Din Eidyn Corpus (Book 2): dEaDINBURGH (Alliances) (18 page)

Starting only slightly, the man turned to face him.

“The archer,” he said, face wearing a worried expression. “I’m James Kelly.”

Noting the raven tattoo under his eye that Alys had described to him, Joey lowered his bow.

James looked at him, eyes fixed intensely on Joey’s.

“They’re coming. All of them. We have maybe twelve hours.”

Both men walked without a word towards the Castle gates.

“Over there, Ali. Run a trench straight towards the Castle, parallel to that one there.”

A full metre behind Ali, who ran a shovel side-on through the layer of moss covering the Esplanade, Joey followed with his barrel of gunpowder, generously filling the inch-wide, deep crack in the moss with the charcoal-coloured chemical. As he passed by, a gentle flick of the side of his foot covered the trench with enough moss, or so Joey hoped, to keep the powder dry enough to ignite. All across the breadth of the Esplanade, women from The Gardens and people from the refugee communities had worked the night through, doing likewise and creating a grid of concealed trenches.

Nobody knew exactly how quickly or ferociously the gunpowder might burn, or explode even – if it ignited at all. But in light of the number of psychotics making their way to the Castle, they had few other options. They had considered trailing powder through the streets leading to the Castle, but feared it may be washed away on the sloping, more exposed surfaces. Better to allow The Exalted to congregate – hopefully all of them – on the Esplanade and take a gamble of the gunpowder’s effectiveness.

There was one other option, one he hadn’t discussed with anyone aside from Alys. Heaven only knew how that particular gamble might play out.

As he emptied the last of his powder into his trench-line, Joey lifted his head at the sound of oncoming footsteps. Approaching him, face grim, was Bobby. Joey already knew The Brotherhood’s decision before Bobby opened his mouth.

“They aren’t coming,” he said quietly.

Joey felt a pang of pain. Not from concern for The Brothers, whom he’d expected to refuse once more, but for his friend who was clearly torturing himself with
what ifs
and
should haves
.

“It’s their decision, Bobby. You did your best.”

He nodded his thanks.

“You gonna stay here with us?”

“No. I’m sealing myself in The Close along with the others. If the doors are breached, I may be the only one fighting but at least I can cost them a few of theirs before they enter the crypts.”

“You’re sure?” Joey asked.

Before Bobby could reply, one of Jennifer’s Rangers ran towards them. As she ran past, Joey shot a hand out and grabbed her forearm.

The woman, Coleen, shot Joey a murderous glare before remembering that Jennifer had instructed the Rangers to assist Joey and Alys whenever possible. She swallowed her anger at being handled by a man and barked at him.

“Yes?”

“You look worried, Coleen. Do you have news?”

Her jaw muscles bunched and tensed.

“You can waste time standing there glaring at me or you can tell me what I need to know,” he said calmly.

She blinked once, long, slow and deliberate. When she opened her eyes they still blazed with determination but the anger had ebbed.

“They’re coming,” she said. “I left them marching towards North Bridge. We have maybe two hours, if they come directly here.”

Joey nodded and let go of her arm.

“Thank you, Coleen.”

As Coleen sped into the Castle courtyard, Joey turned to Bobby. Embracing his childhood friend, he patted him on the back and released him.

“Better go, Bobby.”

“If I don’t see you again, Brother, thank you.”

“Go,” Joey said, and made his way to the gates, ushering the trench diggers along as he went.

Looking at Bobby’s retreating back, Joey imagined for a few moments that the man in the leathers headed back to Mary King’s Close was not Bobby but his dead mentor, Jock.

What on earth would you make of this, Jock? I haven’t exactly followed the old rule: no heroics.

Joey shoved the thought away and began to slide his mind into the zone. The calm place that all fighters inhabited in battle. As the Castle gates’ locks and barricades slammed and clunked into place behind him, he climbed the Lang Stairs and up the Mills Mount Battery where the one o’clock gun stood.

