Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) (34 page)

Lucian took another lash of the whip across his shoulders with a resigned grunt, ignoring the burn in his hamstrings, and pushed his way over the lip of the sharp incline. Uneven ground pockmarked with rabbit holes passed underfoot, and a high wind was kicking up, turning to an unforgiving gale. They had been climbing for almost an hour, trudging uphill on legs barely strong enough to hold them on even ground.

He dropped back aways, hoping the rear security would be more lax and he’d have a chance at escaping. But they weren’t fools, and a line of sentinels on horseback trawled at the very tail of the mile-long ant trail of prisoners, waiting to pick up any stragglers who weren’t yet too weak to abandon on the wayside.

He thought for a while that feigning exhaustion would get him left behind. All he had to do was wait until they were out of sight, then run for the treeline, and make his way back south.

But those who keeled over were trampled by their fellow prisoners, many of whom were lost to catatonic stupors of hunger and fatigue. Worse, the guards rode their mounts’ sharp hooves right over the torsos of the fallen, maybe to make an example, maybe for their own amusement.

Probably both.

Hundreds had been left behind on their journey. They were close to their destination—they had no clue where they were going, but a sense of closeness, of finality, pervaded them all. It seemed the guards wanted the rest of them alive.

And now, Lucian could see why. The ridge he had just crested overlooked a slight rolling valley, more of a dimple in the carpet of black rock and withered heather. He was looking along the furrow lengthways. Nestled within was a sprawling huddle of rawhide tents, interspersed with open fires and surrounded by palisade wooden fences.

Amongst it all were those already interned at the prison camp. He had never imagined there could be so many people in all the land. There were endless masses of them, an oozing myriad filling every inch between the tents, clustering in lumbering stoop-backed huddles around the glow of the fires. Filthy, stick-thin, harrow-eyed people marked by red welts from the lash.

A hand closed on his upper arm. “Come on, McKay,” Vandeborn said, tugging him forward. He was still in the game, his barrel chest not yet hollowed by the long trek, and Lucian was glad to have at least one ally. And, unlike Lucian, Max had learned to keep his eyes on the ground and follow the flow of the convoy. He was a big, proud man, but he wasn’t an idiot, and he wanted to live.

And here, everyone had a role to play. Theirs were
grovelling simpleton number 1000
, and
whipped dog number umpteen-and-one
, respectively.

Lucian couldn’t bring himself to do that. A self-destructive itch poked its head up every time he lowered his gaze and tried surrendering to his captors’ will. He was marking himself a prime candidate for public execution—plenty of examples had been made on the road, and there was still plenty of time for another—and he sensed that notoriety was something altogether a bad idea for another reason: Charlie had remained close to him all the while, within sight and earshot. He was a prized, secret cargo for the boy, at least in his mind; a morsel wrapped up in his handkerchief to savour later.

“Keep your head down. Keep moving,” Vandeborn hissed. “We’re almost there.”

“We’re there, alright.” Lucian took up the plodding pace once more, and together, they made their way from the ridge and descended into the prison camp.

As they grew closer, he began to pick out more detail: the fires were in fact open-air smithing kilns, and the milling droves weren’t clustering around them for warmth, but rather to heat old, blunted blades and sharp implements, readying them for reshaping. Farther away, showers of sparks coughed up above the tent posts where he guessed they were being hammered by others strong enough to wield a hammer.

They were forging weapons of war. Thousands of hunting knives, machetes, axes, pitchforks, even rough-hewn scaffolding poles whittled to sharp spears. And these were only the hand-to-hand weapons. He sensed that elsewhere, close by, were a great many firearms. The guards posted all around carried theirs with careless ease, indicating a plentiful supply.

Yet, peeking above all this, the thing that grabbed his attention the most was Charlie’s gaze. He could feel it moving over him, as it so often had since they had started the long walk, pressing into the nape of his neck as though searching out the perfect spot to put a bullet.

The boy had plans to make him suffer, and he meant to make good on his promise for revenge.

But he wasn’t up to it. Not yet, anyway. Anger had carried him this far, led him to this dangerous place—holding a secret captive amongst myriad others. Lucian was more valuable to them than any of these others by a mile-long stretch, a potential political prisoner.

Lucian would never have negotiated to save the life of another if it were him back home and someone else out here. But he knew fools back in New Canterbury and Canary Wharf who would. He couldn’t live with himself, knowing they might have to sacrifice some vital strategic advantage in exchange for his sorry arse.

“I don’t get it,” Vandeborn said. “They’re up in a fit about you all hogging food when the famine hit the hardest. They started the burning and killing to stop all that happening again. Sons of bitches would still get a bullet in the face from me, but I can wrap my head around where they’d be coming from.” He grunted and glanced up momentarily from his feet, frowning at the camp ahead. “But I don’t get this. None of these people are part of this. None of them wanted it. They’re just ordinary folk.” He paused as they passed under the nose of a skull-faced guard of almost seven feet, his skin a sickly yellow, a cruel soul if Lucian had ever seen one.

“No,” Lucian said. “It’s them that are behind all this. The ones holding the guns, and the keys.” He grunted, not quite managing a laugh. “But the real kicker is that I’m betting bastards like that don’t even know why they’re here. This is just what they do. In the Old World, they would have been the rapists, the murderers, the psychopaths and the autocrats. But here, after the End, they’re the perfect engine to blow this all out of proportion. I’m betting it all started amicable enough, with a real heart and message. But now …”

“Snowballed. That pigeon banner, the sob story about the starving women and children who died because of your mission, it’s become just some vehicle to let the mental cases kill for the sake of killing. All these monkeys would have been rejects their whole lives, cut loose by their families and neighbours, turned away by every place they came by. Crazy breeds crazy, and nobody wants a madman around. But here, they’re somebodies. Gods, even. They have power, and they take what they want and nobody can stop them.”

