Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3)

by Manners, Harry

  The woman dropped without ceremony, and behind her the square was revealed in full, turned into a riotous mass of warring, screaming bodies. Now that their guns were useless, they had fought their way from cover through sheer force of will.

  If they had stayed put, those firing from above would have picked them off one by one. Being in the open wouldn’t save them—they were outnumbered twenty to one—but they would take more with them. Their numbers wilted by the moment, yet despite everything being thrown at them, they were holding their ground.

  Marek ran, never stopping, forever darting back and forth on the balls of his feet between struggling dog piles. Desperate enemies, swinging oversized makeshift weapons, never stood a chance; all he had to do was wait until their own weight committed them to a strike doomed to miss, and then he would go in from the side, make a quick vital plunge with the knife, and move on. In this manner he weaved away from the front lines and into the meat of the army. It was here he knew he could do the most damage, where those behind the front lines were concentrating on pushing forwards, not expecting to find one of their targets alone. Slashing, plunging, jabbing, Marek made dozens of small wounds almost unnoticed; wounds that would have his targets bleed out in a minute or two.

  His luck finally ran out when he neared the square’s centre. Voices rang out, arms pointing in his wake, lifting his veil of anonymity. He did the only thing there was to do: kept moving. If he stopped for an instant they would be on him, and once his avenue of escape was cut off he would be just another corpse.

  I need a bigger weapon, he thought, and at once began scouring the ground for something with greater reach. He couldn’t run forever, and once he stopped, the knife wouldn’t do.

  His trained eye picked out glints of blade, broken rifle butts, all half-buried under bloody bodies or crumpled into uselessness.

  The enemy ranks milled like starlings to cut off his escape. His run was done. From everywhere came bloodcurdling cries: “Get him!”

  Scrabbling from the hot stinking masses, Marek leaped into the rusted carcass of a London bus, kicking back in his wake until his boot met somebody’s jaw with a sharp crack. Then he was in slippery darkness amidst mulched leaf litter and rotted upholstery, writhing for the stairs. He stepped over a bleached skeleton and seized at a glinting, long blade. Pulling it up in his wake, he bounded up the stairs and emerged onto the open-topped roof.

  Backing away from the stairs, he looked at the blade he had retrieved and his heart sank: a three-foot-long antique sabre with a ruby inset in the hilt.

  A bloody sword? He thought incredulously. Seriously?

  Before his dismay could manifest, shadow fell over the stairs, and he swung down, cleaving flesh as a scream was cut short.

  Around him the battle raged, all colour drained by the black sky and the driving rain. He knew he couldn’t keep this up much longer, for his arms already burned and every move he made was less coordinated. After all his long years of training to keep the upper hand, he was limited by the very same thing that made these people such weak fodder: hunger.

  They were weak, emaciated by the ravages of the long winter. This was less a war than a vague scramble; leagues of walking skeletons, barely standing, eyes huge and faces gaunt. This would be over soon, one way or another.

  Marek swung again and met another body. Again, again, again, each time a harsh hacking motion without thought or finesse. If he could get enough, he could block the stairs. He just hoped the snipers weren’t still watching.

  His arms were so weak that lifting the sabre became an almost elastic motion, his arm trembling. There was no fighting it, but he had almost blocked the stairwell.

  Come on. One more, one more.

  Then from the heavens, a low whistling rose above the storm. For an instant everything froze as heads turned upwards and the whistling became a high shrieking whine.

  Marek just had time to perceive the bus erupting under him, unzipping across its long axis like tissue paper. Then he was cartwheeling through the air and intense heat seared his back. Half-blinded, deafened by a percussive rush of air, all sense of orientation vanished, bar the vague sensation of spinning and falling.

  He hit the ground rolling end over end, skittering in a scree of decay. Stones cut at his face, and a barked shin wailed as he cartwheeled to a stop. The world turned over ceaselessly and were it not for the solid ground under him, he would have been sure he was still flying.

  The ringing dissipated just enough for a single thought to run through his mind: move.

