The Broken Isles (Legends of the Red Sun 4) (7 page)

As Fulcrom approached, he could see beyond them stood blue-white glowing forms, exactly like ghosts, and they were brandishing swords. They did not wear military armour: in fact, they seemed to
be sinewy muscle and tendon, as if stripped of skin. Their faces, too, were featureless. Only their swords seemed real: huge curved blades that shimmered in their own light.

Two Jamur soldiers were suddenly carried back through the lines, their arms bloodied and blistered. One man was unconscious, the other screamed, his face creased in agony. He shouted,
‘It’s fucking burning me, it burns, get it off!’ before being taken to one side where his screams became whimpers.

Fulcrom scanned the crowd of soldiers and civilians for Lan: there she was, on the far left, much to Fulcrom’s relief, hauling two people out of the combat zone to safety. It was then that
Fulcrom noticed the dead bodies – civilian casualties – that lay around.

So many of them
. . .
this time we’re surely finished.

A burst of soldiers moved forward, shields locking behind to protect the next row. From his horse, Fulcrom watched the men move to engage the spectres in combat. The ghost-warriors seemed
undisciplined; they fought like feral savages, though for the most part the soldiers were holding them off. Yet more of the ghosts came from behind, twenty, forty, maybe more flooding into view.
Fulcrom could not see the sky-city, could not see where these things were coming from.

‘Frater Mercury,’ Fulcrom called across. ‘Please, help us. What do you suggest we should do? Do you know how to stop this?’

The god-like figure remained inert, merely observing the scene. He gave no sign of having heard Fulcrom’s questions, but instead he nudged his horse in a tight arc and behind the thin line
of Jamur soldiers.

The soldiers moved back and locked their shields again and, from their flanks, archers released another wave of arrows. None of them connected with their targets; the arrows merely passed
straight through and struck into the earth beyond.

Frater Mercury emerged onto the field of combat and rode out into the centre. Fulcrom heard commands for the Jamur soldiers to hold their position and for the archers to cease firing. After
Frater Mercury pulled his horse to a stop, the scene fell eerily silent. The ghost-warriors ceased their movements across the clearing then began to confer with each other, their movements oddly
fluid. More of them came in from behind, brightening the night with their glow. They seemed to swarm, ooze and drift rather than make coherent progress, but soon they began moving towards Frater
Mercury, slower than before and more cautious.

Frater Mercury stared at the approaching figures and began wailing in a bass tone, almost melodic at first, then something far harsher.

The spirit figures paused on the spot and their glow faded to something duller. When Frater Mercury ceased his noise they became more obviously animalistic and less supernatural. The god-like
man held up a hand and Fulcrom watched in awe as a sword whipped from the grasp of one of the Jamur soldiers and travelled – through the air – towards his outstretched hand. He snatched
it firmly, dismounted from his horse and advanced on foot towards the former ghosts, who were now cowering like frightened children at his approach. He held up his other hand and another blade
emerged through the air and landed in his palm with little effort.

Fulcrom now struggled to understand the action, but he saw Frater Mercury lurch forward and bury one blade into the chest of an enemy. As the sword connected, the creature began to redden at the
point of impact, and burst into flame. Screaming horrifically, it lurched back and forth, burning from within, before retreating off into the distance. Several others of its kind began to follow
and, with their backs turned, Frater Mercury threw another blade like a spear: it connected with one of them, creating yet more flames and high-pitched screams. Again, he held his hands aloft, like
a prophet, and – again – he seemed to haul more swords from the clutches of a nearby soldier. One by one, Frater Mercury warded off the remainder of the ghosts until the last of them
scrambled, alight, along the periphery of the forest.

Satisfied his work was done, he slowly walked back to his horse, without acknowledgement of the events or his actions, mounted the mare and nudged her in a slow arc around the row of shocked
soldiers and back towards the east.

*

It was the dignified thing to do, Fulcrom thought, to light a pyre for the fallen.

Fifty-three people in total had been found dead, the vast majority of them with burns or weird abrasions from physical contact with the ghost-warriors. Those who had survived were in agony and
many remained unconscious long afterwards.

