Road to Redemption, page 17
She wouldn’t help him. Bella had risked enough by looking away those times; she wouldn’t go against the father’s decrees. Garrow’s face was alight with eagerness mixed with trepidation, for he wanted Zeke’s knowledge of his own sins burned away, but worried that Zeke would let his secret slip before he died. There’d be no help from that quarter.
The only person Zeke had ever counted on, the only person he’d ever thought might help him if things had got to this stage, was the one who’d betrayed him in the first place. Lukas’ face was in the dirt, not looking at him.
‘Why?’ Zeke called to him, weakly, but Lukas didn’t respond.
No one knew fire like Redemptionists did. Zeke had called it forth himself on uncountable occasions, with the sparsest of fuel and the most basic of heat sources, and had stood transfixed by the flames as they danced and lived and died. Their very movement was like a prayer to the Emperor on their own, and that was before he factored in the holy work they were put to, purifying the heretic and the mutant. Zeke had given those sinners to the flames, and sung hymns as they’d screamed, as their flesh had melted, and run, and then turned black.
This time, as the flames were built up with alarming speed, and roared higher and higher, Zeke no longer thought they looked like prayers.
‘I always told you that you’d burn,’ Kabriel hissed into his ear, as though he needed reminding of the scorn she’d always poured on him like it was fuel that could have caught a wayward spark and ignited. ‘Stop struggling! At least have courage and faith in death, even if you lacked it in life!’
Zeke didn’t stop struggling. It didn’t do him any good.
‘Are we ready?’ Father Infernus asked.
‘Emperor be praised, we are!’ Razeel called back. He was lit up by the flames, and while his robes appeared largely unchanged in the light, his skin and even his teeth were alternately glowing red and lost in shadow.
‘Bring forth the sinner!’ Infernus boomed. Somehow his old, cracked voice of smoke and spite blossomed into a mighty thing of bombast and glory when the fires were high. Zeke had once thought it a sign of the Emperor’s favour, that their work was approved of by the Lord of the Golden Throne. Now, as he was dragged towards the flames, he felt it was far more likely that Infernus just got a kick out of burning people alive.
‘Does the sinner accept his misdeeds, and beg the Emperor for forgiveness?’ Infernus asked grandly, spreading his arms and turning towards Zeke as though they were in front of a settlement crowd, instead of their own band of companions in the depths of the underhive badlands.
The answer to the question was inconsequential in terms of anything except what might happen once Zeke’s soul had been separated from his living flesh by excruciating agony. Confirm or deny, he’d burn just the same.
Zeke spat into the father’s face, and for a moment hope of a swift ending jumped in his heart as the old man’s hand clawed for the pistol at his belt. Then Infernus wiped his face clean, smiling maliciously, and Zeke’s hope died.
‘Raise the props!’ Infernus called, still smiling. ‘Hold him higher over the flames! It will take a long burn to cleanse the sins of this one, so let’s make him think on them a while!’
A metal pole was brought up and Zeke was wrestled into proximity with it. Try as he might, he couldn’t prevent his hands being brought up behind it.
‘Lukas!’ Infernus bawled. ‘Come! Tie his hands! Atone for the stain on your soul which your proximity to him has left!’
Lukas sidled forth, his eyes downcast. Zeke stared at him, daring him to look up and meet his gaze, but it didn’t happen.
‘Zakastra, the rope,’ Infernus ordered. Zakastra held it out; thick and strong, the sort of rope they used for belts. Or to tie sinners to stakes.
Lukas reached out for it.
Then his hand reached further, flashing to the knife at Zakastra’s belt and drawing it. He whirled, and sent the tip of the plasteel blade plunging for Zeke’s unprotected neck.
Zeke flinched instinctively, despite the fact he had nowhere to go, but the blow never landed anyway. Garrow grabbed Lukas’ arm and stayed the thrust, then wrenched the blade from his grip.
‘Let me cut him!’ Lukas raged, naked hatred in his eyes as he struggled to free himself. ‘I want his blood!’
