Vile

by Keith Crawford

  Elianor got back onto her feet. Somehow, Nathaniel had leapt from his horse and landed in the snow, sword still drawn. He advanced on the pair of beasts thrashing in the snow, chopping indiscriminately, making no effort to distinguish between his horse and the Kindred. The horse died quickly. Elianor staggered forward. The Kindred still moved, but its movements were feeble, black blood gushing from a hundred wounds.

  “We have to go,” she said. Nathaniel continued hacking at the twitching morass. She looked around, breath heaving in her chest, trying to spot her horse, see if it still stood. At the base of the slope, the rest of the Kindred hauled their strange and shifting bodies upwards, the gleeful look in their twisted eyes that of pursuers with all the time in the world to pursue.

  “Run!” she shouted.

  Elianor stooped for her rifle and ran. She didn’t wait to see if they followed. The snow was too soft; she couldn’t gain traction, couldn’t gather speed. But if they could reach the road, they might still outpace the Kindred. Sweat ran from her forehead and her face stung from her still unhealed injuries. She blinked and raised her head.

  Mere metres away, a silhouette against the mountain sky, the Black Dog snarled and prepared to leap.

  Chapter 53

  Gunfire and death. Cold wind and sulphur. Persephone’s feet pummelled the earth. Her guards shouted and cried and screamed. There was no time to think. She didn’t want time to think. When had Anton trained rifleman? Who was the blue-eyed child? Why hadn’t he told her? To charge up the hill to the high road was death. To stand still was death. But the riflemen in the house would be unable to see her beneath the porch, and the riflemen up the hill would not risk hitting Anton. What had she ever done to Anton that he would look at her with such hate in his eyes? She was the only one allowed to hit Anton.

  “Captain! Help!”

  Wyn had fallen beneath her horse. The wind carried the smoke from the first round of shots, swirling between the light flecks of snow. Persephone knocked Wyn’s hand aside and ran past the dead horse. Bright flashes, lock igniting fuse, and clouds of smoke billowed from the slope. The windows spewed bilious fumes. Something struck her shoulder. Blood spattered her back and Wyn stopped screaming. Persephone ran.

  There were three steps up to the porch, wide wooden plinths worn by the march of many feet. Anton waited, his sword drawn, bouncing on his toes. He kicked his stool at her. Persephone batted it aside. Splintered fragments spat around her. She was on the first step. He tried to move around the frame of the porch, to limit her swing; she drove forward with the point of her greatsword. He tried to parry. She twisted the blades and knocked his from his hand. Her left boot was already up on the porch.

  When she roared, the spit splashed his face.

  His sword clattered to the floor. She had disarmed him so easily. Too easily. His fist smacked the side of her head: knuckledusters, snuck from a pocket while she roared. Her head rang. Something splintered. She raised her foot to stamp on his weak knee, but he turned and hurled himself back into the brothel.

  He slammed the door in her face. She kicked it open.

  Light streamed into the ground floor of Nana Haf’s from the long windows all along the back wall. The tables were stacked by the bar to Persephone’s right. To her left, the staircase doubled back over her head. She tried to take this in, to look for traps, but the door she had kicked open swung back in her face and her brother’s retreat took up the rest of her view. She lowered her shoulder and barged onwards. Anton stumbled and fell.

  “Captain!”

  Sergeant Rees had made it onto the porch. He dropped his wrecked shield. Before Rees could say anything, Anton threw something from his pocket at her face. Gunpowder! She got her hands up to block the black dust. Her sword caught in the doorframe and she almost dropped it. As she blinked and spat, Anton’s thumb caught her cheek, a failed attempt to grab her by the head and push her away. Persephone wanted that hand on her breast, on her belly, rough skin on smooth. She swung her sword, but he was gone again, chunks of the wooden wall in his wake.

  She dragged her greatsword out of the wood, blinking furiously to clear her eyes, and stepped blindly forward. A sharp pain shot up her foot. She snapped back her boot. Scattered across the floor were four-pronged metal objects, sharp enough to cut through a horse’s hoof. They were caltrops, usually used to topple cavalry or slow charging troops. She fumbled at her boot with her free hand. The caltrop brushed away and a thin trail of blood followed.

