by Ian Whates
The woman nodded. "The goddess will watch over him."
"Thank you. And help will be on hand should it be needed." Dark shadows moved behind the man. Towering black forms which shone in the dull light.
The woman's eyes widened in shock and disbelief. "You've brought them here, to the goddess's temple?"
The prime master smiled. "Where else? They have to be kept out of sight for now. Can you imagine how quickly panic would spread through the streets were people to learn that the Blade have returned to the City Below?"
TWELVE
Tylus took stock of his restless troops - Richardson plus a dozen other officers of the watch, pulled away from their usual duties with no warning. A few of them had puncheons at the ready while others gripped thick, black iron chains; all of them had earplugs in place. They looked ready, despite the odd muttering of discontent.
The other units should be in place by now and there was no point in delaying things. He composed himself and gave Richardson the nod. The young officer scampered forward and attached the two devices to the wall, one either side of the door that was their designated entry point.
Now it was just a question of waiting; it shouldn't be long.
Tylus continued to feel a sense of destiny, that the gods were in some sense smiling on him and everything was going his way. Johnson had been immediately receptive to the idea of this raid, especially when the Kite Guard told him that it might have some bearing on the ongoing problems the watch were facing with the street-nicks and the inter-gang killings. In all honesty, he had no idea whether or not that was true, but he knew that raising the possibility wouldn't harm his cause. The sergeant who had first spoken to him upon his arrival at the station didn't offer so much as a word of protest when Captain Johnson strode up with Tylus by his side and asked him to assemble all available officers. The sergeant's name proved to be Able, which struck Tylus as wholly appropriate based upon what he had seen of the man to date.
Able was now around the other side of the building, with another squad of men, similar in size to Tylus's, while Richardson had taken the front with his own slightly larger group. The visiting Kite Guard had been trusted with the banshees, devices which the station's weapons master handed across with a respect that bordered on reverence.
"Freshly charged," he warned Tylus, "so be careful how you handle them."
Tylus took the oval, fist-sized devices gingerly. They were flat on one side and dome-shaped on the other, the dome being grooved to provide convenient finger holds. He had never encountered banshees before, though he was not about to admit as much and so immediately designated responsibility to Richardson. The young officer seemed to accept this as an honour, a misconception which Tylus was more than happy to encourage. One more boost to the young man's growing self-esteem.
Tylus fiddled with his own earplugs, making sure for the umpteenth time that they were firmly in place. Once deployed, these banshee devices were supposed to trigger fairly quickly.
Even with the earplugs and even though the devices were aimed into the building, there could be no missing the instant the banshees went off. A high pitched shriek filled the air. The Kite Guard and his men immediately leapt into action, rushing to the door. Six of the guards carried between them a thumper - a giant version of the puncheon. They positioned this unwieldy contraption level with the door's lock and catch and then fired. It acted as a battering ram, punching a hole in the door where the lock had been. No longer secured, the door was then easily kicked open, allowing the men of the watch to pour in.
Tylus felt confident that this raid on their headquarters would take the Blue Claw completely by surprise. It had been organised quickly and actioned immediately, leaving little opportunity for a warning to have reached the street-nicks, no matter how good their sources within the watch might be.
The sound from the banshees, which had been clearly audible outside, became deafening once they stepped into the building. And that was with earplugs. Tylus pitied anyone without them. He and his men moved forward swiftly, seeing Johnson's team off to their left, coming in through the front door.
Initially there were no nicks to be found at all, but as they moved further into the house they found their first group, including a girl - a pretty young thing - sunk to her knees with her hands clapped to her ears. Beside her an older nick lay curled up on the floor and a couple of others were slumped in the open doorway to an adjacent room. The hands-to-ears posture seemed universal, which was hardly a surprise.
