The Fallen (43 page)

Isabella shuddered and felt the tears well in her eyes. She dragged a hand to her mouth.

“You remember I spoke of the lights, of the voices which accompany them?”

“Yes. What do they say?”

“Terrible things.” Tacit drew a hand across his eyes and held it there for a moment, as if nursing the pain within them. “They taunt me, compel me on to do terrible things. Their bidding. They empower me.”

“These lights you talk about? What are they?”

“I can't explain it, Isabella. All my life I have pursued those who are possessed, or attempt to possess, and yet all along I myself feel …” The words faded from his lips.

“What do you feel?”

“That I too am possessed.” He shook his head, defeated. “Someone told me once,” he continued, breathing deeply, “told me that I wasn't as big as I thought I was.” He shook his head, recalling the memory of the witch on the shores of the Black Sea, weighing the sentiment in his mind. “I think that she was right.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Who?” he replied.

“Your first love.”

Tacit stirred in the straw and for a moment Isabella thought her impetuousness might have been too premature, too swift, thinking that Tacit might be rising from the bedding to turn away from her, closed once more. But instead he said, quite softly, “What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you want to tell me. It is clear that you loved her very much, and she you.”

“How do you know?” asked Tacit.

“The warmth of your smile when you think of her. The light within your eyes. A sadness captured within the lines of your face.” She rolled gently onto one side so that she was lying opposite him. “What was her name?”

Tacit hesitated. He uncorked the bottle and swilled the liquid within it before snatching a brief drink. And then he said tenderly, “Mila. That was her name.”

In the darkness, the name seemed to echo within the small carriage. Isabella closed her eyes and imagined her, a beauty no doubt, forthright, strong, an independent woman. She imagined that she was all these things, and a lover too. And then Tacit began to speak and she didn't need to imagine anymore. “She was beautiful, like a warm sunrise after a cold hard frost, like the calm after a storm. You know when you lie under cover and hear the rain rattling on the roof above you, when you feel warm and safe and secure, knowing outside the elements are raging but inside you're safe and you're warm? That was how she made me feel. She took away my pain. She taught me what it was to love, to live without shackles, to forget a past filled with too many troubles and bad memories and to live with hope for the future. She was my hope. She was my future.”

“What happened?” asked Isabella.

Tacit didn't answer for a long time. But then he said, in a voice which sounded distant and fragile, as if any moment it might break. “She was murdered.”

“I'm sorry.”

Tacit swilled the bottle again and drank, longer and deeper this time.

“Does her passing still hurt? Does it still hurt to remember her?”

“No,” Tacit lied. “I've learnt to forget. Like I do with everything I experience, as I do with every wound I take. It's easier to bear the pain than it is to try to heal it.”

Isabella rolled onto her back, a tangle of hair splaying like an explosion of red across the straw, her hand on her stomach.

“You should never forget, Tacit,” said Isabella, very quietly. “Not the beautiful things in life, the things which touch you. But also you should never hold back. Life is not about being constantly in pain or in sorrow. I don't think God would want you to be sad.”

And Tacit, who was looking down at her, surprised her by smiling sadly.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I know someone else who said something similar once.”

Isabella smiled back, and slowly, with utmost caution, she moved her hand to the straw between them, wishing he would reach out and grasp it. And he did, his giant hand enveloping her long delicate fingers in a warm, gentle embrace. He watched her fingers entwined with his, his thumbs nursing the tops of them, his eyes gentle and thoughtful on them as he did so. After a moment he looked up and found that he was looking directly into Isabella's eyes.

She smiled, feeling the urge to leave where she lay and join him. She moved a fraction to do so, allowing the weight of their passion to narrow the gap between them.

Without warning there came a sound alongside the carriage, heavy hands searching, heavy doors being heaved back on rusted runners.

The door to their carriage was thrown open and dark figures powered in. Henry and Sandrine, closest to the door, jumped awake but not quickly enough to avoid being grappled and thrown from the rolling train. They fell out in the black of night, tumbling and spinning away from the train and the track, turning over and out in the wilds of the foothills of the Carso.

At once Tacit was on his feet, his fists like giant hammers, setting himself between the Inquisitors and Isabella, just the pair of them left to face the intruders.

“Isn't this just beautiful?” growled Georgi.

EIGHTY NINE

A
PPROACHING THE
I
TATIAN
F
RONT
. T
HE
I
TALIAN
-S
LOVENIAN BORDER
.

The three figures fell upon Tacit as he ran across the wagon. The Inquisitors were armed with cudgels which they wielded like whips. If Tacit felt their weapons strike him, he gave no sign that he did, battering one Inquisitor full in the face. As the struck man reeled away Isabella could see that the blow had splintered his jaw, his mouth a hanging bloodied maw clutched in his shaking hands.

A cudgel struck Tacit hard across the back of the head and this blow he did feel, turning on his attacker and snatching the weapon away, bringing it back down so hard on the Inquisitor's own head that it shattered his skull and buried itself inside his brain, lodged deep. The third Inquisitor wrestled Tacit around the middle, half dragging him to the ground, before an explosion rocked the carriage and the Inquisitor slumped off him, his back torn open by the revolver fired by Isabella, crouched in a corner.

Georgi leapt the carriage in an instant and dashed the weapon aside, striking her hard on the side of the head, spinning her down into the straw with a grunt, reopening the wound on her head, blood streaming from her ear.