‘His blood is the Emperor’s!’ Infernus thundered. ‘Blades and guns are our tools in battle, but we sanctify and purge with fire! Tie his hands and feet, and be grateful I don’t have you hanging alongside him for your temerity!’
Zeke hadn’t even tried to get away in that moment, he’d been so shocked. Now it was too late. Lukas snatched the rope out of Zakastra’s hands and slid behind Zeke, looping the coarse fibre around his wrists, tightening and chafing his skin, securing him to the metal pole. Then the process was repeated for his feet, as each leg was held in place by people that, until this day, he’d called his brethren.
‘Bring him,’ Father Infernus said, and the pole to which Zeke was lashed was picked up and carried horizontally by Garrow and Kabriel, leaving him dangling face-down from it by his wrists and ankles.
‘Even amongst our number, no one is beyond sin!’ Father Infernus thundered as Zeke was brought closer to the flames. ‘Although some stray closer and more readily to it than others…’
At each side of the fire was a prop: a forked pole in which the one Zeke was secured to would rest, leaving him dangling over the flames like a rat on a spit. He’d try to hold himself up at first, straining every muscle in his body, for he was tethered only by his arms and legs, and his body would naturally sag in a manner that was painful even when not suspended over fire. But there was a limit to human endurance, and what would be the point of resisting? You’d burn sooner or later anyway. Might as well get it over with.
And yet everyone still tried to resist.
Zeke wanted to shut his eyes, but couldn’t bring himself to do anything other than watch the flames get closer and closer. Then, as he was brought alongside the fire and his left side was beginning to get uncomfortably warm, Garrow and Kabriel hoisted him higher. Moving in unison, they brought him over the flames, and rested the metal pole in the props.
Warmth gave way to heat. Discomfort gave way to pain. It wasn’t unbearable, not yet, but he could feel his skin tightening already, or so he thought. He turned his head to one side and closed his eyes, but it wouldn’t protect them for long; they’d melt out down his face soon enough. He fought to prevent his torso from sagging down into the fire’s heart, but the battering his ribs had taken made even that an agony. He wouldn’t last long.
‘What about his guns, father?’ he heard Bella ask.
‘Tainted with his sin,’ Infernus replied contemptuously. ‘Throw them on with him.’
‘What if the ammunition cooks off?’ Bella sounded dubious.
‘If your faith is true, the Emperor will shield you from harm…’
There was a momentary pause, and then a faint crunch over the crackle of the flames as Zeke’s gunbelt landed beneath him. He prayed desperately to the Emperor for an act of mercy; if the ammo exploded, it might kill him outright and save him the creeping torture of burning alive…
Zeke’s fingers, desperately clawing for purchase on the metal pole, found the rope’s knot.
Zeke thought he’d heard the Emperor a few times since he’d joined Father Infernus. Not directly, not as a voice in his head as was described by saints, but in the nudge of intuition to step here but not there, or to duck just at this moment; the apparently minor decisions that had kept him alive when others had died.
This was the first time he thought the Emperor might have heard him.
He forced himself to look down as his fingers clawed at the knot. His eyes were streaming from heat and smoke, but he could see the shape of his gunbelt. He’d have one chance at this, and one chance only. Any failure, any miscalculation, and he’d end up in agony, and then dead. But given that was exactly what was going to happen to him anyway, if he didn’t try it…
He screamed, trying to give the rest of them a show, tried to disguise the desperate action of his fingers as nothing but the twitching of a man already being driven frantic by the pain of the flames. Father Infernus was shouting something religious, but Zeke’s screams drowned him out, at least in his own head.
The knot pulled loose. The rope slid free.
Zeke plunged forward, face-first down towards the flames, but rather than panicking or freezing he leaned into the momentum of the swing, tucking in tight. He clawed through the fire itself with his right hand to snag his gunbelt, and he reached up with his left to grab the pole he was hanging from as he came up on the other side.
His shoulder struck one of the prop poles, but he managed to get a grip with his left hand to prevent himself from falling back into the flames. His right hand was screaming at him, but not so much that he couldn’t grab an autopistol and pull it clear of its holster, then shoot through the rope tethering his ankles.
