The Blood Debt (27 page)

Her world soon became one of tense tedium. The buggies never moved much faster than a sluggish stroll, and the group of wardens bringing up the rear first caught up with then overtook the buggy.

Shilly listened to their conversation with a feeling of jealousy but had no real urge to join in. She was content to listen to Chu describe life in Laure as she passed while Shilly rested her legs.

It didn’t sound like much, if Chu’s opinion was accurate. She described a town that had been isolated for too long; everyone knew everyone else; someone such as her, whose family had moved there three generations earlier, was still regarded as an outsider. Nothing changed; the rain rarely came; life was always on a knife-edge; the young of each generation invariably hoped to get away but always ended up becoming as inward-looking as the parents they had rebelled against. To Shilly it sounded no different to Fundelry, only on a larger scale.

Not once did Chu mention the yadachi or the blood rituals that Banner had mentioned the previous night. Perhaps, Shilly thought, she was trying not to scare her new companions away. That would make sense, given that she had no other way of getting home. When she raised her arm to point at something down in the Divide, Shilly thought she glimpsed a line of old, small cuts up the girl’s arm, but she didn’t have the stomach to ask about them.

Somehow, after an hour of slow but steady descent, she managed to nod off. The gentle rocking of the buggy as it traversed the difficult road overcame her anxiety and lulled her into a shallow, dreamless sleep, with Sal’s pack behind her head as a pillow.

When she stirred, the buggy was still and everyone had gathered at the nearest bend to look northeast at the same cloud of dust she had spotted earlier.

Shilly wiped grit from her eyes and took up her stick. The cloud was much closer. She could make out vague shapes at its base, but she couldn’t tell what they were. Some of them looked like people.

‘Man’kin,’ said Kail, lowering a brass telescope from his eye. ‘A thousand or more, travelling as one.’

Even Chu seemed surprised by this declaration.

‘This isn’t a common occurrence, I take it,’ said Marmion.

‘No,’ she said. ‘They often travel in pairs, and we occasionally see groups of a dozen or so, but never this many at once.’

‘Maybe they’re lost,’ said Shilly.

‘Wherever they’re going,’ said Kail, ‘they’re heading right for the Fool’s Run.’

‘Of course they are.’ Marmion ran a hand through his thinning hair and turned to look downward. ‘No walking from here on. We’ll have to step up the pace.’

Shilly followed the direction of his gaze. They had stopped roughly halfway down the canyon wall. The Fool’s Run was faintly visible below — a thread stretching across the floor of the Divide, deviating only to avoid the largest of obstacles. One stretch passed across the remains of a giant beast, slicing without pause right through a ribcage large enough to enclose a small town.

The gathering dispersed. Tom took the wheel of the buggy and gunned the motor. Chu slid into the rear seat with Shilly and couldn’t hide her nervousness as they recommenced their descent.

This time, sleep wasn’t an option. Tom rode the brake, accelerator and steering wheel with furious intensity, incessantly adjusting their course along the weathered road. The constant change in momentum was as unsettling as their increased pace. Shilly tried her best not to look over the edge at the still substantial drop to the bottom of the Divide, but she found it impossible to avoid completely. There was something hypnotic about the drop and the way it decreased, metre by slow metre. She felt strangely as though they were tunnelling deep into the Earth. The rocky cliff oppressed her as much as the drop on the other side. She was being crushed between them, like a bug between two fingers.

‘Goddess,’ she groaned at one point, ‘how much
longer?’

‘We’re getting there,’ said Banner — giving her information she could see with her own eyes but couldn’t truly accept.

Shilly sank back into her seat and quashed the thought that she would never reach the bottom, that they would go slower and slower the closer it came, leaving her stuck on the cliff face forever.

They surmounted one significant obstacle — a landslide that had blocked the last two legs of the road and needed to be cleared before any of the vehicles could pass — and then they were down. Not a moment too soon, Shilly thought. The man’kin were thundering closer with every second. It was clear that the wardens had been seen. Several of the ferocious-looking creatures had broken free from the leading edge of the horde and were running headlong towards them.

