by Matt Langley
God’s Heart.
Those two words thumped in his chest like love.
The endless view into the hazy distance, the ceaseless fields, the tracks, the hills and the people. The gentle upward curve of the far horizon. The suns and Shadewalls, the warm nights, the festivals and the…
Barl felt a weight in his palm, as if there was something resting in it although he couldn’t see anything, but it was there, and it was urgently trying to make its presence known. It weighed in his hand. It had proper weight. It felt rough against his skin. There was genuine texture. And as Barl looked, a shimmering, out of focus line of blurry air wavered above his skin and a blue fissure tried to open in the air; it shivered and warped. With the hand not weighed down by an invisible object Barl, daring not to blink, moved his fingers warily towards the shimmering. He held his breath and kept his thoughts focussed on God’s Heart as he reached into the void between atoms.
A cascade of yellowberries settled in his palm.
Before the rent in reality sealed again, an empty wicker punnet fell out of the air and dropped directly to the floor plates. He dropped the berries in the shock of it. But that didn’t matter.
He’d done it!
True, it wasn’t a weapon. It was a fruit salad.
But it was a start.
Barl allowed himself the first smile in what seemed like forever. At last, proper progress, something tangible. Real. Finally, he felt a little surer of himself and the powers Summer was so sure he had. He was going to get home—of that he was convinced—however long it took.
Barl’s mouth was suddenly full of saliva.
His belly grumbled, aching with pangs of hunger.
The yellowberries looked like the most delicious food he had seen in his life. He bent to retrieve one…
But before he could get a finger on the shiny yellow fruit, the Minular shook so fiercely he was thrown against the wall. Three muffled explosions tore through the structure, resonating from the distance, the vibrations shivering all the way through the metal underfoot and the walls and ceiling all around him. The sound amplified, tortuously loud, as the ship shook violently. Barl was battered around like a tumbling dice in a gaming cup. He reached out trying to steady himself as everything around him lurched away beneath him, smashing bodily into another bulkhead and hanging there stunned as the full gravity turned on.
Chapter 13
Shryke’s head pounded and his ears buzzed with a mad tinnitus of silence. He was in darkness. It was absolute. There were no shades, no shadows no chinks of light.
He tried to move a hand, reaching out in front of him to feel the immediate area around him, but couldn’t. He was bound hand and foot. Not chains… rope? It felt coarse against his skin.
If he couldn’t move, or see, he needed to rely on his other senses to tell him what had happened to him.
First, there was the smell.
By all that was holy, what was it?
It reeked.
The stench clawed in his nostrils, it cloyed at his taste buds.
He shook his head trying to shake off the foetid odour, coughing and hacking and gagging as he struggled to banish the stench.
“He’s awake.”
A man’s voice. Young. Snotty. Arrogant.
Shryke didn’t need to open his eyes to dislike him.
“Shall I hit him again?”
You can try it, he thought, braced for another unseen blow. His head thudded, senses dulled. The base of his skull burned, sore from where he’d been struck. For a flicker of a moment, not even a full heartbeat, Shryke thought about travelling to The Plain to battle for more energy to weave escape magic, but the risk of lighting up his position so soon and drawing the Guild’s warhounds was too much, especially as he was chained. He needed to think rationally; if his captors wanted him dead, he would already be dead, not waking up bound, nursing the aches and pains of their ambush. Which meant they weren’t Guild. His headless body would already be on the way back to the Nest on Pantonyle or to the Protectorate on the Liston Nine if they were.
“No. Please don’t.”
Galdar.
“Please. He’s not a threat. He’s saved my life. He helped me. He didn’t have to do that.”
“Be quiet,” the snotty one rasped. “When we want your opinion, we’ll ask for it.”
“Do you want me to punch you again, Carlow?”
He began putting the pieces together, remembering her stories and the personalities of her Moveable Church. Carlow was a name he’d heard before.
A ripple of laughter came from a number of voices, male and female.
“Carlow.”
A new voice. Female. Older. Authoritative.
“Yes, Reverend Yane?”
“Take the bag off his head.”
“But…”
“Do it or I’ll instruct Galdar to punch you. And you know she will enjoy that.”
Rough hands removed the dark leather bag from Shryke’s head,
He blinked in the bright light. The bag’s interior was stained with traces of rotten food. Fish scales glinted around the lips of the opening, smeared over the drawstring that had been tight around his throat, which explained the sickening stench; they’d covered his head in a bag used for carrying dead fish.
Delightful.
Once he’d shaken his head clear of the humiliation, the warrior took a proper look at his surroundings. They had tied him to the thick wooden pole holding up the central area of a large tent. There were maybe fifty or so people in various tunics, hose or religious garb, habits, surpluses and the like, staring at him, and a makeshift altar between Shryke and the entrance.
Galdar was close, and standing near her was a thin faced, black haired, spotty boy, who was nineteen summers old at best, sixteen at worst. The runt stared at Shryke with intense suspicion. He held a large tree branch, which had been stripped of bark and extraneous twigs, to fashion a crude club. Being taken out by a snotty nosed kid with a stick wasn’t his finest moment.