Jennifer had spent hours poring over the manuals left behind and many hours more performing operational checks and tests on the long-disused cannon, trying to combat decades of dormancy. Fortunately heavy, man-made canvas had protected the machinery from the cruelty of the Edinburgh elements, and corrosion had been minimal. However, none of the community had any clue if the gun would function or not.

Passing Tricia, who stood with a small video camera hooked up to The Hub via the city’s Wi-Fi, Joey gave her a nod, indicating that she should follow him to the cannon.

The little red-haired techie giggled. She was in her element – why wouldn’t she be? Months of hard work in The Hub were about to reach fruition. Tricia had manipulated machines and data streams and servers and a hundred other things Joey had no more connection to than the sands of Mars. The camera she held would transmit via Wi-Fi to the only place it could: directly to The Hub’s servers. From there it’d be bounced to the UKBC feed. They couldn’t know if the images they were about to transmit would ever reach the public, but Fraser Donnelly and his peers would receive them. That would have to do. Once their transmission ended, two of The Gardens’ Rangers, whom Tricia had tutored in the use of some of The Hub’s equipment, would await the signal and give Fraser and the UKBC one final wound.

Searching as he walked for the only person with whom he needed to be when the storm came, Joey found her with her mother, already positioned at the cannon. Jennifer looked at him with her right eyebrow raised.

“Ready to tell me what this is all about, boy? We’re about to be a little busy here, in case you hadn’t noticed,” she said, flatly.

Joey stepped past Jennifer and loaded a blank cartridge into the chamber, just as she’d taught him, and took position next to the firing mechanism.

“Just calling reinforcements,” he said.

Jennifer shook her head, exasperated, whilst Alys hid a smile.

Glancing up at the little clock embedded in the stone wall, Joey whispered, “This one’s for you, Shannon.”

The cannon fired, causing everyone in the Castle and probably for miles beyond to jump. None of the younger survivors had heard anything nearly as loud as the boom that still echoed around the city. Most flung their hands up to their ears in shock.

Joey stuck a finger in each of his own ears and wiggled them, attempting to remove the electronic-sounding beeeeep he was hearing. The sounds of damaged receptors.

Alys wiggled a finger in her ear canal.

“Bit of warning next time, Joe,” she growled, but she was laughing as hard as her Uncle James.

“I like this kid, Jennifer,” he said.

“You would,” she scowled. “Okay, boy. Happy now?”

“No,” Joey said. “We need someone capable to man this. And whoever it is, run them through the firing sequence please. I want it fired every five minutes, for as long as we have shells.”

Jennifer called Coleen over and began instructing her in the light cannon’s use, whilst Joey, Alys and James descended the Lang Stairs.

Since arriving the previous night, James Kelly had spent his time in a closed-off chamber speaking to his estranged sister-in-law. After hours of relaying crucial intel on The Exalted’s numbers, likely strategies and weaknesses, James was exhausted but had just about convinced Jennifer that he could be trusted. For his part, he hadn’t seemed to have held a grudge against her for his banishment. “
She did what she thought was right,”
he’d told Alys.

He hadn’t seen his former-wife Fiona yet. She’d been asleep for his arrival and throughout his interrogation. No-one had mentioned Stephanie. What was the point? James never knew she’d existed. If Fiona wanted him to know he’d had a daughter, she should be the one to tell him.

Reaching the bottom of the staircase, the three parted ways: Joey and Alys to check on the gates and buildings, James to seek out Fiona.

Interlude

Newhaven and the North

They press as one. Decayed, putrefied flesh and sinew squishes against immovable steel barriers. They push on, undeterred, following the sound of a bridge collapse that had died weeks and months before.

Some at the rear turn and tilt their head. The rest of their body follows and they shamble and crawl towards the source of the booming cannon fire.

The sound comes again and again. More join the disjointed march. Some just follow their nearest brethren, but most fix on the booming noise, coming regularly now.

Hundreds and then thousands of decayed, hungry creatures make their way to the source of the sound, jaws working, teeth clacking as though in practice for the coming meal.

