Manx

by Greg Curtis

  And the silver clad warrior looked angry as he turned towards her. The one thing he didn't look like she realised as she saw him advance on her, was crippled. He was injured. There was blood running down his arms, and his armour had been pierced, but he wasn't slowed.

  She struck at him again, but this time with a wall of confused space which she laid between them. It was only a merging of the space of two worlds, but it stopped him dead. His sword fell to pieces in his hand, and his sword hand with it.

  It was his turn to scream as he jumped back. To know terror. And to realise that things weren't as he'd planned. And then a look of horror took hold of his face as he stared at the bloody stump where his hand had been. He screamed some more as the blood spurted from it and fell to the polished tiles, and then he stepped back some more.

  “Bitch!” The man screamed it at her with all his hatred, and his voice echoed around the chamber. But he didn't try advancing on her again.

  Instead he just stood there, clutching his stump with his good hand, and cursed her. But he stopped doing even that a few seconds later as the venom reached the vital organs of his body. He had destroyed the snake, but not before it had poisoned him.

  Then he fell to the floor, still clutching at his arm, and began to writhe in pain as he gasped for breath.

  His suffering didn't last long. Twenty or thirty seconds later he stopped moving and his face turned a shocking shade of grey. She knew then that he was dead. That she had killed him. And that she didn't even know who he was or why he had attacked her.

  Unexpectedly though, she realised something shocking. He was beautiful! Even dead and grey, covered in blood and missing a hand, he could have been a statue of some ancient god. Alive, and artists would have clamoured to paint his likeness. Women would have swayed and fallen at his feet.

  And she'd killed him!

  Still reeling with shock, she knew that, even as she didn't know anything else. She'd killed a man. She'd never killed anyone. Never even hurt anyone. Now she was a killer. And yet, what choice had she had?

  But she pushed the guilt and horror aside. Because it didn't matter. Not just then. What mattered just then as she finally got to her feet was one thing. She knew one thing. She knew her name. Sorsha. She was Sorsha! Sorsha Hooper the walker.

  And she was also naked!

  Why was she naked? Why was she dripping wet? And where was this place? She knew it was in the world – her world – but that was all she knew about it. She had never been here before. And her vision could tell her nothing.

  It was a temple of some sort she thought. The arched doorways all around it and the domed roof suggested as much. But there was no deity on display. No statue. No fountain. Nothing to tell her who was worshipped in this place. Just an empty chamber with a dead silver clad warrior lying on the floor, and endless rivers of blood flowing from his cold grey stump.

  There was one thing more about it that she noticed in time. This chamber was hidden. Woven into the walls were countless magics of time and space and illusion. Things designed to stop anyone from seeing it. Or entering it. And while some of those spells she knew she could undo, others were far beyond her abilities.

  They were powerful magics. Spells that she didn't even have the magic to undo. And others that she at least understood, but which were beyond powerful.

  Which left her standing there, naked and shivering with the cold, a single question on her mind. What was happening?!

  She summoned exotic animals for a living! She made children happy as they played with their new pets. Farmers smiled when she brought them more powerful beasts to plough their fields. She didn't fight silver clad warriors. She didn't stand around in temples wet and naked. And she most certainly didn't kill people! This was wrong!

  In time though, a second question occurred to her. How had the silver clad warrior entered this place? Because it was fairly certain that he hadn't been here for long. He couldn't have been. There was no food or water in this place. So obviously he'd come in from outside, walking through one of the archways, unaffected by the spells woven into the air. And he had only two eyes. He wasn't a walker.

  An amulet! A charm or a ward. He must have one. Or maybe a marking on his skin. Some sort of ward. Those were her thoughts. And no sooner had they come to her than she let her barrier fade and was on his body, searching for the key she knew he had to have on him.

  It didn't take long to find what she was looking for. No sooner had she removed his breastplate then she found the markings pressed into the inside of it. A ward of some sort. But one she didn't recognise. None of the symbols in it made sense to her.

  But that didn't matter. Wherever this place was and however it was protected, she had to get out of here. Not least because she guessed that others would be coming. This was a prison of some sort. A place where she had been held for she didn't know how long. And this man was a gaoler. Here to prevent her escaping. He had almost succeeded. But no prison that she'd ever heard of had only one gaoler. Alarms were no doubt ringing somewhere. More would be coming.

  Though she hated the thought, she instantly knew her only way through the magical barriers enclosing this room, would be in his armour. So she kept stripping him, and when he was naked and revealing to the entire room the gruesome manner of his death, she started putting it on. She did her best not to notice the blood it was covered in, or to remember that it was there because of her. And she ignored the way the helm covered her third eye. She could take it off after she was through. Most of all she tried to not think about the fact that she'd killed the man.