His feet came free and he collapsed downwards into the fire, but the spike of pain was momentary. He rolled clear, singed and seared, but still alive, and with flames of vengeance in his heart that could eclipse even those of what had been intended as his funeral pyre.
For the first time in Zeke’s life, he saw an expression of fear cross Father Infernus’ lined and bearded face.
He raised his autopistol and put a volley of shells right through it.
The dark part of him, the part that had gleefully watched others burning, jumped with fierce exultation as the old man collapsed with nothing but a red ruin where his head had been. The rest of Zeke, the part more concerned with staying alive, put his head down and ran. He was a heretic marked for death, and death was all he could expect unless he got away.
Kabriel screamed in rage and pain and loss, and her Eviscerator chainsword roared into life with an answering snarl. She leaped forward to bar his way, swinging it high to begin a scything sweep of the whirring blades that would dismember Zeke once the weapon made contact.
Something whistled past Zeke’s shoulder and took Kabriel in hers, spraying blood from the resulting wound and spinning her around. Now unbalanced at a critical moment, the Eviscerator toppled with her and twisted from her grasp. It bit deep into her shoulder and chest, chewing through skin and flesh and bone with what seemed like a macabre glee from an inanimate object.
‘Skut!’ someone shouted from behind Zeke as Kabriel jerked in her screaming dance of death, her own weapon sending her to meet the Emperor. It was Bella’s voice, but Zeke knew Bella: she’d taught him how to shoot, as well as how to climb and fall. She wouldn’t have missed even a running target, not at the range she was from him.
He didn’t have time to ponder it. He shot Koop while the novice was still fumbling for his stub gun, and then he was past, out of the circle of his former brethren and, a few moments later, out of the circle of firelight as well. He clawed his mask off, and threw it away. His ribs were pounding, his face was bleeding, and his right hand was going to need medical attention, but he was alive.
He was alone, faithless, friendless, and purposeless for the first time in his adult life… but he was alive.
Zeke ran on, desperately trying to keep it that way.
WORD TRAVELS
‘It must be a new person, yes?’ Alin said. Together, they’d brought the caravan around to the far side of Sternhold, the better to move on to whichever of the two routes out of the dome their quarry had taken. ‘It must be a new person, adopting an old name.’ They hesitated. ‘If… you are absolutely sure there is no way the man you knew as Father Infernus could have survived?’
‘I’m sure,’ Zeke muttered. ‘Not even a plague zombie would have got back up after that.’
Alin made the sign of the aquila. ‘Let us pray such a thing does not come to pass.’
Zeke snorted a laugh. ‘Ha! One thing I can say for my former brethren is that there’s no possibility of them not burning their dead. Infernus isn’t just dead, he’s ashes.’
He and Alin hadn’t discussed Zeke’s former affiliations with anyone else. Zeke had told Alin the pertinent details, and they’d decided that perhaps it was best to keep it quiet. Zeke had worried that Alin was going to abandon him once they learned the truth, but the Delaque had just stroked their chin thoughtfully.
‘Let they who are without a shameful past cast the first grenade,’ was all Alin had said. ‘I’ve not spent all my life in the underhive merely looking out for my younger sibling, no?’
Sternhold’s second gate opened, and a group of figures emerged. Zeke’s hand dropped to his gunbelt until he recognised the diminutive shape of Quickhand Kat, the tall, willowy form of Ash Choll, and Eddie 209’s bulk and distinctive rock drill, then went back to it as the number of people approaching them continued to grow.
‘Heads up for trouble,’ Alin said quietly, and those of the caravan who were still in a condition where they could potentially fight began to ready themselves.
There were a dozen people accompanying Kat and her colleagues, Zeke saw. Most had the huge, hulking build of Goliaths, but two were considerably smaller and skinnier: Van Saars, judging by the bodysuits. Even the Goliaths weren’t uniform, since they were split into two distinct groups. One party of six wore oranges and reds, while the other four were clad in black and silver.
