Crowfall

by Ed McDonald

  I opened the glass door of the grandfather clock. At the bottom, beneath the pendulum, were a couple of old blankets. They shifted a little as I disturbed something beneath them.

  ‘Got you,’ I said. I reached down and flipped the blankets.

  When the Crowfall fucked everything up, it did more than bring the rain. Something had been unleashed on the world, strands of dark and terrible power crafting change where they fell in the aftermath. Hundreds of crows had fallen from the sky, eyes burned out, and so had given the Crowfall its name. In the far south, the colour orange had disappeared for a full year. The people of Pyre had spoken backwards for nearly a month. A new breed of carnivorous geese had appeared, chewing their way through farmyards in a savage display of fanged beaks until the farmers culled them. But of all the odd curses that had appeared to plague the world, the Saplers were the worst.

  Beneath the blanket lay a creature. Humanoid in shape, eight inches long. It was milk-white and ill-formed, as if its body were artlessly shaped from clay. It stared up at me with broad eyes, from a face that looked disturbingly close to Tnota’s. It had been here a while, then. More than a month. Having been disturbed, the Sapler tried to crawl back beneath the blanket, a shrill screeching erupting from its mimicked lips. I grabbed it around the neck. They had teeth, even if they were small.

  ‘Look what I found,’ I said. Tnota stared at the struggling creature with uncaring eyes. Hugged the jug to his chest. ‘I’m sorry. This is going to hurt.’

  I put the Sapler down on the floor, put my boot over it, and then applied all my weight. There was a crunching sound, a tiny rib cage shattering, a skull breaking. The Sapler gave out a dying squeal. I raised my boot, stamped down hard, one, two. A pan fell from its wall hook.

  Tnota stared at me with disinterest for a few moments longer, and then it hit him. The life that the Sapler had been taking from him spilled back to him in a rush. He jerked in his chair. Saplers fed on will, drawing it away and feeding themselves. Over time they took the shape of the victim to whom they had attached themselves. As they drew out the victim’s life-spirit, they began to resemble their source of sustenance. Over time they grew bigger. I’d heard of one that had reached full size in a prison, though they were usually found and dealt with long before that. They were a plague on the states. Some kind of aftermath of the magic that had ripped at the world when the Nameless and the Deep Kings went head-to-head.

  Tnota gasped as if I’d dragged him out of a lake, sucking in a deep breath of air, then doubling over as if he’d been punched in the gut. I gave him the time he needed to get his shit in order and kept a neutral expression, but there was anger beneath it. I’d put my trust in Tnota, needed him. Why hadn’t he realised? He should have known better. I’d taught him better.

  ‘Fuck. Ryhalt. Shitting fuck. There’s a problem.’

  ‘There was a problem,’ I said. ‘It’s just a sticky patch on your tiles now.’

  ‘Not that,’ Tnota said. He took rapid breaths, like he’d been starved of air for a year and only now remembered how much he needed it. He blinked and tried to get his eyes to focus. ‘It’s Giralt. They got him, took him away. I don’t know where. There was a man. A real bastard. Came south up the Range. Looking for you.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Aye … He put that thing in there. Told me he’d send me Giralt’s eyes if I didn’t leave it alone.’ The memory still hurt him. He shook his head to clear it, struck himself on the temple as if he could beat the pain out. ‘You gotta move, Ryhalt. That kid at the door comes by every day to check if you’re here. He’s taking the guy a message.’

  I got bright real quick.

  ‘And you’re meant to keep me here until they come find me?’

  Tnota’s eyes said it all. Fear for his man. Self-loathing for having betrayed me. I couldn’t blame him for that. The Sapler had drained the fight from him. I ground the last of the little monster beneath my boot.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘How long do I have?’

  ‘Depends if you’re going to run or fight,’ Tnota said. I chewed on it a few moments.

  ‘You got powder? Shot?’

  ‘Same trunk as always.’

  I flexed my fingers, joints cracking in the quiet.

  ‘Tell them to bring Giralt. They’ll find me at Sav’s.’