Shryke cursed himself for being so fixated in catching up with Galdar that he’d left himself vulnerable to a damned stick. There would be a reckoning with the boy, he promised himself, but not yet.
First, he had to get free.
Standing a few feet removed from the crowd, closer to him, was a tall, well-appointed woman in a red habit. Her face had that care-worn tiredness of leadership, but her eyes still sparkled with fierce intelligence. He noticed a chalice in her hands, which appeared to be overflowing with fine dirt. Shryke watched as she closed her eyes, picked some crumbs of earth from the chalice and put them into her mouth. Her lips moved in prayer. She waited a moment and then looked at him.
“Tell me why we shouldn’t burn you now?”
Shryke considered the woman, Reverend Yane. He needed to rein in his instinct to sarcasm in the face of religious fervour. These people were zealots of one stripe or other, and they’d just seen some of their congregation slaughtered. “Is your God a vengeful God? Are you a vengeful people?”
“Three of our number have been killed and many injured in an attack. Novice Galdar tells us this action was in retaliation for her saving your life by killing one of their own. Should we not kill you for them? I believe it would keep us safe.”
“It wouldn’t,” he said, telling the truth. Handing his corpse over would achieve nothing.
Carlow turned. “I’ll go and prepare the pyre.”
“No,” Yane raised her hand to stop him. She levelled a bony finger at the boy. “Your bloodlust is disappointing, Carlow. Now be quiet. I need to think.”
They weren’t going to burn him, Shryke knew. This woman, Yane, was clever. He knew what she was doing; she was trying to bond with him, to make him scared and then offer salvation, a pardon to make him beholden to her mercy. It was a reasonable tactic, and it would have work with many others.
“I don’t want to die, Reverend Yane,” Shryke began, “and if you let me go, I will travel far from here. The Guild will
not need to bother you again.”
“Except to exact more death and destruction on us for letting you go?”
“It’s not their way.”
“How can you be so sure, Warrior Shryke?”
“Because I’m one of them.”
There was a collective gasp of shock. Carlow boiled with frustration; hefting his branch from hand to hand, ready to beat Shryke’s face to a bloody pulp should the order be given.
“Is that why they want to kill you?”
“Yes. You don’t leave the Guild. And…I left. They will spend eternity hunting for me.”
“Perhaps you would be better off dead.”
“That is almost certainly true.”
The tent fell silent. Reverend Yane took another benediction of earth. “And yet, you do not want to die?”
“I do not. I have much to do before I can allow myself that luxury.”
Reverend Yane sighed, handed her chalice to another novice and clasped her hands, fingers interlocked, in front of her. “Carlow…” she began.
Carlow needed no second bidding he raised the branch and stepped towards Shryke, murder carved into his face.
“…release him.”
Carlow froze.
His eyes stuttered from side to side as he processed the command. Shryke could almost see him struggling, unwilling to believe he had heard correctly. But he had no choice but to lower the branch and step up to Shryke, doing as he was told. The boy produced a small knife from his belt which he used to saw through Shryke’s bonds.
“I’ll be watching you barbarian,” he whispered in the Quantum Assassin’s ear.
“I’m flattered, honestly, but you’re really not my type,” Shryke whispered back. “I like a bit more meat on the bones.”
Shryke was taken from the Moveable Church, to the Reverend Yane’s personal tent. As he was led through the camp, he saw that it had been struck in a forest clearing. He assumed not deep within the forest. Fires burned, and vegetables roasted on spits above them. The camp filled the space, and some of the Congregation were busy building rough shelters and covering them in fern leaves to insulate them from the worst of the elements. Shryke had guessed right; they had left the open valley for shelter rather than protection, but more than safety the decision was underpinned by devotional needs. The Congregation would obviously be staying here for a while. After the Guild’s attack they still had wounded to tend to and companions to mourn. They needed the rest, but lack of forethought made Shryke uneasy. They were targets. His very presence increased their risk—not just from the Guild, either. The Raiders would not forget what he had done to their number and would seek to humble him. If they realised Shryke was among the Congregation their kindness would bring doom upon them.
The tent was fur lined against the cold, and small enough to be cosy while offering room for a Church Council. Galdar was there, but not, he noticed, Carlow. Yane sat across from Shryke with a small, smoky fire in between them. She was flanked by Church elders. Galdar appeared out of place, her cheeks puffy and eyes red from where she’d been crying; finally mourning her dead friends. The relief of reaching the Congregation had at last allowed her the space to remember and regret. She gave him a wan smile as he sat down. Perhaps she had found some small space in her heart for forgiveness? It would be good for her if she could. He could live without it, of course, but then forgiveness was never about the one being forgiven. Shryke smiled back and their eyes met. It was plain their shared journey that had taken its toll on them both.
Shryke was surprised at how much that moment of eye contact comforted him.
He realised there was a bond growing between him and the girl that might even lead to a pure friendship.
He liked that idea.
“I am sorry that you were hurt and bound, Shryke. It’s not our way. But I will speak plainly with you; the attack by your people has left us scared. I apologise for Carlow’s rash attack, but you must understand he believed you were chasing Galdar and intended her harm.” He nodded. “He acted without thinking, and because you were an unknown entity, despite Galdar vouching for you, we believed it best to secure you so that we might talk without fear before releasing you.”
