by Dylan Doose
The bridge was stone, covered in moss and fungi, vines reaching over the sides and dangling into the mucky green river that ran below. The excrement from the sewer drains in the slums all poured into that river. It was a short bridge, but the fog of that night was so dense Gaige could hardly see the other side.
“Proceed slowly, Randal,” said Gaige, and Randal called, “Whoa, there,” to the donkey, and the mutated mule slowed with a snort.
With every rotation of the wheels, the smell became fouler. It was the stench of shit and rot, the reek of death and the mingling of blood both fresh and crusted old. So powerful was the reek that one wretched smell became indecipherable from the next, and they merged together to create a pain in the sinuses that was the stink of hopelessness. Gaige was familiar with that stink. Day by day his tolerance of it slinked toward indifference. He had seen too much, suffered too much, and taken far too much to be quavered by a reek, even if it were the very aroma of hell.
When they reached the other side, Gaige looked over his shoulder and searched the tendrils of mist. Years of experience had taught him that in this place, both friend and foe kept watch before revealing their presence.
“Stop,” he said to Randal.
Randal did, and took hold of the loaded musket that sat between the two of them. He stood in the cart and shouldered the gun. Gaige stepped down. He pulled his three-shot pistol from his hip and scanned his surroundings… Footsteps from the alley just ahead, no torch, just darkness. Gaige raised his pistol, waiting for whatever was to emerge.
* * *
Dear Doctor De’Broullaird,
Your work is known to me. It has been for some time. I have a task that needs doing, a sensitive task, sure to only be carried out with the use of violence and at great risk to you, doctor. With great risk, as you’ve known since youth, I’m sure, comes great reward.
I ask you two things.
Firstly, should you accept my offer—I have no doubt you will—then take this writ of passage, marked by my very seal. It will allow you to move freely through the city, past curfews.
Second, meet with my agent, Briggs, at the Strangled Sturgeon. I daresay you know the one, dear doctor. Two nights from now, when sun goes down until it rises, he will wait there. I do assure you, you’ve been waiting for this opportunity your whole life. The chance to see beyond, to know the perfect pairing of science and that which only great mages dream, is the bait I dangle.
~ The Lord Regent of Villemisère
* * *
Chapter Three
Amputation
“Doctor, is that you?” came the sound of a familiar voice.
“It is I, Butcher. It is I.” Gaige lowered his pistol. Randal sighed in relief and set down the musket.
“I was about to come looking for you with some of the lads. Devil’s luck running into you like this. What brings you to my cesspool?” Butcher asked from the shadows.
“What always brings me to your cesspool, Butcher. I am on a job right now for the lord regent himself, and you would have had no need to come looking for me, for I was coming to you.”
“You don’t say? The lord regent sent you? Well, I suppose even the lord regent and his blue boys don’t want to come trekking through these parts. Doubt they’d get a warm reception. Will you be needing anything from my stock?”
“I will be,” said Gaige. “Come into the light where I can greet a friend.”
From the shadows stepped forth a thing that had once been a man, and before that a boy. Butcher was six and a half feet tall, pale as the fog that levitated around his mutant muscled form. His veins bulged beneath his scarred skin, and his face was a thing of nightmares. His nose, his ears, his lips, and the skin of his face had been flayed off him as a boy. He’d survived. The result was the visage of death, a living skull.
It was Gaige who had saved him. Since then, they had been… friends.
“Why were you going to come looking for me?” Gaige asked.
“For a favor.” Butcher smiled. He somehow had each and every one of his teeth, and they were straight and white. Animal white.
“I can grant a favor, so long as you leave me a few hours to spare before sunrise,” said Gaige, returning the smile.
“Oh, you’ll have plenty of time, doctor. It’s just a small thing.” Butcher’s voice was strange; he hissed many of his words, for it was hard forming them without lips. “Follow me then, if you will,” Butcher said as he turned and walked back into the shadow and the fog engulfing the alley from whence he had just come. As he always did when Butcher needed a favor, Gaige followed. Because do a favor for Butcher and he would always give you one back.
