“Is a failure anyway,” Galen finished.
Johnny was snoring already.
“Going to be hard as hell to sleep through him snoring,” Aaron joked.
“I don’t envy you that,” Galen said.
Aaron heard more footsteps outside of their room.
But why were the Carrion men returning?
The hell?
The footsteps stopped outside of their door. When it opened, there was another priestess who was also flanked by two soldiers. Galen stood up and put his shirt back on. “See you in the morning.”
They grabbed Galen and walked him out of the room.
Johnny sat up when the door slammed shut. “What happened?” he asked groggily.
“They took Galen.”
“Why?”
“He promised himself to Calimay, remember?”
“Well, you got to admit it. That whole family has a way with women.”
Aaron did his best to laugh.
Martin had gathered all of his hunters next to the wall by ole Bense. They sat in a half circle around him.
It was just an hour before the official morning, but that didn’t mean what it used to. In the old days, the first few hours would be filled with the sounds of gatherers readying themselves for their journeys into the wilds. Today Martin expected a slow trickle at best.
Michael Baker had already taken his first look at his city. The First Citizen didn’t look very happy, but he managed to give Martin a smile. That support made Martin feel bolder.
I won’t let you down, sir.
“I ain’t feeling comfortable with that man there,” Marcus said of Bense.
“Me neither,” Huxley agreed. “Martin, we know you like to talk to him, but he puts the creeps on me.”
The hunters, all forty of them, were a chorus of disgusted grunts.
“Does he?” Martin asked. “‘Cause y’all are pussies?”
There was a bit of laughter, but Martin could tell he hadn’t earned anybody’s trust yet. There were a few snorts mixed in as well.
“It’s sick, Martin,” Marcus responded. “The way you talk to him like he’s still living is sick.”
“Stilling bothers you, doesn’t it?” Martin said loudly. “Turns the stomach.”
Martin saw a few villagers poking their heads out of their hovels.
Good! A few of you folks still have some life left in ya.
“The way you talk to him, does,” Marcus said.
“It ain’t right, what happened to ole Bense.” Martin pointed at his stilled friend. “It ain’t right. He was one of us. He used to wander the halls. Marcus, I thought that’d make you feel a bit of comfort, ya know? Knowing that if you were ever to stop moving, you’d still have my ass to talk to.”
This time the laughter was more genuine.
Martin forged ahead even louder, feeling heartened by his men’s responses. “It ain’t right. It just ain’t right.” He paced from one edge of his hunters’ semicircle to the other. “And there are people, our people, out there in the wilds right now. We’ve seen ‘em while on patrol. They’re just lyin’ there. Waiting. Just like ole Bense, but not quite. Not quite. Marcus, you’ve got a friend out there, almost still, don’t you?”
Marcus nodded. “Jane.”
“That’s why you’re here, waiting for the subsidy. I bet you intend to feed Jane with it.”
Marcus blanched. “I . . . sir. It won’t hurt my hunting. I swear. Don’t order me not to.”
Martin walked up to Marcus. “Stand up, hunter.”
Marcus did so and looked Martin in the eye.
Martin didn’t back down. “I would never order you not to help a villager in need. Never. You got that?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I get a ‘sir’ on that, hunter?”
“Yes, sir!”
People had started to come out of their tents and hovels. One of those people was Katie. Martin felt a flash of warmth as he saw her.
Good to see you up, babe.
“Sit down, hunter.” Martin ordered.
Marcus sat back down immediately as if Aaron himself had given the order.
“The tough thing about all those starving people like Jane is that they’re just a couple of days short of a free meal. Just a couple of days. And the Fore’s finally done it, they’ve agreed to help us out with the stores. Our friends will lie out there, the stilling in their bones, while the rest of us feast. That’s what ‘puts the creeps’ in me. That’s what ‘ain’t right.’ Can I get a ‘yes, sir’ from you hunters?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We don’t want our people starving do we?”
“No, sir,” the hunters replied in unison, a determined look on many of their faces.