  5

  I have always had an affinity for bars. They’re familiar, and you know what you’ll find. Most bars follow the same kind of layout. They hold the same kind of people. The same ways in and out. I knew One-Door Sav’s well. The lights were too bright, the beer was badly brewed, and the resident tellers knocked off at nine. That worked out for me, as there’d be fewer bodies to get in the way. But mostly, I wanted them to find me on familiar ground.

  The place was near empty, just a worried-looking man polishing his brassware behind the bar that ran along the left side of the room. I scanned the balcony that ran around the single large room, didn’t see any threats. I’d left my dust-guard over my mouth to conceal most of my face, and heavy Talent goggles dimmed the damned amber light that bled from my eyes.

  ‘Cold out there tonight,’ I said. My voice was raw, coarse, and dry as sand. ‘Whisky.’

  The barman swallowed hard.

  ‘Nothing warms you like it,’ he said, but there was a tremor in his hand. He was the Sav who gave his name to the joint, and he’d been here from the start. He knew who I was. Any night of the week there should have been at least a dozen desperate Misery-miners gathered around the tables, trading stories about dulchers and limber-men. Evidently the message boy had run his mouth and word had blown down Fortunetown’s street like a kicked-up wind; trouble was coming to Sav’s. The off-duty soldiers had hit their bunks, the prospectors had gone to lie lower than the silver they craved. No point getting mixed up in something that wasn’t their business. That told me that whoever was calling shots in this town had some grit. Dangerous.

  Sav poured a measure of whisky, looked back at me, poured two more. I put the smudged glass beneath my dust-mask. Inhaled. It didn’t have the same impact it had once had, not since the changes had taken their full hold. I breathed it in without drinking, and left the demon where it belonged.

  A red-haired man entered the bar, brushing down his longcoat. He waved a friendly hello to the barman, saw me and didn’t like what he saw, hurried away to a table. I was bad for business.

  ‘You haven’t been round these parts in a long while. Joining a dig?’ Sav said. He hovered near me with the bottle at the ready, but I put the whisky back down without touching it. I wasn’t there to drink and Sav was only talking to keep his nerves at bay. Probably wishing that I’d chosen anywhere but his bar.

  ‘Doubt it,’ I said. The whisky sat untouched between us.

  The barman shivered, took one of the glasses himself, and threw it back. He didn’t look me in the eye as he refilled his glass. I couldn’t claim to know him, but he’d poured juice for me a bunch of times down the years. I wasn’t hard to recognise. I was a sight bigger than most of the emaciated desperadoes here.

  ‘What brought you back here?’ he asked. Slightest inflection of nervousness. A glance at the rough, coppery cast of my hands.

  ‘Looking for a man, name of Giralt. Runs a shop across the street.’

  ‘I know Giralt. But he’s been gone a while,’ the barman said. Awkward smile. ‘Not sure where he went.’

  ‘He’ll be along,’ I said. ‘At least, he better be.’

  I reached up and unhooked the mask. Pulled off the goggles. Let the barman see the metallic sheen that coloured me. The black threads of corruption that ran beneath my skin. The amber in my eyes. But it was the look of my face that set him stammering.

  ‘Ah shit,’ he said. ‘Take the bottle. Get out of here. I don’t want trouble in my place. It don’t have to be here, man. Choose somewhere else.’
>
  His words were pretty convincing, but his hands were working beneath the counter and they might have got the jump on me if the barman hadn’t glanced past me, checking something I wasn’t supposed to see.

  I felt the change in the air, motion behind me, moved fast and aside as a club swung past. The weapon slammed down against the counter, splintering with a sharp crack. There was a time when I believed in taking men alive, when I wanted to question and pluck the answers from them before I sent them to the hells. That era had passed. My knife was out and shanking, and I barrelled forwards as I pumped the blade in and out of the border-man’s guts. He was gracked and done for before he hit the wall, even if he didn’t know it, even if he clutched at the redness pouring out of him as though he might grasp a few more hours if only he could hold it in.

  ‘Spirits damn it!’ Sav hissed. He went for the pistol he’d been fumbling with below the bar, struggled to yank back the lock. I was already throwing as I spun. The knife hammered into his throat just above the breastbone. He twisted on spasming legs and collapsed behind his own bar.