Shryke shrugged. “It’s fine, honestly. I’ve got a hard head.”
The flap of Yane’s tent opened and several novices brought in plates of steaming vegetable stew. Shryke ate greedily. The food was good but simple fare, made all the better by being the first thing he’d eaten in days. The others give a prayer of thanks before eating.
Yane finally spoke again. “You do present us with something of a dilemma.”
“I do?”
“Yes. I wonder, how do we protect ourselves against the Guild? As I said in Church—they will come for us whether you’re here or not. So that they might chase you down.”
Shryke could offer no comfort. “This is true. If it helps, I am genuinely sorry. And I have wrestled with the fact that had I’d left Galdar to the mercy of the Raiders…it might have been one life lost but many more saved.”
“We thank you that you didn’t…” she cut herself off in mid-sentence.
“But here we are.”
They ate in silence for a while. Then Yane looked up. “Galdar tells us that you are a mercenary.”
“Not the word I would use.”
“But you are paid by others to protect them? To kill on their behalf and to outwit the enemies who would do them harm? Yes?”
“It’s what I’m good at. I’m a terrible carpenter and blacksmith, but I am very adept at violence and reading the darker aspect of humanity.”
Yane chewed on her stew, the firelight glittering in her eyes. Eventually she swallowed, put down her plate and wiped at her mouth with a napkin. “Warrior Shryke.” Yane said firmly and with conviction. “The Congregation of the God of Safehome would like to employ you to protect us from the Guild of Assassins.”
Chapter 14
Barl smacked to the deck plate, in an instant feeling one hundred times his normal weight. The impact was brutal. His lungs were crushed within their cage of bones and his limbs suddenly brittle, like rusted iron. Alarms fired off around the room. They echoed down the corridors outside. Raw. Desperate.
His face burst the handful of ripe yellowberries. The wooden punnet broke painfully against his belly.
Barl tried to raise his head against the crushing force of gravity pinning him to the deck. His neck muscles screamed in protest, but his head wouldn’t come away from the cold deck no matter how hard he tried.
The Minular lurched sickeningly.
Barl was thrown, his special awareness undone as suddenly he was upside down on the deck, pressed up against the floor with the ceiling somehow below him. For a moment, as gravity reversed, and Barl hung above the room trying to make sense of the crazy perspectives and the free fall rush hollowing out his guts. He didn’t know if he was going to vomit or piss himself. The strain on his body was incredible.
Then he crashed down on to the ceiling, smashing the side of his head against a brass light fitting.
A trickle of blood from the fresh wound brought him back to his immediate reality.
Two more huge detonations ripped through the ship, off in the distance, rumbling and shaking the very core of it, the aftershocks surging all around him. These felt nearer, he knew, and considerably more powerful.
A new alarm blared, and with it the voice of the Bantoscree captain shouting over the shipboard com-channel: “Hull breeched on levels four to six! Abandon ship! Abandon ship!”
Abandon ship?
Leave?
How? I can’t move! His mind screamed. Barl tried to calm his racing thoughts and the panic surging through him. What was he supposed to do?
There had to be some sort of escape capsules, surely? A way out or why would the captain be shouting for them to abandon ship?
He had no idea where they were or how to operate them. A few weeks ago, he hadn’t even known what space or stars were, even as
a concept, and now he was expected to survive a star-ship blowing up?
He was doomed.
Come on.
Come on.
Nothing was moving.
No part of his body possessed the strength to fight the increased and crushing gravity. Every breath had become a jagged struggle in his chest. The ceiling beneath him was a collection of raised whorls and sharp bumps.
Come on.
It was like laying against lacerating gravel.
Come on.
As the forces around him increased, pushing him ever harder until it felt like he was being pushed through the ceiling, Barl’s clothes snagged and the skin of his forearms began to puncture.
The alarms cut out, but there wasn’t silence in their place.
Something fizzed in the structure of the ceiling. He could smell acrid burning coming from somewhere beneath him.
Another explosion tore through the ship.
The deep rumble made the ceiling buck beneath him.
Barl’s arm slid across the raised stippled pattern, skin splitting against one razor sharp corner. Agony flooded through his arm. He rolled away, clutching the wound with his other hand.
And in that move realised that the incredible force of gravity had relaxed.
He could move!
Barl got to his feet, still disorientated by the upside-down room, and spun around trying to remember where the door would be in this inverted landscape. He walked unsteadily towards it, not sure what he was going to find in the corridor outside but knowing whatever was out there had to be better than the inevitable death that waited for him if he remained here.
Barl palmed the door mechanism hard and the door swished up onto a scene of icy horror.
The smell hit him first.
The rank odour of bile and fresh vomit, mixed with…he couldn’t even begin to guess… It was awful. He saw that two Bantoscree had been crushed… smeared… across the corridor wall opposite his room. Their innards dripped like slime down the walls, their bodies split open, the gaseous sacs of their mid sections popped and deflated, tendrils hung down in limp tangles, their compound eyes crushed like thin ice on a winter pond.