Chapter 20

Alys

Reaching the bottom of the Lang Stairs, Joey at her side, Alys felt the surge of adrenaline threatening. She willed it away.

Not yet
.

“Alys, Joseph,” her mother called from the stair’s halfway point.

Both she and Joey waited as Jennifer came down the stone staircase towards them. She looked calm, in control, but something was on her mind.

“You two come with me.” It wasn’t a request.

“Mum, we’re kinda on a schedule here,” Alys said.

“Yes, I know you are, but this will only take five minutes and it’s important.”

Jennifer walked away from them, tossing a
hurry along
gesture at them over her shoulder.

Joey looked at Alys, who simply shrugged and followed after her mother.

Leading them into the main hall of Governor’s House, Jennifer shoved the doors open and strolled into the area they’d been using as a dining hall. Most of the refugees were gathered there. The former sanctuary of the Castle Governor had become the hub of their daily activity. They came here to eat, to converse and even to relax.

 
The hall buzzed and thrummed with activity and anticipation. People ate, some were huddled in conversation, and some simply read. A score of elderly men and women who’d founded a makeshift crèche for the fifty or so babies and infants, to allow their parents opportunity to work or join the fight, walked the floors, babes in arms, soothing, playing… living. A group of kids had a game of
pebble in the can
going at the rear of the hall. No-one noticed two Shephards and a MacLeod slip in.

The thunderous boom of the one o’clock gun made everyone laugh once more, the room’s buzz lifting another level.

Jennifer moved aside slightly and raised her hand to indicate the people in the room.

“This is what we’re fighting for today,” she said quietly. “The healers over there, the dirty barefoot kids tossing rocks at an empty can there. The fragile, long-immobile preachers of The Green Zone, the families from the beach, The Sick Kids, the babies. Life. That’s what this newly-founded Castle Community you two have created holds the promise of.”

Alys scanned around the room taking in the many faces. They were hardened people, these survivors, but they were good people. Despite every challenge, isolation, abandonment, unending death and loss, these people had endured. More, they had ignored those instincts that had ensured that they and those they loved had survived for these long years in a city of the dead and still held a place in their souls that hoped for a better life. They’d chosen to believe in this new opportunity for life. For a real life, free from fear.

Leaving quietly, Alys, Joey and Jennifer exchanged awkward hugs and left to do what they could to keep their new community intact.

From their position at the Half-Moon Battery, Alys and Joey could see the entire Esplanade sprawled beneath them and part-way along the Royal Mile. What had begun as a trembling had built into the thunder of thousands of boots marching towards the Castle.

From the timing of their arrival, it seemed that Uncle James had been convincing enough in the intel he’d fed to Somna to entice him to travel directly to the ancient fortress, sparing dozens of communities in his path. A small part of Alys’s subconscious sighed, relieved that her uncle had indeed proved trustworthy. A further sliver of her wished that Steph had been alive to meet her father. Alys shoved the thought back into the cell where she kept all of her doubts and focused on the grotesque parade of force and intimidation on the Esplanade below.

Arrogance
… that was the only word Alys could use to describe the nature of The Exalted’s arrival. The arrogance of a tribe who believed that a god directed and protected them. The arrogance of a man who thought himself unbeatable.

Like a winding, black serpent, the tribe had marched slowly, deliberately along The Mile. Hundreds of men garbed entirely in black, much of their faces and arms covered in countless raven tattoos, led the march. They sang dark songs of fates and sin. Behind this group, a clear area was protected and in the centre of it a flotilla travelled with a very tall man standing atop, side by side with his god, who, dressed in red football kit, was strapped to bamboo in his eternal pose of action and past glories, deflated football at his right foot.

