Rojan Dizon 03 - Last to Rise

by Francis Knight

  Sadly, he should have tried about a hundred steps earlier. Then maybe we’d have had more notice and we could have retreated in style. Instead, the first we knew about anything was when Pasha’s eyes flew wide open about half a heartbeat before something – a bullet as it turned out – pinged off the rock right by my head and zipped off down the tunnel behind us. I didn’t even have time to say, “Shit,” before a whole bunch of Storad appeared round the next bend, looking menacing in some weird sort of armour I’d never seen before and dark, twisted helmets. We were near the end, it seemed, and they’d snuck in since Pasha had last listened, or he’d been fooled by the twisting nature of the tunnels. Or maybe Dench really had discovered how to block him at close range.

  Whatever, there was a brief, frozen moment in time as we all stared at each other before reality kicked in. We were seven. They were about twenty, with more coming round the corner, no longer caring about being quiet or sneaking. Big, nasty-looking men with guns in their hands.

  We ran.

  I’ll say this about Halina, that girl could really shift, fast enough that I began to wonder if she’d bypassed those cardinals’ flunkies and decided to leave me to the Storad herself. Probably helped that she wasn’t actually on the ground but propelled herself through the air. I’d have given my left bollock to be able to do the same. I very nearly did give it too, when a bullet grazed the top of my thigh, leaving a burn, a rush of juice and a quick thanks that it hadn’t been just that bit higher, thereby putting an end to my favourite hobby. I could have rearranged myself out of there, of course, but that took time and I had to sit down while I did it or I’d fall down. There was no way in the world I was sitting down while a bunch of Storad came for me with guns, so I ran with everyone else.

  Unfortunately, it’s quite hard to outrun a bullet. Pasha did his best to plant the idea in the shooters’ minds that they might want to aim somewhere else, but I reckon it wasn’t too easy while running away, plus the Storad language wasn’t ours. Bullets zipped about all over the place. One of the guards fell just as we came to the next twist, and had no hope of getting out of the field of fire. Pasha and I picked him up by the shoulders and half dragged, half carried him around the bend, but he was already dead.

  “Where in hell did they come from?” Pasha was wheezing like an old man and something, a bit of bullet or a scrap of shattered rock, had sliced a cut across one eyebrow. “One minute they weren’t there, the next they were.”

  “I was hoping you’d tell me. Best answer, Dench is a tricky bastard. Now what?”

  His eyes took on the dreamy look that meant he was listening in to people’s thoughts. “They’re slowing down. I can’t hear them properly for some reason – they sound far away even though they aren’t, and I don’t know much Storad, but I think they don’t want to come round that corner and find a bunch of guns in their faces.”

  “Can’t say I blame them. How about we use the time to get the fuck out and see if we can block the tunnel? At least jam the door.”

  “Good plan.”

  I suppose we could have left a couple of people to slow them down in a rearguard action, but the guards were all piss-scared – this wasn’t their usual kind of work. Now they were getting shot at, and while Pasha and I had grabbed their comrade and spent a few seconds deciding what to do, they’d been legging it as fast as they could.

  Being the brave and heroic kind of guy I am, I ran after them. We played cat-and-mouse with the Storad, running between twists in the tunnel, hoping they wouldn’t catch sight of us, or catch us with a bullet before we rounded another corner. Luck held out, mostly. One of the guards got a bullet in the arse, but he managed to stagger on out of sheer terror: mages weren’t the only things lied about in the news-sheets, the Storad had a pretty fearsome reputation as baby eaters and captured-person buggerers, and this time I had no idea how true any of it was. I didn’t want to stop to find out either.

  The Storad still weren’t far behind when we got within sight of the entrance, though I’m sure hearing their breathing was just my imagination. The guards were already running for their lives across the close, leaving Halina by the mechanism. She shouted a few choice words after them, but she didn’t run.

