“They understand destruction.”
“Even a child knows how to destroy.” He sniffed suddenly. “We should go. The air here is turning foul.”
Rachel noticed a cloud of pink gas drifting through the trees towards them. After a moment’s thought, she decided to continue along the existing trail. It led in roughly the right direction, after all, and by stepping on already disturbed ground they would hopefully avoid any traps.
Barely two hundred paces further on, they came across a sight so unusual that for a heartbeat Rachel wondered whether she had succumbed to toxic hallucinations.
A brightly painted wagon stood among the trees. It had yellow and green slatted sides, with red shutters and a red door, wheels with gaily decorated spokes. A tin funnel protruded from the roof. The long pole at the front had clearly been designed for horses or oxen, yet no such animals were anywhere in sight. Rachel recognized it from her time in Sandport before she even read the legend painted across one side:
Greene’s Magical Circus.
Beside the wagon a shack had been erected. If anything, it resembled a hand-puppet booth, but of much larger proportions, its planks all decorated with stars, rainbows, and grinning faces. A hatch in the front of it had been lowered to provide an opening, through which Rachel could see a stage with a painted backdrop.
Above the stage dangled two man-sized puppets, each suspended by a number of ropes dangling from the top of the booth. They looked frail and cadaverous, yet with wild glassy eyes and the drooling lips of madmen. Each had been dressed in garish motley: a black-and-white striped suit with a red bow tie for the figure on the left, a puffy blue quilted jacket and green rubber boots for the one on the right.
The trail, Rachel noticed, disappeared around the other side of the puppet booth. She was just about to follow it, when one of the marionettes spoke.
“Is that you, Mr. Partridge?”
The hideous thing was not a puppet at all. It was a living man.
“Mr. Partridge? We have waited an age for you to return.”
The second puppet said, “It’s not him, Mr. Hightower. I can see them from over here. It’s not him, I tell you.” Slack-eyed and slack-jawed, he peered at the two travelers from the end of his rope. “One of them appears to be an angel, although the wings beneath his shirt are naught but bloody stumps; the other one’s a Spine assassin.”
“Why do you insist on taunting me, Mr. Bloom?” the first man responded. “You’re becoming as bad as Partridge—and I find your choice of words vulgar.”
“I am not fibbing, Mr. Hightower. Look, here they come now.”
Rachel and Trench walked around the front of the booth, until both of the living mannequins could properly see them. Both men hung limply, their arms supported by ropes at varying heights. Something about their bodies seemed odd to Rachel: they were altogether too pliant, and only their eyes and lips moved.
“My apologies, Mr. Bloom,” said Mr. Hightower. “I see you have spoken the truth for once. She over there is indeed one of the Spine.” One of his eyelids twitched. A trickle of saliva fell from his chin and soaked into his blue quilted jacket. “Tell me, Spine, have you seen our Mr. Partridge? He’s gone off and left us again.”
Rachel considered the trail. “I suspect he’s hiding behind the booth,” she said. “Is he…in a similar condition to you?”
“Greene never strung him up,” said Mr. Hightower. “So the lucky sod goes off wandering all the time.” His face creased in odd places. “Unfortunately he enjoys these bright poisons too much. He has become an addict, and has no consideration for his friends. He abandons us frequently. When he does show up, it’s only to mock us.”
“Do you mean Mina Greene?”
“That’s her, the puppeteer. She went for a walk last week and never came back. I hope she stepped in something nasty. Now there are only the three of us, and Mr. Partridge is hardly ever here, either. It’s tremendously dull for us. Would you mind terribly cutting us down?”
“Don’t ask them to cut us down,” said Mr. Bloom, managing somehow to huff. “Now they know we can’t get down by ourselves, it puts us at their mercy. You should have tricked them, Mr. Hightower, by making them believe that cutting us down would be to their great benefit.”
“But it isn’t.”
“I know, Mr. Hightower. But they did not realize that.”
“Oh, I see.” Mr. Hightower’s gaze returned to Rachel. “Would you mind cutting us down?
We’d be awfully grateful, and it would be to your enormous benefit to assist us.”
Mr. Bloom sighed.
Mr. Partridge, Mr. Hightower, and Mr. Bloom? Rachel thought the names sounded familiar. She wracked her memory. Where had she heard them before? Suddenly her breath caught.
The Soft Men?
Were these the three scientists who had discovered angelwine, long before the master poisoner Devon had attempted to re-create their elixir? How did they get here? Hadn’t the Spine removed their bones and…?
“They buried you,” Rachel said. “The Spine buried you under the Deadsands more than three hundred years ago.”
“And Miss Greene dug us up,” said Mr. Hightower. “Six days ago, it was. She claimed to be an entrepreneur. She cut our hair. And then she abandoned us, leaving that ragged little pup to guard her wagon.”
Rachel recalled the show-woman’s pet dog from Sandport. It wasn’t exactly much of a guard dog.
“Don’t keep giving them information,” snapped Mr. Bloom. “Information is power. How many times have I told you that? Now they know who we are, and what we are, they’ll be less likely to help us.”
