Red slowed to a walk, and began to take more notice of her surroundings.
It was, of course, still dark. Godolkin had been right on the money with his cryptic comments about the motion of the stars: this world turned slowly on its axis, maybe twenty times more so than old Earth had once done. That allowed the nights to become bitingly cold, because there would be no heat from the sun for a couple of hundred hours. What the days were like, Red could only imagine.
That fact alone made this world a brutally harsh place in which to live. The people of this tiny, isolated settlement must have been tough just to survive it.
The city seemed to have a thriving population, though. It was difficult to tell what kind of people they were, since their multiple layers of winter clothing tended to reduce all of them to ambulatory bundles of fabric. Unless Red looked hard it was difficult, in many cases, even to tell male from female.
She could, however, tell that the clothes she was wearing were actually far less accurate than she'd thought. It wasn't all that surprising, since they were made out of whatever scraps of fabric she had been able to find in Fury's stores, up to and including the lining of a spare thermocowl. As soon as she found a suitable source of replacements, she decided, her present outfit would have to go.
The people might have been hidden to her, but the city itself bore examination. It was a strange mix, like nothing Red had seen before, and she had been to a lot of worlds.
In some ways the city seemed ancient, historical, like the armour of the soldiers. The only building materials were stone, plaster and smooth, dark timber. The streets were cobbled with deep gutters to either side, the roofs either thatch or slate, and the only light came from little glass boxes with fires inside. The streets themselves however were laid out in a rigid grid pattern, with only the tinier lanes and alleys diverging from the layout.
This was no attempt at historical re-enactment. This was what a human city looked like when it had been blasted flat and then rebuilt by hand.
A bell began to toll as Red neared the centre of the city. It rang eight times and then fell silent.
She had heard it before, distantly, just as she was coming in through the gate with Harrow and Godolkin. That time, it had given seven chimes. Did that mean that an hour had passed since her escape from the square? Come to that, how long was an hour when the night lasted ten standard days?
It had been a long time since Red had felt herself so lost on a planet, so utterly without information. It felt terrifying, and oddly exhilarating at the same time.
Whatever the space of time between the two chimes, her reunion with the others was well overdue. The idea of all heading for the middle of the city had been a good one, as far as she was concerned, since they knew no physical landmarks. She didn't like the idea of splitting up in a strange place, but it had made escaping a lot easier. The soldiers pursuing them would have had to divide their forces three ways.
Why they had been pursued in the first place was a matter for conjecture, but for Red it was such a normal occurrence that she accepted it largely without question.
It was easy to tell when she was nearing the centre of the city, and not just by the proximity of the bell. The buildings here were bigger, grander, and their plastered walls in better repair than those on the outskirts. The streets were wider, and although there were more people about there were fewer animals. She saw a handful of carts or wagons, drawn by creatures that might once have been horses, before the attentions of some long-dead geneticist and one or two bizarre little sheep-goat hybrids, but far less than around the square.
That made Red a little wary of using her comm-linker to contact the others. It was plain that no such devices existed in the city - she'd seen no higher form of technology than the block-and-tackle since arriving. Using a communications device in the open would be foolish in the extreme. At best it could arouse unwelcome curiosity. At worst it could have her burned as a witch.
She found a secluded spot, a corner whose lantern had burned out, and ducked into the shadows.
Across the street was a church, one of many that she had seen in the city. In fact, Red had come to the conclusion that, other than residential houses, churches formed the greatest number of buildings within the wall. They ranged in size from some quite impressive structures, complete with lychgates and bell-towers, to tiny chapels that looked as though they could house no more than a dozen worshippers at a time. Some of them were clearly converted houses or shops, and the only way Red had learned to identify them was by an eye-shaped symbol that seemed common to all, usually as a metal plate mounted above the doorway.
The church Red could see now was quite large, and the eye was a beaten brass shape divided into two and mounted on the front doors themselves. The doors, however, were closed, the eye whole. No one would see her from there. She took the linker from her robes.
"I would not advise it, Blasphemy."
She spun. Godolkin was behind her. "Jesus Christ, Godolkin! Where did you spring from?"
"I have been following you for several minutes. Harrow has been expressing concerns as to your health. I decided to test them for myself."
Red scowled, folding her arms and putting her back to the wall. "Cheers. Look, it's just that blood-substitute, okay? Give me a drink of the real stuff and I'll be fine."
"You are impaired."
"I'm fine! Anyway, where is he?"
"Harrow? I have no idea. I was hoping that he had already made contact with you, but clearly that is not the case." He threw a sudden glance back, over his shoulder and then leaned forwards, placing one hand on the wall next to her head. It brought their faces quite close.
She raised her eyebrows. "What are you playing at?"
"We are being observed, casually at present, but unless we show a reason for conversing in such surroundings that may change."
"Oh, right." She looked quickly to either side. People, wrapped in swathes of clothing, were still passing by. "You can kiss me if you think it will help."
"I think at this stage it would be more appropriate if I were to offer you currency."