  I was almost having an apoplexy by the time I made it to the door, and that wasn’t helped by the thought of a score of guns coming round the last twist. Halina didn’t wait until we were fully through before she yanked on the door mechanism, but the damned thing wasn’t built for speed. It glided across the opening like it had all the time in the world.

  Too damned slow – the first bullets took a chunk of masonry out, scattering bits of shrapnel all over. More by luck than judgement a cloud of them took out the delicate mechanism, and the whole contraption ground to a halt.

  “Fuck,” Pasha muttered as he threw himself through the doorway and around a corner, out of the line of fire.

  “You got that right.” I was half a step behind him.

  Halina yanked on the mechanism, but the door stayed where it was and laughed at us. More bullets whizzed past, making us all duck for cover.

  “There was another lever inside to shut the door,” I said from behind the false safety of a wall.

  Halina shook her head. “The whole thing’s jammed – there was a coupling inside it and that got smashed. What about the other ones? That you told me not to touch? Bet your life those do something.”

  “Got to be worth a go.”

  Only, naturally, getting to them meant crossing the line of sight of the guns that were rapidly approaching. Unless I used my juice.

  I slid down the wall and worked as fast as I could. They weren’t big, it shouldn’t take much. A clench of my buggered hand, a quick spike of pain, a call of the black that I could shove back and down, for now, and the first lever moved. Nothing happened except the Storad got closer and I got more desperate. If they got inside the castle, or even if they got back to their camp and told everyone where this tunnel was, we were screwed. Worse than screwed.

  How old were these levers? It didn’t matter, all that mattered was whether they worked. Another burst of pain, another surge of juice. I overdid it, and the second lever snapped in two.

  Pasha muttering behind me didn’t really help, though I thought I could hear something odd down the tunnel, like two of the Storad had decided to get into a fist fight.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Halina said, twisted her fingers and glared at the third lever as though it was personally thwarting her. It slid down like a dream, trailing a rumbling noise in its wake, followed rapidly by a thud like worlds colliding. A cloud of dust billowed out of the tunnel. Pasha swore violently to one side of me and clutched his head in his hands.

  Nobody was shooting any more, which was a relief. Pasha didn’t seem capable of talking – he was moaning fit to bust – as I took my life in my hands and peered into the dust.

  “I thought you were going to leave us in there for a moment,” I managed to pant out at Halina.

  “Considered it,” Halina said with a grin that could have felled angels. “You’re a pain in the arse, but not that much. I may be tempted if that changes.”

  “Thanks. I think.” The dust began to clear, and I began to wish it hadn’t. Pasha’s moans took on a whole new meaning.

  I looked back to where the Storad had been about to leap out of the tunnel. “You know what I said about a ten-ton slab of rock?” I said. “I think I was right.” Then I threw up.

  Chapter Five

  That sneaky old warlord who built the castle and its attendant tunnels knew what he was about all right. Turned out this particular tunnel was constructed, not to be found exactly, but to be just that little bit more findable than the rest. A sort of false hope for anyone looking, to lure them in and kill them with a series of fiendish traps, deadfalls, spikes and other nasty surprises which the Storad had been patiently dismantling or finding ways round. It also turned out that the lever I’d snapped, when fixed, raised the ten-ton slab. What was
left underneath wasn’t pretty.

  The rest of the tunnel had various ingenious devices all along its length, at every twist and turn, all set to spring on anyone coming in, but not on anyone going out. If not for them, we’d have had about twice as many Storad to deal with as we had.

  Goddess’s tits, that ancestor of ours had a mean streak and a very inventive mind, which had saved our arses for now, or at least slowed the Storad down. Perak had doubled the number of guards searching for the rest of the tunnels too, and Lise had an afternoon of fun dreaming up a few chemical traps that would terminally deter anyone wandering in.

  Once Pasha had got over the shock of having all those voices suddenly scream in his head and then go deathly quiet, we had a bit more to go on too. We met Perak at the lab to fill him in.

