Road to Redemption, page 9
Next turning. Halfway down.
What if the supporting joists and bolts failed and sheared? What if the staircase fell away? He and the others would be injured by the fall, possibly killed, and they’d have no way of escape. A swift, hard strike to liberate the captives and then withdrawing before the muties realised how few of them there truly were: that was surely their only path to success here. A small band of wounded trying to fight off the denizens of this dome would be doomed.
One more turn. Last flight. Zeke resisted the urge to take the steps two at a time: he’d get down barely any quicker, and he’d likely slip and hurt himself. Not to mention the fact that his knees were already complaining. When had he got old?
Probably at some point when he was farming slime.
Booom-booom-booom
He reached the solid, mainly level ground of the dome floor, and swung away from the staircase to let the others follow in his footsteps unhindered. The first thing to do was to find some proper cover, and he made a ratline for the nearest pipe. It was a huge thing of dark, corroded metal, nearly as tall as him, although still dwarfed by the massive one he’d seen from his high vantage point. It emerged from the wall of what looked to have been some sort of pumping house and ran at a diagonal to where he was trying to get to, but it would shield the others and him from unfriendly eyes, or at least the majority of them clustered around the pool.
‘Is everyone down?’ he asked, without looking around.
‘Ready when you are,’ Alin Choll’s voice replied.
It had been a long time since Zeke had crept up on an enemy like this. With Sarkon Aggad’s slavers, he’d had barely any plan and combat had been the last resort. Now he had a dozen fighters at his back – or people with weapons, at least, although it wasn’t necessarily the same thing – and his express intention was to attack and kill. His mouth was dry, but his hands were steady. His body remembered this feeling, and it knew how to react. He suddenly knew, knew with all his heart, that he wasn’t going to freeze up, wasn’t going to get the shakes and pull a shot wide. He might not hit what he aimed at, but it wouldn’t be down to nerves. His heart rate was raised, but only because stairs were a minor problem for him now, apparently. He was calm.
The Emperor was with him.
They followed the line of the pipe, half-ducked down to prevent their heads from being seen above it. Zeke stumbled on something, bit back a curse, looked down to see what it was.
A human thigh bone, broken open, the marrow scraped out from within.
‘Animals,’ someone muttered.
‘Let’s put them down,’ another voice replied, thick with disgust. That sounded like Morvost.
Booom-booom-booom
‘They’re chanting something,’ Alin Choll said. Their group was coming up to an intersection, where another pipe met the one they were following. ‘Listen.’
Zeke strained to hear, but sure enough, the Delaque was right. The drumbeats were accompanied by a multitude of rough voices raised, bellowing out one syllable again and again, in time with the beat.
‘TRUGG!’
‘TRUGG!’
‘TRUGG!’
Zeke turned and looked questioningly at Down Town Brudo, but the skinny man just shrugged. ‘Means nothing to me.’
They were at the confluence of pipes. Zeke eased his head up to peer over it, the faint, cold scent of rust in his nostrils just discernible over the background odours of faeces, and smoke from whatever combustibles were burning to make the fires. He could see the stack of cages now, three high in places, most occupied by a miserable, huddled shape, or more than one. Dregs and muties stood at the base of the pile in ones and twos, but their attention was turned towards the big fires around the central pool, the light washing over their ravaged features as they shouted.
‘TRUGG!’
‘TRUGG!’
‘TRUGG!’
Zeke eyed the pipe in front of him. It was too tall to easily get over, but there wasn’t enough clearance beneath it to easily get under it, either. There would be no sudden charge out from behind its cover. They’d have to scramble over or under, probably fairly clumsily, leaving themselves open to being seen and shot at as they did so. It wasn’t a prospect that appealed.
A new figure strode into view, heading for the cages.
Prince Reibus.
