Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) (42 page)

She’s so different, so much
more
than she was, Norman thought.

So have you,
said another quieter voice in his head.
In time, maybe both of you could have been real leaders, somebodies.

“You come back to us. I don’t care what you have to do. You bring them all back.”

He struggled for a few moments, wanting to touch her, to brush her hair behind her ear and feel warm skin on his—perhaps the real world couldn’t touch them if they held on tight enough.

But if he gave in now, he would fall into her like a black hole, and they wouldn’t be able to pry him off with a crowbar.

And so, against the raving want of every mote in him, he took a step back and swallowed. “I will.”

Her eyes and nose had reddened, her round face young and glowing with pent-up hurt, shaking with the effort of keeping her hard stare. She sniffed wetly then turned and was gone in a blur of rosy cheeks and auburn hair.

Norman forced himself not to watch her go, keeping his gaze fixed on the floor until he was sure she was gone. By the time he pulled himself into his saddle, Robert was beside him, walking tall and powerful as a bull elephant. He leaped up onto Obsidian’s back, took a single cursory look at the men and women ready to follow him unto hellfire, and said, “I’m ready.”

They filed away from the city as darkness fell and the few streetlights afforded by the city’s reserve power popped to life, without any grand speech or salutation to push them onward.

Norman fell to thinking of the long years he had lived here and taken it all for granted, hating his great destiny and his poor lot in life, all the while forgetting how fragile all this really was.

Before he knew it, they were cresting the northern hills and the last flames of day were sinking below the Earth, and Robert stopped to hold up his hand in the direction of the dismantled altar—where, upon the windswept grass laden with shadow, a lone figure dressed in white was waving.

The sea roiled all along the base of the chalky cliffs. Each wave crashed upon the rocks with the roar of a lion, and together with the banshee wailing of the wind it was easy to believe the devil himself surfed ever closer just over the horizon.

Alexander fought the gale with his brow bearing the brunt of the high wind, keeping fixed on the way ahead, treading through the beaten grass lining the cliff edge. Beachy Head had changed little since his boyhood: that famous sheer cliff face thrusting up from the waves of England’s southern shore. Southampton was close and, on occasion, he caught sight of a wisp of smoke trailing skyward from that direction—the fires still burned, it seemed. But he tried to keep the smoke to his back, unable to stomach the sight of it.

The cliffs had been his destination since leaving the compound at Canary Wharf. He had no idea why; they had simply possessed his mind’s eye. He had only known that he had to get himself away. He had done enough damage. He had felt eyes on him from inside the gates and out, watching. James finally had all his chess pieces in place, ready to put his final play into action.

Isolating himself wouldn’t forestall the attack, for things had gone too far now, but what else was there for him to do?

But no matter how much he had tried to convince himself all the way through the wastes, the same thoughts had plagued him.

You just wanted out. You needed to get away from your demons and the real world. Dress it up all you like—you ran away.

And that was the bare truth. He knew it despite speaking over himself.

So he tried not to think. He concentrated only on putting one foot in front of the other, feeling the cold slowly work its way through his long billowing cloak and into his bones.

He was an old man. He realised it with a gravity he’d always been too busy for before. His joints were stiff with the slight cold despite the summer sun, and his balance had wilted from a once-thoughtless silent dance over ground to a bemused unsteady shuffle.

Where did all the years go?
asked a voice.

Into New Canterbury
, answered another.
Into the council and books and classrooms and vaults.

And now James is holding a match to all of it.

His heart lurched and he went back to plodding, pushing away mental film reels of libraries ablaze, London darkened by the coming legions, and all those he had brought together crying out upon flaming pyres.

One foot in front of the other. One foot, now the other. Just keep going.

That way he could almost believe it was all academic, a fairy tale, just some trifling what-if. He carried on that way until the cabin came in sight.

For a while he registered it only as the sole human constriction in sight and his mind was preoccupied with a fitful childish rage against it and all man’s creations blighting the land—maybe all the doubters had been right, and it would have been better to let it all fall back to dust after the End. Suppose he was the very evil he had set out to counter: the decaying force that would send what remained of civilised life crashing to the ground.

He had accepted there would be prices to pay for his mission’s success a long time ago. He had known there would be grudges and that people would suffer and starve and die if their work was going to make any real headway. Those sacrifices would have to be made. And he had considered them a small price well worth paying, considering the countless future generations that could benefit.

But now everything was clouded. It could all have been for nothing. And so many could have suffered along the way under his unfeeling heedless influence. Was he the tyrant, and James the liberator after all?

The same taunting voice in his head again.
That was always the way of it. He tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. And you’ve made yourself an enemy nobody can stop.

He pushed those words aside with a literal jerk and blinked to shake himself free. The cabin was closer. And now he could see a thin, pale sliver of smoke was coming from the chimney. Somebody was inside.

He had wandered very close, closer than any measure of sense permitted. And now he was treading the muddied ground under the guttering, against all instinct, numb to common sense.