  Willing his senses to clear, he rolled up onto his knees. He overshot and tumbled onto his other side but sent himself back to his knees before he could settle, holding his head in his hands and smacking at his temples. Fighting dizziness and tasting blood, he groped until he found the sabre and slogged to his feet.

  All was in slow motion. He still heard nothing but the same unbroken ringing, an eerie contrast to the destruction being wrought. In every direction flowers of fire and flying rock blossomed between the ranks of friend and foe, lifting people by the dozen from their feet, tearing their bodies and sending the remains spinning into the mist.

  Marek blinked, something that seemed to take forever. His mind coughed, chugged, and finally clicked.

  They’re using artillery on us. On their own.

  The fog in his head cleared, cast aside by instinct. Pain came in progressive waves, giving him just enough time to grit his teeth in preparation for its full force—he started running before the throbbing in his leg paralysed him.

  He passed people who had moments before been bent on cutting him down. Now, like dodos before the cooking pot, they merely looked into the stormy skies as death rained down upon them. They stared until the peppering of shells became continuous, and Marek felt the spell of shock stretch, strain, and snap. Then panic erupted and the square was alive with churning bodies—not fighting, but fleeing.

  Marek ran, limping with the sabre clutched to his side. Close by the fountains belched detritus into the air, and the magisterial lions vanished in puffs of vaporised bronze. He crossed No Man’s Land—a band of cratered stone patched with bodies and rubble—in a few moments that could have been years, his heart hammering as grit and pebbles sprayed his face, praying his luck didn’t run out.

  By the time he reached the eastern side of the square, the shelling had petered out. He risked pausing to look back, and saw the army gathered on the far side. Despite the terror of moments ago, hunger filled their unified gaze anew.

  He gripped surviving Alliance fighters and threw them ahead of him. “Go! Get to the gate.”

  “What about our position?” somebody protested. “We have to hold them.”

  “Get behind the wall!”

  He turned and shuffled east on legs screaming for mercy, leaving Trafalgar Square with now Nelson alone atop his column, surveying the swirling shadows over the capital.

  FIRST INTERLUDE

  1

  James took the stairs two at a time. Ignoring the flames at his heels, he rolled over the attic threshold and called, “Beth?”

  His voice receded into the gloom. Alex rattled up beside him, and together they stood in the doorway, sweeping back and forth over the shadows. It would be so easy for Malverston to shoot them both right now. No cover lay in sight. All he needed was a gun and a clear line of sight, and they would be dead before they knew where the bullet came from. But nothing happened. In the aftermath of the headlong race, inaction yanked at James’s insides with physical force.

  “Beth?”

  From the darkness, a scuffle of feet upon floorboards.

  “There’s no way out of here, George. Let’s talk. We’re not here to collect heads,” Alex said, sweeping his rifle in the opposite direction to James, inch by inch.

  From the darkness, somewhere to their left, Malverston hummed. “And what is it you’re here for, I wonder?”

  “We just want to stop this, before you destroy everything you’re holding
on to.” Alex spoke carefully, each word smooth and calming.

  “Don’t talk down to me, you arrogant little maggot!”

  James and Alex zeroed in on the noise’s source, thirty degrees to their left. Excitement flooded through James as he stepped forwards into the dark. “Found you,” he snarled.

  Below he could hear the others’ voices. It sounded like they had all made it. Too late to help Beth now.

  Another scuffle, a satisfying stiffening akin to a deer wheeling in fright. Then slow, echoing footsteps. Malverston inched into the amber firelight filtering up the stairs. Before him he held Beth tight to his chest, a knife flush against her larynx. Before James could move or say a word, Malverston whispered, “Not a flinch. She’ll be dead before you can squeeze that trigger.”

  James froze, fixating on Beth: her square jaw, hard features, and short-cropped hair, all consumed by a maze of tiny surgical cuts. In a fraction of a second the ache inside him turned to bile.

  “James, Alex?” Oliver called from below.

