Road to Redemption, page 13
Heads nodded and bodies turned away, people started giving explanations to those still struggling up from sleep, and in a matter of moments the crowd around them had lessened. Zeke was left with Quickhand Kat, Alin Choll, Yuriah Bones and Laverny the Bar, who’d run the tavern in Bad News and had been the least willing of all to leave.
‘Now,’ Zeke said, fixing the youth with a stare. For a ridiculous moment he found himself wishing that he’d put his mask on when he’d woken up, and not just because Yuriah looked decidedly uncomfortable seeing him without it. Zeke knew full well the intimidation that most people felt when facing someone who was both masked and armed. ‘Either you tell me who you are and what you were actually doing, or I put a few shots into you and I go back to sleep.’
He wasn’t entirely sure that it was an idle threat, and the youth certainly seemed to take him at his word.
‘The name’s Varan, father, Varan Duskett, and I meant no harm I swear, I was just hungry!’ He looked around, his eyes sparkling with tears of apparent fear. ‘I just thought you might have some food, and I know I shouldn’t have tried to steal but I didn’t have no creds, and–’
‘That’s enough,’ Zeke cut him off. ‘Do you have any friends nearby, Varan? Anyone else who was with you?’
‘No, father, not a soul,’ Varan said, shaking his head desperately. Zeke reached his free hand into his pouch and fingered the scrimshaw there, running his fingers across the carved surface of the tooth, half-hoping for some sort of guidance on whether to believe him. The scrimshaw had come from a sumpkroc carcass that he and Lukas had found one day when they couldn’t have been much older than Varan. They’d each taken one of the huge upper fangs and worked them with their knives, Zeke scratching an – admittedly quite poor – image of a saint into his, while Lukas had decorated his with prayers. Then they’d exchanged them, as tokens of their devotion and brotherhood.
Father Infernus had been furious, but Zeke had crawled away and found the fangs again after the old man’s rage had been spent, rescuing them from where they’d been hurled. That had been his and Lukas’ secret from then on – well, one of their secrets – and although they never wore them openly, they still kept them. That had been Zeke’s first act of rebellion, now he came to think about it.
‘Do we trust him?’ Laverny asked dubiously, and Zeke let go of his good-luck charm and came back to the present.
‘Search him,’ he said, keeping his autopistol trained on Varan. ‘He says he has no money and no food. If he’s got either, then I say he’s a liar.’
‘And the Emperor detests a liar!’ Yuriah said viciously, reaching for Varan, who squeaked in alarm, but didn’t try to resist as the old man’s bony hands dug at him, searching through his clothes, his pockets and his pouches.
‘No one else in sight,’ Ash Choll reported, appearing at Zeke’s right elbow. ‘If he had friends, they’ve abandoned him, yes?’ They passed something to Zeke. ‘Here.’
It was the mask, and just the sight of it caused Quickhand Kat’s face to brighten. Zeke nodded reluctantly and, on the basis that Yuriah was close enough to stick his fingers into Varan’s eyes if the youth tried anything, took a moment to put it on. It settled into place, scratchy and uncomfortable, but since when was the lot of a sinner supposed to be a pleasant one?
‘Nothing,’ Yuriah said, sounding almost disappointed as he rocked back onto his haunches.
‘Nothing?’ Zeke asked, frowning. ‘By all the saints, that’s almost more suspicious than him lying. Who walks around the underhive with nothing in their pockets, not even a knife?’
‘Fool, or a corpse,’ Kat commented.
‘And one soon becomes the other,’ Laverny huffed, eyeing Zeke expectantly.
Zeke frowned. He’d happily shoot down someone who was threatening his life – the last few days had shown that to be true enough, for all that he’d once hoped to have left that far behind him – but killing an unarmed young man who posed him no threat, in the middle of nowhere, was not an image he could reconcile with himself.
‘What’s your story?’ he said instead, directing the question to Varan. ‘What brought you here, with nothing to your name?’
‘I’m outta Deadwired,’ Varan said, as though that explained everything. Zeke looked around.
‘Deadwired? Anyone?’
‘It’s a settlement, the next dome over,’ Laverny replied. ‘The Von Gray clan refine promethium there.’