  The proverbial powder keg was about to ignite. I needed cover.

  I ran towards the bar, threw myself behind it as a boot smacked door open and a man entered with his matchlock smoking, blinding himself with the coiling trail. I went for the pistols at my belt. He had no shot on me behind the counter, and stark in the doorway he made an easy target. My pistol barked, and the would-be assassin flew back through the doorway, a smoking hole in his chest. I ducked down, reached back, and snagged the whisky bottle. Still had a pistol left, and so long as you have a whisky and a gun, how bad can your luck be?

  The front windows shattered as crossbows thumped heavy bolts through them, blasting the mirrors behind the bar into sparkling shards, and a trio of matchlocks barked their loads. Broken glass fell like rain, the phos-lit sign advertising FINEST GRILL sputtered and belched little arcs of lightning. I shut my eyes, shook my head to clear the glass from my hair. Whoever was gunning for me had brought a whole gang. I’d guessed he wouldn’t come alone. A couple of cronies, sure, but he’d raised up a whole troop. Old habits, long buried, told me to take a slug of the whisky, but I grimaced and tossed the bottle away, liquid spilling. Never mind. I’d come armed enough to tackle any eventuality short of a battalion.

  I spared a glance for Sav. I’d picked his joint because, as its name implied, One-Door Sav’s had only one way in, and a gallery that ran all around the top of the room. Under the bar, I saw the switches that operated the lighting, labelled nice and clear with arrows. I flipped three of them, killed the phos tubes everywhere but above the single entrance. Anyone coming in that way wasn’t going to enjoy it.

  ‘Galharrow!’ someone called from outside. A heavy southern accent, strong voice, neither hurried nor bothered that I’d already taken out two of his men. I didn’t reply. I reloaded my spent pistol as quickly as I was able, then took Sav’s and put them all in my bandolier. I tested my sword in its scabbard. It slid easily, freshly oiled. I gritted my teeth and waited.

  ‘Galharrow. I know you’re in there,’ the voice came again. ‘You’re surrounded, neh?’

  I yanked the knife out of the barman’s unmoving throat and said nothing. Fished in my coat for a cigar. There are times when you realise that there’s a good chance that you might not get another.

  ‘You’re making this harder than it has to be,’ the southern voice called. ‘Let’s talk.’

  You heard all accents up and down the Range. It was a place of strangers and immigrants, the clustering of those brave enough to fight or too unfortunate not to, but that tone was distinctive. From Pyre, the island on which the Lady of Waves made her home, far to the south and always summer.

  ‘Didn’t seem like you wanted to talk a minute ago,’ I shouted back. I drew on the cigar, flared the nub red. Cheap shit. ‘Got a pair of corpses in here as testament to that, and by the sounds the rest of your boys are making out there, there are going to be more soon.’

  Time to move. The bar was dark as night, other than the single glow-light over the doorway. I hunkered low, made for the stairs. Stealth isn’t easy at three hundred pounds and I had to trust to luck not to make too much noise in the darkness. By now those men had reloaded their weapons, had bolts and balls ready to cut me in half. Someone might take a potshot into the dark.

  ‘Excitable amateurs! Overly enthusiastic,’ the spokesman called. ‘Jumped the gun, neh? Even gave the first lad a club, didn’t I? Hard to hire good help in a place like this.’

  ‘Seems to me if you wanted to talk, there were easier ways of going about it,’ I yelled back, but it was just talk, and I was more intent on moving. Along the gallery, until I could see out of an upper-storey window, overlooking the space in the street.

  ‘You’re not an easy man to pin down,’ the accented man called. He stood at the back of the group, a leader who didn’t want to stand in the vanguard. Long black hair, long dark coat. Slender. He had Tnota with him, caught by the scruff of the neck. ‘But here’s the thing. I got your Fracan out here with me, him and the shopkeep. You don’t want to see their tongues coming through the door without the rest of them, you’ll come out to talk.’

