The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (51 page)

“It would be too good to believe,” Lizneth said. “And I’d be
in doubt as to why you’d want
me
to do such a thing for you when you
know others who are more capable, and who would do the same for much less.”

“Your worries are understood,” Jakrizah said, handing the
belt back to her. “There are two simple reasons why you’re perfect for the
task: you don’t live in Gris-Mirahz, and your foremost desire is to
leave
here as soon as possible. The
calai
slavers will follow a fugitive to
Gris-Mirahz from time to time, but they’re less likely to follow one who
disappears into the blind-world and is never heard from again. Do this for me,
and I’ll repay you with all the potions, food, and drink you can carry. I’ll
fill that belt of yours with antivenom and see that you’re protected until
you’re safely out of the vale.”

Lizneth ground her longteeth and paced, partly to consider
Jakrizah’s proposal, and partly to escape the puddle of porphyrin she was
standing in. She fastened the belt around her waist and let her fingertips
dance over the dagger’s hilt as she thought. Before she agreed to anything, there
were a few things she had to know. “A
calai
won’t do?” she asked. “It
must be an
eh-calai
?”

“Either will serve. However, taking the wrong
calai
from Sai Calgoar is sure to bring the city’s wrath on Gris-Mirahz. Better not
to risk it. An
eh-calai
would be safer. Most of the
eh-calai
you’ll find there are slaves, and their masters will only come so far to find
them.”

“And what about the slavers who are
already
looking
for me? I came to Gris-Mirahz with four others, and we weren’t the first
escaped slaves from our galley to come here. Other masters may only go so far
to find one missing slave, but ours lost an entire ship full of rowing slaves, and
several of their own number were killed during the escape. I doubt Qeddiker and
his taskmasters will stray from the trail of our
haick
until they find
us. Gris-Mirahz is where that trail will lead.”

Artolo and Jakrizah exchanged another look. “We want to help
you,” Jakrizah said. “We don’t have a lot, but we
will
see that you get started
on your way home if you can only have a little patience.”

I’ve heard that before
, Lizneth thought. She hadn’t
forgotten Curznack’s deceptions, and she wouldn’t be so quick to trust a
stranger again. Friendly as they might appear, Jakrizah and Artolo could be as
mischievous and crooked as any in Curznack’s crew, for all she knew. She decided
that whatever they were up to with this
aezoghil
, she wanted nothing to
do with it. “Going back toward Sai Calgoar seems a fool thing for me to do when
the
haick
will bring them here. I’d flee overland for home without any
provisions before I’d ever go back toward the port. I won’t do it.”

“You don’t have to go back the way you came,” Artolo said.
“There are other paths.”

“It doesn’t matter which route I take if the destination is
the same,” Lizneth said.

“Name any city on the Aionach, blind-world or below, and
there are a thousand
ikzhehn
who know a hundred ways to enter and leave
without being seen,” Artolo said.

“Yes, and you forget that
ikzhehn
who live near the
blind-world are more dependent on the
calaihn
than you low-dwellers,”
Jakrizah added. “And not always because they have to be, mind you. Exploiting
the hard work of others is easier than doing it yourself. It’s time you learned
how satisfying it is, stealing from humans.”

“I have to go,” Lizneth said. She was growing irritated with
both of them. “I’ll trade you this dagger for some clean water and a little of
that cooling tincture. Whatever you can give to help me on my way home would be
generous.”

“You don’t have to go,” Artolo said. “You’re working yourself
into a frenzy. You’ve seen how well we watch our borders. As long as you’re
here, I won’t let anyone take you away.”

How chivalrous of you
. “If your borders are so
well-guarded, how do you explain the slaves we came across on our way here?”

Artolo was stoic. He blinked again and rubbed his eyes while
he spoke. “I explained to your friend big-ears that everyone earns their keep
here in Gris-Mirahz, or they’re asked to leave. Those captives—the ones you let
follow you home like hounds—are troublesome ones. They didn’t do their share,
and they wouldn’t leave. From time to time, we need to have some of our
residents forcibly removed. We provide the slavers in Sai Calgoar with a list
of names and let them in. As long as they keep to the list, we look the other
way, and in turn they don’t come back to bother us as often.”

“You betray your own
zhehn
to the slavers and allow
them to be taken away.”

“We clean house. We offer tribute to appease those who would
otherwise see us all driven out or enslaved. Even in a place like this, there
are people whose behavior is too destructive.”

“Those slaves were only cripples and
quinzhehn
,”
Lizneth said, remembering.

“Most of them suffer from some malady of body or mind, yes. A
cripple can’t carry his weight, and a
quinzhe
says and does things he
doesn’t understand and can’t control. Both are hindrances to our way of life.”

