Road to Redemption, page 10
An inhuman bellow split the air. Zeke staggered, gasping in pain as the noise drove itself into his head like nails. It was the deep note of a hive quake, a frequency that resonated in the bones, yet it also held a pitch so high that it vibrated the teeth inside his skull.
Thumping steps. A bow wave of filthy water, emanating from the darkness of the huge pipe.
Then, squeezing its monstrous, malformed bulk beneath the still-rising grate, Trugg forced its way free.
TRUGG
It was something wrenched from the fever-addled mind of an obscura addict; bloated and horrific, yet still with enough features of the form it had perverted to be recognisable, which somehow made it all the more revolting. The arch of its back rose above Zeke’s head, and it must have weighed at least a ton. Its fur had sloughed away in parts to reveal the scabrous skin beneath, but that skin rippled with muscle, for Trugg had been kept well fed by its malformed worshippers. Its tail was thicker than Zeke’s waist where it joined the body, its claws were the length of his hands, and its teeth were the size of his forearm and dripping with foul ichor.
Trugg was a monstrous, two-headed hive rat.
Zeke wanted to scream. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to turn tail and run, leaving this hideous sight far behind him and preferably drowned under several bottles of booze. For a moment his spirit quailed and his legs trembled, ready to either collapse or carry him away.
Then Trugg’s right-most head sniffed the air, a great huffing intake of breath, and both heads turned towards the girl desperately wading towards the edge of the pool. Zeke stiffened, a newfound determination filling him. He could feel the will of the Emperor suffusing him, giving him the strength and the courage to do what was right, no matter the peril. He raised his pistols and fired.
The shots tore along Trugg’s flank, kicking up puffs of grey-brown fur and a couple of spurts of blood, but most of the shells barely penetrated the beast’s hide. Zeke heard the double click of his guns running dry and ejected the magazines automatically, reloaded on instinct, but Trugg was already wheeling towards him. He’d done little more than attract the monster’s attention.
‘Get clear!’ he yelled at the girl, who needed no further encouragement. Trugg’s two pairs of eyes focused on Zeke, and a spasm of terror ran through him. He’d never seen a living creature so vast, and now all of its malevolence was focused on him.
Trugg charged him, its feet kicking up sprays of filth as it came, the water not appearing to slow it in the slightest. Zeke fired again, saw a tooth shatter, but the monster kept coming.
He ran.
He ran for the fire nearest to Prince Reibus, seeking to put it between himself and Trugg as the beast lurched out of the water onto the shore where he’d just been standing. He dodged past the corpse of the drummer, hoping the still-warm carrion might distract the beast, but Trugg appeared to have eyes only for the morsel of meat that had just attacked it. Zeke heard its claws scraping and skittering across the rockcrete of the surround as it tried to adjust its momentum to follow him. The drum of human skin loomed up on his right, but there would be no shelter there; even if he got around to the far end of the pipe, it would still be big enough for Trugg to reach inside and get him.
He shoved his pistols back into their holsters, jumped up and kicked off the side of the monstrous pipe Trugg had emerged from, and grabbed a length of chain that hung down from the contraption that had raised the grate. His injured left arm screamed at him, the dull ache abruptly flaring up into fiery agony, and he struggled upwards using just his right arm and his knees to gain height.
The enormous rat rounded the fire and lunged for him.
Zeke dragged his legs up out of reach of the beast’s jaws just in time, and they clashed shut on empty air, but the chain was knocked swaying by the impact of Trugg’s body. Zeke held on desperately, tried to climb a little higher as Trugg turned once more to come back for another pass, but then the chain swung back the other way and he sailed through the updraft of heat from the fire.
The flames were fierce and hot beneath him, and although he’d now climbed to above their reach, the heat they gave off was terrifying in its ferocity. There was a second or two of well-remembered pain as his thin clothes failed to shield him, and the breath he painfully gasped was red-hot and choking, as though someone were stabbing the inside of his throat with superheated splinters. Then the chain swung back again, out of the full force of the fire’s heat.
Back into the path of Trugg.