Through the open doorway, Tylus caught a glimpse of total chaos. Street-nicks and furniture were strewn everywhere. He stepped into the room and made way for the watch officers, who streamed in behind him and started clamping leg irons on the incapacitated youths. There was a little blood in evidence, and surely the banshees could not be responsible for that, nor for the injuries apparent in many of the nicks - cuts, bruises, and at least one who appeared to have a broken leg. It looked as if their arrival might have interrupted a fight.
Was this further evidence of the gang violence the watch had been battling against of late? Had another gang attacked the Blue Claw here, in their very strong-hold, or was it some internal dispute? As he looked around at the carnage, the banshees finally ran down, their grating screech trailing away to a whimper and then to merciful silence. With considerable relief, he removed his earplugs.
At last Tylus felt able to think clearly again, and it was time to start trying to make sense of all this. The oldest person he had seen so far was the man out in the hallway. He realised that maturity didn't necessarily equate to leadership, but why would anyone of that age stick around with a gang of street-nicks unless they had some level of authority? It seemed to Tylus as good a place to start as any. He stepped around fractured furniture, bemused guardsmen and dazed-looking youths, and made his way back into the hall.
The man had begun to sit up, if gingerly, feeling his ribs. Blood marked his face from a cut on the forehead. Altogether, he reminded Tylus of a boxer who had gone too many rounds with an opponent far better than him. Then the man looked up at the Kite Guard and Tylus felt the stirrings of recognition. Where had he seen that face before? He tried to see through the blood and the bruises, picture him unblemished and less dishevelled. Very ordinary looking and yet those eyes.
Then he had it.
"You're the senior arkademic's servant," he blurted out, hardly able to believe as much despite his own words. "What in Thaiss's name are you doing here?"
The man pointed to his ears, frowned and said, "Can't hear you."
Tylus repeated himself, upping the volume. This time the meaning seemed to get through, because the other responded, "Not servant, aide. My name's Dewar and the senior arkademic sent me down here to back you up." The man spoke over-loudly at first, presumably due to the ringing in his ears. Tylus sympathised. His own hearing was still troubled by the ghost of that screeching claxon and he could only imagine what it must be like for someone who hadn't benefitted from any protection. Dewar seemed to realise his error and moderated his tone when he continued. "I thought we might make better progress working independently, and came here following a tip-off. Captured the gang's leader and learned that the boy, Tom, hadn't returned yet, so decided to hang around." He was obviously having some difficulty speaking; quite apart from the problems he must still have been having with hearing, his top lip was split and swollen.
"You were involved in the fight here, I take it?"
"Yes. Things didn't quite go as planned and half the gang jumped me. I ended up fighting for my life and was in the process of trying to escape when you lot turned up and deafened us all."
Tylus felt an odd mix of anger, disappointment and wounded pride. The thought that the senior arkademic had sent someone else down here shook his newly acquired self-belief, leaching away the momentum of his perceived destiny. Didn't Magnus trust him to get the job done? Then he caught himself, refusing to be disheartened. He would use this to his advantage, more determine
d to succeed than ever, if only to prove to Magnus and everyone else that he could. There still remained the question of why this Dewar had failed to declare himself immediately on arriving in the under-City. This woolly nonsense about wanting to work independently struck him as a hastily concocted excuse rather than a sound reason.
Despite his doubts and his wounded pride, Tylus still waved away the guardsman who approached Dewar with the ubiquitous leg irons. After all, no matter what his presence implied, this was unquestionably the senior arkademic's man. Tylus had seen that much with his own eyes.
"Well, Kite Officer, and who have we here?" Captain Johnson had come across to join them. Tylus made the introductions and could see doubts similar to his own play across the captain's face.
Before he could frame any suitable response, he was interrupted by Sergeant Able. "Sir, there's something here you ought to see."
Whatever it was had clearly made the sergeant anxious and he didn't strike Tylus as the sort of man to disturb easily, so he decided to follow them as Able led the captain back into the main room. Dewar tagged along behind.