  He'd been trying to murder her! She'd defended herself! Sorsha kept telling herself that. But while she knew it was all true, it was hard to stare at the grey and mutilated body of the man she'd killed and believe it.

  Still, once she was dressed in the dead man's clothes and armour, she knew she had to go. She had to escape this place. But first she whispered a quiet prayer to Mother Mya for the soul of the man she'd killed. She didn't know him. She didn't know if there was anything good about him. Whether he belonged in the eternal garden. But it didn't feel good to see him lying there, torn apart and grey, and to know that she had done that to him. So she prayed for the Mother to bless him. And then taking her courage in her hands, she walked to the nearest archway and risked putting her finger through into the seemingly empty air.

  It tingled a bit. But nothing tried to burn her or cut her finger off. So she took a deep breath and stepped through it.

  A second later she was on the other side, and strangely she still didn't know where she was. It was dark. There was a grassed courtyard of some sort in front of her. And when she turned around, the marble temple was gone. Completely missing. There was only grass behind her.

  But more than that, she was shockingly weak. In fact almost immediately she fell to her knees and then just had to stay there on the grass, wondering what was wrong.

  Unfortunately her troubles were only just beginning. She heard dogs, and men shouting. And when she looked up it was to see a small army advancing on her.

  An army?! The sight of them, shocked her. It filled her with fear. But more than that she knew despair. Helplessness. She couldn't run. She couldn't hide. She couldn't even step back into the temple and take shelter in it since it was gone. And they were going to kill her. Like the man whose armour she was wearing. She'd escaped a prison only to be killed.

  But she wasn't going to die! Not here. Not now. And from somewhere she found the strength to fight. Sorsha fell back on her most basic defences, and she started summoning the most dangerous creatures she could find.

  If they had dogs she decided, she should too. But hers were hell hounds. And no sooner had she thought of them than a dozen or more of them appeared on the grass and rushed the approaching soldiers, fire leaping from their mouths. If they had horses she thought, she had nightmares, and she unleashed them and their fiery hooves on the grass. And if they had men in silver armour, she had her own black knights. />
  Soon a small army of hell was rushing towards the people who had been advancing on her, and she watched as they turned and ran. Sorsha knew a moment of overwhelming relief when she saw that. But it didn't last. Because they also had cannons.

  “Oh gods!”

  Thunder and smoke suddenly filled the air, and the ground shook with terror as she lay face down on it. How could they have cannons?! But there was no point in asking questions that had no answers. The only thing that mattered was surviving. So she summoned ever more hell beasts as quickly as she could and prayed. She had to take out the cannons before they cut her to pieces. If only she wasn't so weak and fuzzy.

  Somehow her plan worked. Even as the smoke turned the night into blackness so dark that she couldn't see anything, she heard the sound of the cannons' fury growing quieter. And every so often she heard the roar of explosions as the fire of the hell hounds no doubt found the kegs of gunpowder. She saw the orange flashes lighting up the sky as well. But she also felt the impacts in the ground underneath her as cannon balls and shrapnel smashed into it, far too close. She could still die.

  Thankfully she didn't. Instead in time there was only silence. The enemy was vanquished. And she knew she should get up and leave this place. Run. But her arms and legs simply had no strength. And every time she tried to stand, she collapsed. So in the end she just lay there and hoped her strength would return in time.

  And while she did that, she tried to make sense of what had happened to her. And when. Because she had no memories of being placed in that magical prison. In fact her last memory was of walking down a street in Fort Bane with a new dress in her hands, thinking it would look so good on her.

  She'd been happy. The day had been warm and the sun shining. And there had been nothing dark on the horizon. In fact it had all been wonderful. Her engagement had already been announced. Her family had been thrilled with her husband to be. And Maigret had been happy too. She couldn't wait to show him her new dress.

  And then she'd noticed a couple of the new knights of the King, the Silver Order as he called them, walking up the street towards her. Had they done something? She couldn't remember. She thought she remembered one of them reaching for something under his green cloak. But that was where everything ended – until she'd arrived here.

  Still the man she'd fought here had been wearing silver. He'd had a silver sword. Could that be a connection?

  Sorsha wished she could be sure. But really she wasn't sure of anything. All she knew was that it was time to get out of here. So after resting for a while and having listened to the silence for long enough, she made another effort to get to her feet. And this time she managed it. Then she started walking.

  The smoke had cleared by then. The stars were shining in the sky above her, and there was enough moonlight for her to navigate by. And for her to see the destruction her creatures had caused. Cannons were in pieces. Here and there she saw bodies as well, none of them wearing silver. But thankfully it seemed that most of those who'd come for her had run away.

  In the distance there was a large building in flames as well. She steered away from it, thinking to stay as far away from people as she could. And eventually she reached the end of the courtyard. But when she looked out through the gate it was to see a city beyond it. A large city.