This time the monster reared up onto its hind legs, bracing itself on its tail and lashing out with its front paws. Zeke couldn’t quite get his legs out of the way this time, for now Trugg was stretching up to its full reach, and a claw lodged itself in his left calf muscle and ripped down the outside of it. Zeke screamed as his flesh parted under the sheer force of the monster’s blow, and the shock of the pain seemed to drain strength from his body. Suddenly both his arms were shaking with the effort of holding him in place.
Trugg reared up again, and this time it wrapped its front paws around the chain with hideous dexterity. It tugged, seeking to bring him down closer to its gnashing twin mouths, and Zeke heard the faint creak of stressed metal from overhead. The monster’s sheer bulk might cause the collapse of the structure to which the chain was attached, and if that happened it would be a toss-up whether Zeke would be killed by falling girders or torn apart by the slavering beast that was currently beneath him.
He couldn’t draw a gun; even if he had any indication that his shells would do damage, to let go even with just one hand was to be shaken off onto the rockcrete below. Nor could he climb any higher. He gritted his teeth and held on, but his strength was ebbing. It wouldn’t be long before the choice would be made for him. The best he could hope for was that the monster would choke on his bones.
He risked a glance sideways. The far side of the pool was empty, with no sign of the girl who’d been Trugg’s initial prey. Zeke’s heart eased, just a touch. Had he not been on hand, that child would have been rat-bait. Perhaps this had been the Emperor’s plan for him after all; not to rescue the children he sought, but to at least spare a stranger pain and suffering. Zeke could make his peace with that.
He closed his eyes as the chain shook once more. If he let go voluntarily, while he still had the strength to hold on and make it a deliberate decision, could he draw fast enough to get a shot at the monster’s maw on his way into it? To at least hurt it before it devoured him? Maybe make it slightly easier for someone else to kill, or deal it a wound that might become infected and hasten its death in some manner?
There was only one way to find out. He flexed his fingers slightly, checking that they weren’t snagged or wedged in the chain, so that his release would be clean and unencumbered.
God-Emperor, lend me strength and grace for the quickest, surest draw I’ve ever made…
It was time to go.
The boom of a shotgun rang out, and Zeke’s head jerked around involuntarily. A band of armed figures were making their way down the surround.
Sigrud Morvost racked the action of her shotgun, expelling the spent casing and sending it tinkling across the rockcrete, where it got kicked by the metal-tipped boot of Grimbjorn Stonefist, who was bleeding from a wound in his hairline but otherwise apparently hale. Aberley Deel had lost one knife and had her empty hand clamped to her side across a dark stain, while Annie Three-Teeth was caked in blood and viscera, although given the various hues of it Zeke couldn’t be sure how much of it was hers.
Morvost’s shotgun boomed again, and this time a gobbet of flesh was blown out of Trugg’s side. It howled in pain, another skull-rattling shriek, and its right head snapped down to focus on this new threat. The left, however, kept reaching for Zeke, and its paws didn’t release the chain, nor did it drop back to all fours.
Trugg was as distracted as it was going to get, and Zeke couldn’t wait any longer, lest he lose any ability to pick his moment. He let go of the chain and dropped, but he didn’t reach for his guns. Instead, he aimed each boot at one of the left head’s eyes.
Whether through a confusion caused by its split attention and some shared neurological connections, the blessings of the Emperor, or sheer blind luck, Trugg’s left head neither avoided Zeke’s fall nor shifted far enough to catch him in its mouth and impale him with its teeth. His boots struck home into the beast’s dark eyes, which sent a spasm of pain up his already-injured left leg, and then he was tumbling off the broad expanse of its head. He fell forwards, sprawled for a moment across its shoulder as the monster bucked and shrieked in pain, caught a momentary nauseating whiff of its foul fur as his face passed close to its pelt, and then he fell again.
He hit the rockcrete hard, but managed to desperately roll aside as Trugg backed up from this unexpected assault on two fronts. The left head shook as it tried to clear its vision, but the right turned towards him, and the body came with it as Trugg lunged for the morsel that had tormented and eluded it.