  “Up here,” Alex replied. He turned back to Malverston. “It’s over, George. The others are downstairs. Your men are dead. It’s done.”

  Malverston’s leer wilted, and James saw that he knew it was so.

  Alex muttered in James’s ear, “Wait for the others and we’ll move in together—”

  “No, he’s mine!” James surged forwards, using every scrap of his hatred, flying forwards with such suddenness that Malverston’s only movement was to widen his eyes.

  He heard Alex from a great distance yelling, “James, no!”

  Then James was yelling, lowering his head and colliding with Malverston’s shoulder. The mayor was twice his size, but with Beth in tow he was poorly balanced. Malverston’s arm fell away from Beth’s throat, and the three of them went spinning into the dark in a ball of scratching and yelling.

  James clawed meaty jowls, pawing for the mayor’s eyes, fighting enormous flabby arms. The mayor howled, then James touched something much slimmer, fairer—Beth. Abandoning his attack, he seized her around the waist and threw her through the air. Her hand clasped his briefly—so very briefly—then she flew from him and the mayor, landing several feet away.

  He had done it! She was away, she was free!—

  Blinding pain exploded inside his skull, radiating through his nose as a meaty fist pummelled him with the force of a hammer. Seeing flashes, James threw a wild punch that met nothing but air, then a leg swept out of nowhere and took his feet out from under him. James slammed to his knees with a crack that made him cry out, and then his arms were pinned to his side. He blinked his vision clear and writhed in the mayor’s grasp, but before he could do any more than spit blood he faced Alex on his knees, and Malverston crouched behind him with a triumphant laugh. James felt something cold and sharp press at his neck.

  “Well, this is tiresome,” the mayor said. “Looks like we’ve swapped one brat for another.” Pleasure trickled into his voice. “This one I know you couldn’t bear to lose. Am I right, messiah?”

  Alex’s eyes were huge in his head, his hands shaking so much that the rifle waved back and forth. “Let him go.”

  “I’ll be glad to release your beloved Pigeon Keeper, as soon as I’m given safe passage.” Malverston exaggerated a sniff. “Better hurry now, it’s getting warm in here. We’ll all be roast chicken in a minute.”

  James surged against Malverston, but the mayor started cutting the delicate skin of his neck immediately, slicing into the tendon. He yelled, gasped, and grew still. “Don’t do it, Alex. Shoot him.”

  Alex shook, his mouth retracted into a pencil-thin white line.

  “Now, Alex!”

  Beth groaned somewhere in the dark, and upon the stairs a rattle rang out as the others scrambled over the flaming risers.

  “Stop them now, Alexander,” the mayor snarled.

  “Stop!” Alex yelled over his shoulder.

  The patter stilled. “What?” Oliver said.

  “Stay back. He has James.”

  A pause, then a spate of curses from all parties.

  “Wha-what do we do?” Agatha cried.

  “Get out. Get out now.”

  “This whole place is burnin’. You gotta get out now.”

  “We’ll be right behind you, just hurry!”

  James swallowed and searched for Beth. The floorboards were hot underfoot now, and the whole building groaned as the wooden supports gave way. Already his vision was blurring from the acrid build-up, and smoke was drifting up into the attic in bulbous clots, pooling at the ceiling.

  “Beth, get up,” James hissed. “Get up and go.”

  She stirred in the shadows. “James!” She moved forwards, but Malverston tightened the knife against James’s throat.

  They all became still, an immobile triangle standing in the growing orange glow of the spreading fire.

  “Let him go or we all die,” Alex said.

  “I think not. I think I’ll have you do something for me,” Malverston said.

  Alex made to retort, but the mayor cut him off. “If you want your precious saviour back, you’ll do this one thing for me.”

  Alex’s eyes twitched. “What?”

  Malverston pointed to Beth. “Shoot her.”