The room contained several clumps of disconsolate street-nicks, each group of four or five linked together by a chain attached to the manacles which all of them wore. There were twenty or more in total; only two girls among them, he noted. Whereas the boys tended to become street-nicks, cast-out or orphaned girls usually ended up working in washrooms or taverns in one capacity or another, or so Tylus understood.
Able went to the nearest nick and turned him around so that his back faced them, then pulled down the neck of his shirt. A long metallic limb, resembling some sort of steel serpent, appeared to be attached to the back of the kid's neck. Cutting away the shirt altogether revealed an outlandish and, to Tylus's mind, revolting semi-organic device. It had four of the long tentacular legs and a small body dominated by a single eye.
"What is that thing?"
"No idea, sir, but see this?" He revealed another boy's back. It bore four puncture wounds, fairly fresh by the look of them; one to the back of the neck, two to the shoulders and a fourth in the centre of the back, all in exactly the same positions as the hybrid mechanism was clinging to the first nick's back."
"They've all got them," Able said.
"All of them?"
"Yes, sir."
In fact, the only two free of such wounds were Dewar and the girl who had been with him in the hallway. All the other members of the Blue Claw bore the ominous marks.
Closer examination revealed that the creature could not be removed by simply pulling or prising it off; the thing appeared to have burrowed into the street-nick's body with all four limbs.
Tylus stood and stared at it and felt a deep sense of outrage and revulsion. Neither Dewar nor the girl, Jezmina, could shed any light on the matter - both claimed never to have seen these things before - and the other street-nicks were refusing to talk at all.
A flushed Richardson hurried in to join them. "Sir, we've found this man Lyle, the Blue Claw's leader, exactly where we were told to look."
Dewar had supplied the information. The Kite Guard was still uneasy with the man's presence, but felt obliged to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"Did he have the wounds on his neck and back?" Able stepped in.
"No, sir, but..."
"Well bring him here then, lad."
"We can't, sir."
"What do you mean you can't?"
"We would, sir, but there doesn't seem much point. Someone's broken into the room he was held in and has stabbed him. He's dead, sir."
Dewar might have laughed if he weren't still half deaf from the buzzing in his ears, not to mention recovering from being beaten up by a score of youths and then hit over the head by a girl who had been intent on seducing him not long before. After all, here he was being rescued from almost certain death or an even worse fate by the bumbling fool he was supposed to be using as a smokescreen. He could just imagine what his good friend the senior arkademic would make of that.
He hadn't made up his mind what to do about Jezmina yet, although he was very interested to see that she didn't have the marks apparently left by this bizarre semi-organic device and so couldn't fall back on claiming that was the reason she had hit him. On the other hand, he understood Jezmina, perhaps better than he understood anyone else here. There was something comfortingly uncomplicated about the way she made a beeline for the main chance. Here was a beautiful young girl, sensual beyond her years, who knew full well the effect she had on men and adolescent boys alike and was fully prepared to use that influence whenever she could. Lyle led the Blue Claw, so she seduced him. Dewar seized control from Lyle so she adjusted her sights accordingly. Then, when it was clear that his influence had been broken and the gang had turned on him, so did she. Simple, straightforward and very direct self-interest; he admired her for that.
But, at the end of the day, she had hit him.
Jezmina could wait, though. It was the discovery of this abominable device that most occupied his attention. As soon as the watch sergeant revealed the thing he felt a shiver of recognition, remembering his experience in the back streets the previous night. There was no doubt in his mind that the creature he had clipped with his kairuken was related to this one. Had this been his intended fate? To have one of these grotesques straddling his back and burrowing into his neck and spine doing Thaiss knew what? He shuddered at the thought and stared at the thing with renewed distaste.
He sensed caution, even distrust, in the Kite Guard, and the watch captain didn't seem too enamoured of him either. Neither of which bothered Dewar much - popularity he had never been concerned with - but if he wanted to avoid the leg irons he was going to have to keep them convinced that his presence here was at least semi-official. He told them where to find Lyle, which was really telling them nothing at all, since they were bound to search the building thoroughly in any case, and, in the same vein, said, "This isn't all of the Blue Claw. There's still one group who haven't come back yet and possibly a few others."
