Grim Company 02 - Sword Of The North (29 page)

‘You stupid shit.’ Shank’s breath was hot and sour. ‘You’re Corvac’s bitch, else I’d murder you like I did that other sod. But I can still have some fun.’ Shank’s arm slid down his body, the knife gleaming in the light of the glow-globe. Their tussle had put some distance between them and the globe overhead, and as they moved away from its baleful light Cole found that his anger was almost instantly replaced by desperate terror.

‘No!’ he begged. ‘Please no! I’ll give you my food, all of it, tomorrow and every day until you say otherwise. Don’t hurt me.’ There had been a time when he would never have begged so pathetically, but that part of him had died the night Corvac and his gang had ambushed him outside the tavern.

Shank smirked and pressed the knife closer. ‘Goldie was right. You really are a tiny dick. At least you won’t miss it much.’

‘You stop that!’ The ponderous voice boomed out across the dormitory. Suddenly Ed was there, dragging Shank back, tossing him across the room as if he weighed nothing. The halfwit’s brow was furrowed in anger and he waved an admonishing finger in Shank’s face. ‘You mustn’t hurt my friends.’

Shank snarled and leaped at Ed, driving his knife into the big halfwit again and again. Ed didn’t react. He just stood there with a confused expression as the steel entered and left him, splashes of blood flicking from the plunging blade. Eventually several men rushed forward to restrain the crazed knifeman, but by then it was too late.

Ed looked down at the gory mess Shank had made of his chest. ‘Oh,’ he said. Then he collapsed.

‘Ghost?’

He tried to open his eyes. The world was a blur, and he felt so very heavy. He attempted to hack up some saliva to wet his throat, but there was nothing left. His mouth was as dry as old bone.

‘Man down,’ shouted another voice from far above. There was a brief pause. ‘It’s Corvac’s bitch.’

A face materialized a few inches from his nose. The smile on that face triggered a memory, which swirled out of the fog of his befuddled mind.

A piano.

The smile reminded him of a piano, black and white keys arranged side by side. Garrett had owned a piano. His mentor had purchased it in Shadowport and transported it across the Broken Sea to his estate in Dorminia. It was the envy of everyone who saw it. Sasha had learned to play a few arrangements, haunting in their beauty. Cole himself had never been able to master the instrument. Sasha had always been smarter than him.

‘Ghost!’ repeated the first voice. ‘Stay awake! If you drift off, you might not wake up again.’

He felt himself being lifted, and then he was floating through the air. What had the piano man called him? Ghost?

He was a ghost, soaring up on ethereal wings to fly away to a better place. But if he were a ghost, that must mean he was dead. It didn’t seem so bad, he reflected. In fact, it was rather peaceful.

Thud.

He struck the ground with a painful jolt. Something was torn from his shoulders, and rough hands prodded him.

‘Boy’s all skin and bone. It’s a wonder he lasted as long as he did. You think he’s done?’

Footsteps approached, crunching over hard stone. ‘He’s done. Throw him in the shambler pit.’

He knew that voice, and the man it belonged to.

Corvac.

Memory flooded back. He’d collapsed in the pit. The pick had slipped from his hands as exhaustion finally got the better of him.

Corvac’s words twisted around in his brain, unfolding like a sheet of parchment and burning their meaning into his brain like fire.

Throw him in the shambler pit.

Overseeing the miners could be dull work, and so the Mad Dogs had created their own perverse form of entertainment. The shambler pit, where dead workers were tossed and left to rot until the Blight brought them back, devoid of everything that had once made them human.

Cole struggled desperately as he was dragged along the blackened wasteland towards the ditch, but his efforts were feeble. He heard a few muttered protests from the Mad Dogs, the more decent among them voicing their objections to Corvac. Still, none dared step in to stop what was happening.

They reached the edge of the pit. Corvac placed a booted foot on Cole’s chest and for a moment the Mad Dog leader seemed almost apologetic. ‘This is for disrespecting my woman,’ he said. ‘No one fucks Goldie. Not without paying. She told me to tell you that.’

And with that, Corvac shoved him over the side of the pit.

The walls weren’t quite sheer, and Cole bounced off them on the way down to the bottom, breaking at least two ribs. Despite the terrible pain, he lifted his head with a colossal effort and took in his surroundings.

