief.

"What do you think you're doing?" Captain Strank barked angrily. "They could have boarded us."

"I'm--I'm sorry," Danny stammered.

"You never do see Cherbs until too late," Strank grumbled.

"Where's Starling?"

"Gone. Went over the side at dawn onto a fishing boat." Danny stared at Strank, feeling a wave of panic. He hadn't entirely trusted Starling, but he had been glad to have him there. He quelled his fear by summoning an image of Brunholm. In an instant his mind was ice-cold. He turned his back on Strank and stared straight ahead. He didn't need Starling.

Much of the geography lesson about Westwald was hazy, but there was one thing he did not forget. As the steamer forged up the river, a shape began to resolve

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itself, dominating the town, massive and grim, so that Danny felt at once repelled, and, on another level, attracted. Even though you could barely see it through the smog, every soul in Westwald knew it was there every moment of every day, though they muttered and turned aside and averted their gaze. It was always there, and for many it was their final destination: the fortress of Grist. Headquarters of the Cherbs, home of the Ring.

The ship began to slow and Danny could see a busy dock up ahead. There was a redbrick railway station on the quay. As they got nearer Danny could see that the windows were begrimed and the steel pillars were rusted. On the roof there was a gun emplacement manned by uniformed Cherbs. The quayside was in a state of chaos. A crane had dropped several sacks, and golden grain spilled from them across one of the railway lines. Armed Cherbs stood on a dirty-looking locomotive, shouting at the crane operator.

The Cherbs yelled at a group of men who were unloading another boat, and the men scurried to clean up the mess. The men were thin and poorly dressed against the damp, cold early-morning air. Danny could see that they were nervous. They didn't seem to be fearful of the Cherbs on the train, but kept glancing upward. He followed their gaze. There were birds circling high above the city. No, not birds ... great winged shapes wheeling in the dirty air.

"What are they?" Danny asked Strank.

"Seraphim," the man muttered, and a shadow of fear crossed his face. Danny looked back at the men clearing

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the railway track. A gout of oily smoke from the locomotive drifted across them, and one of the men, under cover of the smoke, scooped some of the grain into his pocket.

It took only a few minutes to clear the track. Danny was sorry to see the grain swept up. The golden corn had looked like a pool of sunshine against the dreary background of the dockside. The locomotive got up steam and, billowing black smoke, hid the wheeling Seraphim from view.

As the ship made fast to the quay, Strank called Danny over.

"My job is done now. You get off my ship."

"Don't worry," Danny said, "I'm going."

"You got papers?" Strank asked, suddenly looking worried.

"Why? You afraid you'll get into trouble? Don't worry. You might even get a medal or something for taking me to Westwald."

Strank looked puzzled. Danny went down to the lower deck, where two of the Skreen deckhands had put a gangway to the quayside in place. The minute the gangway touched the quay, two Cherb soldiers were in place at the end. Danny studied them for a while. They looked down at passing people from under the shiny peaks of their caps, and he could see that in their turn, the shabbily dressed passersby gave them a wide berth. The soldiers stood with their thumbs hooked into the belts of their black uniforms, guns slung over their shoulders, obviously seeing themselves as far superior to anyone else on the dock. That might work to my advantage, Danny

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thought. Once they see my eyes, they'll think I'm one of them. They'll be eating out of my hand.

Without another thought he strode confidently down the gangplank to the Cherbs, who watched without expression.

"Hi," he said. The nearest Cherb looked him up and down without saying a word. He was tall for a Cherb, with a mole in the center of his forehead just above his two slanting eyes, which gave him the odd appearance of having three eyes. The other Cherb seemed to be pretending that Danny wasn't there.

"Er, hello," Danny said.

"What do we have here, Sergeant?" the first Cherb said.

"I don't know, Lieutenant." The second one turned and pretended to notice Danny for the first time. This one had shiny dark brown skin stretched tight on his face, which made him look like a snake.

"I think what we have here," went on Three Eyes, as Danny was starting to think of him, "is a deserter."

"A deserter, sir? You mean one of our lads who has gone on the run?"

"I'm afraid so, Sergeant."

"No, no," Danny said, "I'm here to see Rufus Ness." The two Cherbs smiled, revealing rows of sharp little teeth.

"Are you now, sonny," Snake said. "And why do you have to see Mr. Ness?"

"I need him to bring me to Suzerrain Longford." The two soldiers looked at each other in mock amazement.

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"Suzerrain Longford, is it?" Snake said. "Why, certainly. I'll bring you myself."

"Will you?" Danny said eagerly.

"Of course not, you horrible little toerag!"
Snake bellowed. "Where are your papers?"

"I haven't got any," Danny said faintly.

"It ain't got any, sir," Snake reported to Three Eyes.

"Are you stupid or insane, or both?" Three Eyes inquired. "You come walking off a ship demanding to meet those whose names your filthy little mouth shouldn't even know how to form, and want to be taken to them. What unit did you desert from? Answer me now!"

"I really have to see Suzerrain Longford," Danny said desperately. "I ... I know he'll want to see me...."

The two soldiers roared with laughter. Danny could see passing workers giving him a pitying look, which should have made him stop, but he couldn't help himself.

"Stop laughing!" he shouted. "Take me to see someone from the Ring of Five!"

The laughter stopped. The two Cherbs were looking at him with hard expressions on their faces. Danny felt a cold shadow fall over him. He looked up in time to see a great wing sweep overhead, then dip behind one of the ship's funnels.