"How many are we missing in total?" Johnson wanted to know.
"About a dozen, maybe a few less." Damn this split lip. It made his words sound like those of a semi-articulate simpleton. It also pulsed with dull heat, but that was nothing compared to the pain from his ribs.
Again, telling them the number of gang members still at large gave the guards little they wouldn't have discovered for themselves but it helped to build his credibility. So far, he hadn't encountered his new informant and hoped the man was not a part of the raid; seeing the person who had so recently tortured and broken him at such an obvious disadvantage might prove too great a test for such a newly-forged sense of loyalty.
He was as surprised as anyone when Richardson came back with news of Lyle's murder and wondered which of the Blue Claw was responsible for killing their own leader and why. Not that he'd miss the man, but he did fleetingly wonder whether the killing was down to whatever influence these devices were exerting or just a case of one of the gang's lieutenants taking advantage of unexpected opportunity.
Richardson joined the small group that had gathered to contemplate the disturbing device and had as much to add to the discussion as anyone; which was precious little.
"Looks like the sort of thing the dog master might cook up," the young guardsman observed.
"Not dog-like enough," Able replied. Dewar could only agree. The dog master had always focused exclusively on the canine form. It was an obsession with the man to an extent which the assassin had never felt inclined to explore.
"There is someone else across the city who dabbles in similar things." This from Johnson. "The Maker, I think he calls himself."
Really? Two warped minds playing with similar perversions? Dewar had never heard of this particular denizen of the under-City and had always thought the dog master to be unique, in both his delectations and his skills. Was this 'Maker' a recent arrival, perhaps? It was worth looking into, certainly.
; The street-nicks were marched back to the station, Dewar having little choice but to return with Tylus and the guardsmen. They made a strange procession which earned stares and even a few jeers from those they passed, people who were doubtless used to seeing the unusual. Word of the Blue Claw's downfall would spread like wildfire through the streets.
Once back at the station, Dewar's injuries were inspected by the guards' medic, a portly, aging officer whose ruddy complexion suggested he might have been overly familiar with the medicinal spirit on occasion. The assassin was relieved to learn that his ribs had only suffered heavy bruising rather than any breakages, and stoically allowed them to be heavily strapped before rejoining the Kite Guard and his lackeys.
He arrived in time to witness the same medic attempting to remove the device from a decidedly reluctant street-nick, who kicked and screamed so much that it took three guardsmen to hold him face-down and bind him to the table. The lad fought as if his life depended on it, which indeed proved to be the case.
Evidently tiring of the nick's struggles, the medic held a cloth over his mouth, knocking him unconscious. The medic then made his first incision immediately below the point where the lowest of the device's legs connected with the boy's back.
"Interesting," he muttered as he continued, "it seems to have burrowed directly into the spine."
Whatever this medic's skills, they evidently did not extend to surgery. Dewar felt certain that he could have made a better job of this operation himself. Despite the efforts of the guardsman acting as nurse to swab it away, blood was soon everywhere. The nick died when the medic attempted to remove the spike from his spine, crying out immediately beforehand even through the anaesthetic.
All the operation left them with was a lot of blood and one dead street-nick, and they still had no clear idea what the devices were intended to do. Mind-control seemed to be everybody's favourite theory, and certainly there had been something unnatural about the way the street-nicks attacked him, Dewar recalled, particularly the silence. Yet he was far from convinced. To him the idea made little sense. How could anyone direct so many individuals effectively, even if such a level of control were possible? One or two at a time, maybe, but there were a score or so of the Blue Claw and probably dozens more infected street-nicks spread throughout the other gangs if suspicions were correct. It would be impossible to oversee so many individuals unless victims became programmed automata, which clearly these Blue Claw were not. He suspected they still had much to discover on the subject.