“I thought you said knowledge was power.”
“It’s the same thing, Mr. Hightower.”
“Well, I don’t see that it makes a difference,” said the other man. “You’re just being crotchety as usual.”
Mr. Bloom harrumphed. “You weren’t the one buried upside down.”
And on it went.
Rachel listened to their ranting for a while longer, and then interrupted. “Where is Mina Greene now?”
“In Hell, I suppose,” said Mr. Hightower.
Rachel and Trench exchanged a glance.
“Mr. Hightower!” exclaimed Bloom.
“I don’t care to listen to you anymore, Mr. Bloom.” The scientist’s damp eyes turned back to Rachel. “There’s power in this forest, places where Hell bubbles up close to the surface. It’s because of all the heathens who have died here—the sands have drunk a lot of blood, you see.” A strand of drool extended from his lip. “Miss Greene is a collector of horrors, and she became quite animated when we explained all of this to her.”
“When you explained it,” said Bloom. “You couldn’t keep your mouth shut then, and you can’t keep it shut now.”
Mr. Hightower looked peevish. “I thought she would let us go if she realized that there were more interesting specimens to be discovered nearby.” He stared down at the sand with a pitiful expression. “But she didn’t. She simply swanned off in the direction of a particularly nasty toxic cache to look for ghosts. She said she’d be gone an hour or two.”
“And this was six days ago?” Rachel asked.
“The whole forest is riddled with little holes into Hell,” said Mr. Hightower. “I suppose something terrible must have happened to her.”
“He’s like this with the phantasms, too,” said Mr. Bloom. “He won’t stop talking at them. And now they’re so completely bored with him they don’t even haunt us anymore.”
“That’s unfair, Mr. Bloom.”
Rachel decided to leave them to it. She didn’t have to go far to find Mr. Partridge. He was, as she had suspected, lying right behind the puppet booth itself. Looking at his slack body, bundled into a black suit and white frilled shirt, she couldn’t help but think of an oversized slug. Partridge had a shock of white hair and glazed eyes which looked in two directions at once. He was licking the red-and-black-spattered root of a tree.
�
��I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said.
By moving in a series of jerking motions, Mr. Partridge somehow managed to swivel himself around. “This particular toxin,” he said gruffly, like a schoolteacher reprimanding a pupil, “happens to be one of my favorites. It helps me think clearly, while relieving the itching sensation in my backbone.”
“You don’t have a backbone.”
“Are you mad?” he said. “Of course I don’t have a backbone.”
He shuffled back around and went back to lapping at the root.
Rachel could not see how further conversation with these men could improve the situation. All three of them were clearly unhinged. If these toxins couldn’t actually kill Mr. Partridge, then what did it matter if she left him to enjoy them? She shook her head, and returned the way she had come.
Hightower and Bloom were still—as she could hear—arguing with each other. “They seem harmless enough,” Rachel said, stepping down from the wagon. “We should cut them down.”
Trench was staring at the two hanging men with contempt. “What would they do then?” he grunted. “Flap around the place like fish? Would that be any better than leaving them where they are? Once they leave this wood, someone will only find them and abuse them.
They have no way to defend against that.”
“They want to be free.”
He shrugged. “As you wish.” He helped lift each man down from the stage in turn while Rachel severed their ropes. Meanwhile, Mr. Hightower and Mr. Bloom did not stop arguing until their limp bodies were stretched out lying side by side on the sand.
“We are down, Mr. Bloom.”
“I see that, Mr. Hightower.”
Both men’s glances moved rapidly about them, as though assimilating the view from this new and strange perspective. Mr. Hightower tried to move first. By flexing the muscles in his shoulders, arms, and legs, he managed to squirm an inch forward. His hat fell off.
“Did you see that, Mr. Bloom? I am mobile.”
“You are indeed, Mr. Hightower!”
“Then let us race!”
“A race, Mr. Hightower?” The other man sounded excited. “Yes, yes, but to where?”
“To Mr. Partridge, of course. I intend to murder the scoundrel for leaving us to rot up there all this time.”
“Not before I do, Mr. Hightower. Not before I do!”
With much exciting grunting and wriggling, the two Soft Men headed off just like snails without their shells.
Their numbers had grown again since nightfall. In addition to forty or so riders, the Heshette raiders had now acquired a further dozen men on foot, three hags who claimed to be seers, two dogs, and a herd of goats.
News of a sighting reached the party when they were less than half a league from Cinderbark Wood. One of the outriders returned, his mount steaming in the fog, to tell them that he’d witnessed the Spine assassin and her companion entering the grove of poisonous trees.
Ramnir frowned as he spoke to John Anchor. “This woodland is a dangerous place,” he said. “Deepgate’s chemists went to work on it with every poison in their arsenal.”
Anchor shrugged his massive shoulders. “It is no big problem for me,” he said. “I don’t die so easily.”
“Yet your rope might become entangled.”