  “Jackrocks, Anton? Fucking Jackrocks?”

  Anton didn’t stop. He grabbed the balustrade at the base of the staircase. It creaked mightily as he pivoted around it, his shoulders heaving as he fought for breath.

  “You can’t run from me, Anton!” she screamed after him.

  “I bloody well can!” he called back.

  She grabbed the edge of the stairs. She would jump, clamber up the outside of the stairs, and rip him down by his fucking neck. A hand grabbed her by her shoulder. She spun, sword raised.

  “Whoa, whoa, Captain, it’s me,” Rees said.

  Rees had blood splashed up his face and across his beard. He kept his hand on her shoulder, leaning on her as he tried to catch his breath. Sweat ran from the curled hair at the back of his neck into his leather jerkin. Persephone could hear Anton’s malcoordinated stomping as he made it to the top of the stairs.

  “Where are the rest of the men?”

  “Dead, or not coming. We must retreat. How badly hurt are you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Anton has the Dragon Helm’s set up all over town. The Post Office is on fire.”

  She blinked. There was still gunpowder in her eyes. What did she care about the Post Office?

  “Tannyr’s people are running,” he continued. “It’s over. We have to escape.”

  She rubbed at her streaming eyes with a dirty hand.

  “Did you hear me, Persephone? It’s time to go!”

  “No!”

  Rees let go of her shoulder.

  “If you want to die here, you can,” he said. “But I don’t work for you.”

  He picked his way through the half-dozen scattered caltrops, scanned the room, straightened his jerkin, and fled out the back door.

  Abandoned. Everyone had abandoned her. Or not been strong enough to keep up, which amounted to the same thing really.

  She swept the caltrops aside with her injured left foot. It hurt but would not slow her. She let the cool sword blade touch her wet forehead. He would hide in one of the upstairs rooms. Or try to escape across the porch roof. But he was slow. She wouldn’t have to go very fast to catch him. The blood pumped to the scratches and cuts, the bruises and wounds; they throbbed and told her she was still alive.

  She walked across the room. The back door banged on its hinge where Rees had left it open. She loped up the stairs, eyes-open for loose boards, more caltrops, hell, for marbles scattered like when they were kids. The top of the stairs opened to a mezzanine: three doors along the wall, one at the end of the corridor to the left, and another ajar to her right. From the next floor up rang a new round of gunfire, Anton’s riflemen still firing into the street. Persephone turned right and slammed her shoulder through the open door.

  Something struck her on the head. A bucket that had been balanced precariously atop the door slopped yellow oil across her face and chest before splashing a great round puddle on the floor. Her right foot slipped then skidded to a halt. Anton stood at the far side of the bedroom, his back against the window, his mouth set in a grim line. The bucket clanged to the floor and span away under the four-poster bed. A globule of oil stretched from Persephone’s nose.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she exclaimed. “Are you twelve years old?”

  The door swung all the way open. She parried without thinking, without looking, then turned and parried again. Ty had hidden behind the door, quiet, competent Ty, still dressed in her guard uniform with a helmet square on her head. The tr
aitorous guard swung a heavy cudgel with her usual look of concentration, a worker engaged in an unpleasant task, muscles bent to till or plough or murder.

  Persephone tried to turn her block into a counterstrike, but her feet slipped on the oil. She adjusted her grip. The gunk on her face made it difficult to see. From the corridor came a high-pitched shriek. Haf Garn, still in her tight-bodiced red dress, swung an ornate walking cane above her head. Persephone’s blade was caught against Ty’s cudgel, but Haf attacked too late and the cane smacked against the frame of the door. Persephone slid back until she knocked against the post of the bed, twisted past Ty’s next attack, and grabbed Haf by the scruff of the neck as she fell through the door.

  From the corner of her eye she saw Anton, waiting, watching.