A bolt shell hit the side of the right head’s neck, and this didn’t just kick up a cloud of fur, or a spray of blood. Flesh erupted and blood gouted, and the right head lolled to one side. Trugg staggered backwards in confusion as half of its sensory inputs began to dim, and a hitherto-unknown weight began to drag at its right side.
‘That’s my last one!’ Stonefist bellowed. ‘Take ’im!’
The left head asserted full control. The beast took a step forward towards where Zeke lay, opened its mouth and reached for him…
Thunk
The breastbone just beneath where Trugg’s necks converged abruptly sprouted a shaft of metal. The monster shrieked in pain and staggered once more, but still made a final, rage-filled lunge for Zeke.
Zeke drew and fired on full auto, putting the entire contents of two clips down its throat. He tried to aim upwards, to send the rounds up into Trugg’s cranium, but as death spread its jaws to claim him he was firing more in blind panic than anything else.
Something hit home. At least one of his shells punctured the thick bone surrounding Trugg’s brain, or severed the spinal column. Between one hammering beat of Zeke’s heart and the next, something switched off inside the monstrosity. It slumped down and the huge head landed on Zeke’s injured leg, a purplish tongue lolling out from between its jaws. Zeke screamed in pain and beat at it with the guns he was still clutching with a death grip, but he couldn’t shift it.
‘I’ve gotcha!’ Strong hands grabbed Zeke under the armpits and pulled him backwards, giving him one last stab of pain in his leg as it was wrenched from underneath Trugg’s left head. Annie Three-Teeth stepped past him, her chainaxe humming and ready, but Trugg made no further movement.
‘No sooner do I patch up one injury, than you get another,’ Stonefist muttered, for it was he who’d taken hold of Zeke, but there was good humour in his voice as he clapped Zeke on the back. ‘What manner of beast is this, that you decided to kick in the head?’
‘It’s Trugg,’ Zeke told the squat. He reholstered his pistols and let them go. His hands ached from desperately clinging to the chain, and then gripping his pistols so tightly that the cross-hatching of their grips had imprinted itself into his flesh. ‘I think they worshipped it. They were sacrificing…’ His brain kicked into gear, and he looked around. ‘The girl! There was a girl, over there! The captive Reibus had! I drew the beast away from her and she fled, but I didn’t see where!’
‘Samanta!’ Aberley Deel gasped. Zeke looked around and saw her turn to run, a heavy, limping gait with one hand still clutched to her side, but none the less determined for that as she pounded off, taking the long way around the pool’s edge towards its far side.
‘Oh, for – Deel! There might be more around! Wait up, you fool!’ Annie Three-Teeth shouted, setting off after the other woman. Sigrud Morvost turned to watch them go, looked for a moment as though she was considering following, then shrugged and turned away again. Next to her, the Choll siblings dropped the enormous – and now empty – spear cannon they’d been carrying, Alin at the trigger and Ash holding the barrel.
‘Sorry we were late,’ Alin said, nudging the stolen weapon with their foot. ‘We thought this might come in handy, yes?’ They nodded towards the body of Trugg, where the butt end of its projectile still protruded from the monster’s chest. ‘A wise decision, I think.’
‘Are the mutants dead?’ Zeke asked them. He got one hand under him and pushed himself up to his feet. He could stand, for the moment, so long as he took most of his weight on his right leg. His left calf burned, and he wasn’t sure that he was imagining the sensation of filth from Trugg’s claw finding its way into his bloodstream.
‘Dead or fled,’ Alin replied. ‘I looked back and saw Kanner freeing the captives, too.’ They reached out an arm and Zeke took it gratefully, steadying himself on them as he limped forwards.
‘Come,’ Alin said, a hint of excitement in their dry voice. ‘Let us see whether we have found your missing children.’
AFTERMATH
They hadn’t.
Zeke searched through the cages one by one, calling, but there was no sign of Essy or Donnel. None of the other captives could remember seeing them, or anyone who had looked like them, and one – a young Escher named Quickhand Kat, who readily identified herself as a thief – had been a prisoner of the mutants for close on a week.
‘Nah, din’t see none like that,’ she said, locking her fingers together and stretching her arms out above her head. ‘Only one lotta kids came in, an’ you arrived as they was about to do the first of ’em.’