It was a scratching of each other’s backs sort of deal. Gaige looked after Butcher and his gang, and for this Butcher and his gang watched Gaige’s back whenever he came down to the slums, the times when his work brought him there, and that was often enough.
Gaige and Butcher walked. Gaige used his cane and was glad for a bit of a stretch after sitting on the cart for so long. Randal remained in his seat and followed the two of them, the cart just barely fitting the alley. They talked little the whole way; none of the three men cared much for chitchat. They passed droves of lepers, bowls for spare coin in front of them in a place where no coin could be spared. Gangs of ratty children ran around, grunting at each other like animals. Gaige saw a boy no older than ten run by, like the devil himself was pursuing him, a bloody knife in his hand. There was nothing unsettling about this, not in this place. The presence of a corrupt church made it worse, not better. Those who had coin to donate into the holy chalice once a week were the only ones who received the Luminescent’s blessings, and, of course, the notice of his earthly disciples.
They passed vagabonds who intoxicated themselves by huffing fumes of foul things until they were just like the ghouls that were a constant looming threat—purposeless, defeated, ravenous. It was often hard to tell the difference in these parts between dead, living, and cursed.
“Welcome, as always,” said Butcher when they arrived at his gang’s hideaway. The Manor of Grime, they called it. Sometime ago, before the Wastes expanded to swallow chunks of the city and beyond, it had been a manor house to a lord. And now it was home to the Grimers. It was a tall house, with only two floors but ceilings of impressive height, so that from the outside one would guess at perhaps four or even five stories. Its brick was dark brown, the color of mud, and vines and green moss crawled up the walls on either side of the massive front doors. Painted on them were white skulls ten feet high cascading green poison tears from their empty eye sockets.
Two tall, hooded men, broad-shouldered but sickly thin, guarded the door. Each had a musket strapped to his back, several pistols around the waist, and on the thighs and in their hands they held blunderbusses that at close range could turn a man into chunks of meat.
They stood at attention and saluted Butcher. “Good to see you, doctor,” said the man on the left. Gaige nodded in return.
“Sal, she is in poor shape,” said Butcher when they walked into the atrium of the dilapidated manor house, a perfect home for a gang that referred to themselves by that ugly moniker of the Grimers. The walls had been maroon, or burgundy, perhaps, when a lord owned the house. Now they were shit brown in parts, and in others the wall had stripped away and the moldy, dying structure of the house was visible, beams of wood covered in green and blue fungi.
Sal—Saline—was one of the prostitutes that generated a good bit of profit for the Grimers. She was a popular girl, perhaps fifteen, and looked like she was pushing forty. She had half her teeth, and half her face had been beaten so badly once that the nerves had died, and so she was permanently drooping.
“Sal is tough,” said Gaige, because she was. Anyone who lived among the Grimers was tough, especially those of the fairer sex. Gaige was acutely aware of the pressing engagement he had this night, but as a doctor and healer, he could not turn his back on the girl. As they climbed the creaking stairs to the second f
loor, Grimers saluted Butcher and said their hellos to the doctor as they passed. Gaige was always sure to say hello back. These were the type of men who when they showed you respect, you gave it back. Unless you enjoyed the prospect of having your eyes gouged out while another man twisted a knife in your liver. Besides, Gaige did respect them. They lived a hard life.
“I don’t know this time.” Butcher shook his head. “She was bit last night and the bloody infection has spread fast.”
Gaige’s attention sharpened. “Bit? By?”
“A customer. Some fuck from the Skulkers nipped her in the thigh.” Butcher grimaced as he mentioned the name of the Skulkers, another gang that operated in the Wastes. They lived in the sewers, wore cloaks made of rat fur and masks of the rodents’ skin. For the past year the Grimers and the Skulkers had held a fragile alliance, but that was liable to change at the slightest tilt of the knife. Or teeth.
