Rojan Dizon 03 - Last to Rise

by Francis Knight

  The three of us gathered under a Glow light in the shelter of an office that usually held the guards checking goods going in and out. At least it had a brazier to warm it, but it was a mean one and all it did was stop my nose from turning blue. Malaki and the last remaining sergeant of the guards looked over our shoulders at what Pasha had brought. A large sheet of thick paper, much creased and filled with pencil markings that had been scratched in, crossed out and drawn over.

  “Here’s the gate.” Pasha’s voice cracked, but he swallowed hard and tried again. “And here’s Jake. Two of her guys left with her, that’s all.”

  He pointed to what could have been a group of boulders. Or possibly a tree. Whatever Pasha’s talents, they didn’t include drawing. Whichever, it was on the far side of the valley, where the wind whipped down over the mountains like a knife to saw through your bones.

  “Did she have any kind of weather gear?” I asked, but Pasha gave me a don’t-be-stupid-she-didn’t-expect-to-be-camping-Outside look so I shut up.

  It didn’t take him long to point out all the relevant information that Jake had managed to give him. Where the main force was, what sort of weapons they had – at least a third of the Storad had the flamers they’d used before – where their leader was billeted, and where Dench was. He, it seemed from what she’d managed to overhear or otherwise weasel out of some unlucky bastard, wasn’t exactly welcome, more tolerated. From what little we knew of them, the Storad had a funny kind of code and to them Dench had sold his own men out. That made him a traitor and, while useful, not to be trusted.

  Malaki and the sergeant pored over the map and asked a load of technical questions which Pasha stumbled answers to. Malaki cocked an eye my way and I tried not to flinch. Not very successfully, because old habits die very hard indeed.

  “What exactly is our objective here, Your Grace?” he asked.

  Perak looked long and hard at Pasha and me before he gave his answer. “Twofold, captain. One: those reinforcements on their way? We want them to find nothing of use when they enter the valley. No troops, no camp. Nothing.”

  The captain raised his eyebrows at that. Perak never wanted anything done by halves.

  “And second?”

  “Second, the captain of my personal guard is out there with two of her men. I would like them back.”

  “That’s —”

  “What your orders are, captain. This could actually be to our advantage, if we play it right. You know where their leader is billeted. Take him out. And Dench too. Jake and Pasha can also keep you apprised of any changes in the situation as and when they occur. But I want her and those men back, understood?”

  I was hard pressed not to grin – someone else was getting dropped in the shit for a change, and it was much more gratifying to see it from the outside.

  Malaki threw me an evil look before he and the sergeant left.

  Perak deflated after they’d gone, and I realised his commanding tone had been at least half bravado. “All right. Pasha, you go down to the new recruits. I reckon they’ll take better to someone who isn’t a guard or Special. And then —”

  And then it was too late. Any plans we might have made flew out of the window as a big, fat crack reverberated below us, followed by a series of screams.

  They’d fixed the machine I’d bent, and it had taken just one shot to break the inner gates. They were in, and killing anyone in front of them.

  Perak and I raced to a window. The inner gate was off its hinges and Storad were running amok below, guns firing, flamers burning every man they could reach. Pasha groaned behind us – every man’s thoughts were in his head, all their pain, panic, everything. I’ve never known quite how he managed to stay sane through it all.

  The guards fell back, the new recruits in among them, and any differences were forgotten in the face of Namrat stalking through Mahala, his tiger teeth ready to rip throats out, to take the dead and send them where he would.

  If I’d thought about it, I probably would have stayed where I was, or moved back in the tactical manoeuvre that is also known as “getting the hell out”. I certainly wouldn’t have gone charging off the way I did. The old me would have found a handy bolthole and stayed there till it was all over. Not any more, though it was still tempting. But I wasn’t the old me any more, or not completely.

  Pasha and I ignored Perak’s shout behind us and ran, not away, towards. Fuck only knows why, when everything was telling me to get away and quick. Probably because I knew there was no chance of Pasha hanging back, not with Jake out there, and I wasn’t letting him take all the glory. I had my pulse pistol out from habit, but sense kicked in and I dragged out my bullet gun instead.