It had to be; surely no other degenerate would be wearing a crown of polished fingerbones, carrying a skull-topped staff, or be clad in such comparatively-fine vestments. His heavy Orlock work jacket had been decorated with what looked like human teeth, and from the back of it hung a strange patchwork cape. Polished Goliath shin greaves adorned his lower legs, and were not too oversized, for Prince Reibus was taller than Zeke and perhaps twice as wide. His skin held a purplish tinge, and was dotted with boils, but his stride was firm and determined, and his staff was clearly more weapon or symbol of authority than walking prop. He snarled at a lackey in front of him, revealing stumps of blackened teeth, and the wretch scrambled to wrestle open a cage door.
Nothing for it.
‘TRUGG!’
‘TRUGG!’
‘TRUGG!’
‘Go, go, go!’ Zeke hissed. Beside him, Alin Choll vaulted up onto the top of the pipe and swung their long legs over in one easy motion. Ash followed suit, but the rest of them lacked the Delaques’ height or limberness. Zeke cupped his hands together and boosted up Aberley Deel, grim-faced and already with one knife drawn, and bit down on a moan of pain as his injured arm complained. He received the same favour himself from Sigrud Morvost, then he reached over from the top of the pipe and grabbed her wrists, helping her up and over after him.
‘Hey, now!’
Grimbjorn Stonefist had helped others over, but now the squat stood alone on the other side of the pipe. There was no way he could get over by himself, and he was too sturdily-built to slide underneath it as Kanner the Rat and Jassy had. Zeke looked back at him, caught in an agony of indecision. The squat’s weapons would serve them well, but it would take at least two of them to get him over, which would mean going back, and–
A snarling shout of alarm erupted behind him, accompanied a moment later by the report of a firearm and a scream. Zeke ducked instinctively and whirled around, but it was Down Town Brudo who’d been hit. One of the dregs by the cages had spotted them and had a weapon trained on them; probably an autogun, from the quick glance Zeke got of it. Other dregs had heard the shout, even over their own chanting, and were turning to see what the disturbance was. Even Prince Reibus was looking around, squinting to see into the relative darkness beyond the light of his fires.
There was no cover to duck behind, for they’d just emerged from it. The only way out was through.
‘Die, filth of damnation!’ Zeke bellowed, drawing his autopistols – somewhat slower with his left arm – and charging forwards. The others, frozen in indecision and fear only a moment before, jolted into action with him. Suddenly he was at the head of an onrushing mass of humanity, firing guns and screaming war cries.
He dropped the dreg who’d fired at them first, two bursts from his right-hand pistol that took the foul creature in its chest. It fell backwards, screaming.
‘Mind the captives!’ Morvost yelled. Her shotgun roared and another dreg, this one standing a short distance away from the cages, was blown off its feet.
Reibus snatched the child that his lackey thrust at him. Zeke didn’t get a good look at it, but it didn’t look like either Essy or Donnel. It didn’t matter; no child should suffer at the hands of these monsters. He raised his left hand pistol, seeking to put a round or three through Reibus’ skull, but cursed and pulled his gun away at the last moment as Aberley Deel charged into the line of his shot, screaming a name.
‘Samanta!’
Deel broke away from the main body of the posse’s charge, a knife in either hand, heading straight for Reibus. The degenerate lord garbled something and waved his skull-topped staff, and a pair of his followers moved to intercept her. One held a pick, the other an oversized wrench. Zeke took aim at the leftmost of them, then ducked instinctively as something flashed past his right ear. One of the muties on top of the crate pile was aiming at him again: he fired back, taking out its knees, and it dropped out of sight with an agonised cry.
‘Skutting hell!’ someone shouted, and panic fire blazed upwards.
Something tore out of the darkness above them with a sound like tearing cloth: a pair of leathery wings, beating at the stagnant air. For a moment Zeke thought it was some monstrous carrion bat, or the mother of all ripperjacks, but then the shadow spat fire and he realised it was a mutie, an Emperor-damned winged mutie, with a gun!
Screams. Two down; Till and Jassy. Multiple small bleeding wounds, Zeke’s quick glance told him, probably some sort of crude blunderbuss. The perpetrator was already out of sight, having banked up beyond the reach of the fires’ light. Zeke found himself amazed at how rationally he was thinking, even in the midst of chaos. This was a thrill he’d forgotten, throwing himself into harm’s way and placing his trust in the Emperor to see him through. The fight against the slavers had been desperate necessity, but he’d sought out this battle, he’d wanted to bring the Almighty’s wrath down on these beasts, and now he was here he felt nothing but the purifying fires of wrath within him. Holy wrath, wrath without mercy, but not wrath beyond reason.