They reached the room where Saline was being tended to, and the smell of rot increased just outside the door. Rotting, dying flesh; it was a hot smell, an evil smell.
“Randal?” Gaige asked, turning to his assistant, who had crept along behind them.
“I think I will remain outside, maybe downstairs at the bar, or a bit of dice,” said Randal as he turned away from the room, his nose plugged with his fingers.
“Fuck off, then, Randal. I do hate when you linger,” Gaige said, unsurprised by the young man’s response. Randal nodded and was gone.
Gaige opened the door and stepped forth. The scent attacked him, but he did not waver. He had seen this a thousand times in the field. The failed war of independence fifteen years earlier had resulted in a rise of infected, rotting limbs. Gaige had honed his skills while the orchestra of agony had played around him. Two minutes for an arm. Three for a leg. And each time he got faster, and colder.
Saline was lying in a bed, the white cotton sheets befouled. Two Grimers were present, tending to the girl, both of whom were female, but as burly and hardened as any man. Saline was shaking violently beneath the sheets, and every step Gaige took, he pressed into that odor most sinister.
He pulled away the sheet. It stuck when it got past her waist, and he had to give it a bit of a tug to reveal the ailment.
Nothing too major. He opened the iron beak of his doctor’s mask and reached into his coat pocket, removing a small vial. Within were the ground petals of moon’s widow. Gaige opened the vial and sprinkled the petals onto Saline’s open mouth to help dull her senses, then dropped a pinch more into the beak of his mask to help mask the smell.
Almost immediately the herbs took effect. Saline’s thrashing and moaning decreased. She was naked, sweating profusely and suffering from racking shakes. Her entire thigh was rotting. The point of origin—where she was bitten—had spread and had now eaten through right to the bone. The flesh was black and maggots tunneled in and out of the wound, taking their fill.
Gaige looked at the older of the two women. “You applied the maggots?”
“I did,” she said. “Fat lot of help it was.”
“They slowed the infection. They’re probably the reason she’s still alive.”
He continued his examination. Outside of that blackened region, the skin was fighting a losing fight and was burning a deep red, with blackened veins beneath. Through his gloved hand Gaige could feel the burning heat. He would have to amputate, and he would have to do so from the hip. Most other doctors would have decided it was a hopeless effort, and especially in these conditions. They would have turned to Butcher and explained that saving this girl was impossible. Well, saving her was impossible in the sense that Gaige was no savior, that if she lived it was to a life likely worse than death. Maybe I should just kill her, give her too much of something. There is no coming back from this.
“I don’t know, Butcher,” said Gaige.
“What don’t you know?”
“If there is a point in this. I mean, what life will she have? She is a child, a prostitute, and now she will be legless.”
“Save her. Let her choose. Like you did for me. Not everyone is as smart as you, doctor. Not everyone understands the blanket of suicide as you do.”
Let her choose. That is fair, or as fair as it can be. “I will need my tools.” He kept a set here, for he was here often enough. “I will need fire. I will need boiled water.”
“You heard him,” said Butcher, and the two women left the room to get Gaige his things.
Butcher nodded to Gaige when it was just them and the incoherent Saline in the room. “If she lives, do you think she will ever be able to work again?”
“You are a wicked man, Butcher. Repulsive, in body and mind.”
The brute shrugged. “I didn’t earn my name from being kind. She chose here, instead of out there.”
“A lot of good that did her… To answer your question, let her choose.” Gaige shrugged. “We both know you won’t throw her out either way.”
“How would I explain that to you if I did?”
Gaige turned back to his patient, and he thought of how Butcher had wandered through the Wastes looking for him, to help her.
Butcher and the two Grimers held the girl down and they gave her a thick rope to bite on. Gaige acted quickly. He boiled some of the moon’s widow and forced Saline to drink. It was not enough to knock her out, but it took the edge off the bone saw’s teeth as the instrument bit into her upper thigh and rocked back and forth. Saline bit the rope and frothed like a wild horse the whole time, and only when the leg was off, black, ruined blood oozing and spurting all the way through, did she finally pass out.