‘Van Saar place?’ Zeke asked. The name sounded like it.
‘Mainly,’ Laverny confirmed. He nudged Varan with his foot. ‘Don’t see what it’s got to do with anything, though.’
Varan looked around at them all, his mouth agape. ‘You ain’t heard?’
‘I’ve been busy killing dregs,’ Zeke told him sourly. ‘Assume we haven’t heard… whatever it is you’re talking about.’
‘It’s gone,’ Varan said miserably. Even the tense, nervous energy suddenly seemed to drain out of him, and his eyes focused on somewhere level with Zeke’s knees and a thousand kilometres away. ‘It’s all gone.’
‘Gone?’ Zeke squatted down to bring his face more or less into line with Varan’s gaze again. ‘What do you mean, “gone”?’
Varan’s eyes met his once more. ‘Burned, innit? All burned down.’
A chill ran right through Zeke, from the crown of his head down to the base of his booted feet. ‘Burned?’
‘An accident?’ Alin asked softly, and Zeke’s stomach knotted up. ‘Or an attack?’
‘Dunno,’ Varan replied. ‘I weren’t there, was I? I’d gone to Sternhold to pick up an isotropic fuel rod, but they didn’t have none. Came back to find the whole Emperor-damned place burned black, smoke hanging about so thick you could barely see, let alone breathe! Broke my knife trying to dig out my da’s old place, had to run for it when the scavengers came around.’ He slumped backwards, tears streaking down his cheeks. ‘I ain’t had nothing to eat for two days! My da’s dead, the whole place is dead!’
Zeke stood up slowly, trying to fight down the bile that was rising in his throat. ‘Give him something to eat.’
‘Father?’ Kat asked, shocked.
‘I’m not saying make him a banquet!’ Zeke snapped at her. ‘Give him half a ration bar and some water, at least, then get someone to keep an eye on him. Domitry and Ibram, maybe.’ He looked around. ‘Everyone’s awake now anyway. It can’t be long until lights up. We may as well start moving.’
‘Moving where?’ Laverny asked.
Zeke thrust his autopistol back into its holster. ‘We’re going to Deadwired.’
WELCOME TO DEADWIRED
Smoke still hung in the air, thick and lazy, because the ventilation systems around Deadwired were mediocre at best, and the town had burned thoroughly. It gave a dirty, tainted tinge to the light of the lumens that had come up to mark the day-cycle, and Zeke found himself wishing that his mask covered his nose and mouth, so he might be able to inhale without taking down the scent of death and destruction. It wasn’t strong enough to choke, but it scratched at the throat with smoky talons, as though gently trying to claw its way inside you. Coughs rang out down the line of their procession, with sparing sips of water taken in attempts to quell them.
‘This is what happened to your home?’ Alin Choll asked as they passed between the first two blackened shells of buildings. The Delaque’s voice was even more subdued than its usual whisper-quiet, as though they were standing in a great cathedral, or perhaps a mortuary. Which they were, in a way.
‘Fire is fire,’ Zeke muttered, looking around him. ‘But, yes.’
‘You escaped something like this?’ Alin was looking around, one hand held over their face in an attempt to block out the worst of the smoke. ‘When the flames were raging?’
‘Jumped out of a window and ran for it,’ Zeke told them. ‘Hid in an old water still until everything had died down.’
‘Perhaps you are indeed blessed by the Emperor, yes?’ Alin said, shaking their head.
‘Don’t you start with that,’ Zeke muttered. ‘It’s bad enough that everyone else seems to think I’m Saint Ezra, or something equally ridiculous.’
‘Ezra? That doesn’t seem likely,’ Alin commented. ‘Kodran, perhaps.’
‘Saint Kodran?’ Zeke asked, incredulous. ‘The saint who walked unharmed through fire?’
‘He was always one of our favourite stories as children. And he would be a better fit than Ezra, yes?’ Alin pointed out. Zeke was about to protest when he saw the faint twitch at one corner of the Delaque’s mouth, and realised that Alin was joking with him. It didn’t help his mood, it just sent it spiralling downwards in a different direction.