  “I’m fairly certain where the tunnel comes out,” Pasha told him. “Right near their camp. Pretty close to one of the machines too. I don’t speak much Storad and what I did get was fuzzy somehow, like someone was blocking me perhaps? Dench knows what I can do, so they’ll be trying anything to stop me figuring out what they’re up to. But I could hear some, and I could see the pictures in their heads.”

  Perak paced up and down. Jake watched him impassively, with Malaki, Dench’s replacement as head of the Specials, next to her. I didn’t much care for Malaki – he had an effortless “hard-arse bastard” look to him that recalled those not far-off days when I was likely to get arrested every time I cast a spell. That is, he looked like he could kill you without losing sleep over it, in fact he might even relish it. His face was impassive, grey and slab-sided like a badly made granite crypt. It made an interesting contrast to the smooth and sleek Specials uniform that was perfectly designed to help the wearer kill quickly and quietly while looking very scary indeed. His eyes took in everything and gave away nothing, and I’d yet to hear him say anything other than “Yes, Your Grace” when taking orders from Perak. All in all, a perfect specimen of Specialness, and enough to give me the heebie-jeebies.

  “We’re losing men left and right,” Perak said. “Or about to. A number of guns have gone through the Mishan gate already, along with two cardinals. I’ve had a few subtle words with the remaining ones, but don’t expect much joy from that – Mahala is falling apart and they know it. Half the remaining cardinals are in talks with the Mishans – secretly, so they think: I didn’t let on that we knew, though they have to know we suspect. Some of the same ones are still hoping I’ll turn you over to the Storad, or the Mishans, or don’t care as long as they can get rid of you to someone. You keep that disguise on, Rojan, and stay where I can find you.”

  “They want Lise too,” I said. “She —”

  “Is constantly guarded, best I can spare. The Storad aren’t interested in her as yet, as far as I know. That leaves the Mishan liaison, who we know does want Lise and is trying to find a cardinal to help him out. I’ve, er, my liaisons have talked with him and hinted very strongly that it’s in the Mishans’ best interests that Mahala stands, in which case we need both you and Lise. I think he got the message.”

  I raised one eyebrow. “Hinted very strongly? I’d have preferred an example of what would happen should they find themselves in possession of me or Lise.”

  That got me a frazzled smile. “The liaisons in question were Jake and Erlat. Very persuasive, in differing ways, and they will continue to be so. Erlat I may have to appoint as an actual liaison.”

  I tried to imagine a very strong hint from Jake and the swords that were never far away, coupled with Erlat and her beguiling smile. “OK, fair point, but that’s not going to stop the cardinals.”

  “I don’t suppose it’ll stop the Mishans either, but at least they know we’re looking out for them, and they know that Lise will be harder to get to now. I’ve also told them that you’re down in the ’Pit and likely to stay there. But that’s not the really pressing thing, is it?”

  Anther boom-shudder to rattle our bones. The Storad seemed particularly good at punctuating a conversation, and reminding us that, above all else, the really pressing thing was keeping them out of the city.

  “No food coming in now, either,” Perak said. “Not a thing left to trade for it except guns, and we can’t trade those or we’re dead anyway. Whatever we’re going to do, it needs to be now. The tunnel, is it safe?”

  “You mean apart from the fact it’s full of traps, we aren’t sure we’ve found them all and we daren’t go to the end because we’ll tip the Storad off to exactly where it is if they aren’t aware already, which they probably are? Sure, Perak. Safe as houses. I’m surprised Dench hasn’t come up it to find the men who’ve gone missing. He will.”

  Perak glanced at Jake and Malaki, who both nodded. I didn’t like the way this was going. It had the smell of drop-Rojan-in-the-shit.

  “We need to do something to end this quickly,” Perak said. “But first we need to slow them down – the Storad’s machines will have the gates down in a few days otherwise, and then it doesn’t matter about all the rest. Look, let us get all the information we can, see what we can come up with. In the meantime…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. In the meantime keep my head down, rearranged and out of sight, try not to piss off any cardinals, keep pumping out Glow, get on with finding more mages, teaching them, see if we can get them firing up some Glow too. Check if any of them have a handy ability for making a whole damn army disappear. Right?”