Ninety seconds, cut and sealed. That was all it took.
It was done.
Gaige applied mold to fight infection and bandages to stem the bleeding. The smell of the mold mingled with the infected limb, and the general wretchedness of the Wastes was so formidable that it fought its way into Gaige’s beak and past the gentle-smelling ground petals of moon’s widow.
One of the women brought him a bowl and soap and a relatively clean towel. She squeezed Gaige’s arm in thanks.
He gave the Grimers a vial of a strong poultice that he had concocted himself; he only had one vial, for the ingredients were rare, but if anything could save Saline from another infection, it was that.
The chattering of Saline’s teeth ticked off the seconds.
“I have a pressing matter, Butcher,” Gaige said. Butcher handed him his cane, and motioned for him to follow. They left Saline’s room, her delirious noises providing the ambiance of their exit.
Left through the atrium, right toward the east wing, another left, and through the library where the ceiling had a drip, an endless drip even on the rare days when not a single cloud hung in the sky above that melancholy city. Most of the books were damp and ruined, but sometimes when Gaige browsed a section of that vast chamber of now decaying knowledge, he found a book that had somehow endured against the pestilence that bayed so close by. There was no time to look for survivors on that day, so they went on through the high-ceilinged room, into the smoking lounge, the place most densely populated with Grimers puffing away on opium and injecting ground moon’s widow. In the corner, a wild-eyed man in a shabby green military coat with long dreadlocked hair and a beard strewn with dirt shredded away on a violin, his harmony equal parts manic rage and collapsing depression.
Two doors led out to a small balcony that looked over the grimy river that cut Villemisère in two. On one side, their side, was the manor house and others like it all the way up until the bridge. Facing them across the river was a wall, wooden, but very thick. Not that it mattered. It was not built for defense, but just so the citizens of the suburbs and upper city, in the castle and university districts, need not look at the obscenity of the slums.
Beyond the wall, Gaige could see the tower of the university, and he thought of Professor Lumire. He thought of the riots, the student protests. This made him feel hollow, and he tried to push the ghosts away as he followed Butcher down
the stairs from the balcony that led to the cellar. Because before the doctor could finish the night’s business, he would need bait, and Butcher always had stock.
“Down we go,” Butcher said, in fine good humor. He held a weak oil lamp in his hand as they descended. Gaige had been there many times before, but it never got any easier walking down those stone steps, the edges blackened, the centers worn from thousands upon thousand of footfalls, into the damp abyss below Butcher’s fortress deep in the heart of the Wastes where the devil dared not go.
The tap of Gaige’s cane echoed down the narrow, high-ceilinged hall at the bottom of the steps. When they finally reached the end, the air was thicker and fouler than it was above, and Gaige’s leg screamed in demonic agony from all the steps.
“We have him,” Butcher said, as they walked, a cruel smile on his leathery, skeletal face. His white teeth showed bright in the poor light of the lantern.
“You have who?” asked Gaige, his voice jittering from his lack of breath in the thick air, and fatigue from keeping up with Butcher’s long strides.
“The mutt that bit Saline.”
“Ah,” said Gaige, and a shiver of sympathy crawled through him. There was no denying that the criminal was certainly a most lowly form of bastard. But what Saline had just suffered, Gaige was sure that Butcher would make this man suffer tenfold.
They reached the end of the hall and a rusted iron door barred their way. Gaige’s and Butcher’s breathing were the only sounds to be heard. The smell of copper, tangy and sharp, hung in the air. The meat room, Butcher called it. It was here that he brought stolen cadavers from the corpse wagon. It was here that he operated his “feed” business from, for when the free supply of bodies dwindled, the ghouls got hungry, the rats got hungry, the hounds, the Lycans—they all got hungry. Hungry ghouls made their way from the graves into the Wastes, and if they were hungry enough they went for the living.