“We don’t want them sitting alone out in the wilds, waiting for a corpse to come by and rip out their eyes.”
“No, sir!”
“We don’t want to eat no feast, knowing that our own people are dying out there in the wilds while we can take care of them.”
“No, sir!”
“We’re going to do something about this shit, aren’t we?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Aren’t we!” Martin shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Yes, sir!” The echoes of the soldiers shouting reverberated off of the walls of the Harpsborough chamber.
Martin looked up and saw Michael and Mancini on one of the Fore’s third story balconies, looking down on him. More villagers were standing and watching his gathering than Martin had guessed were left in Harpsborough. He even spotted Constance, though the sight of the dissident sent a cold shiver up Martin’s spine.
“Aren’t we?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Can I get a ‘sir, yes, sir’ on that?”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
Martin’s hunters were with him, he could feel that in his bones.
Martin paced back across his semicircle. “Huxley, Tucker, follow the lad John over there and bring out our subsidy.”
The hunters stood and walked into the Fore. Then they came back out carrying two boxes Martin knew were filled with devil wheat, dried dyitzu meat, and some pickled sinfruit. Huxley and Tucker set the boxes down next to Martin.
“Now this ain’t no order,” Martin said, “but I’m going to give up some of my subsidy and take it out into the wilds to feed Jane and the people like Jane. How much each of you give, or if you give it all, is up to you.”
“Why don’t we just give ‘em one of these boxes?” Marcus suggested.
“Anyone opposed?” Martin asked.
He could tell some were, but they didn’t dare say so with the entire village watching.
“Good,” Martin said, nodding and pacing.
The village erupted into an applause. Martin felt hot blood rushing through his veins. His hairs were standing up on the back of his neck. For the first time in his life, he knew he was doing the right thing.
“Alright, I’m leading a crew down to the Hungerleaf Grove. Rick said he didn’t mind if we picked through it while he was gone.” That was a lie, but Martin figured Rick wouldn’t be too angry with him when he found out about it. “Then we’re going to break up into units and find all the starving people in the wilds. We’re going to feed them and keep them from the stilling. Now we don’t need to give ‘em much. Just enough so they can make it to the feast.”
Graham stood up.
Oh shit.
“Isn’t feeding who’s left in the village important, too?” Graham asked. “And if you’re out running through the halls feeding those people, who will be catching the dyitzu? Who’s going to be patrolling the outskirts, making sure to thin out the corpses that might kill the villagers?”
There was a sudden pause. Everyone was looking at Martin. Martin’s brain froze. He didn’t know what to say. To buy time he paced back and forth again, looking at the faces of his hunters, and then at the faces of his people.
They don’t like him. They want me to win.
/>
His eyes fell on Constance.
Except for that guy. He just wants the Fore to fall. He’s probably my worst enemy.
Martin walked back to Graham, but looked past him and addressed the hunters and the villagers. “You’re right, Graham,” he said loudly. “You’re absolutely right. We’re a little short handed. Constance!” Martin walked through the hunters towards the man. “You’ve got a crew who runs with you, right?”
Gotta keep my enemies close.
Constance seemed a little shocked at being addressed by a Harpsborough authority figure, but his blond-haired head nodded.
“This is a tough time,” Martin said. “I know it’s been tough. You’ve done a great job looking out for you and your own, even when it looked like no help was coming from the Fore. Will you help me now? Will you and your men help me pick through the Hungerleaf Grove? Will you help me save those people who need us?”
The entire village focused on Constance.
“It’s about damn time we did something.” Constance said. “You’re damn straight I’ll help you.”
He ain’t my enemy. Seeing starving people just hurts him in a different way, is all.
Martin offered his hand. Constance shook it firmly. Martin heard the knuckles of his hand crack, but the hand had recovered well enough that it let him grip back.
“Good, you and your men are with me. Huxley, Marcus, Pete, you too. Graham, I want you to supervise the normal hunting.”