Somna, dressed also in black, long hair tied tightly to his crown in a bun, moved his lidless eyes over his tribe. Even from her elevated opposition, the man looked truly terrifying and sent a shiver along Alys’s neck. His eyes spat the fire of belief and insanity. His arms were raised in victory. This monster, commanded by his god-king, had overseen the murder of thousands. He was supremely confident. He had every right to be. Somna was unparalleled as a killer and unwavering in his conviction.
 
He had his god on his side, after all.

The line of men stretched far along The Mile and ended with a group awkwardly wheeling a large wooden and metal structure along the cobbles.

Alys looked to Joey at her side. He had a grim look on his face, but he was calm, despite looking as though he wanted nothing more than to put an arrow through Somna’s skull.

A round metal trellis burned, one on each side of them. Alys watched the flames dance and absorbed some of the good, clean heat.

As she was about to ask Joey if he was ready, Somna’s Exalted came to a stop ten metres from the little bridge leading to the Castle’s gates. The Esplanade held perhaps two-thirds of Somna’s tribe. The remainder trailed along the Mile, out past the barricaded doors of Mary King’s Close.

Knowing the numbers but seeing them in front of your eyes were two very different things. Alys’s heart sank as she scanned along the legion of men and women of The Exalted. For a moment the wind seemed to stop and the sun dipped behind the only cloud floating across the morning sky. Somna’s voice boomed, reverberating along the Esplanade and around the castle walls.

“Sinners. Your lives are an affront to my god.” He held his arms aloft, scanning the faces of his peeking over the battlements. “You have clung to a life that you do not deserve. This place does not want you. My god’s people do not want you. Your very lives are an insult to him.”

The Exalted clanked weapons and stamped feet, bringing a riotous noise to the Esplanade.

“We will not tolerate…”

KRAKOOM

The one o’clock gun thundered once again, cutting off Somna’s diatribe.

Joey couldn’t help himself. Leaning out over the short wall at the Half Moon Battery he shouted, “What was that, gorgeous? Didn’t catch that.”

It was a reflex moment of humour that he didn’t really feel, but enjoyed all the same.

Somna was crocodilian in his posture below.

“With your every action you insult our holy purpose, boy. Do you think a simple noisemaker frightens an army commanded by our god?”

The Exalted raised a clamour in response once again.

Somna stepped down from his platform and made his way to the front line, metres away from the little bridge at the castle’s entrance.

“You can talk all you want, boy, that time is over. Your time is done. Open the gates and accept god’s
mercy
. I will end you quickly. Make us work for it… and it will not be quick, boy.”

A silence fell over the assembled killers in the Esplanade. Perhaps one full minute ticked by. Somna glared at the battlements as though imposing his will on the Castle walls and its inhabitants.

“Your response?” he boomed.

Alys looked back over her shoulder, up to where her mother stood. Jennifer gave her a sharp nod.

“Give him our response, Joe,” she said quietly.

Slowly, deliberately, Joseph MacLeod pulled an arrow from his quiver. Its tip wrapped in tough twine and dipped in single-malt scotch, he placed it smoothly into his bow and drew some tension into it. Holding the arrow tip over the flames to his left Joey waited to hear the crackle of the twine and removed the arrow, its tip burning alcohol-blue.

Alys stepped up with him onto the battlements, deliberately drawing her Sai to protect her friend from any arrows sent his way. Without a single word, Joey pulled full tension into his bow and released.

The flaming blue arrow thwhipped through the air, clunking into the moss-covered cobbles ten metres behind Somna in the centre of the clearing where his god stood atop the flotilla. Nothing happened. The arrow reverberated a few times and then stood still, poking out from the ground, its blue flame burning a few centimetres from the mossy cobbles.

Interpreting the arrow as a gesture of defiance, Somna snarled at the battlements.

“So be it.” Turning to his tribe he shouted to a blonde-haired woman, “Bring the ram.”

Joey leapt back down to the fire-filled trestles. Adjusting the twine on a second arrow, he lit the wad of cotton and retook his position on the battlements beside Alys.

Drawing back, he released the tension in his bow without firing and lay flat alongside Alys on the battlements as a shower of arrows flew over their heads.