Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) (47 page)

Robert crouched low to the ground. A bead of sweat hung from his chin, trembling in the breeze. Further rivulets ran the height of his face, following the contours of frown lines and crow’s-feet.

He studied the ground, adding minute detail to the mental map of the hillside forming in his mind’s eye, taking note of the tiniest landmarks, picking out every bent blade of grass, every broken twig.

The relative cool of the morning was being replaced by humid gales, which caressed the hillside as the sky grew paler. He sensed stifling heat building behind the horizon. Intuition and experience told him that, once the sun had risen in earnest, it would be unbearable in the open.

He would have to move fast. He couldn’t afford to miss a sign because of heat fatigue.

At the sound of snuffling, he stood and turned. Canterbury was spread out below. The brilliant white spires of the cathedral undulated behind building heat waves, cast alight in the early dawn light by mobile floodlights—the only lights they’d managed to get going before sunrise.

From here, he could see a few dozen people working away in the fields, tiny ant-like figures scrabbling amidst a sea of youthful wheat stalks. Only those few had dared brave the streets; the rest had barricaded themselves in their homes, joined a guard patrol, or taken flight to the cathedral.

A few metres away, Sarah sat astride her elderly, anserine chestnut mare—the smallest of the Friesian crop in the city’s stables, the only mount she’d ever been able to ride with confidence—which looked very much like a Shetland pony beside Robert’s mount. Due to his size, he rode one of their precious Shire horses: an obsidian stallion named Zodiac, nineteen hands tall, birthed by his father’s hand, a trusted friend since childhood.

Robert kept one eye on her, ready to take her reins at any moment. She’d been unsteady since leaving the stables, and had almost fallen several times. If the horse gathered any momentum up here then the pair of them would go hurtling down the hillside.

It detracted only slightly from his level of concentration, but he feared it might be just enough to make him miss that all-important shred of evidence.

Yet she had insisted. Her bout of rage the night before hadn’t dissipated as he’d hoped. After over an hour of fretting and agonising, she had agreed to let him leave the house—so long as she went with him.

There hadn’t been time to argue it out. He couldn’t leave her feeling abandoned and terrified, yet he had to get to the hills. Against his better judgement, he’d relented.

He scratched the back of his head and peered into the depths of the forest at the hill’s summit. His line of sight beyond the tree line was blocked by a thick screening of boughs and branches, beyond which anybody could stand and study them with ease.

Unnerved, trying to ignore the flesh crawling on the back of his neck, he turned his attention back towards the ground. The soil had been moved recently. The disturbance was subtle, scattered, almost undetectable even to his eyes—but it was there.

“Have you found something?” Sarah said.

Robert glanced at her over his shoulder. “I’m not sure.” He stood, dusting his knees, and headed back towards Zodiac. Once there, making sure that Sarah’s gaze was directed towards the city, he raised a duffel bag from the mount’s thigh, revealing the long barrel of a high-calibre rifle—a deadly talisman that warded away some of the prickling upon his neck.

But his talisman hadn’t come direct from the lock-up. It had come from under his bed.

According to one of their few enforced laws, nobody was allowed to keep a personal firearm. He himself had suggested it in the first place. In times gone by, he would have put his instincts aside to make a good example.

But Sarah had changed that.

After Norman had been attacked, he’d taken it from the armoury. It had taken a great deal of care to ensure that its absence went unnoticed. Each weapon was engraved with a registration number, and a log was made of acquisitions and returns. Fixing the numbers had been difficult, and only possible because of the increased threat level.

At the time he’d felt as though he was crossing a line—going back on everything he’d worked for over the years—but now he was certain that he’d been wise to do it.

He rested the duffel bag back against Zodiac’s leg. “Has anybody been up here recently? Travellers from away? Foraging parties? Kids playing?”

“No,” Sarah said. Her eyes were still on the city. “I don’t think so.”

Robert looked upon the tree line once more as he saddled up, keeping a hand near the duffel bag, ready. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”

The screech of crickets was deafening, occasionally punctured by the squawk of a passing bird. The clearing’s grass towered five feet high, protected from sheep or deer by an encircling shell of beech and oak. The underbrush had grown thick, with nettles and thorns interlacing the ferns and drowning ruined colonies of lavender.