  Perak looked apologetic, but there it was. We all had to do things we didn’t want to, except of course those cardinals who felt it was more useful to be a bunch of dissenting and/or running-away bastards.

  I was seriously starting to feel tied to the damned pain lab, to Glow, like it was the only reason I was here and anyone was putting up with me. A fleeting – and very tempting – thought said that if the pain machine went belly-up, no one would need me. I could go and have a nice sleep, maybe drink myself insensible if I could find anything that would do the job. The only problem with that was that I’d probably fail to wake up due to a Storad bullet in the head.

  Compared to that, a little pain, a little bit of teaching, would be a breeze.

  There were often days when I wondered why the hell I bothered getting up. This was turning into one of them. Not that I’d actually got up as such, because I hadn’t really slept, but still. Lise and Perak were tweaking her mysterious machine while Jake and Malaki did some reconnoitring and tried to figure out a plan. In the meantime I was left to keep my head down and try not to foam too much at the mouth about it.

  The trickle of leads on new mages had dried up, so other than pumping out Glow I tried to keep myself busy training the mages we did have while looking over my shoulder all the time for a cardinal’s man to come and stick a bag over my head, knock me out and drag me off.

  The training wasn’t going so well – I am not a natural teacher. Allit was a sulky mess, all knees and elbows as boys his age are. Allit, however, wasn’t wholly as other boys, and if he carried on like this, there was a good chance we’d end up as part of the decor. Uncontrolled magic is a delicate thing, hence what made the Slump.

  We were outside because this was a tricky business and, if it all went tits up, well, I didn’t want it scaring the crap out of the other magelets. Or exploding any of Lise’s experimental chemicals. The downside was that I was still smelling food cooking and it was almost enough to drive me crazy, especially as no one else seemed to be smelling it. My mind had taken against me, in league with my stomach.

  Clouds hovered gently over the city like a murderer lowering a suffocating pillow, making Top of the World seem ghostly and indistinct. The wind blew straight down from mountains that were sprinkled with the first snow of the year, but for once it wasn’t raining, so we sat on a frigid walkway overlooking the huge bulking factories of Trade. I made sure I was nice and close to a wall, because it was a long way down.

  The factories’ rumble shivered our bones, both comforting and odd. Comforting because, for a while ther
e, we’d had no trade and that meant no food. Odd because, well, because it wasn’t for trade that the factories were rumbling. The factories were working flat out, producing guns as fast as they could, bigger and better. But the very people we usually traded with for our raw materials were the ones who were sat outside the gates trying to batter their way in.

  So, despite my genius little sister busting her arse to try to get more power out of the magic we could produce, and working on whatever gizmos she could think of on the side, we had to go with what we’d got and try every angle. Hence, a frustrating and painful morning for both me and Allit. At least I wasn’t in a tunnel, getting shot at.

  “It’s stupid,” Allit said, nursing a cut thumb.

  “Not just stupid,” I said. “Stupid, painful and a one-way road to madness, if you let it. That’s why we start small, not try the big stuff straight away. Do that again and I’ll toss you over the walkway. Lesson one – you don’t use it lightly. I prefer not to use it at all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because dislocating your own thumb to cast a spell is a ridiculous way to do things. And it hurts. I do not like to hurt. I also do not wish to go completely crazy, which is always a possibility.” Of course, there was a good chance that it had already started on me.

  Allit looked at me sideways, trying for guile but failing. “But you still do it. Why’s that then?”

  I wasn’t going to be totally honest with him – I’m not even totally honest with myself most of the time – so I said, “Because sometimes even I have to. Like now. We make the magic, make the Glow or we all die. That simple. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  He gave me the sort of “Yeah, right” look that only works when teenagers try it. To distract him from the fact he was dead on right, I started him on another bit of practice.