“What real harm could they have done? This is supposed to be
a haven for those in need.”

“
Krahzeh
what it’s
supposed
to be,” Artolo said.
“Gris-Mirahz does what it
can
. I didn’t bring you here so you could
chastise me. Mama Jak and I try to help everyone, but some people can’t be
helped, and those people have to be sent away. You’re lucky you aren’t like
most of them; you actually have a place to go. You have a home. If we can get
you there instead of sending you back into a slaver’s shackles, we’ll find a
way to do that. But you have to be patient, and we’re asking you to help
us
first. That’s how we do things here. It’s how we survive. You either work with
us… or you leave.”

I want to leave
, Lizneth almost said. But even as she bid
herself to turn and exit Jakrizah’s hut, the memory of the blind-world froze
her in place. The oppressive heat of every grueling footstep, the way her tail had
burned and her eyes had gone dry; the idea of enduring it alone kept her feet
planted where they were. She remembered how far the walk had been from Sai
Calgoar’s port—a place she could see over the Omnekh from the beach in
Gris-Mirahz.
How much further the distance must be from here to Tanley. Many
times that, at least
. If it had taken weeks to sail here in a straight line,
with the oars propelling the ship at full bore, how long would it take to cross
the mountains on foot? Lizneth gave a deep sigh. “Show me what I have to do.”

Artolo eased. “First you should find something to eat and
take time to rest,” he said. “My eyes are starting to feel better now. Tomorrow
I go into the blind-world to see how they do. Go back to your friends and stay
with them. I’ll come visit you when I can. In a few days, I’m going to take you
fishing.” He gave Mama Jak a look. “I’m going to help Lizneth get the
eh-calai
for you.”

“I knew it would only be a matter of time before you
offered,” said the old dam. “Fine. Just don’t go getting yourself caught.”

CHAPTER 45

Escape From Belmond

Raith glanced at Sig. “What do you mean these aren’t
your people?”

The dark figures were pouring over the slanted concrete bank
and into the channel, rushing toward Raith and the Sons of Decylum like a black
tide, silent as death. Raith saw Jiren Oliver and Derrow Leonard through the
dim twilight, their hands stretched out, mustering whatever was left inside
them.
So this is how the Sons of Decylum meet their end
, Raith thought.
Or
something worse than an end. And yet I’m powerless to save the few of us who
remain. Another promise I made to Decylum that I’ll never be able to keep
.

“They are not my people. They are gangers,” Sig said. “Look
behind you.
Those
are my people.”

Raith turned. Another group of dark shapes was swarming over
the lip on the opposite bank. Two opposing forces were about to clash, and he
and his people were sandwiched between them. A cry rang across the channel.
Whooping shouts broke the stillness, and he felt the air stir around him. The
oncoming gangers began to fall as arrows and javelins pierced them. Jiren and
Derrow were herding the Sons into a tight group, circling them like brengens
protecting their cubs.

The gangers were close now. Raith remembered hearing about
gangs like these before they’d left Decylum. They were the true scavengers of
the city, and scum of the purest form, it was said—loose-knit bands of war-like
people who survived by terrorizing the defenseless.
We must look quite
defenseless at the moment
, Raith surmised. He could begin to make out the
details of them in the twilight; a rabble of lean bodies in mismatched
wardrobe, the vestiges of a life of survival. Spiked pads on knees and elbows,
masks and sports helmets, metal gauntlets and fingerless leather gloves. They
wore thick hide over tattered cloth, and some had armor fashioned from old
highway signs, plates of green and white and red and yellow, cut and hammered
into shapes that fit around shoulders and torsos.

Just before they arrived, Raith made a judgment call; he
decided to trust Sig. “Jiren, Derrow,” he shouted, pointing toward the gangers.
“Those are our enemies. Our allies are behind us.”

Raith stepped into the advance, tearing through the gangers
as they came. Clubs, bats, heavy chains, and hand-made flails came at him
through the darkening air, stray thrusts and swings from what felt like a
thousand different directions. He took command of his shield, severing wood,
metal, and flesh in bursts of electric red. For each man he cut down, two more
came to fill the space. He could only hope he had been right to trust Sig, and
that the nomads behind them weren’t preparing to butcher them while their backs
were turned.

Soon Raith was in the thickest part of the crowd, with
ferocious gangers swarming him on all sides. His hands made molten work of
their bodies; shattered bones, seared flesh, holes in street-sign armor. It was
then that he felt his power begin to flicker. He ignited, but his hands
sputtered like dying lightbeams. His shield winked on after a short delay,
saving him from an oncoming swing at the last possible instant. The gangers
were all around him, swatting, bashing, and kicking him with the kind of
ferocity that only the daily struggle for survival can engender. He knew he was
close to burning out for good when the first of their blows found its mark.