  This was not Fort Bane!

  That was a town based around a single fort. This was a vast city where surely hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of people lived. And it was on fire. Here and there she could see buildings burning, and she knew that it was because of her army. The beasts were running free, burning everything they found. And that shouldn't be.

  Sorsha tried to call them back. But she couldn't. She should be able to. They should respond to her wishes. In fact they shouldn't have left the confines of the courtyard. But something was wrong. Something more than just the weakness of her flesh. There was something wrong with her magic. Or maybe with her. When she'd been desperate, the magic had flown as it always did. But now, when she was no longer under attack, her magic was quiet. Subdued and confused.

  They'd done something to her! Sorsha didn't know what. But she knew that she wasn't as she should be, and it surely had something to do with whatever hell dimension they'd locker her up in. It had drained her. Stolen her strength. And now she wasn't the woman she had been.

  Sorsha walked on, heading out into the burning city, knowing only that she had to get away from this place. Before the soldiers returned.

  But as she walked across the grass to the nearest city street, she realised something else. She wasn't important enough to have an entire army guarding her as she was trapped in an otherworldly prison. She was just a simple walker. One of many. So they simply wouldn't have gone to all this trouble just for her.

  And that in turn told her one thing more – that she wasn't the only prisoner that had been held in that place. There were more people locked away in it.

  Then she heard a noise, a strange chugging sound, and when she turned to look, everything she'd worked out simply fell out of her head.

  There was a wagon rolling towards her. But it had no horses! Instead it had a funnel out of which black smoke poured into the sky. Actually it was a procession of smaller wagons all somehow joined together, which didn't make any sense to her. And though it moved by its own accord, she could feel no magic coming from it. Just a man in a seat at the front of it, staring at her. And slowing down.

  “You alright Miss?” he called to her as he brought the great steel beast to a halt not far from her.

  “I ahh … ,” she tried to answer him, still staring at the steel beast while at the same time wondering why his accent was so strange.

  “Oh by the gods, you're wounded!” He saw the blood on her stolen armour and leapt to the wrong conclusion. Then he jumped down and hurried to her.

  “Here,” he wrapped his arms around her and started leading her to the great steel beast. “I'll take you to the physicians. The gods alone know they must have enough other patients to deal with at the moment but I'm sure they can help.”

  She wasn't sure they could help. Not even if she'd been injured. If she had been she would have wanted a proper healer. And maybe an apothecary as well. But she didn't know what to say to the man. So she simply mumbled something to the man and let him help her up into the seat. And then she kept silent as he pushed a few levers and the great beast took off.

  It accelerated down the street hard enough to throw her back in her padded leather seat. And despite its size it was at least as fast as a horse and trap. But there was no horse, unless it was that giant chugging furnace behind her in the middle wagon, sending foul black smoke into the night sky.

  What was this? Where was this? Had she arrived in some other strange underworld? A world where demon beasts were made of metal and men commanded them?

  All she could really think as they travelled down the street, was that this definitely wasn't Fort Bane. Or any other city she'd ever been to. In fact it occurred to her as she stared at the burning buildings, was that she was lost. So lost that she didn't even know how she could begin to make her way back home again. She didn't even know in what direction it lay.

  What the hell had happened to her?!

  Chapter Three

  The morning dawned bright and warm, a stark change from the chill of the night. Manx for once woke well rested and ready for the day. The cats had sung for most of the night, and of course in doing so they'd set off the dogs and kept half the city up, but they'd been far enough away that by closing the windows he'd been able to muffle the noise. He was grateful for that. Sometimes when they sang, they practically did it in his front yard and then there was no sleeping. Bastards! He was sure they did it on purpose. Just as he was sure that there would be a small pile of shite on his front doorstep when he checked.

  And of course he'd had to suffer through the nightmares. They came and they went, but always it was the same. Teeth and claws tearing at him. Ripping into his
flesh. Killing him. But the truth was, they weren't nightmares. They weren't dreams of any sort. They were memories.

  Never-the-less he felt good as he rolled out of bed. Good enough that the pulling of his scars didn't even bother him when he stood up and stretched. They annoyed him of course. You'd think after twenty four years they would have gone away. Melted into the rest of his skin. But they hadn't. They were still massive welts that covered his flesh from head to foot and which restricted his movement.

  Most of all he hated the scars across his face. The three jagged lines that ran from the top of one side of his head to the other side of his jaw. Not because they made him hideous. He had grown used to what he looked like and it no longer bothered him. It was just a part of who he was. And that they interfered with his vision in his left eye wasn't too terrible either. So his eye didn't move as it should – it was just life. But what did bother him was the reaction of everyone he encountered as he went about his day when they saw the scars. The way they gasped and looked away. Sometimes the pity he saw in their eyes. That never seemed to go away.