It had taken Robert and Sarah over ten minutes to fight their way through, led only by a sliver of light shining through the canopy, flat on their stomachs. They had advanced by the inch, so that their rustling had been obscured by the din of cricket song.

Now the sun beat down on them from directly overhead, an orange fireball blazing without mercy. The grass was damp, the air between the blades stifling and stale, earthy in taste and lacking in oxygen. Even breathing had become a burden.

Beside him, Sarah’s face was creased into a fierce mask of determination, rouge at the cheeks. Curled locks of hair clung to her crown and lay lifeless upon her shoulders, dark with sweat, and her robes were streaked with grime, clinging to her skin. Her breathing had become laboured, and she looked somewhat dazed. But she hadn’t made a single complaint.

The forest had been too thick to ride this far, and so they had left their mounts tied to a tree. Robert had made sure to position them facing downhill, so that a quick getaway could be made, should they need one.

“What do you think?” Sarah whispered. Her eyes were wide, fixed on the sights ahead.

Nestled in the valley below was a small collection of buildings, laced with ragged concrete and rusted iron girders. Its borders had become shrouded by vines and a thick spattering of buckler ferns, but Robert still dared to wager that the complex had once been a remote business park of some kind.

The central building, an ugly maroon-bricked tower block, was nearing its end. The exterior walls on the upper levels had fallen away, taking with them cabling, piping and myriad office-room clutter. The resultant wreckage lay in the grass below, forming a rubble field that stretched for almost a hundred feet in every direction. In the harsh light of day, the building was rendered bare and cold, its cracked, grey pallor unwelcoming.

Running along the edge of the complex, beyond a small car park, was what remained of a chain-link fence, some ten feet high. Creepers had woven between the wire, obscuring its outline and engorging its apparent size. Heavily rusted in many places and torn away completely in others, it offered no protection to the complex’s borders now.

Sarah shifted in the shallow well her body had created in the grass. She started forwards on her elbows, but succeeded only in digging herself deeper into the stinking mud.

“What are you doing?” Robert hissed. He pointed to the blades of grass above their heads, which were undulating at her every move.

“I can’t see,” she answered, squinting and darting her head back and forth. She jostled for a few seconds more, during which time Robert’s gesticulations became ever more adamant, and the grass continued to sway.

He maintained his gaze upon her until her face had grown sheepish and her head still. He glanced down at the building, back to her questioning face, and then shook his head. “Nothing’s moving,” he whispered.

“Then why are we lying down?”

“We don’t know who’s down there. We have to wait until we’re sure.”

She cursed under her breath, pulling clods of sodden fabric away from her body. He watched her face scintillate with restless energy, and smiled despite himself.

“How much longer? I can’t breathe down here.”

Robert took another look at the building, seeing nothing of interest other than the outer door teetering in the lacklustre breeze. “I don’t know,” he said. “A little longer.”

He made to shunt the duffel bag forwards with the utmost delicacy, but winced as Sarah turned her head to watch, blinded by a ray of reflected light from the rim of her spectacles. “Take those off, will you?” he muttered.

Sarah’s eyes grew forlorn, and her head slid down to make contact with the ground. “I’m sorry.” She paused. “I’m not like you. I can’t do this. I shouldn’t have followed you.”

Her skin was now showing the first signs of sunburn, the delicate pallor of her thighs and upper arms taking on an angry pinkish glow. A lifetime with her nose in books had robbed her of any protection from the sun’s rays.

He reached out, chancing an errant rustle, and gripped her arm. “It’s okay.”

They would have to leave. He’d get her back to the city and return to the clearing later with reinforcements. All they had to do was clear up a little recon now, and then at least the journey would not have been wasted.

He assessed the complex afresh as flies buzzed about his head. He was almost certain that this was the very same office building that the injured boy—Charlie—had mentioned. This was where he’d been held prisoner. And others had been held here too, entire enslaved families. Perhaps the nerve centre of the mysterious coalition Norman had spoken of. If this was indeed the place, they would have gained a major tactical advantage: they would have made the first step towards mounting an effective resistance.