As Fulcrom was on his way back towards the chain of refugees, he thought he caught sight of Lan crouching by a body at the edge of the forest. When he came closer he noticed she was shivering
and in tears. The body resting on the damp earth beside her was one he knew all too well.

Tane
. . .

He took a deep breath and bent down beside them.

‘Is he unconscious or is he . . . ?’ Fulcrom asked, gesturing to Tane’s body.

Because of the late hour and Tane’s dark uniform, Fulcrom struggled to make out how much blood the werecat had lost, but the open wound below his right ribcage was enough to tell Fulcrom
what he needed to know. He placed a hand on her shoulder.

‘Yes, he’s dead,’ was all Lan could manage.

They rose together.

‘We hadn’t always got on,’ she breathed, ‘but I had very few people I could rely on in this world. It shouldn’t have happened to him . . .’

Fulcrom didn’t say anything. He had found Tane frustrating to work with, but very effective – if a little too brutal – at helping to reduce crime in Villjamur. But he felt a
fatherly attachment to him, and was deeply saddened.

‘Did you see what happened to him?’

‘He had pulled a dozen or so individuals from the path of those white things,’ Lan said, her arms still around Fulcrom. ‘He’d managed to find a blade and was trying to
attack them when one of them must have caught him. I was the other side of the clearing when I heard his scream, but couldn’t reach him quickly enough because of the combat and all the
soldiers. It was only when the fighting moved on that I could find his body. So I brought it to the side and let him pass away quietly. He was so silent at the end – he just couldn’t
say a word. It seemed so unnatural.’

*

The pyre was a hasty affair. What wood could be gathered from the damp forest floor was piled haphazardly and all the bodies wrapped in any rags that people could spare. Smoke
plumes drifted back in the direction of Villjamur, downwind, carrying with them the rancid smell of the burning dead. Fulcrom had tried to approach Frater Mercury about doing something perhaps to bring Tane back to life, but his requests were stubbornly ignored and the god-man simply walked away. Instead, Tane’s body would join the
others.

Hundreds of people tentatively came to pay their respects, many of them wary about remaining too long in one place – Fulcrom included. People raised the question of whether or not it was
reckless to light beacons that would reveal their whereabouts; perhaps this was true, Fulcrom told them, but it was clear, given the recent events, that whatever was after them knew perfectly well
where they could be found.

He would light these pyres. Respect would be paid.

Frater Mercury attended the funeral burning, but despite Fulcrom persistently quizzing him about what had happened, the god-thing gave no explanation as to what the creatures who attacked them
were, or indeed how he had dealt with them; they seemed a minor inconvenience to him. The figure merely regarded the flames, which were reflected in the metallic half of his face.

Fulcrom and Lan moved closer, Lan with her head on his shoulder, him with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

‘Will we make it to the coast after this?’ she whispered.

‘So long as we have him by our side,’ Fulcrom said, indicating Frater Mercury, ‘I would think our chances are decent. The only question is, is he actually here to help us?
Given the sacrifices to bring him into this world, we still have little idea of who Frater Mercury is, or even what he wants, let alone whether he can get us to the coast.’

She waited for him from within the shelter of an old doorway in the heart of the Ancient Quarter of Villiren. Diggsy had promised to take Jeza out tonight and he was true to
his word. They were headed to her new favourite bistro, which had replaced the one on the seafront with the constantly steamed-up windows and the delicious crab cakes – that had been
destroyed in the fighting. She had been devastated by its loss at first, until she realized it was silly to mourn a bistro when so many people had died in the war. Still, it was the little things
like that which hurt just as much – the little pleasures she had previously taken for granted, which had been rendered important once they had been lost to her forever.

A lot of things took on a new context after the war. Once-important issues, such as what clothes she was wearing or what they might eat that night, didn’t seem to matter as much, not when
the bodies of tens of thousands of people were being swept from the streets. Arguments with others seemed futile. She realized how close death could be, and that seemed to fill her with a sense of
urgency – to do things, something, anything, though she didn’t quite know what.

Diggsy sauntered down the street towards her. He had made an effort with his hair, and wore customized breeches. He was also sporting a hooded jumper she had asked to be made for him with money
she earned selling a bunch of dodgy relics. The sight of him warmed her insides. She smiled widely.

