Iron Jackal (46 page)

Not fast enough. The door was inches from the jamb when a hand bristling with bayonets clamped around the edge. The door hit the Iron Jackal’s fingers with a clang. But it didn’t close.

He let go of the door and fled into the depths of the meat locker. He pushed his way through sides of beef, racks of ribs, a forest of hard-frozen flesh. The cold enfolded him, chilling his skin with frightening speed. He was only wearing his lightest clothes, and even they had been too much in the heat of the Samarlan afternoon. Here, they were no protection at all.

The far wall appeared out of the fog. No way out.
Course there’s no way out, it’s a damned meat locker!
But he
needed
a way out, so he went towards the corner, slipping in between the rows, pulse thumping in his ears.

Stop moving. Think.

He stopped. Listened.

Somewhere out there, he could hear the heavy breathing of a large animal.

He ducked down to look beneath the hanging carcasses, hoping to get an idea of where the Iron Jackal was. The white fog foiled him, suggesting phantom movements everywhere.

He tried to make a plan, but his thoughts were tumbling over themselves. He couldn’t see the daemon, but the daemon knew where he was. Maybe it couldn’t pinpoint him exactly, but it knew enough to track him down. He peered between the obscuring slabs of meat. It could come from anywhere.

The chrome ball was still clutched in his hand. If only that overseer hadn’t had such a thick skull.

Then he noticed something. There were two wires coming from within the ball, running to the battery pack at his waist. One was more slack than the other, hanging loose. He pulled up his shirt and checked the pack where it was strapped to his waist, and as he did so, the end that was supposed to be attached to the pack fell free.

He’d yanked out the wire when he swung it at the Sammie, and it had come loose of its clip. The bloody thing wasn’t broken at all!

He raised his head. A huge silhouette crossed the row ahead of him; but then it was gone, without seeing him. Quickly, he ducked away, and slipped off in the other direction, moving as silently as he could.

Just give me a few seconds, you son of a bitch.

He tucked the ball under his armpit and snatched up the loose end of the wire. With both hands free, he coiled the wire around the battery terminal and secured the clip.

Now we’re in business!

The thump of the daemon’s clawed feet warned him an instant before it attacked. He threw himself back as a handful of blades slashed through the air towards him. They ripped into a frozen carcass and tore it in two. Frey tripped and crashed into a side of beef, hard as a wall. He fell to the ground, the chrome ball dropping with him. Somewhere in amid all the fog and flesh was a monster, close enough to grab him and tear him to pieces. He scrambled away on his hands and knees, snatching up the ball as he went. The beast snarled, hacking through carcasses to get at its prey, setting them all to swinging on their hooks. Frey found space to stand, got to his feet and ran for all he was worth in whichever direction he was facing.

Ahead of him, a blank wall.
No, no, no. Wrong way!

He looked to his left, along the rows. And there it was: the door. He heard the thump of clawed feet again: the Iron Jackal, racing along the rows. Done playing now. Intent on the kill.

He burst through the open doorway, out of the meat locker, back into the anteroom. His one and only thought as he crossed the boundary was to close the door behind him, to trap the thing, shut it inside. But two of the butchers were just coming in from the slaughter-yard with cleavers in their hands. They saw him coming out of the locker, recognised him, and charged.

His revolver was out in a moment. He fired at the ground in front of them, and they faltered. They backed away, hands held up. Frey looked past them into the yard, and saw more of their fellows coming, drawn by the gunshot.

‘Shit,’ he muttered. He didn’t have time for this. He ran for the only quick exit he had: the stairs.

The stairs turned back on themselves and let out onto a short corridor with doors to either side. At the end was a large window. There was no glass in it – few windows had glass in Shasiith – but it was shuttered against the sunlight.

Frey heard someone or some
thing
crashing up the stairs behind him. He sprinted the length of the corridor and threw himself at the shutters. They were flimsy, and splintered before him, sending him tumbling out onto a sloping roof. His legs went from under him and he bounced and rolled before plunging off the edge and into the alley beyond.

The drop was only a couple of metres, a single storey, and the floor was packed mud rather than stone. It was still enough to knock the wind out of him, and it was only because he landed well that he didn’t break a bone. Gasping for breath, his vision blurred with pain, he raised his head. Right in front of him was a cart full of hay.

Why couldn’t I have bloody landed on
that?

The owner was nowhere to be seen, having left the donkey that drew the cart tethered up in the deserted alleyway. Frey scrambled under the cart. He only had seconds to act before the Iron Jackal appeared. In the hot shade under the cart, he fumbled the chrome ball into his hands, and pressed his thumb down on the stud.

It vibrated in his hands.

There was a loud impact above him as something heavy landed on the cart, and the bottom suddenly dropped towards Frey. He cringed and squeezed his eyes shut: it took a second before he realised he hadn’t been squashed. One of the wheels had snapped, and the floor of the cart was now tipped at an angle, mere centimetres above him. But he was still here, and still holding down the stud for all he was worth.

The donkey was braying frantically and pulling against its tether, making the cart wheels scrape back and forth. Frey was caught between trying to catch his breath and trying not to breathe. He gasped silently like a landed fish and did his best not to move.

The cart creaked above him as the Iron Jackal shifted its weight. He heard a long, low snarl. Angry. Suspicious. Suddenly, a flurry of savage movement: hay went flying everywhere, landing in clumps to either side of the cart.

You can’t find me, you bastard,
he thought, terror making him defiant.
You can’t find me.

Then the cart lurched again. Another impact, this one lighter. The Iron Jackal, launching off.

He listened, not daring to move. The donkey gradually stopped bucking and braying.