The Emperor had given humanity logic and reason, and he would use those tools to smite his foes, rather than falling to their level of mindless savagery.
‘Ash!’ he shouted. ‘Watch for the flyer! Kanner, free the captives! Everyone else–’
He turned to look for Aberley Deel, readying himself to see her hacked down on the ground. Instead he saw her ducking a swipe of a pick and plunging one of her knives into the back of the mutie who’d been attacking her; the other dreg was already down, bleeding out from a gash the entire width of its throat.
‘Into them!’ Zeke bawled. He caught sight of Eddie 209 running down the last mutie who’d been standing guard of the cages and impaling it through with his drill, pinning it to the ground as it screamed and thrashed. Kanner went to work on a cage door. Ash was walking backwards, laspistol held in both hands and aimed upwards, ready to take down the flying mutant should it seek to bother them again.
They turned a corner, hard on the heels of Aberley Deel as she pursued the fleeing Prince Reibus, rounded the edge of a crude hut thrown together from boards and doors and wire mesh, and were met with the sight of the whole stinking, degenerate mass.
A mass of bodies, scaled and feathered and pustule-ridden, purple and green and blue and red, clawed and taloned, fanged and horned, with oversized limbs or shrunken vestiges, simple hooks and peg-legs in the place of ones that were missing entirely through nature or injury. No two bodies were the same, and nor were their weapons, which, despite obvious disrepair, still looked deadly enough.
‘Break them, in the Emperor’s name!’ Zeke roared. He strafed his autopistols along the line in front of him until they ran dry. It was their only chance: hit the beasts so hard and so quickly that their nerve failed. His companions followed his lead as best they could, but Deel carried no guns, Till and Jassy were down, Kanner was working on the cages, Ash was watching their backs…
Shots flew. Zeke slowed his pace slightly, ejected both magazines, slammed his guns back down on the next mags, clicked the safeties off and readied them again. Something took Murph in the chest and he fell, bracing his fall with his shears arm but clearly hurt. Eddie roared and charged past his fallen friend. Morvost’s shotgun blew a hole clean through one dreg, but Durn dropped, screaming, as the lower half of his left leg went cartwheeling away.
Something huge rose up in the dreg mob; an enormous scaled mutant, nine feet tall at least, wielding some sort of monstrous harpoon gun with a shaft that had to be as long as Zeke was tall.
‘Have some of this, you sump-suckers!’
Grimbjorn Stonefist barrelled into one flank of the muties, his bolt pistol barking and power hammer crackling. One of their number was knocked backwards into two more, its chest smoking from the impact of Stonefist’s mighty weapon, and a visible ripple of alarm passed through the rest of the mob. Their collective attention shifted, distracted for a moment as they wondered what had happened, how many enemies had outflanked them, whether they should turn and run…
Aberley Deel, Annie Three-Teeth and Eddie 209 thundered into them, knives and chainaxe slashing, and drill thrusting. Blood splattered, and limbs flew. The giant mutant aimed its spear gun downwards, then slewed to one side with a roar of agony as the thump-crack! of Stonefist’s power hammer announced his new target.
Ash Choll’s laspistol fired a handful of times, and something dark and ragged flew overhead, but this was the tumbling fall of something no longer in control of its own momentum. The winged beast crashed into its fellows, and suddenly a gap appeared in the mob as its flailing pinions flattened three or four more.
‘Go!’ Alin Choll shouted at Zeke. A knife appeared in their hand, then a practised flick saw it leave at speed to bury itself in a mutant’s eye socket. ‘Get Reibus! Get the child!’