  Haf fell like a child thrown from a bull. With a snarl, Ty struck again, bashed the underside of Persephone’s arm, then her chest, then her hand, three swift blows that sent the greatsword clattering to the floor. Desperate to keep her balance on the slippery floor, she snatched the cane from Haf’s grasp and thrust it at Ty. The blow caught square then glanced sideways as Ty turned her head. There was a spurt of blood. Ty stumbled back, her arm across her face. Haf collapsed against the bed.

  Anton roared. He barrelled into Persephone, shoulder lowered and head down. She pivoted to throw him aside, but her feet skidded and slid. He caught her side and pulled her to her knees as they crashed back out into the corridor. The oil had flooded out ahead of them.

  Persephone wanted to brutalise him. She wanted to kill Haf and kill Ty and drag Anton back to the castle by his fucking heels.

  She heaved up onto one knee and threw him to one side. Before she could grapple him, Ty burst out of the room after them. Persephone got the cane in the way to block, but it snapped under the weight of Ty’s cudgel and the blow carried through to thud into her shoulder. There was a crunch beneath her armour. Persephone grabbed Ty’s arm and raised her broken cane.

  There was a dull thump at the back of her head. She lost her grip on Ty. White light at the end of a long, narrow tunnel. Her knees did not bend; it was the floor that moved. The puddle of oil had spread and stretched; the amber whorl sought out the grooves in the wood. She willed her eyes upwards. They stayed on the wood. So be it. I don’t need my eyes to hit you, you bastard.

  She had dropped the cane and couldn’t see where. Anton cursed. The word led her to him: she caught his wrist and twisted. The rush of movement brought her vision back in a flash. Anton had a black sap, a flat piece of leather shaped like the tail of a beaver with a lead weight sewn into one end. She twisted harder. With a yelp, he dropped the sap. She skidded with him on the oil and fell on her arse.

  A laugh rose from her belly. There was vomit in her throat. Blood seeped into the oil from the hole in her boot. Haf had crawled from somewhere and was pulling at Persephone’s hair.

  “Stop pissing around and hit me!” Persephone shouted.

  Anton grabbed her lapels and punched her in the temple.

  “Is that all you’ve got! I’ll bite off your fucking balls!”

  The room was swinging, and her legs wouldn’t work. He shoved her. She fell. She tried to sit. Only her head lifted. She couldn’t move.

  “You and that thick skull of yours,” he said and then looked back, at someone she couldn’t see. “Olwen, come help us carry her to the house.”

  Then he stopped and leaned over her, close enough she could feel his breath, almost exactly the way she had leant over him all those years ago when he was crippled in bed and she had come to save him.

  “Now you know what it feels like,” Anton said. “To be helpless and have someone violate you.”

  Could he possibly mean… No. Impossible. Her love had got him out of bed, got him living again. She had seen that he wanted her. How could that possibly be a violation? He was fumbling in his pockets. She tried to reach for the broken cane, but Ty grabbed her arms. There was the patter of quick feet.

  “Stay still, bitch,” Ty grumbled. Her voice slurred. Good, Persephone thought, I hit her hard then. Anton took a cloth from his pocket and pressed it over her nose and mouth.

  A blue-eyed child stood before her. He had run from the corridor to stand in the puddle of oil. He couldn’t have been much more than two years old.

  “Baby?” Persephone said, but beneath the cloth she was the only one who heard the word.

  He looked exactly like his father.

  “Zach! Go back to your mother!”

  Persephone went to sleep.

  Chapter 54

  Elianor scrambled back, tried to get to her feet, but the Black Dog loomed over her.

  “Gods,” Nathaniel said. “It’s not a dog.”

  It raised itself from four legs to two and howled, the same wet howl she had first heard in Derec Garn’s cart on the road to Shadowgate. Nathaniel was right. The Black Dog was somewhere between man and beast, human and canine. The number one was tattooed on its chest.

  Its eyes were bright blue.

  It leapt. The powerful muscles of its curved back legs drove it straight over her, where she crouched with her hands over her head. Nathaniel had a wild look in his eyes; he clenched and released the hilt of his longsword as if he didn’t know who to hit. Elianor got to her knees and charged her rifle.