‘Did you get the supplies?’ Zeke called, as Kat approached within hailing distance.
‘We got something better!’ she replied eagerly.
Zeke glanced at Alin, and found the Delaque looking back at him.
‘And what’s that?’ he asked, turning back to Kat.
‘There’s a medicae facility there,’ Kat said happily.
‘Well-appointed,’ Ash put in.
‘I talked with the doc, and our wounded can get treated there,’ Kat said. ‘The spider eyes will pay for it. It seemed a better idea than dragging them with us,’ she added, suddenly uncertain.
‘I’m not arguing that, but who’s to say they’ll actually get the treatment they need?’ Zeke demanded. ‘At least with us–’
‘I’ll stay with them,’ Eddie said.
Zeke sucked his teeth and squinted at the big ex-slave’s marker tattoo. ‘Are you sure that’s wise? I mean, people might come looking for you.’
‘The Emperor protects,’ Eddie said soberly. ‘He sent you to give me a second chance at life. I couldn’t save Murph. I can help save these people, and let you move on to find your children.’
‘It’s not a bad idea, no?’ Alin murmured.
Zeke was torn. On the one hand, he’d never wanted all these civilians with him anyway. The fact that Bad News had decided to uproot itself and join him had been a burden on his conscience, but now he felt responsible for them. Could he really abandon them to the uncertain environs of Sternhold? But might that not be better for them than the dogged pursuit of a group of murderous Redemptionists?
It was the splitting of the caravan that bothered him, he realised. Emperor help him, but he’d actually internalised some of the things that had been said about him. These weren’t his people! He’d be better off without them!
‘It’ll be a shame to lose you,’ he told Eddie. ‘But we must all follow what we believe is the Emperor’s plan for us.’ He looked at Kat again. ‘And your… friends, here?’
‘The Delaque said Father Zeke is going to kill Father Infernus,’ one of the orange Goliaths said, gesturing at Ash.
You’re a few years late for that, Zeke thought manically. He did his best to school his expression – the Emperor-damned mask helped, he had to admit – and readied himself for however this conversation was going to go.
‘I wasn’t aware Ash knew of Father Infernus,’ he said, as calmly as he could.
‘Delaque didn’t, but Markur does,’ the Goliath replied, slapping himself in the chest with a clang of metal gauntlet on metal furnace plate. His right leg was replaced by a mechanical prosthetic too, but he’d seemed mobile enough on his way from Sternhold. ‘Delaque said Father Zeke is going to kill leader of Redemptionists. Markur knows this to be Father Infernus. So Father Zeke is going to kill Father Infernus.’
‘I’m going to get my children back from him and his followers,’ Zeke said levelly. ‘I never said anything about killing anyone.’
Markur laughed, a sound like rocks falling. ‘Father Zeke won’t get his children back without killing Father Infernus. Markur wants Father Infernus dead. Markur offers to help.’
Zeke eyed him anew. The epitome of a Goliath ganger, in truth: big, tough-looking, arms the size of Zeke’s waist, or near enough, and a gun that would double up as a relatively efficient bludgeon. His companions were cut from the same cloth, save for one at the back with the look of a juve; probably only a few years old, but already approaching what passed for adulthood amongst Goliath. She was smaller, less scarred and skinnier, although that still meant she probably weighed twice what Zeke did.
‘And you’re all of the same mind?’ he asked.
‘All Furnace Lords here are of same mind,’ Markur shrugged. ‘Others didn’t want to come.’
Zeke glanced towards Sternhold. Great. So who is Markur? The leader of a now-splintered gang, or an upstart who’s led a few of them astray? Are the rest going to be after him now? And even if that’s the case, can we afford to turn his help down?
‘And you?’ he asked the foremost of the Goliaths in black and silver.
‘Korvra of the Soot Devils,’ she replied. ‘The little Escher said Father Zeke is a true man of the Emperor. Said Father Zeke rescued those falsely enslaved, freed those imprisoned by the dregs, slew Prince Reibus and a rat-god, will slay those that burned Deadwired and rescue the children they stole.’
