Manx

by Greg Curtis

  “Maybe,” Manx agreed. And maybe she could, he didn't know. But there were some things that were simply private. “But I don't need or want that help. I'll just keep using the unguent.” And that was doing enough for him. It was slowly getting rid of the scars and making his life a little easier. That was enough for him.

  “As you will.” The shaman let out a heavy breath. “But I think you're making a mistake.”

  “It's my mistake to make,” he told her. And then, because he didn't want to continue the conversation, he turned to the cat.

  “Come on you. Lets go and get you that dinner.” With that he was on his feet, a cat in his arms, confused but hungry, and setting off for their lodgings for the night. But even as he walked and as Whitey demanded he hurry up, there was an uneasy feeling in his soul. He didn't know why. But he knew he didn't want to be examined by the healer.

  And maybe, though he didn't want to admit it even to himself, what truly frightened him wasn't what she might do. It was that she might find something.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Morning was usually a good time for Manx. Or it had been ever since he'd started using this new unguent the healers had prepared for him. Because these days when he woke, he wasn't stiff and sore. He could stretch and not know the pain of scars cracking open. And best of all when he looked in the mirror, he could see them slowly becoming fainter – or at least less angry. That mattered to him. It let him dream that one day they might not be there at all. That he might be normal. Just like everyone else.

  Maybe one day he could even do all the things normal people did. Grow fit and healthy. Strong. Walk around without a hat and a scarf to hide his deformities. Maybe even find a wife and not have to worry that the woman would run screaming when she saw him. All of him that was. The parts of him that he never let anyone see.

  This morning however, was different. Mostly it was different because of what the shaman had spoken to him about the previous day. And as he went about his ablutions and then rubbed the unguent into his scars, he found himself still unsettled by the thought of having the healer anywhere near him. Some things were just private.

  But he put that aside as he dressed for the day, ably encouraged by the cat growling at him that they needed to go downstairs and get breakfast. She was always concerned about that. Which was one of the reasons he was always up early these days. Whitey wouldn't let him sleep in. Adern who was sharing the room with him, seemed to agree, but mostly because he needed to use the bathroom.

  At least there were only two of them in the room this time. Sometimes there were four or more in the room and sleeping became nearly impossible over the snoring. But things were improving as they travelled. More and more spell-casters had been freed, and that meant that every city they visited had more of them already preparing for the next prison break. They'd already arranged lodgings for the thousand or so prisoners before the party had arrived.

  A few minutes later Manx was able to make his way down the stairs, followed by a white and tabby cat, and into the inn's main room and then the dining hall. But there things changed a little. It was already full even though six bells hadn't yet rung, and he had to be escorted to a tiny little coffee table in a corner of the room where a seat had been set out. There had to be a hundred other diners already eating their oatmeal, and he guessed more would be coming.

  All of them were spell-casters he noticed. He saw antlers, spear like ears, third eyes and glowing blue fingernails everywhere he looked. He even saw a set of wings and a tail. Most of them he guessed, were the people he and the others had just freed yesterday. People who were only now starting to understand what had happened to them, while they also coped with the illness of their flesh. Even though they were free, he knew, it would be a long time before they had proper lives to lead once more. If they truly had lives left to lead.

  “Oatmeal?” A serving girl appeared in front of him with a big bowl of the morning meal in her hands, before he'd even had a chance to think.

  “Thank you. And a cup of coffee for me. A saucer of cream for the cat and some cold meat cuts if you have some leftover from last night.”

  “And you could warm them up too,” Whitey added. But of course the girl didn't understand her.

  “Oh, you're so pretty!” She reached out and started petting the cat's head. “What's her name?”

  “Whitey,” Manx told her, and then watched as the cat played up to her adoring admirer. She even rolled on to her back and let the girl rub her belly. And all the while he had to listen to Whitey telling him what a wonderful servant she would make, and asking him why he couldn't do the same.

  But at least by the time the food was in the bowls and they were eating, the cat was too busy wolfing down her breakfast to talk. Then the others arrived, Adern took a seat on the opposite side of the tiny coffee table from him, and things became too busy for him to worry about the cat.

  “Larissa Calder?”

  A man appeared in the doorway of the dining hall and called for the shaman even as Manx was still drinking his coffee. A man with the brightest glowing blue eyes Manx had ever seen. A sorcerer – and he guessed, their new driver in their new carriage.

  “Five minutes,” the shaman called out from a table on the far side of the crowded room where she was squeezed in with half a dozen others. Then she stood up and turned around to face the rest of the room. “Everyone ready?”

  Manx put down his mug and stood up. “Eat your breakfast and look after the cat. I'll get the bags,” he told the walker. He could do that these days. Just casually agree to walk up the stairs and grab the bags which he knew would be packed and on the beds as if it was nothing. Because it was nothing. He felt so much stronger thanks to the medicine he'd been given. And he hadn't even been using it for a month yet.