The stroke glanced off his hip and crashed into the side of
his stomach. It unmanned him like a flash of light, and he stumbled backward.
Without his shield to protect him, a host of heavy blows began to land, sharp
and sudden. He raised his arms to ward off what he could, but every strike met
him with unbridled force.
So much pain
, he thought.
I never knew
there was so much pain
. The darkness was growing and the shadows were
lengthening as Infernal sank below the horizon. Raith’s last hope was sinking
with it.

Then there came a bright flame, and the air was so hot and
alive that Raith could see everything the night had stolen away. There were
nomads in their midst now, rushing in alongside them, swords running red and
glinting in the firelight. Something made Raith lose his footing and fall
backward, and he found himself on the ground, looking up into the night sky.

When the flames died, men were on fire. There was a wet
hissing sound, and a second gout swallowed the tranquil stars above and
caressed Raith’s face in dry warmth. He saw the gangers’ looks turn to terror
as the flames broke over them and swept through their ranks like a tidal wave.
The flame retreated, and the gangers were lit and screaming as black smoke carried
the stench of oil and burning flesh away into the night.

Raith rolled over and climbed to his knees to watch the
grisly dance. Whoever had tripped him up was still beneath him, two bodies
squirming and struggling to rise. He grabbed the first man by the throat and
pulled him close. It was Theodar Urial. The old apothecary had apparently
thought it safe to stand behind Raith, but he hadn’t been able to get out of
the way fast enough when Raith began to retreat. Raith shoved the old man aside
and yanked the other body toward him in the same fashion. It was one of the
gangers.

When Raith tried to ignite—more out of instinct than good
sense—he felt himself falter again instead. It was then that he knew he had
nothing left.

The ganger slung his fist and connected. Raith felt his head
wrench sideways and his face go numb. There was a cold stinging in his cheek,
as if the ganger had embedded some metal device in his glove. The ganger pitched
his other hand around and hit Raith in the forehead, and there was the bite of
cold metal again. Raith’s neck snapped back and his skull began to throb. The
sleep might’ve come over him then, had it not been for the adrenaline firing
through his body.

He gritted his teeth and leaned forward, the man beneath him
flailing both arms now and finding pieces of Raith’s face with each wild swing.
There was another gout of flame, and in the light from the fiery blast, Raith
could see his foe’s rotting gums and bloodshot eyes, crazed and smiling within
their sockets. Raith set in with blows of his own, one hand still around the
throat and the other slamming straight down into the man’s face. Ignoring the
sting of every successful strike against him, Raith ploughed in again and
again, until he felt something come loose where the man’s nose had been. Blood
gushed out, soaking both his hands, and the ganger lay still.

Nomads swept forward, bringing fine forged steel to bear
against the gangers’ handmade bats and clubs. The wielder of the flame stepped
past him, a metal cylinder strapped to his back, a candle burning in the
orifice at his weapon’s muzzle. He assumed a wide stance and braced the
apparatus against himself, flicked it open. A hiss, and liquid orange heat burst
forth. The nomad swiveled from side to side, bathing his foes in the firespout.

The gangers began to retreat. Those who were still rushing
toward them stopped in their tracks and fled from the sight of their burning
brethren. The injured limped and stumbled away into the darkness, some of them
still on fire, while the nomads pursued them and shot after with their bows.

Raith turned to Theodar Urial and helped the old man to his
feet. “Did I hurt you?”

“Not a mite. I’m a bit scratched up, but that wasn’t on your
account.”

Raith was relieved to see Jiren and Derrow come over, both
still on their feet. “Was anyone hurt?”

“Heniard Limshire,” said Jiren.

“And Rikkert Weiber,” said Derrow. “Both dead. Sombit Quentin
is beat pretty bad, and Edrie Thronson got stabbed again.”

“Infernal wretches,” Raith said, massaging his temples. He
felt himself breaking down as the fever of battle wore away, the stress of
days’ worth of hunger and exhaustion and heat taking their toll. “Wretches,” he
said again. “This city is a deathtrap. We’re falling faster than I can handle
anymore.”

“We all agreed to this, come what may,” Jiren said, resting a
hand on Raith’s shoulder.

“What’s coming is that we’ve taken up with slavers,” said
Ernost Bilschkin, dusting himself off. “We were the bait in this fight. We’re
the prize they were fighting over. The winning side won the right to do with us
as they please.”

Sig gave Ernost a shove. “You are alive. If you were bait,
you would be dead. Now stop your whining and come. Or stay, if you want to wait
until the gangs come back looking for bodies to plunder.”