Red blinked at him for a second or two, lost, and then gaped at him. "Are you trying to pretend I'm a snecking prostitute?"
"Whores are a universal constant, Blasphemy. It seems the safest option."
She scowled. "You're going to pay for this, buster."
"I have no doubt."
Red took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. He was probably right. He usually was, which is what made him so bloody annoying. "Okay, but we'll have to make this quick and then move on. No personal experience, you understand, but I don't think we should be engaging in lengthy negotiations."
"Agreed."
"First thing we have to do is find Jude. He's got to be around here somewhere."
"I have already scouted the entire centre of the city. Harrow has not made it this far at present, although there may be many reasons for that. However, I would again advise against using the comm-linker. Judging by what was said in the square, I believe there is an active aversion to technology here, not simply a lack of it."
"I wasn't going to start chatting to him in the open! What do you think I am, an idiot?"
To his credit, Godolkin didn't take the bait. "I merely find it suspicious that we were so quickly set upon. There is a chance, however small, that our technology was detected."
"Bullshit." She shook her head. "We didn't use any comms on the way in, so there was nothing to detect and if they could pick our stuff up passively they'd be on us already, wouldn't they?"
"It is possible."
"Possible my arse. This place is a tech-free zone, Godolkin: I don't know why those boneheads were after us, but it wasn't for that. These poor bastards wouldn't know a sense engine if it tugged their forelocks." She caught the eye of a man scurrying past the corner, and turned away. "Come on. We've been here too long. You'll get a reputation."
"As a whoremonger?"
"As a cheaps
kate."
They headed off around the corner. Red kept her place slow, and drew closer to Godolkin, trying to make it look as if they had made their deal and were off to consummate it. She knew that if she tried too hard he would react badly, and give the game away. On reflection, with her nervousness and Godolkin's perpetual frown, they probably just looked like a normal couple after a blazing row.
As they neared a functioning lantern, Red realised that Godolkin was wearing a different robe. It was stained and ragged, and it smelled despite the searing cold of the air but it looked a lot more authentic than anything she was wearing.
"Where did you get that?"
"It was discarded."
"Godolkin," she growled. "You didn't kill anybody for it, did you?"
His expression became slightly more sour than usual. "I told you, Blasphemy, it was discarded. Piles of garbage lie unattended on the street here."
"I noticed that. So you've been rooting through the crap, huh?" She nudged him. "It's a good look. You should stick to it."
"Once again, Blasphemy, your humour threatens to overwhelm me. Nevertheless, you should consider doing the same. Your attire is starting to draw more unfavourable looks than normal."
"I'm a hooker, remember? Let's just find somewhere to call Jude."
By the time the bell rang nine times, Red had become certain that Harrow wasn't going to show up.
She and Godolkin had been searching the centre of the city ever since they had met, other than the time she had spent plundering rubbish heaps for more appropriate clothing. In this, though, she had been reasonably successful: after some thoroughly disgusting false starts she had discovered what had once been a fairly expensive set of robes. Now they were little more then grimy sheets of fabric, and smelled of something that Red had no real desire to identify, but at least she wasn't wearing a costume made out of bits of Omega Fury.
As a way of locating Judas Harrow, the search had proved fruitless. Red had tried to call him on the comm-linker a couple of times, but there was no reply.
For Red, that clinched it. "They've got him," she hissed to Godolkin. "He's been picked up."
They were as close to the heart of the city as they could get. Red had guessed that the tolling bell she could hear would be housed there, as it would be roughly equidistant from everywhere else. She had turned out to be right: in the very centre of the place was the source of the chiming, a great stone structure lurking behind a massive secondary wall.
It was on seeing this wall - a hundred-metre square of sharpened tree-trunks and stone reinforcement - that Red had her first insight into the true nature of the city. Built into the buttresses were tall gibbets, hinged constructions of wood and chain. Each gibbet bore a bright lantern, and under the lantern dangled a corpse.
There were ten gibbets on each side of the wall, and every one of them was occupied. Some of those who hung there had obviously dangled for some time, but others were fresh, their racked bodies glittering with frost. In this city, Red realised, this half-medieval place with its churches and its cobbled streets and herds of sheep-goat hybrids fouling the gutters, somebody in charge not only executed people in public, but they left the dead under lanterns so that everyone could see them rot.
Red forced herself to look away, not because the sight was so dreadful - she had seen worse, in her time - but because no one around them was paying the bodies much attention, and she didn't want to stand out.
She and Godolkin shared the street with a very large number of people. The buildings filling the space between the square of roads and the inner wall were mainly taverns and shops, and they all had their customers. There were a large number of small churches, too; twenty or so arranged around the wall, each of them bearing the eye-symbol in one form or another. Even Godolkin, a pious man in his own twisted way, had commented on their number.
"The Gerizimi of lore were noted for their religious devotion," he muttered, gazing up at one of the eye-plates, "but this is excessive."