As soon as the second bus — the one carrying Highson Sparre — safely descended, Marmion urged them onto the Fool’s Run.

‘Go!’ he shouted, waving. ‘Go!’

Tom put his foot down hard on the accelerator. The wheels threw up stones in their wake. Shilly held on as the buggy leapt forward like a goat freed from its post. The road — mercifully level and straight — swept by beneath them.

Tom whooped with excitement, but Shilly didn’t share the sentiment. Three of the leading man’kin changed course to intercept them further along the road. One had the shape of a bare-breasted woman running on all fours, with the hindquarters of a lion and a naked child riding her back. The second possessed scales and a broad bearded mouth filled with sharp teeth; two curving, spiked horns grew out of its head. The third was only vaguely humanoid, its limbs jointless, flexing and whipping like snakes as it ran, its bullet-shaped head menacingly featureless.

The man’kin put on a surprising turn of speed. Shilly clutched the buggy’s metal frame. It was going to be close. The shouts of the man’kin rose above the whine of the engine. This surprised her, as they looked so feral as to be incapable of language. It was hard to make out the words they called until the fastest was close enough to strike.

‘More humans!’
screeched the bestial woman. ‘
Why won’t they leave us alone?’

It lunged at them. Tom jerked the buggy out of range. The man’kin shrieked and fell back as they accelerated along the road. The other two had already diverted their attentions to the bus behind them. It dodged a clumsy attempt by the horned man’kin to spike its metal side. Peering over the back of the buggy, Shilly saw wardens on the back of the bus scrambling to get out of range of the snarling beast. Kail wrenched the bus from side to side, slamming into the whip-creature and sending it flying. Then he too was past the main threat.

The second bus wasn’t so lucky. The bestial woman had planted itself in the centre of the road, head dipped low to ram. In a desperate attempt to avoid the collision, the driver turned the wheel too far and lost control. The bus skidded off the road in a cloud of dirt and threatened to tip. ‘Don’t stop!’ yelled Shilly, although the driver couldn’t possibly hear her. If the bus came to a halt it would bog for sure in the powdery soil.

She could make out Marmion yelling instructions from the front passenger seat. Behind him, the wardens had linked hands and seemed to be shouting. As the bus stabilised, wheels spinning, slowly dragging itself back to the road, the horned man’kin tossed its head and charged.

Two things happened in quick succession. First, the wardens in the back of the bus raised their hands as one and brought them down again, hard. Shilly felt a ripple flow through the Change, although she couldn’t see what had happened. Only as the horned creature’s feet scrabbled for purchase on the suddenly slippery sand did she realise: the wardens had frozen the traces of moisture lying under the ground’s topmost layers, rendering the creature unable to find its footing.

It tried nonetheless. Its legs kicked and its spine twisted. Instead of spearing the bus with its deadly horns, it merely broadsided it, sending it wobbling again.

Then the slender whip-like man’kin placed itself between the bus and the other man’kin. It flailed at the horned creature, and drove it off howling in pain and anger. Its blows drew bright sparks from the wide stone back.

The wheels of the second bus found purchase on the road at last and fishtailed out of reach of the bestial woman. The man’kin child on its rump shook its fist as the wardens sped away. Shilly could see its mouth opening and closing but couldn’t hear the words. Its face was a mask of fury.

As the man’kin horde receded into the distance, Shilly felt more puzzled than relieved. Why had one of the man’kin defended the second bus against its fellows-? What had the bestial woman meant by
more
humans?

‘Sal!’ she said. ‘It was talking about Sal! We have to go back!’

‘No! Keep driving,’ said Chu, her eyes still fixed on the man’kin astride the road, her face pale with fear. ‘Keep driving!’

Banner reached back to grip the young woman’s shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘We’re not going to stop for a good while yet.’ When Shilly went to protest, she added, ‘We can’t go back. You know that. The road will be thick with man’kin by now. To turn would kill us all.’

Shilly forced herself to see the sense in Banner’s words. No word had come from Sal, but the certainty that he was alive burned in her. She clung to that knowledge like a life preserver.