“I don’t want to be plundered,” Ernost muttered.

Raith took a quick head count, finding his men one by one in
the growing darkness. There were ten left, including himself. Ten men of the eighteen
he’d rescued from the jailhouse. Ten of the eighty who’d come to Belmond. They
would have to leave Heniard Limshire and Rikkert Weiber where they lay, their
bodies on hard cement instead of beneath the ground where they belonged. It
grieved him that they hadn’t been able to bury so many of Decylum’s dead, but
his chief concern was still keeping the others alive, and that left little time
for digging graves.

Edrie Thronson, the engineer who’d been shot through the
thigh during their approach to Belmond, was bleeding from the shoulder now as
well. Sombit Quentin had been beaten with spiked clubs and chains and was
bleeding from dozens of tiny puncture wounds. Both men could still walk, but
neither looked well enough to run.

If only the healer had joined us
, Raith thought.
Whatever
he hopes to find here in this Infernal-forsaken city, it won’t be what he
expected
. “Our injured can’t go on for much longer without help.”

“And they will get it,” Sig assured him. “It will not be far
to our camp from here.”

When the nomads surrounded the Sons of Decylum, Sig greeted
his kinsmen and spoke to their leader for a minute. They lit torches and began
to make their way toward the monstrous steel bridge that spanned the channel.
They left the concrete riverbed and crossed the bridge, heading south.
Sentinels watched from the shadows of great steel girders all along the
bridge’s length, waving them toward safety as they passed.

There was a derelict factory ahead, cold smokestacks like the
spires of some mechanized temple jutting up between rows of storefronts. Beyond
the factory, the cityscape was fading into darkness. At the end of the bridge,
a pylon sign heralded the Oplethorpe Hotel, its blank exterior clad in crumbling
stucco. A tenement building stood across the street, dead planter boxes in its
cracked brick window sills.

The nomads were silent, watchful and serious as they moved.
Aside from a few scattered words of caution, there was no conversation or
laughter between them. To Raith, it felt just like when the Scarred Comrades
had led them through the city, only now they were surrounded by guardians
instead of captors.

“Feels like we can’t go anywhere in this city without being
mugged or captured,” said Ernost.

“You haven’t been captured,” Sig said. “And you’re being
protected so as not to be mugged.”

“You’re surrounding us for our own protection, are you?”

Sig gave him an agitated look.

“What’ll happen to us?”

“We are taking you to our warleader, Lethari Prokin. He will
decide what is to be done with you.”

A chain link fence topped with razorwire surrounded the
factory, but there was a gaping hole where someone had snipped through the
links. Half a dozen nomads kept watch over the opening, sitting around a fire
they’d built in the parking lot within. Sig and Tally made the rounds, greeting
each of them in turn. One of the nomads said something in Calgoàric, and half
the men around the fire switched places with those in the war party. Sig tilted
his head and nudged Raith to keep moving.

They circled the main building and passed a row of gigantic
storage tanks laced with pipes and gauges. A ramp in the pavement took them
down to the loading docks, an L-shaped confluence of buildings that formed an
enclosure half a story below street level. There was open sky above them, but
the enclosure was hidden from view to anyone approaching from outside the
factory grounds. Raith could see the shapes of sentinels posted at intervals
along the flat rooftops. When they came around the last corner, he almost
didn’t believe what else he saw.

There must have been close to two hundred people in the
courtyard, most of them nomads. Those who weren’t nomads appeared to be new slaves.
Iron manacles were fastened about their ankles and necks, and they were
confined within two pens situated in adjacent corners of the yard. In the
darkness, it took Raith a few moments to notice that the captives were
segregated by gender. Open loading garages held horses, chickens, hogs,
corsils, and goats in pens of their own. Sacks of grain, feed, and other non-perishables
were stacked against the building. Fires burned in steel drums. The whole place
was alive with activity, but somehow it was so quiet that Raith couldn’t hear
much until they’d reached the bottom of the ramp.

Some nomads were cooking; others played at contests of skill
or strength, while still others slept or sharpened their weapons. As they
entered the courtyard, Raith felt their eyes on him. He saw faces darken, and
he realized that most of them probably thought he and his companions were being
brought in as slaves too. That made him wonder if they were right.
I’m sure
we’ll find out soon enough
, he thought.

The nomads led a group of female captives from the pen at the
far corner and prodded them into a line. Then they began to move down the line,
inspecting teeth, hair, eyes, legs, hips, and breasts, as if each slave was a
piece of livestock.

“We have to run,” Ernost Bilschkin whispered, tapping Raith
on the arm.

“Calm down. We’re not running.”