Zeke plunged forward, ripping off shots as best he could between the struggling bodies of his comrades, trying to punch his way through. Something with two mouths reared up in front of them, each jaw sporting razor-sharp teeth, although that was of less immediate concern than the two-handed axe they swung at him. He checked his own momentum and dodged back at the last moment, felt the breeze of the blow brush his face as the weapon’s head narrowly missed, then put a shell through the thing’s temple before it could readjust and catch him with the backswing. Flesh, bone and teeth flew as his angled shot blew out the other side of its face, and he stepped over its corpse.
Something grabbed at his left arm, sending another lance of pain up and and down it. He turned, raised his right pistol, then turned his face away as Annie Three-Teeth dragged her chainaxe up the back of the mutie that had accosted him, severing its spine. She flashed him a grin, swift and deadly, then turned back with a ululating howl.
He was free.
Zeke turned again and ran, away from the fight, towards the blaze of fires. The infernal drumming was still going on, it was just that the noise of battle had drowned it out until now.
The pool was ahead of him, its stench heavy in the air, heavy in his lungs. Prince Reibus had dragged his captive to the far end of it, beyond the fires. Three more of his followers lurked nearby; two at his side, and one wielding a length of pole with which it beat a skin stretched taut over another section of pipe, this one perhaps three metres deep and apparently hewn off specifically to create this monstrous percussion instrument.
Zeke’s eyes adjusted to the fire’s light, and he took in the pattern of stitching across the drumskin. It wasn’t one skin, it was many. And the shades weren’t uniform.
‘TRUGG!’
‘TRUGG!’
‘TRUGG!’
Zeke fought down bile as it threatened to climb up his throat. He could make a guess at the nature of Reibus’ cape now, too. The monsters had made use of the skins of their victims.
Reibus lifted the child in his arms, ignoring its screaming, and turned towards the pool.
‘Wait!’ Zeke bellowed. He had both pistols up, but he couldn’t be sure of his shot through the heat distortion of the flames. He’d get the beast within seconds, but he might hit the child first, or not land a telling shot before the child was thrown into the pool. He walked forwards at an angle, trying to get around the fire, hoping he could stall them until then.
Reibus’ face turned towards him, bestial hatred writ large upon it.
‘TRUGG!’ chanted his lackeys. ‘TRUGG! TRUGG!’
‘Put the child down!’ Zeke yelled. Just a few steps more. ‘Put the child down and walk away! Don’t make me kill you!’
Zeke was going to kill him, of that there was no doubt. But while the Emperor might hate liars, He hated mutants and heretics more. They deserved nothing from Zeke; no honesty, no pity, no mercy.
‘TRUGG! TRUGG! TRUGG!’
Reibus sneered, and threw the child. In the same moment, his lackeys brought up their weapons and opened fire.
Zeke rolled forwards, expecting at any moment to feel the white-hot sting of something burying itself into his internal organs, but he came up to one knee unharmed and his twin bursts of autopistol fire were accurate. The dregs fell backwards, chests blown open by the rounds. The drummer finally ceased his task and charged forwards, his pipe held in both hands like a club. Zeke’s first shots sparked off the pipe, but then he lowered his aim and took out the mutie’s knees. It landed facedown in the dust, howling in anguish. Zeke pushed himself fully upright, wincing at the pain in his own knees, and put a shot through its head to still it.
He looked across. The child – a girl – was screaming in terror, but the water was nowhere near as deep as it had looked. The girl was standing waist-deep, and was already trying to wade towards the edge of the pool; the far edge, away from Prince Reibus.
Zeke’s shot took the mutant lord in the shoulder. Reibus staggered backwards, coming to rest against the huge pipe. He raised one big hand, clasped his fingers around a lever.
‘Trugg,’ he said, leering at Zeke, and pulled.
Chains rattled. A mighty counterweight that Zeke hadn’t even noticed began to descend from above, and slowly but inexorably, the grate began to rise.
Zeke’s next shot took out Reibus’ throat. The mutant sank backwards, his cloak of human skin rucking up behind him as he tried desperately to staunch the wound with his thick-fingered hands, but to no avail. Prince Reibus, lord of the Princedom and terror of five levels, died choking on his own filthy blood at the hand of Zeke of House Cawdor.