  “Thanks,” Adern replied as he started shovelling the oatmeal down his throat as quickly as he could. Whitey didn't even speak as she started gulping her breakfast down.

  How had the cat not grown fat, he wondered as he went to do as he'd said? And as others joined him on the stairs. She ate far too much for such a little cat. Though Larissa was right, she had grown a little rounder around the middle. Still maybe he should have the others take a look at her, he thought. Maybe she actually did have worms.

  A couple of minutes later he dropped the bags at the foot of the tiny table, gulped down the last of his coffee, and then headed outside with the others. He was curious to see this new carriage. Except that when he got there, it wasn't a carriage. It was at best half a carriage.

  Where were the wheels? The horses to pull it? Or the steam engine? It was just a platform with some seats! Was this someone's idea of a jest, he wondered? But as the others headed for it and dropped their bags off in the small luggage compartment in the back, he realised it wasn't. They seemed absolutely certain that this thing would carry them where they needed to go. Certain enough that they even sat down in the seats and waited.

  So he did the same. And as he did so, a question occurred to him. How had this platform with seats on it arrived in the front yard? Who'd carried it? Lifted it over the fence? And why? But he kept his questions to himself. As Freda had proclaimed long ago, it was usually best when you didn't know something to simply listen and learn. Not to poison the air with pointless questions. And he was glad of the Goddess' wisdom a few moments later as the platform suddenly lifted up into the air.

  That wasn't possible! And yet even as he was telling himself that, the carriage was taking off. Gliding over the small front fence of the inn, and then rushing along the street, while people stared at them.

  “What is this?” he asked Adern as the city street raced by.

  “Oh! Of course! You haven't seen a glider before!” All three of the man's eyes were wide with surprise as he stared at Manx. “This is how we used to travel, before the Silver Order locked us away.”

  “Uh huh …” Manx replied, not really sure if he had an answer or not. He suspected that all he really had wa
s a name.

  “It's smooth!” Whitey announced from his lap. “No more bumping. A cat could get a lot of sleep here. Finally!”

  Manx didn't reply. He didn't know what to say. Instead he simply sat in his seat and stared as the glider rushed along the street as fast as a horse could gallop, and wondered what else the ancient spell-casters might have had at their disposal. He also wondered why they were racing along, perhaps four feet above the ground instead of simply flying. After all what was the point of flying at waist height? But maybe, he decided, it would be best just to remain silent and watch.

  It wasn't long before they reached the edge of the city and the more or less empty roads. And then the glider sped up – and he'd already thought they were racing. Soon they were racing along at impossible speeds, dodging the odd cart or horse and rider or even steam wagon using the same roads as they blasted past them, and making impossibly good time. The wind was blowing in his eyes and messing up his hair. It sounded like thunder as it raced past his ears. And he started to wonder just how long it would take them to reach their destination – the city of Halden.

  But he learned to relax a little as the journey continued and nothing untoward happened. They didn't crash or run off into a ditch, and as Whitey had said, the ride was impossibly smooth. Even when they reached a bridge with an arch, nothing happened. They floated gently up and down as they crossed the span, and he scarcely even felt it. The sorcerers in the front seemed to know exactly what they were doing – which was strange since as far as he could see, they weren't doing anything at all.

  In time he even managed to enjoy the ride. It wasn't every day you got to race along the ground like a bullet. Even if the wind ripping past his eyes made them water a little, it was a wondrous thing he thought. Wondrous enough that as the city of Halden appeared in the distance maybe an hour later, he knew a moment of disappointment. The ride was almost over.

  But they could do this again tomorrow he realised. And when they slowed down as they entered the city streets, he reminded himself that he had work to do. But now the likelihood was that he would be finished with the mission in only a month instead of two. That was a good thing.

  Soon they reached the inn where they would be staying for the night, and he let the others take care of his bag and even said farewell to Whitey. But she wasn't going inside to sleep on whatever bed he'd been given. Instead she'd spied a comfortable looking patch of long grass in the garden which she'd obviously decided would make an equally comfortable bed for the day.

  Things were going well, he decided as he waited to be escorted to the local dimensional prison wherever it was. Probably better than he deserved.

  “Excuse me, are you Manx Smythe?”

  Manx turned, and saw an elderly man standing there with a friendly smile and a face full of bushy white whiskers. This must be their guide he thought, though he was a little surprised that he couldn't see any sign of magic in him. Maybe the locals here had decided to help.

  “Yes,” he nodded. “You're here to take us to the prison?”

  “Absolutely.” The man's smile broadened.

  Suddenly there was pain. Manx didn't understand it. It had been a while since he had known a lot of pain. And when he had it usually hadn't been in his belly. Then he looked down and saw the hilt of a knife sticking out of his stomach and a trail of red starting to run down his front, and the truth started to dawn on him. He'd been stabbed!