“Bastard!” roared Tacit, pummelling hard into him, partially shattering the wall of the wagon, planks of wood breaking free and splintering away down the track and into the night as the train rolled on. They wrestled, the battle brutal and fast, both men fighting like dogs, whipped by the wind and the rain rushing through the smashed panel.

They rolled away into the middle of the carriage, jabbing and striking whenever they could. Georgi's cudgel was caught and thrown wide, spinning through the open door of the carriage, tumbling and cartwheeling away. The cold whip of rain dashed the room. Straw and hair was flying as Tacit feigned a blow and kicked out with his boot, catching Georgi hard on the shoulder.

“You don't recognise me, do you, Poldek?” shouted Georgi, as he caught hold of Tacit's boot and spun him away.

Something in the voice, coupled with the question, made Tacit hesitate. He stared hard at the man facing him, trying to place him. And then, like little pieces of a puzzle falling into place, the realisation of who he was fighting hit him. Like a steam train.

“Georgi?” he asked incredulously.

Georgi bowed, smiling, before hammering his fist hard through Tacit's open defences and into his nose. The blow seemed to drive sense back into the man and he knocked the following punch aside, putting some distance between himself and his old friend.

“I … I thought you were dead?”

“I was dead, yes,” said Georgi. “Dead to that way of life, that faith. Let's just say I found myself reborn, with a new Lord. One who appreciated my talents.” He launched himself at the shocked Inquisitor, battering him left and right with his fists. “I understand if you're surprised. It's been a while, Poldek. Many years. A lot of water under many bridges.” He brought up
a boot, bringing Tacit down onto it, and then clattered him onto his back with a right hook.

Georgi shook the pain of the blow from his knuckles and circled the winded Inquisitor. “Take your time,” he offered cynically. “I know it's a lot to take in. Your old friend returned. The one who murdered your first love.”

At once something flared within Tacit and he scrambled to his feet.

“She died badly,” Georgi growled, fending off a following blow and returning Tacit's feint with interest in the form of a shattering undercut that rocked the big man on his heels.

“I don't know who you mean!” Tacit cursed, lunging for Georgi and getting hold of his neck. He pulled hard and twisted, feeling something give in his lower back, but a blow to his old friend's midriff caused him to loosen his grip and draw back, his hand to his bruised ribs.

“Yes you do!” smiled Georgi through bloodied teeth. “The only person who ever meant anything to you. The only person you've ever cared for. Other than her,” he added, looking at Isabella unconscious in the corner.

Tacit paused, enough for Georgi to catch him off guard with a glancing blow, which shuddered Tacit's vision to a blur.

“Mila.” Georgi spoke the word like a triumph.

Tacit hesitated, his eyes wide.

“They told you it was Orthodox, didn't they?” Georgi laughed, and struck Tacit without any resistance twice in the face. Tacit's nose exploded and blood flooded his mouth. “That was the official line you were told. The one to get you back on side. To get you back doing what you do best.” He worked his way through Tacit's fumbling defences, battering his right eye so hard that it instantly it closed with blood and he thought Tacit might be close to breaking. “You're too valuable to lose, you see, Tacit, especially to some Italian farm whore.” Georgi caught him in the ribs, following with a blow to the chin. Tacit rocked over onto his backside, instantly trying to find his feet. “It was a test for me. My first real test for my new master. To see if I had what it took to follow their every order, their every command.” Tacit came at him, but he was too blinded by pain and the words he was hearing to attack with any purpose or focus. Georgi stepped aside and slammed his boot into Tacit's knee, causing it to crumple and sending Tacit down. As he was scraping blindly in the straw of the carriage to collect his bearings, Georgi took Tacit's hair and pulled so he was looking down into his face. “Seems I keep coming between you and the women you love?”

Tacit roared and lashed out, but his anger had blinded any hope of striking his foe. Georgi caught him and threw him against the right-hand side
of the open door. Tacit's wild clumsy hand reached out to grasp it, locking firm to the lintel, stopping him from falling out into the rolling blackness of the mountain plains. He looked with bloody tear-drenched eyes across the carriage to Isabella. Georgi followed Tacit's gaze to her and smiled.

“Oh, don't worry, Poldek,” he said, searching in a holster for his revolver. “I'll take good care of her. She has important work to do. But I suspect you knew that all along. That it's always been you and her. Ever since the start. Since Arras.”

There was a flash of metal and Tacit knew instantly what he was about to do. He powered desperately towards Georgi, but too slow to stop the gun from going off like a cannon. Tacit crunched down, holding his shoulder, his hand over the wound dashed with vivid crimson.

“Georgi!” cried Tacit, his wide eyes pleading.

“Pathetic!” replied Georgi, any smile now polluted by the sheer venom staining his face. He raised the pistol again at Tacit.

“No!” was all Tacit could say before he was hit for a second time in the shoulder, sending him backwards out of the open door and somersaulting out into the blackness.

PART SIX

NINETY

T
HE
I
TALIAN
F
RONT
. T
HE
S
OČA
R
IVER
. N
ORTHWEST
S
LOVENIA
.

The barrage started, as it always started, with the dull clunk of shells, sounding so far away that Pablo thought they couldn't be firing at him or the crowd of broken Italian soldiers of his unit. But the whine in the sky above grew louder and the grey dawn became too bright to see anything. The air was sucked out of the lungs of the Italian soldiers, their ears ruined by the torment of the falling shells, their eyes blinded. Pablo sank down in the trench on the very edge of the Karst Plateau, opposite the Corporal.