If it was empty then they could set a watch and surprise the enemy when they returned. If it was occupied, they could saddle up every volunteer and storm the entire complex. Troublesome they might be, but a few marauders couldn’t stand up to a hundred-strong cavalry charge. They could rid themselves of this scourge.

The tower block’s door slammed against the outer wall, caught in a sudden gust of wind. He ducked instinctively, but forced his head back up and focused on the distant doorway. All was still. The wind died, and the door settled, squeaking.

Then a shadow moved inside. It was a mere blur of darkness against the concrete floor, but it sent a shiver down his spine nonetheless.

The heat suddenly seemed far away, the insects’ chorus a distant nuisance. The doorway became scarred on his retinas, and he saw its frame even when he blinked, cast in glowing greens and neon purples.

The movement came again soon after. The shadow—that of a slouching man—slid across the floor beneath the open doorway. It was positioned some way inside, but from Robert's raised vantage point he could see some two metres into the building.

He froze in place and scanned the meadow by swivelling his eyes in their sockets, determined not to make a further sound. If the tower block
was
occupied then there might be others lying in wait, or patrolling the surrounding areas. The last thing he needed now was to be spotted because of his own carelessness.

Beside him, he sensed that Sarah hadn’t noticed this turn of events. Her head still rested upon her arms. Sweat now ran in rivulets down her back, and she breathed laboriously in the heat. For the time being, Robert was glad for her exhaustion. As long as she remained as she was, they would most probably remain unseen.

The pair of legs passed the door again, stepping around debris and plant matter scattered on the floor. Robert almost cringed when the tip of a rifle barrel swung into view.

Moments later, another man came around the corner from behind the tower block, twirling a stunted pistol in his hand: a grizzled old goat with unkind Hispanic features and a long, grey beard. His skin was tanned a uniform bronze, weathered and pockmarked, and one arm was tarnished by deep scars that snaked from elbow to shoulder. Patrolling the edge of the rubble field, he didn’t bother to look beyond the bounds of his path, making for a poor guardsman. Yet Robert wasn’t fooled, sensing danger in the man’s brutal face and lumbering gait.

Inside the doorway, the pair of legs passed into view again. This time they moved fast, with purpose. A few moments later a resounding clatter emanated from within the tower block.

Sarah jumped as though electrocuted. Robert reached for her arm to steady her, once again risking a stray rustle. She looked at him with wide eyes, but yielded under his soothing grasp, and settled back into the grass.

The banging grew louder, now accompanied by shouting. It sounded as though several people were fighting inside, and more were joining the battle by the moment.

The Hispanic man stood very still. He glanced about himself, then trained his gaze upon the wall closest to him, head cocked, listening. The pistol hung lame in his grasp, the hand twitching near the safety catch.

A single resounding rumble brought the scuffling inside to an abrupt end, leaving in its wake a deathly silence.

“What’s going on?” Sarah whispered.

“Shhh.” Robert didn’t take his eyes from the Hispanic guard. “I’m not sure.”

The guard remained frozen beyond the rubble field, patient and calculating despite his brutish visage.

The doors of the tower block flew open as a group of men burst outside. Two bore automatic rifles and sported dark, lank hair, their faces cruel and grimed. The other three stumbled some way ahead, arms folded behind their heads, unarmed, backing away. Those in the former group were dressed in ragged, shapeless shawls, while the latter were clad in somewhat cleaner work shirts and dungarees.

Two of the unarmed men were babbling, falling into a crouch before their captors, hands drawn up to their faces. Their companion stood erect and still, face set and expressionless, his blue shirt flapping in the wind. Even from a long way off, and with only the back of his head to go by, Robert could sense perseverant dignity and pride about him.

The Hispanic guard came striding forwards, his patience having vanished, waving his pistol and uttering rapid obscenities. He approached the two armed men and struck one of them across the head with the butt of the pistol without a break in his stride.