  As the Black Dog landed, it returned to all-fours, galloped for a moment, then leapt again, over the fallen Kindred Elianor had fought and down the slope towards the others. The rest of the Kindred lumbered, milled, and shuddered, as if blind, uncertain what to do. The Black Dog took the first by the throat. The attacked Kindred screamed. Elianor raised her rifle. It was so cold her fingers burned on the metal. She had a clear shot, but what should she shoot?

  The Black Dog savaged the fallen Kindred. The remaining monsters just watched. Their shoulders rippled. Strange limbs twitched. Then one threw back its head and let out a long, keening whine. The sound modulated, mounted and then crescendoed as the others joined its wailing lament.

  Nathaniel took Elianor’s shoulder.

  “We have to run. Now.”

  “My horse. There.” She pointed to where her horse had wandered farther along the road. It panted, heavy sweat mixed with blood on its sides. “Quickly.”

  Elianor slowed as she approached the horse, slung the rifle over her shoulder and put up both her hands, palms out. It skittishly tapped its hooves on the thin snow and rolled its eyes. The Truthsense worked in both directions. To sense truth, you had to be able to show truth. She let her calm reach out to the horse. The keening of the Kindred continued. She breathed out, slowly, and took the reins.

  “Don’t worry, girl,” Elianor said. “I want to get out of here as much as you do.”

  The horse glared at her, balefully, then glanced back over her shoulder. The poor beast was too badly hurt to carry them, but loyalty meant nothing if once earned it was thrown away. She stroked its face. Then the tenderness made her feel vulnerable and she pulled her hand away.

  “The Waystation!” Nathaniel called, having stayed back sword raised towards the Kindred. “We have to make it to the Waystation!”

  Elianor led the horse and Nathaniel followed. Wordlessly, Nathaniel caught up with her, took her pack from her shoulder and hitched it over his own. Elianor looked back in the direction from which they had come. The road led them up and away from the battle. The echoes of the lament faded.

  Then she saw the Kindred they had fought twitch, rise, and pull itself together into a new form. It had seen them. It moved closer, then stumbled away.

  “How do we kill those things?”

  “You can’t. Fire, maybe. Their Shaper can just keep bringing them back.”

  “So, there must be a Shaper nearby,” Elianor said.

  “There hasn’t been a Kindred Prince since the last invasion.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “If I did, we wouldn’t be here.”

  The sun set fast as they fled up the mountain road. Cold set in
to their limbs, making it harder to run, harder to move, harder to breathe. The same darkness that obscured the route to the Waystation swallowed the path behind. Nathaniel was forced to light a torch and raise it with the same uninjured shoulder that carried Elianor’s backpack. The torchlight would make them easy to find by whatever hunted them in the snow. But what choice did they have?

  “So, it’s an incursion, then?” Elianor said.

  “What else could it be?”

  “They’ll get stronger the closer they get to the Shaper.”

  “Then we have to find it and kill it.” Nathaniel grinned, but his jaw stayed clenched against the pain. “Persephone will be pissed to have missed this!”

  ◆◆◆

  The Waystation wasn’t much more than a barracks, an outhouse, a watchtower, and a wall of wooden spikes. This was the last garrison before Demon’s Pass and the Kindred West, the closest Persephone’s guard were allowed to the monastery. Even at the height of the Age of Reason, when churches were ransacked, torn-down, or re-purposed, the Order of Demon’s Pass had been left to their business. Why risk provoking the Kindred? Even so, now that the Kingdom was a Kingdom again, and a new Queen sat on the throne, one might have expected the Order to rise in prominence. But it just sat there. Forbidding interference. Rejecting assistance. Staring West and hoping that the West did not stare back.

  Elianor went ahead and un-hooped the rope that secured the gate. Nathaniel held the reins of the horse and stared up at the dark shape of the monastery against the mountain, an hour away by foot but impossible to reach safely in the dark.

  “Let’s get inside and light a fire.” Elianor pulled at the gate. It wouldn’t move. She pulled again. “I want to look at your shoulder. We’ll find out the truth in the morning.”