  Manx stared at the knife in disbelief, trying to work out how he could have been stabbed. And then as he saw the hand attached to the knife's hilt and realised it belonged to the smiling bearded man in front of him, he wondered why the man was smiling. It just didn't seem right.

  “I … ahh …” he tried to say something. To ask what was happening. Because he couldn't quite understand what was happening. But instead of speaking, his knees began to buckle.

  Then he fell to the ground, and lay there staring up at the kindly looking man with the bloodied knife in his hands, still trying to understand.

  “I'm sorry for what I did to you as a child. But it was an accident. Your father shouldn't have gone after my family.”

  “Walken?” Manx stared up at the man, and realised who he was. But even as he tried to name him, he couldn't. The words wouldn't make it out of his throat. Meanwhile the sky was going dark as he lay there, and he knew that that was bad. But it was probably worse than he knew he guessed when he saw the man raise his weapon for a second strike.

  Then a small furry shape came out of nowhere, to strike straight at the man's face, screaming wildly, and another voice he knew yelled out in anger. A heartbeat later the man was swept away, disappearing from view, still yelling, and Manx knew he wasn't going to be stabbed again.

  He should have been relieved about that. But when the night suddenly fell, Manx guessed it was probably too late to matter. And just when things had been starting to look up. He should never have freed the bastard!

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Another damned gaol! Sorsha was becoming tired of prisons – of all types. But still as she walked down the long corridors of stone and concrete of this one, she found herself surprised by it. Surprised by how similar it was to the one in Winstone. Nine foot wide stone floored corridors, with steel bars for walls on both sides, interspersed with concrete sections, and twelve foot high ceilings with bars laid in to the concrete high above her head. Did they build these places according to a plan? And once again she had to wonder, where were all the prisoners? She understood that the guards had gone. But the prisoners too?

  But this gaol differed from the one in Winstone in a couple of respects. The first was that there were two members of the Silver Order now calling it home. The battle for Halden had been particularly fierce according to all she'd heard, and the mercenaries had died here in terrible numbers before their employers had surrendered. They were both now sitting in cells somewhere, slowly decaying as this spider queen apparently continued feeding off them.

  The second though was more important. It actually had one prisoner in it, not related to her peoples' struggles for freedom. A man who, according to everything she'd heard, had struck at Manx for entirely personal reasons. Just as he'd apparently struck at other member's of the man's family.

  She shuddered a little at the thought. Four hundred years had changed this world in many ways. It was almost completely different in some respects. In fact she scarcely recognised it. But still the people who lived in it were the same. They still had their demons. And this man carried a large one on his shoulders. He had tried to murder a man who had done him no harm. In fact a man who he had already caused terrible harm to when Manx had been just a boy. A man whose entire life he had ruined. And yet he too was a man whose life had been ruined. It seemed to her, that no matter how the world changed, whether they flew on magic or these great technological ships of the sky, people would always be people. She wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not.

  Eventually, after taking a number of wrong turns through the gaols endless corridors, she came to the prisoner's cell. She recognised it before she even saw the occupant inside it, by the chair that had been set out in front of it. There had been a lot of people sitting in that chair before her, interrogating the prisoner. All of them unable to believe that he had done what he had done for purely personal reasons. That it had nothing to do with the Silver Order and stopping them freeing their fellow spell-casters. But that it turned out, was the truth of the matter. This was all about vengeance. Horribly misguided vengeance. Nothing else.

  But having accepted that, it was a horrible crime. To strike without warning against an innocent – that was bad enough. But to do so against a man who was doing nothing but helping others – that made it worse somehow.

  The only good news was that the librarian had survived the attack. And now with the aid of the healers the librarian was making a good recovery. It seemed that he, that maybe all Smythes, were far tougher than they appeared.

  “So
, Mr. Walken.” She took her place on the chair and stared at the man on the other side of the bars. “You like to murder the innocent?” Perhaps “like” was the wrong word. But he had attacked Manx's sister Petunia, leaving her with crippling injuries, and murdered his brother Harald. And neither of them was responsible for what had happened to the man's family. He had spent a lifetime trying to kill the rest of the Smythe family. Truly this man was hatred personified.

  And yet he looked so harmless as he sat on his cot. Salt and pepper hair. A bushy white beard. A little bit pot bellied. Save for the deep gashes across his forehead, he looked like her neighbour from when she'd been growing up. And a nicer man you would never find. Yet three days ago this man had pushed a knife right through the gut of another man without any sort of provocation. It just didn't seem possible.

  “They're not innocent,” he replied, his face filled with self pity.

  “And what crimes had any of them committed against you?” she asked, not really wanting to know the answer. Sorsha suspected it would be bad. She was right.