  It wasn’t just an attack, it was a massacre. The ground was slick with blood and burned bodies, a sight to sicken even the hardest heart, but we didn’t have time to dwell on that. The Storad came, and we fell back before them, all of us, Special and guard helping new recruit and vice versa. Before that onslaught, we were all one. I remember thinking at least I’d die quickly, before I got to see Mahala completely destroyed, and wondering how the cardinals would put a Ministry spin on this, make it the Goddess’s will.

  The Storad came through the swirling snow, flamers out in front. Guns weren’t all that much help when you couldn’t see what you were shooting, but their flamers – all they needed to do was get in range, flick the switch and watch men burn.

  I fired my gun three, four times, fumbling the reloading with my bad hand so that I was alive with juice that I daren’t use, making my vision go black in patches, tempting me. That black tiger shape was everywhere I looked. I couldn’t see that I was doing any good with my gun, and wasn’t sure I wanted to. I’ve done some messed-up shit in my time, but to shoot a man, even a man who wanted me dead…

  I wasn’t the only one either. All I could hear, in between shots, was people praying, pleading for help, for absolution. The guard next to me kept up a constant litany to the Goddess, even while his shaking hands raised his gun, while he pissed himself when a bullet came the other way and took a chunk out of his cheek before it flew off into the dark.

  It was Pasha who turned it. I suppose it was always going to be Pasha, because he wasn’t just fighting for Mahala, or for his life. He was fighting for everything that made his life bearable, made it worth living, and she was out there somewhere, and in his head too. Jake would be fighting with all she had; she always did, so that the Goddess would love her, because she had to or die inside.

  One second Pasha was next to me and the next he was running forward with a wild scream. His gun wasn’t out but he ran with his hands twisting and cracking, holding them out like they were the weapon, and I suppose they were. Before him Storad stopped firing, their faces confused blurs behind the swirling curtains of snow. One of the men holding a flamer turned without stopping his fire, and three Storad gunmen went up in flames. I can hear the screams now, the smell of their skin as it crisped. I can hear the words behind me, from men who would never accept a mage, words that spoke of fear of magic even as it saved their ugly butts.

  And I remember the sudden rage at that. How I wanted to take my poor buggered hand and twist it, wanted to rearrange the whole damned place and everyone in it, Storad and Mahalian, wanted to twist their brains and make them see. Instead, I came over all sensible for once and lurched after Pasha. Snow and blood made the ground treacherous and I slipped more than ran. Pasha didn’t seem to notice, or care, but arrowed straight for the outer gates, or what was left of them. Straight for a bunch of Storad with guns and flamers at the ready.

  The thing about Pasha was that he looked like a sulky monkey, he was as jittery as a mouse walking past a cat – but when he had to, when something he cared about was threatened, he turned all lion; and then caution, and indeed anything approaching sensible, went out of the window. Generally at the worst possible moment, like now.

  I’d have bet any money you like that he didn’t even see those Storad waiting for him. All he was
thinking about was where Jake was, if she was safe, whether whatever Allit had seen would come true. Almost laughable, considering she could probably dissect any one of them in two heartbeats. But that was all this was to him now, all these blood and bodies, all that was in front of him. It was all about Jake.

  One Storad reacted quicker than the others to this wild-eyed apparition coming for them, and turned his flamer towards the threat. I shot him, managed to hit him too, high up in the shoulder so he half span and his flame scorched the guy next to him. But I couldn’t reload on the run, especially with only one hand that worked properly, and there were too many Storad. Pasha seemed to realise where he was then, what he was running into. A gunman aimed at Pasha’s head, then inexplicably turned the gun on himself and blew his brains out. “How far would you go?” Pasha had asked me once, and I saw it again now, just how far he would. Further than he’d be able to handle, once the lion wore off.