‘I’d appreciate it,’ he bit out, ‘if you didn’t mock the saints by comparing me to–’
‘Spider!’
The shout came from back down the line. Zeke whirled, clawing his pistols free as a scream rang out, followed swiftly by others. People were scattering, panicking, but he couldn’t see clearly enough to get a shot. Then there was a flash of light and the sound of a detonation, and a many-legged body the size of a large child flew backwards away from the caravan, courtesy of what could only have been Grimbjorn Stonefist’s power hammer.
‘Eyes open!’ Zeke bellowed, fighting against the smoke that threatened to turn his words into splutters in his throat. ‘Everyone without a weapon, onto the crawlers! Everyone else, stay alert, there might be–’
Alin Choll’s stubgun coughed, the sound of the shot muffled by its bulky gunshroud, and Zeke whirled again as the ricochet whined off into the distance. No more than thirty feet away crouched another spider, a scratch showing on its shiny brown-and-black carapace where Alin’s round had glanced off due to the oblique angle at which it had struck. The monstrous arachnid was rising back to its feet again after the impact of the shot. Zeke flicked off the safety and fired on full auto, and the barrage of shells smashed through the spider’s chitinous protection. The creature collapsed into a twitching heap, and Zeke breathed a sigh of relief that he nearly sucked back into his lungs as more gunfire erupted from behind him.
‘There’s more of them!’
‘Over there, over there!’
‘I told you!’ Varan Duskett was shouting from somewhere, panic causing his voice to crack. ‘I told you about the scavengers!’
‘Blood mad,’ Alin Choll muttered darkly, a long knife appearing in their free hand. ‘I’ve heard of such things before. We should–’
But Zeke never found out what they should do, because at that moment something huge and eight-legged dropped on Alin Choll from above, bearing them to the ground. The Delaque crumpled under the weight with a startled cry, their long limbs flailing. Zeke recoiled, a yelp of utter horror escaping him involuntarily. He dodged sideways as something shiny drifted towards him: the deceptively-thin thread of silk by which the spider had descended silently from above, the same means other dark shapes were even now using to drop onto the caravan.
Zeke raised his gun again, but the angle was wrong; he might hit Alin, or the shots could punch straight through the spider and hit his friend anyway. Gritting his teeth, he took a one-step run-up, planted his aching left leg and used his right to deliver the hardest kick he could into the creature’s abdomen.
It was like kicking a building block. Zeke staggered backwards, his right shin ablaze with pain, but the impact had knocked the spider clear of Alin, albeit only just. It landed facing him, the black crystals of its eyes focused on him, and its legs tensed.
‘Oh sku–’
The spider leapt for Zeke’s face, and he threw himself to his right in what was more of a half-controlled fall than anything else. There was a tug at his shoulder as one of the thing’s clawed feet caught on his tunic for a moment, but not enough to bring him down beneath it, and he landed on his right side as the spider tumbled into the dirt only a few feet away. He heard the scrabbling of its legs as it righted itself, oriented itself on him…
Zeke rolled away from it, bringing his right arm uppermost, and fired just as it jumped. The shots ripped into its underside and the force of them stalled its leap in mid-air and flipped it over, and it landed on its back directly in front of him with its legs already curling up in death.
‘Alin!’ Zeke barked. He could hear shouts and screams elsewhere, but first things first. ‘Are you hurt?’ He scrambled around, reaching for the Delaque just as Alin sat up, their face twisted in pain and clutching at their right shoulder. Zeke’s already hammering heart skipped a beat. Spiders injected venom that liquefied their victim’s bodies; left untreated, a bite would fester and rot with alarming swiftness as the enzymes did their deadly work, and a victim’s internal organs would literally disintegrate.
‘I’ll live,’ Alin replied. They dropped their hand and Zeke caught the faint glint of what looked like body armour, thankfully intact, beneath the pierced fabric of their greatcoat. ‘These things have a bite like a mining drill, though.’ They flashed Zeke a quick, tight smile. ‘Now I owe you my life as well as my sibling’s, yes?’
‘Move now, tally up later,’ Zeke told them with relief, reaching out and taking the Delaque’s hand, and together they hauled themselves upright.