"He wants to see the Ring, does he," Three Eyes murmured. "This Cherb might see them sooner than he thinks."

"I'm not a--" Danny was going to say "a Cherb," but he stopped himself in time. "Are you going to take me?"

"There's only one place you're being took," Snake

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said softly; then, quicker than the eye could see, his hand shot out. Danny's head blazed with pain. He fell to the ground.

He came to in a railway carriage. He was sitting between two Cherbs he had never seen before. The carriage was shabby and dirty. Some of the overhead lights were broken, and the windows were so filthy, it felt like night. The rest of the carriage was crammed with people, but despite that, the seats around Danny and the Cherbs were empty, and people averted their eyes when Danny looked up. The men wore cheap suits and looked pale and ill-fed. The women wore shapeless dresses, patched here and there, although sometimes one had tried to enliven the outfit with a colorful brooch or a ribbon, or a slash of brightly colored lipstick. No one spoke. Their faces were sad and careworn.

Danny felt his head. There was a large bump just above his ear. What a fool he had been! Thinking he could just waltz in and get to talk to the most important man in the city.

"Take your hand away from your head," one of his captors growled.

"Where are we going?" Danny groaned.

"Where do you think you're going? Punishment battalion is where. Harden up them soft hands of yours."

"What's the punishment battalion?"

"That's enough talk out of you. Shut up." Danny opened his mouth, but the Cherb lifted his hand. Danny closed his mouth. His head was sore enough already.

The train stopped at several overground stations.

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The platforms were grimy and unkempt, although Danny could see ornate tilework and wrought metal underneath the layers of dirt. The stations after that were underground. Eerie, silent places with dim lights and passengers scuttling about in the gloom. At each stop more of the passengers got off, until in the end there were only Danny and his two guards in the carriage. The train sped up. Danny had the feeling that they were going deeper and deeper into the earth. The carriage started to get warmer.

"Where are we--" he started to ask, but a booted foot crashed into his shin and cut off his question.

"You'll find out soon enough," one of the guards growled.

There were no lights in the tunnel outside now. On and on the train sped. Danny thought he saw deserted stations through the window; unlit platforms rushed past, and he felt that they were traveling through an under ground ghost city. Despite the pain in his hand and his leg, he started to doze fitfully, each time waking with a start and looking wildly around at the jolting, rushing carriage before realizing with despair that he was a captive.

He didn't know how long it took--time meant nothing in the empty tunnels--but in the end, the train began to slow. Danny felt his heart lift a little. Nothing could be worse than the long descent into darkness. One of the Cherbs must have sensed what Danny was thinking, for he grinned an unpleasant grin.

"The fun ain't even started yet," he said.

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Up ahead Danny could see lights, and he strained to see through the filthy windows. The track widened and another train appeared going the other way, its freight carriages loaded with rocks and soil. The brakes of Danny's train squealed as without warning, the tunnel widened into a large cavern hewn out of the earth. Everywhere there were people working, digging, wheeling barrows, breaking rocks, filling wagons. And everywhere there were black-clad Cherbs with whips and clubs, standing guard over the workers. As the train halted, Danny saw a skinny Messenger who looked like Les pushing an overloaded barrow. He fell to the ground and was beaten until he got to to his feet.

The guards hauled Danny up and pushed him through the open door. Danny saw dozens of workers hauling earth from a great opening in the ground. The shouts and curses of their guards and the whimpers of the beaten echoed in the great chamber. Sweat and dirt mingled on the faces of the workers, doing little to disguise their weariness and despair. One of his captors flung him forward so that he fell on his knees on the platform.

"Welcome to the tunnel," the Cherb growled.

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THE SERAPHIM

Danny lost all sense of time. There was no day or night on the punishment battalion, just relentless grinding work. They were building a tunnel, but to what end, Danny did not know, and before long he stopped wondering. They worked in semidarkness, stooped over painfully in damp hot shafts, and slept where they fell--when they were allowed. Meals were a thin soup and hard black bread, and they drank water from the puddles that formed at the edge of the tunnel. There was no slacking--a Cherb guard was always nearby--and no talking either, although Danny had no one to talk to anyway. The ordinary people and Messengers would not talk to him, thinking that he was a Cherb, and Danny had no desire to talk to the hard-bitten Cherbs who had found their way onto the punishment battalion.

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Apart from the Cherbs, his fellow toilers were the same cross-section of people he had seen on the streets of Westwald, although thinner and more harried-looking. There were women and children as well. As the days wore on he saw that the guards, though brutal, sometimes looked the other way--bribed, he thought, although how the money to bribe them was brought in, he didn't know. Once he looked down a dark shaft and saw light at the end of it, and children sitting in rows in front of a blackboard. One of the Messengers saw him looking and aimed a piece of timber at his head. Danny only just got out of the way. And once he saw a child perched on a rock, engrossed in a brightly colored book.

At the start, when he tried to speak to the other workers, they glared at him and moved away. Suspecting some kind of trap, he thought. As his imprisonment wore on, he thought that he could see some compassionate looks. The Cherbs were harder on him than they were on the others, as though in some obscure way he had let their side down by ending up on a punishment battalion. He was mocked relentlessly, and beaten even when he had done nothing. They often stole his food and he went hungry for days. Once, when he was on the point of collapse from hunger, he looked up to see a piece of gray bread sitting on a rock beside him. He seized it and crammed it into his mouth. When he had finished he looked warily around. The thin Messenger who reminded him of Les was watching from the shadows. He nodded brusquely at Danny and turned away.

Danny stumbled on in a fog of weariness. When it all