  I caught sight of Giralt, roped up and half-abandoned by a wall. A northern man, looking the worse for his ill treatment. Tnota had been roughed up too, but he was OK. He’d not resisted, though they’d knocked him around anyway. Red scrapes and cuts marred his otherwise uncracked face, and his lower lip was swollen. Men get an idea about who they are, what they need to do. They know that there’ll be violence down the line, and they need to prove to themselves that they have it in them, so they get tough on an easy target. I’d seen it a thousand times along the Range. Only this time the man with the long hair had let them test their aggression on one of the few people I actually gave two damns about.

  ‘You’re trapped in here,’ Nenn said. She lounged against a sideboard, tossing a coin from hand to hand. I blinked and shook my head.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ I whispered.

  ‘Never did like rules.’

  Nenn’s ghost missed the coin, shrugged, and gave me a pointed look. She was right, but there was a reason that I’d chosen Sav’s. I’d figured that whoever was coming for me wouldn’t come alone, and I’d figured that they’d be reluctant to charge the door now they’d realised what a bad idea it was.

  The gang were gathered out in the street. Nervous-looking men and women. The matchlock gunners were Range station soldiers in dishevelled uniforms, the crossbowmen looked like Misery-miners or the kind of mercs that walked them out there. Drunks, desperadoes. I doubted that the dark-haired man had needed to pay them well, but they were chancers and they’d already lost men. That would make them twitchy, and nervous enemies are better than calm ones. Nenn didn’t offer any further advice – she was gone. She shouldn’t have been there to begin with. Ghosts couldn’t leave the Misery. They were as much part of it as the rocks and the sand. Maybe the Misery was too deep in me to leave behind entirely, or maybe it was just the pumping blood making things fuzzy. Probably that.

  Eleven, not counting the leader. Three matchlocks, four crossbows, the rest were just packing swords, picks, or hammers. No armour. Men he’d had to round up in a hurry. That made him a loner. Twelve in all.

  Bad odds.

  I once said that I don’t fight outnumbered and I don’t fight for lost causes. To attack a dozen men would have been suicide. But the Misery had changed me. Twisted me. I had advantages that they couldn’t begin to understand.

  My first advantage was that whilst I was at Tnota’s house, I’d picked up a couple of surprises.

  My second was that a bunch of men standing by a single narrow door made for an excellent target.

  I puffed twice on the cheap cigar and then applied it to a fuse. The dark-haired man was shouting something about coming out unarmed, but I wasn’t listening.
I was humming a tune I’d heard Lady Dovaura play on the viola, a lifetime ago now, but the aria had always stayed with me. The sizzling fuses made a static accompaniment. When they were burned down low enough, I kicked the window out. That was Tnota’s cue to drop to the ground, and then I tossed the explosives out into the street and covered my ears.

  A grenadoe makes one hell of a noise. It makes a lot of shrapnel, a lot of smoke, and a lot of damage too. Two of them make double the mess.

  I swung down from the balcony. Everything outside was white powder smoke and the acrid stink of blasting powder. I rushed through the doorway in a low hunch, my drudge-sword whispering from its scabbard. She was no delicate implement, not a weapon intended for dainty pokes and taps, but forged to sever a man’s spine.

  I moved through the smoke like a wraith.

  Most of the posse were sprawled on the ground, some of them in pieces, some of them moaning, some just stunned or clutching at their ears and shrieking. No need to play safe, no need to fence. Broad, savage strokes, slashes and cuts that dismembered and disabled. Nothing that would tangle my sword blade in ribs and innards, but cuts that left people howling as I struck off limbs or silenced their screams altogether. Blinded, deafened, they didn’t know who was friend or foe in the roiling, blinding cloud of dense powder smoke, but I had no such fears. I struck through anything that moved or made a sound. A Misery-digger, either brave or panicked, flailed an axe at me but I voided the attack, moved in, and sliced him in half. One of the soldiers swung her broken matchlock like a club but I parried that and my next blow took her head. Not many of them fought. None of them fought well.

  Along the town’s single, dusty road, shutters banged tight. Lights flickered out. Folk who’d previously been gawking now wanted to get the hell out the way. Dead and dying bodies staggered against walls, to their knees, to the ground. They made sounds, and then, in the aftermath of that flurry, made none.