Not a moment too soon.
The spiders must have been taken by some form of blood madness, as Alin had suggested; the Emperor-damned things were swarming everywhere, and although there were still considerably fewer of them than there were people in the caravan, only a few of the defenders were able to put up much resistance. Zeke saw Sigrud Morvost blow one huge arachnid apart with her shotgun, but another was dragging Domitry away by his leg. Zeke’s shots killed that one, too, and Aberley Deel’s knives claimed another, but at least one spider that had dropped from above was retreating back up its silken thread with a half-wrapped body clutched in its legs. Zeke ignored it: the poor wretch within wasn’t struggling, so they were dead already, and the spider wouldn’t return until it had finished its meal. That would be a day or more from now, far too long to trouble his caravan. He needed to conserve his shells.
‘Get back here!’ someone shouted. It was Ash Choll, their laspistol still spitting super-focused beams of light as they tried to keep the spiders at bay, but they were shouting at Laverny the Bar. The former tavern-keeper’s nerve had broken, and he was fleeing away from the caravan towards an alleyway between the remains of two buildings. Zeke saw a spider twitch towards the fleeing man, but only for a moment before Ash put a lasbolt through its head.
‘Laverny!’ Zeke shouted, but the word became a cough, and the man showed no sign of heeding him anyway. He ran on, into the alleyway… then came to a sudden, stumbling halt. His screams took on a new, more desperate edge as he thrashed against an unseen adversary which held him fast despite his efforts.
He’d run straight into a monstrous web. And, detaching itself from the shadows above him, the owner began to descend rapidly towards its meal.
Zeke and Alin both fired, but they were rushed, and the distance was greater than that for which either of their pistols were designed to shoot with any accuracy. The shots either missed or had no effect, and the spider’s rapid descent terminated a moment later with its fangs sinking into Laverny’s neck.
‘Help!’ he screamed in agony. ‘Help!’
Alin Choll, their face set grimly, aimed their stub gun carefully with both hands and squeezed the trigger once more. This time the shot flew true, and the top part of Laverny’s head was blown away, instantly ending the doomed man’s suffering. The spider continued with its meal, unconcerned.
Whatever frenzy had seized the spiders seemed to be abating. One by one, those that were still harassing the caravan turned and fled, either scuttling away into the shadows or ascending back up their silken lines into the sullen smoke clouds that still hung thickly overhead. In a matter of seconds, Zeke’s progress down the caravan was met by nothing except panicked gasping, the cries of screaming children, and the wails of the wounded who yet lived.
‘Stay alert!’ Zeke ordered, as the caravan’s defenders began to turn their attention to their fallen colleagues. ‘They might return!’
‘Someone get me something to clean these wounds!’ Stonefist bellowed, from his right. ‘Quickly now!’
Zeke vaulted onto the top of one of the crawlers and pulled open the crate in which Laverny had packed his best alcohol. Brudo had declined to ration it out – wisely, Zeke felt – and so the bottles of glistening liquid were still untouched; the worldly wealth of a man now being devoured by a giant spider somewhere off to Zeke’s left. Zeke selected something that looked clear, on the basis that it would have the fewest contaminants; the strength of the alcohol in it was, while hardly uniform or regulated, not likely to be in question.
It was while he was standing up there, drawing his arm back to toss the bottle to Stonefist, that Zeke saw exactly why the spiders had fled.
They’d been big creatures, perhaps a metre long in the body and double that across the span of their legs. Fast and savage, especially when in a feeding frenzy, and with a bite that could kill. They were formidable hunters, true enough, and even an armed person could fall victim to one; as had been amply demonstrated by the attack on the caravan.
They were as nothing when set against the monster that now dragged its ancient bulk from out of the ruins of a charred building.
It was a sickly pale green, with blotches of black across its hide like smears of ancient dried blood. One of its middle legs was missing on the left, but that didn’t seem to affect its movement any. Its body was the size of the crawler Zeke was standing on, its head as large as the body of one of its smaller kin, and it made a disturbing whistling sound as it clack-clack-clacked forwards with alarming swiftness for something of its sheer bulk.