  *

  Melanie gagged, smoke filling her lungs as it seeped between the tiles. The roof was hot enough to burn, but she kept moving, gritting her teeth, moving towards the lee in the nested roof. Her gaze was fixed utterly on a ragged hole in the boards, just big enough to fire a well-aimed stone through. Inside she heard Beth and James and the mayor. They and the others were all screaming at one another. She willed flashes of gore from her mind’s eye and kept inching upwards, gasping as her leg wound dragged on the tiles’ sharp edges.

  She screamed as the entire building shuddered, sinking an inch on the left side. Clutching the tiles, she waited for the roof to cave in, for her body to drop into the waiting flames.

  It held. Swallowing the bile slicking her tongue, she inched for a stronger patch of tiles, and finally reached the tiny crack in the beams. She fingered her waistband and found her slingshot. Flame-lit floorboards met her gaze, a pool of light at the edges of which stood a frozen trio of silhouettes. Mel took a moment to recognise Beth—Beth free!

  The mayor hunched over a slim young figure with long boyish hair. James.

  She took a breath. Now that Beth was safe, she could focus. With practised familiarity her fingers found the rock in the pouch on her belt and brought it up to the sling. All the while she stared, judging dimensions in the murky, ever-shifting half-light. They were all shouting, the fire roared like a great beast under her, and the building juddered and groaned each moment.

  She would only have one chance. She had to make it count. Mel drew back the band and aimed.

  2

  “We have to get out!” Oliver said.

  Agatha reeled from the stairs as a flaming drapery twirled down in a shower of embers. Oliver lifted her clear with an inch to spare.

  “We can’t just leave them,” she yelled.

  Their eyes streamed with smoke and ash. The fire climbed the walls, working into every crevice. The crackling and burbling blanketed out any sounds coming from upstairs. Oliver and Agatha stared at each other for a long moment, then with a tortured whine the beam above their heads buckled inwards, spraying embers into their hair.

  A scream rose above the racket. Whatever was going on above, it wasn’t good.

  Every fibre of Oliver wanted to tear up the stairs. But they couldn’t. They had no way of knowing what the consequences might be.

  When this is over, I’m done with people. I’ll play with my clocks and gadgets. At least they never try to kill me. I’m done with this life, this name: Oliver Farringdon, and all the tosh that goes with it. I’ll get a workshop, start over; I’ll go by what the boys at the shipyards used to call me: Lincoln.

  A hand gripped Oliver’s arm.

  “Both of you go. I’m staying,�
� Lucian said.

  “We all come out of here together, or none of us will,” Oliver said.

  Lucian took Agatha’s arm in his other hand. “You have to get out.”

  “We can’t go out without them,” Agatha said. “They’re the lifeblood of the mission! Without them it’ll all fall apart.”

  A cross-brace toppled onto the dining table and set the chairs ablaze. They crouched instinctively, dropping to their haunches as the smoke grew thicker. The air was breathable close to the ground, but it still seared Oliver’s lungs.

  Lucian mouthed like a goldfish, then gripped them both harder. “If we all die here today, it’ll be because of that mayor. We can’t let the bastard have that. We can’t let him win.”

  An ache shot through Oliver’s chest. Lucian was right. But to leave now when they were but feet away…

  “They’re my brothers,” Lucian grated. “I’m not going.”

  A crash shook the front of the building, and they turned to see Hector and Helen out on the porch, crouched over Norman. Oblivious to the flames, they stroked his cheeks, their expressions filmy and distant. Hector held a compress to Norman’s forehead, which had soaked through with blood.

  Oliver’s chest sank. He turned to Agatha, who stared up the staircase with a pleading gaze as though she could will Alex and James to appear. There was the same knowing forlornness about her. They had to get out.

  He nodded to Lucian, and the boy released them. Oliver touched Agatha’s face, turning her gently to him. “Come, my dear,” he coughed. “It’s too late.”

  She shook her head, pale-faced and red-eyed from the ash. “I won’t leave my boys, Oliver.”

  “Aggie, we have to—”

  “No, Oliver! No! I haven’t raised this lot of little toerags so they can jus’ go and die on me. I won’t ever leave ’em, not now and not ever—”