He now craved company more than anything, even if it meant death at the hands of his host. Anything was better than being alone with his thoughts. He pushed open the door and peered into the gloom, at once recoiling as a stoppered puff of stale air swept over him, redolent of sickness and the sour stench of human waste.

Yet still he stepped forward, drawn by the flickering darkness thrown about by a tiny hearth fire set against the far wall. The unmistakable profile of somebody bedridden shuddered in shadow close to the doorway. From within came a voice no more than a broken whisper. “Billy? Billy, is that you? Please, let it be you.”

Alexander stepped inside and came into the single room under the cabin’s tin roof, askance and frugal and rough-sawn. A sunken skeleton clothed in blue-tinged skin lay amidst a mass of blankets, staring up at him with enormous, unfocused eyes. Alexander frowned. He had heard that kind of accent before, from the old man they had found beaten in the woods around New Canterbury. He waited a moment, then said, “Never thought I’d meet another Irishman.”

The man trembled. “My daughter. My Billy. Is she with you?” A weak and desperate anger flashed upon his sallow cheeks. “What have you done with her?”

“Nobody around, friend. But maybe I can help. What’s your story?”

The man blinked. “It’s a long one. And I’m near the end of it.”

Alexander dropped his satchel onto the ground with a thump, slid off the hood of his robe and squatted down onto a stool beside the bed. “Well, that makes two of us. I’m Alex.”

The man made to speak, but then bent double and choked his way through a hacking fit of dry, wrenching coughs, sputtering droplets of blood onto the sheets and whimpering all the while. The smell of faeces intensified. He collapsed back, gasping, and Alexander leaned forward to set the sheets straight. He rinsed a sponge in a nearby basin and squeezed a few drops of water into the man’s arid mouth.

The man sputtered and wheezed.

“What?” Alexander said.

“Don. My name’s Don.”

“Don.” Alexander gripped his shoulder.

“My daughter. My girl. Billy.” His bloodied eyes darted sideways desperately, searching the room in delirium. “Billy!”

“There’s nobody but me.”

“Where is she?” Bony fingers gripped Alexander’s arm. “Where?”

“Tell me, Don. Tell me what happened and maybe we can find her.”

A weeping splutter. “Like I said”—another gasp—“it’s a long story.”

Alexander lowered himself back onto the stool. “I’ve got time.”

James would have never expected that Alexander would follow him so far without protest. Yet they had been riding well through the day and not a word had passed between them. Cambridge, Corby and Nottingham had slid past, and they had stopped by a few friendly homesteads to rest and feed the horses, not talking and not planning. Then they had gone on.

Slowly the land changed as they went farther north and the buildings grew sparser, the roads more overgrown and potholed.

They began keeping one eye on the horizon and the other on the shadows as the sense of being watched became too obvious to ignore. There was no doubt they were being watched. Homes, apartment towers and offices were fewer and farther between, but they still pockmarked the sapling woodlands sprouting up everywhere, and lights were on in more than a few. But they wouldn’t dream of wandering close to these places.

James had nothing but bad memories of the North. Every time he had journeyed beyond Leeds in the past, things had gone from bad to worse, and somebody had always ended up hurt. That it had usually been the other side to suffer losses had been blind, dumb luck.

Prowlers inhabited this wasteland, preying upon those taking the chance to pass through. Anybody who wasn’t at the top of their game would either come out the other side chewed up and penniless, or they wouldn’t come out at all. The mission could have all the luck in the world and unite the entire South under a single leadership, but they wouldn’t touch this place, not for a long time. This would be the great unending desert at the periphery of their lands for ages to come.

It was a lot to ask of Alex, coming all the way out here on a whim. Hell, less than a whim. The whole thing was built on a crazy vision from a drunken stranger. They were risking their lives, and the alliance with the Moon was in direct jeopardy, not to mention Beth …

He shook himself. He wasn’t going to think about that. He couldn’t afford to be distracted, because they were getting close. He knew they were getting close because he was almost delirious with the intensity of the itch in his legs now, and in the corners of his eyes were twinkling lights like those before a migraine. Somewhere at the back of his mind he could hear that alien voice whispering incoherent words.

But for the time being he had to keep straight and strong, keep guiding them north. Alex had kept quiet thus far, but how long would that last? And if he started mumbling and spouting all the crazy going on in his head, he was bound to turn them around right now and march him back home in a straitjacket.

In any case they couldn’t stop. Their pace might have been their only reason for not running into trouble thus far. If they lingered anywhere too long, they were bound to attract attention. He could only hope their luck held out.

So he kept mum, and they kept going. Sheffield passed by at the far reaches of sight, a blitzed shell, the site of a thousand skirmishes and stand-offs between rival clans. Soon it too was gone, and they left even the scant suburbia behind. In its place was true countryside, rugged and untraversed and eternal.

As one day became two, and two days dragged into a long tiring week, the flatlands buckled into rolling hills, then sharp valleys and exposed rocky bluffs. Mountains crawled up over the horizon, the serrated teeth of some fallen behemoth. In time the first road signs for Radden County started dotting the roadside.