When he arrived, they kissed. He smelled good tonight and his tongue tasted of peppermint. He walked with his arm around her, and she liked that it was so casual. The stars were starting to
show. Everything felt right.

*

‘What d’you think our next creation should be?’ Diggsy asked, before tucking into a mouthful of young, boiled sea trilobite. She laughed when he had difficulty
prising open their shells, but she fared no better. She half wished she could bring some of the tools from their workbench, but that might not have gone down too well with the owners of the
bistro.

The Mourning Wasps
. . . she thought.
The shells were tough. Like armour.

‘I think we should really get to grips with the Mourning Wasps,’ she said. ‘I want us to work with the military – with that albino – and if we really work hard on
the Mourning Wasps instead of procrastinating, we will get work with them.’

The waitress, a middle-aged lady with a limp, came over to ask them for their drinks order. Jeza wanted the wine while Diggsy, as always, stuck to water. He gave her that smug look of his: the
one that questioned why she was drinking yet again.

‘It’s all right,’ she replied.

‘Don’t you think you drink too much these days?’ He meant it innocently. He laughed and smiled at her, making light of the issue.

‘I like the taste,’ she replied. ‘Plus it’s nice to unwind – my mind needs some way of relaxing after thinking about flesh matrices all day long.’

‘I know, I just worry about you, that’s all.’

As the waitress clanked the bottle and glasses on the bar, Jeza looked around. It wasn’t quite the same as the harbour – there wasn’t the same smell, and the windows were
generally clean – but the place had a little charm about it, with polished tables, stone tiles on the floor, high wooden beams with bottles balanced on them for decoration, some with candles
in.

‘I think you’re right,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘About what we should create next – on commission. I think you’re right. All of us at Factory 54 do.’ He leaned forward and held her hand. ‘Look, there’s
something I want to ask.’

‘Ask away,’ she replied coolly. Secretly her heart was thumping away with expectation.

‘You know, I’ve been speaking to the others,’ he began, ‘and we’ve all been thinking that we should have some kind of representative. Like a boss. We’ve never
had to deal with anyone other than ourselves, and now that we’re in a position where we’ll have to deal with stuff outside our usual world, we’re going to need someone to lead us.
To have those conversations. We’re not kids any more, and have to start taking things seriously. We felt you should be in charge of all those kinds of things. To look after all of the gang at
Factory 54.’

‘Wow,’ she replied. ‘I mean . . . yeah. I’d love to. It’s not what I thought you’d say . . .’

‘What were you expecting?’ he asked playfully.

For you to say you loved me.
‘Nothing,’ she lied. ‘But this – I mean, everyone wanted me to be in charge?’

‘Yeah, everyone. Even Coren.’ Diggsy laughed at that. ‘I guess it’s probably what Lim would have wanted, too.’

She looked down at her plate for a moment. Then she met Diggsy’s gaze. ‘What kind of things will you want me to do exactly?’

‘You’re the real brains, we all know that. You see the bigger picture while we lose ourselves in the detail of animation. Coren’s too full of himself to care about such things.
Me, I’m too laid back and just want to enjoy things as they are.’

‘And Pilli?’

Diggsy shrugged. ‘You’re the smart one, Jeza. You should be the one to deal with the guy in charge of the army. You’re much better than any of us at that sort of
thing.’

‘Really?’

‘Really, and maybe it’s why I don’t want you drinking all the time.’

‘It’s not
all
the time,’ Jeza replied with a frown, but still, she couldn’t contain her excitement. She leaned over the table and kissed him, and sat back happy
and determined. But first, she resumed her dinner and everything tasted just that little bit better than a moment ago.

*

They finished their meal and headed home, to their room at the top of Factory 54.

It wasn’t much, but it was nice to have everything all in one place, and certainly better than most other cultists lived, surviving in a windowless room with little but a few technical
manuals to play with. As it was, most of their existence was actually spent in or around the factory. Every flesh-being, every mechanical device, every crude relic was manufactured by the team.
Most of the meals she ate, most of the boys she’d slept with, were all under the one roof.