There was round of staggered “yes, sirs.” Even Graham gave a halfhearted one.
Martin turned and addressed his hunters, but really he was addressing the entire village. “It’s been rough. No one’s denying that. But when we get back tonight, we’re going to sit down and brainstorm a new way to do this hunting thing. Hell’s changed, and we’re going to change with it. It ain’t like when Aaron was here, having to fight the Fore every step of the way. We’re on the same side now. They’re going to hear us when we ask for some changes. And we’re going to hear them when they ask us to protect the people. Any questions?”
No one had any.
“Good! Move out!”
“Sir, yes, sir!” the hunters responded.
Martin moved towards Constance, who was talking to some of his people. Huxley, Marcus and Pete fell in step behind him. He saw Katie in the crowd and gave her a wink. She blew him a kiss back. He looked up towards the Fore.
Michael was grinning.
Ellen awoke from her slumber.
The Kingsriver slowed as it widened. As usual, the ceiling of this river soared high above them, coming together into irregular formations of small red bricks. The river split around a huge natural central pillar. Rick took them down the left fork.
“We’re almost there,” he said.
The walls around them were made of limestone blocks, each nearly five feet high. A small grate sat in one of the walls, blocking off a cavern. The entranceway was only about ten feet wide and five feet tall. Rick slowed the boat next to the grate, which was made of crossed iron bars.
Rick held onto one bar with one hand and rattled his paddle inside the grate with the other. “They’ll be here in a second.”
The water flowed slowly beneath them and ran down the long chamber. Molly stirred, scratching one breast and sitting up. Alice leaned over one side of the boat, rocking it slightly, and put her cupped hands into the water. She brought them up to her face before thinking better of it. She let the water flow out into the river, unscrewed the cap from her canteen and took a long drink from that instead. Ellen watched her screw the canteen’s cap back on.
She must remember the corpses. Their dust must be polluting this river.
Rick rattled his paddle again. “Hello! Is anyone in there?”
No one answered. Rick looked worried.
“They may have moved on,” Alice suggested.
Molly shrugged. “Or they could all be dead.”
“It’s not impossible,” Rick said. “It could be all the corpsedust in the river. If they were using this as a water source, and anyone died, they’d be sure to rise. Town could have been overrun.”
Alice looked worriedly about. “If that’s what you think, then is it really such a good idea to be making all that noise?”
It was Rick’s turn to shrug. “At least they wouldn’t be able to get us.”
Ellen watched the polluted water run for a while. Then she put her hand on the bar to help Rick hold the boat still.
Rick began banging the paddle against the iron, hard enough that Ellen was afraid it might break. The blows shook some of the red rust free from the iron. The red flecks drifted down into the river. After around ten hits or so, he stopped.
“Damn,” Molly said.
Rick shrugged. “They’ve gone dark. I guess we’ll go downstream a bit. Then we’ll disembark and head on to Tucumcari.”
“What if they’re gone too?” Molly asked.
Rick looked suddenly unsure of himself. “I don’t know, Molly. I guess we’ll have to search the wilds until we . . .” Rick stopped talking and tilted his head to one side.
Ellen tried to listen for whatever Rick might have heard. For a second, she thought she was hearing hellsong again, but that wasn’t it. This was something different.
Voices.
Ellen could hear them coming from the river beyond the grate.
Rick laughed, obviously relieved. “Little help?” he called.
One of the voices was higher pitched than the other. “I told you I heard something,”
“We’re coming,” said the deeper voice. “Just hold on, okay?”
“We’re holding,” Ellen shouted back.
Massan chuckled with relief.
Two men came around the bend beyond the grate and jogged up to them. They both wore the same kind of black boots, which seemed to have been torn apart and sewn back together with white stitching. Ellen was surprised to find that they were both male. She could have sworn that the higher voice was a girl’s.
One rested his hands on the iron bars, leaning over the river to speak while the other disappeared from view. “Welcome to Macon’s Bend.” Ellen noticed that it was the leaning man that had the deeper voice. “Didn’t know anyone still tried to come in the river way. Not since the dead took Cypress Lake, anyways.”