‘So why didn’t the mutants sacrifice you before them?’ Alin asked as Zeke began to limp away, unsure whether he should be despairing or not. He still hadn’t found Essy and Donnel, but at least they hadn’t been eaten by Reibus’ dregs, or fed to their blasphemous idol.
‘Dunno. Grace of the God-Empress, I guess. Hey, Cawdor!’
Zeke looked around. Kat slipped past Alin and walked up to him, her dark eyes studying his face. She was small and slight, with brown hair buzzed short and her brown skin unmarked by gang tats or piercings: quick, nimble and largely unmemorable, which Zeke supposed were all excellent traits in a thief.
‘You’re Cawdor, right?’
‘Guess so,’ Zeke muttered.
‘Where’s your mask?’ Kat asked curiously, and Zeke felt another stab of guilt. His House would traditionally wear half- or even full-face masks, so that the Emperor might not think them too proud of their individuality: not that He couldn’t see the truth in their hearts if He so chose, but it was the principle of the thing. Zeke had thrown his away when he’d fled his old life. He’d no longer been sure that anything he’d been taught about the Emperor was true, and he’d wanted Him to gaze upon his face, to judge his sins and punish him accordingly.
Perhaps the Emperor had just taken His time to get around to it.
‘I lost it,’ he told Kat. ‘In a fire.’ It was the best lie he could come up with at short notice, since he certainly wasn’t going to tell the truth to this person he didn’t know, and it wasn’t like his life hadn’t been marked with fires.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kat said, and she seemed entirely genuine. ‘Thanks for coming to rescue us. God-Empress must’ve sent you.’ She made the sign of the aquila over her chest, and Zeke found himself mirroring her automatically.
‘I wasn’t being a hero,’ he told her reluctantly, feeling he owed her that much truth after the lie about his mask. ‘I was just looking for the kids.’
‘Don’t mean the Empress din’t send you,’ Kat replied with a shrug. ‘She works in mysterious ways.’
She kept looking at Zeke, who got the feeling something else was expected of him. He managed a half-smile. ‘Perhaps.’
Alin Choll came to his rescue, steering him away with one arm under his shoulder. ‘You should get your leg seen to, yes?’ the Delaque said. ‘I understand that Stonefist brought the slavers’ medicae kit with him.’
‘There are other people who need his attentions more than I do,’ Zeke replied, trying not to wince too much as he did so. ‘We should get out of here as soon as we can. Who’s to say that there isn’t another horde of those deviants somewhere nearby, and we just got lucky by attacking when a bunch of them weren’t around?’
‘A fair point,’ Alin conceded. ‘We’ll get everyone together, and move as quickly as possible. What should we do with the bodies?’
Zeke looked with distaste at the mangled corpses of the dregs. ‘Since we haven’t got anything to burn them with, let them lie.’
‘I meant the bodies of our allies,’ Alin said quietly, and Zeke’s chest tightened.
‘Who?’
Durn had bled out within a minute of losing his leg. Jassy’s heart had been punctured by something from the blunderbuss and his screams had stopped quickly as well. Murph hadn’t made it, to Eddie’s grief. However, it was Kanner’s death that Zeke found the hardest to accept.
‘He slipped?’ he asked, looking down at the body of the young man whose neck was no longer sitting at the correct angle.
‘Right after he got my door open,’ a rail-thin, white-haired Cawdor man said sadly. ‘My cage was right at the top.’
His name was, apparently, Yuriah Bones, and what was visible of his face was so lined it could have been a diagram of a whitefern’s root system. Zeke found him more unnerving than any of the mutants’ twisted forms, with his half-mask of worn leather, his clicking necklace of finger bones – each one inscribed with a prayer to the Emperor – and, most of all, a strength of faith that was almost palpable. Yuriah reminded Zeke of everything he’d always thought he should have been.
‘May the Emperor bless his soul,’ Zeke said, fighting the crushing weight of guilt that suddenly threatened to bury him. Kanner had volunteered to come on this mission, but it was Zeke who’d selected him to come into the dregs’ camp instead of staying with Syrun Kos, and it was Zeke who’d told him to free the captives.