Chu remained tense, but she too nodded and pretended to relax. Shilly could see her hands shaking where they rested in her lap. Only then did she realise something.

‘That’s the first time you’ve seen a man’kin up close, isn’t it?’

Chu nodded. ‘They’re not allowed in the city. They’re dangerous.’

‘Not all of them are,’ said Shilly, thinking of Mawson. ‘They’re like people. Some are good, some bad. Did you see the one that helped us out back there?’

‘It was horrible,’ she said with a shudder.

‘Looks can be deceiving.’

‘As long as there’s a wall between me and them, I’m happy to be deceived.’

Shilly dropped the subject, knowing it would take more than words to convince Chu. The young flyer turned her attention forward, closing herself off to further conversation.

Banner still twisted to the rear, and Shilly realised that she was looking at something behind the buggy. At the same time, Tom eased off on the accelerator. Shilly turned to look too, fearing that a new man’kin threat had appeared. The truth was much less exotic. The first bus had fallen behind, allowing the second to overtake. It was difficult to see what was going on through the dust the buggies kicked up, but she could make out Marmion waving impatiently for them to continue. Maybe, she thought, they had wanted Highson safe in the middle of the convoy rather than at the end. Or perhaps she was just being charitable, and Marmion was worried about no other skin than his own.

Banner nodded and Tom increased their speed. They continued on across the bottom of the Divide, leaving Sal and Skender far behind.

* * * *

The Ruin

‘Put behind you all thoughts of the outside world,

for such are distractions and dangerous. The rules

you knew are irrelevant. Those who enter a Ruin

should do so only in the clear and certain

knowledge that they may never return.’

THE SURVEYOR’S CODE

kender stood facing the blank stone wall and resisted the urge to kick it. He and Sal had tracked the Change-dead spoor of the Homunculus across several kilometres to its terminus just short of the Aad. Instead of following a straight line — as Sal explained that it had from almost as far away as the Haunted City — it wound its way around and between obstacles, sticking close to the wall of the Divide where possible. Towards the end, for no apparent reason, it had kinked to the right and headed for the cliff. There, abruptly, it ended.

‘I can’t see a door,’ Skender said, tracing his hands over the rough sandstone. Layers of ancient sediment hung before him, preserved for eternity — or would have been but for the great rending that had separated the cliff face from its match on the far side of the Divide.

‘And we can’t find a hidden door by using the Change because the Homunculus has sucked it dry.’ Sal paced back and forth at the edge of the wake, testing for any sign of an opening: a sliding stone, a trapdoor, anything. ‘But there must be one!’

Skender succumbed to frustration and kicked the stone. That gave him a sore toe to match his headache, but it seemed appropriate. Their search had come to a dead end.

He turned away from the cliff and looked around. The sun was fading into the west, casting a shadow across the floor of the Divide. Soon, that shadow would hit their location and they would lose any chance of finding an entrance.

Look on the bright side,
he told himself. The tide of man’kin had finally run out. A few last stragglers had eyed the humans hatefully as he and Sal had continued on their way, careful never to leave the safety of the wake. A couple had tried to engage them in conversation, but they rarely said anything of relevance. One declared that the mysterious Angel had told it about them, but nothing else had been forthcoming. Who the Angel was, how the Angel could possibly know about Sal and Skender and why that detail was important, remained a mystery. After a while, Skender had stopped responding to calls for attention from the stony mass of man’kin.

As he stood gazing out across the Divide floor, he saw another cloud on the far side of the mighty canyon, along the eastern leg. At the rate it was moving, it would encounter the Wall protecting Laure before nightfall. Skender hoped the city’s defences were ready for an onslaught.

‘There
has
to be a way in,’ he muttered, turning back to the problem at hand. ‘We’re just not seeing it.’

‘We could wait until the wake fades and try then.’

‘How long would that take?’

‘A few hours, perhaps.’

‘The Homunculus could be anywhere by then. And if the wake has faded, how are we going to follow it?’ Skender pointed at the second cloud on the far side of the Divide. ‘Anyway, I’m not sure I like the idea of being defenceless with so many of these things roaming around. I think we should just think harder.’