"You think?" Red was barely listening. Seeing the hanging bodies was making her more fearful for Harrow's safety with every passing moment, but although she still had the comm-linker secreted under her robes she was loath to switch the thing on again. The last time she had done so a patrol of leather-clad soldiers had been in sight within a few minutes, and even though she was sure there was no hidden detection equipment on Gerizim the coincidence was beginning to make her paranoid.
Somebody must have been watching her and reported it. It was the only explanation she could reconcile.
Godolkin was still looking at the church. "Many of these chapels have been recently converted, Blasphemy. Note the manner in which this eye-symbol has been mounted. It is a hurried effort, imprecise."
"So the poor bastards are getting more religious, big deal. I'm more worried about- Hold on, what's this?"
A small crowd had appeared in front of a shop not far away, and more people were arriving as she watched. Red tapped Godolkin's shoulder and nodded over to the gathering.
"That is a church, mistress. There is an eye..." Godolkin began to make his way towards it. Red followed, hearing a tapping sound as she did so. Somebody was hammering something.
Together, they sidled through the crowd towards the front of the church. Godolkin saw what was happening first, due to his height.
"Ah," he said quietly. "Blasphemy, our situation has just worsened."
Red shoved her way to the front, saw what was being nailed to the church door, and immediately recoiled back into the crowd. "Shit," she hissed. "Shit!"
A labourer, flanked by two leather-clad soldiers, had just finished fixing a large sheet of parchment to the door with a couple of iron nails. There was a picture of Red and Godolkin on it.
It was a crude likeness, and thankfully didn't include their new outfits but there was no mistaking Red's striped hair, or Godolkin's milky right eye. She hadn't worried about that before: it looked, to anyone untrained, like a serious cataract. Now it was an identifying mark, one that could get them both into very serious trouble.
The soldiers turned to the crowd. "Citizens of Igantia, hear me!" one of them bellowed.
"By order of the provost of the Elect, by Sheriff Roder and all marshals, notice is hereby given that the man and woman shown in this likeness are declared outlaw under the Eye of God!" The soldier had taken a small piece of parchment from his belt, and was reading from it. "They are senior members of the Daedalus sect, and are therefore to be given no succour or rest. It is the duty of all citizens to immediately report any sighting of them to the nearest marshal."
The soldier rolled up his parchment. "What it doesn't say here is that these two are bloody dangerous, so don't get any funny ideas about taking them on, right?" There was a murmur from the crowd. Red voiced a wordless grumble of her own, just to fit in. "Now there're posters like this going up all over. Keep a look out, and if you see 'em run and tell one of us."
Nods and mumbled affirmatives from the crowd. The soldier - or marshal, Red corrected herself - leaned over to say something to his colleague, but the muttering around her prevented her from hearing what it was. After that, the three men began to make their way out of the crowd.
Across the street, the sound of hammering rose again.
Red stayed where she was glaring at the poster while most of the crowd dissipated. "I look like a snecking bandit."
"Hand-drawn," Godolkin breathed, peering close. "The lack of technology here must extend to printing."
"And Harrow's not on it either." She turned away, spotting small crowds gathering around other doors further up the street. "That means they've definitely got him."
"How do you wish to proceed?"
"Wish?" Red folded her arms. "What I wish to do is break out the plasma cannons and start shooting this place up until we get him back." She sighed. "But that wouldn't accomplish anything, would it?"
"Many deaths," said Godolkin. "Nothing more."
"Yeah. Most of these poo
r bastards don't know what's going on..." She glanced back up at the corpses, swinging slowly in the icy breeze. "Do you think he's still alive?"
"I can only surmise."
"Yeah, but you know more about this kind of set-up than I do."
Godolkin shook his great head. "Blasphemy, this city is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. I can make assumptions, as I said before, but they may well be wrong. It would be foolish to act on them."
She glared at him. "Try me."
"Very well. I would consider it likely that an active technological prohibition is in place. There is a heretical sect active in the city named Daedalus; in legend a man who created artificial wings in order to escape a prison. My assumption would be that the sect is working against the technological ban."
Red nodded. "Makes sense but why are they accusing us of being part of it?"
"I cannot say. It may well be the cover for another reason we are pursued, or that the wargear we carry labels us as part of the sect by its nature. Without more information, there is simply no way to tell."
Red rubbed her eyes. "Sneck this. I don't know what the hell to do. We need more information: whether they've got Jude, where they're keeping him..."
"I would lay odds that prisoners are within those walls."
"Me too, but we're going to look bloody silly if we're wrong and personally, I think my neck looks fine the length it is."
"Iconoclast doctrine states that, if faced with overwhelming odds, fall back and observe."
Red sniffed. "Never thought I'd agree with Iconoclast doctrine, but I think you're right. No point shooting the place up until we know where they've got him."
"Harrow will be interrogated. His captors must already possess his wargear."
"I know but they'll work out pretty soon that he's not local, and all we can do right now is hope that buys him some time. You and me, we need to get out of sight and then find out what the sneck's going on here. Something tells me that if we get that, we'll get Jude too."
Black Dawn Page 10