The pit was about thirty feet across and roughly circular. Near the middle of the pit the bodies of two dead miners sprawled on the ground. As Cole watched in agonized horror, the corpses began to twitch. The heads of the dead miners slowly turned on their rotting necks, rotating around to stare at him with mucus-glazed eyes. In a terrifying succession of moans and cracking limbs, the corpses climbed slowly to their feet.

When he was younger Cole had imagined that when he eventually died it would be in a blaze of glory. He often daydreamed of his heroic last stand, enemies piling onto him from all sides and bearing him down only for him to rise up again, half a dozen swords sticking out of his body, roaring his defiance.

He never for a moment imagined he would die starved and broken at the bottom of a pit, chewed apart by slavering corpses.

The shamblers shuffled closer, rotting flesh sloughing off their bodies, mouths opening and closing shut with a horrific clicking noise.

Cole tried to block out the world as the Darkson had taught him. To slip away to a place of utter tranquillity. The
snap
of the shamblers’ jaws made it impossible to focus and lose himself. He opened his mouth to roar his defiance, but all that emerged was a pathetic squawk.

He closed his eyes again. He was done.
I’m sorry, Sasha
, he thought
. I failed you.

There was a whisper of movement above him, a slight rustle of air as something passing overhead.

‘Caw.’

He opened his eyes. A crow was fixing him with its beady stare. ‘Cole,’ it said.

‘You… I know you. You’re the bird from my dreams.’

Command them.
The voice thundered inside his skull.
Command them to halt and they will yield to you.

‘How?’ Cole tried to move but it was no good, he had no strength left. ‘How are you talking to me?’

There is no time to explain. Summon forth the power that is within you, child. Bend them to your will. Do it now.

And suddenly the crow was gone, beating wings lifting it up out of the pit and into the steel sky.

The shamblers were almost upon him. The snapping jaws inched down, broken teeth inches from his face, so close now that he could smell the creatures’ breath, a rotten stench that made him gag. What had the crow said?
Bend them to your will.

He summoned all his courage, all his willpower. ‘Stop,’ he rasped.

And the corpses froze.

‘The fuck is this? Come on, you raggedy bastards! Bite his face off!’ Corvac’s frustrated scream bellowed from the edge of the pit.

Cole stared at the putrid heads just above him. The malevolence in their eyes, the infernal force that animated the corpses, seemed to have faded.

It was me. I told them to stop… and they obeyed me.

He laughed suddenly, a manic outpouring of pain and grief and relief. He was still laughing when a maggot wriggled from the eyelid of the nearest shambler and tumbled down into his mouth.

‘Back!’ he ordered, choking down bile. The corpses withdrew.

‘I don’t believe this… Now even the dead are trying to fuck me!’ Corvac was incandescent with rage. ‘Burn them! Burn those whore-spawned dead fucks!’

A handful of Mad Dogs clambered down into the pit carrying torches and swords. The shamblers lurched towards them, but they were quickly set aflame as torches were thrust at their feet. Soon they were smouldering on the ground.

Corvac stormed over to Cole and drew his sword. ‘I don’t know how you did it, but you’ve embarrassed me for the last time, you little prick.’

‘Lower your weapon.’

It was Captain Priam. The Whitecloaks had arrived and were climbing down into the pit, Derkin trailing after them. ‘What did I tell you?’ Priam called sternly to Corvac. ‘We can afford no more losses until the new shipment arrives. This Condemned is still drawing breath.’

Derkin attempted to descend the pit but slipped halfway down, thudding painfully to the bottom. He climbed to his feet and hobbled over to Cole. ‘Come on. Let’s get you out of here.’

‘You went to fetch Priam?’ screamed Corvac. ‘You twisted little shit!’ He looked like he wanted to run the hunchback through – but with the Whitecloaks around, he dared not make a move.

‘I couldn’t let you torture him any more,’ Derkin said fiercely. ‘It’s not right.’ The corpse-carver placed a comforting hand on Cole’s brow. ‘You can stay with me until you’ve recovered. Ma will look after you.’

‘Thank you,’ Cole gasped. A moment later darkness claimed him.

‘Well, what about
this
one?’