He kept holding down the stud until long after the ball had stopped vibrating, and the battery pack had died.

After the donkey had been calm for several minutes, he crawled out into the light. He still half-expected the Iron Jackal to be hiding on top of the cart, waiting to stab him in the back from above. But there was no sign of it, and something told him it had gone.

He’d survived the second visit. That only left the last. If the sorcerer was to be believed, the Iron Jackal wouldn’t give up a third time.

He coughed and spat. Aching everywhere, he made his painful way up the alley. He still had a rendezvous with Trinica to get to. And he was pretty sure the damned daemon had made him late.

Thirty

The Nameless – Juggernauts – Frey is Paranoid – The Water Garden

‘W
hat happened to
you
?’ Trinica asked, laughing. Then she saw the look on his face, and the laughter drained out of her. ‘What happened?’ she asked again, serious this time.

Frey sat down next to her on the broad stone steps that led from the shrine behind them to the river below. He was muddy and tattered, his hair was everywhere, and he stank of sweat and dead animals.

‘I’ve had a bit of a bad day,’ he said.

She reached towards him, hesitated, then brushed the hair away from his forehead with quick and uncertain movements. The concern in her eyes forced him to turn his head away as tears threatened. Exhaustion and fright had made him overemotional. He took a few breaths to get himself under control.

‘You want to see inside the shrine?’ she asked, out of nowhere.

He didn’t want to see inside the shrine. He couldn’t have cared less about it. But she sensed the state he was in. She sensed it, and pretended she didn’t, and she was giving him something to distract himself until he was ready to talk.

Damn, this woman was so
right
for him. Nobody understood him like she did.

‘Yeah.’ He nodded and managed a smile. ‘That’d be nice.’

She got to her feet, bringing her parasol with her, and held out a hand. He took it, glad of the excuse to touch her. The effort of standing up made him wince.

It was the old Trinica who had appeared today, the one he’d almost married. She was wearing short trousers, sandals and a shirt, exposing slender, marble-white limbs that glistened with an unguent for protection against sunburn. Frey hadn’t seen her wearing so little for more than a decade. Even beat up and filthy as he was, he suddenly found himself very interested in all that unclothed skin.

Her chopped-off white-blonde hair had been fixed into a style that she carried off well. While she still hacked her hair, these days she never did it so much that she couldn’t make something out of it when she wanted to.

She saw him staring at her. ‘What?’ she asked with a smile.

‘You know what.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Darian,’ she said, and it could have meant anything. But he thought she was pleased.

She was in a lighthearted, girlish mood today. Their sour parting had been forgotten, and there would be no apology necessary from either side. He was glad of that. He was rubbish at apologies at the best of times.

She chatted about nothing as she led him up the stairs towards the shrine at the top. Her manner was such a contrast to the horror he’d experienced on the way to meet her that his spirits began to return. So what if he looked a mess? Trinica had forgiven him. That was a result.

The shrine was a simple semicircle of white and weathered columns beneath a flat roof. It was plain in comparison to the grand and elaborate buildings he could see crowding the far bank of the river and clinging to the bridges that spanned it. Dakkadians and Samarlans passed by, going unhurriedly about their business, or loafed on the steps, watching the boats on the river, but none came inside.

It was a relief to be out of the sun. The shrine seemed dim in comparison, even though it was open on all sides to the light. Inside the shrine, nine huge alabaster figures stood against the flat rear wall. None of them had a face. They were blank and smooth. There were six identical males and three identical females, the difference being the height, the shape of the body and the length of the hair. Other than that, there was no decoration at all. It was a white, quiet, empty place.

Frey looked from one statue to another, and back again. ‘Their gods are really boring, huh? Who are this lot?’

‘The Nameless,’ said Trinica, with a wry glance.

Frey snorted. ‘Should’ve known, really. Honestly, folks worship all kinds of shit. You know, I just found out that Silo believes he’ll be born again in another body after he dies.’

‘Of course he does. He’s a Murthian.’

‘How comes everyone knows about that except me?’

She patted him on the arm. ‘Books, Darian. You know, if you open one, you’ll find it full of words.’

‘Words, eh?’ Frey said. ‘Tell me more.’

‘Well, for instance, in
books
there are stories about the old gods of Samarla, and how they once lived on Atalon among their people. It was a paradise, and nobody wanted for anything. But the people became corrupt and decadent, and they stopped worshipping their gods. Evil grew in them—’

‘
Now
it’s getting interesting,’ Frey interjected.

She gave him a look. ‘Evil grew in them, and this evil became manifest. A plague – the translation is literally
soul-plague
– swept through the land, killing the good. Many people died, but only the most pious, the most faithful. And then the gods began to die too. One by one they fell, killed by the ungratefulness of their subjects. And the evil people saw them die, and thought that they might not be gods after all, and made war on them. The gods departed the world in despair, rising up into the sky on a pillar of fire.’

‘Right,’ said Frey. ‘Pillar of fire.’

‘A little open-mindedness wouldn’t hurt you, Darian.’

‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘Every time I open my mind, things fall out.’

‘That explains a lot,’ she replied. ‘Anyway, listen, you’ll like this bit. As punishment for the soul-plague, the gods unleashed seven great beasts of unstoppable power to destroy the paradise they’d created. They were called the Juggernauts. They roamed the land, destroying settlements, eradicating crops, slaughtering anything that moved. The people hid, and starved, and prayed to the gods for mercy. It took a hundred years of suffering before the Juggernauts stopped, disappearing as mysteriously as they came.’

‘So what’s up with the no-face thing?’ Frey asked, gesturing at the statues.