  Pasha wasn’t the sort of guy who could rationalise it, tell himself he had to, that these men would have killed him given half the chance. Me, I’d shrug it off most likely, at least on the outside. My conscience does what I tell it to, or at least I like to think so, and I was telling it that these bastards deserved everything they got. But Pasha – it would break him; but he didn’t care about it right then. He wasn’t thinking about tomorrow when this would haunt him, when he’d remember what they were thinking as he killed them, see their wives and children in their heads as they died. It would break him, but he didn’t care so it looked like I was going to have to.

  I dropped my next bullet into the gathering snow, swore like a motherfucker and grabbed another. Too slow. A Storad, eyes glassy as Pasha rummaged in his head and gave it a nasty suggestion, turned on his neighbour and shot him through the eye. But Pasha wasn’t quick enough, not together enough, to brainwash all of them. Not before three men grabbed at him and a gun came round, a finger ready on the trigger.

  If I believed in the Goddess, I’d swear on her that everything seemed to stop then. Time stretched, and all I could think of was Pasha. Not Jake, not how I’d have to tell her he was dead, if we found her. Not her, but him. How he’d taken me under his wing once. Talked to me, believed in me, told me not to be such a shit. Been a friend, the best I could recall.

  I don’t remember telling my hand to bunch into a fist, or recall with any clarity the pain swirling through my head, firing up my juice. I remember the black calling, though, telling me now was the time, right now. I’d promised it once, it reminded me. I’d promised that it could have me, and now it was collecting. A voice, not mine or the black’s but other than that I couldn’t say who, saying, Not now. Not for this. Not even for this.

  Then Malaki ran a bullet through the heart of the guy holding Pasha. Guards came up, guns ready, and the new recruits were with them. Bloodied and gaunt and terrified, all of them, but they came anyway. I relaxed my hand, willed the juice away, told the black to piss off, it wasn’t having me today. I almost succeeded, and got on with the business of shooting at men I’d never met.

  Chapter Seventeen

  By the time we’d finished at the wrecked gates, all the snow was pink- and red-streaked with blood. Broken flamers lay in bits of tangled metal, fresh snow covering them up as though to hide the fact they’d ever been. Not all the bodies were Storad, not by a long shot. The last sergeant of the guards lay right at the foot of the gates, three Storad bodies in various states of shot-through-the-face around him. Malaki was still upright, though it looked more from stubborn determination than anything else, as blood dripped freely down the left side of his face and off his chin. Something was changed about him, about all of us probably, but it was marked most upon him. A moulding of his features from stiff and uncompromising to grim yet – what? I couldn’t say. Only that I liked him a hell of a lot more, especially when he said, “Right, all of you, group up. You’re all my men now.”

  He didn’t seem to care that more than half them had never been his, that most had been until earlier today a bunch of men and women from the bottom of Heights, the top of Under, fairly respectable people who were only there because it seemed expedient for their careers to say yes when asked by Ministry. Yesterday, Malaki would have been happy arresting them for standing with intent to look at a Special, and they’d probably have done a runner at the first hint of a Specials uniform within a hundred yards or more. Today, that didn’t matter.

  Malaki pointed to one of the Heights men, who’d all somehow seemed to accumulate a lot of weaponry. The flamer seemed to ride easy in his hands and two guns poked out of a pocket. The cardinals were going to have a fit.

  “You, yes you. You’re my sergeant now. In fact, you’re all Specials now, got it? You serve me, the Goddess, and the Archdeacon, in that order.”

  No one argued, though I silently reserved the right to tell the Goddess to go fuck herself if what she wanted was at odds with what I needed to do. All the new recruits looked different shades of stunned – them, Specials? What were left of the guards looked much the same.

  “Right,” Malaki said. “We hold the gates, and we are going to keep holding them. There will be more men coming, I promise you that. Ours and theirs. But these gates belong to us, and no one is going to take them. Got it?”

  “But —” Pasha began. He looked worse than ever, grey and sick, one hand trembling and the other held to him where he’d taken a burn from the flamers. I could almost feel the pain coming off him in waves, feel the juice building in him. Not just juice either – desperation, a touch of panic.