“It happens often.” The giant gave him a huge grin. “I just keep walking, no problem.”
Ramnir laughed and clapped the black man on the arm. “Then our elders and women will bring the livestock to the eastern fringes of the wood while our warriors accompany you into the trees, John Anchor.”
Jack Caulker scowled. He didn’t like the way these heathens had attached themselves so closely to the giant. They’d obviously seen profit in this situation and they’d stuck to it like bone glue. No doubt every one of them had an eye on Anchor’s soulpearls. This display of jovial camaraderie they had put on for the giant’s benefit was clearly faked. Now they were going into Cinderbark fucking Wood of all places. Everyone who’d ever gone there left it insane—if they left the cover of the trees at all.
Well, Caulker wasn’t about to join them. “We’ll ride with the livestock,” he announced from the rear of his shared gelding. “We shall be waiting on the far side in case the two of them get away from you.”
At this the remainder of the horsemen snorted and laughed, and called him a coward. The rider in control of Caulker’s mount laughed as loud as the others. “Not all the livestock will miss this hunt, then,” he cried. “I’m carrying one of them here on my horse. Did you hear it bleat just then?”
Caulker fumed. Where was Hammer Eric now, when the cutthroat needed some muscle to emphasize his point of view? These idiots would kill themselves in Cinderbark Wood. But he smiled gracefully. An idea had just occurred to him—a way in which he might change the situation to his favor. He swung his leg over the horse in order to dismount. But just at that moment his horseman twitched the reins, urging their shared mount forward. Caulker lost his balance and fell clumsily, landing on his rear in the sand.
A chorus of laughter and hoots went up from the gathered Heshette riders.
The cutthroat scrambled to his feet, his face hot with rage. “If any one of you is man enough to fight me,” he cried, “then—”
A dozen blades rasped from their sheaths all around him.
Caulker felt the blood leave his face. “Then I would obviously refuse,” he said quickly. “The desert folk are not my enemies. We’ve shared fire and water, for which I am grateful. And if you’re ever in Sandport, look me up so that I can return the favor.” He prayed that they would. Hammer Eric knew a dock official who collected Heshette ears. “But it seems to me that we’re facing a great deal of danger ahead. We’re all weary after the long trek here, and a man needs all of his wits in Cinderbark Wood.”
“We are not weary,” Ramnir said, sheathing his blade. “That trek, as you call it, was naught but a gentle excursion to us.”
“Then I admire your stamina as much as your generosity. But I’m a sailor, unused to horses and sand.” He stretched his legs and winced. “My bones ache and my flesh is raw. I fear my presence will be a burden to you all.”
One of the Heshette spat.
“You are my guide,” Anchor said to Caulker firmly. “I need you with me.”
“You appear to have found some better guides,” Caulker retorted.
“But I like you, Jack Caulker.” The giant’s smile now seemed to have a slightly sinister edge to it. “We are good friends. And you are still…ah, indebted to me, yes? You would not break our deal?”
The cutthroat remembered the glass bead he had smashed, payment for services he had yet to provide, and he smiled as Anchor mentioned it now.
“John Anchor’s generosity almost matches yours,” he said to Ramnir. “He was kind enough to give me a soulpearl, a bead with the power to bestow great strength upon any man who consumes it.” Now he shrugged sadly. “Foolishly, I broke the pearl.” He sighed. “Such a waste of power is especially galling now. I think we’d all benefit from a boost to strength and endurance if we are to follow Anchor into the dangers ahead.”
He caught Anchor’s eye and, for an instant, saw a shadow pass across the big man’s face. That’s right. Not so willing to share your power with these heathen bastards, are you?
None of the Heshette spoke. Several eyed the pouch at the giant’s belt, then looked quickly away. The horses whickered. Finally Ramnir said, “John Anchor has already offered us much. We do not need to be bribed with power.”
But Anchor beamed suddenly. “No, no. Jack Caulker is right. I have souls aplenty, and any man who wants one is welcome to it.” He untied the pouch from his belt. Now the Heshette looked abashed. Not one of them would step forward.
Jack Caulker wasn’t so modest. He reached into the bag and plucked out one of the glass beads. It glittered in the flat grey light, as though illuminated by an interior glow. “I thank you, Anchor.” He popped the soulpearl into his mouth and sw
allowed.
Wild cackles of laughter assaulted the cutthroat’s ears, as though the ghost of a madwoman had been let loose inside his head. His vision blurred and eddied and suddenly the view before him changed. He found himself standing before a parapet on the edge of a sickening drop, peering down into a fog-shrouded valley of green conifers. Great eagles circled in the air below him, drifting in and out of the mists. He smelled cold mountain air and pine needles. A gust of wind made him shiver—he was wearing a thin, floaty garment.
A dress?
But then two huge hands grabbed his shoulders. Caulker had just enough time to turn around and see a face he recognized—the massive wooden harness, the rope leading up into the heavens, and the thick black lips split into a huge grin—before John Anchor shoved him out into the yawning precipice.
Campbell, Alan - Iron Angel Page 16