“I told you I was hearing something, Sarge.” the high pitched voice called out from behind the wall.
Rick put his paddle back by his side. “That lake almost killed us. Someone ought to put up a warning. We barely made it through.”
“Glad you made it,” Sarge responded. “We tried to clear it out once but ran into a stonewight. Bullets didn’t do shit to the thing, so we just gave up. Give us a second here. I know for a fact that the downstream gate is rusted shut. I think we may still be able to force this one open.” He turned to Ellen. “You look pale, miss. You alright?”
Ellen did her best to give him a smile. “I’m getting better. Hurt my ankle and,” she said as she gave Molly a pointed look, “a zombie ate my toes.”
Molly’s jaw dropped as Alice laughed.
“But what’s a stonewight?” Ellen asked. “How are they immune to bullets?”
“Magic,” Sarge said.
Rick shook his head. “Hell works differently than the old world. Some of the items we have seem to have come from Earth. Our bullets, guns, clothes, stuff like that. Some devils aren’t affected by that stuff. Other things are from Hell. Our bodies, the rocks around us, sinfruit and devilwheat.”
Ellen frowned. “My body is not from Hell.”
Sarge laughed. “You think so, girl? No scars? Eternal youth? Grow back any limb you like? That’s not the body God gave you, sweetheart—”
“Give me some help, Sarge,” the high pitched voice asked.
“One sec,” Sarge told them.
Sarge moved away, disappearing behind the wall. Ellen felt her shoulders tighten involuntarily at the harsh squealing noises that came from whatever the Macon’s Bend me
n were working on. It sounded like metal scraping on metal.
“I think it’s jammed, Sarge.”
“Of course it’s jammed. Here, help me push.”
The wrenching sound was so loud that it echoed up and down the river chamber. The grate began to rise and Ellen let go of it. Rick began paddling backwards to keep them still. Alice gasped as she saw how rusted the iron bars on the bottom half of the gate had become.
Rick nodded. “It’s that corpsedust. Breaks even metals down eventually.”
“It’s safe to drink, mostly,” Sarge called out over the squeaking of the rising gate. “Boil enough of the water off and drink it, then you’ll get some righteous hallucinations, but as long as you don’t do that you’ll be just fine.”
“That’s been a problem here lately,” the high pitched voice said. “People getting stoned that way. We’ve had a few guys do it so much they started to rot from the inside out.”
“Highman Tucker outlawed the practice,” Sarge said. “Some people weren’t too happy about it. I’m just wondering how the hell they figured out they could do it to begin with.”
The bottom of the grate rose out of the river. It got stuck after going up only a few feet. After a few more grunts from the men, it began to move again.
“Hold on,” Sarge said.
“You can stop now,” Rick told them. “That’s high enough for us to make it.”
The water fell like rain off of the raised grate and onto the back of Ellen’s neck while Rick paddled them under it. With a squeal and a splash, the gate fell behind them. The two men from Macon’s bend were both breathing hard. Sarge was bent over with his hands on his knees. They were standing next to a wheel which had an iron chain wrapped around its axle. Ellen figured that was what they’d used to open the gate.
“This way,” Sarge said between breaths. “I’ll show you where you can dock your boat.”
The river’s left wall opened up to the city of Macon’s Bend. It reminded Ellen very much of a giant amphitheatre except that there were rows of houses instead of seats. The river took them to the stage-like portion—a flat, cobblestone half circle where a few dozen people stood, lounging and talking. A series of four foot long woodstone docks jutted out into the river, each one buoyed by dyitzu bladders. Radiating back and up from the stage-like landing were semicircular rings of stone houses. People moved along walkways which were actually the roofs of the houses below. Each house had a stucco-like façade, but Ellen could see red Kingsriver bricks beneath where the stucco had worn away.
Knight of Gehenna (Hellsong Book 2) Page 21