  Malaki glanced his way and cut him off. “I haven’t forgotten, but holding these gates is primary. I swore to the Goddess first, not the Archdeacon, and this city is hers, and will stay hers.” Turning his back on us, he began barking out orders which all the men and women leapt to obey. Funny how the threat of dying together could make all those old arguments trivial. Now, after this, none of those men and women even gave Pasha and me a sideways glance.

  Perhaps that’s what made it easier for him to slump to the ground, cradling his burned arm. The lion was still there though, under the grey skin and the tremor. It was there in the way his dark eyes bored into mine, the way he gritted his teeth. “Rojan, we have to go.”

  If it hadn’t been Jake out there, if it hadn’t been Pasha looking like he wanted to burn holes in the snow with his eyes, I might have laughed. But it was, so I didn’t say a damn thing about how I was no use, a mage who daren’t use his magic for fear of going batshit, and one who was so strung out on worry and pain he could hardly stand. I like to think it was very restrained of me not to say, “Pasha, what the hell are we going to do?”, though I suppose he could hear it anyway.

  He could hear a lot, I’d no doubt – his arm was still smoking and the smell of cooking flesh, from him and all the others, mixing together with the smell wafting from what was left of the tunnels, quite put me off bacon for the rest of my life. He had juice enough to hear half of Mahala. But he couldn’t hear everyone, and that was the problem.

  “When we took the gates,” he said in a whisper. “I could hear her up till then. Her and her two men. We came from this side, they were doing what they could on the other. Doing a good job of it too, chaos for a while. Sneak into a tent, take out the men inside, sneak out. And then – I can’t hear her now. Her men are dead, and I heard her start to say something, heard her say, ‘Dench’ and then… nothing. She – I – I can’t think she’s dead. Can’t, won’t. I don’t care what Allit saw. Do you see?”

  I think I saw more than he thought. That the grey tinge to his skin wasn’t just from worry about Jake, though that was part of it. He’d killed men tonight, and Pasha wasn’t a killing kind of man. He’d done it for her, as he had once before and that had almost broken him, and yet he’d do it all again, if he had to. Would go as far as he must, for Jake. And now he was asking me to go out there, beyond the gates, out into who knew how many more Storad who were licking their wounds, biding their time till their rei
nforcements arrived, perhaps. Or perhaps not. But he had to, because if Jake was gone, or if she wasn’t and he left her there, then he had nothing except a useless faith in a useless goddess who would do bugger all for him except give him the faint, fool’s hope he’d see her again someday after they were both dead.

  He laughed, all pity and anger, and I realised he’d seen that last thought in my head. “You’ll see one day, you will. Until then, I will not say she’s dead. I just can’t hear her. Maybe – maybe what Allit saw, only maybe he didn’t see all of it? Dench has her, but when Allit saw her she was alive. Maybe Dench got that helmet on her? I swear that’s what was blocking me before, at the tunnel. Maybe she’s unconscious. Maybe lots of things. But I have to know. Are you coming with me, or not? You can walk on your own, and I can use my magic. Between us we make one good mage. What do you say?”

  What can you say to a friend who asks you that? Just to find out whether the woman he loves, and you do too, is alive. There is only one thing to say. Of course, I injected my own charm into it, so as not to appear too soppy.

  “Fine, but you’re paying the cleaning bill to get the blood out of my clothes, and I expect a lot of beer at a later date. A lot of beer.”

  He grinned at that and held out his good arm for me to help him up. But the grin had lion’s teeth in it, and it wasn’t only a lion that walked with us. A big, gleaming tiger followed in our trail, invisible, silent, watchful, waiting for his chance. Namrat, all teeth and hungry eyes, patient as time, cold as mountains. Namrat the stalker, who would have us all in the end. Death.

  I tried telling him to piss off, there’s a good little kitty, but it didn’t work.

  We didn’t get far. Maybe we would have done, maybe we’d have found Jake, Pasha could have rescued her like the dashing hero he seemed to want to be, whether she needed it or not. Maybe everything would have turned out differently if we hadn’t been so screwed, and if the first of the Storad reinforcements hadn’t decided to turn up.