Ambryl examined the mask with a furrowed brow. ‘This one’ was of reptilian design, with a long snout and oversized teeth painted around the breathing hole.

‘Are you high again, sister? I would rather the rat mask we saw in the last shop than this… monstrosity.’

Sasha sighed. For someone who claimed to have no interest in fashion, Ambryl was taking her sweet time choosing a costume for the festival. First it had been the dress, an adventure that had taken the best part of the morning before she settled on a green frock costing almost double what they’d budgeted for. Then they had needed to look for shoes, a fiasco that had severely tested Sasha’s resolve to kick her drug habit once and for all. Sixteen days on and somehow she was still hanging in there, despite the cravings that kept her awake at night and occasionally reduced her to a trembling, emotional mess.

Ambryl scowled at the masks. There were all manner of designs on display, most inspired by creatures real or imagined. Some resembled cats, other wolves or exotic birds. One mask depicted a bizarre tentacled monster that reminded Sasha of the magical abomination she’d destroyed months back. The exploding quarrel had been Isaac’s invention, a device he claimed could revolutionize warfare if produced in sufficient numbers. Sasha thought she might have been able to replicate the weapon, but if Isaac was indeed what the Halfmage had claimed the best thing she could do was to forget that it had ever existed. The world needed no more weapons capable of such devastation.

‘How much for this one?’ Ambryl asked the shop owner, a small, timid-looking woman of middling years.

‘Twenty silver,’ the shopkeep said. ‘But for you, fifteen.’

‘Five,’ Ambryl replied coldly.

‘Fourteen.’

‘Five.’

‘That’s not how we conduct business in the City of Towers,’ the shopkeep said, mild admonishment in her voice.

Ambryl’s hazel eyes narrowed dangerously. Sasha took a quick step forward and positioned herself in front of her older sister. ‘Thank you for your time but we’ll shop elsewhere.’

They left Masquerade and decided to make their way back to the first shop they’d visited. The marble streets were teeming with people. The Seeding Festival seemed to have energized the typically subdued Thelassans – Sasha saw eager smiles and eyes bright with anticipation, from the women perhaps more than the men.

‘You have to stop doing that,’ she remonstrated with Ambryl as they walked. ‘This isn’t Dorminia and you’re not an Augmentor any longer. You can’t just bully people.’

Her sister sneered. ‘These Thelassans are soft. Have you seen the way the men lower their eyes as we pass? We are wolves among lambs here.’

‘We’re
guests
,’ Sasha replied. ‘We’re going to speak with the White Lady and bring warning of the Fade, that’s all. Then we’re going back to Dorminia.’

Ambryl’s gaze narrowed again. Sasha could think of no one that teetered on the edge of fury as often as her sister, except perhaps for Brodar Kayne’s friend the Wolf. Jerek’s outbursts usually stopped at a torrent of curses and possibly the odd death threat. Ambryl’s anger, on the other hand, was like a steel blade in a velvet glove: sudden, unexpected, and usually murderous in intent. Sasha still had the bump on her head to prove it.

‘I came here to deliver vengeance,’ Ambryl hissed. ‘The life of the White Lady for that of Lord Salazar.’

Sasha stopped dead in the street. A passing woman gave them a curious glance; she must have noted their expressions for she quickly looked away and hurried off. ‘We discussed this, Ambryl—’

‘I told you not to call me that.’

‘Fine, Cyreena. Look, you
cannot
approach the mistress of this city with malice in your heart. She’s a Magelord, one of the most powerful wizards who ever walked the land. Even Salazar never challenged her openly. You’ll get us both killed if you try to confront her.’

Ambryl’s mouth twisted and she flicked blonde hair out of her face. ‘You know, I believe I preferred you when you were drugged out of your skull. Let’s hurry and find these accursed masks. Your insatiable appetite for shopping has delayed us quite long enough.’

Ambryl strolled off, leaving Sasha standing there, mouth hanging open in shocked outrage. She closed it with a frown and lengthened her stride to catch up with her sister.

They returned to Liza’s Costumes and inspected the masks there a second time. Sasha found a fox mask that cost only two silvers, and after another quarter-bell of dithering Ambryl finally picked out a mask that seemed to please her. It resembled a woman with serpentine features. ‘What’s this mask supposed to be?’ Ambryl asked the shop owner.