Lucian was listening carefully. He had gotten the ball rolling on the conversation with great care, but here was the crux. He needed to know where Vandeborn’s mind was. How far he had gotten on his own. “Right,” he said, baiting the way ahead.

“But, there has to be something else going on,” Vandeborn said. “The pace of all this, the pattern of attack, this place … it doesn’t add up. They’re like dogs circling in for the kill, and that just ain’t how mobs play out.

“They should have been sloppy, sudden. They should have made mistakes. Hell, a mob on some revenge kick wouldn’t have stood a chance against Twingo. But these guys, they’re thinking. There’s a plan, and it wasn’t hatched by no committee. There’s a man behind the curtain.”

Lucian suppressed a smile.

Thank God somebody else has a head on their shoulders.

“There always is,” he said.

“Any idea who it might be?”

Lucian kept his gaze on the ground. They were passing the first of the tents. Not only did he not want to risk being overheard, but he needed to keep them both focused on the here and now. “No,” he said. “But we’ll get to that soon enough.”

“Oh yeah? You got plans to break out of dodge?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” They passed by a tent with an open flap, and they caught a glimpse of a small mountain of assault rifles within. Almost all were in varying states of decay and would never fire again, but there were so many, and at least a few of them would get a few dozen rounds off—though they could just as likely explode and kill the poor saps pulling the triggers. If even half these tents stored similar loot, they were in big trouble. “We’ve got our work cut out for us. These guys are serious.” He cursed. “I never was any great fan of Cain, the mission, or any of the lot of you. We looked after you because you brought in the trade. But right now, I wish we’d paid you a little more kindness. Maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference. We started this.”

“What are you blabbing about?”

“Don’t play dumb. You’re not as stupid as some of those starry-eyed fools who come trooping around New Canterbury trying to spot the
Great Cain
and his little band of disciples. You know we’ve got skeletons in our cupboard, just like everyone else. And the famine sent them all marching out to bend us over for just desserts.”

Vandeborn managed a laugh—a coarse and wheezy snort. “They got you, alright. Laid out flat over the kitchen counter with your skirt up over your head.”

“Nice image.”

“Take mind-candy where you can get it, mate.”

“I’m not complaining.”

Vandeborn shook his head. “You’re alright, McKay.”

“Yeah, well, you’re still the same arsehole you always were.”

The tents were thick all around them now. Up ahead, the ant trail was coiling up into a mass of milling, stupefied prisoners, all staring around at the other inmates. Written on their faces was the acceptance of doom in a mouse’s frozen stance, in the moment before the cat’s jaws go to work. Before anyone could find a spare moment to squat or fall prone in the mud, before Lucian and Max had even come within a hundred feet of the main body of them, blunt blades and whetstones were being hauled out from the nearest tents.

There was no sympathy on the faces of the other prisoners as they dumped the masses of iron and steel at the feet of so many hundreds of bedraggled figures, most of whom weren’t even strong enough to lift their arms.

There was no room for sympathy here. Anyone weak enough for compassion wouldn’t last long.

“So what’s the breakout plan, chief?” Vandeborn whispered as they bent and hauled up an armful of rusted meat cleavers.

Lucian grunted. “Keep our heads low for now. Scope the place out. And the others. We’ll need as many on our side as we can.”

“That it? I could have spat that shite out. I meant a way to do any of that. How are we gunna get
out
of dodge?”

Lucian nodded over his shoulder, but kept his gaze low and his body moving. The guards watched them all closely, watching for stragglers, for weakness. And then there was Charlie to worry about; he wouldn’t be far away, even now. “Up there. See the tent?” He took his small pile to an empty furrow between two smaller tents and set to work with the whetstone, ignoring the guards posted every few dozen feet. Showers of sparks sputtered into the mud.

He tensed despite himself as Vandeborn glanced in the direction he’d nodded, but the big guy was subtle enough, and he relaxed again.

The valley lay at the foot of a sheer cliff, rising several hundred feet straight up to the edge of an old cluster of Victorian buildings. He sensed a large Old World settlement beyond the lip of the incline, and he had an inkling that he knew which. This place looked a lot like how Alex had described his hometown. He bet that up there was Radden.

Perched upon the very edge of the summit was a tepee-style tent, a crumpled cone of beaten, black leather. A small sliver of smoke trailed into the sky from within.

“There’s our man behind the curtain,” Vandeborn said. He struck an ornamental katana with his own whetstone and a cascade of sparks burst forth like a Catherine wheel. “What do we wish for when we get up there?”

I’m bloody lucky I’m not alone on this. I might actually stand a chance at getting up there.

But if he did? If they got up there and confronted whoever masterminded all this? And if it really was James running the show? Even after all that had happened, even if the lives of everyone he’d ever known were riding on it, could he really bring himself to kill his brother?”

Vandeborn was watching him closely. He cleared his throat and muttered, “One thing at a time.”

“This is crazy,” Allie said.

“Really, bloody crazy,” Richard muttered.

Norman shook his head. “That ain’t half of it.”

Richard grumbled under his breath as he scooped up armfuls of maps, books of censuses and inventories, and a hastily scratched out transcript of the summit proceedings. “And yet I wouldn’t have it any other way. Once more into the fray, dear friends, and all that.” Glancing over at John DeGray with hungry eagerness, he set to stumbling through the crowd, squawking for people to stay clear. He left a trail of paper and dusty volumes in his wake.

Norman watched him go with mixed amusement and regret. He was still reeling from sitting at the councillors’ bench. Watching the young fool skitter across the tower’s dusty marble floor in aid of his master, he felt a slick of bile grease his throat.